The sudden desire to destroy trees for solar panels comes as the state risks failing to meet its own climate goal of 100% “clean” energy by 2040. If it doesn’t increase its development of so-called renewable energy, it won’t meet its arbitrary timeframe.

The 420 acres about to be bulldozed are part of 4,000 acres of public land that will be flattened to try and meet the 2040 deadline. //

Public land, even - meaning, presumably, land that is held by the state government in trust, as it were, for the people of the state of Michigan. Land that would otherwise be available for a variety of recreational uses, as most public land is.

Now, though, it will be destroyed in favor of solar panels that will take up an enormous amount of space to produce far less energy than a nuclear power plant would generate with a much, much smaller footprint.

This is ridiculous. //

To sum that up, solar arrays require 38 times more land to produce the same amount of electricity as one modern fission plant. Wind is even worse, requiring 140 times the land to produce that same amount of electricity - enough to power about 775,000 typical homes. That doesn't even take into account the issues with reliability or the necessity of battery backups for times when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. //

So, why do these "clean energy" goals never include nuclear power? Fission reactors are everything the climate scolds and "clean energy" types profess to want; modern reactors, including molten-salt and small modular reactors, are safe, efficient, and produce no carbon emissions. //

They are literally destroying the environment to protect the environment. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
an hour ago edited
This is another example of progressive greenwashing. This won’t help the environment, it won’t reduce carbon and it isn’t scalable. It also isn’t base power as it won’t work at night or as well depending on the weather. That means another power plant needs to be built o provide power when this doesn't.

Get real and start deploying nuclear energy. Stop buying Chinese solar panels (based on stolen US IP) and leave the trees alone. The real world pollution will be effectively nonexistent, there will be less carbon and we don’t have to give more money to the CCP. //

Quiverfull
22 minutes ago
The deer and the antelope do not play
In the middle of a gross solar array

Most people do not realize how delayed portions of the Fukushima evacuation were. I certainly did not. By the end of March, the situation at the plant was under control. Power had been restored to the site. The team was getting water to all the stricken reactors. The temperatures were coming down. The release rate was one ten thousandth of what it had been earlier.\cite{tepco-2012a}[p 51]

The government fully expected to restart Japan's reactors quickly. The job was mainly clean up and rebuild from the tsunami. They were quite taken back when the public led by a normally tame press turned against nuclear power, threatening the ruling Democratic party.

The politicians responded. On April 22, 40 days after the start of the release, the government implemented two new evacuation zones, Figure 1. The area out to 20 kilometers from the plant had already been evacuated. //

Figure 2 shows the GKG dose rate profile for the high end Iitate population. GKG estimates the peak high end ambient dose rate for this town was 47 microGy/h, not that much lower than UCS's number for Okuma. According to LNT, making these people evacuate after 50 days increased their life expectancy by 24 days. For most of the citizens of Iitate, the numbers would be lower to much lower. According to SNT, forcing these to people to evacuate after 50 days, increased their life expectancy by 1.7 minutes. The stress of evacuation will be far, far more costly. //

Under LNT, the harm just keeps building up. In a nuclear power plant release, after the initial rapid decline, the dose rate falls off very slowly. The cumulative dose for the Iitate high end group after a 40 year exposure period is 613 mSv. For an LNTer, this is a scary number, since it only took a 150 mSv or so acute dose to produce significant increases in cancer in the bomb survivors. For an LNTer, the fact that the bomb survivors suffered most of their dose in seconds, while the Iitate citizens will receive their dose fairly evenly over 40 years is irrelevant. Given our rate dependent ability to repair radiation damage, this is biological nonsense. //

This is so stupidly tragic that I don't know where to begin. The peak dose rate in the EPA was around 0.06 mSv/d and lasted roughly 10 days. In the Karunagappally study, Figure 4, the people who got 0.06 mSv/d showed no increase in cancer and they averaged that dose rate for at least 19 years. By day 50, when most of these people were frightened into leaving, the dose rate was down to around 0.02 mSv/d. In the Karunagappally study, we have nearly a million person-years at this dose rate or higher with no increase in cancer. And most of these people experienced these dose rates their whole life. //

The people in the EPA had their lives uprooted, and in many cases ruined for no reason at all. Or rather by a model that is tragically misleading. Given its consequences, I have no problem calling LNT evil. What does that say about its promoters?

