Tag: Jeremiah Josey

Episode 13 – What’s so Great about Nuclear Power? – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 6 Part 1

Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima

No other technology produces energy as cheaply, safely and continuously on a large scale as nuclear power. No other energy source can match nuclear power’s low environmental impact, partly because its energy density is a million times greater than that of fossil fuels – and more so for wind or solar.

As of 2016, the world’s 400 + nuclear reactors created about 15% of our electricity. France, alarmed by the cost of petro-fuels, went to 70% nuclear in just 16 years, and Finland, now at 30%, is aiming for 60%. Sweden is adding 10.

The French energy transition by Craig Morris, 23 Feb 2015

Nuclear France emits about 40 grams of CO₂/kWh, but Germany, the US, Japan and most industrialised nations emit 400 – 500 grams per kiloWatt hour – ten times more per kWh than heavily nuclear France. Compared to fossil fuel-reliant wind and solar farms, nuclear power is a gift from the energy gods.

Finland doubles down on nuclear power as coal heads out the door

Nuclear power, being CO2-free, is by far the most effective displacer of greenhouse gases, so how can my fellow “greens,” oppose nuclear power when the environmental costs of burning carbon-based fuels are so high?

01 Seminar Opening – Deep Decarbonization with Advanced Nuclear -seminar

Dr. James Lovelock, a patriarch of the environmental movement, has begged people to support nuclear energy: “Civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear power, the one safe, available, energy source now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by an outraged planet.”

James Lovelock Explains Gaia Hypothesis on The Sacred Balance (TV)

In May, 2014, Robert Bryce wrote in Bloomberg View,

“In the core of just one reactor, the power density is about 338 million watts per square meter. To equal that with wind energy, which has a power density of 1 watt per square meter, you’d need about 772 square miles of wind turbines….

“Some opponents still claim that nuclear energy is too dangerous. Debunking that argument requires only a close look at the facts about Fukushima….

“Here’s the reality: The tsunami caused two deaths – two workers who drowned at the plant.

“It was feared that radiation from the plant would contaminate large areas of Japan and even reach the U.S. That didn’t happen. In 2013, the World Health Organization concluded: ‘Outside of the geographical areas most affected by radiation, even within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated.

“High on my list of well intentioned dupes are those who praise science and are eager to confront Climate Change but refuse to accept nuclear power as an essential part of carbon-reduction strategies. They dismiss new reactor designs that they don’t understand, and then talk about how wind and solar power can ‘supply our needs.’

“They are wrong, but nuclear can supply our needs when people conquer their fears, educate themselves on the safety of nuclear power – and constructively join the fray. Until they do, they must accept their culpability in creating an overheated planet with millions of climate refugees.”

Duke Energy Says It Can’t Reach Carbon-Cutting Targets Without Nuclear, March 2021

Only at the “illegal” plant at Chernobyl, which was designed to also make plutonium for bombs, with electricity being a by-product, has anyone died from radiation from nuclear power, but we’ve had tens of millions of coal, gas and petroleum-related, early deaths. Furthermore, our reactors, by generating electricity from the 20,000 Russian warheads we purchased in the Megatons to Megawatts program, have become the ultimate in weapons-reduction techniques.

First Container of Uranium in Megatons to Megawatts, 1995

Top climate change scientists’ letter to policy influencers

Dr. James Hansen, former scientist at NASA, professor at Columbia University

How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources by James Conca, Forbes, 10 Jun 2012

Energy Source	Deaths per trillion kWh	Significance
Coal – Global Average	100,000	41% global electricity
Coal – China	170,000	75% China’s electricity
Coal – U.S.	10,000	32% U.S. electricity
Oil	36,000	33% energy, 8% elect.
Biofuel/Biomass	24,000	21% global energy
Natural Gas	4,000	22% global electricity
Hydro – Global Average	1,400	16% global electricity
Rooftop Solar	440	< 1% global electricity
Wind	150	2% global electricity
Hydro – U.S.	5	6% U.S. electricity
Nuclear Global Average	90	11% global electricity
Nucleat – U.S.	0.1	19% U.S. electricity

Activist conversion to pro-nuclear: Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger at Canada Nuclear 2018, CNA2018

What about 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima? We’ll examine each of them, but it is important to remember that nuclear plants have been supplying 15% of the world’s electricity, while creating no CO₂, for 16,000 reactor-years of almost accident-free operation. And the reactors that have powered our nuclear Navy for more than 50 years have similar safety records. (Naval reactor fuel can be up to 90% U-235.)

Three Mile Island

In March, 1979, two weeks after the release of the popular movie, The China Syndrome, a partial meltdown of a reactor core due to a stuck coolant valve and design flaws that confused the operators, caused mildly radioactive gases to accumulate inside one of the reactor buildings.

After the gases were treated with charcoal, they were vented, and a small amount of contaminated water was released into the Susquehanna River. No one died or was harmed.

However, when an AP reporter described a “bubble” of hydrogen inside the reactor building in a way that led people to think that the plant was a “hydrogen bomb,” many residents fled, which caused more harm than the accident.

In fact, radiation exposure from Three Mile Island was far less than the amount of radiation that pilots and airline passengers receive during a round-trip flight between New York and Los Angeles [1 mrem, or 1 microSivert – 100 times less than average yearly background exposure in the area around Three Mile Island]. Furthermore, in the following decades, more than a dozen studies have found no short or long-term ill effects for anyone, whether they were downwind or downstream from the plant or at it – and since then, operator training and safety measures have greatly improved.

Lieutenant Jimmy Carter USS Barracuda 1952

President Carter—who had specialized in nuclear power while in the United States Navy—told his cabinet after visiting the plant that the [Three Mile Island] accident was minor, but reportedly declined to do so in public in order to avoid offending Democrats who opposed nuclear power.
Perspectives, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 6 April 1979

Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program [55 years safe operation], so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others.
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

John Kennedy and Hyman Rickover — President John F. Kennedy with Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, 11 Feb 1963

Despite all of the fear and panic, nothing happened. No one died, and no one got cancer, but the media-hyped event at Three Mile Island came very close to shutting down all progress in American nuclear power. Because of the radiophobia generated by our sensation-seeking press and fervent greens, neither of whom bothered to check the facts, many proposed reactors were replaced by coal plants, and in the following decades, pollution from those plants brought premature death to at least 500,000 Americans.

Chernobyl

Mil Mi-17 Heavy Lift Helicopter Spraying **bourda** (molasses) and/or Radiacwash™

In 1986, during a test ordered by Moscow that involved disabling the safety systems, a portion of the core of the reactor, which had design hazards not present in Western reactors, was inadvertently exposed. (The RKMB reactor at Chernobyl was long judged to be dangerous by scientists outside of the Soviet Union.)

Reactor 4, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

As Dr. Spencer Weart wrote in The Rise of Nuclear Fear, “In short, for Soviet reactor designers, safety was less important than building ‘civilian’ reactors that could produce military plutonium if desired, and building them cheaply.”

This negligence led to a steam/hydrogen explosion that released radioactive gases into the atmosphere because the reactor had no effective containment structure. In contrast, no U.S. reactor contains flammables. Each has a reinforced concrete containment structure that can survive an airliner hit, and every plant is strictly regulated by the NRC.

