Unfortunately, the anti-nuke effort that started in th 1950's has become an unreasonable mob.

We could have fresh food that lasts for a weeks on the shelf, not days, cheaper.

The hysterical response has overwhelmed reason.

> "Radiation from nuclear energy has not killed
> a single American," he says

Bullshit lie. By that standard of logic, smoking's effects on the lungs never killed anybody, either.

Brand may be right, and I adore Bailey (who's probably one of my top 10 humans).

But I'm just sayin'....

Problems with energy generation and transmission do not come from greed and corporate mismamangement. They come from political (mis)management, changing incentives, anti-energy emotions, and a fickle permitting process. Too many billion dollar projects have received permits along the way, only to see the final permit to operate cancelled. That kills private investment in energy, leaving only government manipulation and favors in a vital activity.

Energy production requires massive, capital intensive projects. The government acts as if these can be successful, producing cheap energy, while changing the rules to meet the fad of the moment (no carbon). Nuclear power should be a big part of our energy future. It won't be built, because the federal and state governments are effectively against it, even when they claim to be scientific and forward looking.

"Green" energy will not succeed, because it will take massive amounts of land and new transmission lines, both of which are opposed by green organizations.

I'm afraid that there will be no progress until the lights go out, and the politicians and public becomes more accepting of the physical realities of energy production.

Magic Power
The nerds are not hiding the magic that could provide unlimited power in a future utopia. Producing power requires a huge infrastructure and lots of effort. No magic there. It can only be done through long term intelligence and the incentives of a free market, not a central government agency and a bureaucracy of lawyers.

- -
easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/06/no-progress-on-nuclear-energy.html
No Progress on Nuclear Energy

Carl From Chicago writes at ChicagoBoyz:
========
There is continuing legislative heavy handedness (NRC decommissioning) and ineptitude (Yucca Mountain) which would make any rational investor think twice before investing.
I am a fan of nuclear power and believe that it is a great way to make our country more competitive. Done correctly, it is far cheaper to run in the long term, and reliable under all conditions.

As a “bitter realist”, however, it isn’t going to happen.
========

Crid, you have something to back that up?

As follows: Carcinogenic effects appear in humans (animals, etc.) under the statistical noise floor above which causation can be said to be proven. To say "Radiation from nuclear energy has not killed a single American" is nonetheless preposterous.

Besides, there's this favorite countermanding example... Unless you want to argue that Canadians aren't real Americans, which I think would be a real weasel of an argument.

People who feel as strongly about this as many pro-nukers do (and anti-nukers, for that matter) shouldn't try to smirk through wordplay. It makes us doubt their decency. I remember before TMI, when the power company reps in Indiana (who were trying to build a plant at Marble Hill) told boldfaced lies about the nature of Price-Anderson.

Go nuts, make what ever case you're so desperate to make: We'll be observing your rhetoric very, very carefully.

"Go nuts, make what ever case you're so desperate to make: We'll be observing your rhetoric very, very carefully."

We? Got a mouse in your pocket?

So long as you're going at this with your own emotional baggage, you won't get close to the truth either: that death, despite earnest wishes, is often without obvious cause. Some people die young from smoking. Did the two packs a day kill Uncle Bob, or the nuke tests at Nevada Test Site? By the way, that's exactly where Yucca Mountain sits - hardly a pristine environment.

If you want to avoid lies, start with this truth: You are not getting cheap energy again, from anyone.

Not unless another World War kills off your competition. Bite back the tears and get used to it. You are going to pay. You are going to walk, and turn off the light when you're not using it.

I'd love to have the name of anyone who died from acute radiation poisoning in the USA. I actually know of three - in the last 70 years.

Radiation obeys physical laws. There is no magic to it - none at all. Personal fear does not change this.

Be sure to count dead coal miners and roughnecks if you're counting the costs of energy.

Bailey's article was not about nuclear safety, Crid. Stuart Brand is an environmental advocate with opinions about nuclear energy & other matters, who decided to write a book, which Reason decided to review. That's all. He's not speaking for anyone but himself & like-minded greens, and he's not an authority on nuclear safety. I don't know why you're treating him as if he's speaking on behalf of everyone who believes that hysteria about nuclear energy is harmful.

> We? Got a mouse in your pocket?

Nope.... gotta generational cohort that's heard all these arguments before. Some of the dance moves are as stale as the Funky Chicken.

> death, despite earnest wishes, is
> often without obvious cause

Is there any reason to think anyone here doubts it? Besides, sane defenders of public health are concerned about hidden threats as much as the obvious ones.

> You are not getting cheap energy again,
> from anyone.

Again, never said otherwise.

> There is no magic to it - none at all.

Again again, Raddy... Nobody said.....

> count dead coal miners

Absolutely. But the biological damage from the ugly chemistry of fossil fuels seems petty –measured in centuries or millenia– compared to the epoch-maiming impacts of a nuclear accident.

> He's not speaking for anyone but himself
> & like-minded greens

He's being challenged accordingly. It ain't the company he keeps, it's the things he says!

"But the biological damage from the ugly chemistry of fossil fuels seems petty-measured in centuries or millenia-compared to the epoch-maiming impacts of a nuclear accident"

What exactly was epoch-maiming about Three Mile Island?