Wednesday 19th June 2013 08:28 GMT
John Smith 19Gold badge
Coat
PDP 11 odds and ends.
The PDP 11 (like the PARC Alto) had a main processor built from standard 4 bit TTL "ALU" parts and their companion "register file." So 2nd, 3rd,4th sourced. I'm not sure how many mfg still list them on their available list in the old standard 0.1" pin spacing.

El Reg ran a story that Chorus (formerly British Steel) ran them for controlling all sorts of bits of their rolling mills but I can't recall if they are

I think the core role for this task is the refueling robots for the CANDU reactors. CANDU allows "on load" refuelling. The robots work in pairs locked onto each end of the pressurized pipes that carry the fuel and heavy water coolant/moderator. They then pressurize their internal storage areas, open the ends and one pushes new fuel bundles in while the other stores the old ones, before sealing the ends. However CANDU have been working on new designs with different fuel mixes (CANDU's special sauce (C Lewis Page) is that it's run with unenriched Uranium, which is much cheaper and does not need a bomb making enrichment facility) and new fuel bundle geometries, so time for a software upgrade.

And 128 users on a PDP 11/70. Certain customers ran bespoke OSes in the early 90s that could get 300+ when VMS could only support about less than 20 on the same spec.

Note for embedded use this is likely to be RSX rather than VMS, which also hosted the ICI developed RTL/2, which was partly what hosted the BBC CEEFAX service for decades.

Yes, it's an anorak.. //

Wednesday 19th June 2013 18:20 GMT
Jamie JonesSilver badge
Thumb Up
Who's laughing?
I feel much better knowing this.

What is the alternative? Buggy software written by the "'Have you tried switching it off and on again" generation? Wednesday 19th June 2013 20:24 GMT
bscottm
Reply Icon
Re: It just costs money
It's not the GHz clock cycle that is the problem. It's the smaller feature size of the transistors that increases the single event upset (SEU) rate. Yes, the two are inter-related, but one could conceivably build multi-core, chip symmetric multiprocessors based on the PDP-11 at today's feature sizes and not have GHz clock cycle times (and still end up with significant SEU rates.)

A couple of years ago, a NASA/JPL scientist pointed out that the alpha particles (helium nuclei) from lead solder were causing interesting issues with current x86_64 I/O pins -- radiation issues on commodity hardware. //

Wednesday 19th June 2013 07:32 GMT
Duncan Macdonald
RSX11M - Dave Cutler
Anyone who read the RSX11M sources (driver writers especially) realised that Dave Cutler was a very very good programmer long before he worked on VMS and later Windows NT. He managed to get a multiuser protected general purpose operating system to work with a minimum memory footprint of under 32kbytes on machines with about the same CPU power as the chip on a credit card. (A 96kByte PDP 11/40 (1/3 mip) with 2 RK05 disks (2.4Mbyte each) could support 2 concurrent programmers - a PDP 11/70 (1 mip) with 1Mbyte and 2 RM03 disk packs (65Mbyte each) could support 10 or more.) During the many years that the CEGB used PDP-11 computers with RSX11M, I did not hear of a single OS failure that was not caused by a hardware fault - I wish that current systems were as good. //

Wednesday 19th June 2013 17:23 GMT
MD Rackham
Reply Icon
Re: RSX11M - Dave Cutler
Of course, that was several years after there was a protected, multi-user timesharing system running on the PDP-8, TSS/8. And it would run in 8K of memory, although you had to spring for 12K for decent performance. Swapped off a fixed-head 256K word disk.

