The Nuclear Industry should educate the public about radiation hormesis

Article for Engineering Dissent

Originally Published at Independent Online

With the National Nuclear Regulator of South Africa’s announcement that the Koeberg Power Station’s Unit 1 can operate for another 20 years, there has been a predictable response from “the green activists” claiming that the SA regulator is being negligent by not considering “the necessary safety upgrades”. Given that Koeberg has been operating successfully for 40 years without a major incident, on what basis should we believe that the next 20 years would be different? 

The latest refrain about “nuclear safety” is that Koeberg needs a “core catcher” to be installed on the generation 2 powerstation, because it is “international best practice”. This position is the official talking from the “independent experts'' that are all associated with the Foundations such as the Heinrich Böll and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftungs, who generously “advises” some of South Africa’s green activists such as The Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI), the Green Connection, Earthlife Africa and Koeberg Alert Alliance. What these organizations are not aware of is that they are taking advice from organizations that openly receive money from foreign governments and from “experts” that have a wrapped understanding of radiation safety.

Notably, Earthlife Africa had members on the Presidential Climate Commision that (predictably) took an anti-nuclear stance, claiming rather dogmatically that South Africa doesn’t need a new nuclear power station and that the technology is “too expensive” and “unsafe”. Their assessment was based on numbers that were proven bunk and not based on International Benchmarking or audited accounts.

A few basic facts regarding nuclear safety have to be set straight, and the industry has to make a real effort to help with public education, because if not, the gap in public misperception will be filled by the anti-nuclear activists and their “experts”. 

Nuclear power plants have dossiers that are site specific and Koeberg is no exception. Core Catchers that were introduced in Generation III plants are not necessary to maintain public safety, as the ultimate safety function is covered by the concrete outer containment structure. Neither is installing one an "international standard" as the activists claim. U.S. plants do not require it for longterm operations and there simply is no “international nuclear regulation”, because nuclear safety has always been a national responsibility, albeit often guided by principles of the IAEA. Koeberg's design is based on an American Westinghouse design and was built by France’s Framatome. South Africa therefore had the advantage of assessing what both countries did and apply the lessons that are relevant to us. 

Koeberg’s safety is ensured by its independent safeguard systems, including seismic bearings and a foundation raft that reduce the likelihood of a post-Fukushima-type earthquake, passive autocatalytic recombiners that prevent hydrogen buildup, as well as backup generators for emergency cooling in the case of a meltdown. Ultimately, defense in depth is guaranteed through the concrete containment building, which is reinforced with prestressed tendons. 

Eskom implemented many of these modifications in the aftermath of Fukushima when the industry acceptable risk went from a 1 in 100 000 accident to a 1 in 1 million, the black swan risks. No other industry, to my knowledge, has gone this far in guaranteeing public safety. Koeberg furthermore has a separate primary and secondary loop, whereas the Fukushima accident was based on a boiling water reactor design that ran on a direct cycle. The type of accident that occurred at Fukushima that resulted from hydrogen built up during a melt down is therefore less likely to occur, and given that Koeberg is not in a tsunami zone one can argue that Eskom even went the extra mile to respect public safety.

But despite this, there is an obvious practical reason why Koeberg cannot install a core catcher: the slab underneath the reactor is 6 meters thick, compared to the average 2-meter thick slabs in France. If Neil Overy from the 'Environmental Humanities' department at Stellenbosch University insists on installing one, then I propose that the team currently working on the Steam Generator of Unit 2 provide him with a jackhammer so he can demonstrate how to penetrate a three-story thick foundation raft with multiple layers of high-bond steel reinforcement.

The exaggerated and astonishingly misinformed claims from “the activists'' unfortunately do not stop there. For example during the public participation hearing of the Koeberg Life Extension, South Africa’s anti-nuclear activists tried to stack the hearings with their presentations, by trying to turn it into a special interest event and then hoping that the public wouldn’t realize what they are trying to achieve. Peter Becker of Koeberg Alert Alliance, with no expertise in nuclear power, tried to promote himself, getting nominated by “the community” on the National Nuclear Regulator’s Board. Minister Mantashe considered this a conflict of interest, but following a legal dispute, Mr. Becker managed to win his court case on a procedural technicality. Mantashe's decision to fire someone for their views was shortsighted, as it allowed Becker to gain more publicity by having the media introduce him as a 'former board member’. The Minister should rather have been aware of what was going on before he appointed Becker.

Even though the regulator saw through the shenanigans and approved the life extension of Koeberg for another 20 years, I suspect that the green’s tactics have only just begun, because what nuclear activists want is not public safety, but rather for the plant to shut down entirely. Their ultimate goal is for South Africa’s small nuclear industry (that produces up to 20% of the world’s cancer treating isotopes) to be systematically sabotaged through public policy as was the case with the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, the Tokoloshe Experimental Fusion Reactor and the “alleged” R1 trillion Nuclear Deal (a number that even Chris Yellend’s most conservative estimates didn’t agree with).

There is nothing more threatening to the utopian green idea than a nuclear power station providing up to 40% of the Western Cape’s electricity supply, and nothing more provocative than the suggestion that we might expand this technology to the poverty stricken Eastern Cape Region with the construction of the Thyspunt Nuclear Power Plant. The activists already started with their predictable tactics and ramped up the fear of “excessive costs” when the Minister of Energy Dr. Kgosientso Ramokgopa made the announcement that SA will procure another 2500 MW of electricity through Nuclear Power. If the tender hasn’t even been sent out, how can they possibly know that it is going to be “too expensive”? They are simply fear mongering.

