Thank you for this article! You might want to check out Gordian Knot News on Substack. The author Jack Devanney @jackdevanney has lots of discussion about LNT. Like you he argues that it is a bad way to assess risk and hazard from exposure to radiation.
Jack's work helped me a lot to make sense of these issues. My personal view is that for a practical level we should just go back to the standards that we had during the Manhattan project. They were derived from empirical observation, but it means relaxing the safety standard by a factor of 100-1000!
Great post! Andy Weir’s (of The Martian fame) novel, Hail Mary is a wonderful sci-if yarn that involves a friendship between an Earthling and an alien in a life and death situation, where they must act as a team to save their worlds and themselves. Without spoiling the story, the alien is from a planet with a thick atmosphere and thus has little experience with radioactivity, many of his shipmates died of radiation poisoning during their long voyage. The Earthling narrates the story. He has to educate his alien friend (who is now exposed to radiation in space) about the nature and risk of radioactivity. BTW, there is a reason that alien survived. What unfolds is one of the best explanations of how essential radiation is to human life, and our amazing ability to adapt to it. I am sure a lot of Weir’s followers knew this information, but I am also sure he educated a lot of people on the subject. The book is now being made into a motion picture (starts filming this year 2024 - in case this post lives in infamy) starring Ryan Gosling. Just tell almost anyone off the street that the Earth is awash in radiation, and it’s essential to life, and most never had a clue. The LNT false narrative was put forth by oil interest in the 1960s, it is one of the many mysteries and disappointments of nuclear history that the nuclear community did not step up to effectively refute it and act as educators. I do think the American Nuclear Society and the World Nuclear Association are improving in educational outreach. But for the most part, it’s up to posts like Hugo’s, other citizen journalists, and story tellers to get the accurate information out in a compelling and understandable way.
I concentrated in implications of this truly fascinating epidemiological study:
Sutou S. Rediscovery of an old article reporting that the area around the epicenter in Hiroshima was heavily contaminated with residual radiation, indicating that exposure doses of A-bomb survivors were largely underestimated. J Radiat Res. 2017; 58(5): 745–754.
This paper was originally published in the 1950's only in Japanese. It shows without any doubt that the cancer risk assessment of the ICRP based on LNT model substantially overestimate the risk as the dose assessment in the LSS-cohort does not take into account torrential Black rain i.e. survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki got way higher doses, what has been estimated based on test in Nevada desert in dry weather conditions. Torrential Black rain occurred for hours in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So even if LNT correctly estimates very low risks among people with doses below 100 mSv, the "real" risks are substantially lower than very low based on LNT. The dose assessment in the LSS Study assumes that gamma radiation resulted from the blast for let us say 20 seconds caused the only dose to survivors.
What is also significant is that radiation sickness alone was quite rare among acute deaths. Visible and non-visible light i.e. non-ionizing radiation and its thermal effects was the most significant killer as it light reaches far further than the blast effect of an atomic bomb if detonated above earth (500 m).
Mikko Paunio, MD, MHS (Chairman of the Radiation Safety Committee of Finland 2010-2020.)
Thank you for this article! You might want to check out Gordian Knot News on Substack. The author Jack Devanney @jackdevanney has lots of discussion about LNT. Like you he argues that it is a bad way to assess risk and hazard from exposure to radiation.
Thanks Joe,
Jack's work helped me a lot to make sense of these issues. My personal view is that for a practical level we should just go back to the standards that we had during the Manhattan project. They were derived from empirical observation, but it means relaxing the safety standard by a factor of 100-1000!
Imagine what that would do to the cost!
Great post! Andy Weir’s (of The Martian fame) novel, Hail Mary is a wonderful sci-if yarn that involves a friendship between an Earthling and an alien in a life and death situation, where they must act as a team to save their worlds and themselves. Without spoiling the story, the alien is from a planet with a thick atmosphere and thus has little experience with radioactivity, many of his shipmates died of radiation poisoning during their long voyage. The Earthling narrates the story. He has to educate his alien friend (who is now exposed to radiation in space) about the nature and risk of radioactivity. BTW, there is a reason that alien survived. What unfolds is one of the best explanations of how essential radiation is to human life, and our amazing ability to adapt to it. I am sure a lot of Weir’s followers knew this information, but I am also sure he educated a lot of people on the subject. The book is now being made into a motion picture (starts filming this year 2024 - in case this post lives in infamy) starring Ryan Gosling. Just tell almost anyone off the street that the Earth is awash in radiation, and it’s essential to life, and most never had a clue. The LNT false narrative was put forth by oil interest in the 1960s, it is one of the many mysteries and disappointments of nuclear history that the nuclear community did not step up to effectively refute it and act as educators. I do think the American Nuclear Society and the World Nuclear Association are improving in educational outreach. But for the most part, it’s up to posts like Hugo’s, other citizen journalists, and story tellers to get the accurate information out in a compelling and understandable way.
thanks Shawn,
I added a few more photos about Ramsar, on the request of some subscribers!
There is one aspect missing in this very good analysis. I wrote with professor Calabrese this publication
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Calabrese-Paunio-2020.pdf
I concentrated in implications of this truly fascinating epidemiological study:
Sutou S. Rediscovery of an old article reporting that the area around the epicenter in Hiroshima was heavily contaminated with residual radiation, indicating that exposure doses of A-bomb survivors were largely underestimated. J Radiat Res. 2017; 58(5): 745–754.
This paper was originally published in the 1950's only in Japanese. It shows without any doubt that the cancer risk assessment of the ICRP based on LNT model substantially overestimate the risk as the dose assessment in the LSS-cohort does not take into account torrential Black rain i.e. survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki got way higher doses, what has been estimated based on test in Nevada desert in dry weather conditions. Torrential Black rain occurred for hours in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So even if LNT correctly estimates very low risks among people with doses below 100 mSv, the "real" risks are substantially lower than very low based on LNT. The dose assessment in the LSS Study assumes that gamma radiation resulted from the blast for let us say 20 seconds caused the only dose to survivors.
What is also significant is that radiation sickness alone was quite rare among acute deaths. Visible and non-visible light i.e. non-ionizing radiation and its thermal effects was the most significant killer as it light reaches far further than the blast effect of an atomic bomb if detonated above earth (500 m).
Mikko Paunio, MD, MHS (Chairman of the Radiation Safety Committee of Finland 2010-2020.)
Hi Mikko,
Thank you very much, and thanks for the contribution. I will definitely read into it in detail.
In mid July paper of mine in the subject matter will be published. Stay tuned.