You PDP-11 kids get off my lawn! //

Wednesday 19th June 2013 15:28 GMT
Bastage
Reply Icon
Go
Re: there are alternatives
There is replacement hardware available. NuPDP replacment CPU's including QBUS support and peripheral cards. Also NuVAX for the new kids.

The Reviver boards for PDP-11 and HP1000.

The Osprey PDP-11 and Kestral HP1000 hardware from Strobe Data.

There are also the Stromasys/Charon software emulators VAX/AXP/HP3000. //

Go
Re: there are alternatives
@Peter Gathercole

There is already a well established PDP-11 project on OpenCores:

http://opencores.org/project,w11 //

PDP 11 odds and ends.
The PDP 11 (like the PARC Alto) had a main processor built from standard 4 bit TTL "ALU" parts and their companion "register file." So 2nd, 3rd,4th sourced. I'm not sure how many mfg still list them on their available list in the old standard 0.1" pin spacing.

El Reg ran a story that Chorus (formerly British Steel) ran them for controlling all sorts of bits of their rolling mills but I can't recall if they are

I think the core role for this task is the refueling robots for the CANDU reactors. CANDU allows "on load" refuelling. The robots work in pairs locked onto each end of the pressurized pipes that carry the fuel and heavy water coolant/moderator. They then pressurize their internal storage areas, open the ends and one pushes new fuel bundles in while the other stores the old ones, before sealing the ends. However CANDU have been working on new designs with different fuel mixes (CANDU's special sauce (C Lewis Page) is that it's run with unenriched Uranium, which is much cheaper and does not need a bomb making enrichment facility) and new fuel bundle geometries, so time for a software upgrade.

And 128 users on a PDP 11/70. Certain customers ran bespoke OSes in the early 90s that could get 300+ when VMS could only support about less than 20 on the same spec.

Note for embedded use this is likely to be RSX rather than VMS, which also hosted the ICI developed RTL/2, which was partly what hosted the BBC CEEFAX service for decades. //

Wednesday 19th June 2013 13:20 GMT
PhilBuk
Reply Icon
Happy
Re: PDP 11 odds and ends.
Most real-time systems stayed as PDP-11 when the industry realised that the interupt latency on VAX/VMS was too slow for a lot of applications. You could improve it with a ccustomised VMS kernel but, in most cases, it was cheaper to stick with the devil you knew. Similarly, a friend worked for a measuring company that were using embedded PDP-8 systems as controllers well into the end of the 90s. used to drive round with a clip-on PDP-8 front panel in the boot of his car.

Phil. //

Thursday 20th June 2013 08:25 GMT
FrankAlphaXII
Reply Icon
Re: PDP 11 odds and ends.
Its a certainly a CANDU reactor and its fuel bundle loader robots from what it looks like.

CANDU is a different type of reactor than what gets built most of the time, they can burn just about anything, from some unenriched uranium with some slightly enriched uranium at the same time, to thorium, to Mixed Oxide fuels partially from decommissioned nuclear weapons, to "fun" transuranic actinides and also (as a proliferation concern) some quite nasty fuel mixes which can breed massive (relatively speaking of course) amounts of Plutonium if the reactor isn't properly safeguarded. Thats where India and probably Pakistan bred most of their Special Materials.

And what's cool about this is if the PDP-11 is what GE is using in Canada for their loaders, then its probably what they're using in India, South Korea, Romania, Argentina and China as well, as they also have CANDU reactors or designs derived from CANDU. //

In the early days of Russia's war on Ukraine, President Joe Biden boldly declared he was ready to seize "ill-begotten gains" of the region's oligarchs.

But in the years before Moscow twice invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from such oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals that still haunt America today.

GALTean
5 months ago
russians threaten with nukes??? Must be a day ending in Y...seriously how many of their nukes would even launch and go bang WHEN they are supposed to and not immediately or not at all? After seeing Ivantech in action in Ukraine and my time in the cold war going up against the soviet crap...I would say that most may be painted telephone poles.

streiff GALTean
5 months ago
the last Russian nuke test was 1990. So there's 30 years of Russian maintenance and quality control at work on those warheads.

