the Author simply fails to compare the health effects of burning coal and demystified nuclear fission.

iIgnored, the much higher death toll/environmental damage from coal fired power!

Which includes most of the polluting heavy metals(lead mercury, cadmium, arsenic and uranium) emanating from the smoke stacks; which permanently pollutes the natural environment with even more disastrous cumulative health consequences for many more!

Or that over half the solar panels adorning over a million australian roofs are made using this power?

Ignores recent advances, like waterless helium cooled pebble reactors able to be sited almost anywhere; that make a meltdown almost impossible or history.

Also ignored are thorium reactors or the fact that the latest advances in solar thermal energy, rely on radioactive liquid lithium and thorium salts to facilitate the heat retention required to make these alternatives, base load capable!

He needs to wake up in the morning and smell the unprecedented levels of Co2 that threaten us with a real, not hyperventilated E.L.E!

He probably prefers unreliable wind and solar voltaic power, because it costs a proverbial granny killing arm and a leg.

And entirely unaffordable for more than half the world's population; encourage the felling of more trees and or the substitution of world polluting fossil fuels.

We who export so much coal should instead be exporting fully functional truckable thorium reactors, and renting them out where they can't otherwise afford them; and in so doing, ensuring they are fueled with our thorium.

Thankfully the break even price per ton for new coal projects is around $100.00 a ton, and the current market is around $50.00 a ton.

Let me conclude by saying, I have a coal fired power station in my backyard.

I have just very recently just survived Multiple pulmonary embolisms. And I am downstream from the smoke stacks!

P.E"s cause of most sudden deaths in the elderly! Just one is usually enough!

Would that that power station could be a nuclear one, and that we had the brains to build a nuclear powered shipping fleet/connecting rapid rail!
Rhrosty.

The writer seems to assume non-natural radioactive material will get into the environment as a matter of course. Given that nobody has gotten a clearly sickening dose at Fukushima and that proveable deaths from Chernobyl are fewer than 60 I'd say that makes it relatively safe. Look how many coal miners are killed each year or how much respiratory distress is caused eg by the Morwell coal fires.

Fortunately the writer is not insisting that wind and solar can substantially replace coal as the evidence for such a claim is tenuous. In Australia our coal use is increasing despite over a decade of generous subsidies for wind and solar. There is no perfect energy source but nuclear is one that works at scale with statistically low harm rates.

Sorry Rhrosty and Taswegian

But the fact that coal mining is bad for health does not prove that ionising radiation is safe.

Oh Noel

Reckon you are somewhat hard on Doc Muller.

Right at the end of the final episode he said - along the lines - he doesn't think nuclear is ready and that renewables (wind and solar) are a better choice.

Such was the complexity and ambiguous nature of Doc Muller's statements over three long episodes - that we extract what meanings that are in accord with our leanings.

I am scrupulously neutral mar-self.

Peter-kin

from Noel Wauchope

Oh Plantagenet
How good to have the luxury of being scrupulously neutral. I can't manage that, in a world with so much pain and suffering.

Dr Muller makes sure to make numerous statements that sound like strong reservations about nuclear power, and that statement about "feeling" that renewables are an alternative, and that we're not ready for new nuclear. That's exactly what the nuclear lobby is saying - particularly people like Leslie Dewan - as her new nuclear reactor exists only on paper.

These statements are a sort of letout for him. They do not inform his whole account.

Muller and Thomas are perfect choices for the new sophisticated style nuclear spin. Either they are both shills, or Muller is strangely ignorant on biology. Check out his videos on radiation at Veritasium on Youtube. Check out Prof Thomas at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7sGESRhpqg or http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-smoking-more-dangerous-radiation

Christina: Logically, the fact that some people die from gas poisoning does not make electricity safe!

Nor does a higher death rate from coal suddenly make nuclear perfectly safe!

Recent advances have made it considerably safer and cheaper!

See helium cooled pebble reactors. Cheaper than coal thorium!

As far as I'm concerned I've not claimed that nuclear was completely safe! Show where I've claimed that!? Typical anti nuclear obfuscation?

Make no mistake, coal fired power probably leaches more uranium and other even more dangerous heavy metals into our environment, via smoke stack emission, than any still operational nuclear plant?