And the consequences of ripping over a billion tons of coal out of the earth & burning it every year seem petty to you? Are they petty to the families of the 10,000 American coal miners who've died of black lung (pneumoconiosis) over the past 10 years or so?

I'm sure the concerned citizens of Indiana felt safer after they canceled the Bailly & Marble Hill nuke plants. No more icky radiation! But their electricity has to come from somewhere, and most of it comes from more than 2 dozen coal-fired plants, each & every one of which releases about 100 times as much radiation into the environment as those nuke plants would have. Never mind that the real hazards are the arsenic, selenium...

Some people are so terrified at the thought of dying in a flaming plane crash with hundreds of other passengers that they feel safer driving from LA to New York in a worn-out car without wearing their seat-belts than they would flying. People like that are unhinged from reality.

Not that those citizens didn't have every right to be concerned & inform themselves. But all they've ended up with is a different set of hazards.

> What exactly was epoch-maiming about
> Three Mile Island?

Are you promising that's as bad as it will ever be? Have you sold that to the Georgians?

> Are they petty to the families

If you have a plan to make everyone in the world perfectly happy, it will be fun to hear about it.

> each & every one of which releases about
> 100 times as much radiation into the
> environment as those nuke plants would have.

Would have or might have? Your argument has odors...

And not only that...

Bill McKibben (cited in the piece) is not to be trusted in such matters. That such a person could be described as a pre-eminent writer of the environmental movement shows just how socially and intellectually impoverished that movement is.

And not only that...

...did you read this shit?

| But what about costs? Brand breezily waves
| them aside. “We Greens are not economists,”
| he writes. “We don’t really care about money.
| Our agenda is to protect the natural
| environment, not taxpayers or ratepayers.”

I bet about seven seconds of blind & deaf research into the conduct of Mr. Brand's life would show that he cares about money a great deal... For instance, I bet he paid for his lunch.

But more to the point, the passage exposes the messianic fantasies in which these numbskulls piss away their lives. He wants to be a God, with oracular, unsleeping tutelage of all the world's life forms.

But "the natural environment" never did anything for anyone. PEOPLE did things for each other, first by learning how to keep the harsher elements of the natural environment away (cold and rain, for example), and then by bringing the digestible parts of the natural environment home for dinner.

The people who beat "the natural environment" into submission and made it such a rewarding place to live your life righteously expect to be paid for their service. The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker are going to need to see their interests addressed as we move forward.

Our mission is not to fulfill Brand's and McKibben's daydreams of living in an Enya video.

Go ahead and take a look at that Postrel link: This reminds me of Whatever's confusion about courage and comedy a few weeks ago. Folks so often seem to be trying to burn their personal psychodramas as fuel in inappropriate contexts.

Ah, one of the favorite passages in my "library" (3+ shelves!): So let us return to the garden.

WHoops, it was Ukraine, not Georgia....

"As follows: Carcinogenic effects appear in humans (animals, etc.) under the statistical noise floor above which causation can be said to be proven."

But Crid, that's a correlation that, by definition, is impossible to make. You know that. TVA's Browns Ferry plant is about 20 miles, as the crow flies, from where I sit. What do I get more radiation from -- it, or the natural background? What's more likely to kill me, Browns Ferry or the sun?

The only other argument you can make to support what I quoted is the precautionary principle, which basically says that no risk that can be eliminated is tolerable. But that has two flaws: (1) it doesn't assign equal weight to equal risks, and (2) as a way to live your life, it sucks.

"Have you sold that to the Ukrainians?"

There are no Chernobyls lurking in the US or Canada, no naturally unstable reactors without any containment buildings, a thousand tons of combustible graphite moderator, primitive cooling & shut-down systems, and engineers & operators taking orders from Communist party bosses demanding more production to meet the Five Year Plan.

"If you have a plan to make everyone in the world perfectly happy..."

Where did that come from? Pointing out that there's no free lunch, as Rad and I have done, is not the same as implying that the world would be all sunshine & lollipops if only more people shared our views on risk & radiation.

"Would have or might have?"

Coal contains uranium & thorium, which decay into radium & radon, among other things. Burning the coal greatly concentrates the uranium & thorium. Some of the radionuclides go out the stack, some remain in the ash that gets dumped. All this is part of day-to-day coal-fired plant operation. In practice, yes, the public exposure to radiation from coal plants is over a hundred times greater than that from nuclear plants:

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Even so, this exposure is still tiny compared to natural background radiation, and as I said, the real hazards of coal lie elsewhere.

"the passage exposes the messianic fantasies in which these numbskulls piss away their lives"

Indeed. But isn't that just the sort of thing you've gotten used to hearing from environmentalists? I'm not evangelizing for nukes here, just asking that people make their decisions about nuclear energy based on rational considerations of risk, cost & benefit. There's no escape from radiation. Even sealing yourself inside a lead coffin won't help, since you get a dose of 40 mrem/year or so from the natural radionuclides inside your own body, orders of magnitude greater than you'd get from living next to a nuke plant. Judge the risk, and reason accordingly.