Dieter Schultz streiff
5 months ago
I've noted this before...

There's been some discussion here and elsewhere that Russia's nuclear arsenal and delivery vehicles are largely past their useful designed lifespan. One news site suggested that Russia ended the inspection of their nuclear arsenal four or five years ago, in large part, because they didn't want western countries to discover the sorry state of their arsenal.

Laocoön of Troy streiff
5 months ago edited
You know...it just occurs to me that Russia could put to rest any doubts about their nukes by doing an above-the-ground public nuke test at their Semipalatinsk Test Site. Of course, suitably observed and recorded by their usual Western media allies. It would exponentially increase their leverage in terms of their threats. But so far Putin hasn't gone there. Why?

streiff Laocoön of Troy
5 months ago
for the same reason the USSR didn't invade Western Europe, they know how f***ed they are and we have too many centers of influence with a financial/power stake in making the threat larger than it is.

More Than a Newsletter
Access to Energy is one of those rare newsletters that does not stop with just publication, but goes into effective action for the causes it espouses. The latest instance of this is the Petition Project - an anti-global warming petition signed by over 17,000 scientists - which exposes Al Gore's "scientific consensus" on global warming as phony. This Petition Project was funded by subscriptions and donations from the readers of Access to Energy. See Global Warming Debunking News and Views for more.

Global Warming Report – $20

Hammer and Tickle by Petr Beckmann – $12

Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear by Petr Beckmann – $15

As we grapple with the twin challenges of energy security and energy reliability, revisiting Nixon’s vision offers valuable lessons. //

In the annals of American energy policy, few moments stand out as boldly as the unveiling of Nixon’s nuclear agenda. His plan, set against the backdrop of the 1973 oil embargo, was both a response to the immediate crisis and a long-term strategy for the nation’s energy security. One allure of nuclear power was its potential to diversify America’s energy portfolio and market, providing a backup in case of a crisis in one sector. Nixon envisaged a future where America’s cities and industries would be powered by the atom, reducing domestic risks associated with dependence on foreign oil. //

However, several factors derailed Nixon’s nuclear dream. During the Cold War, concerns about nuclear proliferation were already mounting, particularly around civilian nuclear programs that could lay the groundwork for weapon development if nuclear energy expanded into politically unstable regions. These proliferation concerns, combined with environmental fears intensified by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and later the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, significantly dampened public and political support for nuclear energy. This climate of skepticism led policymakers to impose regulatory hurdles on nuclear plant construction that ultimately proved insurmountable.

Every major advance in human technology, in human standard of living, has come with increases in energy density. From wood to charcoal to coal to oil to natural gas to fission power, the arc of progress in energy has always been toward greater, not lower, energy density. That is until the green energy types came along with their insistence on low-density sources like solar and wind.

So, with nuclear fission reactors providing the highest energy density available today, the question arises, "Where do we go from here?" What energy source can provide greater energy density than fission power?

The answer is fusion power. But the problem is that it's a few decades away, and has been since the '50s:

Meta believes it will need one to four gigawatts of nuclear power, in additional to the energy it already consumes, to fuel its AI ambitions. As such, it will put out a request for proposals (RFP) to find developers capable of supplying that level of electricity in the United States by early 2030. //

But while Meta plans to continue investing in solar and wind, hyperscalers seem convinced that harnessing the atom is the only practical means of meeting AI's thirst for power while making good on its sustainability commitments.

SpaceWeatherNews @SunWeatherMan
·
Trying to shoot a hole in this argument. Can’t. Any takers?
prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️
@mrexits
He is kind of asking the right questions here

There exist magic rocks that can boil water.

Boiling water gives us energy.

We stop using magic rocks because they exploded that one time.