There has never been a source of energy as safe or kind to the environment as nuclear power, and the reason for the safety is regulation.

Every responsible nation similarly regulates its nuclear power plants and shares information and training practices via international agencies. This cooperation, which was expanded after Three Mile Island, resulted in so many improvements that civilian nuclear power climbed from 60% up-time in the sixties to at least 90% today.

For three days, Soviet authorities hid the [Chernobyl] disaster and delayed evacuating the area, coming clean when radiation readings across Europe began to rise. (The government also failed to distribute iodine tablets, which could have protected thousands from airborne Iodine-131, which is readily absorbed by the thyroid, particularly in the young. (A body with an abundance of benign I-127 is less likely to absorb I-131.)

Chernobyl failed due to bad design, Moscow’s interference, poor training and a system that forbade operators from sharing essential information about reactor problems. It is the only “civilian” reactor accident where radiation directly killed anyone. Initially, approximately eighteen firefighters died from intense radiation. Yet, with design changes and proper procedures, several similar reactors still operate in the former Soviet Union.

Metsamor, a nuclear power plant in Armenia, (former USSR), also has no containment structure. The European Union has urged Armenia to close down the site for years, and offered $289 million to finance shutting down the plant…

Saahel Alimagham, SFSU 2021

According to a study by 100 scientists from eight United Nations agencies, “Chernobyl produced additional 50 deaths over the following twenty years.” Most died soon after the accident. However, that’s just a tiny fraction of the deaths caused by burning coal or oil or natural gas.

(A round trip flight for the U. S. to Chernobyl will expose travellers to twice as much additional background radiation as their 2-day tour in the exclusion zone, which even includes a tour of the damaged plant).

Tours of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Extreme Tours of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Furthermore, the deformed and brain-damaged “Chernobyl children” that sensation-seeking TV programs occasionally feature are no different from similarly afflicted children elsewhere in Europe who received no fallout, but that information is never provided by anti-nuclear activists and the media. (Since Chernobyl, cancer rates in the Ukraine have been about 2/3 of the rate in Australia.)

Because of the erroneous, dangerous LNT theory and many dire predictions from people like Helen Caldicott (coming up in future episodes), many thousands of badly frightened European women endured needless abortions because they had become convinced that they were carrying monster babies.

Dr. Helen Caldicott vs Nuclear Canada (Nuclear Ontario / Alberta / Saskatchewan & our CANDU)

Let’s separate the urban myths from Chernobyl’s scientific facts

Roaming wild in the radiation zone: Endangered species are THRIVING around Chernobyl 30 years after nuclear disaster forced mankind to leave

Fukushima

Tepco’s Fukushima reactors began operation in 1971 and ran safely for 40 years, generating huge amounts of electricity without creating any CO₂ or air pollution, but then, in 2011, came a record-setting earthquake – Tōhoku.

During the earthquake, which actually shifted Honshu, Japan’s main island, 8 feet eastward, all of Japan‘s 52 reactors shut down properly, including those at Fukushima.

However, the quake destroyed the plant’s connections to the electrical grid, which required emergency generators to power the systems that cooled the still-hot reactors.

Although three of Tepco’s six nuclear reactors were off-line when the quake struck, five were eventually doomed because:
1. In 1967, Tepco removed 25 meters from the site’s 35-meter seawall to ease bringing equipment ashore.
2. Tepco replaced the original seawall with only a six-meter seawall.
3. The Japanese government advised Tepco to raise it, but Tepco declined – and the government did nothing.
4. Tepco had inexplicably placed five of its six emergency generators in the basements.
5. The tsunami flooded all but #6.
6. Batteries powered the controls for about 8 hours, and then failed. Without coolant, meltdown was assured.

Reactors 1 – 4 are useless, and number 5 is damaged, but reactor 6 was unaffected because its back-up equipment was intelligently sited well above the tsunami’s reach. Reactor 6 is capable of producing power, but it has not been started, largely because of the anti-nuclear hysteria fanned by most of the Japanese press.

FAQ: Radiation from Fukushima – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

There were warnings: All along the coast, ancient “Sendai stones” have been warning residents to avoid building below 150 feet above sea level for centuries.

The Onagawa nuclear plant, which was closer to the epicenter of the quake, also survived the quake, and its 45-foot high seawall easily blocked the tsunami. The tsunami took more than 15,000 lives, but Fukushima’s seawall failure took the lives of just two workers who drowned.

Onagawa: The Japanese nuclear power plant that didn’t melt down on 3/11

Onagawa closer to earthquake but tsunami stopped by sea wall

Coming up next week, Episode 14 – What’s Up Doc? – Tremors from Fukushima

Links and References

#UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #ThreeMileIsland #Chernobyl #Fukushima #Armenia #Metsamor

April 7, 2022

Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 5, Part 2

Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

Remembering Leslie Corrice’s words from Episode 11, Corrice’s dismay over the results of radiophobia are echoed by many professionals, one being Dr. Antone “Tony” Brooks, who grew up in “fallout-drenched” St. George, Utah, which led him to study radiation at Cornell University. For an excellent, short video of the conclusions he reached, please visit:

Our Stories: “Fallout Man” with Tony Brooks – 2017 SILVER TELLY AWARD WINNER

Dr. Gunnar Walinder, an eminent Swedish radiation scientist, bluntly told UNSCEAR, “…LNT is the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th Century.”

Some Perspectives on Actions on Areas Contaminated by Radioactive Fallout Gunnar Walinder Download

The Harmful and Fraudulent Basis for the LNT Assumption, August 2017, Charles Sanders

Doctors petitioning NRC to revise radiation protection regulations June 29, 2015, Rod Adams

LNT begat ALARA
“As Low As Reasonably Acheiveable”
LNT- “Any radiation can kill you
minimise the risk”.
“Achievable” depends on technology, not health effects.
Country Tritium Limits
Canada 0.1 mSv/y World Health Org
US 0.04 mSv/yr LWRs can meet
Alarming ALARA

The belief that tiny amounts of radiation can be lethal created ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable – an anti-nuclear bias that has permeated our regulations for decades. However, “reasonably” is vague, and “achievable” depends on technology, not health effects.

For example, the World Health Organisation has set a public exposure limit for tritium from nuclear power plants of 0.1 mSv per year. Canada’s reactors comply with this limit, but due to ALARA, the limit in the USA is 0.04 mSv per year. Why? Because it is achievable – not because it is necessary.

Tritium (also known as hydrogen-3), is often used in watches and emergency exit signs. It is also present in our food and water. Furthermore, its tiny nucleus emits a particle so slow that it cannot even penetrate skin. In comparison, the Potassium-40 in our omnipresent banana emits beta particles that are 230 times as energetic, but no one worries about those deadly bananas.

“Adults would have to drink ~3 gallons of Vermont-Yankee tritiated water every day to match the internal radiation they get from the Potassium-40 in their own bodies.”
Mike Conley

LNT and ALARA can easily lead to absurdities: For example, airline passengers are exposed to about 20 times more cosmic radiation than those at ground level, but despite the dire predictions of LNT, they experience no more cancer than those who don’t fly. Should jets be required to fly at low altitudes, where they produce more greenhouse gases, just to satisfy ALARA – and what about the flight attendants and pilots who constantly work in higher levels of cosmic radiation?

As Radiation detection technology improves, ALARA just increases fear.

