HA! HA! I mentioned Winsor last year as the first health physics denier I had encountered.
Oh, and did you know health physicists are rats?!?:
"It reminded me of numerous occasions when Ted Rockwell repeated that money spent on radiation protection did not disappear into a rat hole, it disappeared into some rats’ pockets."
Yeah, will you just look at these rodents? They obviously have more money than they know what to do with!
(The Rat Pack, from a 2011 symposium in Salt Lake City, UT - Tom Gesell, Mrs. Gesell, Adams Kadiri, Majid Khalaf, Deepesh Poudel, Maia Avtandilashvilli, Jason Harris, Joy Epps, Rich Brey, Audrey Evelan, Kathryn H. Pryor, Roy Dunker, Sophio Nadiradze and Robert Acha.)
Yup, these folks can look forward to lifestyles of the rich and famous with a median salary of about $78,000 per year.
Nuclear utility executives must be envious considering their salary pittance!
Adams apparently has a yearning for dead health physics deniers (Rockwell recently died) and conspiracy fantasies.
It's quite hilarious considering the premier health physics scientific organization in the U.S., the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, has the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) as a voluntary Corporate Sponsor. NEI is the policy organization for the nuclear technologies industry.
So, per Adams, the tres chic health physicists are magically forcing the publicly-owned, poverty-stricken utilities (Exelon, as one example, has a market capitalization of only $27,000,000,000) to contribute to and to hire health physics staff. Those rats!
Oh, and he mentions Jerry Cuttler and Wade Allison. Nice club.
The health physics deniers club. Talk about rat infested!
I'll post a link to this blog on the propaganda site, but won't otherwise comment there because I have been censored when providing facts there in the past.
Bob
ReplyDeleteYour reading comprehension is as limited as your understanding of biology. The rats I was referring to are not the health physicists; they did not invent the rules, they are a part of the work force that blindly enforces the rules.
The rules were invented and imposed by the establishment that recognized nuclear energy as a dire threat to their market dominance and political power. The ever tightening rules increased the cost of nuclear energy production to the point where fossil fuels could compete, especially during the occasional price wars designed to drive out an hydrocarbon alternatives.
Take a hard look at reality and tell me that you agree with imposing nuclear safety rules that result in injury and fatality rates that are several orders of magnitude below those of competitive energy sources.
Well, when one writes "...money spent on radiation protection", which is the service health physicists provide and get compensated for, ie, where the money goes, you should expect readers to take a straightforward reading of what you write.
DeleteAnd I don't engage in conspiracy fantasies concerning the "establishment". You might want to hang out with other science deniers on that issue, since that's a fantasy which is common regardless of the science being denied.
There aren't any nuclear safety rules that result in injury and fatality rates that are several orders of magnitude below those of competitive sources. Just the opposite is true. The nuclear industry gets to expose the population to higher risks, because they are NRC regulated, than those industries that are EPA regulated. It rarely happens that anyone is actually exposed to higher risks, but the legal framework allows it.
Bob - competitive sources are NOT those that expose people to radiation, but those that expose people to fine particulates, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and the risk of fire and explosions.
DeleteNuclear energy competes with hydrocarbon energy.
Please do not confuse my commentary about the behavior of market protection that is an essential part of every business curriculum in the country with an irrational tendency to conspiracy theories.
Money spent on radiation protection is not limited to the salaries paid to health physicists.
DeleteDo you have any idea how much it costs to produce mock-ups, plan jobs with ALARA considerations, install shielding, and build containment domes that can be proven to be virtually leakproof in the most extremely imagined scenario? Do you understand how much those containment domes add to the cost of nuclear plant construction, operations and maintenance?
Where is the containment dome that prevents leakage from a coal or gas plant?
I understand what you meant. The EPA starts regulating a substance at a risk of 1 in 1 million of excess death to the average member of the exposed population. They impose strict regulations to prevent risks from climbing to 1 in 10,000. These risks are based on 30 years of exposure.
DeleteThe NRC allows licensees to expose the general public to 100 mrem/yr.
(100 mrem/yr)(30 yr)(1% excess cancer incidence/10,000 mrem) = 3E-3 excess risk of cancer incidence.
Typically, death is about one half of incidence, so we get 1.5 E-3 is allowable.
That's an order of magnitude above what the EPA allows.
None of that has anything to do with market protection.
You are the health physicist. However, the Health Physics Society (of which I am a member) issued the following statement about making the kinds of calculations that you provided.