Are we re*ed? Imagine if pre historic (sic) peoples stopped using fire because some red burnt his house down once.
10:54 AM · Dec 2, 2024

It's an interesting question. It's also a great illustration of the irrational thinking in some quarters when things like climate change are concerned. The fact is that nuclear energy is safer, with a lower rate of injury, than any energy method other than solar.

Climate scolds, people who want to keep the earth at some human-approved level, are all about "clean energy." They love the intermittent, low-energy-density sources - windmills, solar power - but can't abide and will not discuss nuclear power or "magic rocks." And when it comes to energy density, there just isn't any comparison. One fuel pellet of uranium in a light-water reactor produces as much energy as 1.3 tons of coal, 250 gallons of oil, and 34,000 cubic feet of natural gas. In a breeder reactor, the numbers are much higher: 22 tons of coal, 4,350 gallons of oil, and 590,000 cubic feet of natural gas. //

Forget what climate scolds claim to want. Look at what they are in favor of: You (not they) reducing your standard of living to meet their claimed goals. Look at the actions of the high-profile members of the opposition: Jetting around the globe in private jets, living in huge mansions a few feet above the tide line in the oceans they claim are rising out of control. They expect you to pay the price they aren’t willing to.

Do you want clean energy? This is clean energy. It's safe energy. No “still just thirty years away” fusion boondoggles are required. Not that fusion wouldn’t be even greater if we can make it work on an industrial scale, but how long have various organizations been trying to make that happen? This technology, nuclear power, especially the promising small modular reactors, is a technology we have now.

The new, improved small modular reactors described above could and should be built today. Technological societies like ours are dependent on abundant, cheap energy, and nuclear power has the ability to provide that power. Throughout our history, every major technological advance in power – from animal to machine, from wood to coal to oil to gas – has had one key characteristic in common, and that is increased energy density. Nuclear power represents just such an increase over generating electricity with coal or gas. Solar and wind power run in just the opposite direction, which is why they don’t scale up. //

anon-j5pd
a day ago
I’m an engineer and was a nuclear operator in the Navy. I’m a big supporter of nuclear power.
My dad used to work at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in AZ. It’s the biggest nuke in the country.
Just for fun I calculated the area of solar panels required to match Palo Verde’s output. It would require a field of panels 25 miles on a side, 625 square miles of panels. I used the power conversion factor and highest rate of sunlight incidence on the panels.
Palo Verde churns out the same amount of power day and night and isn’t impacted by dust. //

They Call Me Bruce
a day ago
Can't argue with a word of this.

As for safety, I used to be fond of pointing out that more people died in Ted Kennedy's car than in every civilian nuclear accident in the US combined.

How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power? | ITIF

An interesting (albeit saddening) article from the Swamp-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

• China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations.

• China has commenced operation of the world’s first fourth-generation nuclear reactor, for which China asserts it developed some 90 percent of the technology.

• China is leading in the development and launch of cost-competitive small modular reactors (SMRs).

• Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.

• China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.

That used to be the US’s strength – the ability to take smart ideas from anywhere around the world and actually implement them. That was before the US changed itself into a make-work program for bureaucrats & lawyers.

The fuel today with the greatest energy density is nuclear fuel; a chunk of enriched uranium the size of a thumbnail contains as much energy as one ton of coal, 120 gallons of oil, or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.

So when our nearest neighbor, Canada, has the potential to become the Saudi Arabia of uranium, the United States should sit up and take notice. //

Nuclear power is the energy source of the future. We can't wait for the day when fusion power becomes economically viable, either. America's energy requirements in coming decades will be increasing, not decreasing, and anyone who has looked at the data knows that wind, solar, and other "green" sources won't meet the needs. We need nuclear power, we need reliable, friendly sources of uranium to augment our own production, and we need to streamline the process for approving new reactors.

Legal Insurrection readers will recall that in my post on the United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan this week, its president boldly declared that oil and gas were a ‘gift from God’.

The eco-activists attending the event were enraged.

The climate cultists will likely be working themselves up into even more hysteria because of another climate conference that occurred mid-November in the Czech Republic city of Prague.