AMy, the French do it right with nukes ... There's a great video on youtube about toxins from coal-fired plants; sorry I do not have the link handy. I believe they mentioned that the typical coal-fired plant produces thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of tons of waste EACH DAY - whereas the waste produced by a nuke plant in a year would - drum roll, please - fit inside a refrigerator. Don't forget all the greenhouse gases ... have a nice day!

> that's a correlation that, by definition,
> is impossible to make.

Yes, and bad people will use this truth for bad purposes! The incidence of cancer always rises in proportion to an increase of carcinogens in the environment, detectably or not. It's not that the correlation is impossible to make, it's just impossible to cite. Bad things really are happening, and people who say they aren't are cheating... And they're cheating in a manner that kinda rhymes with, and perhaps clearly echoes, the zombie Christians who prattle on that there's a "missing link" or that "evolution is just a theory"... They're pressing semantics too hard.

Our darling planet is crawling with uncertainty... A loved one in my life (with a newborn!) just gave me the sequel to the Freakonomics book, Superfreakonomics, which persuasively argues that nobody knows whether car seats are truly all that helpful to little children in accidents. And it's kind of important, y'know? A lot SUVs were sold not because parents wanted to take up more space or burn more fuel, but because they wanted to buckle their children into the car seats WITHOUT going through contortions... High center-of-gravity vehicles made life easier. So, like, if you wanna be harsh with logic, be ready for the blade to cut again on the swing-back.


> Browns Ferry plant is about 20 miles,
> as the crow flies

I hear ya. I'm about 60 away from San Onofre, which is a little closer than I'd like... Even if Pacific winds shelter me from the radioactive cloud of the forthcoming apocalypse, mouth-bleeding death-zombies will be surging into my neighborhood from San Juan Capistrano in their desperate hunger for food, water and brains... They'll be driving in Acuras and Beemers and wearing Abercrombie & Fitch, but they'll be scary nonetheless... (Many of these wagons full of the Undead will almost certainly have Celine Dion and Mariah Carey tunes playing on their dash-integrated Ipod Touches. The Horror! The Horror!)

And a couple years ago I worked within a mile or two of Santa Susana.

> as a way to live your
> life, it sucks.

This isn't about a personal choice, like veganism or weird sex or a fondness for murder mysteries. This affects lots of organisms for a very long time. And get this: Other people have the perfect right to be wrong about this.

> There are no Chernobyls lurking
> in the US or Canada

Riiiiight.... We should trust them when they tell us this.

> I'm not evangelizing for nukes

Nor, honestly, am I evangelizing against. But....

> There's no escape from radiation.

I'm a diver (yoosta be, anyway): OXYGEN kills at excessive partial pressures. Your argument is deceptive, and it pisses me off. No one's saying life must be lived with zero radiation. We're saying we don't trust the government and profiteering industry to keep the lid on the crock pot.

Bullet points, presented here using the sophisticated "bullet point" character (alt-0149):

• People who make nuclear mistakes will never flatly cop to failure. Not to failure of their own, or of their gear, or of their corporations, or of their technology. It's difficult to construct systems (or whole economies) to counteract this.

• No matter how much shit goes down, there are always people who say things like "No deaths have ever been attributed to nuclear power!"

• Even if you're ready to concede that a modern economy, ours specifically, can probably keep things under control, you have to concede that the environment in which nuclear power can be safely provided is one of sophisticated regulation, oversight, and social balance.

• In fact, and I think this is worth its own bullet, global culture might very well be taking the opposite direction.... Well OK, actually, on the level of the whole species, I think we're doing OK.. But I can imagine that any number of emergent social and economic powers are going to face difficult times in the century ahead as they realize that they don't just want financial success, but they want all the other blessings of American-style liberty as well. Those transitions may involve all sorts of dislocation... And these are the very economies who might be expected to turn to nuclear energy in the first place, hoping to skip the typical industrial reliance on cheap oil. France has 58 nuclear power plants, and is undergoing immigrant upheavals over things like Sharia. Get the picture?

Consider an only moderately unstable regime: The Soviet Union. It collapsed pretty gently, remember? But not only do they NOT have the money to cap the disaster site as they ought to, they can't even stop the ruins of Pripyat from being pilfered for metal scrap and other poisoned materials. Economics is more powerful than anything.

So if you're so sure this is going to work well and that civilization has everything under control and always will, well, that's OK with me. But you forfeit your right to bitch and moan about a lot other stuff... Intense government and so forth. You're not only asserting that we do have everything under control, you're asserting that we SHOULD have everything under control!

You'll not be allowed to recant after a bad day at work and a warm bottle of beer.

When it comes to nuclear power, I'm one of the "they" you're talking about. My father is a (now-retired) nuclear engineer too. He's the man whose judgment I respect the most, a man who risked his life & gave up everything he owned to escape from behind the Iron Curtain so that my sister & I could live in the free world, a man who really understands something about risk, cost & benefit. Your presumption that we're incapable of fairly judging the difference between our reactors & Chernobyl's, and that the endless hours we & our co-workers spent dissecting incidents at nuke plants all over North America to try & sort out what went wrong, who fucked up & why, and what lessons we could learn from it, were just figments of our imagination would be maddening if it wasn't laughable.

