Nuclear energy and society,
radiation and life – the evidence
Wade Allison MA DPhil
Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Oxford
1 November 2016
Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 1
Websites: radiationandreason.com and nuclear4life.com
Email: [email protected]
1 November 2016
Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 2
sections to follow
1 First alarm: the unexpected happens
2 Second alarm: knowledge lacks credibility
3 Ionising radiation absorbed by dead matter
4 and the difference if the matter is alive
5 Further open evidence
6 Why others think otherwise
7 The safety of ionising radiation
8 Towards a new culture
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 3
1. First alarm: the unexpected happens
this alarm is ringing
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 5
2. Second alarm: knowledge lacks
credibility
this alarm is ringing
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 6
Analysis of cancer among 174541 UK radiation workers (2009) by
Muirhead et al (2009), incl. in Leuraud (2015) and Richardson (2015)
Muirhead Fig. 1 Leukaemia
Fig. 2 Solid cancers
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
slide 7
3. Ionising radiation absorbed by
dead matter
Metabolic rate 1 watt per kg.
Ultrasound and MRI safety at level 1 watt per kg.
By definition 1 watt per kg = 1 Gy per sec.
1000 mGy (mSv) per year = 32 10-9 watt per kg
1905 Einstein Quantum and photoelectric effect.
In a CT-scan 10 mGy gives 2 1016 ions per kg.
only 1 in 2500 million atoms, very localised, not
spread
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 8
4. and the difference if the matter is
alive
Same as dead matter?
Broken DNA, malicious DNA error, cancer?
Linear No-Threshold (LNT) and As Low As
Reasonably Achievable safety code (ALARA)
But living tissue is alive!
Biology protects and damage does not
accumulate
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 9
Failure and stability of a system with
resource-limited repair/replacement
where the Stress is dose RATE or dose within a recovery time
BUT this is WRONG since response adapts, as in getting fit, So the curve SHIFTS!
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
slide 10
5. Further open evidence
Clinical medicine
Goiania
Chernobyl
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
and more...
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 11
Radiation in Clinical Medicine
low environmental dose 10 mGy per year
low medical dose up to 10 mGy in a
single scan CT, SPECT or PET
high radiotherapy dose to treat a tumour
2000 mGy per day every day for
3-4 weeks with perhaps 5% chance
to survive.
Tissue near tumour gets 1000 mGy per
day at the same time with 95%
survival, perhaps.
What is safe?
- Radiotherapy prolongs life.
- Everyone know somebody who has had it.
- Patients usually go home and say “thanks”
- They do not demonstrate against it
A matter of trust, confidence, education
1 November 2016
Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 12
1 November 2016
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slide 13
Chernobyl: human habitation far worse for
nature than radiation
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 14
Solid cancer deaths among Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors,
1950-2000, separated by dose range (Preston et al., 2004)
Dose range survivor solid cancer survivor deaths1950-2000
mSv
number
actual
expected
extra risk
per 1000
less than 5
38507
4270
4282
-2.0 to 1.4
5 to 100
29960
3387
3313
0.0 to 3.5
100 to 200
5949
732
691
3.5 to 12.5
200 to 500
6380
815
736
9 to 18
500 to 1000
3426
483
378
25 to 37
1000 to 2000
1764
326
191
63 to 83
above 2000
625
114
56
72 to 108
all
86611
10127
9647
5.0 to 5.2
“expected” means the number of deaths predicted from those in other cities
Lines highlighted in green have doses compatible with zero risk, final column
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
15
Nuclear arms race of the 20th Century with its policy
of mutually assured destruction
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 17
The “anti”s whose views are set by fear and distrust
a
Max Planck: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its
opponents eventually die.
Many think they already know and their minds are made up
Tolstoy: The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow
witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the
simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he
is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of
doubt, what is laid before him.
Others are in employment that depends on the status quo
Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 18
An acceptably safe radiation dose rate?
1.As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA)
a level within a fraction of natural background
most likely to appease public concern
[advocated by International Commission for Radiological
Protection (ICRP)]
2.As High As Relatively Safe (AHARS)
a level below the threshold of any observed
negative health effect including cancer
[suggested in this work]
These differ by a factor of about 1000
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Slide 20
Monthly radiation dose
rates shown as
areas
of
circles
Red circle, 40,000 mGy per month,
less than a radiotherapy dose rate
that kills a tumour
Yellow circle 20,000 mGy a month,
a survivable therapy dose rate to
healthy tissue near a treated tumour
Green circle 100 mGy per month,
a conservatively safe dose rate,
As High As Relatively Safe
(AHARS)
Small black dot 0.08 mGy per
month, [1 mSv per year]
an unreasonably cautious rate,
As Low As Reasonably Achievable
(ALARA)
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 21
Protection and safety by Darwinian evolution?
or the deliberations of a UN committee?
As Aesop's Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare illustrates
The natural protection of life, eg from ionising radiation, provided by slow
evolution wins easily against regulation determined by committee
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Slide 22
Living, loving and laughing with UV radiation
a positive image with a sensible public safety message
on a free carrier bag from a high street pharmacy
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23
th
20
In the
Century we chose
“the comfort of opinion over the
discomfort of thought”
.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie –
deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth –
persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold
fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to
a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the
comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought
John Kennedy
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Oxford Energy Colloquium
Slide 25
The narrow obsession of international authorities with
nuclear safety has distorted the market and
is now hitting consumer prices and the environment,
even if the carbon interests are not as happy as they were
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Slide 26
The proposal then: Fire in the home!
The final confrontation with the Environmental Anti Fire Party,
half a million years ago, perhaps
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Slide 27
Lifelong human data: Dial Painters
luminous watches and dials painted with radium paint
Bone cancer usually 1/400. Evidence for threshold: (Rowland 1997)
1339 painters with less than 10,000mGy, 0 cases [3 expected]
191 painters with more than 10,000mGy, 46 cases. [<1 expected]
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slide 31
No malignancies
after 1926 when
practices changed.
No malignancies
with less than
3.7 MBq
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32
Whole-body internal Cs-137 activity at Goiania
compared to Fukushima and K-40
Whole body activity
Goiania Cs137
n
Deaths
above 1000 MBq
above
100,000
1
1 ARS death
100 to 1000 MBq
above
10,000
7
3 ARS death
20
No deaths
from
radiation in
25 years
10 to 100 MBq
1 November 2016
Rel to highest
adult activity at
Fukushima
above 1000
Oxford Energy Colloquium
1 to 10 MBq
above 100
Slide 34
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