He repeats his belief that he thinks most people are scared of nuclear power because of their association with nuclear weapons. I don't know of any organized anti-nuclear power groups who promote that. (They do promote the proliferation argument...that producing nuclear power fuel can also be used in nuclear weapons, and that is true.)
He states that cells can repair themselves, which is true. But sometimes the damage isn't detected and sometimes the repair is doesn't correctly. He conveniently forgot to mention that!
And there's nothing in U.S. regulations that imply all levels of radiation are "dangerous", only that there is a cell damage risk associated with all levels. See preceding paragraph.
I like how he says he gave a press conference and some of them "swallowed it and some of them didn't"!
This is propaganda in action! Taking pseudo-science to the general public, in order to avoid criticisms by experts.
It's funny how he says biological systems "have evolved to repair the damage". Evolution couldn't happen if DNA damage was repaired with 100% fidelity. So, he doesn't know it but he's contradicting himself!
Based on his talk, I can see why the Japanese lack trust.
He doesn't seem to understand that people don't mind getting medical radiation because they perceive the benefit exceeds the risk. That doesn't mean they wouldn't prefer the risk to be lower. With a nuclear accident they perceive the power benefit isn't worth the radiation risks.
His "contaminated meat" presentation, where one would have to eat 2,000 kg of meat during 4 months is absurd. First, the 500 Bq/kg is for all food. And since one eats food during the year, the limit is based on the dose over the course of a year. It assumes 2 kg of food per day. Note that even though Cs-137 is the most prevalent radionuclide, there are still plenty of others.
It's not a very good idea to have the average Joe making decisions on what level of food contamination is okay to eat. Not with radioactivity, not with mercury, not with bacteria, not with......
His radiotherapy presentation neglects to discuss that even though healthy tissue surrounding a tumor survives the dose (we wouldn't give it, if it didn't), it is at higher risk for cancer decades in the future.
He's right that radiation safety shouldn't be assessed in a vacuum. Japan is a democracy and they chose the path they wanted to follow. Having set the radiation safety limits, it is incumbent to take actions for emergency planning. This would address many issues, that obviously weren't addressed.
He seems to think that a failing immune system is what drives cancer, but it's the accumulation of mutations over time.
WoW! He actually said something intelligent...."the biology is all the same", regardless of the agent. Mutations are the result of chemical reactions in the eV range of energy. Ionizing radiation is in the keV range of energy. Clearly it increases cancer risk even at low doses, because "the biology is all the same".
His a-bomb graph only goes to 2000. We have better statistics today, but that would hurt his argument.
No, ICRP is not recommending ALARA because they think that's what people want to hear, this is 2013, not 1960. ALARA is based on the biological understanding that the biology is all the same. Doses should be as low as reasonably achievable, don't take unsubstantiated risks. Part of the "reasonableness" is to consider competing risks.
Oh...and he'd like you to buy his book.
P.S. He doesn't seem to really be arguing for Hormesis, so maybe it's a bit unfair to include him in this shitty series. He seems to just want to impose his risk perceptions rather than follow the democratic process.
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