¹³⁷Caesium decay scheme showing half-lives, daughter nuclides, and types and proportion of radiation emitted.

Caesium-137 from Fukushima is detectable, so Counter Punch complains of Blue Fun tuna containing 0.0000077 mSv per 7 oz serving [200 grams], writing “… no radiation exposure of any kind is safe”.

Washington’s Hanford storage site has a budget of about USD 3 billion per year, much of which is used to try to reduce area radiation to the LNT-based standard of less than 0.15 mSv. (Normal Denver exposure is 40 times higher.)

Construction of Nuclear Waste Storage Tanks at Hanford 1943

It is wasteful to spend money “protecting” people from tiny amounts of radiation. Instead, let’s finance programs that help people stop smoking, which brings carcinogens like cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide into intimate contact with their lungs. (Smoking related diseases kill 5 million people per year).

Radiation exposure in reactor buildings is so low that it isn’t an issue, but educating the public on basic environmental radiation is a very critical issue.

For example, after Fukushima, lack of accurate radiation knowledge and the media’s eagerness to hype radiation issues caused a run on potassium iodide [KI] pills along our west coast, but no media explained that this was pointless. Pharmacies ran out, and some patients who needed KI couldn’t get it, while those who needlessly took it actually raised their chances of disease because too much KI can cause thyroid malfunction.

Radiation is safe within limits
LNT and ALARA are regulation policies, not scientific facts. Replace them
An evidence-based radiation safety limit would be 100 mSv per year.
Rational regulation is all that is needed to let nuclear power thrive and solve our global environmental and economic crises.

Dr. Robert Hargraves, the author of THORIUM: Energy Cheaper than Coal, writes,

“Radiation safety limits have been ratcheted down from 150 mSv/year in 1948 to 5 mSv/y in 1957 to 1 mSv/y in 1991 without supporting evidence by relying on the erroneous LNT model. EPA limits are set 100 times lower than levels that could cause harm. ALARA leads people, the press, and Big Green to falsely conclude that any radiation exposure may kill you.”

Thorium – energy cheaper than coal

Robert Hargraves – Aim High! @ TEAC3

However, just 50 mSv/yr is the new limit proposed by Dr. Carol Marcus and other experts in their 2015 petition that requests the NRC to increase the limits based on current knowledge.

The petitioner recommends the following changes to 10 CFR part 20:
(1) Worker doses should remain at present levels, with allowance of up to 100 mSv (10 rem) effective dose per year if the doses are chronic.
(2) ALARA should be removed entirely from the regulations. The petitioner argues that “it makes no sense to decrease radiation doses that are not only harmless but may be hormetic.”
(3) Public doses should be raised to worker doses. The petitioner notes that “these low doses may be hormetic. The petitioner goes on to ask, “why deprive the public of the benefits of low dose radiation?”
(4) End differential doses to pregnant women, embryos and fetuses, and children under 18 years of age.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), United States of America

For more on the consequences of accepting LNT, which led to ALARA, please see these links:

Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information – S.A.R.I.

XLNT Foundation website

Absurd Radiation Limits Are a Trillion Dollar Waste
James Conca, Forbes magazine – 2014

James Conca, in Forbes: “There are some easy decisions to make that will save us a trillion dollars, and they could be made soon by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA could raise the absurdly low radiation levels considered to be a threat to the public. These limits were based upon biased and fraudulent “research” in the 1940’s through the 1960’s, when we were frightened of all things nuclear and knew almost nothing about our cells’ ability to repair damage from excess radiation.

“These possible regulatory changes have been triggered by the threat of nuclear terrorism and by the unnecessary evacuation of tens of thousands of Japanese after Fukushima Daiichi, and hundreds of thousands of Russians after Chernobyl. There, the frightened authorities were following U. S. plans that were created because of the ALARA policy (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) that has always been misinterpreted to mean that all forms of radiation are dangerous, no matter at what level. It’s led to our present absurdly low threat level of 25 millirem.

“Keep in mind that radiation workers can get 5,000 mrem/year and think nothing of it. We’ve never had problems with these levels. Emergency responders can get up to 25,000 mrem to save human lives and property. I would take 50,000 mrem just to save my cat.

“This wouldn’t be bad if it didn’t have really serious social and economic side-effects, like pathological fear, significant deaths during any forced evacuation, not receiving medical care that you should have, shutting down nuclear power plants to fire up fossil fuel plants, and a trillion-dollar price tag trying to clean up minor radiation that even Nature doesn’t care about.”

Approximately 100,000 people were evacuated from the Fukushima area after the meltdown, and by September, 2013, about 1,200 evacuees had died from suicide and the stress of the excessive evacuation.

Dr. Brian Hanley

Radiation – Exposure and its treatment A modern handbook

Dr. Brian Hanley: [Fukushima] “If no evacuation had occurred, and everyone had lived outdoors with no precautions, at most 15 cancer deaths might have happened, but probably none.

“People have been going to radioactive spas in Ramsar, Iran for a long time without ill effect. In a 2-week visit, the dose would be a maximum of 10 mSv. That is 6 to 80 times more radioactive than the evacuation zone of Fukushima.”

Ramsar

Grand Ramsar Hotel

Ramsar

“To enable nuclear power, the NRC must renounce the non-scientific basis for LNT and ALARA”
Dr. Robert Hargraves

Coming up next week, Episode 13 – What’s So Great about Nuclear Power

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 13 – What’s So Great about Nuclear Power
2. Previous Episode – Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/
7. https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n77019846/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Scientific_Committee_on_the_Effects_of_Atomic_Radiation
8. https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20637408
9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318986234_The_Harmful_and_Fraudulent_Basis_for_the_LNT_Assumption
10. https://atomicinsights.com/doctors-petitioning-nrc-to-revise-radiation-protection-regulations/
11. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
12. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium
14. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-conley-5529b3/
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
16. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/fukushima-radiation-us-west-coast-tuna
17. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/equivalent-dose/sievert-unit-of-equivalent-dose/sievert-gray-becquerel-conversion-calculation/
18. https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs//320-015_cleanup_e.pdf
19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
20. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm
21. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/ki.htm
22. https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthargraves/
23. https://www.amazon.com/THORIUM-energy-cheaper-than-coal/dp/1478161299
24. https://thoriumenergyalliance.com/resource/robert-hargraves-aim-high/
25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOoBTufkEog
26. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-s-marcus-ph-d-m-d-11111a62/
27. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/rulemaking-ruleforum/petitions-by-year/2015/index.html
28. https://atomicinsights.com/doctors-petitioning-nrc-to-revise-radiation-protection-regulations/
29. https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0010
30. https://radiationeffects.org/
31. https://www.x-lnt.org/
32. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/07/13/absurd-radiation-limits-are-a-trillion-dollar-waste/
33. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-conca-2a51037/
34. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/06/18/fukushima-2-25-the-humanitarian-crisis/
35. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hanley-983312/
36. https://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Exposure-treatment-modern-handbook-ebook/dp/B00D7KLQYY
37. https://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/lance2/
38. https://parsianramsar.pih.ir/
39. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar%2C_Iran

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #Thorium #Fukushima #ALARA #Radiophobia #Ramsar

March 31, 2022
Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 5 Part 1

Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

The Consequences of Overreaction

ALARA = As Low As Reasonably Achievable

LNT [Linear No Threshold Theory] was pushed through the U.N. by Russia and China in the 1950’s to stop America’s above-ground weapons testing. It worked, but it also caused a worldwide fear of radiation below levels that are dangerous.. The radiation safety people liked it because it seemed so… conservative. But it has become an ideology “ruled by hysteria and fuelled by ignorance.” Dr. Kathy Reichs, Society for the Advancement of Education.