Nuclear fear narrative

The nuclear fear narrative has a dark history that dates back to the Cold War and starting with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red scare when several scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, such as Robert Oppenheimer, were stigmatized as 'communist sympathizers,' leading to the destruction of their careers. Hollywood began producing films on the topic of Nuclear Winter like Dr. Strangelove, and the U.S. corporate press kept on highlighting stories about the deaths of nuclear whistleblowers, such as Karen Silkwood. Although years later it was found that her “secret discoveries” were exaggerated, it did not stop nuclear activism becoming a symbol of the Cold War opposition, and particularly in relation to the anti-vietnam war protests. This connection eventually led to the environmental movement associating nuclear weapons with nuclear power. As Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of greenpeace later admitted, this radical stance was a historical error.

The South African activists, like their American counterparts, rather unknowingly, continue to recycle antinuclear arguments that were debunked decades ago. For example, as the late Dr. Bernard Cohen showed in 1991, according to the then official claims of the anti-nuclear Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, nuclear power kills fewer people than alcoholism, poverty, heart disease, cancer, and murder, but it unfortunately receives far too much media coverage.

The world has around 400 nuclear reactors, and out of the three major incidents of nuclear power—Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl—only the latter (that had no containment structure) resulted in radiation-related deaths. Nuclear energy is unique in that even if its accidents do not cause radiation fatalities, they are termed as “nuclear disasters”. The reason for it is that we came to accept radiation safety standards based on an outdated understanding of radiation safety called Linear No Threshold (LNT) that assumes, like homeopaths, that all doses of radiation is dangerous. The theory is at the core of what motivates the activists.

As the former senior health advisor to the Finnish Government and World Bank, Dr. Mikko Pauno, recently demonstrated, modern radiation safety standards were adopted despite evidence that the Atomic Bomb Survivors were subjected to the black rain that delivered high doses of radiation in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. By ignoring this evidence, the original panel of experts wrongly concluded that every dosage of radiation is dangerous. Ultimately several reviews of this dataset disproved LNT, and others have shown that it fails several toxicological stress tests. The atomic bomb data for example showed 3,000 excess cases of cancer due to high doses of radiation and controversially that individuals that were exposed to low doses of radiation had reduced levels of cancer when compared to the general population. This finding aligns with the 2005 conclusions of the French Académie des Sciences, which also found no significant evidence of cancer risk for populations exposed to low radiation dosages, as well as Dr. Edward Calabrese’s at Amherst’s work, showing that excessive regulation based on LNT was lobbied for by the Fossil Fuel Industry -  a deliberate rejection of human data.

The phenomenon known as Radiation Hormesis suggests that low doses of radiation may not only be harmless but could potentially have therapeutic effects. This idea fundamentally challenges the arguments of the anti-nuclear lobby. However, the nuclear industry, by adhering to the outdated hypothesis that all radiation is harmful regardless of dose, has put itself in a difficult position. It has focused on proving 'safety' rather than asserting that 'nuclear is safe’ and in fact that radiation might be beneficial. The untenable position has even led to the crackdown of dissident scientists within its own ranks.

Radiation hardly ever kills. In fact the deaths at Fukushima were due to the panic. The evacuations themselves caused 2313 premature deaths, with 90% of them in people aged 66 and older. The Japanese government, by law, reimburses anyone who can prove they developed cancer from the fallout, and so far, the number of cases can be counted on our fingers. As Dr. Wade Allison predicted in the aftermath of Fukushima, the response was totally disproportionate to the actual danger. The reported levels of radiation in the direct aftermath were unlikely to kill anyone - and in fact it didn’t. Hence we probably shouldn’t have called it a disaster.

Dr. Alla Shapiro, in her review of the literature on Chernobyl came to a similar conclusion that many of the deaths were ultimately caused by fear mongering. She was a first responder at Chernobyl and noticed that children, bussed in from the disaster zone, started pouring into her hospital with persistent coughs and psychological symptoms stemming from anxiety and fear. Furthermore, many Ukrainian women were wrongfully advised to abort their babies, and as far away as Sweden, the government initiated a frenzy to slaughter up to 71% of their reindeer. Psychologists now call this irrational fear radiophobia. 

The death toll at Chernobyl, estimated to be 30-50 according to the UN, is comparable to the 2004 LNG Skikda accident in Algeria, which resulted in a similar number of fatalities - yet the latter is largely unknown to the public. As the Documentary BBC Horizon reported in 2011 as humans have left the area, the wildlife has bloomed and flourished, because contrary to misperception, radiation is actually good for plant and mammalian life. Hormesis might be why aircraft pilots and nuclear power operators have longer lifespans than the general population, why the holiday resorts such as Tshipise and Die Eiland are green, and why Iranians go to radioactive zones such as Ramsar for holidays, believing it strengthens their marriage.

The Green Politburo shouldn’t be allowed to hijack public policy and the Nuclear Industry should in fact, based on the evidence of Radiation Hormesis, come to terms with the fact that our fear of radiation is based on dogmatic superstition. The nuclear industry should rather consider lowering its safety standards, back to 1 in 100 000 and push back against the disproportionate fear. 

Ultimately, public education about radiation hormesis is required to overcome the propaganda.