Naturally, nobody with a still functioning brain is advocating building a conventional oxide reactor on a known fault line!

That said, improving battery technology may make some of the "renewables" more reliable? Just not cheaper?

At the end of the day those alternatives we take up, will literally walk out the door!

Money talks!

However, if there's a market for the renewables, without taxpayer subsidies, let them stand or fall on merit; in a completely free energy market!

I have shown some carbon free technologies, that we could roll out to provide power at half the cost of that available today from the coal fired power market!

To among other things, resuscitate our slowly sinking in the sunset, manufacturing base.

If the services are so good? See how much we make from them, having to compete with emerging economies for a market share, large enough to guarantee a viable future for our kids and their Kids!?

Read me on earlier energy articles.
Rhrosty.

O Noel!

Radiation explains me lovely tan.

An submariners need more of it.

SSNs for peace?

Exhibit A http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/us-nuclear-subs-that-temporarily-docked.html

and B http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/guam-nuclear-submarine-and-air-base.html

:)

Peter-kin

There's a wikipedia page which provides a bit more background on the financing of the series. It would be interesting to know who the technical advisors that worked with the screen-writer were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_%E2%80%93_Twisting_the_Dragon%E2%80%99s_Tail

Thank you, Dan Monceaux
It seems that the series was not funded by nuclear interests. So it looks as though they relied on nuclear physicists for their information on ionising radiation. Professor Thomas seems limited to discussing the sort-lived radioactive iodine.

It would have been an improvement had they consulted a radiation expert, for example Dr Ian Fairlie. His most recent article explains the current debate about low level radiation. http://www.ianfairlie.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/US-NRC-Consultation-4-1.pdf

I simply do not have the time to refute all the spurious arguments in Noel's post. I guess it proves the point that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Today's nuclear technology is so far beyond the post war fission reactors that Noel's concerns are mostly risable. The real problem is that persons like her with zealous belief in their own myths can do much damage. If the climate fundamentalists are even 20% right, nuclear power will be the saviour of planet earth and advanced civilisations. Without nuclear some humans may survive, but my guess is that they will wish they had not.

G'day Pliny of Perth

Your poor post paints a pattern of periodic pathos.

You may be an "I simply do not have the time" pauper, but you will have to do more than attempt to drag the author down to the depths ye inhabit.

Poida de la Pox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpS31FJO8_o

Gudday Plantagenet,

Your terse dismissal is unfortunately justified to some degree. However I am about to depart for the far blue yonder and just now resemble a lizard flat out drinking. Allow me to comment that I am well informed with a hard science background and that a complete rebuttal of Noel Wauchope's claims is a very lengthy business. I do sincerely believe that views similar to hers are dangerous and very misleading and have the capacity to do harm to the national interest. In fact, many of the population of Australia are behaving like lemmings dancing to a pied piper's flute playing songs of political correctness and denial of reality. Will Australia wake up in time? By the way, I understood that the last of the plantagenets died out with Richard III in 1485.

Poor Pliny - Doesn't understand simple concepts - like that the idea of just attacking a person's reputation just doesn't really cut it- not even in the case where the attacker is So important and So busy that of course, we must all defer to his opinion.

No - sorry - what counts is the old maxim from the old TV show "The Untouchables" - "Just wanna get the facts Ma'am, just wanna get the facts"

Giday Pliny de la Perth

We Plantagenets were, of course, a proud dynasty, much schooled in nuclear fysiks, particularly as it pertained to submarine propulsion.

But for the untimely death of Richard III, not far from the sea (in Australian terms) the Spanish Armada and combined French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar would o been despatched by torpedo, long afore they knew wot hit'em.

Poida de la Drake-Nelson

//So it looks as though they relied on nuclear physicists for their information on ionising radiation.//

Yeah, because what would a committed, hard-working academic know about his own field of study that an amateur, arm-chair expert with a background in changing bedpans and checking blood-pressure can't tell them?

Actually, probably a hell of lot. I'd bet my last dollar that Noel or Christina or some faceless anti-nuke-spruiker from Greenpeace or whoever they may be has never actually studied any nuclear physics because they are intimidated by the level of mathematics involved, so they're not in a real good position to be levelling criticism against people who know what they're talking about.