Cancer And Death by Radiation? Not From Fukushima, James Conca, Forbes 2014

Contamination dropping in evacuation zone
07 June 2013

IAEA would recommend evacuation of the areas in RED [>166 mSv/yr]

Japanese Government
– Resettlement allowed < 20 mSv per year
– Remediation Goal 1 mSv per year
– More Confusion –

The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data, Tubiana, Feinendegen, Yang, Kaminski, Radiology, April 2009

Dr. Tim Maloney: “Anyone living permanently in the green zone would only receive a dose rate equal to twice the rate in Colorado, where the cancer rate is less than the US average. The dose rate in the dark red regions is 1/3 of the safety threshold set by the International Commission on System of Radiological Protection in 1934. Even by today’s extreme standards, this level of exposure carries no known cancer risk.

“Anxious to impress, officials and reporters donned white suits and masks, which made good TV but did nothing for the child who saw the school playground being dug up by workers who were afraid of an unseen evil called radiation. Unfortunately, most people see their fears confirmed as fact when workers and officials dress this way. An open-necked shirt with rolled-up sleeves, a firm hand shake and a cup of tea would be a better way to reassure.”

A man uses a roller near a Geiger counter, measuring a radiation level of 0.207 microsieverts per hour, during nuclear radiation decontamination work at a park in Koriyama. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

Imagine the anxiety created by clueless officials who provided useless information, as when a school official warned parents that the radiation intensity was 0.14 micro Sieverts per hour, which was meaningless because the normal radiation level in some Japanese cities can be five times that high.

Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima nuclear plant on March 13, 2011, two days after the accident began. Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Fukushima Fear of Radiation Killed People

In 2012, UNSCEAR stated, “…no clinically observable effects have been reported and there is no evidence of acute radiation injury in any of the 20,115 workers who participated in Tepco’s efforts to mitigate the accident at the plant.”

A year later, UNSCEAR added: “Radiation exposure following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely [that there will be] any health effects among the general public and the vast majority of workers.”

And in an April, 2014 follow-up, UNSCEAR reported that, “Overall, people in Fukushima are expected on average to receive less than 10 mSv due to the accident over their whole lifetime, compared with the 170 mSv lifetime dose from natural background radiation that most people in Japan typically receive.”

Finally, in October, 2015, UNSCEAR confirmed that none of the new information accumulated after the 2013 report “materially affected the main findings in, or challenged the major assumptions of, the 2013 report.” However, despite these positive reports, as of November, 2016, most of the 150,000 people who were forced to evacuate still lived in temporary housing.

Dr. Jane Orient, who practices internal medicine agreed: “The number of radiation casualties from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors stands at zero. In Fukushima Prefecture, the casualties from radiation terror number more than 1,600… The U.S. is vulnerable to the same radiation terror as occurred in Japan because of using the wrong dose-response model, which is based on the linear no- threshold hypothesis (LNT), for assessing radiation health risks.”

The number of radiation casualties from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors stands at zero.
Dr. Jane Orient

The following is an excerpt from Whole-body Counter Surveys of over 2700 babies and small children in and around Fukushima Prefecture from 33 to 49 months after the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident:

BABYSCAN – Peekaboo – Looking for Radiation

“The BABYSCAN, a whole-body counter (WBC) for small children, was developed in 2013, and units have been installed at three hospitals in Fukushima Prefecture. Between December, 2013 and March, 2015, 2702 children between the ages of 0 and 11 have been scanned, and none had a detectable level of cesium-137.” (The anti-nuclear crowd had been obsessing about exposure to cesium-137.)

Extensive radiation study finds no internal cesium exposure in Fukushima children

Positive reports like this rarely appear in our American press, which frustrates professionals like Leslie Corrice, a former nuclear power plant operator, environmental monitoring technician, health physics design engineer, public education coordinator and emergency planner who writes the informative and highly respected blog, The Hiroshima Syndrome.

In Radiation: The No-Safe-Level Myth, Corrice writes,

“As long as the LNT theory is maintained, our fear of radiation will continue to damage the psyche of all humanity, restrict the therapeutic and healing effects of non-lethal doses of radiation, limit the growth of green nuclear energy, and needlessly prolong the burning of fossil fuels to produce electricity.

“In 1987, when I was frustrated because it seemed like the major news outlets bent over backwards to broadcast negative nuclear reports while seemingly ignoring anything positive, a former Press manager with a major news outlet in Cleveland took me aside and gave me the facts of life.

“He first explained that the Press is a moneymaking venture. The ratings determine advertising income; the lifeblood of the business – and the surefire money-makers were war, presidential elections, natural disasters and airline crashes.

…the surefire money-makers were war, presidential elections, natural disasters and airline crashes.
Cleveland press manager

“Turning to Three Mile Island, he said the ratings sky-rocketed and stayed that way for the better part of two weeks. In the years that followed, the media found that negative reports caused an increase in ratings, and positive stuff didn’t. This trend slowly dwindled, but Chernobyl re-ignited the ratings impact of nuclear accident reporting and proved that broadcasting the negative was better for business…

“He added that the media might someday entirely ignore the positive and only report the negative in regard to nuclear energy, and he speculated that all it would take was one more accident. Unfortunately, he was right. Fukushima has pushed the world’s Press into the journalistic dark side. My Fukushima Updates blog has lashed the Japanese Press and the world’s news media outside Japan severely for primarily reporting the negative…. A recent example concerns the child care thyroid study in Fukushima Prefecture during the past four years.

“On October 5, 2015, four PhDs in Japan alleged in the Tsuda Report that the Fukushima accident had spawned a thyroid cancer epidemic among the prefecture’s children, which contradicted the Fukushima Univ. Medical School, Japanese Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening, and National Cancer Center, which all found that the detected child thyroid precancerous anomalies in Fukushima Prefecture cannot be realistically linked to the accident. Regardless, the Tsuda Report’s claim made major headlines in Japan, then spread to mainstream outlets outside Japan, including UPI and AP.

“Here’s the problem. In December 2013, a scientific report was published on a comparison of the rate of child thyroid, pre-cancerous anomalies in Fukushima Prefecture with the rates in three prefectures hundreds of kilometers distant: Aomori, Yamanashi and Nagasaki.

“The Fukushima University medical team studying the issue had discovered that there was no prior data on child thyroid cancer rates in Japan, so there was nothing to compare the 2012 results to.

“Because of the furor caused by the original release of their findings in 2012, the team decided to take matters into their own hands and offer free testing to volunteer families in the distant prefectures. Nearly 5,000 parents took advantage of the opportunity and had their children screened.

“What was found was completely unexpected. The abnormality rates in Aomori, Yamanashi and Nagasaki Prefectures were actually higher than that discovered in Fukushima Prefecture, which conclusively indicated that the radiation from the Fukushima accident had no negative impact on the health of the thyroid glands in Fukushima’s children. Just one Japanese Press outlet mentioned the 2013 discovery at the very end of an article about a few more children being found to have the anomalies in Fukushima….

