Episode 16 – Green is Clean Air and Clean Water for All – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 7 Part 2

The trail of destruction continues from Episode 15.

Later in 2010, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured in Michigan, eventually “spilling” more than a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River. When monitors at the Alberta office reported that the line pressure had fallen to zero, control room staff dismissed the warning as a false alarm and cranked up the pressure twice, which worsened the disaster. In 2018, Enbridge’s “cleanup” was still incomplete.

Fire at BP Deepwater Horizon 2010
Bird in Oil Alaska 1989
800 Mile Oil Spill Alaska 1989
San Bruno Gas Pipeline Explosion 2010
Aliso Canyon Methane Leak 2014
Alberta Waste Oil Spill 2014
Oil Train Derailment in New Brunswick, Canada 2014
Alabama Oil Train Crash 2013
Mayflower, Arkansas Exxon Oil Spill 2016
Lac Megantic Quebec Oil Train Crash 2013
Enbridge Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Spill Kalamazoo 2010
Ramsey Natural Gas Processing Plant in Orla, Texas 2015

In 2013, a spectacular train wreck dumped 2 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil into Lac Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 residents and incinerating the centre of the town – but that’s just another page in the endless petroleum tale that includes Exxon’s disastrous, 2016 “spill” in Mayflower, Arkansas, that received scant notice from the press.

And in November 2013, a train loaded with 2.7 million gallons of crude oil went incendiary in Alabama, followed in December by a North Dakota conflagration.

2014 began with a fiery derailment in New Brunswick, Canada, and in October 2014, 625,000 liters of oil and toxic mine-water were “spilled” in Alberta.

July, August and September brought Alberta’s autumn, 2014 total to 90 pipeline “spills.” 2015 brought four, fiery oil train wrecks just by March, and 2016 delivered two Alabama pipeline explosions – one close to Birmingham.
George Erickson

July, August and September brought Alberta’s autumn, 2014 total to 90 pipeline “spills.” 2015 brought four, fiery oil train wrecks just by March, and 2016 delivered two Alabama pipeline explosions – one close to Birmingham.

In late 2015, California’s horrific, Aliso Canyon methane “leak” (think “geyser”) erupted, spewing forth 100,000 tons of natural gas, the equivalent of approximately 3 billion gallons of gasoline or adding 500,000 cars to our roads for a year.

The Southern California Gas Company finally managed to throttle the geyser in February, 2016. Incidentally, Aliso’s 100,000 tons of “leakage” is just 25% of California’s allowed leakage, which is an indication of the political power of the natural gas industry. (Five months later, a new headline appeared: “Massive Fracking Explosion in New Mexico”)

The Aliso “leak” caused the loss of 70 billion cubic feet (BCF) of gas that California utilities count on to create electricity for the hot summer months. As a consequence, the California Independent Service Operator, which manages California’s grid, estimated that due to Aliso, 21 million customers should expect to be without power for 14 days during the summer.

Methane leaks offset much of the climate change benefits of natural gas, study says

According to Reuters, (June 2016), “SoCalGas uses Aliso Canyon to provide gas to power generators that cannot be met with pipeline flows alone on about 10 days per month during the summer, according to state agencies.”

However, during the summer, SoCalGas also strives to fill Aliso Canyon to prepare for the winter heating season. State regulators, however, subsequently ordered the company to reduce the amount of gas in Aliso to just 15 BCF and use that fuel to reduce the risk of power interruptions in the hot summer months of 2016. Fortunately, State regulators have also said that they won’t allow SoCalGas to inject fuel into the facility until the company has inspected all of its 114 storage facilities.

The Aliso disaster wiped out all of the state’s Green House Gas (GHG) reductions from its wind and solar systems – and led to a USD 1.8 billion judgement against SoCalGas in September, 2021. In 2016, California officials also reported leakage at a San Joachim County storage facility that was “similar to, or slightly above, background levels at other natural gas storage facilities.”

Alexander Cannara – Energy Basics @ TEAC3

Dr. Alex Cannara, a California resident writes,

“Combustion sources [unlike nuclear power], aren’t burdened with their true costs. Natural gas, for example, is not cheaper than nuclear or anything else. In 2016, our allowed leakage wipes wind/solar out by 4 times. In other words, ‘renewables’ in a gas state like California wipe out their benefits every 3 months because they depend on gas for most of their nameplate ratings. The Aliso storage was largely used to compensate for ‘renewables’ inevitable shortfall.

“The most important combustion cost is the unlimited downside risk of its emissions for the entire planet, but in February 2016, our CEC approved 600MW of added gas burning in the San Diego region simply because the San Onofre nuclear plant wasn’t running, due to possibly corrupt actions by SoCla Gas, SCE, Sempra Energy and Edison Intl.

“Such practices were prevented for 75 years by the 1935 PUHCA, but the Bush administration repealed it in 2005 after decades of carbon combustion-interest lobbying. Some states – not California – passed legislation to correct for the 2005 PUHCA repeal.”

There’s more: In August, 2016, the Pennsylvania EPA admitted that oil and gas production in the state emitted as much methane as Aliso Canyon. The Aliso “leak” was deemed a disaster, but the hundreds of equally damaging Pennsylvania “leaks” were considered business as usual.

Finally, also in August, 2016, a thirty-inch pipeline exploded in southeast New Mexico, killing five adults and five children while leaving two other adults in critical condition in a Lubbock, Texas hospital.

All of this could have been avoided if, instead of pursuing intermittent, short-lived, carbon-dependent windmills and solar panels (Chapters 9 and 10), we had expanded safe, CO₂-free Nuclear Power.

Dr. Wade Allison, in Nuclear is For Life, wrote: “Critics of civilian nuclear power use what they fear might happen due to a nuclear failure – but never has – but ignore other accidents that have been far worse:
– The 1975 dam failure in China that killed 170,000;
– The 1984 chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India where 3,899 died and 558,000 were injured;
– The 1889, Johnstown. PA flood that drowned 2,200;
– The 1917 explosion of a cargo ship in Halifax, N. S. where 2,000 died and 9,000 were injured;
– Turkey’s 2014 coal mine accident that took 300 lives;
– The 2015 warehouse explosion in China that cost 173 lives. “

The list seems endless, but no one advocates destroying dams or closing chemical plants.

The way the world has reacted to the Fukushima accident has been the real disaster with huge consequences to the environment, but the accident itself was not.”

See more from Dr Alison here.

Rediscovering the Promise of Nuclear Power by Wade Allison

“In California, defective, Japanese-built steam generators at the San Onofre plant could have been replaced for about USD 600 million, but the plant is being decommissioned at a cost of USD 4.5 billion because of Fukushima and anti-nuclear zealotry. The plant could be replaced with two, CO_2-free AP-1000 reactors for USD 14 Billion.” Mike Conley

In this foolish way, California lost the CO₂-free electricity generated by San Onofre – 9% of California’s needs – which was replaced by carbon burning power plants and/or carbon-reliant wind and solar.

Nuclear plants are required to set aside part of their profits to pay the cost of decommissioning, but no such requirement is made of wind and solar farms. Neither are carbon companies required to pre-fund the removal of miles of pipelines, the cleanup of refinery sites, or the sealing of their abandoned wells.

Gas Industry Plans to Sink Nuclear Power

Inside the Gas Industry’s Plan to Sink Nuclear Power, Lachlan Markay 14 April 2019

I repeat, NO ONE has died from radiation created by commercial nuclear power production in Western Europe, Asia or the Southern and Western hemispheres, but up to 5,000,000 people die prematurely every year from the burning of coal, gas, wood and oil.

The 2008 UNSCEAR update on their Chernobyl Report changed the “4000” future deaths from cancer to undetectable future deaths. With that reduction, the deaths per TWh drop accordingly.
A 2019 study lowered the nuclear rate even further from 0.0013 to 0.0007/TWh.

The original version of this chart, which rated nuclear power at 0.04 deaths per Terawatt hour, included thousands of LNT-predicted Chernobyl deaths that never happened.

As a consequence, this image, which reflects reality instead of LNT [Linear No Threshold] errors, reveals that nuclear power is far safer than initially thought, and that nuclear is actually 115 times safer than wind – not 4,340 times safer than solar – not 10, 3,000 times safer than natural gas, 27,000 times safer than oil – and coal is out of sight.

“Renewables” vs Nuclear Power by George Erickson 21 Sept 2017

While we are at it, let’s explore resources necessary to build equivalent power facilities and the fuel required.

Quadrennial Technology Review 2015 Department of Energy

Power Station	Fuel Quantity	Fuel Quantity (kg)	CO2 Production (Tons)
Solid Fission (U235)	7 Pounds	3.2	Zero
Coal Burning	9,000 tons	9,000,000	26,000
Natural Gas Burning	240,000,000 cu ft	4,621,309	15,210

How Much Does it Take to Move that Much Materials?

Thorium and Uranium Compared Slide 1 of 3
Thorium and Uranium Compared Slide 2 of 3
Thorium and Uranium Compared Slide 3 of 3

Coming up next week, Episode 17 – All At Sea – The Best Technology. Not Used. Why?

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 17 – All At Sea – The Best Technology. Not Used. Why?
2. Previous Episode – Episode 15 – Clean Air and Water? Not with Fossil Fuels Around
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Mayflower_oil_spill
8. https://www.ecowatch.com/massive-fracking-explosion-in-new-mexico-1919567359.html
9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/methane-leaks-offset-much-of-the-benefits-of-natural-gas-new-study-says/2018/06/21/e381654a-7590-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html
10. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-california-heatwave-idUSKCN0Z60DO
11. https://thoriumenergyalliance.com/resource/dr-alex-cannara-energy-basics/
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUVq81kBKyk
13. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-cannara-6a1b7a3/
14. http://www.dep.pa.gov/Business/Air/BAQ/BusinessTopics/Emission/Pages/Marcellus-Inventory.aspx
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Allison
17. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wade-allison-08929816/
18. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285420212_Nuclear_is_for_Life_A_Cultural_Revolution
19. https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Life-Wade-Allison-author/dp/0956275648
20. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nuclear-power-climate-change-misconceptions-by-wade-allison-2018-06
21. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-conley-5529b3/
22. https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-gas-industrys-plan-to-sink-nuclear-power
23. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lachlanmarkay/
24. https://duluthreader.com/articles/2017/09/21/109245-renewables-vs-nuclear-power
25. https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-technology-review-2015

#UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #ClimateChange #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #FossilFuels #NuclearSafety #TheThoriumNetwork #Fission4All #RadiationIsGood4U #GetYourRadiation2Day #Thorium

21st Apr 20225th Jun 2022

Episode 15 – Clean Air and Water? Not with Fossil Fuels Around – Death by Fossil – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 7 Part 1

What’s the Fossil Fuel Record? Millions of Air Pollution Deaths each year

Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for more than 8 million people worldwide in 2018
Loretta J. Mickley | Harvard
February 9, 2021

Loretta J. Mickley , Senior Research Fellow in Chemistry-Climate Interactions, Harvard

Because the carbon industries are heavily subsidised, one might expect them to have exemplary safety and social records, but one would be wrong!

According to the Guardian, 6 Oct 2021 “The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by USD 5.9tn in 2020″ Or USD 11 million a minute every day. This is according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has noted before that existing fossil fuel subsidies overwhelmingly go to the rich, with the wealthiest 20% of people getting six times as much as the poorest 20% in low and middle-income countries.

IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by USD 5.9tn in 2020, or USD11 per minute.
Guardian , 6 Oct 2021

The ash derived from burning coal averages 80,000 pounds per American lifetime. Compare that to two pounds of nuclear “waste” for the same amount of electricity. The world’s 1,200 largest coal-fired plants cause 30,000 premature U.S. deaths every year plus hundreds of thousands of cases of lung and heart diseases.

In 2006, the Sago coal mine disaster killed 12. A few years later, a West Virginia coal mine explosion killed 29. In May 2014, 240 miners died in a Turkish coal mine.

*Normal Operations – Ash from Coal Fired Power Station – Tennessee Valley Authority*

Generating the 20% of U.S. electricity with nuclear power saves our atmosphere from being polluted with 177 million tons of greenhouse gases every year, but despite the increasing consequences of Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, the burning of carbon to make electricity is still rising.

Scientific American, 13 Dec 2007: “Coal-fired plants expel mercury, arsenic, uranium, radon, cyanide and harmful particulates while exposing us to 100 times more radiation than nuclear plants that create no CO₂. In fact, coal ash is more radioactive than any emission from any operating nuclear plant.”

