In 1982 and 1983, recycled rebar, containing Cobalt-60, was “accidentally” used in the construction of 180 apartment buildings in Taipei. Most of the buildings were completed in 1983. The problem was discovered in the mid-1990's, and full scale investigations started in 1996 after a kindergartener whose classroom was in one of the contaminated buildings died of leukemia.
The Chen 2004 Study
The first study was led by W. L. Chen of the National Yang-Ming University. //
In 2006, Hwang et al published a competing study of the Taipei apartment exposure. //
The Taipei apartment data emphatically contradicts LNT. Hwang's methodology in attempting to refute this conclusion suggests that we are dealing with defense lawyers, not scientists.
The Hwang paper was designed to shoot down the Chen paper and reestablish LNT. //
The Hwang numbers may not demolish LNT as dramatically as the Chen figures; but they clearly meet Feynman's criterion for "one ugly fact", although in this case, the fact that a providential Nature has endowed us with a radiation damage repair system which has no problem with dose rate profiles such as Figure 2 is far from ugly. It's humanity's salvation.
Here's a truly ugly fact. The promoters of LNT can't show us one situation, not one, where people have received a very large dose spread more or less evenly over a protracted period where LNT does not screw up completely. It's quite remarkable that a 100 year old theory that is based on an assumption --- radiation damage is unrepairable --- that we now know is flat wrong, and is always orders of magnitude in error on the kind of dose rate profiles that will be incurred in a nuclear power plant release has survived.
EDF is building a nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in England. EDF proudly requires that each of its plants have a tombstone like Figure 1 at the main entrance, a point it emphasizes in its advertising. EDF is not alone, you will find the phrase "safety is our overriding priority" in various forms repeated over and over again by the NRC, INPO, and the rest of the nuclear establishment. For example, INPO has a monomanical focus on safety culture which it defines as “an organization’s values and behaviors that serve to make nuclear safety the overriding priority.”
Hinkley Point C(HPC) will cost at least $18,000/kW and take over 12 years to construct. //
Table 1 shows the overnight cost in 2024 USD and build times of the six lowest overnight cost plants built in the USA. When I lived in the Florida Keys, I enjoyed some of the cheapest electricity in the country, thanks to Turkey Point 3 and 4.
If you repeat the Figure 2 calculation for Turkey Point 3 at $795 per kW, the LCOE is just under 3 cents/kWh, about 4 times less than Hinkley Point 3. //
Over the 3 year, 2022-2024 period, the EIA finds that Turkey Point 3 had a capacity factor of 95.2%, about 5% above the USA average, and ranking it 15th among 92 reactors, In 53 years of operation, Turkey Point 3 and all its elderly brethren have harmed exactly zero members of the public. Most of these plants will still be operating in 2050. Turkey Point 3 and the other five plants in Table 1 were designed and built before the current regulatory apparat became organized. There was no independent regulator. //
We made a disastrous, tragic, colossal, brobdingnagian blunder. We set up an omnipotent bureaucracy whose overriding priority, as it so clearly states, is nuclear safety. While Congress declared "public health and safety" to be just one one of its goals, it created an apparat for which nuclear health and safety was effectively the only goal. The NRC would be judged on its ability to prevent a release. Period.
Bureaucrats are not saints. They reacted according to the incentives they have been given, just as we would. And since we have given the last word to these souls we have misguided, it is their priorities that rule, not society's. The regulatory structure that the AEA/ERA setup is inherently inconsistent with the stated goals.
The result has been an auto-genocidal increase in the cost of nuclear power for no apparent benefit. There is nothing in the actual harm data that suggests the oldest plants are less safe than the newest. When Three Mile Island 2 melted down in 1979 and produced the biggest release in the US so far, it was the youngest plant in the US fleet, and subject to the most stringent regulation. //
vboring
May 13
Grok estimates that the choice to implement "safety" regulations for nuclear energy in such expensive ways has killed about 840,000 people in the US so far.
Safety first! is a strict lie.
