Energy Prices, the Climate and the Nuclear Bubble

The IAEA should withdraw support for ALARA (and for LNT, Linear No-Threshold, the scientifically unsupported argument that accompanies it). Released from the nuclear Zeitgeist of the Cold War, our children and grandchildren should receive explanatory education for their future, firmly based on trust and science, not blame and fear.  -Wade Allison, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford

Energy Prices, the Climate and the Nuclear Bubble (pdf)

Those who would attack nuclear in the name of the environment use inverted arguments –nuclear waste is very small, captured, solid, does not spread and causes no casualties. Compare this to human waste or fossil emissions, discharged into the environment with acknowledged death tolls measured in millions. In the 1950s worldwide public fears of radiation were fanned by threats of WMD – this lead to ALARA. This policy, sanctioned by the United Nations, attempts to appease public fear by recommending farcically low radiation levels – today in Japan you would have to eat 5 tonnes of “contaminated” food in 3 months to get as much radiation as a single CT scan, itself 100 times lower than a life-giving radiotherapy treatment.

Comparison of monthly doses shown as areas 

Dark circle, treatment to cancer tumour (40,000mSv);

Light circle, recoverable dose to healthy tissue (20,000mSv); 

Small circle, conservative and safe (100mSv a month); 

Tiny dot, safety recommended by ALARA (0.08mSv a month or 1mSv a year)

So how safe is nuclear radiation? About a 1000 times safer than regulations suggest.

Read the entire article  by Wade Allison, MA, DPhil, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford at www.radiationandreason.com

Thanks to Rod Adams for recommending this, on Twitter, as a "Must read now."