…no negative impact on the health of the thyroid glands in Fukushima’s children.
Fukushima University

“On the other hand, when a maverick team of four Japanese with PhDs publish a highly questionable report – full of so many holes that it should be tossed into the trash – alleging a severe cancer problem caused by the Fukushima accident, it gets major coverage inside Japan and significant coverage by the world’s mainstream press!

“It is important to emphasize that the Tsuda Report fails to acknowledge the fact that Prefectures unaffected by the Fukushima accident had the higher anomaly rates. (Which is why the Tsuda Report is worthy of the trash heap.)

“The media might not make money off sharing the good news about Fukushima, but they are committing a moral crime against humanity by not doing it.”

Fukushima’s Children Aren’t Dying, New American, October 20, 2014

Tritiated Water From Fukushima To Be Discharged Into Pacific, Andrew Karam, Ph.D., CHP, April 23, 2021

Fukushima’s Children Aren’t Dying

Coming up next week, Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 12 – The Dismay of Radiophobia
2. Previous Episode – Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
7. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/LNT+Has+Been+TNT+to+Humanity.-a0677253825
8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/05/04/cancer-and-death-by-radiation-not-from-fukushima/
9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
10. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_in_evacuation_zone_0706131.html
11. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/mar/10/fukushima-children-play-indoors-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-in-pictures
12. https://www.ibtimes.com/new-fukushima-radiation-study-looks-ahead-future-cancer-risks-1557613
13. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx
14. https://www.drjaneorient.com/
15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26460321/
16. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/10/09/national/science-health/extensive-radiation-study-finds-no-internal-cesium-exposure-fukushima-children/
17. https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-corrice-49a8b230/
18. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/
19. https://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/radiation-the-no-safe-level-myth.html
20. https://thenewamerican.com/fukushima-s-children-aren-t-dying/
21. https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/04/23/tritiated-water-fukushima%C2%A0-be-discharged-pacific-15496

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #Fukushima #ALARA #BABYSCAN

March 24, 2022
Episode 10 – Hormesis: How Radiation is Good for You – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 4 Part 2
Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, UNCLEAR Chairman

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, MD PhD, DSc, former Chairman of the United Nationals Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR):
“What is really surprising, however, is that data collected by UNSCEAR and the Forum show 15% to 30% fewer cancer deaths among Chernobyl emergency workers and about 5% lower solid cancer incidences among the people on the Bryansk district (the most contaminated in Russia) in comparison with the general population. In most irradiated group of these people (mean dose of 40 mSv) the deficit of cancer incidence was 17%.”

Because of their daily exposure to low levels of radiation, which seems to stimulate the DNA repair system, nuclear power plant workers get one third fewer cancers than other workers. They also lose fewer workdays to accidents than office workers.

Knowing this, it is not surprising that, when steel containing cobalt-60 was used to build Taiwan apartments, which exposed 8,000 people to an additional 400 mSv of radiation during some twenty years, cancer incidence was sharply down, not up 30% as Linear No Threshold Theory would have predicted.Instead, the residents’ adaptive response to low- level radiation seems to have provided health benefits. The following chart reveals lower cancer rates for those who receive extra low-level radiation vs. those who only get background radiation.

Sometimes a low radiation exposure of 1-100 mGy, close to yearly background level, appears to act as the “tickle” dose, and reduces cancer rates. Redpath et al 2001

The USA de-funded low dose radiation studies that would have disproved No Threshold Theory.

Dr. Doug Boreham, Norther Ontario School of Medicine – Radiation, space travel and hormesis

In 2015, a study of bacteria grown at a dose rate 1/400 of normal background radiation yielded a reduction in growth, but when the cells were returned to normal background radiation levels, growth rates recovered. The conclusion: Insufficient radiation can yield harmful results.

Life Needs (Some) Radiation – Deep in the Earth, a series of experiments is revealing how life suffers when it’s deprived of background levels of radiation.

Life Needs (Some) Radiation

Therefore, it seems reasonable that radiation limits should be the same regardless of the source of the radiation. Nevertheless, nuclear plants are held to a standard 100 times higher than coal plants, which actually emit more radiation than nuclear power plants. Per unit of electricity created, the fly ash emitted by a coal power plant exposes the environment to 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant’s on-site-stored spent fuel – it’s so-called “waste”, 90% of which can be consumed in modern reactors. (Granite buildings irradiate their occupants more than nuclear power plants.)

In 2004, the Radiation Research Society published the Mortality Experience amongst U. S. Nuclear Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation:

“Workers employed in fifteen utilities that generate nuclear power in the U. S. have been followed for up to 18 years between 1979 and 1997.

“Their cumulative dose from whole body radiation has been determined from records maintained by the facilities and by the Nuclear Regulatory Comm. and the Energy Department.

“Mortality in the cohort … has been analyzed with respect to individual radiation doses. The cohort displays a very substantial healthy worker effect, i.e. considerably lower cancer and non-cancer mortality than the general population.”

World Nuclear Radiation Health Effects

The largest circle (red) represents a radiotherapy tumour dose;

The green circle is a recoverable dose to normal tissue near the tumour;

The dark green circle is a dose with a 100% safety record.

The tiny black dot in the smallest circle represents the limit recommended by current regulations due to LTN.

Radiation and Health by Hendrickson and Maillie

In Radiation and Health, Hendrickson and Maillie wrote “…during radiation therapy for cancer, we’ve learned that chromosome damage to lymphocytes can be reduced by up to 50% if a small dose is given to the cells a few hours before the larger ‘cancer-killing’ dose is administered.”

Kerala

Where is Kerala!

In the southwest Indian state of Kerala, children under five have the lowest mortality rate in the country, and life expectancy is 74 despite background radiation rates that can range as high as 30 times the global average.

What can we learn from Kerala?

For thousands of years, Keralites have lived with radiation three times the level that caused the evacuation at Fukushima, where the limit was, on July, 2016, just 20 mSv. In contrast, some sections of Kerala experience 70 mSv, with a few areas measuring 500 – and many Keralites also eat food that is five times as radioactive as food in the United States.

Kerala Beach People Live Longer

Despite these radiation levels, cancer incidence in Kerala is the same as the rate in greater India, which is about 1/2 that of Japan’s and less than a third of the rate in Australia. As the linked article says, “Cancer experts know a great deal about the drivers of these huge differences, and radiation isn’t on the list.”

Kerala Beach

In Kerala, scientists have been working with a genuinely low rate of radiation exposure that mirrors what would have been the case in Fukushima if the Japanese officials hadn’t panicked and needlessly evacuated so many thousands of people.

So, why did they? Partly from fear, but primarily because most radiation protection standards have been derived from LNT bias and studies of Japanese atomic bomb victims who received their dose in a very short time, and being bombed is very different from living for years with a slightly higher radiation level.

Kerala also confirms our modern knowledge of DNA repair- namely that radiation damage is not cumulative at background dose rates up to 30 times normal, and that 70 mSv over a lifetime does nothing. In fact, the concepts of an “annual dose” or a “cumulative dose” are misleading. Instead, evidence reveals that an annual exposure to 100 mSv is comparable to a dose of zero because it doesn’t exceed a person’s capacity for repair.