Or why I hate costly nuclear. //
Poverty has a Lost Life Expectacy(LLE) of the order of tens of billions of years per year. And we reject should-cost nuclear for fear of an occasional release that worst case, Chernobyl, properly handled, will have a public LLE of less than a 1000 years? This makes sense only if we assume a malthusian level of selfishness. But that is precisely where the nuclear establishment is. //
Jack Devanney
May 19
Edited
I rarely compliment the choir, but I do want to give a shout out to the choristers for whom nuclear's main attraction is its low CO2. For them, this was a very tough sermon. It was a call to change focus, metanoeite if you will, from what nuclear can do for the climate to what nuclear can do for the poor, and for all humanity. That's not an easy switch. For one thing, it implies that costly nuclear is not good enough. It's immoral. We must have should-cost nuclear, and that will require a complete rethink about how we regulate nuclear.
I expected something like a 5% subscriber cancellation rate. Instead we lost 7 of 2900. I thought that was impressive.
Here's your reward. If and only if we push nuclear down to its should-cost, not only will nuclear push fossil fuel out of power generation except for a bit of peaking and backup fo r unplanned outages and do so automatically, not only will EV's now be very attractive economically, but now we can talk seriously about synfuels starting with synthetic methane.
If LNT is biological nonsense, how did it ever get accepted? The Hamlet in that tragedy is Ed Lewis.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Genetic Scare. //
Hundreds of scientists could have pointed out the glaring inconsistency. But as far as I know none did. Moreover, fractionation, dividing a therapeutic dose into fractions, delivered a day or so apart to allow healthy cells to recover, was universal medical practice. If LNT is valid, fractionation makes no sense. Even Lauriston Taylor, a towering figure, who called LNT "a deeply immoral use of our scientific heritage" did not speak out until 1980. He was about 25 years too late. Were all these people grasping creeps?
Of course not. They were petrified of the bomb. If LNT could end bomb testing, then I will have to abandon scientific integrity, just this once. Look at Taylor's strange wording. You don't normally call a model, a "use". He knew LNT had been accepted not because it was correct, but because it was a tool, a tool for controlling the bomb.
On Tuesday federal authorities announced that Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, had been charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud.
The FBI arrested Jian in connection with allegations related to Jian’s and Liu’s smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon. This noxious fungus causes “head blight,” a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year. Fusarium graminearum’s toxins cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock. //
According to the complaint, Jian received Chinese government funding for her work on this pathogen in China, and a January 2024 work assessment form found on her phone, which she signed, contained a pledge of loyalty to China and to "support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, resolutely implement the party’s educational guidelines and policies, love education, care for students, unite colleagues, love the motherland and care about international affairs."
When customs agents at Detroit Metropolitan Airport found baggies containing various strains of the fungus in his luggage Liu at first denied they were his, according to the complaint. Eventually he admitted they were his and told agents what they were, and that he planned to clone them and make more samples if his experiments failed.
June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
That historic opinion recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” It also famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
Sadly, despite that—and even now—many federal programs continue to encroach on parental rights. //
....
These federal programs violate parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, education, and health care. The government should help—not hinder—loving parents in fulfilling their “high duty.” Including parents helps. Keeping secrets hinders. //
Fortunately, Congress has the authority—and the opportunity—to protect parental rights from federal government overreach by passing the Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act.
This act recognizes that parents’ fundamental rights are entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection. It requires courts to apply the proper standard of judicial review—“strict scrutiny”—to federal violations of parental rights.
This is the same standard the Supreme Court has applied to safeguard other fundamental rights—like free speech and free exercise of religion. Congress is well within its constitutional authority to ensure that federal programs properly respect parental authority. ///
Therefore... School choice!?
Sinatra Jordan was accused of firing at police officers and leading them on a chase through the streets of Jackson. Then the officers were arrested.
Did FBI headquarters bury Hunter Biden laptop in “Prohibited Access” black hole? //
The United States attorney screening evidence related to Ukrainian corruption in the lead-up to the 2020 election did not know the FBI’s Sentinel case management system had a stealth feature to render files invisible during search queries. Nor did anyone from FBI headquarters reference the existence of such “Prohibited Access” files during discussions over access to relevant material related to Burisma and Hunter Biden. These new facts add to the growing scandal surrounding last week’s revelation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team placed documents related to the Russia collusion hoax in “Prohibited Access” subfiles, preventing other FBI agents from discovering their existence. //
Given that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team secreted evidence in Sentinel by using the “Prohibited Access” coding, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that FBI headquarters followed a similar tack to protect the Biden family. In fact, given the lengths FBI headquarters went to interfering in the investigation of Hunter Biden, as detailed by the IRS whistleblowers, if anything, it would be shocking if FBI headquarters’ didn’t bury evidence about Ukrainian corruption in “Prohibited Access” files.
