NEI Nuclear Notes

The author of one of my favorite nuclear blogs, Rod Adams , found a new and compelling document explaining the beneficial health effects of low doses of radiation . The document has generated quite the number of comments at his site and I could see why. Here are some good quotes and background info from the paper (pdf): In the early stages of nuclear development, more than 60 years ago, the world regulatory agencies (e.g. ICRP) had little understanding of the mechanisms by which nuclear radiation interacts with living things. They observed an excess incidence of cancer death following high dose exposures and measured a linear relationship between dose and cancer mortality in the high dose range. They were unable to observe excess cancers in the low dose range, so they assumed that excess cancer is proportional to dose in that range, all the way down to zero dose. That is, they made a linear extrapolation from evidence in the high range down through the low range, where there is no ev...

Coincidentally, nearly a week after I posted an analogy of the linear no-threshold radiation theory , a debate sparked up at the Climate Progress and Gristmill blogs on the health effects of radiation (it's the same post at both blogs but interesting and different comments at each site). The anti-nuclear side holds to the claim that any radiation is bad for you, whereas the pro-nuclear side says low doses of radiation are not harmful and could in fact be beneficial. Check out the discussions and also check out Charles Barton over at Nuclear Green who's been at the forefront of the debate .

Many NEI NN readers here know that there are two competing theories on radiation: linear no-threshold (LNT) and hormesis . For those who don't, the LNT theory basically says that there is no safe dose of radiation whereas the hormesis theory says small doses of radiation are safe and that there is a threshold before radiation becomes harmful. Both are highly debatable but the latter makes a stronger case - at least in my opinion. (US nuclear plants, however, are regulated under the LNT theory.) One of the best analogies that explains the LNT theory comes from a comment made by DV82XL over at Physical Insights : If the LNT were applied to falling as it is to radiation, we might note that 100 percent of those falling onto concrete from 100 feet are killed, but only 50 percent of those falling from 50 feet die. With these data we would linearly extrapolate to say that 10 percent falling from 10 feet and one percent of those falling from one foot would die. Armed with this “linear no-...