How Coal Kills 17 Feb 2015, EarthTalk (Doug Moss & Roddy Scheer), February 17, 2015

The Human Cost of Energy
Fossil fuels exact the biggest toll in terms of lives lost
By Mark Fischetti on September 1, 2011

In one year, a CO₂-free, 1,000 MW nuclear plant creates about 500 cu ft of spent fuel that can be recycled to retrieve useful U-238, reducing its bulk by about 90%. (An average U. S. bathroom is about that size.) In that same year, a 1,000 MW coal plant creates 65,000 tons of CO₂ plus enough toxic ash to cover an entire football field to a height of at least 200 feet.

Burning fossil fuels releases significant quantities of carbon dioxide, aggravating climate change. Although it gets less attention these days, combustion also emits volumes of pollutants, which can cause a variety of illnesses.
Mark Fischetti

U.S. Health Burden Caused by Particulate Pollution from Fossil-Fuelled Power Plants

Illness	Mean Number of Cases
Asthma (hospital admissions)	3,020
Pneumonia (hospital admissions)	4,040
Asthma (emergency room visits)	7,160
Cardiovascular ills (hospital admissions)	9,720
Chronic bronchitis	18,600
Premature deaths	30,100
Acute bronchitis	59,000
Asthma attacks	603,000
Lower respiratory ills	630,000
Upper respiratory ills	679,000
Lost workdays	5.13 million
Minor restricted-activity days	26.3 million

The Health Care Burden of Fossil Fuels

Every year, we store 140 million tons of coal ash in unlined or poorly lined landfills and tailing ponds. In 2008, five million tons of toxic ash burst through a Tennessee berm (see below), destroying homes and fouling lakes and rivers.

Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards 2008

Coal-fired power plants leak more toxic pollution into America’s waters than any other industry. (A June, 2013 test found that arsenic levels leaking from unlined coal ash ponds were 300 times the safety level for drinking water.)

And in 2014, North Carolina’s Duke Energy’s plant (now bankrupt) “spilled” 9,000 tons of toxic coal ash sludge into the Dan River. Why do they always say “spilled” – never “gushed?”

Coal companies like to promote their supposedly “clean coal,” which really means “not quite so filthy,” but despite making an attempt at carbon capture and storage (CCS) at a new power plant in Saskatchewan, the plant has been a failure. (Burning fossil fuels causes 4.5 million early deaths per year.)

CO2 Sequestration Critique by The Juice Media 2 Sept 2021

CO₂ removal devices use natural gas or electricity, which is usually generated by burning carbon. The moral hazard of removing CO₂ from the air is that it justifies burning fossil fuels.

Technology to Make Clean Energy from Coal is Stumbling in Practice

Carbon Capture System at Saskpower Boundary Dam Powerstation

An electrical plant in Saskatchewan was the great hope for industries that burn coal.

In the first large-scale project of its kind, the plant was equipped with a technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust and bury it, transforming coal into a cleaner power source. In the months after opening, the utility and the government declared the project an unqualified success, but the USD 1.1 billion project is now looking like a dream.

Known as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the project has been plagued by shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an unresolved problem with its core technology. The costs, too, have soared, requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs.

“At the outset, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member of the legislature who released confidential internal documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster….”

New York Times by Ian Austen, 29 March 2016, Ottawa

Even modern, 75% efficient coal-burners with thirty-year lifespans can’t compete with nuclear plants that have lifespans of 60 years and provide CO2-free power at 90% efficiency, and the new plants are even safer. In addition, our coal reserves will last 100 years at best. And as we “decarbonize”, we will require increasing amounts of electricity, and the only source of economical CO₂-free, 24/7 power must be our new, super-safe, highly efficient nuclear reactors that cannot melt down.

Note: The word “efficiency,” AKA “capacity factor,” in this book means the amount of electricity created over an extended period by wind, solar, etc. compared to their maximum power rating. Unfortunately, the maximum power rating is often used to sell the project. For nuclear reactors, this figure is at least 90%, but it is 33% for windmills and just 19 -22% for pv solar – and solar panel efficiency degrades by 1% per year during their short, 20 year lifespan. (Thermal efficiency is a separate matter.)

When a gas pipeline exploded in 2010 at San Bruno, California, 8 people died, 35 homes were levelled and dozens more were damaged. In 2016, a federal government report stated that natural gas explosions cause heavy property damage, often with deaths, about 180 times per year – that’s every other day.

GULF OF MEXICO – APRIL 21: In this handout image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21, 2010 near New Orleans, Louisiana. An estimated leak of 1,000 barrels of oil a day are still leaking into the gulf. Multiple Coast Guard helicopters, planes and cutters responded to rescue the Deepwater Horizon’s 126 person crew. (Photo by U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)

In 2010, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico “spilled” 200 million gallons of oil and killed 11 workers and 800,000 birds. Prior to that, an explosion at a Texas BP refinery killed fifteen workers. And BP, which was also involved in the Exxon Valdez “spill” in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, is just one of the many oil companies that we subsidise with USD 2.4 billion every year.

“‘Evolution is driven by the tendency of all organisms to expand their habitat and exploit the available resources… Just as bacteria in a Petri dish grow until they have consumed all of the nutrients, and then die in a toxic soup of their own waste.”
William Ophuls

Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power, New Scientist, 23 March 2011, Phil Mckenna

Coming up next week, Episode 16 – “Green” Means Everyone Gets Clean Air and Clean Water

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 16 – “Green” Means Everyone Gets Clean Air and Clean Water
2. Previous Episode – Episode 14 – What’s up Doc? Tremors from Fukushima – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 6, Part 2
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel-emissions-higher-previously-thought
8. https://www.seas.harvard.edu/person/loretta-mickley
9. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004
10. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds
11. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27406195
12. https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2021/jun/21/tva-studies-idle-kingston-coal-plant/549068/
13. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/
14. https://earthtalk.org/
15. https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthtalk/
16. https://www.linkedin.com/in/roddy-scheer-2070722b/
17. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-cost-of-energy/
18. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/graphic-science-health-care-burden-of-fossil-fuels/
19. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-fischetti-7482609/
20. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/25sludge.html
21. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2014-12-19/first-ever-national-coal-ash-regs-disappoint-missouri-environmentalists
22. https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants
23. https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/duke-energy-pleads-guilty-to-environmental-crimes-in-north-carolina/
24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
25. https://www.thejuicemedia.com/
26. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/energy-environment/technology-to-make-clean-energy-from-coal-is-stumbling-in-practice.html
27. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/19/false-solution-500-groups-urge-us-canadian-leaders-reject-carbon-capture
28. https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-sproule-a049944a/
29. https://www.nytimes.com/by/ian-austen
30. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-great-invisible-a-new_b_7532262
31. https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/15265-small-modular-reactors-generating-interest-among-municipalities-in-finland.html
32. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-austen-0a10a944/
33. https://ccsknowledge.com/news/next-generation-ccs–beyond-coal
34. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
35. https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-ophuls-9b3171225/
36. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ophuls
37. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
38. https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-mckenna-75930b7/
39. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928050-200-risk-expert-why-radiation-fears-are-often-exaggerated/

#UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #FossilFuels #ParticulatePollution #AirPollution #WaterPollution

14th Apr 202218th Jun 2022

Episode 14 – What’s up Doc? Tremors from Fukushima – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 6 Part 2

Japan responded [to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake] by closing its nuclear plants – a foolish move that has required the country to spend USD 40 billion per year on liquefied natural gas plus billions more for coal, which has created huge amounts of greenhouse gases. Another USD 11 billion per year has been spent to maintain their perfectly functional-but-idle reactors.

Nuclear power has been tarred by the Fukushima Daichi disaster, but the failure was NOT the fault of nuclear power. It was caused by repeated corporate lying, record falsifying and penny-pinching, by the lack of government enforcement of seawall height, by building too low to the ocean, and by installing backup generators in easily flooded basements.

Blaming nuclear power for Fukushima is like blaming the train when an engineer derails it by taking a turn at 70 mph that is posted for 30. (The Japanese Diet has stated that the Fukushima accident was not the fault of “nuclear power.”)

Blaming nuclear power for Fukushima is like blaming the train when an engineer derails it by taking a turn at 70 mph that is posted for 30. (The Japanese Diet has stated that the Fukushima accident was not the fault of “nuclear power.”)

In 2015, the usually reliable Amy Goodman [Democracy Now!] reported that a class action suit had been filed by several sailors who had served on the USS REAGAN. In her article, she described their symptoms, which they blamed on being exposed to radiation, but she failed to provide any depth.

Warning – A Rubbish Introduction: Fukushima “Death Cloud” Kills hundreds on US Warship

A few days later, Goodman’s article was read by Captain Reid Tanaka, a United States Navy professional with considerable expertise in nuclear matters who had been intimately involved during the meltdown – and Captain Tanaka presented a very different view:

“I was in Japan, in the Navy, when the tsunami struck and because of my nuclear training, I was called to assist in the reactor accident response and served as a key adviser to the US military forces commander and the US Ambassador to Japan. I spent a year in Tokyo with the US NRC-led team to assist TEPCO and the Japanese Government in battling through the casualty.

“My command (CTF 70) was the direct reporting command for the REAGAN (where we had control over REAGAN’S assignments and missions) and were in direct decision-making with REAGAN’S Commanding Officer and team. I don’t qualify to be called an “expert” in reactor accidents…, but I am well informed enough to know where my limits are and to see through much of the distortions on this issue….

“A Google search will tend to drive people to alarmist websites and non-technical news reports, but you could also find the dull, technical (yet truthful) places such as the IAEA or DOE…

“Numerous bodies of experts have weighed in and provided assessments and reports. A couple are quite critical of TEPCO and the Japanese nuclear industry and regulators.

“… the biggest problem the public has is … being able to distinguish the science-based, objective reports from the alarmist and emotionally charged positions that get the attention of the press, some of whom are self- proclaimed experts in some fields but NOT nuclear power: Dr. David Suzuki and Dr. Michio Kaku. Neither understand spent fuel, nor the condition of spent fuel pools….

“Dr. Suzuki is an award-winning scientist and a champion for the environment, but he is lacking any real understanding of spent fuel or radioactivity. “Bye-bye Japan?’ A headline grabbing sound-bite, but the math just doesn’t work…

“[Sometimes] the true experts cannot give a simple answer because there isn’t one, while those who have no science to back their claims have no compunction in saying the sky is falling and everyone else is lying.

“For the Navy, the contamination caused by Fukushima created a huge amount of extra work and costs for decontaminating the ships and our aircraft to ‘zero’, but [there was] no risk to the health of our people.

“REAGAN was about 100 miles from Fukushima when the radiation alarms first alerted us to the Fukushima accident. Navy nuclear ships have low-level radiation alarms to alert us of a potential problem with our onboard reactors. So, when the airborne alarms were received, we were quite surprised and concerned. The levels of contamination were small, but they caused a great deal of additional evaluation and work. REAGAN’s movements were planned and made to avoid additional fallout. Sailors who believe they were within five miles or so, were misinformed. Japanese ships were close; the REAGAN was not….

“There are former sailors who are engaged in a class-action suit against TEPCO for radiation sickness they are suffering for the exposure they received from Operation Tomodachi. The lead plaintiffs were originally sailors from REAGAN but now have expanded to a few other sailors from other ships. Looking at the claims, I have no doubt some of the SAILORS have some ailments, but without any real supporting information (I haven’t seen ANY credible information to that end), I do not believe any of their ailments can be attributable to radiation—fear and stress related, perhaps, but not radiation directly. Radiation sickness occurs within a ‘minutes/hours’ time frame of exposure and cancer occurs in a ‘years’ time frame. These sailors were not sick in either of these windows. I believe that many of them believe it, but I also believe most are being misled.”

Why Operation Tomodachi worked like clockwork

May, 2020, – U S Court Rejects Sailors’ Lawsuit

The closure of Japan’s nuclear plants and its increased use of imported liquefied natural gas put an end to Japan’s long-standing trade surplus. But in 2015, bowing to financial realities and because of diminishing fear, Japan restarted the second of its reactors. As of May, 2018, seven reactors had been restarted, with many scheduled to follow.