Unfortunately, it will likely be some time before the country knows how widespread the FBI’s use of “Prohibited Access” was, and how many investigations it potentially impacted.
The phone, which from the outside appears no different from a normal device, issued warnings about using South Korean slang words to users, and auto-corrected “South Korea” to read “puppet state,” an investigation from the BBC found.
It would also covertly take a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a secret folder which the user couldn’t access, but which presumably were accessible to North Korean authorities. //
When the user tried to type in the word “oppa,” which means older brother in Korean, but has come to be used to refer to a boyfriend in South Korean slang, the phone would auto-correct the word to the more Communist-friendly alternative “comrade.”
A warning would then flash, informing the phone’s user that the term “oppa” could only be used for older siblings, the BBC investigation found.
Weiss tried to claim that "there is not a threat to gender women" when a biological male competes against them.
"Why do you want to be a cheat?" Morgan hit back. "I mean, seriously, why do you want to be a cheat? That's what you're doing. You're cheating."
When Morgan got pushback that he was being disrespectful to Weiss, he said no, "It cuts to the heart of the debate."
"It is cheating," the host said. "It is knowingly using a superior biology from birth to beat women who are born with female bodies, it is cheating, and it's time to call it out for what it is."
On Monday, Alex Marquardt, CNN Senior Intelligence Correspondent and frequent fill-in anchor at the network, announced that he was leaving his position. Speculation was immediately emerging that this was in connection to the defamation lawsuit brought against CNN, where a jury found the news network liable for defamation and ruled they had to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages. Now, indications are that Marquardt was in fact let go as a result of the suit.
CNN was sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young over a report on Young’s work as an extraction expert who facilitated the safe release of people from Afghanistan. CNN chose to frame Young’s work as illegal black market activities where he was extorting people to have them safely escape the nation as it fell into Taliban rule. The jury ruled CNN acted errantly and with malice in its false presentation, awarding Young with significant compensatory damages, with the network then negotiating undisclosed punitive compensation.
Marquardt was the reporter on those disputed reports, which ran on programs hosted by Jake Tapper, as well as others at the network.
These new charges appear to confirm that the ballot was cast. It is no longer an "unauthorized attempt." It is a very tangible case of illegal voting. //
Whether or not it sends a message to Gao himself remains to be seen.
The case against him has a significant problem - Gao was granted a $5,000 personal bond with conditions by a Michigan state court, which included surrendering his passport. Unfortunately, it appears the man who was charged with perjury wound up - shocker! - allegedly forging another passport in his name but with a different serial number.
As a result, the accused citizen and national of the People’s Republic of China managed to flee the country the day before President Trump took the oath of office. He hitched a flight to Shanghai.
Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio
·
In light of yesterday’s horrific attack, all terrorists, their family members, and terrorist sympathizers here on a visa should know that under the Trump Administration we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you.
3:56 PM · Jun 2, 2025. //
Per Fox News' Bill Melugin, Soliman "allegedly told investigators that he waited to carry out the attack until his daughter graduated high school." //
It sounds as though her post-graduation plans will not include remaining in the United States.
a practical guide on setting up WireGuard VPN on the MikroTik router.
Any type of aerobic exercise works for the improvements, study finds. //
Exercise is generally good for you, but a new high-quality clinical trial finds that it's so good, it can even knock back colon cancer—and, in fact, rival some chemotherapy treatments.
The bash manual states:
case word in [ [(] pattern [ | pattern ] ... ) list ;; ] ... esacEach pattern examined is expanded using tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic substitution, command substitution, and process substitution.
Los Angeles Times
@latimes
·
Follow
Could phonics solve California's reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
latimes.com
Could phonics solve California's reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
8:31 AM · Jun 2, 2025. //
The bill is the capstone to decades of debate and controversy in California on how best to teach reading amid stubbornly low test scores. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged his support, setting aside $200 million to fund teacher training on the new approach in the May revise of his 2025-26 budget proposal. //
What is so infuriating about all this, aside from the obvious fact that generations of kids have been unnecessarily hampered in their education and hence their lifetime achievements, is that liberals are always given a pass for ruining things, and when they shift to proven methods, they somehow get credit for doing the obvious. //
SSGT Ranger Davis ConsistentConservative
2 hours ago
It took 100 years to rewire our brains to make us a society that thinks in written words. Giving up phonics was an attempt by the teacher’s union to disrupt the reading ability of our students and create another “crisis” that they could ask for more money. As a recently retired teacher (on my fourth day so far) I’m sure that was their intention, even though I haven’t been part of the union in twenty years.