The Czech division of the International Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel) organized a two-day climate conference in Prague on November 12-13, 2024, where climate scientists declared that the “climate emergency” is over. The conference concluded with a communiqué drafted by the participating scientists and researchers that targeted the climate hysteria promoted by the United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.’

Moreover, the scientists at the conference declared that even if all nations moved straight to net zero emissions, by the 2050 target date the world would be only about 0.1 C cooler than with no emissions reduction.

So far, the attempts to mitigate climate change by international agreements such as the Paris Agreement have made no difference to our influence on climate, since nations such as Russia and China, India and Pakistan continue greatly to expand their combustion of coal, oil and gas.

The cost of achieving that 0.1 C reduction in global warming would be $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ worldwide gross domestic product.

The declaration has 18 different point referencing climate science and facts that counter the narratives being pushed by the IPCC and those who want to push their green agendas. //

1 The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.

2. Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
3. The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
4. The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
5. Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual. //

Though I have to say, #17 is a favorite of mine:

17. Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generated than any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.

But, perhaps most importantly, the conference attendees demand the end of persecution of those researchers doing real science who struggle to share their reasonable and reliable findings whenever the data counters the political narratives.

david says:
January 20, 2015 at 1:50 PM

There’s a big difference in what we’re told about climate change versus the effects of radiation.

Decades ago people subjected test animals to “large” amounts of radiation, and extrapolated their results to “small” amounts of radiation. The assumption was that as the amount of radiation decreased, then so did the effects of the radiation linearly. This implies that even at low doses of radiation there would be some damage. (ie. 1/10th the radiation = 1/10th the damage, 1/100th the radiation = 1/100th the damage..)

However, that’s not how science works. They had an hypothesis, but where were the experiments to prove it true?

Eventually it was found that the LNT model didn’t hold to be true. The expected cancers from Chernobyl didn’t match what was expected. Different parts of the world have different background levels of radiation, yet those changes don’t seem to correspond with the LNT hypothesis. There were accident where people were subjected to radiation, yet once again no correlation with cancer rates as suggested by the LNT hypothesis; in fact, in such cases it sometimes appeared that low doses of radiation could decrease cancer rates.

The LNT hypothesis is dead, or at least it should be. But there are people who benefit from keeping it alive, and rather than going back to the labs to try to figure out the proper relationship between radiation at low levels, and genetic damage, they try to muddy the waters.

Climate change might have its fear-mongers, much like the supporters of the LNT hypothesis do, but it has yet to be proven wrong. We know that greenhouse gases do affect the Earth’s climate, though to what degree our meddling will affect it is open to some debate, as is how harshly those changes will affect us humans. But, since the Earth isn’t a frozen wasteland, we “know” that greenhouse gases do affect the climate.

In short:
———-

Low doses of radiation:
-> has fear mongers
-> those fear mongers have been proven wrong.
-> end of story, (or it should be.)

Climate Change:
-> has fear mongers, and also
-> has those who benefit from denying it.
-> greenhouse gases affect climate, else the Earth would be a lot colder.
-> end of story, including how bad it will be, is yet to be written.

Given we don’t know the full story, we should research, and act, because the worse case scenario is disaster for us human. Replacing coal with nuclear is a no brainer. If there is room for some small release of greenhouse gases by us humans, it won’t include the use of coal to generate electricity. That’s one of the lower-hanging branches that we should be eliminating now.

Wayne SW says:
January 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM

Well, you identified a major part of the problem. Those wind farms don’t harvest wind so much as they harvest subsidies. And governments are the ones who put those subsidies in place. In my state (Ohio), the state government is mulling removing the state portion of those subsidies, and the unreliable energy lobbyists are raising holy hell. They say they won’t proceed with any new projects without those subsidies. That right there tells me how they are making their money. And of course they also lobby for high-priced PPAs, while you have travelling anti-nuclear activists decrying PPAs for any company with nuclear plants (they say it shows the nukes need “subsidies”).