You can think of a nuclear generating station as a modern version of the Maze of the Minotaur at Knossos. Everything about it is designed to keep the glowing beast safely contained within. Folks there are always conscious of the fact that their families would be first in line to be sacrificed if they didn't make things safe for the public. That's a powerful motivation to keep the lid on the crock pot.

"The people who beat "the natural environment" into submission and made it such a rewarding place to live your life..." So the scientists & engineers who harnessed nuclear energy for the benefit of mankind are not among those righteous people, in your view. For 99% of human history, people could only glance at the Sun & conceive of nuclear energy as the Fire of the Gods. You would prefer to go back to that ignorance & superstition, out of fear? Do you have any practical knowledge of the risks involved in nuclear medicine? Some unsuspecting patients in the US & Canada have died hideous deaths because something went wrong or someone fucked up when they where getting their radiotherapy. Should modern medicine take a huge leap back to the Dark Ages to eliminate this possibility?

I'm not being deceptive, you're being dumb. Being exposed to radiation is like being shot by countless tiny guns. They're firing all the time from all directions, and a lot of the shots are coming from inside your own body. It's not like San Onofre is firing live ammunition while the Potassium 40 in your bones is only shooting blanks. X avoidable mrem of radiation exposure is X avoidable mrem of radiation, regardless of the source. Why do Southern Californians petrified of sharing a state with nuclear power plants hop on planes to New York or Tokyo without thinking about radiation for even a second, when they're willingly exposing themselves to more radiation in one flight than they would get from San Onofre in their whole lifetimes?

The Linear Nonthreshold Hypothesis, according to which cancer rates vary linearly with radiation exposure even at the lowest doses, remains just that: an unproven hypothesis. And if you're so concerned about the possible effects to your health of even tiny doses of radiation, when was the last time you invited a friendly technician over to thoroughly survey your house for radon? A year ago, ten years ago, never? Radon concentrations vary greatly from place to place, and with factors like construction, materials, ventilation, etc. It can build up to very high levels in confined spaces, and it's decay products get inhaled, lodge deep in your lungs, and stay there, continuing the exposure indefinitely. The California Department of Health Services recommends that you take action to reduce radon levels if a sample of air from your house contains more than 4 picocuries/liter, as has been measured in quite a few houses in LA County. Do you have any idea if your house could be one of them?

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/environhealth/Documents/Radon/CaliforniaRadonDatabase.pdf

So nuclear power leads straight to a police state! It would be fun watching you try to convince my dad that you understand nuclear energy AND the nature of totalitarianism better than he does. Not that your concerns have no merit, or that I don't share some of them. But if a free country enjoying the blessings of liberty & self-government is incapable of safely managing dangerous technologies with sophisticated regulations, oversight, and social balance, then the Founding Fathers were wrong, Lincoln was wrong, and you might as well call a halt to the American experiment.

I also worry about countries that couldn't run a lemonade stand trying to manage nuclear power. But what is to be done? Reflect on what Einstein told FDR before the Manhattan Project. If I can paraphrase, the atomic genie is out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in. The knowledge exists, use it wisely. China & India, in particular, are hell-bent on massive new nuke plant construction, whether you or Obama approve or not. As for the more backward & shaky countries, consider that the US once held a seemingly insurmountable lead in all aspects of nuclear technology & engineering. Metallurgy, chemistry, hydraulics, electronics...so many arts are practiced at their highest levels in the pursuit of nuclear energy. It doesn't bother you at all that that lead has been surrendered, to countries like France, of all places? Fearful retreat is not an option. The role of responsible countries is to do everything they can to lead the way in designing, building, & operating safe reactors, so that the rest of the world is not left to it's own devices. If you don't like this idea, then answer the question: what is to be done?

More California radon here:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/environhealth/Pages/RadoninCalifornia.aspx

Something else for you to ponder.

The only reason there have been no repeats of Chernobyl in the former USSR is Western nuclear expertise. Western engineers went over there to sort things out. All their reactors were modified on the fly to fix their most glaring operational deficiencies. State of the art equipment was installed everywhere possible, and people were trained to use it. Thousands of Russian & East European engineers & staff have made visits here to see how it's done and to soak up the safety culture that did not exist behind the Iron Curtain. New Russian reactor & design proposals are reviewed by Western engineers. The shield that will be up over the pile-of-junk sarcophagus the Russians erected over Chernobyl, the liquid waste processing at the site,,,all in the hands of Western nuke people. Yes it costs in the $billions. Worth it, considering the alternative. No, shutting down all their reactors permanently & never building any new ones there is not a practical alternative.

The knowledge required to do that sort of thing comes from years of experience in running reactors & handling radwaste safely. If the West abandons nuclear power, this knowledge will be lost.

You know that trees & wildlife in California are dying because of Chinese pollution. On some days in some locations almost all the pollution in the air comes from China.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/chinas_filthiest_export

So you know where the fallout from a Chinese Chernobyl will be headed. Since there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop China (& India) from embarking on a massive program of nuclear construction, then for the sake of self-preservation you'd better hope that our hard-won nuclear knowledge will be available for them to learn from, and that we will continue to keep raising the state of the art higher.

> I'm one of the "they" you're
> talking about. My father is...