Shortly thereafter, the U. S. media and many of the “Green” organizations began to report that a Fukushima worker had been “awarded compensation and official acknowledgment that his cancer [leukemia] was caused by working in the reactor disaster zone.” That’s wrong, and competent journalists who do adequate research should know it. Here are the facts:

The worker received a workman’s comp benefit package because he satisfied the statutory criteria stipulated in the 1976 Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, which says that workers who are injured or become ill while working or while commuting to and from work, can receive financial aid and medical coverage. The worker spent 14 months at F. Daiichi. (October, 2012 to December 2013.)

In late December 2013, the worker felt too ill to work, so he went to a doctor, and was diagnosed with acute leukaemia in January, 2014. No link was made between his occupational exposure and his cancer. In addition, because the latency period between radiation exposure and the onset of leukaemia is 5 to 7 years, the worker did not get cancer from working at Fukushima. It was, in fact, a pre-existing condition that was exploited by opponents of nuclear power who routinely repeat convenient-but-wrong stories because being honest and accurate takes time, knowledge and integrity.

In 2016, anti-nuclear zealots began to fear-monger about the effects of Cesium-134 on fish while ignoring reports from NOAA and the Japanese government that stated, “Radioactive Cesium in fish caught near Fukushima Daiichi continues to dwindle. Of the more than 70 specimens taken in October, only five showed any Caesium isotope 134, the ‘fingerprint’ for Fukushima Daiichi contamination. The highest Cs-134 concentration was [associated] with a Banded Dogfish, at 8.3 Becquerels per kilogram. Half of the sampled fish had detectable levels of Cs-137, but all were well below Japan’s limit of 100 Bq/kg….”

These amounts are tiny, and the particles emitted from the Potassium-40, which we all contain, are more potent than the Caesium-137 emissions that many greens apparently fear.

There is 500,000 times more natural radiation in the ocean than the amount added by Fukushima.

Regarding the risk from remaining reactor material that many greens agonize over, Dr. Alex Cannara subsequently wrote,

“As of late 2013, the spent fuel at Fukushima was 30 months old. That means that the rods and the fuel pellets within them are able to be stored in air. If any rods had never been in a reactor core, they have no fission products in them and are perfectly safe to take apart by hand.

“So, what do we have at Fukushima? We have some melted core materials (corium), which can be entombed. We have water containing a small amount of fission products like Cesium. And, we have a bunch of fuel assemblies that are very radioactive because of their internal creation of fission products when they were in their reactor cores. (No fission products are created when rods are out of cores, in pools or dry air storage.)

“Since the rods are at least 30 months out of fission-product production [2013], one can see how quickly they’ve lost the need for cooling and the reduction in their radioactivity.

“Nuclear power has for its entire life, been the safest form of power generation. The EPA estimates that we lose more than 12,000 Americans every year to coal emissions. The Chinese lose 700,000, and the Indians, 100,000. To delay building nuclear power plants will cause diseases and deaths that could easily be avoided.”

Nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity.
World Health Organisation

“A nuclear power plant that melts down is less dangerous than a fossil fuel plant that is working correctly. [Because of their toxic ashes and emissions.] Fukushima illustrates that even a meltdown that penetrates containment is very little danger to the public when a few basic precautions are taken.” Andrew Daniels, author, “After Fukushima What We Now Know”.

Titans of Nuclear – Andrew Daniels, Author, After Fukushima Sep 27, 2018

After Fukushima: What We Now Know: A History of Nuclear Power and Radiation

A nuclear power plant that melts down is less dangerous than a fossil fuel plant that is working correctly.
Andrew Daniels

How Fukushima Made Me a Nukie, Eric Schmitz on March 28th, 2017

Colin Megson on Future Nuclear Energy & The Madness Of Renewables

“Not 1 in 10,000 people have any concept of the huge amount of 24/7, low-carbon electricity a nuclear power plant can deliver compared to the intermittent dribble provided by the renewables.”
Colin Megson

Every year, U.S., nuclear-generated electricity prevents more than 500 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering our atmosphere – Wall Street Journal

Only Nuclear Energy Can Save the Planet, Wall Street Journal, Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist Jan. 11, 2019

Is nuclear energy the key to saving the planet?, High Country News, about Emma Redfoot by Jonathan Thompson

Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System, IEA, Fuel Report, May 2019

5 Things Everyone Should Know About Nuclear, David de Caires Watson, Dec 11, 2019

Emma Redfoot, Sunnyvale, California, United States
Titans of Nuclear
Image by Sarah Craig

Coming up next week, Episode 15 – Clean Air and Water? Not with Fossil Fuels Around – Death by Fossil

Links and References

1. Next Episode 15 – Clean Air and Water? Not With Fossil Fuels Around – Death by Fossil
2. Previous Episode – Episode 13 – What’s so Great about Nuclear Power?
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Goodman
9. https://www.democracynow.org/
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ronald_Reagan
11. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/uss-reagan-sailors-lawsuit-found-lacking
12. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2020/05/28/american-sailors-lawsuit-against-japanese-over-fukushima-radiation-rejected-by-us-appeals-court/
13. https://www.linkedin.com/in/reid-tanaka-b212751b/
14. https://www.nvcfoundation.org/newsletter/2008/3/captain-tanaka–first-japanese-american-commander-of-a-navy-submarine-base/
15. https://www.vice.com/en/article/gq8gbm/these-nuclear-physicists-think-david-suzuki-is-exaggerating-about-fukushima
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki
17. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00967/
18. http://www.noaa.gov/
19. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-cannara-6a1b7a3/
20. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14245903
21. https://twitter.com/After_Fukushima
22. https://www.instagram.com/andrewsdaniels/
23. https://www.amazon.com/After-Fukushima-History-Nuclear-Radiation-ebook/dp/B01LC8489M
24. https://nuclearprogress.org/how-fukushima-made-me-a-nukie/
25. https://mobile.twitter.com/moonbatnukie
26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBGxMnpQ9g
27. https://www.facebook.com/cwm66
28. https://www.wsj.com/articles/only-nuclear-energy-can-save-the-planet-11547225861
29. https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.21/nuclear-energy-a-new-generation-of-environmentalists-is-learning-to-stop-worrying-and-love-nuclear-power
30. https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system
31. https://medium.com/generation-atomic/5-things-everyone-should-know-about-nuclear-64e73ff27c98
32. https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-goldstein-0ab013204/
33. https://www.linkedin.com/in/staffanq/
34. https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-redfoot-4121685b/
35. https://twitter.com/EmmaRedfoot
36. https://www.titansofnuclear.com/experts/EmmaRedfoot
37. https://www.hcn.org/voices/jonathan-thompson
38. https://twitter.com/jonnypeace
39. https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnwatson/
40. https://twitter.com/ecopragmatist
41. http://www.sarahcraigmedia.com/

#UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #Fukushima #airpollution #USSReagan #OperationTomodachi

7th Apr 202218th Jun 2022

Episode 13 – What’s so Great about Nuclear Power? – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 6 Part 1

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima

No other technology produces energy as cheaply, safely and continuously on a large scale as nuclear power. No other energy source can match nuclear power’s low environmental impact, partly because its energy density is a million times greater than that of fossil fuels – and more so for wind or solar.

As of 2016, the world’s 400 + nuclear reactors created about 15% of our electricity. France, alarmed by the cost of petro-fuels, went to 70% nuclear in just 16 years, and Finland, now at 30%, is aiming for 60%. Sweden is adding 10.

The French energy transition by Craig Morris, 23 Feb 2015

Nuclear France emits about 40 grams of CO₂/kWh, but Germany, the US, Japan and most industrialised nations emit 400 – 500 grams per kiloWatt hour – ten times more per kWh than heavily nuclear France. Compared to fossil fuel-reliant wind and solar farms, nuclear power is a gift from the energy gods.

Finland doubles down on nuclear power as coal heads out the door

Nuclear power, being CO2-free, is by far the most effective displacer of greenhouse gases, so how can my fellow “greens,” oppose nuclear power when the environmental costs of burning carbon-based fuels are so high?

01 Seminar Opening – Deep Decarbonization with Advanced Nuclear -seminar

Dr. James Lovelock, a patriarch of the environmental movement, has begged people to support nuclear energy: “Civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear power, the one safe, available, energy source now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by an outraged planet.”

James Lovelock Explains Gaia Hypothesis on The Sacred Balance (TV)

In May, 2014, Robert Bryce wrote in Bloomberg View,

“In the core of just one reactor, the power density is about 338 million watts per square meter. To equal that with wind energy, which has a power density of 1 watt per square meter, you’d need about 772 square miles of wind turbines….

“Some opponents still claim that nuclear energy is too dangerous. Debunking that argument requires only a close look at the facts about Fukushima….

“Here’s the reality: The tsunami caused two deaths – two workers who drowned at the plant.

“It was feared that radiation from the plant would contaminate large areas of Japan and even reach the U.S. That didn’t happen. In 2013, the World Health Organization concluded: ‘Outside of the geographical areas most affected by radiation, even within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated.

“High on my list of well intentioned dupes are those who praise science and are eager to confront Climate Change but refuse to accept nuclear power as an essential part of carbon-reduction strategies. They dismiss new reactor designs that they don’t understand, and then talk about how wind and solar power can ‘supply our needs.’

“They are wrong, but nuclear can supply our needs when people conquer their fears, educate themselves on the safety of nuclear power – and constructively join the fray. Until they do, they must accept their culpability in creating an overheated planet with millions of climate refugees.”

Duke Energy Says It Can’t Reach Carbon-Cutting Targets Without Nuclear, March 2021

Only at the “illegal” plant at Chernobyl, which was designed to also make plutonium for bombs, with electricity being a by-product, has anyone died from radiation from nuclear power, but we’ve had tens of millions of coal, gas and petroleum-related, early deaths. Furthermore, our reactors, by generating electricity from the 20,000 Russian warheads we purchased in the Megatons to Megawatts program, have become the ultimate in weapons-reduction techniques.

First Container of Uranium in Megatons to Megawatts, 1995

Top climate change scientists’ letter to policy influencers

Dr. James Hansen, former scientist at NASA, professor at Columbia University

How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources by James Conca, Forbes, 10 Jun 2012

Energy Source	Deaths per trillion kWh	Significance
Coal – Global Average	100,000	41% global electricity
Coal – China	170,000	75% China’s electricity
Coal – U.S.	10,000	32% U.S. electricity
Oil	36,000	33% energy, 8% elect.
Biofuel/Biomass	24,000	21% global energy
Natural Gas	4,000	22% global electricity
Hydro – Global Average	1,400	16% global electricity
Rooftop Solar	440	< 1% global electricity
Wind	150	2% global electricity
Hydro – U.S.	5	6% U.S. electricity
Nuclear Global Average	90	11% global electricity
Nucleat – U.S.	0.1	19% U.S. electricity

Activist conversion to pro-nuclear: Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger at Canada Nuclear 2018, CNA2018

What about 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima? We’ll examine each of them, but it is important to remember that nuclear plants have been supplying 15% of the world’s electricity, while creating no CO₂, for 16,000 reactor-years of almost accident-free operation. And the reactors that have powered our nuclear Navy for more than 50 years have similar safety records. (Naval reactor fuel can be up to 90% U-235.)

Three Mile Island

In March, 1979, two weeks after the release of the popular movie, The China Syndrome, a partial meltdown of a reactor core due to a stuck coolant valve and design flaws that confused the operators, caused mildly radioactive gases to accumulate inside one of the reactor buildings.

After the gases were treated with charcoal, they were vented, and a small amount of contaminated water was released into the Susquehanna River. No one died or was harmed.

However, when an AP reporter described a “bubble” of hydrogen inside the reactor building in a way that led people to think that the plant was a “hydrogen bomb,” many residents fled, which caused more harm than the accident.

In fact, radiation exposure from Three Mile Island was far less than the amount of radiation that pilots and airline passengers receive during a round-trip flight between New York and Los Angeles [1 mrem, or 1 microSivert – 100 times less than average yearly background exposure in the area around Three Mile Island]. Furthermore, in the following decades, more than a dozen studies have found no short or long-term ill effects for anyone, whether they were downwind or downstream from the plant or at it – and since then, operator training and safety measures have greatly improved.

Lieutenant Jimmy Carter USS Barracuda 1952

President Carter—who had specialized in nuclear power while in the United States Navy—told his cabinet after visiting the plant that the [Three Mile Island] accident was minor, but reportedly declined to do so in public in order to avoid offending Democrats who opposed nuclear power.
Perspectives, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 6 April 1979

Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program [55 years safe operation], so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others.
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

John Kennedy and Hyman Rickover — President John F. Kennedy with Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, 11 Feb 1963

Despite all of the fear and panic, nothing happened. No one died, and no one got cancer, but the media-hyped event at Three Mile Island came very close to shutting down all progress in American nuclear power. Because of the radiophobia generated by our sensation-seeking press and fervent greens, neither of whom bothered to check the facts, many proposed reactors were replaced by coal plants, and in the following decades, pollution from those plants brought premature death to at least 500,000 Americans.

