1. New on the Web: HEALTH EFFECTS OF LOW-LEVEL RADIATION ARE IGNORED - as documented by John Cameron

2. WHY LNT (LINEAR NO-THRESHOLD) CONTINUES TO DOMINATE RADIATION HEALTH PHYSICS

3. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HORMESIS?

4. EU CATFIGHT OVER KYOTO

5. CLIMATE STABILITY CONTROL BY CO2 NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

6. OIL RESERVES AT ALL-TIME HIGH

7. CAN HYDRO BACK UP WIND POWER?

8. WIND POWER WINDED -IN DENMARK

9. FREE-MARKET MEDICINE - BY VOLTAIRE

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2. LNT Hypothesis should not dominate radiation health physics

From Feb 12 testimony of Theodore Rockwell to National Research Council

SCIENCE PUBLISHED ONLY 3 LETTERS COMMENTING ON OUR EARLIER ARTICLE (SCIENCE.297:1997-99, 20 SEPT. 2002), WHICH DISCUSSED HEALTH HAZARDS FROM NUCLEAR RELEASES. ONE AGREED THAT THE INDIVIDUAL RADIATION DOSES [FROM A NUCLEAR RELEASE] WOULD BE SMALL, BUT ARGUED THAT THESE RISKS MUST BE MULTIPLIED BY THE LARGE EXPOSED POPULATION TO GET A DEATH TOTAL. BUT POPULATIONS DON'T GET CANCERS; ONLY INDIVIDUALS DO. IF NO INDIVIDUAL IS HARMED, THEN THE POPULATION IS NOT HARMED.

SEPP COMMENT: IF 1000 PEOPLE TAKE ONE ASPIRIN EACH, YOU DON'T GET ONE DEATH -EVEN THOUGH A PERSON SWALLOWING 1000 ASPIRINS WOUD PROBABLY DIE.

THIS LAST POINT IS CRUCIAL. THERE WOULD BE NO MEGADEATH PREDICTIONS WITHOUT THIS PREMISE. IT IS INVALID FOR TWO REASONS:

LOW-DOSE RADIATION IS NOT AT ALL HARMFUL; IN MOST CASES IT IS BENEFICIAL. THE RELEVANT DOSES ARE FAR BELOW THE RANGE OF NATURAL BACKGROUND RADIATION AND THE SAFE DOSES OF MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES. THE ONLY STUDIES OF MEDICAL EXPOSURES THAT CLAIM ADVERSE EFFECTS AT LOW DOSES ARE THOSE THAT ARBITRARILY DRAW A STRAIGHT LINE THROUGH ZERO FROM ADVERSE EFFECTS FOUND AT HIGH DOSES. IN ADDITION, STUDIES THAT HAVE "PROTECTED" ORGANISMS AND CELLS FROM NATURAL BACKGROUND RADIATION TO BELOW THE LOWEST NATURAL LEVELS CAUSES ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS, CONSISTENT WITH INDICATING THAT RADIATION IS ESSENTIAL TO BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS. IN ADDITION, THOUSANDS OF EXPERIMENTS AND MANY DECADES OF HUMAN MEDICAL TREATMENTS BEFORE BEING DISPLACED BY ANTIBIOTICS AND OTHER CHEMOTHERAPIES SHOW THAT SMALL RADIATION DOSES STIMULATE IMMUNOLOGICAL AND OTHER FUNCTIONS THAT PREVENT AND CURE CANCERS AND OTHER DISEASES.

PREDICTING DEATHS BY ADDING UP TRIVIAL DOSES OVER LARGE POPULATIONS OR OVER LARGE PERIODS OF TIME IS SCIENTIFICALLY INDEFENSIBLE.
BOTH OF THESE POINTS HAVE BEEN CONCEDED, EVEN IN THE REPORTS BY REGULATORY AND ADVISORY BODIES THAT NEVERTHELESS RECOMMEND USING THE PREMISE THAT RADIATION IS HARMFUL DOWN TO ZERO RADIATION. THEY JUSTIFY THIS RECOMMENDATION AS BEING "CONSERVATIVE" -- EVEN IF NOT JUSTIFIED SCIENTIFICALLY. THIS CONCESSION HAS TWO IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS; IT MEANS THAT QUESTIONING THIS INVALID PREMISE IS NOT ATTACKING AN ESTABLISHED SCIENTIFIC THEORY; IT IS MERELY CHALLENGING AN ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGMENT.