Here comes something really precious, I can tell. Someone else, a woman, was using this same argument last week... Wait a sec, it'll come to me... It was the one where it was implied that a woman who'd been who been adopted should have first, middle & last word on the topic. (OTHER people implied this; she didn't say such a thing on her own behalf.) And there's the one where no one is allowed to critique Matthew Sheppard's mother for her comments on how "hate" kills people....

This too is one of those issues that exceeds anyone's faith in experts, no matter how rough things were for those experts in the Old Country. We're certainly not going to leave it in your hands merely because your ancestors had a rough go of things. Just as it's said that war is too important to leave to the generals, the generation of energy is too important to leave to power company hires. The decisions we make about this could be amongst the most pivotal ever made... Not merely for humanity but for every living thing.

> Your presumption that we're
> incapable of fairly judging the
> difference between our
> reactors & Chernobyl's

No, my presumption is that your judgment about the risks of nuclear power more broadly are not to be trusted. Your favorite designs are your own beeswax.

> So the scientists & engineers
> who harnessed nuclear energy for
> the benefit of mankind are not
> among those righteous people, in
> your view.

They're only among them.

> For 99% of human history, people
> could only glance at the Sun &
> conceive of...

I only do poetry when I'm drinking, and this is a school night.

> You would prefer to go back to
> that ignorance & superstition,
> out of fear?

No, I'd prefer that you not get all cuntly and overbearing in your argument.

> Being exposed to radiation is like

Goddamit, I can do this again if you want, just like I did earlier: No one's arguing against "radiation" any more than we're arguing against gravity. We're saying that the hazards of nuclear power are so intense that perhaps it's not a good investment.

> So nuclear power leads straight
> to a police state!

Oh for fuck's sake, you're not even reading the comments. Let's slip some showbiz gossip into this paragraph and see if you notice. What'll it be: dlisted, TMZ, or Perez? Dlisted. Ah, it looks like the Hopper divorce thing is still bubbling. A sorrow he should spend his last days in such bickering, no? Never really cared about his movies that much, but his wife's really cute, and I've always felt it's especially important for good-looking people to be happy. Hmm? OK, where were we?

> if a free country enjoying the
> blessings of liberty & self-government
> is incapable of safely managing
> dangerous technologies

The blessings are under constant assault.

> you might as well call a halt
> to the American experiment.

If the accidents are big enough, you'll do that for us.

> answer the question: what is
> to be done?

Move slowly, and don't put bogus faith in interested parties.

> you'd better hope that our hard-
> won nuclear knowledge will be
> available for them

Yeah; THREATEN us. That'll sell...

Who told you to shut up & follow blindly?

Since citizens in general have the last word on how power is to be generated in their country, they ought to listen to what the people generating that power have to say before they make their final judgment. That's all.

You're saying the hazards of nuclear power are too intense for it to be a practical means of generating electricity. I'm saying that having the countries most capable of dealing with those hazards abandon nuclear energy while much less capable countries carry on is folly.

> You're saying the hazards...

Stop TRANSLATING. M'kay? A lot of people do that on this blog... I think it's so they can have the fight they want to have instead of one that's actually being offered to them. It's a really bad habit. It's all right there in the preceding comments.

> Who told you to shut up & follow blindly?

The people who thought they could shove the topics with things like "There's no escape from radiation..." and for "For 99% of human history..."

And by the way....

> you'd better hope that our hard-
> won nuclear knowledge will be
> available for them

That's precisely the hope that I don't have. Not because modernity won't make its science available, but because modernity won't infuse its (often personal) discipline into distant cultures. The truth is that being a typically rich and safe American is a lot of work; it means going to college (etc.) and taking risks and crashing on your cousin's basement couch for a few years while you get your business in order.

It's human nature, seen around the globe, to imagine that this isn't true— It's human nature to think that economics is a zero-sum game, and the Americans took the biggest piece of pie by being the rudest players. They don't see the work, and they don't imagine that wealth (and educations in physics and the social comity that permit our use of nuclear power) are something that can be built through hard work over a lifetime.

Seriously, that 'you'd better hope' thing was shitty, especially from a guy who (it might seem– I'd hate to translate) is offering the third world nothing but brittle, risky technologies and no social infrastructure to support them.

Bungled a sentence in there but I gotta gota work.

I'll make it up to you next time you're badly mistaken about something.

Your exact words: "We're saying that the hazards of nuclear power are so intense that perhaps it's not a good investment" Bottom line: if nuclear power is not a good investment for safety reasons, then it's not a practical means of generating the electricity we need. Pardon the paraphrase.

There was more than one topic on this thread. Your statement "the incidence of cancer always rises in proportion to an increase of carcinogens in the environment, detectably or not" was wrong.

When my company was involved in a South Korean reactor project, we did not sell them a newfangled reactor and tell them "good luck!". That project started in the 70s, when South Korea was a very different place than it is today. We provided them with a proven design that had one of the best performance & safety records in the world. And with decades of training & support besides. From the time their last unit went online in the late 90s, their competence & their record has matched that of the best North American operators. There is a right way to transfer nuclear know-how to other countries.

I'll mention that I've met plenty of native-born Canadians & Americans with the mind-set you describe, and plenty of immigrants fresh from the Third World without it.