Brian Mays says:
January 12, 2015 at 8:05 PM

“The question arises: Were the decisions concerning this enormous funding for global warming research taken out of genuine concern that the climate is allegedly changing as a result of CO2 industrial emissions, or do some other undisclosed ideas stand behind this money, IPCC activity, Kyoto, and all the gruesome catastrophic propaganda the world is now exposed to? If this concern is genuine, then why do we not see a storm of enthusiastic environmentalists and United Nations officials demanding to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants, which have zero emission of greenhouse gases, are environmentally friendly, more economical, and much safer for plant workers and much safer for the general population than other sources of energy?”

– Zbigniew Jaworowski

What I don’t believe is that society needs to seek to reduce either “man-made” CO2 or “man-made” radiation doses to near zero. There are reasons to limit both CO2 and radiation doses, but there is no logical or moral reason to impose too tight a limit on either one.

In fact, I’ve often found that people working very hard to impose such limits don’t even like other people and seek to restrict their access to economic prosperity and physical power.

Human Health and Welfare Effects from Increased Greenhouse Gases and Warming
-- John Dunn and David Legates

Claims that global warming will have net negative effects on human health are not supported by scientific evidence. Moderate warming and increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon-dioxide levels could provide net benefits for human welfare, agriculture, and the biosphere by reducing cold-related deaths, increasing the amount of arable land, extending the length of growing seasons, and invigorating plant life. The harmful effects of restricting access to fossil fuel energy and subsequently causing energy costs to increase would likely outweigh any potential benefits from slightly delaying any rise in temperatures. Climate change is likely to have less impact on health and welfare than polices that would deprive the poor living in emerging economies of the benefits of abundant and inexpensive energy. //

As this chart shows, by a wide margin, the Gasparrini et al. study illustrates that cold extremes kill far more people that heatwaves—and by a wide margin. They concluded:

Our findings show that temperature is responsible for advancing a substantial fraction of deaths…7.71% of the mortality…. Most of the mortality burden was caused by days colder than the optimum temperature (7.29%) compared with days warmer than the optimum temperature (0.42%). So cold produced 17 times the number of heat deaths.7 //

Underlying the concept of Net Zero is the LNT [Linear No Threshold - nuclear radiation] philosophy laid down more than three decades earlier: no net emissions of greenhouse gases are acceptable. There is no threshold that allows some net production of greenhouse gases such that at any level, the net emission of greenhouse gases at any non-zero level is detrimental to the environment and must, therefore, be stopped. The belief is that since urgent action must be taken to avoid any additional warming of the planet, greenhouse gases must be removed from the atmosphere.71 When “emissions released by human action are taking a catastrophic toll on our planet and propelling us further into an irreversible climate crisis,” no threshold is acceptable.72 //

Linear No-Threshold theory began in 1927 when H. J. Muller examined phenotypical damages in fruit flies resulting from x-ray exposure, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946.78

Ibid.
It was introduced in radiological risk studies in 1959 and subsequently into general cancer risk. Consequently, the U.S. National Academy of Science recommended use of the LNT model to the induction of radiation-related mutations in somatic cells and, subsequently, to the study of cancer initiation.79

Edward J. Calabrese, “Cancer Risk Assessment, Its Wretched History and What It Means for Public Health,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Vol. 21 (2024). 
In low-energy radiation, The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation based its radiological protection system on the assumption that the radiation-induced risk was directly proportional (i.e., linear) to the dosage, with no dose threshold below which no risk exists.80

Dominique Laurier et al., “The Scientific Basis for the Use of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Model at Low Doses and Dose Rates in Radiological Protection,” Journal of Radiological Protection, Vol. 43 (2023), 024003.