IF THE RISKS AND COSTS OF THIS ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGMENT EXCEED THE BENEFITS PROVIDED, IT SHOULD BE REVOKED. [FOR EXAMPLE, THIS ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGMENT PROVIDES THE BASIS FOR THE EPA, DOE AND NRC TO SET A LIMIT OF 4 MILLIREM PER YEAR (!!) FROM THE RELEASES FROM YUCCA MOUNTAIN. BUT NATURAL BACKGROUND RADIATION VARIES FROM ABOUT 80 TO 800 MILLIREM PER YEAR, WITH AREAS IN WHICH MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE EXPOSED UP TO 8,000 MILLIREM PER YEAR, WITH LOCAL DOSES TO MORE THAN 20,000 MILLIREM PER YEAR TO PEOPLE IN THE HIGH-DOSE AREAS OF RAMSAR, IRAN.]

Question: "UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) and others seem to be trying very hard to link thyroid cancer to I-131 radiation. Why?"

A response from inside DOE:
You jest!! Part of the answer is here at Hanford, where tens of millions were spent on the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Study (HEDR) and the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study (HTDS). No excesses of thyroid disease (let alone cancers) were found around here as a consequence of I-131 emissions in the 40s. Yet massive lawsuits are still underway with imaginative lawyers claiming harm from computer-generated dose estimates from 50 years ago. A lot of consultants and a lot of lawyers and a lot of media and a lot of environmentalists would be too embarrassed to now learn their exaggerations were false.

Worse, thousands of government employees who now enforce the LNT, promote the ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable") programs, force design of new construction to limit doses to 100 mrem (500 to the rad workers) would lose their jobs. This means more design effort, more concrete, more rebar, thicker walls and floors, tremendous HVAC systems and huge oversight
budgets for design, construction and operations. The tighter the regs. for anything, the greater are the enforcement, compliance, and personnel budgets. In turn, this means larger budgets and larger payrolls-- which means the agency leaders are entitled to larger salaries. There are no incentives to reduce these budgets and agency personnel, and certainly no incentives to question the LNT. (I've tried!!)

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3. Whatever happened to Hormesis?

Among the first to take the Health Physics Society to the woodshed in my view was Marshall Brucer's 1990 "A Chronology of Nuclear Medicine". He was the first president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine. Brucer bewildered some in the HPS, but little was done in the way of self-reflection and analyses. It's a tough read but full of goodies.

It includes such facts as:

"After World War II, almost 20 articles per year mentioned a hormetic effect in spite of a budding fallout hysteria. Health physicists soon learned that their livelihood depended upon scaring the pants off Congress."

and

"Health Physics and Genetics were supported lavishly by radiation hysteria, and Radiation Biology was the most intensely researched science in history. At the 1955 Atoms-for-Peace conference an English geneticist uttered heresy at the opening session. Background radiation, he said, was probably the cause of most mutations throughout evolution, and the human race had not done too badly. He was almost read out of science for this heresy. Every Genetics budget meeting, from 1955 to 1981, opened its request for funds with an anti-nuclear litany. In spite of this atmosphere, during the 1960's and 1970's, about 40 articles per year described hormesis. In 1963, the AEC repeatedly confirmed lower mortality in guinea pigs, rats and mice irradiated at low dose. In 1964, the cows exposed to about 150 rads after the Trinity A-Bomb in 1946 were quietly euthanized because of extreme old age."

SEPP Comment: Wherehave we heard this story before? Climate scientists and Global Warming?
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4. EU catfight

Loyola de Palacio, the Spanish EU commissioner, responsible for energy issues, has begun to throw doubts about the viability of the Kyoto Protocol if Russia refuses to ratify.
The comment came as a surprise given that the EU is the strongest backer of the agreement designed to tackle global warming, in the face of bitter US opposition and Russian foot-dragging...

Environment commissioner Margot Wallstroem has chastised her for this comment. "It is not helpful if colleagues start questioning [Kyoto]," she said.

EU Business, 30 January 2004
http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040130164934.7wcihya0
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5. Climate stability control by CO2