> Your statement "the incidence of cancer
> always rises in proportion to an increase
> of carcinogens in the environment,
> detectably or not" was wrong.

No, it wasn't, unless you're prepared to discredit the last two hundred years of medical progress. (Here I am, sitting at my computer, wondering how you'd find the gall to say something so obviously wrong. What's next, mutations aren't a part of evolution?) That's precisely the standard that's been used: If a proposed ingredient / component / whatever causes a detectable number of cancers, you back off the dose a couple of orders of magnitude until the cancers don't show; and then you back off a one more order, so that your children don't have their shirts sued off their backs.

> we did not sell them a newfangled reactor
> and tell them "good luck!"

South Korea was a comer. Did you sell one to North Korea, as well?

I'm starting to think you're not a nice guy. That happens a lot of times with guys who get their egos behind nuclear power.

Yes, the precautionary principle is public policy. The NRC backed off from the lowest dose at which any adverse health effects have ever been observed to arrive at an annual dose limit of 5000 mrem for workers in the nuclear industry. To give the public an extra margin of safety, they set the dose limit for the general public at 2% of this, or 100 mrem. To provide an even greater assurance of public safety, and to stay out of the zone in which they could get in trouble with their regulator, all nuclear operators voluntarily set their public exposure limits lower still.

But public policy is NOT scientific fact! Everyone is just making assumptions to be on the safe side. It is not scientific fact to deny that your cell's natural mechanisms for repairing damage exist. Indeed, an inverse relation between genetic damage and dose rate has been observed over a range of high dose rates. This could not be possible if cellular repair mechanisms were not busily at work until they were overwhelmed by very high dose rates.

Background radiation exposures vary greatly around the US, and by more than an order of magnitude around the world, with no corresponding variation in adverse health effects. If your aunt had no X-rays last year and received a background dose of 300 mrem, but she got 330 mrem this year because she had some chest X-rays, you would be lying, and frightening her for no reason if you told her she now has a 10% greater risk of getting cancer, as if that was scientific fact.

> But public policy is NOT scientific fact

Red herring, fussy wording, etc: You're bullshitting. You're a robotic, self-interested industry apologist, and I don't like you.

NAME, name one carcinogen for which cancers don't scale with exposure. ONE.

> Background radiation exposures vary greatly

Pre-emptive apologizing for the horrible accidents yet to come... You want people who get bladder cancer in Tallahassee in 2023 not cast blame on the Arizona meltdown of 2017.

You're a crank, and I don't much like you either.

A) An assumption everyone has to make, to be on the safe side.
B) Fact.

These are not the same. A 10-year old could understand this.

Of course there's no carcinogen for which cancers don't scale with exposure above a certain point.

There must be someone knowledgeable out there, in no way connected to the industry, whose opinion you trust (the doctor who gave you your last X-ray?). Go ask them.

I've noticed you can't tell me what the radon level in your house is. A strange state of affairs for someone convinced that cancer always varies directly with exposure even at the very lowest levels. If you have had it tested before, my apologies.

> Of course there's no carcinogen
> for which cancers don't scale
> with exposure above a certain point.

You don't get this: There is no "certain point". There's not even an un-certain point. A family of scientists, you say?

> If you have had it tested before...

First, our topic is not radon, lesser & ambient sources of radiation, or any of the other matters for which you imagine yourself to be armed with talking points. We're talking about whether nuclear power should be a large fulfillment of our energy needs in the years ahead. Clouded, emotional, self-interested arguments in the affirmative –such as yours– make me think not. You're pushing hard, and you're pushing blindly.

Second, I'm in West Los Angeles, with crushing property tax bills to prove it: The Blue Pacific warms me in the winter and chills me in the summer. Gently brine-scented breezes surround me at all hours, reminding me of scuba dayz and cleansing my chambers of the terrifying radon threat. (The car, in the underground garage, may soak in it, but probably not: It's pretty windy down there, too. We have those big steel gates.)

But thanks for your concern; apology accepted. We'll be in touch.

"You're a robotic, self-interested industry apologist, and I don't like you."

Crid, your outrage has overwhelmed any tendency you might have to learn about the nuclear industry - or, the power generating industry.

Does industry = evil?

Martin has merely shown his bona fides, while you're busy pretending not to be self-interested. The contrast here is that Martin knows what he is talking about, and you don't.

That's why you had to call Martin a name, and equivocate.

Hey, I'm not going to challenge you on the topic of video production, even given your tendency lately to be bitter. But you should identify when a person in the industry has backing for his or her statements.

Glad to see you back in the mud-wrestling pit, Rad!

Crid, if you want a better understanding of the history of low-dose linearity & the distinction between policy & science that I was getting at, read "The Road To Linearity: Why Linearity at Low Doses Became The Basis For Carcinogen Risk Assessment" from Archives of Toxicology, February 2009.

http://www.toxexpo.com/ISOT/SS/RiskAssess/ArchToxicolLinearity.pdf

If you don't like what he has to say, feel free to send him a letter at the Dept of Public Health, U of Massachusetts calling him a bullshitter & a phony scientist.