Chernobyl

Mil Mi-17 Heavy Lift Helicopter Spraying **bourda** (molasses) and/or Radiacwash™

In 1986, during a test ordered by Moscow that involved disabling the safety systems, a portion of the core of the reactor, which had design hazards not present in Western reactors, was inadvertently exposed. (The RKMB reactor at Chernobyl was long judged to be dangerous by scientists outside of the Soviet Union.)

Reactor 4, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

As Dr. Spencer Weart wrote in The Rise of Nuclear Fear, “In short, for Soviet reactor designers, safety was less important than building ‘civilian’ reactors that could produce military plutonium if desired, and building them cheaply.”

This negligence led to a steam/hydrogen explosion that released radioactive gases into the atmosphere because the reactor had no effective containment structure. In contrast, no U.S. reactor contains flammables. Each has a reinforced concrete containment structure that can survive an airliner hit, and every plant is strictly regulated by the NRC.

There has never been a source of energy as safe or kind to the environment as nuclear power, and the reason for the safety is regulation.

Every responsible nation similarly regulates its nuclear power plants and shares information and training practices via international agencies. This cooperation, which was expanded after Three Mile Island, resulted in so many improvements that civilian nuclear power climbed from 60% up-time in the sixties to at least 90% today.

For three days, Soviet authorities hid the [Chernobyl] disaster and delayed evacuating the area, coming clean when radiation readings across Europe began to rise. (The government also failed to distribute iodine tablets, which could have protected thousands from airborne Iodine-131, which is readily absorbed by the thyroid, particularly in the young. (A body with an abundance of benign I-127 is less likely to absorb I-131.)

Chernobyl failed due to bad design, Moscow’s interference, poor training and a system that forbade operators from sharing essential information about reactor problems. It is the only “civilian” reactor accident where radiation directly killed anyone. Initially, approximately eighteen firefighters died from intense radiation. Yet, with design changes and proper procedures, several similar reactors still operate in the former Soviet Union.

Metsamor, a nuclear power plant in Armenia, (former USSR), also has no containment structure. The European Union has urged Armenia to close down the site for years, and offered $289 million to finance shutting down the plant…

Saahel Alimagham, SFSU 2021

https://wikimapia.org/4963743/Metsamor-Nuclear-Power-Plant
Metsamor Nuclear Power Plan Aerial View
Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant
Metsamor Reactor 1 Control Room 1970s
Metsamor Reactor 1 Control Room 2011

According to a study by 100 scientists from eight United Nations agencies, “Chernobyl produced additional 50 deaths over the following twenty years.” Most died soon after the accident. However, that’s just a tiny fraction of the deaths caused by burning coal or oil or natural gas.

(A round trip flight for the U. S. to Chernobyl will expose travellers to twice as much additional background radiation as their 2-day tour in the exclusion zone, which even includes a tour of the damaged plant).

Tours of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Extreme Tours of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Furthermore, the deformed and brain-damaged “Chernobyl children” that sensation-seeking TV programs occasionally feature are no different from similarly afflicted children elsewhere in Europe who received no fallout, but that information is never provided by anti-nuclear activists and the media. (Since Chernobyl, cancer rates in the Ukraine have been about 2/3 of the rate in Australia.)

Because of the erroneous, dangerous LNT theory and many dire predictions from people like Helen Caldicott (coming up in future episodes), many thousands of badly frightened European women endured needless abortions because they had become convinced that they were carrying monster babies.

Dr. Helen Caldicott vs Nuclear Canada (Nuclear Ontario / Alberta / Saskatchewan & our CANDU)

Let’s separate the urban myths from Chernobyl’s scientific facts

Roaming wild in the radiation zone: Endangered species are THRIVING around Chernobyl 30 years after nuclear disaster forced mankind to leave

Fukushima

Tepco’s Fukushima reactors began operation in 1971 and ran safely for 40 years, generating huge amounts of electricity without creating any CO₂ or air pollution, but then, in 2011, came a record-setting earthquake – Tōhoku.

During the earthquake, which actually shifted Honshu, Japan’s main island, 8 feet eastward, all of Japan‘s 52 reactors shut down properly, including those at Fukushima.

However, the quake destroyed the plant’s connections to the electrical grid, which required emergency generators to power the systems that cooled the still-hot reactors.

Although three of Tepco’s six nuclear reactors were off-line when the quake struck, five were eventually doomed because:
1. In 1967, Tepco removed 25 meters from the site’s 35-meter seawall to ease bringing equipment ashore.
2. Tepco replaced the original seawall with only a six-meter seawall.
3. The Japanese government advised Tepco to raise it, but Tepco declined – and the government did nothing.
4. Tepco had inexplicably placed five of its six emergency generators in the basements.
5. The tsunami flooded all but #6.
6. Batteries powered the controls for about 8 hours, and then failed. Without coolant, meltdown was assured.

Reactors 1 – 4 are useless, and number 5 is damaged, but reactor 6 was unaffected because its back-up equipment was intelligently sited well above the tsunami’s reach. Reactor 6 is capable of producing power, but it has not been started, largely because of the anti-nuclear hysteria fanned by most of the Japanese press.

FAQ: Radiation from Fukushima – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

There were warnings: All along the coast, ancient “Sendai stones” have been warning residents to avoid building below 150 feet above sea level for centuries.

The Onagawa nuclear plant, which was closer to the epicenter of the quake, also survived the quake, and its 45-foot high seawall easily blocked the tsunami. The tsunami took more than 15,000 lives, but Fukushima’s seawall failure took the lives of just two workers who drowned.

Onagawa: The Japanese nuclear power plant that didn’t melt down on 3/11

Onagawa closer to earthquake but tsunami stopped by sea wall
Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Hamaoka 63 foot high sea wall

Coming up next week, Episode 14 – What’s Up Doc? – Tremors from Fukushima

Links and References

#UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #ThreeMileIsland #Chernobyl #Fukushima #Armenia #Metsamor

31st Mar 20229th Apr 2022

Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 5, Part 2

Background Construction of Nuclear Waste Storage Tanks at Hanford 1943

Remembering Leslie Corrice’s words from Episode 11, Corrice’s dismay over the results of radiophobia are echoed by many professionals, one being Dr. Antone “Tony” Brooks, who grew up in “fallout-drenched” St. George, Utah, which led him to study radiation at Cornell University. For an excellent, short video of the conclusions he reached, please visit:

Our Stories: “Fallout Man” with Tony Brooks – 2017 SILVER TELLY AWARD WINNER

Dr. Gunnar Walinder, an eminent Swedish radiation scientist, bluntly told UNSCEAR, “…LNT is the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th Century.”

Some Perspectives on Actions on Areas Contaminated by Radioactive Fallout Gunnar Walinder Download

The Harmful and Fraudulent Basis for the LNT Assumption, August 2017, Charles Sanders

Doctors petitioning NRC to revise radiation protection regulations June 29, 2015, Rod Adams

LNT begat ALARA
“As Low As Reasonably Acheiveable”
LNT- “Any radiation can kill you
minimise the risk”.
“Achievable” depends on technology, not health effects.
Country Tritium Limits
Canada 0.1 mSv/y World Health Org
US 0.04 mSv/yr LWRs can meet
Alarming ALARA

The belief that tiny amounts of radiation can be lethal created ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable – an anti-nuclear bias that has permeated our regulations for decades. However, “reasonably” is vague, and “achievable” depends on technology, not health effects.

For example, the World Health Organisation has set a public exposure limit for tritium from nuclear power plants of 0.1 mSv per year. Canada’s reactors comply with this limit, but due to ALARA, the limit in the USA is 0.04 mSv per year. Why? Because it is achievable – not because it is necessary.

Tritium (also known as hydrogen-3), is often used in watches and emergency exit signs. It is also present in our food and water. Furthermore, its tiny nucleus emits a particle so slow that it cannot even penetrate skin. In comparison, the Potassium-40 in our omnipresent banana emits beta particles that are 230 times as energetic, but no one worries about those deadly bananas.

“Adults would have to drink ~3 gallons of Vermont-Yankee tritiated water every day to match the internal radiation they get from the Potassium-40 in their own bodies.”
Mike Conley

LNT and ALARA can easily lead to absurdities: For example, airline passengers are exposed to about 20 times more cosmic radiation than those at ground level, but despite the dire predictions of LNT, they experience no more cancer than those who don’t fly. Should jets be required to fly at low altitudes, where they produce more greenhouse gases, just to satisfy ALARA – and what about the flight attendants and pilots who constantly work in higher levels of cosmic radiation?

As Radiation detection technology improves, ALARA just increases fear.

¹³⁷Caesium decay scheme showing half-lives, daughter nuclides, and types and proportion of radiation emitted.

Caesium-137 from Fukushima is detectable, so Counter Punch complains of Blue Fun tuna containing 0.0000077 mSv per 7 oz serving [200 grams], writing “… no radiation exposure of any kind is safe”.

Washington’s Hanford storage site has a budget of about USD 3 billion per year, much of which is used to try to reduce area radiation to the LNT-based standard of less than 0.15 mSv. (Normal Denver exposure is 40 times higher.)

Construction of Nuclear Waste Storage Tanks at Hanford 1943

It is wasteful to spend money “protecting” people from tiny amounts of radiation. Instead, let’s finance programs that help people stop smoking, which brings carcinogens like cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide into intimate contact with their lungs. (Smoking related diseases kill 5 million people per year).

Radiation exposure in reactor buildings is so low that it isn’t an issue, but educating the public on basic environmental radiation is a very critical issue.

For example, after Fukushima, lack of accurate radiation knowledge and the media’s eagerness to hype radiation issues caused a run on potassium iodide [KI] pills along our west coast, but no media explained that this was pointless. Pharmacies ran out, and some patients who needed KI couldn’t get it, while those who needlessly took it actually raised their chances of disease because too much KI can cause thyroid malfunction.

Radiation is safe within limits
LNT and ALARA are regulation policies, not scientific facts. Replace them
An evidence-based radiation safety limit would be 100 mSv per year.
Rational regulation is all that is needed to let nuclear power thrive and solve our global environmental and economic crises.

Dr. Robert Hargraves, the author of THORIUM: Energy Cheaper than Coal, writes,

“Radiation safety limits have been ratcheted down from 150 mSv/year in 1948 to 5 mSv/y in 1957 to 1 mSv/y in 1991 without supporting evidence by relying on the erroneous LNT model. EPA limits are set 100 times lower than levels that could cause harm. ALARA leads people, the press, and Big Green to falsely conclude that any radiation exposure may kill you.”

Robert Hargraves – Aim High! @ TEAC3

However, just 50 mSv/yr is the new limit proposed by Dr. Carol Marcus and other experts in their 2015 petition that requests the NRC to increase the limits based on current knowledge.

The petitioner recommends the following changes to 10 CFR part 20:
(1) Worker doses should remain at present levels, with allowance of up to 100 mSv (10 rem) effective dose per year if the doses are chronic.
(2) ALARA should be removed entirely from the regulations. The petitioner argues that “it makes no sense to decrease radiation doses that are not only harmless but may be hormetic.”
(3) Public doses should be raised to worker doses. The petitioner notes that “these low doses may be hormetic. The petitioner goes on to ask, “why deprive the public of the benefits of low dose radiation?”
(4) End differential doses to pregnant women, embryos and fetuses, and children under 18 years of age.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), United States of America

For more on the consequences of accepting LNT, which led to ALARA, please see these links:

Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information – S.A.R.I.

XLNT Foundation website

Absurd Radiation Limits Are a Trillion Dollar Waste
James Conca, Forbes magazine – 2014

James Conca, in Forbes: “There are some easy decisions to make that will save us a trillion dollars, and they could be made soon by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA could raise the absurdly low radiation levels considered to be a threat to the public. These limits were based upon biased and fraudulent “research” in the 1940’s through the 1960’s, when we were frightened of all things nuclear and knew almost nothing about our cells’ ability to repair damage from excess radiation.