About a decade after receiving the Nobel Prize, Muller admitted that he did not discover small mutations in fruit flies with the x-ray exposure for which he was heralded; rather, the high-energy radiation nearly obliterated large portions of their chromosomes. However, his Nobel Lecture argued that no safe radiation dose existed and that the LNT model must replace a threshold-dose-response model.81

Ibid., and Edward J. Calabrese, “Flaws in the LN Single-Hit Model for Cancer Risk: An Historical Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 158 (2017), pp. 773–788; Edward J. Calabrese, “From Muller to Mechanism: How LNT Became the Default Model for Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Pollution, Vol. 241 (2018), pp. 289–302; and Edward J. Calabrese, “Ethical Failures: The Problematic History of Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 193 (2020), 110582.

A Better Rule. An obviously better rule than LNT (and to net zero and other greenhouse gas–reduction strategies) is that of Paracelsus, a Swiss physician and alchemist of the 16th century: “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison” (Sola dosis facit venenum).82 //

Eighty percent of modern energy is produced by burning petroleum, natural gas, or coal to turn the turbines inside electricity generators. (See Chart 2.) Running 24 hours a day and seven days a week, a traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear plant requires about 12.5 acres per megawatt of electricity. By contrast, solar (43.5 acres per megawatt) and wind (70.6 acres per megawatt) arrays occupy vastly more land area and have a much larger negative impact on the local habitat and its environment.93

Nuclear medicine is one of those cool specialities that doesn’t get enough attention. While nuclear energy has enjoyed a revival in recent years, little attention has been paid to nuclear medicine. That’s probably partly because explaining it in technical terms inevitably removes some of the magic and partly because many people fear radiation and don’t want to think about it.

But nuclear medicine deserves attention. Not all of the world's nuclear reactors are used for producing energy; they are also used for producing radioisotopes for medicine and industry, training, and other purposes. They are known as research reactors, and there are currently around 220 research reactors in 53 countries. In the heyday of nuclear development, in 1975, there were 373 neutron factories in 55 countries. //

Outside of the wealthier nations, there is a significant shortage of equipment and workforce for nuclear imaging around the world, and one study found that:

A comprehensive scale-up of imaging, treatment, and care quality would avert 9·55 million (12·5%) of all cancer deaths caused by the modelled cancers worldwide, saving 232·30 million life-years. Scale-up of imaging would cost US$6·84 billion in 2020–30 but yield lifetime productivity gains of $1·23 trillion worldwide, a net return of $179·19 per $1 invested.

Healthy people benefit humanity. For those living in the poorest nations to gain access to improved healthcare, nuclear medicine will play a vital role going forward, although when and how that will happen remains to be seen.

In reporting on a radiation study, a nearly universal practice of the 'experts' is to show us only the subjects' total doses. They do this despite the fact that usually what is measured is the dose rate profile, often in the form of daily doses. The total dose is computed by adding up these daily doses, and then tossing aside everything but the total. Analyzing radiation harm by only looking at total dose is like an electrical engineer attempt to analyze a complicated circuit by only looking at the annual energy input.

The human body is an extremely complex circuit. It has to be analyzed dynamically. The essential element of SNT [Signmoid No Threshold] is not the shape of the acute dose response curve, it is chopping the dose rate profile into repair periods, and analyzing each period separately. //

Where would we encounter 1 and 2 mSv/d dose rate profiles for decades? That's an easy one. Space travel. The astronauts in Low Earth Orbit get between 0.5 and 1.0 mSv/d, with occasional spikes during solar flares. High Earth Orbit or a trip to Mars will about double that. If LNT were valid, the shielding requirements would be prohibitively expensive.

NASA can't afford LNT. That's why it ignores all the EPA and NRC limits. The EPA says more than 1 mSv per year is unsafe. NASA says 1 mSv per day is routine. That's the difference between the top and bottom of Figure 1.

NASA is not the only entity that cannot afford LNT. Space travel is a luxury that humanity may or may not be able to afford. The benefits of manned space travel are at best speculative. The benefits of cheap nuclear electricity are undeniable and cornucopic. If we can correctly trash LNT to go into space, surely we can junk this counterfactual hypothesis to get cheap nuclear.