Linear nonthreshold remains the safest assumption, and the basis for the regulations that nuclear operators must follow. When you apply this same standard to the full spectrum of carcinogens & pollutants emitted by coal plants, the results are not very pretty. Assessing the real risks of low to high radiation exposure is not a distraction. It's the foundation for deciding whether the public health risks of nuclear power are acceptable or not. And those risks have to be compared to those of real-world alternatives, of which coal is #1.

Boys, boys, boys...

> outrage has overwhelmed

Maybe. That happens to me when people with a who don't understand high school-level statistics get all smarty-pants.

> any tendency you might have to
> learn about the nuclear industry

You guys seem to think the rest of the world is dying for you to show us the way. This is not the case. You're the ones who need to be persuading, and it's not going too well.

> Does industry = evil?

No: Industrial integrity = an extra standard of frank speaking.

> you're busy pretending not
> to be self-interested.

For FUCK'S SAKE, Raddy! YOU'RE THE ONE in the nuclear industry! I have ZERO "interest"... I get paid whether America goes coal or America goes nuke. My self-interest is not being poisoned by incompent, dishonest industry spokesmen whose pride is on the line. If you can't talk to people with even THAT much interest, you have a long climb ahead of you indeed.

I wan't to be really clear about this: No decent human being will support the expansion of this resource merely because it will offend you, or some fucking family member, if we don't. Your attitude, yours and Martin's, is very much like that of an overeager Southern charismatic preacher, threatening hell and promising salvation if we turn to the church... Somehow we're supposed ignore the fact that he's living rent-free in the parsonage, as if this my not affect his interest in our contributions to the collection plate.

> call Martin a name,

I did that mostly for fun...

> and equivocate.

Where? Martin's the one who won't name a cancer that appears only at a threshold.

> you should identify when a
> person in the industry has
> backing for his or her
> statements.

He hasn't even copped to dropping the ball yet. And again, you seem to think representation of "the industry" is something for us all to be concerned with.

> if you want a better
> understanding of the history of
> low-dose linearity

No, I don't. And...

> read "The Road To Linearity: Why
> Linearity at Low Doses Became
> The Basis For Carcinogen Risk
> Assessment" from Archives of

For fuck's sake, you guys really think you're here to pass out the pearls, don't you?

> Assessing the real risks of low
> to high radiation exposure is
> not a distraction.

Maybe, but I don't trust you. Isn't that sumthin'?

"I get paid whether America goes coal or America goes nuke" So do we. People need power, & people need waste management. And they're going to need much more in the years ahead. We're ready & able to provide it for them, any way they decide they want it. Experienced engineers of any sort are in high demand. If Americans (or Canadians) decide they don't want any more nuclear power, neither of us will be on the bread-lines. We'll just have to suffer the inconvenience of moving to a well-paying job with the company next door. You'd know this, if you weren't blinded by indignation.

It's amusing to listen to you rant & rave whilst pretending that you have absolutely no emotional baggage of your own when it comes to this subject. Well, suit yourself.

> Experienced engineers of any sort are
> in high demand.

?? WTF? Well, lad, I can tell that you're a sharp young chap with a bright future... You've demonstrated a compelling measure of reproductive fitness, and you'll enjoy a selection of attractive mates and fulfilling career options... You may even own a sports car some day....

If your rhetoric is just dick-swinging, then have at it. Go nuts with that! Seriously, enjoy... Just don't pretend this ISN'T all about you.

> pretending that you have absolutely no
> emotional baggage

Assholes piss me off, as do poisons (from brittle, complicated, expensive, politically brutal enterprises) which decay only over hundreds of thousands of years. Raddy calls that my "self-interest".

> Well, suit yourself.

Babe, WE WILL.

Christ, I can't believe I forgot about this as we were arguing a few days ago.

> When my company was involved in a
> South Korean reactor project, we did
> not sell them a newfangled reactor
> and tell them "good luck!".

In the comments I pointed out that South Korea was never the problem.

North Koread was the problem.

Yep, that's quite an industry you've got there... Nuclear power is awfully reliable that way.

Fuckin'd typosd.

And then there's these friends....

Are you sure you want to turn this into a referendum on the righteousness of your tribe? Maybe it would be better for you to pretend the secrets are in difficult-to-read tech reports.

The very first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States went online on Shippingport PA in December 1957, more than 12 years after Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

The first pilot-scale power reactor in the USSR went online in Obninsk in 1954, 5 years after the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in 1949.

The first full-scale commercial reactor in China went online in Qinshan in 1991, 27 years after the PRC tested it's first bomb in 1964.

Can you see a pattern here? BOMBS CAME FIRST!

The Russians combined the knowledge they gleaned from infiltrating the US bomb program with the in-house knowledge of their own nuclear physicists to build their first bomb in 1949. In 1955, when USSR-PRC relations were good, they gave their bomb-making know-how to the Chinese. From there, it spread everywhere else.