ABSTRACT

The long-term stability of Earth's climate throughout the Phanerozoic stands in marked contrast to the dramatic fluctuations that have taken place on time scales as short as a few years, reflecting the high efficiency of longer-term climate regulation through negative feedbacks. A fundamental mechanism is thought to involve control of CO2 in the ocean- atmosphere system through continental weathering, although unambiguous, high-resolution data supporting this hypothesis have hitherto not been available. Organic-rich mud rocks from Yorkshire, England, which were deposited during the Toarcian oceanic anoxic event (ca. 181 Ma, Early Jurassic), contain evidence of an exceptionally large excursion in the 187Os/188Os ratio of contemporaneous seawater, from 0.4 to 1.0. The most likely explanation for this excursion is that it resulted from a transient increase in global continental weathering rates of 400%-800%. The Os isotope excursion coincided with a well-documented global 13C excursion of 6‰ that affected all the major biospheric reservoirs of the time. Higher mean global temperatures caused global chemical weathering rates to increase substantially, while, in turn, chemical weathering was very effective in reducing the elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 and the high temperatures to pre-excursion levels.
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Cohen, Anthony S., Angela L. Coe, Stephen M. Harding and Lorenz Schwark, 2004. Osmium isotope evidence for the regulation of atmospheric CO2 by continental weathering. Geology Vol. 32, No 2, pp. 157-160, February 2004
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6. Oil reserves at all-time high

According to the Club of Rome and Limits to Growth, we should have run out of oil and most metals by now, with even coal in short supply. But last year, oil reserves increased by 4% to 172 billion tons. [1 metric tonne = 7.33 US barrels of oil] The new record stems from a re-evaluation of Iranian reserves, which rose by 40% to 17.2 billion tons.
Source: dpa 2/5/04
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7. BPA launching service to back up wind power

Source: Global Power Report, New York: 15 Jan 2004, p. 9

In the new program, Bonneville Power Administration customers receive wind as if it were firm because BPA provides back-up hydropower when wind turbines are not generating. As an incentive for wind development, BPA allows customers to subtract the wind energy that BPA integrates from the total amount of energy the customers had contracted to buy from BPA.

In a move that could boost development of wind farms by private companies, the BPA said it would use the flexibility of its hydro system to back up wind power for its customers. The program is needed because wind resources are available only 30% of the time on average, which presents problems for utilities.

BPA expects the program to be self-funding. BPA will charge participating utilities a $4.50/MWh fee for all wind energy integrated into its system. A fee is necessary in part because BPA must hold sufficient generating capacity of its own to fully back up the wind resource.

In another option, BPA would offer a storage and shaping service for utilities and other entities outside of its control area that buy wind from a developer but do not want to manage the hour-to-hour variability associated with wind output. BPA will take the wind power into its system as it is produced and store it for a week. It will redeliver the wind to the power purchaser a week later in flat peak and off-peak blocks at a cost of $6/MWh.
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8. Wind Power Winded -in Denmark

News from Denmark, the world's largest producer of wind turbines, informs that the government there is withdrawing the subsidies it had previously given to wind power. The new Danish government are in favour of cancelling 3 planned sea-based wind farms at a total value of 5 billion Danish Kroner. [1 $ ~ 6 Dkr]. Cancelling the sea-based wind farms, will save the Danish taxpayers 900 million Dkr per year.

The numerous wind turbines in Denmark have distorted the market for electricity and raised Danish electricity prices to one of the highest in the world. The minister of Business and industry, Bent Bendsen, is concerned about the social and industrial consequences if Denmark keeps building wind turbines as they have far exceeded the safety margin for such intermittent energy supplies. (This was brought home to Californians last year when their wind power investment proved unable to protect them from extensive power cuts).

The Danish producers of wind turbines are complaining it will seriously damage their exports due to the loss of economies of scale. Since the sea based wind farms will not receive subsidies, no more will be built. There are unconfirmed rumours that planned and existing land-based mills will also lose their subsidies within the year. Without those subsidies many mill owners could end up in financial difficulty. All these facts and rumours are having an adverse effect on the market for wind turbines. The shares for Vestas, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines have been falling since last year, by more than 60%.

The basic problem with the wind turbine industry is that it is dependent on taxpayer subsidies, in other words - politics. Without political patronage, wind power could not justify itself in strictly economic terms. The industry has ridden the wave of that patronage for several years, the Danish company Vestas being the biggest beneficiary, but now reality is finally setting in - wind power is unreliable, very expensive, badly scars the landscape, and is only useful as a small supplementary source of power, nothing more. Vestas has sold turbines into Australia, but the sales were only made possible by the political actions of governments to appease the environmental lobby, not by natural market forces. (Investment analysis here <http://www.hemscott.co.uk/hstoday/eurofile/backgrounders/vestas_301001.htm> )

Judging by the slide in share prices, investors seem to have woken up from the Green daydream and taken a more realistic assessment of the potential - or lack of - of wind power. It may be a repeat of the dot.com phenomenon, share prices driven to unrealistic levels by political hype - only to fall sharply once investors took a reality check."

(Source: - J. van Tiggelen and Jyllandsposten, Denmark's leading newspaper)
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9. Free-market medicine?

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures thedisease. (Voltaire)