“These possible regulatory changes have been triggered by the threat of nuclear terrorism and by the unnecessary evacuation of tens of thousands of Japanese after Fukushima Daiichi, and hundreds of thousands of Russians after Chernobyl. There, the frightened authorities were following U. S. plans that were created because of the ALARA policy (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) that has always been misinterpreted to mean that all forms of radiation are dangerous, no matter at what level. It’s led to our present absurdly low threat level of 25 millirem.

“Keep in mind that radiation workers can get 5,000 mrem/year and think nothing of it. We’ve never had problems with these levels. Emergency responders can get up to 25,000 mrem to save human lives and property. I would take 50,000 mrem just to save my cat.

“This wouldn’t be bad if it didn’t have really serious social and economic side-effects, like pathological fear, significant deaths during any forced evacuation, not receiving medical care that you should have, shutting down nuclear power plants to fire up fossil fuel plants, and a trillion-dollar price tag trying to clean up minor radiation that even Nature doesn’t care about.”

Approximately 100,000 people were evacuated from the Fukushima area after the meltdown, and by September, 2013, about 1,200 evacuees had died from suicide and the stress of the excessive evacuation.

Radiation – Exposure and its treatment A modern handbook

Dr. Brian Hanley: [Fukushima] “If no evacuation had occurred, and everyone had lived outdoors with no precautions, at most 15 cancer deaths might have happened, but probably none.

“People have been going to radioactive spas in Ramsar, Iran for a long time without ill effect. In a 2-week visit, the dose would be a maximum of 10 mSv. That is 6 to 80 times more radioactive than the evacuation zone of Fukushima.”

“To enable nuclear power, the NRC must renounce the non-scientific basis for LNT and ALARA”
Dr. Robert Hargraves

Coming up next week, Episode 13 – What’s So Great about Nuclear Power

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 13 – What’s So Great about Nuclear Power
2. Previous Episode – Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/
7. https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n77019846/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Scientific_Committee_on_the_Effects_of_Atomic_Radiation
8. https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20637408
9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318986234_The_Harmful_and_Fraudulent_Basis_for_the_LNT_Assumption
10. https://atomicinsights.com/doctors-petitioning-nrc-to-revise-radiation-protection-regulations/
11. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
12. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium
14. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-conley-5529b3/
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
16. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/fukushima-radiation-us-west-coast-tuna
17. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/equivalent-dose/sievert-unit-of-equivalent-dose/sievert-gray-becquerel-conversion-calculation/
18. https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs//320-015_cleanup_e.pdf
19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
20. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm
21. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/ki.htm
22. https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthargraves/
23. https://www.amazon.com/THORIUM-energy-cheaper-than-coal/dp/1478161299
24. https://thoriumenergyalliance.com/resource/robert-hargraves-aim-high/
25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOoBTufkEog
26. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-s-marcus-ph-d-m-d-11111a62/
27. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/rulemaking-ruleforum/petitions-by-year/2015/index.html
28. https://atomicinsights.com/doctors-petitioning-nrc-to-revise-radiation-protection-regulations/
29. https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0010
30. http://radiationeffects.org/
31. http://www.x-lnt.org/
32. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/07/13/absurd-radiation-limits-are-a-trillion-dollar-waste/
33. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-conca-2a51037/
34. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/06/18/fukushima-2-25-the-humanitarian-crisis/
35. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hanley-983312/
36. https://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Exposure-treatment-modern-handbook-ebook/dp/B00D7KLQYY
37. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/lance2/
38. https://parsianramsar.pih.ir/
39. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar%2C_Iran

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #Thorium #Fukushima #ALARA #Radiophobia #Ramsar

24th Mar 202218th Jun 2022

Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 5 Part 1

The Consequences of Overreaction

ALARA = As Low As Reasonably Achievable

LNT [Linear No Threshold Theory] was pushed through the U.N. by Russia and China in the 1950’s to stop America’s above-ground weapons testing. It worked, but it also caused a worldwide fear of radiation below levels that are dangerous.. The radiation safety people liked it because it seemed so… conservative. But it has become an ideology “ruled by hysteria and fuelled by ignorance.” Dr. Kathy Reichs, Society for the Advancement of Education.

Cancer And Death by Radiation? Not From Fukushima, James Conca, Forbes 2014

Fukushima Radiation Decline in Evacuation Area — Contamination dropping in evacuation zone
07 June 2013

IAEA would recommend evacuation of the areas in RED [>166 mSv/yr]

Japanese Government
– Resettlement allowed < 20 mSv per year
– Remediation Goal 1 mSv per year
– More Confusion –

The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data, Tubiana, Feinendegen, Yang, Kaminski, Radiology, April 2009

Dr. Tim Maloney: “Anyone living permanently in the green zone would only receive a dose rate equal to twice the rate in Colorado, where the cancer rate is less than the US average. The dose rate in the dark red regions is 1/3 of the safety threshold set by the International Commission on System of Radiological Protection in 1934. Even by today’s extreme standards, this level of exposure carries no known cancer risk.

“Anxious to impress, officials and reporters donned white suits and masks, which made good TV but did nothing for the child who saw the school playground being dug up by workers who were afraid of an unseen evil called radiation. Unfortunately, most people see their fears confirmed as fact when workers and officials dress this way. An open-necked shirt with rolled-up sleeves, a firm hand shake and a cup of tea would be a better way to reassure.”

A man uses a roller near a Geiger counter, measuring a radiation level of 0.207 microsieverts per hour, during nuclear radiation decontamination work at a park in Koriyama. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

Imagine the anxiety created by clueless officials who provided useless information, as when a school official warned parents that the radiation intensity was 0.14 micro Sieverts per hour, which was meaningless because the normal radiation level in some Japanese cities can be five times that high.

Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima nuclear plant on March 13, 2011, two days after the accident began. Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Fukushima Fear of Radiation Killed People

In 2012, UNSCEAR stated, “…no clinically observable effects have been reported and there is no evidence of acute radiation injury in any of the 20,115 workers who participated in Tepco’s efforts to mitigate the accident at the plant.”

A year later, UNSCEAR added: “Radiation exposure following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely [that there will be] any health effects among the general public and the vast majority of workers.”

And in an April, 2014 follow-up, UNSCEAR reported that, “Overall, people in Fukushima are expected on average to receive less than 10 mSv due to the accident over their whole lifetime, compared with the 170 mSv lifetime dose from natural background radiation that most people in Japan typically receive.”

Finally, in October, 2015, UNSCEAR confirmed that none of the new information accumulated after the 2013 report “materially affected the main findings in, or challenged the major assumptions of, the 2013 report.” However, despite these positive reports, as of November, 2016, most of the 150,000 people who were forced to evacuate still lived in temporary housing.

Dr. Jane Orient, who practices internal medicine agreed: “The number of radiation casualties from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors stands at zero. In Fukushima Prefecture, the casualties from radiation terror number more than 1,600… The U.S. is vulnerable to the same radiation terror as occurred in Japan because of using the wrong dose-response model, which is based on the linear no- threshold hypothesis (LNT), for assessing radiation health risks.”

The number of radiation casualties from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors stands at zero.
Dr. Jane Orient

The following is an excerpt from Whole-body Counter Surveys of over 2700 babies and small children in and around Fukushima Prefecture from 33 to 49 months after the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident:

*BABYSCAN – Peekaboo – Looking for Radiation*

“The BABYSCAN, a whole-body counter (WBC) for small children, was developed in 2013, and units have been installed at three hospitals in Fukushima Prefecture. Between December, 2013 and March, 2015, 2702 children between the ages of 0 and 11 have been scanned, and none had a detectable level of cesium-137.” (The anti-nuclear crowd had been obsessing about exposure to cesium-137.)

Extensive radiation study finds no internal cesium exposure in Fukushima children

Positive reports like this rarely appear in our American press, which frustrates professionals like Leslie Corrice, a former nuclear power plant operator, environmental monitoring technician, health physics design engineer, public education coordinator and emergency planner who writes the informative and highly respected blog, The Hiroshima Syndrome.

In Radiation: The No-Safe-Level Myth, Corrice writes,

“As long as the LNT theory is maintained, our fear of radiation will continue to damage the psyche of all humanity, restrict the therapeutic and healing effects of non-lethal doses of radiation, limit the growth of green nuclear energy, and needlessly prolong the burning of fossil fuels to produce electricity.

“In 1987, when I was frustrated because it seemed like the major news outlets bent over backwards to broadcast negative nuclear reports while seemingly ignoring anything positive, a former Press manager with a major news outlet in Cleveland took me aside and gave me the facts of life.

“He first explained that the Press is a moneymaking venture. The ratings determine advertising income; the lifeblood of the business – and the surefire money-makers were war, presidential elections, natural disasters and airline crashes.

…the surefire money-makers were war, presidential elections, natural disasters and airline crashes.
Cleveland press manager

“Turning to Three Mile Island, he said the ratings sky-rocketed and stayed that way for the better part of two weeks. In the years that followed, the media found that negative reports caused an increase in ratings, and positive stuff didn’t. This trend slowly dwindled, but Chernobyl re-ignited the ratings impact of nuclear accident reporting and proved that broadcasting the negative was better for business…

“He added that the media might someday entirely ignore the positive and only report the negative in regard to nuclear energy, and he speculated that all it would take was one more accident. Unfortunately, he was right. Fukushima has pushed the world’s Press into the journalistic dark side. My Fukushima Updates blog has lashed the Japanese Press and the world’s news media outside Japan severely for primarily reporting the negative…. A recent example concerns the child care thyroid study in Fukushima Prefecture during the past four years.

“On October 5, 2015, four PhDs in Japan alleged in the Tsuda Report that the Fukushima accident had spawned a thyroid cancer epidemic among the prefecture’s children, which contradicted the Fukushima Univ. Medical School, Japanese Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening, and National Cancer Center, which all found that the detected child thyroid precancerous anomalies in Fukushima Prefecture cannot be realistically linked to the accident. Regardless, the Tsuda Report’s claim made major headlines in Japan, then spread to mainstream outlets outside Japan, including UPI and AP.

“Here’s the problem. In December 2013, a scientific report was published on a comparison of the rate of child thyroid, pre-cancerous anomalies in Fukushima Prefecture with the rates in three prefectures hundreds of kilometers distant: Aomori, Yamanashi and Nagasaki.

“The Fukushima University medical team studying the issue had discovered that there was no prior data on child thyroid cancer rates in Japan, so there was nothing to compare the 2012 results to.

“Because of the furor caused by the original release of their findings in 2012, the team decided to take matters into their own hands and offer free testing to volunteer families in the distant prefectures. Nearly 5,000 parents took advantage of the opportunity and had their children screened.

“What was found was completely unexpected. The abnormality rates in Aomori, Yamanashi and Nagasaki Prefectures were actually higher than that discovered in Fukushima Prefecture, which conclusively indicated that the radiation from the Fukushima accident had no negative impact on the health of the thyroid glands in Fukushima’s children. Just one Japanese Press outlet mentioned the 2013 discovery at the very end of an article about a few more children being found to have the anomalies in Fukushima….

…no negative impact on the health of the thyroid glands in Fukushima’s children.
Fukushima University

“On the other hand, when a maverick team of four Japanese with PhDs publish a highly questionable report – full of so many holes that it should be tossed into the trash – alleging a severe cancer problem caused by the Fukushima accident, it gets major coverage inside Japan and significant coverage by the world’s mainstream press!

“It is important to emphasize that the Tsuda Report fails to acknowledge the fact that Prefectures unaffected by the Fukushima accident had the higher anomaly rates. (Which is why the Tsuda Report is worthy of the trash heap.)

“The media might not make money off sharing the good news about Fukushima, but they are committing a moral crime against humanity by not doing it.”