Deletehttp://hps.org/documents/risk_ps010-2.pdf
"In accordance with current knowledge of radiation health risks, the Health Physics Society recommends against quantitative estimation of health risks below an individual dose1
of 50 millisievert (mSv) in one year or a lifetime dose of 100 mSv above that received from natural sources. Doses from natural background radiation in the United States average
about 3 mSv per year. A dose of 50 mSv will be accumulated in the first 17 years of life and 0.25 Sv in a lifetime of 80 years. Estimation of health risk associated with radiation doses that are of similar magnitude as those received from natural sources should be strictly qualitative and encompass a range of hypothetical health outcomes, including the
possibility of no adverse health effects at such low levels.
There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks following high-dose exposures. However, below 50–100 mSv (which includes occupational and environmental exposures), risks of health effects are either too small to be
observed or are nonexistent. "
That statement was first published in 1996 and confirmed in 2010. You appear to be a little behind in your professional reading.
Your post also indicates that you haven't read the editorial in the latest issue of Operational Radiation Safety titled "HPS Publications Implement Society's "SI Only" Position".
DeleteThe Health Physics Society has democratically agreed to try to reduce confusion in public communications by using a single system of measurement using becquerels (Bq), gray (Gy), and sievert (Sv) along with typical metric prefixes like p, and m.
You're an HPS member? HA! Then you are in violation of its Code Of Ethics, particularly:
Delete"Professional statements made by members shall have sound scientific basis. Sensational and unwarranted statements of others concerning radiation and radiation protection shall be corrected, when practical."
The scientific consensus is LNT, yet you habitually try to attack the consensus.
The HPS is a loose society of volunteers with no special qualifications (other than paying dues) to join.
Their 1996 position statement was not confirmed in 2010. It's an old statement based on old science (look at the footnote at the bottom).
You are behind on your science, but your science denial is pretty average.
I'm not the HPS....I used the units used by the NRC for consistency. If you have a problem converting let me know, I can help you with that.
DeleteBob
DeleteI adhere to the ethical standard "shall have sound scientific basis". Sound science does not depend on consensus; it depends on evidence.
Show me the EVIDENCE vice the assumptions that supports your claim of hazard below 100 mSv per year.
The evidence is presented in BEIR VII, NCRP 136, and many other publications. These fall after NCRP 126, 1997 which is the basis of the HPS position paper which you cherrypicked.
Delete[...] nuclear safety rules that result in injury and fatality rates that are several orders of magnitude below those of competitive energy sources
DeleteSurely that claim is based on some sort of computation... could we see it, please?
@Bob
DeleteHere is a quote from page 211 of NCRP 136:
"In conclusion, although the evidence for linearity is stronger with high-LET radiation than with low-LET radiation, the weight of evidence, both experimental and theoretical, suggests that the dose-response relationships for many of the biological alterations that are likely precursors to cancer are compatible with linear-nonthreshold functions. The epidemiological evidence, likewise, while necessarily limited to higher doses suggests that the dose response relationships for some, but not all, types of cancer may not depart significantly from linear-nonthreshold functions. The existing data do not exclude other dose-response relationships. Further efforts to clarify the relevant dose-response relationships in the low-dose domain are strongly warranted.”
There are a number of equivocal statements in that paragraph, but the one most relevant to our discussion about evidence is the following:
"The epidemiological evidence, likewise, while necessarily limited to higher doses suggests...
I don't understand what point you're trying to make here. The epidemiological evidence, which is necessarily limited to higher doses does suggest that the dose response relationships for some, but not all, types of cancer may not depart significantly from LNT functions.
DeleteIn other words, some cancers may depart from LNT, like leukemia which follows a linear-quadratic function, without threshold.
But epidemiology is only one avenue of evidence. We don't ignore the other avenues like molecular biology or animal epidemiology which give us additional evidence.
Then we put all the evidence into a comprehensive scientific theory which best describes the totality of evidence.
If you have evidence to contradict the theory, publish it.
Otherwise, you are just spreading anti-science propaganda.
@ Martin:
DeleteI think Rod is referring to something like the Hansen paper which shows that the mortality associated with nuclear power is much less than fossil fuels.
But many of the rules are essentially the same, like Occupational Safety & Health rules are the same for nuclear power and fossil fuel power. Environmental protection rules for chemical hazards are the same for both power sources.
The differences in mortality have to do with many other factors besides the rules.
Sure Bob, I get that. But even Hansen does the numbers. One may agree or disagree with how he does them, but he does. So do you, above. A credible viewpoint requires doing the numbers. Yet Adams tells you that you shouldn't do such calculations because of professional ethics or some such. So... where does he get his "credible viewpoint" from, if not from an ethics violation? Enquiring minds would like to know.
