Posted on 05/19/2024 2:55:09 PM PDT by Twotone
Nuclear power could be a game-changer for energy affordability, grid reliability, and carbon reduction. However, it's been stifled for decades based on one deeply flawed scientific model: the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The theory underlying this model suggests that any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small, increases cancer risks and that risks rise in a linear way with exposure levels. It's not true.
The roots of LNT's dominance are more political than scientific. Its influence traces back to Hermann Muller, a geneticist and 1946 Nobel Prize winner. Muller's research in the 1920s and '30s claimed to show that radiation induces mutations in fruit flies, with no safe threshold. He became an ardent evangelist for the idea that even tiny radiation doses could cause hereditary defects.
However, it appears Muller may have deliberately misled his followers. For example, Muller falsely claimed in his 1946 Nobel acceptance speech that there was "no escape" from the conclusion that any radiation is harmful, despite being aware of evidence to the contrary.
Muller's influence peaked during the Cold War, as fears of radioactive fallout from above-ground nuclear weapons testing dominated public discourse. He warned that fallout could unleash a wave of birth defects based on unwarranted extrapolations from his fruit fly experiments. Though human studies of the offspring of Japanese atomic bomb survivors found no significant evidence of genetic damage, Muller helped convince the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to exclude this inconvenient data when it convened an expert panel to assess fallout risks, opting instead to rely on his research using fruit flies and newer studies involving mice.
The internal dynamics of these scientific panels were less than objective. Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, revealed that panelists openly strategized about how conclusions from their report could increase funding for their research. The head of the panel even referred to the members as "conspirators." This conflict of interest resulted in a biased final report that exaggerated health risks from fallout and omitted lower estimates to create a false veneer of consensus.
The deceptions worked. The panel's report led to widespread media coverage, which caused a sensation with its dire warnings. It catalyzed a major shift in government policy toward reliance on LNT for radiation regulations and risk assessment. Subsequent expert committees would repeatedly endorse LNT, often while downplaying or ignoring new findings that challenged it.
One such finding was the discovery of DNA repair mechanisms in the late 1950s by geneticists William and Liane Russell, which contradicted LNT's core premise that radiation damage always accumulates. When the NAS convened a new version of its radiation panel, the group initially sought to bury the repair discovery. An early draft of the panel's report omitted the repair findings. Only after several members protested—including, to his credit, Herman Muller—was the information added. Yet the committee still endorsed LNT.
In the 1990s, researcher Paul Selby uncovered serious flaws (or possibly deliberate misrepresentations) in earlier mouse studies by the Russells that had been pivotal to LNT's acceptance. Had these errors been known from the start, the regulatory regime surrounding radiation today could be very different.
More recently, the debate over LNT reignited within the Health Physics Society following the launch of a video series in April 2022 that detailed the checkered history of LNT. The series, featuring interviews with Edward Calabrese, sparked a vicious backlash. Emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests revealed an orchestrated pressure campaign by LNT proponents within the society, federal agencies, and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements to discredit the video series and quash further discussion. The society's president, who spearheaded the video project, was censured by the Board of Directors of the Health Physics Society, in an apparent act of retaliation since some of these individuals were mentioned by name in the uncovered emails. The censure was ultimately overturned by a vote of the membership.
The sordid history of LNT is a cautionary tale of how flawed science, ideological bias, and political motives can distort the search for truth. Yet this dubious model remains and its influence extends beyond academic debates. LNT shapes onerous radiation regulations that dictate cleanup standards, nuclear plant oversight generally, and public perceptions of radiation risk, leading to exaggerated fears, higher energy costs, and perennially thwarted progress in the nuclear industry.
A more biology-based approach is needed—one that recognizes organisms' evolved capacities to repair low-dose radiation damage. Dose limits should be grounded in observable health effects, not speculative extrapolations from experiments on fruit flies. Additionally, it's time to discard the ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable") concept that requires nuclear plants to continuously undertake costly efforts to lower exposure levels, based on the unfounded premises of the LNT model.
Science is supposed to self-correct through a culture of healthy skepticism and procedures like peer review. Yet these corrections often fail. Given the revelations about LNT's past and the many studies challenging its core assumptions, policymakers need to revisit the foundations of LNT-based regulation. Responsible reforms would lift burdens on the nuclear power industry and potentially dispel radiation phobias, opening the door to a more science-based approach to nuclear safety.
If we can learn from this history, we can build a scientific strategy around regulating nuclear technologies that helps people gain access to affordable, abundant, and reliable clean energy.
Anti-nuke people often like to claim that storage of nuclear waste is the reason for not building more nuclear plants.
The nuclear industry in the U.S. produces about 4000 tons of waste per year. That may seem like a lot but, consider that we produce about 275 MILLION tons of non-nuclear, bio and chemical hazardous waste. That is about 70,000 times more than nuclear waste. But do we shut down the bio and chemical industries for that?
Also, people worry about the long lifetimes of some of the nuclear waste. But the lifetime is the inverse of the decay rate. Materials with long lifetimes are not very radioactive, and materials that are very radioactive, have very short lifetimes. Meanwhile, bio and chemical hazardous waste can be hazardous for ever.
Was HerrDoktor FauciMengeleGates in the vicinty ?
Had the breeder reactor been commercialized, it would have cut the waste to a fraction of what light water reactors (which were chosen on Rickovers advice)produce. Also, Jimmah banned the re-processing of fuel rods due to proliferation concerns. As far as I know, the ban is still in effect.
Good article, but it is assumes that the intentions of the agencies regulating nuclear power are good. TPTB are using energy policy as a political weapon.
Sure, just like you claim “nobody is being forced to buy electric vehicles” and “nobody is banning ICE”
You remind me of Obama: “you can build all the coal plants you want, you just won’t make any money”
I bet you claim Biden has no open borders policy
The big attack on nuclear power is by wind and solor people. They are exagerating the danger in alomost any way they can for the profitibility of their product versus nuclear power.
An example is California. They are scheduled to shut down their last reator next year while they are being forced to buy power from states all over the west because they can’t stay up with the need.
But nuclear power is being used more and more because of growth and it is drawing from those states still with reactors. And with the failure of the grids to handle the needs, the unlikely use of wind and power, especially with the lies they throw, is becoming a non entity. It can’t stay with the advancing requirement and the cost will be passed on to the users with a failing future.
The only state that has been able to operate without nuclear power is Hawaii but they have started legislation to change that this year. The pinch is on as the islands develope.
wy69
Clearly you are way over-qualified to be a GOP Senator.
And also 100% correct!
Sobering reality of “Follow the Science “ corruption going back to the first anti-nuclear debates in 1946.
(Be interesting to find out if the Linear NO Threshold “ advocates and theorists were “just” making their reputations and their power and their careers by promoting their theory. Or were they also getting money and political and bureaucratic support and research money from the Soviet Union and its “science” via Comintern-KGB.
But the US nuclear fuel recycling programs were never refunded. They remain stagnant. Deliberately.
There are storage containers at Oak Ridge National Lab that are filled with material waste that could be recycled for power production. Enough for 700 years of power production...if they could ever get it reprocessed.
That's what certain people want you to think. The same people who also hate coal, oil, natural gas, and the human species ...
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