Fukushima’s Children Aren’t Dying, New American, October 20, 2014

Tritiated Water From Fukushima To Be Discharged Into Pacific, Andrew Karam, Ph.D., CHP, April 23, 2021

Coming up next week, Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia
2. Previous Episode – Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
7. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/LNT+Has+Been+TNT+to+Humanity.-a0677253825
8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/05/04/cancer-and-death-by-radiation-not-from-fukushima/
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
10. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_in_evacuation_zone_0706131.html
11. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/mar/10/fukushima-children-play-indoors-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-in-pictures
12. https://www.ibtimes.com/new-fukushima-radiation-study-looks-ahead-future-cancer-risks-1557613
13. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
14. https://www.drjaneorient.com/
15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26460321/
16. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/10/09/national/science-health/extensive-radiation-study-finds-no-internal-cesium-exposure-fukushima-children/
17. https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-corrice-49a8b230/
18. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/
19. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/radiation-the-no-safe-level-myth.html
20. https://thenewamerican.com/fukushima-s-children-aren-t-dying/
21. https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/23/tritiated-water-fukushima%C2%A0-be-discharged-pacific-15496

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #Fukushima #ALARA #BABYSCAN

17th Mar 202221st Jun 2022

Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 4 Part 2

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, MD PhD, DSc, former Chairman of the United Nationals Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCLEAR) — Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, UNCLEAR Chairman

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, MD PhD, DSc, former Chairman of the United Nationals Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR):
“What is really surprising, however, is that data collected by UNSCEAR and the Forum show 15% to 30% fewer cancer deaths among Chernobyl emergency workers and about 5% lower solid cancer incidences among the people on the Bryansk district (the most contaminated in Russia) in comparison with the general population. In most irradiated group of these people (mean dose of 40 mSv) the deficit of cancer incidence was 17%.”

Because of their daily exposure to low levels of radiation, which seems to stimulate the DNA repair system, nuclear power plant workers get one third fewer cancers than other workers. They also lose fewer workdays to accidents than office workers.

Knowing this, it is not surprising that, when steel containing cobalt-60 was used to build Taiwan apartments, which exposed 8,000 people to an additional 400 mSv of radiation during some twenty years, cancer incidence was sharply down, not up 30% as Linear No Threshold Theory would have predicted.Instead, the residents’ adaptive response to low- level radiation seems to have provided health benefits. The following chart reveals lower cancer rates for those who receive extra low-level radiation vs. those who only get background radiation.

*Sometimes a low radiation exposure of 1-100 mGy, close to yearly background level, appears to act as the “tickle” dose, and reduces cancer rates. Redpath et al 2001*

The USA de-funded low dose radiation studies that would have disproved No Threshold Theory.

Dr. Doug Boreham, Norther Ontario School of Medicine – Radiation, space travel and hormesis

In 2015, a study of bacteria grown at a dose rate 1/400 of normal background radiation yielded a reduction in growth, but when the cells were returned to normal background radiation levels, growth rates recovered. The conclusion: Insufficient radiation can yield harmful results.

Life Needs (Some) Radiation – Deep in the Earth, a series of experiments is revealing how life suffers when it’s deprived of background levels of radiation.

Therefore, it seems reasonable that radiation limits should be the same regardless of the source of the radiation. Nevertheless, nuclear plants are held to a standard 100 times higher than coal plants, which actually emit more radiation than nuclear power plants. Per unit of electricity created, the fly ash emitted by a coal power plant exposes the environment to 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant’s on-site-stored spent fuel – it’s so-called “waste”, 90% of which can be consumed in modern reactors. (Granite buildings irradiate their occupants more than nuclear power plants.)

In 2004, the Radiation Research Society published the Mortality Experience amongst U. S. Nuclear Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation:

“Workers employed in fifteen utilities that generate nuclear power in the U. S. have been followed for up to 18 years between 1979 and 1997.

“Their cumulative dose from whole body radiation has been determined from records maintained by the facilities and by the Nuclear Regulatory Comm. and the Energy Department.

“Mortality in the cohort … has been analyzed with respect to individual radiation doses. The cohort displays a very substantial healthy worker effect, i.e. considerably lower cancer and non-cancer mortality than the general population.”

The largest circle (red) represents a radiotherapy tumour dose;

The green circle is a recoverable dose to normal tissue near the tumour;

The dark green circle is a dose with a 100% safety record.

The tiny black dot in the smallest circle represents the limit recommended by current regulations due to LTN.

Radiation and Health by Hendrickson and Maillie

In Radiation and Health, Hendrickson and Maillie wrote “…during radiation therapy for cancer, we’ve learned that chromosome damage to lymphocytes can be reduced by up to 50% if a small dose is given to the cells a few hours before the larger ‘cancer-killing’ dose is administered.”

Kerala

In the southwest Indian state of Kerala, children under five have the lowest mortality rate in the country, and life expectancy is 74 despite background radiation rates that can range as high as 30 times the global average.

What can we learn from Kerala?

For thousands of years, Keralites have lived with radiation three times the level that caused the evacuation at Fukushima, where the limit was, on July, 2016, just 20 mSv. In contrast, some sections of Kerala experience 70 mSv, with a few areas measuring 500 – and many Keralites also eat food that is five times as radioactive as food in the United States.

Despite these radiation levels, cancer incidence in Kerala is the same as the rate in greater India, which is about 1/2 that of Japan’s and less than a third of the rate in Australia. As the linked article says, “Cancer experts know a great deal about the drivers of these huge differences, and radiation isn’t on the list.”

In Kerala, scientists have been working with a genuinely low rate of radiation exposure that mirrors what would have been the case in Fukushima if the Japanese officials hadn’t panicked and needlessly evacuated so many thousands of people.

So, why did they? Partly from fear, but primarily because most radiation protection standards have been derived from LNT bias and studies of Japanese atomic bomb victims who received their dose in a very short time, and being bombed is very different from living for years with a slightly higher radiation level.

Kerala also confirms our modern knowledge of DNA repair- namely that radiation damage is not cumulative at background dose rates up to 30 times normal, and that 70 mSv over a lifetime does nothing. In fact, the concepts of an “annual dose” or a “cumulative dose” are misleading. Instead, evidence reveals that an annual exposure to 100 mSv is comparable to a dose of zero because it doesn’t exceed a person’s capacity for repair.

In the past, when experts discussed these issues they couldn’t consider delivery rates or DNA repair because the power and mechanisms of DNA repair were not known until long after Muller’s LNT theory became dogma. As a consequence, the suffering caused by this obsolete “science” has been immense. (UK radiation expert Malcolm Grimston has characterised the Fukushima evacuation as being “stark raving mad”).

When the Japanese government lifted the evacuation orders because the radiation level had dropped to 20 mSv, 80 % of the residents refused to return because of their fear of radiation despite the fact that the most highly irradiated areas near the plant received only 1/5 of the lowest dose linked to a detectable increase in cancer. (At Guarapari beach in Brazil, residents often bury themselves in sand that yields 340 mSv without ill effect.)

We should be concerned about genuinely dangerous isotopes, but we shouldn’t waste energy and money cleaning up minor radioactivity that doesn’t do anything – but that is what we are doing.

Despite our learning that our cells have amazing repair abilities, LNT advocates still create the radiophobia that caused the extreme evacuations at Fukushima and the flood of needless, fear-induced European abortions that followed Chernobyl. In my opinion, people who refuse to examine the evidence that negates this discredited illusion have abandoned their integrity.

October, 2020. New U.S. Department of Energy research indicates that at low doses, biological reactions are often unrelated to those that occur at high levels. The influential Linear-No-Threshold model, which predicted that acute exposure damage can be extrapolated linearly to low dose exposures—was flawed. In fact, small amounts can have an adaptive positive effect. In addition, it appears that cells communicate with each other and a dose to one affects the cells around it.

The LNT model for cancer induction is not supported by radiobiological data

LOW DOSE RADIATION – The History of the U.S. Department of Energy Research Program

As others have noted, not knowing the truth doesn’t make us ignorant, but not wanting to know the truth most certainly will.

0.01 mrem = 0.0001 mSv, 500,000,000 Bananas deliver a lethal dose

Comparison of Radiation Doses

0.05 µGy – Sleeping next to someone
0.09 µGy – Living within 30 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year
0.1 µGy – Eating one banana
0.3 µGy – Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year
10 µGy – Average daily dose received from natural background
20 µGy – Chest X-ray
40 µGy – A 5-hour airplane flight
600 µGy – mammogram
1 000 µGy – Dose limit for individual members of the public, total effective dose per annum
3 650 µGy – Average yearly dose received from natural background
5 800 µGy – Chest CT scan
10 000 µGy – Average yearly dose received from natural background in Ramsar, Iran
20 000 µGy – single full-body CT scan
175 000 µGy – Annual dose from natural radiation on a monazite beach near Guarapari, Brazil.
5 000 000 µGy – Dose that kills a human with a 50% risk within 30 days (LD50/30), if the dose is received over a very short duration.

What is a Gray and what is a Sivert?

Coming up next week, Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation
2. Previous Episode – Episode 9 – Our Natural DNA Repair Capabilities
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
7. https://www.unscear.org/
8. https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2879
9. http://www.falloutradiation.com/files/HPANSpresentation.pdf
10. https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc4975094
11. https://atomicinsights.com/low-dose-radiation-research-program-defunded-2011/
12. https://www.academia.edu/4637793/Adaptive_Response_to_Low_Dose_Radiation
13. https://www.ans.org/news/article-2875/national-academies-steers-lowdose-radiation-research-in-a-new-direction/
14. https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Radiation_definitions.html
15. http://www.falloutradiation.com/files/HPANSpresentation.pdf
16. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/life-without-radiation/
17. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/15020740-analysis-mortality-experience-amongst-nuclear-power-industry-workers-after-chronic-low-dose-exposure-ionizing-radiation
18. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/radiation-and-health/nuclear-radiation-and-health-effects.aspx
19. https://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Health-Thormod-Henriksen-ebook/dp/B08LGH82MS
20. https://goo.gl/maps/6tC88EYMQNoPLyy9A
21. https://bravenewclimate.com/2015/01/24/what-can-we-learn-from-kerala/
22. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mediaguide/index.asp?PeopleID=254
23. https://wsupress.wsu.edu/product/low-dose-radiation/
24. https://www.britannica.com/event/Fukushima-accident
25. https://www.dedoimedo.com/physics/banana-radioactive.html
26. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/absorbed-dose/gray-unit-of-radiation-dose/
27. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/equivalent-dose/sievert-unit-of-equivalent-dose/sievert-gray-becquerel-conversion-calculation/

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology #Hormesis #Russia #Chernobyl #Ukraine

14th Mar 202216th Mar 2022

The „Perfekte Technologie“ – a Bilingual Article

**This article published 14 March 2022 by Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, the Prussian General Newspaper**. **Copyright notice:** **applying fair use for educational purposes.**

Zeitung für Deutschland · Das Ostpreußenblatt · Pommersche Zeitung

Newspaper for Germany · The Ostpreußenblatt · Pomeranian Newspaper

Zeichnet für den Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 verantwortlich: Das Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics

Responsible for the Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1: The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics

THORIUM-FLÜSSIGSALZREAKTOREN Kernreaktoren, in denen der Kernbrennstoff in Form geschmolzenen Salzes vorliegt, bieten eine Fülle von Vorteilen. In China wird in nächster Zukunft eine Versuchsanlage in Betrieb gehen

THORIUM MOLTEN SALT REACTORS Nuclear reactors in which the nuclear fuel is in the form of molten salt offer a wealth of advantages. A test plant will go into operation in China in the near future.

„Perfekte Technologie“

Der Ausgangsstoff ist billig und weltweit vorhanden, nicht einmal Kühlwasser wird benötigt und der Müll wird weniger und verfällt viel schneller als herkömmlicher Atommüll: Die Thorium-Technologie steht für eine neue Qualität der Nutzung der Kernenergie

Wolfgang Kaufmann, 23.01.2022

“Perfect technology”

The raw material is cheap and available worldwide, not even cooling water is needed and the waste is less and decays much faster than conventional nuclear waste: Thorium technology stands for a new quality of the use of nuclear energy

Wolfgang Kaufmann 23.01.2022

Im Hongshagang-Industriepark bei Wuwei in der zentralchinesischen Provinz Gansu wird in nächster Zukunft eine Versuchsanlage in Betrieb gehen, die das Potential besitzt, nicht nur die Energieerzeugung im Reich der Mitte, sondern in der ganzen Welt zu revolutionieren. Keine Kohlendioxidemissionen mehr infolge der Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe, keine Landschaftsverschandelung durch Windräder, kein massenhafter Einsatz von Akkus aus umweltschädlicher Produktion, keine Stromausfälle bei Windstille und Bewölkung, aber auch kein Strahlungsrisiko aufgrund von Reaktorhavarien, alles das verspricht der innovative Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 (TMSR-LF1) des Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, der für eine neue Qualität der Nutzung der Kernenergie steht und dieser quasi einen „grünen Anstrich“ geben soll.