Watt SSGT Ranger Davis
an hour ago
You may be right, but I think there were other factors as well:
-
The desire to come up with something new and innovative for the sake of it, or to demonstrate that education, too, is a real science.
-
The fact that, once we get the phonics down, we do tend to see whole words as units and no longer need to sound them out (kind of like reading Chinese characters). So the "innovators" thought they could skip the phonics step and jump to adult reading.
Inside a laboratory nestled above the mist of the forests of South Dakota, scientists are searching for the answer to one of science's biggest questions: why does our Universe exist?
They are in a race for the answer with a separate team of Japanese scientists – who are several years ahead.
The current theory of how the Universe came into being can't explain the existence of the planets, stars and galaxies we see around us. Both teams are building detectors that study a sub-atomic particle called a neutrino in the hope of finding answers.
The US-led international collaboration is hoping the answer lies deep underground, in the aptly named Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (Dune). //
When the Universe was created two kinds of particles were created: matter – from which stars, planets and everything around us are made – and, in equal amounts, antimatter, matter's exact opposite.
Theoretically the two should have cancelled each other out, leaving nothing but a big burst of energy. And yet, here we – as matter – are. //
Scientists believe that the answer to understanding why matter won – and we exist – lies in studying a particle called the neutrino and its antimatter opposite, the anti-neutrino.
They will be firing beams of both kinds of particles from deep underground in Illinois to the detectors at South Dakota, 800 miles away.
This is because as they travel, neutrinos and anti-neutrinos change ever so slightly.
The scientists want to find out whether those changes are different for the neutrinos and anti-neutrinos. If they are, it could lead them to the answer of why matter and anti-matter don't cancel each other out. //
Half a world away, Japanese scientists are using shining golden globes to search for the same answers. Gleaming in all its splendour it is like a temple to science, mirroring the cathedral in South Dakota 6,000 miles (9,650 km) away. The scientists are building Hyper-K - which will be a bigger and better version of their existing neutrino detector, Super-K.
The Japanese-led team will be ready to turn on their neutrino beam in less than three years, several years earlier than the American project. Just like Dune, Hyper-K is an international collaboration. Dr Mark Scott of Imperial College, London believes his team is in pole position to make one of the biggest ever discoveries about the origin of the Universe.
"We switch on earlier and we have a larger detector, so we should have more sensitivity sooner than Dune," he says.
Having both experiments running together means that scientists will learn more than they would with just one, but, he says, "I would like to get there first!"
https://heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Apr-25-ARC-Scorecard.pdf
Adding together the above numbers yields the following affordable, reliable, and clean total scores, with lower scores being closer to perfect power sources and higher scores being least compatible with the affordable, reliable, and clean ideal:
Natural gas - 3
Nuclear - 6
Hydro -7
Coal - 8
Biomass - 12
Wind - 22
Solar - 23
Eyal Yakoby
@EYakoby
·
Follow
BREAKING: The BBC has officially retracted its story, confirming the video of the IDF firing on Palestinians at an aid site was false.
The question remains: If they could verify the truth in 24 hours, why didn’t they wait to verify it before publishing the lie?
4:28 PM · Jun 2, 2025. //
Eyal Yakoby
@EYakoby
·
Follow
BBC Attempt 1: "Israeli tanks kill 26."
BBC Attempt 2: "Israeli tanks kill 31."
BBC Attempt 3: "Israeli gunfire kills 31."
BBC Attempt 4: "Red Cross says 21 people killed in aid incident."
BBC Attempt 5: "We reviewed the footage and couldn't find any evidence of anything."
4:50 PM · Jun 2, 2025. //
Aviva Klompas
@AvivaKlompas
·
Follow
Want to know who opened fire on Gazans trying to get aid?
IDF drone footage from earlier today shows Hamas operatives throwing rocks and firing at civilians attempting to collect humanitarian aid in southern Khan Yunis. Show more
12:56 PM · Jun 1, 2025