In the past, when experts discussed these issues they couldn’t consider delivery rates or DNA repair because the power and mechanisms of DNA repair were not known until long after Muller’s LNT theory became dogma. As a consequence, the suffering caused by this obsolete “science” has been immense. (UK radiation expert Malcolm Grimston has characterised the Fukushima evacuation as being “stark raving mad”).

Malcolm Grimston

Fukushima Evacuation 11 March 2011

When the Japanese government lifted the evacuation orders because the radiation level had dropped to 20 mSv, 80 % of the residents refused to return because of their fear of radiation despite the fact that the most highly irradiated areas near the plant received only 1/5 of the lowest dose linked to a detectable increase in cancer. (At Guarapari beach in Brazil, residents often bury themselves in sand that yields 340 mSv without ill effect.)

Guarapari Beaches, Brazil

We should be concerned about genuinely dangerous isotopes, but we shouldn’t waste energy and money cleaning up minor radioactivity that doesn’t do anything – but that is what we are doing.

Despite our learning that our cells have amazing repair abilities, LNT advocates still create the radiophobia that caused the extreme evacuations at Fukushima and the flood of needless, fear-induced European abortions that followed Chernobyl. In my opinion, people who refuse to examine the evidence that negates this discredited illusion have abandoned their integrity.

October, 2020. New U.S. Department of Energy research indicates that at low doses, biological reactions are often unrelated to those that occur at high levels. The influential Linear-No-Threshold model, which predicted that acute exposure damage can be extrapolated linearly to low dose exposures—was flawed. In fact, small amounts can have an adaptive positive effect. In addition, it appears that cells communicate with each other and a dose to one affects the cells around it.

The LNT model for cancer induction is not supported by radiobiological data

LOW DOSE RADIATION – The History of the U.S. Department of Energy Research Program

As others have noted, not knowing the truth doesn’t make us ignorant, but not wanting to know the truth most certainly will.

0.01 mrem = 0.0001 mSv, 500,000,000 Bananas deliver a lethal dose

Comparison of Radiation Doses
- 0.05 µGy – Sleeping next to someone
- 0.09 µGy – Living within 30 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year
- 0.1 µGy – Eating one banana
- 0.3 µGy – Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year
- 10 µGy – Average daily dose received from natural background
- 20 µGy – Chest X-ray
- 40 µGy – A 5-hour airplane flight
- 600 µGy – mammogram
- 1 000 µGy – Dose limit for individual members of the public, total effective dose per annum
- 3 650 µGy – Average yearly dose received from natural background
- 5 800 µGy – Chest CT scan
- 10 000 µGy – Average yearly dose received from natural background in Ramsar, Iran
- 20 000 µGy – single full-body CT scan
- 175 000 µGy – Annual dose from natural radiation on a monazite beach near Guarapari, Brazil.
- 5 000 000 µGy – Dose that kills a human with a 50% risk within 30 days (LD50/30), if the dose is received over a very short duration.
What is a Gray and what is a Sivert?

Coming up next week, Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 11 – Looking for Radiation
2. Previous Episode – Episode 9 – Our Natural DNA Repair Capabilities
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
7. https://www.unscear.org/
8. https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2879
9. https://www.falloutradiation.com/files/HPANSpresentation.pdf
10. https://europepmc.org/article/pmc/pmc4975094
11. https://atomicinsights.com/low-dose-radiation-research-program-defunded-2011/
12. https://www.academia.edu/4637793/Adaptive_Response_to_Low_Dose_Radiation
13. https://www.ans.org/news/article-2875/national-academies-steers-lowdose-radiation-research-in-a-new-direction/
14. https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Radiation_definitions.html
15. https://www.falloutradiation.com/files/HPANSpresentation.pdf
16. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/life-without-radiation/
17. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/15020740-analysis-mortality-experience-amongst-nuclear-power-industry-workers-after-chronic-low-dose-exposure-ionizing-radiation
18. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/radiation-and-health/nuclear-radiation-and-health-effects.aspx
19. https://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Health-Thormod-Henriksen-ebook/dp/B08LGH82MS
20. https://goo.gl/maps/6tC88EYMQNoPLyy9A
21. https://bravenewclimate.com/2015/01/24/what-can-we-learn-from-kerala/
22. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mediaguide/index.asp?PeopleID=254
23. https://wsupress.wsu.edu/product/low-dose-radiation/
24. https://www.britannica.com/event/Fukushima-accident
25. https://www.dedoimedo.com/physics/banana-radioactive.html
26. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/absorbed-dose/gray-unit-of-radiation-dose/
27. https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-protection/equivalent-dose/sievert-unit-of-equivalent-dose/sievert-gray-becquerel-conversion-calculation/

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology #Hormesis #Russia #Chernobyl #Ukraine
March 17, 2022
The „Perfekte Technologie“ – a Bilingual Article

Post created by Jeremiah Josey

This article published 14 March 2022 by Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, the Prussian General Newspaper. Copyright notice: applying fair use for educational purposes.

Zeitung für Deutschland · Das Ostpreußenblatt · Pommersche Zeitung

Newspaper for Germany · The Ostpreußenblatt · Pomeranian Newspaper

Zeichnet für den Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 verantwortlich: Das Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics

Responsible for the Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1: The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics

China’s molten salt loop experiment

THORIUM-FLÜSSIGSALZREAKTOREN Kernreaktoren, in denen der Kernbrennstoff in Form geschmolzenen Salzes vorliegt, bieten eine Fülle von Vorteilen. In China wird in nächster Zukunft eine Versuchsanlage in Betrieb gehen

THORIUM MOLTEN SALT REACTORS Nuclear reactors in which the nuclear fuel is in the form of molten salt offer a wealth of advantages. A test plant will go into operation in China in the near future.

„Perfekte Technologie“

Der Ausgangsstoff ist billig und weltweit vorhanden, nicht einmal Kühlwasser wird benötigt und der Müll wird weniger und verfällt viel schneller als herkömmlicher Atommüll: Die Thorium-Technologie steht für eine neue Qualität der Nutzung der Kernenergie

Wolfgang Kaufmann, 23.01.2022

“Perfect technology”

The raw material is cheap and available worldwide, not even cooling water is needed and the waste is less and decays much faster than conventional nuclear waste: Thorium technology stands for a new quality of the use of nuclear energy

Wolfgang Kaufmann 23.01.2022

Im Hongshagang-Industriepark bei Wuwei in der zentralchinesischen Provinz Gansu wird in nächster Zukunft eine Versuchsanlage in Betrieb gehen, die das Potential besitzt, nicht nur die Energieerzeugung im Reich der Mitte, sondern in der ganzen Welt zu revolutionieren. Keine Kohlendioxidemissionen mehr infolge der Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe, keine Landschaftsverschandelung durch Windräder, kein massenhafter Einsatz von Akkus aus umweltschädlicher Produktion, keine Stromausfälle bei Windstille und Bewölkung, aber auch kein Strahlungsrisiko aufgrund von Reaktorhavarien, alles das verspricht der innovative Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 (TMSR-LF1) des Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, der für eine neue Qualität der Nutzung der Kernenergie steht und dieser quasi einen „grünen Anstrich“ geben soll.