In the Hongshagang Industrial Park near Wuwei in the central Chinese province of Gansu, a pilot plant will go into operation in the near future, which has the potential to revolutionize energy production not only in the Middle Kingdom, but throughout the world. No more carbon dioxide emissions as a result of the use of fossil fuels, no more landscape degradation by wind turbines, no mass use of batteries from environmentally harmful production, no power outages in calm winds and clouds, but also no radiation risk due to reactor accidents, all this promises the innovative Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 (TMSR-LF1) of the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, which advocates a new quality of use of the Nuclear energy is in place and this should give it a kind of “green coat of paint”.

Die Funktionsweise des Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktors TMSR-LF1 ist relativ einfach. Das schwach radioaktive Element Thorium wird in Flüssigsalz aufgelöst und mit Neutronen beschossen. Dadurch entsteht das Isotop Uran 233, dessen Spaltung große Wärmemengen freisetzt. Der Reaktor produziert also seinen Brennstoff selbst. Dieses Verfahren bringt letztlich sehr viel mehr Sicherheit als der Betrieb klassischer Kernreaktoren (siehe unten) und darüber hinaus auch noch eine Vielzahl weiterer Vorteile.

The operation of the Thorium Molten Salt reactor TMSR-LF1 is relatively simple. The weakly radioactive element Thorium is dissolved in molten salt and bombarded with neutrons. This produces the isotope uranium 233, the fission of which releases large amounts of heat. So the reactor produces its own fuel. This process ultimately brings much more safety than the operation of classic nuclear reactors (see below) and also a variety of other advantages.

Sechs Vorteile

Six Benefits

Zum Ersten werden nur äußerst geringe Mengen an Thorium 232 benötigt. Denn der Energiegehalt einer Tonne Thorium entspricht der von 200 Tonnen Uran-Metall oder 28 Millionen Tonnen Kohle, wie der italienische Physik-Nobelpreisträger Carlo Rubbia errechnete.

First, only extremely small amounts of Thorium 232 are needed. The energy content of one ton of Thorium corresponds to that of 200 tons of uranium metal or 28 million tons of coal, as the Italian Nobel Laureate in Physics Carlo Rubbia calculated.

Zum Zweiten gibt es überall auf der Welt größere Thorium-Vorkommen. Im Prinzip kommt das Element in der Gesteinskruste ähnlich häufig vor wie Blei und fällt zudem als Abfallprodukt bei der Förderung von Seltenen Erden an. Deshalb ist es auch nicht teuer. Dahingegen drohen perspektivisch Verknappungen und Preisexplosionen beim Uran, weil die Zahl der konventionellen Kernkraftwerke neuerdings wieder deutlich zunimmt.

Secondly, there are larger Thorium deposits all over the world. In principle, the element occurs in the rock crust as often as lead and is also produced as a waste product in the extraction of rare earths. That’s why it’s not expensive. On the other hand, there is a risk of shortages and price explosions for uranium in the future, because the number of conventional nuclear power plants has recently increased significantly again.

Zum Dritten kann ein Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktor praktisch überall errichtet werden, also beispielsweise auch in Wüstenregionen. Denn er benötigt keinerlei Kühlwasser.

Thirdly, a Thorium Molten Salt reactor can be built virtually anywhere, including desert regions, for example. Because it does not require any cooling water.

Zum Vierten entstehen bei seinem Betrieb auch deutlich weniger radioaktive Abfälle. Außerdem sollen über 99 Prozent des Atommülls aus dem TMSR-LF1 nach spätestens 300 Jahren in harmlose Isotope zerfallen sein. Des Weiteren besteht die Möglichkeit, die geringen Restmengen an länger strahlendem Material später in fortgeschritteneren Flüssigsalzreaktoren zu verarbeiten und damit gänzlich zu neutralisieren. Zum Vergleich: In mit Uran betriebenen konventionellen Atommeilern fallen langlebige radioaktive Spaltprodukte mit Halbwertszeiten von vielen tausend Jahren an, obwohl nur ein kleiner Bruchteil des verwendeten Kernbrennstoffs genutzt wird.

Fourthly, its operation also generates significantly less radioactive waste. In addition, more than 99 percent of the nuclear waste from the TMSR-LF1 is said to have decayed into harmless isotopes after 300 years at the latest. Furthermore, it is possible to process the small residual amounts of longer radiating material later in more advanced molten salt reactors and thus completely neutralise. By way of comparison, conventional nuclear reactors powered by uranium produce long-lived radioactive fission products with half-lives of many thousands of years, even though only a small fraction of the nuclear fuel used is used.

Zum Fünften liegen die Kosten für den Bau und Betrieb von Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktoren niedriger als bei den sonst zumeist verwendeten Leichtwasser-Reaktoren. Das resultiert vor allen aus dem geringen Betriebsdruck der Anlagen, der zahlreiche Sicherheitsvorkehrungen überflüssig macht, sowie der Tatsache, dass keine Brennstäbe beschafft werden müssen.

Fifthly, the costs for the construction and operation of Thorium Molten Salt reactors are lower than those of the light-water reactors that are usually used. This is mainly due to the low operating pressure of the systems, which makes numerous safety precautions superfluous, as well as the fact that no fuel rods have to be procured.

Zum Sechsten lassen sich Reaktoren wie der TMSR-LF1 auch deshalb ausgesprochen wirtschaftlich betreiben, weil in ihnen nicht nur Uran 233 erbrütet wird, sondern zusätzlich noch viele andere radioaktive Spaltprodukte entstehen, die zum Beispiel in der Nuklearmedizin benötigt werden. Und manche der Radionuklide verwandeln sich sogar in ausgesprochen begehrte Elemente wie Rubidium, Zirconium, Molybdän, Ruthenium, Palladium, Neodym und Samarium. Desgleichen wird das Edelgas Xenon frei, das unter anderem als Isolationsmedium sowie in der Laser- und Raumfahrttechnik zum Einsatz kommt.

Sixthly, reactors such as the TMSR-LF1 can also be operated extremely economically because not only uranium 233 is incubated in them, but also many other radioactive fission products are produced, which are required, for example, in nuclear medicine. And some of the radionuclides even turn into highly sought-after elements such as rubidium, zirconium, molybdenum, ruthenium, palladium, neodymium and samarium. Likewise, the noble gas xenon is released, which is used, among other things, as an insulation medium as well as in laser and aerospace technology.

Der Krieg ist aller Dinge Vater

War is the father of all things

Erfunden wurde die dem TMSR-LF1 zugrunde liegende Technologie nicht in China, sondern in den USA. Dort experimentierten die Luftstreitkräfte bereits ab 1954 mit einem kleinen Flüssigsalzreaktor, der zum Antrieb von Langstreckenbombern dienen sollte. Das Projekt fand jedoch ein rapides Ende, als die Vereinigten Staaten über Interkontinentalraketen verfügten. Ebenso legten bundesdeutsche Wissenschaftler aus der Kernforschungsanlage Jülich zu Beginn der 1970er Jahre einige Studien über Flüssigsalzreaktoren vor, die letztlich wegen der ablehnenden Haltung des damaligen Leiters der Reaktorentwicklung, Rudolf Schulten, keine Beachtung fanden.

The technology underlying the TMSR-LF1 was not invented in China, but in the USA. As early as 1954, the Air Force experimented with a small molten salt reactor to power long-range bombers. However, the project came to a rapid end when the United States had intercontinental ballistic missiles. Likewise, at the beginning of the 1970s, West German scientists from the Jülich nuclear research facility presented some studies on molten salt reactors, which ultimately received no attention because of the negative attitude of the then head of reactor development, Rudolf Schulten [main developer of the pebble bed reactor design, a non fluid fuel system].

Core of Aircraft Reactor Experiment 1954

Ein weiterer Grund für die fehlende Akzeptanz des alternativen Reaktortyps war das absolute Desinteresse der Nu-klearindustrie rund um die Welt. Mit den klassischen Atommeilern ließ sich hervorragend Geld verdienen, und auf die Einnahmen aus der Herstellung von Brennstäben wollte auch niemand verzichten. Deshalb wurden allerlei vorgeschobene Argumente gegen den Einsatz von Flüssigsalzreaktoren ins Spiel gebracht, wie beispielsweise das angeblich höhere Korrosionsrisiko und die hypothetische Gefahr, dass jemand die Meiler missbraucht, um waffenfähiges Spaltmaterial zu produzieren.

Another reason for the lack of acceptance of the alternative reactor type was the absolute lack of interest of the nuclear industry around the world. With the classic nuclear reactors, excellent money could be earned, and no one wanted to do without the income from the production of fuel rods. Therefore, all sorts of pretended arguments against the use of molten salt reactors were brought into play, such as the allegedly higher risk of corrosion and the hypothetical danger that someone will misuse the reactors to produce weapons-grade fissile material.

Dies hat die Volksrepublik China nicht davon abgehalten, seit 2011 umgerechnet 400 Millionen Euro in die Entwicklung des TMSR-LF1 zu investieren. Schließlich verfolgt die Pekinger Führung das ehrgeizige Ziel, das Reich der Mitte bis 2050 „klimaneutral“ zu machen, und dabei könnte sich die „perfekte Technologie“ der Flüssigsalzreaktoren als absolut unverzichtbar erweisen.

This has not prevented the People’s Republic of China from investing the equivalent of 400 million euros in the development of the TMSR-LF1 since 2011. After all, Beijing’s leaders are pursuing the ambitious goal of making the Middle Kingdom “climate neutral” by 2050, and the “perfect technology” of molten salt reactors could prove absolutely indispensable.

250 MW Molten Salt Fission Energy Power Facility

Der Reaktor, der nun am Rande der Wüste Gobi erprobt werden soll, hat erst einmal nur eine Nennleistung von zwei Megawatt. Damit kann er lediglich um die 1000 Haushalte mit Strom versorgen. Sollte sich das Konstruktionsprinzip des TMSR-LF1 bewähren, dann würde allerdings bis etwa 2030 der erste Prototyp eines Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktors mit 373 Megawatt Leistung in Betrieb gehen, dem dann in schneller Folge identische Anlagen in ganz China folgen. Ob Deutschland zu diesem Zeitpunkt immer noch in seiner Atomkraft-Abstinenz verharrt oder inzwischen auch auf die „Grüne Kernenergie“ setzt, bleibt abzuwarten.

The reactor, which is now to be tested on the edge of the Gobi Desert, initially has a nominal output of only two megawatts. This means that it can only supply around 1000 households with electricity. If the design principle of the TMSR-LF1 proves successful, however, the first prototype of a Thorium Molten Salt reactor with an output of 373 megawatts would go into operation by around 2030, which will then be followed by identical plants throughout China in rapid succession. It remains to be seen whether Germany will still remain in its abstinence from nuclear power at this time or whether it will now also rely on “green nuclear energy”.

Chinese Gobi Desert Molten Salt Industrial Facility

Dr. Mark Ho of ANSTO 12 May 2021 Molten Salt Review Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Yang Zou Netherlands 5 July 2019 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu Shanghai 27 Sept 2018 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu Switzerland 24 Jan 2017 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu ORNL 5 Oct 2016 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu CAS 27 Oct 2015 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu ORNL 15 Oct 2015 Download

Über die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung

About the Prussian General Newspaper

Die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ) ist eine einzigartige Stimme in der deutschen Medienlandschaft. Woche für Woche berichtet sie über das aktuelle Zeitgeschehen in Politik, Kultur und Wirtschaft und bezieht zu den grundlegenden Entwicklungen unserer Gesellschaft Stellung. In ihrer Arbeit fühlt sich die Redaktion dem traditionellen preußischen Wertekanon verpflichtet: Das alte Preußen stand und steht für religiöse und weltanschauliche Toleranz, für Heimatliebe und Weltoffenheit, für Rechtstaatlichkeit und intellektuelle Redlichkeit sowie nicht zuletzt für ein von der Vernunft geleitetes Handeln in allen Bereichen der Gesellschaft. In diesem Sinne pflegt die PAZ eine offene Debattenkultur, die gleichermaßen den eigenen Standpunkt mit Leidenschaft vertritt wie sie die Meinung von Andersdenkenden achtet – und diese auch zu Wort kommen lässt. Jenseits des Tagesgeschehens fühlt sich die PAZ der Erinnerung an das historische Preußen und der Pflege seines kulturellen Erbes verpflichtet. Mit diesen Grundsätzen ist die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung eine einzigartige publizistische Brücke zwischen dem Gestern, Heute und Morgen, zwischen den Ländern und Regionen in West und Ost – sowie zwischen den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Strömungen in unserem Lande.

The Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ) is a unique voice in the German media landscape. Week after week, it reports on current events in politics, culture and business and takes a stand on the fundamental developments in our society. In their work, the editors feel committed to the traditional Prussian canon of values: The old Prussia stood and stands for religious and ideological tolerance, for love of homeland and open-mindedness, for the rule of law and intellectual honesty, and not least for reason-guided action in all areas of society . With this in mind, the PAZ maintains an open culture of debate, which passionately represents its own point of view and respects the opinions of those who think differently – and also lets them have their say. Beyond day-to-day events, the PAZ feels committed to remembering historical Prussia and caring for its cultural heritage. With these principles, the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung is a unique journalistic bridge between yesterday, today and tomorrow, between the countries and regions in West and East – as well as between the different social currents in our country.

Translation courtesy of Duck Duck Go – Your personal data is nobody’s business.

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References and Links

1. Original article: https://paz.de/artikel/perfekte-technologie-a6180.html
2. https://paz.de/impressum.html
3. https://english.sinap.cas.cn/
4. https://www.ans.org/news/article-3091/china-moves-closer-to-completion-of-worlds-first-thorium-reactor/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
6. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forschungszentrum_J%C3%BClich
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Schulten
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Reactor_Experiment
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion
11. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones.html
12. https://regulatorwatch.com/reported_elsewhere/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones/
13. https://www.nuclearaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Mark_Ho_20210512.pdf
14. http://samofar.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-TMSR-SAMOFAR%E2%80%94%E2%80%94Yang-ZOU-PDF-version-1.pdf
15. https://threeconsulting.com/mt-content/uploads/2021/04/chinatmsr2018.pdf
https://www.gen-4.org/gif/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-05/03_hongjie_xu_china.pdf
16. https://msrworkshop.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/MSR2016-day1-15-Hongjie-Xu-Update-on-SINAP-TMSR-Research.pdf
17. https://tcw15.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/TMSRstatus-liuwei.pdf
18. https://paz.de/anerkennungszahlung.html
19. https://www.patreon.com/TheThoriumNetwork
20. https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/translation/

#PreußischeAllgemeineZeitung #PAZ #ShanghaiInstituteofAppliedPhysics #SINAP #ThoriumMoltenSalt #MoltenSaltFissionEnergyTechnology #MSFET #Thorium

5th Mar 202218th Jun 2022

Episode 9 – Our Natural DNA Repair Capabilities – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 4 Part 1

Near the end of the 20th century, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that DNA strands can break and repair about 10,000 times per day per cell, (this is not a typo), and that a 100 mSv per year dose increases the number of breaks by only 12 per day.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Faculty

“… MIT discovered that DNA strands can break and repair about 10,000 times per day per cell, (this is not a typo), and that a 100 mSv per year dose increases the number of breaks by only 12 per day.“

In addition, the majority of DNA breaks are caused by ionised oxygen atoms from the normal metabolism that constantly occurs within our cells. And because DNA is a double helix, the duplicate information in the other strand lets enzymes easily repair single strand breaks. In fact, our cells have been repairing DNA breaks since forever, and they have become extremely good at it.

DNA damage, due to environmental factors and normal metabolic processes inside the cell, occurs at a rate of 1,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions per cell per day. A special enzyme, DNA ligase (shown here in color), encircles the double helix to repair a broken strand of DNA. DNA ligase is responsible for repairing the millions of DNA breaks generated during the normal course of a cell’s life.

Adaptive Response – The vaccination effect called Hormesis

Dr. Alex Cannara explains it this way:

“Radiation from unstable isotopes is always decreasing. That’s what the ‘half-life’ for an isotope expresses. Going back in time is going back to much higher radiation environments – 8 times more for U-235 when photosynthesis began to make oxygen common in air, and oxidation made elements like Uranium soluble in water. Living things were, back then, even more intimately in contact with radioactive isotopes.

“So how did life survive higher radiation, and how did it survive the increasing oxygen atmosphere, which corrodes life’s hydrocarbons into CO₂ and water?

“The answer is simple: Nature evolved repair mechanisms. Each cell repairs proteins or digests badly malformed cells. Each cell repairs genetic material before it’s copied for reproduction.

“A DNA or protein molecule, or one of the many repair molecules in our cells, doesn’t know if a bond has been broken by an oxidizing radical, an alpha particle, or a microbial secretion. Our cellular-repair systems have evolved to fix defects regardless of cause. Thus, Nature has, for billions of years, been able to deal with chemical and radiation threats. Today, chemical threats have increased because of industry, but radiation threats have decreased.

“Therefore, we should not be surprised by the absence of radiation deaths at Fukushima and the small death rates in and around Chernobyl.”

We have also learned that low dose irradiation of the torso is an effective treatment for malignant lymphomas. Fear of radon has been hyped by the EPA’s devotion to the LNT theory, and their efforts have greatly assisted those who sell and install radon-related equipment, whether needed or not. (Studies of every US county have revealed that those with low levels of radon actually had higher levels of lung cancer than counties with higher levels – where the incidence was lower!

But compare the two maps. The counties with less radon have more lung cancer deaths. EPA’s LNT theory is clearly wrong.

Here’s US lung cancer deaths, by county. Red have the highest death rates. Blue the lowest

The EPA recommends remediation when radiation measures 4 picoCuries per litre of air, but an average adult is naturally radioactive at about 200,000 picoCuries. If the EPA knows this, and they should, why are they concerned about such low, natural radon levels?

The south eastern states had the lowest radon levels, but high cancer rates.

Climate Crowd Ignores a Scientific Fraud

Radon, lung cancer and the LNT model

This Radioactive Life, by Chris Patrick. Radiation is everywhere. The question is: How much?

Coming up next week, Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You
2. Previous Episode – Episode 8 – More Beer, More Bananas
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_ligase
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
8. https://wi.mit.edu/news/forks-colliding-how-dna-breaks-during-re-replication
9. https://www.epa.gov/
10. https://enews.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/radon-risk-website.html
11. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cancer-mortality-rates-lung-trachea-bronchus-and-pleura-by-state-economic-area_fig1_242164660
12. https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-crowd-ignores-a-scientific-fraud-1460758426
13. https://www.mn.uio.no/fysikk/tjenester/kunnskap/straling/radon-and-lung-cancer.pdf
14. https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/this-radioactive-life

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology #DNARepair #Hormesis

2nd Mar 202217th May 2022

Interview #2, Mr. Emre Kiraç of Kiraç Group. Part of the Student Guild Interview Series, “Leading to Nuclear”

Under favour of The Thorium Network, I met a successful and farsighted person. The person who caught my attention with his works and ideas in various fields is Emre Kıraç, CEO of Kıraç Group. If we talk about him briefly, Mr. Emre received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Istanbul Technical University. After completing his master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Management at London EBS (European Business School), he still works as the general manager of Kıraç Group companies operating in the fields of energy, transportation and health. If I were to talk about Mr. Emre for myself, I can say that he is open to new ideas and a model to young entrepreneurs with his success in many sectors he has entered. As a nuclear engineer, the thing that draws my attention the most is his innovative views, support and work in the field of energy. The reason why I say so is that, as we know, the need for energy is increasing day by day due to the increasing population and other factors. There are many different methods to supply with the energy need. One of them is nuclear energy. We see that Mr. Emre closely follows and supports the developments in the nuclear field.

Without further ado, you can see what we asked in our interview. Good reading!

Rana,
President of the Student Guild
The Thorium Network

https://kiracgroup.com/en

Leading to Nuclear Interview Series, Interview #2, Engineer Emre Kiraç of Kiraç Group, Turkey

Can you tell us about the development of Kıraç Group? Since 1982, your company has continued to grow. What is your biggest source of motivation?

Our company’s history and the fact that we have earned people’s confidence in the workplace. Moreover, one of our major sources of motivation is to ensure and improve the continuation of our businesses.

In which areas and specifically on which subjects does Kıraç Group focus on R&D studies?

In particular, we have four companies engaged in R&D work. These companies develop their own products. Kıraç Metal is working on solar energy systems, Kıraç Galvaniz is working on highway protection systems, Kıraç Bilişim is working on hospital automation, and Kıraç HTS is working on aviation.

You’ve worked in the energy business for a long time and have a lot of experience in it. I’d want to hear your own thoughts on nuclear energy and reactors.

Nuclear energy, in my opinion as an electrical engineer, is a healthy and safe source of energy. Of course, if it’s done correctly. There have unfortunately been awful examples of this in the past. Unfortunately, many associate nuclear energy with nuclear weapons, and as a result, they are biased towards this sort of energy. But, with smart design and hard effort, I’m confident that many people will see nuclear power as clean and safe.

As Kıraç Group, you give importance to green energy. You have studies and activities on solar energy and wind energy. The world also needs nuclear energy and we cannot stop climate change with wind and solar energy alone. What do you think about Turkey’s adventure in the field of nuclear energy? What changes will happen after that?

As we know, Akkuyu nuclear power plant installation has started. Of course, our country does not have any nuclear technology. In fact, nuclear technology is a technology that has been on the world agenda since the 1940s. Although Turkey has technology in many fields, unfortunately it has not had any technology in the nuclear field. Therefore, our country should develop itself in the global conjuncture.

Do you find Turkey’s studies on renewable energy sufficient? What do you think should be done more?

The main country that creates the economy of renewable energy is Germany. In this sector, we continue our work in Germany. Although this country is less efficient in terms of solar energy compared to other countries, it has many more solar power plants. In Turkey, on the other hand, solar power plants will definitely become more widespread. We are also in this business. Turkey is a complete renewable energy country in terms of both wind and solar energy. We also closely follow the hydrogen-based energy technology. Renewable energy should become more widespread in our country. Our country is very clear in this regard. The important thing is to increase the incentives of the state to this sector.

What are your thoughts on molten salt reactors? Can a molten salt reactor be established in Turkey after the VVER 1200 (PWR) to be established in Akkuyu and can it be produced entirely with national resources?

I got detailed information on this subject. The implementation of this technology would be incredibly good for Turkey. Since Turkey is rich in thorium reserves, this technology carries our country much further in the nuclear field. But for this technology to be applicable, R&D studies are needed. I think this will be possible with the efforts of our state and universities.

Can you tell us about your cooperation with Thorium Network? What prompted you to make this collaboration? What was the most influential factor for you?

First of all, since we are in the energy sector, Thorium Network attracted our attention. We have an old friendship with Mr. Jeremiah. I am interested in Jeremiah’s blogs and I follow them. After he came to Turkey, I had the opportunity to get to know him better. In addition to these, I feel responsible for this issue as Eskişehir has thorium deposits. I want to promote and develop Thorium Network in this environment. This is my biggest goal right now.

What kind of work can be done to spread the idea of nuclear energy in Turkey?

We need to lobby on this issue. People like you and us need to understand this technology very well and explain it to other people. We are just at the beginning of the road. Firstly, the Molten Salt Reactor technology needs to be developed. The more R&D studies we do on this subject, the more positive returns will be.

Turkey wants to design and install a molten salt reactor with completely domestic and national resources. Especially the Turkish Energy, Nuclear and Mining Research Institute (TENMAK) is very enthusiastic about this issue. Do you think TENMAK and universities alone will be enough for R&D studies or do we need other organizations?

We need an international communication on this issue. There may also be a need for the private sector, but we do not have many companies that have worked in the nuclear field. Together we can research and develop. Apart from these, it is important for the state to support, technical and commercial reports should be prepared and funds should be allocated. Then an international partner can be found and brought to better places.

When I examined your company, the years you entered new sectors caught my attention. You identify the needs very clearly and produce solutions in the most effective way. What do you pay attention to when entering a new industry? In your opinion, if the first molten salt reactor were to be successfully established in our country, where would Kıraç Group be in this process? (Part production, liquid fuel production, construction, electricity etc.)

The nuclear industry is a very large and complex field. We have thousands of products, of course, we can meet some of them in the future. But it’s too early to talk about that. We will cooperate with Thorium Network on this issue. There is also a large thorium reserve and precious metals in Eskişehir. These mines are currently being sold. It would be much better if we were in a position to add value to these mines. We continue our research on this subject.

We had a great time during the interview. We’d like to show our thanks to Mr. Emre for the information he gave and for his participation.

You may also stay updated on developments by visiting our website and joining our student guild.

Thorium Network Student Guild continues to inspire people all around the world. Come and join our team! You can find the Student Guild application on this page:

The Student Guild of The Thorium Network

Links and References

#StudentGuild #LeadingToNuclear #Interview #EmreKirac #KiracGroup