//"Just wanna get the facts Ma'am, just wanna get the facts"//

Except when those facts are delivered by a physicist. Because we all know you can't trust nerdy old greybeards with too much intellectual curiosity. They're all part of a vast government conspiracy to kill everyone with radiation poisoning. The people with the deepest fascination for what makes the universe tick have no interest in truth, accuracy or fact: they just want you irradiated till you glow like a Christmas tree.

Hi Noel-ChristinaMac1

Nautilus just sent an excellent article on radioactive waste approaches in South Korea (31 August 2015) http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=0de7e0e84dc3aff619f936a70&id=70900dcf63&e=ae85b3aafb . This includes:

"South Korea’s earlier failure could thus have been foreseen when the South Korean government excluded local communities in its unilateral siting drive. South Korea’s previous approach was a typical example of what in the UK is called the “DADA” or “decide, announce, defend, and abandon” process."

Poida's Cherenkov Glow

from Noel Wauchope
Thank you, plantagenet, for the information from Nautilus on Korea.

The subject of ionising radiation seems to be the main point of contention regarding "The Dragon's Tail".

Ionising radiation is covered very thoroughly by Stephen Starr, Director, University of Missouri, Clinical Laboratory Science Program ,in his article The "Implications of The Massive Contamination of Japan With Radioactive Cesium"
at http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Fukushima/StevenStarr.html

In particular, he demolishes the "banana" comparisons.

Why did Noel quote the extremists? Why not the more cautious peer reviewed work of UNESCAR? They follow the largely *unproved* Linear No-Threshold (or no safe level) theory of radiation exposure, so it is a very conservative, careful, slightly paranoid measure of concern about radiation exposure. And even they concluded that while Chernobyl only killed 64 at the time, the longer term exposure might only kill another 4000 people. And that's according to the *unproven* and highly conservative LNT! So these authors estimating a million or so are *way* out there!

As the wiki on Chernobyl says:

“The number of potential deaths arising from the Chernobyl disaster is heavily debated. The WHO‘s prediction of 4000 future cancer deaths in surrounding countries[152] is based on the Linear no-threshold model (LNT), which assumes that the damage inflicted by radiation at low doses is directly proportional to the dose.[153] Radiation epidemiologist Roy Shore contends that estimating health effects in a population from the LNT model “is not wise because of the uncertainties”.[154]“

But why quote a radiation epidemiologist when you can quote a paper by a Greenpeace biologist and a psychologically traumatised nuclear engineer (and hero!) of the "Battle of Chernobyl"? Why quote calmer, more objective sources when you can turn to known anti-nuclear activists with (understandable but misleading) emotional biases on the subject of Chernobyl?

Indeed, if Noel had even bothered to read the wiki on the book, she would have understood that it is full of vague terminology that does not quantify doses properly, has poor referencing, and inconsistent results. As M. I. Balonov, Institute of Radiation Hygiene, St. Petersburg, said:

"The value of this review is not zero, but negative, as its bias is obvious only to specialists, while inexperienced readers may well be put into deep error. ... Yablokov's assessment for the mortality from Chernobyl fallout of about one million ... puts this book in a range of rather science fiction than science."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment

Familiar tactic of the nuclear lobby - try to trash the reputation of a respected science commentator (Stephen Starr, Director, University of Missouri, Clinical Laboratory Science Program).

UNSCEAR must be taken with a grain of salt, closely liaising with the World Health Organisation. The “WHA 12-40” agreement of 28th May 1959, in practice, puts the WHO and UNSCEAR in a subordinate position to the IAEA.

WHO and UNSCEAR are therefore constrained to carefully not publish anything that would impede the nuclear industry.

Even within that constraint, UNSCEAR's full report does indeed state the danger of ionising radiation to the Fukushima population, particularly to women and children, especially female children.

Hi ChristinaMac,
nice conspiracy theory. Want any science to go with that?

In the meantime, another few phrases of Noel's that seemed particularly dishonest and misleading:

"Muller consistently mixes up "natural" radiation with ionising radiation from nuclear fission."
This sentence is misleading. Natural radiation is often ionising radiation! "Background radiation is the ubiquitous ionizing radiation that people on the planet Earth are exposed to, including natural and artificial sources."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
Being an ex-science teacher, surely Noel knows this? Why write such a misleading sentence?