In the Hongshagang Industrial Park near Wuwei in the central Chinese province of Gansu, a pilot plant will go into operation in the near future, which has the potential to revolutionize energy production not only in the Middle Kingdom, but throughout the world. No more carbon dioxide emissions as a result of the use of fossil fuels, no more landscape degradation by wind turbines, no mass use of batteries from environmentally harmful production, no power outages in calm winds and clouds, but also no radiation risk due to reactor accidents, all this promises the innovative Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor-Liquid Fuel No. 1 (TMSR-LF1) of the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, which advocates a new quality of use of the Nuclear energy is in place and this should give it a kind of “green coat of paint”.

Molten Salt Fission Energy Schematic

Die Funktionsweise des Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktors TMSR-LF1 ist relativ einfach. Das schwach radioaktive Element Thorium wird in Flüssigsalz aufgelöst und mit Neutronen beschossen. Dadurch entsteht das Isotop Uran 233, dessen Spaltung große Wärmemengen freisetzt. Der Reaktor produziert also seinen Brennstoff selbst. Dieses Verfahren bringt letztlich sehr viel mehr Sicherheit als der Betrieb klassischer Kernreaktoren (siehe unten) und darüber hinaus auch noch eine Vielzahl weiterer Vorteile.

The operation of the Thorium Molten Salt reactor TMSR-LF1 is relatively simple. The weakly radioactive element Thorium is dissolved in molten salt and bombarded with neutrons. This produces the isotope uranium 233, the fission of which releases large amounts of heat. So the reactor produces its own fuel. This process ultimately brings much more safety than the operation of classic nuclear reactors (see below) and also a variety of other advantages.

Sechs Vorteile

Six Benefits

Zum Ersten werden nur äußerst geringe Mengen an Thorium 232 benötigt. Denn der Energiegehalt einer Tonne Thorium entspricht der von 200 Tonnen Uran-Metall oder 28 Millionen Tonnen Kohle, wie der italienische Physik-Nobelpreisträger Carlo Rubbia errechnete.

First, only extremely small amounts of Thorium 232 are needed. The energy content of one ton of Thorium corresponds to that of 200 tons of uranium metal or 28 million tons of coal, as the Italian Nobel Laureate in Physics Carlo Rubbia calculated.

Zum Zweiten gibt es überall auf der Welt größere Thorium-Vorkommen. Im Prinzip kommt das Element in der Gesteinskruste ähnlich häufig vor wie Blei und fällt zudem als Abfallprodukt bei der Förderung von Seltenen Erden an. Deshalb ist es auch nicht teuer. Dahingegen drohen perspektivisch Verknappungen und Preisexplosionen beim Uran, weil die Zahl der konventionellen Kernkraftwerke neuerdings wieder deutlich zunimmt.

Secondly, there are larger Thorium deposits all over the world. In principle, the element occurs in the rock crust as often as lead and is also produced as a waste product in the extraction of rare earths. That’s why it’s not expensive. On the other hand, there is a risk of shortages and price explosions for uranium in the future, because the number of conventional nuclear power plants has recently increased significantly again.

Zum Dritten kann ein Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktor praktisch überall errichtet werden, also beispielsweise auch in Wüstenregionen. Denn er benötigt keinerlei Kühlwasser.

Thirdly, a Thorium Molten Salt reactor can be built virtually anywhere, including desert regions, for example. Because it does not require any cooling water.

Zum Vierten entstehen bei seinem Betrieb auch deutlich weniger radioaktive Abfälle. Außerdem sollen über 99 Prozent des Atommülls aus dem TMSR-LF1 nach spätestens 300 Jahren in harmlose Isotope zerfallen sein. Des Weiteren besteht die Möglichkeit, die geringen Restmengen an länger strahlendem Material später in fortgeschritteneren Flüssigsalzreaktoren zu verarbeiten und damit gänzlich zu neutralisieren. Zum Vergleich: In mit Uran betriebenen konventionellen Atommeilern fallen langlebige radioaktive Spaltprodukte mit Halbwertszeiten von vielen tausend Jahren an, obwohl nur ein kleiner Bruchteil des verwendeten Kernbrennstoffs genutzt wird.

Fourthly, its operation also generates significantly less radioactive waste. In addition, more than 99 percent of the nuclear waste from the TMSR-LF1 is said to have decayed into harmless isotopes after 300 years at the latest. Furthermore, it is possible to process the small residual amounts of longer radiating material later in more advanced molten salt reactors and thus completely neutralise. By way of comparison, conventional nuclear reactors powered by uranium produce long-lived radioactive fission products with half-lives of many thousands of years, even though only a small fraction of the nuclear fuel used is used.

Zum Fünften liegen die Kosten für den Bau und Betrieb von Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktoren niedriger als bei den sonst zumeist verwendeten Leichtwasser-Reaktoren. Das resultiert vor allen aus dem geringen Betriebsdruck der Anlagen, der zahlreiche Sicherheitsvorkehrungen überflüssig macht, sowie der Tatsache, dass keine Brennstäbe beschafft werden müssen.

Fifthly, the costs for the construction and operation of Thorium Molten Salt reactors are lower than those of the light-water reactors that are usually used. This is mainly due to the low operating pressure of the systems, which makes numerous safety precautions superfluous, as well as the fact that no fuel rods have to be procured.

Zum Sechsten lassen sich Reaktoren wie der TMSR-LF1 auch deshalb ausgesprochen wirtschaftlich betreiben, weil in ihnen nicht nur Uran 233 erbrütet wird, sondern zusätzlich noch viele andere radioaktive Spaltprodukte entstehen, die zum Beispiel in der Nuklearmedizin benötigt werden. Und manche der Radionuklide verwandeln sich sogar in ausgesprochen begehrte Elemente wie Rubidium, Zirconium, Molybdän, Ruthenium, Palladium, Neodym und Samarium. Desgleichen wird das Edelgas Xenon frei, das unter anderem als Isolationsmedium sowie in der Laser- und Raumfahrttechnik zum Einsatz kommt.

Sixthly, reactors such as the TMSR-LF1 can also be operated extremely economically because not only uranium 233 is incubated in them, but also many other radioactive fission products are produced, which are required, for example, in nuclear medicine. And some of the radionuclides even turn into highly sought-after elements such as rubidium, zirconium, molybdenum, ruthenium, palladium, neodymium and samarium. Likewise, the noble gas xenon is released, which is used, among other things, as an insulation medium as well as in laser and aerospace technology.

Der Krieg ist aller Dinge Vater

War is the father of all things

Erfunden wurde die dem TMSR-LF1 zugrunde liegende Technologie nicht in China, sondern in den USA. Dort experimentierten die Luftstreitkräfte bereits ab 1954 mit einem kleinen Flüssigsalzreaktor, der zum Antrieb von Langstreckenbombern dienen sollte. Das Projekt fand jedoch ein rapides Ende, als die Vereinigten Staaten über Interkontinentalraketen verfügten. Ebenso legten bundesdeutsche Wissenschaftler aus der Kernforschungsanlage Jülich zu Beginn der 1970er Jahre einige Studien über Flüssigsalzreaktoren vor, die letztlich wegen der ablehnenden Haltung des damaligen Leiters der Reaktorentwicklung, Rudolf Schulten, keine Beachtung fanden.

