Zero Risk, Zero Return.

With nuclear power coming partially back into vogue due to the climate change hysteria, a lot of the old bugbears have resurfaced. Radiation is like fire; too much of it is decidedly bad for you, but some, in the right measure, time and place, is a very useful tool. In fact, a bit of it is everywhere, all the time.

The whole planet is radioactive, and if radiation really scares you, just think about the fact that our sun is one big fusion reactor. Yes, too much sun is a bad thing too, and too much of anything will kill you; a simple fact of life. It takes a mere 2L of water to kill you for example, albeit that's 1L per lung. Drinking it would take several L more in a short period, but it can still dilute you to death. Much more water than that in the shower (or the ocean) will not harm you, so "how" as much as "how much" is a factor.

So what about radiation? The consensus view (oh, how I'm beginning to dread that term) is the Linear Non-Threshold model. In plain English, that means that ANY amount of substance X is bad for you, and just gets worse the more of it that you get. This sounds rational (using fire as an example) but it's not so simple as that and the alternatives are not some way-out fringe theory.

The leader of alternates is called Hormesis, and it postulates (with a LOT of evidence) that small amounts of potentially deleterious substances, effects, etc. actually are GOOD for you. Perhaps that radon in your basement isn't as scary as "they" would have you believe?

This is where things get sticky; testing and validating. How much is good for you and how much is too much is not easily determined, and a lot of that has to do with how the experiments are designed. The standard toxic dose is generally the LD50, the amount which will kill 50% of a population. This is fairly easy to determine (though a raw deal for the test subjects) and is a good dose to stay below for safety.

The problem is at amounts significantly lower than the LD50. They don't determine the LD1, for example, but that would be a very useful number. With that number you could fairly confidently extrapolate what is in fact a dangerous amount of something. My understanding of what is actually done is that a number like the LD50 is the basis for all exposure regulations, and acceptable levels are extrapolated from that.

Yes, extrapolated; not tested, verified or otherwise proved. Better safe than sorry though, right? If that's your only option I suppose so, but what you don't know can in fact wreck your whole day. It depends on your worldview too I guess; would you rather be safe, or would you rather have as much information about things that affect you as possible?

So, how much ionizing radiation is too much? Studies from Hiroshima show that the LD50 for radiation there was 450,000 millirems, and the dose that killed everyone was 600,000 millirems. That however was an attack with a nuclear bomb, and those sort of levels are not found even under the worst possible nuclear accident, that of Chernobyl in 1986. Even the World Health Organization's 2005 report enumerates only 50 deaths to that time from the release of fission materials in that incident, with a projection of 4000 total deaths attributed to it.

The WHO is a UN entity and I am a bit sceptical in light of the IPCC garbage we've had on climate recently, but I can see no "angle" to be played here that would cause them to under-report. Their projection of 4000 more deaths may be alarmist or it may not, but in absolute terms it's less than catastrophic considering what happened and what you'd expect given the "any radiation is unhealthy" model. Note that the 50 dead is 20 years after the explosion, and those people were acutely exposed during the explosion itself or the cleanup/containment immediately afterward.

Lots of interesting stuff on this, and proponents are definitely bucking the hive mind, particularly in the U.S. My point here (I usually get to one eventually) is that this is yet another manifestation of the "Nanny State", or at least Nanny Agencies. There is money to be made on scaring people, and policy can be slanted in certain directions based on those same fears. There are a lot of people who are heavily invested in the status quo.

You can of course say the same thing for the oil business. To break free of that we need electricity (and better batteries, but they're coming), and nuclear power is a tested and SAFE stopgap to bridge until our space-based solar and mythical fusion plants arrive. Three Mile Island is still supposed to scare us, but NO ONE died there or was even made ill.

So, I'll close with a call to remember the Scientific Method in things that affect our daily lives. Extrapolation is a bullshit way to determine anything important, and a lot of that is going on with global temperature measurement, by way of current example. If we're going to make official pronouncements about things that affect people and industry (and consequently peoples' livelihoods and entire economies) it should be proven, not a dogmatic answer based on some "consensus" guess.