DeleteActually, I did the numbers and rather than address the point at hand (NRC allows higher risks than EPA), Rod criticized me for using "rem" instead of "Sv".
DeleteA red herring.
By the way, the proper way to put my last name into the possessive form is Adams's. Your way turns my last name into Adam, which is not correct.
ReplyDeleteThank you, I will correct.
DeleteOne more thing - you should be a little more honest with your readers about your position in relation to the median income for health physicists.
ReplyDeleteThe price at which you sold RACE to Studsvik is a matter of public record.
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=12748#.UfPVW2Tvkmw
I congratulate people on success when they devise and sell valuable products; I am a little less impressed by people who manipulate and support government regulations to create a profitable business by imposing excess costs on unwitting customers.
I was honests. Picking a particular over-compensated or under-compensated person is cherrypicking. That's a fallacy.
ReplyDeleteI didn't engage in fallacious reasoning, I gave the medium income.
If you are claiming that I manipulate government regulation to create a business please provide evidence of that.
Otherwise, you're just fantasizing again.
It is not cherry picking or fallacious reasoning to point out that there are lucrative opportunities in the radiation protection business and that not all of the decision makers are wage slaves that only draw a median salary.
DeleteYour comment history on Atomic Insights provides adequate evidence of your insistence on maintaining excessive government regulation and absurdly low, often below background, dose limits. I cannot point to any particular memo that provides evidence that you are aware that those limits increase the profitability of a company that offers the service of handling low level waste disposal from hospitals and other users of radioactive material, but it is not a large logic stretch to assume that you can do the math.
If the radiation protection business is so lucrative, the utilities could just start their own, buy out existing ones, etc.
DeleteThey choose not to and would rather pay someone else for those services. It is not a large logic stretch to assume they can do the math.
I have no history of insistence on maintaining excessive government regulation and low dose limits. My insistence is on fairness. You want NRC regulated facilities to enjoy less regulation than other industries. I've already shown they do, but that's not enough for you. You want even less regulation for your industry du jour.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLook at the top:
DeleteAdopted: January 1996
Revised: July 2010
The date changed, but that doesn't mean it was reaffirmed. It means a change was made.
Delete@Bob
DeletePerhaps there are people that revise and reissue documents without confirming their current accuracy.
That is not the standard practice in the parts of the nuclear industry with which I am most familiar, but maybe you are correct that a revision is not the same as a reaffirmation.
I guess I would be more convinced if the HPS decided to remove the document altogether, but that has not happened. In fact, several other organizations of radiation professionals have made similar statements.
The document tells you what it is using as its scientific source, NCRP 126, 1997. That is outdated. NCRP 136 is what is current on that issue. And it supports BEIR VII, UNSCEAR 2010, etc. and other scientific consensus organizations.
DeleteThe only people who refer to the old HPS position paper are those cherrypicking in order to spread doubt on health physics. The HPS is a society, it is not tasked with forming scientific consensus.
An HPS member wrote this:
ReplyDelete"Do you have any idea how much it costs to produce mock-ups, plan jobs with ALARA considerations, install shielding, and build containment domes that can be proven to be virtually leakproof in the most extremely imagined scenario? Do you understand how much those containment domes add to the cost of nuclear plant construction, operations and maintenance?"
From its website, "The Health Physics Society (HPS), formed in 1956, is a scientific organization of professionals who specialize in radiation safety. Its mission is to support its members in the practice of their profession and to promote excellence in the science and practice of radiation safety."
Sounds like Adams is in the wrong society, but it also shows that anyone can join as long as they pay dues. It doesn't matter what their level of expertise is or their source of income. It certainly isn't an organization of professionals who specialize in radiation safety. Adams, a member, is evidence of that.
Hi Bob,
ReplyDeleteI am trying to put all these radiation exposure numbers in perspective for myself so that I can get a feel for what level of exposure I would feel comfortable with and what would make me feel unsafe.
My question to you is...
What exposure would give a fatality rate of 1 in 10,000 per year?
1 in 100,000 per year?
I am not sure how complicated my request is so thank you in advance if are able to help me.
Cheers,
Mike
Hi Mike:
ReplyDeleteWe don't typically look at fatality rate per year because cancer encompasses a large family of diseases which don't typically manifest themselves until decades following an exposure.
Instead we look at lifetime risks following exposure. In the U.S. about 42% of the population will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. We expect 0.1 Sv will increase the lifetime risk to 43%.
Certain sub-populations and individuals can be more or less radiosensitive than the general population.
Thanks Bob.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for an average person to relate to the numbers we see published.
Having a context to compare them to is very helpful.
Mike
Glad to help, that's why I blog.
Delete