"He talks about background radiation as "natural"."
It often is! Radon, food, cosmic radiation from space, all give us natural ionising radiation!? Not only this, but the world average natural ionizing radiation is 2.4 mSv, while the world average artificial is only 0.61. Globally our exposure to NATURAL ionizing radiation is about 4 times our exposure to ARTIFICIAL ionizing radiation. Where does Noel acknowledge this? If not, why not?

"There's no mention of the increased ionising radiation in the biosphere as a result of the atomic bomb testing in the 1950s and 60s.""
There WAS mention of it, unless Noel just didn't bother watching all 3 episodes? He even mentioned that our skeletons would be different to that of people buried before the Trinity test. He concluded that every person on earth walks around with some tiny particles of fallout in them. I'm amazed that Noel claims he ignored this? I thought this section was over-wrought.

Is this just the level of dishonesty we are to expect from anti-nuclear activists? George Monbiot was right about Helen Caldicott and other nuclear activists: suspicion of the peer-review process and paranoid conspiracy theories take the place of cold, hard science.

from Noel Wauchope

I did watch all 3 episodes, and took extensive notes.
I thought that the first 2 episodes were terrific.
Now it seems - I must have missed (? forgotten ) that important part, which I suspect, came up in the earlier episodes.

In which case, I made a bad mistake, and I regret it.

As to "natural" ionising radiation versus"background" ionising radiation - well - until the atomic bomb, they were one and the same.
Nuclear fission has added to background radiation. I did not think that Derek Muller paid attention to this fact, in the 3rd episode - more or less implying that it didn't matter if more was addd now, with further nuclear activities.

//Want any science to go with that?//

Yes, he does. But not too much science. You've already seen how dismissive he is of knowledge provided by physicists. Apparently epidemiology is a science, but in Noel's world, physics is in the same boat as astrology and homeopathy: a pseudo-science.

Most people would disagree, especially the physicists (but they're biased). However, many philosophers of science have written on the distinction between science, pseudo-science and non-science, and none to my knowledge share Noel's view that physics is any less worthy as a field of science than epidemiology.

I think epidemiology and physics are both proper sciences, and that they are both worthy of our attention in any reasonable discussion of the health effects of radiation.

//Nuclear fission has added to background radiation.//

Thanks to d!ckheads playing silly buggers with bombs. Boys and their toys. But artificial fission reactions are also important in nuclear power stations and other controlled reactors like the Lucas Heights reactor, and their contribution to average background radiation is sweet F.A.

I'm all in favour of reactors which produce medical isotopes, and I think nuclear power stations are a sensible option in some cases. I've met a lot of people who share my view, and quite a few who are even more in favour nuclear power than myself. I've haven't met any who think that more nuclear bombs or bomb tests are a good idea.

//I did not think that Derek Muller paid attention to this fact, in the 3rd episode - more or less implying that it didn't matter if more was addd now, with further nuclear activities.//

Yes, he did. He pointed out quite clearly that bomb tests have led a significant and measurable increase in the level of background radiation. Does it matter is more is added with further bomb tests? Yes: bomb tests are a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. We shouldn't be building any more of the damn things and we certainly shouldn't be detonating them. We should be dismantling them and recycling their fissile components for civilian uses.

//Nuclear fission has added to background radiation.//
How much extra? What fraction more? 5%? 100% 500% Is it of a different quality to background radiation? Is Noel allowed to get away with insinuating background radiation is not ionising radiation like fission products? What about certain beaches that are *naturally* 500 times background radiation? What about the whole district of Kerala, India? How radioactive is that? What is a fatal does of radiation, and how

Tutt tutt Noel. Without actually letting us know these facts and proportions, for all we know you're hyperventilating about a drop in the ocean! I'd suggest that everyone have a good read of this wiki and do some careful analysis of the numbers. Check that Chernobyl accident! I hardly registers across European averages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

While we're on it, is Noel allowed to get away without quantifying how many peer-reviewed science journals have very serious problems with the 'experts' she quoted? Conspiracy theory thinking on major UN bodies?

As George Monbiot said of Helen Caldicott, that's the same emotional appeal against science that climate contrarians use! It's the very same tactic. "Oh, don't trust that IPCC, they're in cahoots with the climate gravy train."
"Oh, don't trust UNSCEAR, they're in cahoots with the IAEA."