Building a bomb factory - a puny "research" reactor that's really intended to crank out bomb fuel - is much, much easier, faster, & cheaper than building a big commercial reactor to produce electrical power. Getting bomb fuel by digging through the spent fuel of a commercial power reactor is definitely going about it the hard way. The Russians handed the Norks a tiny test reactor in the 60's. The Norks used it to test out their plutonium-making. Then they built their very own bomb factory at Yongbyon, which they used to produce as much plutonium as they could from 1985 to 1994, when they signed a "peace accord" with the US. This accord predictably fell apart in 2002, and the Norks restarted Yongbyon. The whole "policy of engagement" thing was complete madness, but the LWRs the US wanted to provide to North Korea came with a catch - the Norks were unable to provide their own fuel for these reactors, or to get them started up & keep them running on their own. Americans would have been there, keeping an eye out & making sure the Norks didn't try to use these reactors for anything other than making electricity. No surprise that the Norks balked at this.

Let's review: making a bomb factory is much easier, faster, & cheaper than building a power reactor. The knowledge of how to do so has been out there for almost 60 years now. If Eisenhower & the Atomic Energy Commission had decided back before you were born that commercial nuclear power was not an option for the United States, the North Koreans would still have nuclear weapons today, and the Ayatollahs would still be trying to make their own (not a single power reactor running in Iran to this day).

If it makes you feel better to blame Raddy & me for these facts of physics & for historical events that happened before we were born, go ahead. I'm sick & tired of plumbing the depths of your ignorance.

"No, I don't."

This reply, by Crid, is an insistence that learning will not happen.

You can look things up yourself. When you observe a credible source, you will be using the exact same research methods I do to make sure our Engineering guys aren't putting us at risk - that we have the proper controls for modifications and new equipment they specify.

But that's too much work. It's so much easier to snipe.

It might be wonderfully self-satisfying to think that stupid and evil nuclear scientists are out to irradiate you into the next iteration of Toxic Avenger...

... but I am at the scene. My office is one hundred feet from Tank 35 at SRS. Take a look.

Only a tremendous ego would suppose that they have more interest in controlling radioactive waste than I do.

Just to clarify, because, apparently, my handle and my explanations are going unseen:

I am in the radioactive waste disposal business.

As such, yes, I have to know how it's made. The reality of our huge existing inventory makes any studying I might make of the power production industry an extracurricular activity, but that's OK - I'm nerdy that way, having had to explain every component of a Naval reactor to be qualified to watch one on a submarine.

You really need to learn about waste production and handling before you are asked to vote on the subject, because no one has the same goals you have - even as I suggest that ours are similar.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes, Rad.

"sick & tired" etc. Tes I lost my temper. You can be exasperating.

> The very first commercial
> nuclear power plant in the
> United States went online on

Again with schoolmarm stuff... The condescension would offend if it weren't so inane. You really can't comprehend this.

> If Eisenhower & the Atomic
> Energy Commission had decided
> back before you were born that

Then the French are to be forgiven? The Israelis shouldn't have taken out their Osirak franchise? Everybody's cool with Rummy?

> an insistence that learning will
> not happen.

You're much more interested in 'teaching' than persuading...

> self-satisfying to think that
> stupid and evil nuclear
> scientists are out to irradiate

Worse to think that self-interested (incompetent?) industry-bots will try to distract from the larger picture with quaint office talk. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, lowballing or highballing the argument. You won't read what I say, you'll only respond to the argument you want to have, whether or not it's offered to you.

> I am in the radioactive waste
> disposal business.

"Interest party", we call that. See the church thing, above.

> You really need to learn about
> waste production and handling
> before you are asked to vote

Fuck that with a stick. There's no issue on Earth for which a losing rhetor won't argue that voters were merely insufficiently 'educated' (or indoctrinated). Your insistence may literally be cancerous, but you won't let that stop you.

You guys keep saying 'We have fabulous careers!' I reply 'I don't give a rat's ass.' Then you say 'But we have fabulous careers!' Do we need any more laps of this circuit?

Let me know. I love this blog.

Well, Crid, you've said goodbye to your last brain cell.

Clearly, you need to be taught something because you don't know, but you're offended by that. Crid knows everything, right?

You don't have to know what you're talking about, and your opinion still matters?

No. Go stroke your tremendous... ego, because I'm not in the business of perpetuating my job.

But, convinced as you are that you know something, you'll never believe that.

When you leave Wonderland to argue your position with any sort of moderation, you'll be humiliated by the data behind our Documented Safety Analysis, just to speak of SRS waste, and then, on the subject of nuclear power, your neighbors, eager to run all the fancy appliances they get for Christmas, will cheerfully tell you to shut up so they can turn their new toys on.

But that won't stop you from making things up.

Fine. San Onofre offers on-site tours for the public:

http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PowerGeneration/SanOnofreNuclearGeneratingStation/OutreachPrograms/EducationalOutreach/

Go on one, start ranting, and see how persuasive you are to your fellow citizens.

You guys are essentially Scientologists.

> your opinion still matters?

Yep. We don't get to choose what other people's opinions are, let alone which ones "matter".

> the data behind our Documented Safety
> Analysis

I like that capitalization... Very professional and self-assured. Remember Pelto the Memo Weasel? He'd love that. 'According to the DSA...'

> But that won't stop you from
> making things up.

Who made anything up? ...Besides Martin's new functioning for carcinogens, I mean?

Again, I'm always good for another loop of a pointless, childish argument, but I get the feeling we're about done here.