The technology underlying the TMSR-LF1 was not invented in China, but in the USA. As early as 1954, the Air Force experimented with a small molten salt reactor to power long-range bombers. However, the project came to a rapid end when the United States had intercontinental ballistic missiles. Likewise, at the beginning of the 1970s, West German scientists from the Jülich nuclear research facility presented some studies on molten salt reactors, which ultimately received no attention because of the negative attitude of the then head of reactor development, Rudolf Schulten [main developer of the pebble bed reactor design, a non fluid fuel system].

Core of Aircraft Reactor Experiment 1954

Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment-3

Ein weiterer Grund für die fehlende Akzeptanz des alternativen Reaktortyps war das absolute Desinteresse der Nu-klearindustrie rund um die Welt. Mit den klassischen Atommeilern ließ sich hervorragend Geld verdienen, und auf die Einnahmen aus der Herstellung von Brennstäben wollte auch niemand verzichten. Deshalb wurden allerlei vorgeschobene Argumente gegen den Einsatz von Flüssigsalzreaktoren ins Spiel gebracht, wie beispielsweise das angeblich höhere Korrosionsrisiko und die hypothetische Gefahr, dass jemand die Meiler missbraucht, um waffenfähiges Spaltmaterial zu produzieren.

Another reason for the lack of acceptance of the alternative reactor type was the absolute lack of interest of the nuclear industry around the world. With the classic nuclear reactors, excellent money could be earned, and no one wanted to do without the income from the production of fuel rods. Therefore, all sorts of pretended arguments against the use of molten salt reactors were brought into play, such as the allegedly higher risk of corrosion and the hypothetical danger that someone will misuse the reactors to produce weapons-grade fissile material.

Dies hat die Volksrepublik China nicht davon abgehalten, seit 2011 umgerechnet 400 Millionen Euro in die Entwicklung des TMSR-LF1 zu investieren. Schließlich verfolgt die Pekinger Führung das ehrgeizige Ziel, das Reich der Mitte bis 2050 „klimaneutral“ zu machen, und dabei könnte sich die „perfekte Technologie“ der Flüssigsalzreaktoren als absolut unverzichtbar erweisen.

This has not prevented the People’s Republic of China from investing the equivalent of 400 million euros in the development of the TMSR-LF1 since 2011. After all, Beijing’s leaders are pursuing the ambitious goal of making the Middle Kingdom “climate neutral” by 2050, and the “perfect technology” of molten salt reactors could prove absolutely indispensable.

250 MW Molten Salt Fission Energy Power Facility

Der Reaktor, der nun am Rande der Wüste Gobi erprobt werden soll, hat erst einmal nur eine Nennleistung von zwei Megawatt. Damit kann er lediglich um die 1000 Haushalte mit Strom versorgen. Sollte sich das Konstruktionsprinzip des TMSR-LF1 bewähren, dann würde allerdings bis etwa 2030 der erste Prototyp eines Thorium-Flüssigsalzreaktors mit 373 Megawatt Leistung in Betrieb gehen, dem dann in schneller Folge identische Anlagen in ganz China folgen. Ob Deutschland zu diesem Zeitpunkt immer noch in seiner Atomkraft-Abstinenz verharrt oder inzwischen auch auf die „Grüne Kernenergie“ setzt, bleibt abzuwarten.

The reactor, which is now to be tested on the edge of the Gobi Desert, initially has a nominal output of only two megawatts. This means that it can only supply around 1000 households with electricity. If the design principle of the TMSR-LF1 proves successful, however, the first prototype of a Thorium Molten Salt reactor with an output of 373 megawatts would go into operation by around 2030, which will then be followed by identical plants throughout China in rapid succession. It remains to be seen whether Germany will still remain in its abstinence from nuclear power at this time or whether it will now also rely on “green nuclear energy”.

Chinese Gobi Desert Molten Salt Industrial Facility

Gobi Desert Molten Salt Installation

Dr. Mark Ho of ANSTO 12 May 2021 Molten Salt Review Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Yang Zou Netherlands 5 July 2019 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu Shanghai 27 Sept 2018 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu Switzerland 24 Jan 2017 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu ORNL 5 Oct 2016 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu CAS 27 Oct 2015 Download

China SINAP TMSR Progress Hongjie Xu ORNL 15 Oct 2015 Download

Über die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung

About the Prussian General Newspaper

Die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ) ist eine einzigartige Stimme in der deutschen Medienlandschaft. Woche für Woche berichtet sie über das aktuelle Zeitgeschehen in Politik, Kultur und Wirtschaft und bezieht zu den grundlegenden Entwicklungen unserer Gesellschaft Stellung. In ihrer Arbeit fühlt sich die Redaktion dem traditionellen preußischen Wertekanon verpflichtet: Das alte Preußen stand und steht für religiöse und weltanschauliche Toleranz, für Heimatliebe und Weltoffenheit, für Rechtstaatlichkeit und intellektuelle Redlichkeit sowie nicht zuletzt für ein von der Vernunft geleitetes Handeln in allen Bereichen der Gesellschaft. In diesem Sinne pflegt die PAZ eine offene Debattenkultur, die gleichermaßen den eigenen Standpunkt mit Leidenschaft vertritt wie sie die Meinung von Andersdenkenden achtet – und diese auch zu Wort kommen lässt. Jenseits des Tagesgeschehens fühlt sich die PAZ der Erinnerung an das historische Preußen und der Pflege seines kulturellen Erbes verpflichtet. Mit diesen Grundsätzen ist die Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung eine einzigartige publizistische Brücke zwischen dem Gestern, Heute und Morgen, zwischen den Ländern und Regionen in West und Ost – sowie zwischen den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Strömungen in unserem Lande.

The Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ) is a unique voice in the German media landscape. Week after week, it reports on current events in politics, culture and business and takes a stand on the fundamental developments in our society. In their work, the editors feel committed to the traditional Prussian canon of values: The old Prussia stood and stands for religious and ideological tolerance, for love of homeland and open-mindedness, for the rule of law and intellectual honesty, and not least for reason-guided action in all areas of society . With this in mind, the PAZ maintains an open culture of debate, which passionately represents its own point of view and respects the opinions of those who think differently – and also lets them have their say. Beyond day-to-day events, the PAZ feels committed to remembering historical Prussia and caring for its cultural heritage. With these principles, the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung is a unique journalistic bridge between yesterday, today and tomorrow, between the countries and regions in West and East – as well as between the different social currents in our country.

Translation courtesy of Duck Duck Go – Your personal data is nobody’s business.

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References and Links

1. Original article: https://paz.de/artikel/perfekte-technologie-a6180.html
2. https://paz.de/impressum.html
3. https://english.sinap.cas.cn/
4. https://www.ans.org/news/article-3091/china-moves-closer-to-completion-of-worlds-first-thorium-reactor/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
6. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forschungszentrum_J%C3%BClich
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Schulten
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Reactor_Experiment
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion
11. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones.html
12. https://regulatorwatch.com/reported_elsewhere/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones/
13. https://www.nuclearaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Mark_Ho_20210512.pdf
14. https://samofar.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019-TMSR-SAMOFAR%E2%80%94%E2%80%94Yang-ZOU-PDF-version-1.pdf
15. https://threeconsulting.com/mt-content/uploads/2021/04/chinatmsr2018.pdf
https://www.gen-4.org/gif/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-05/03_hongjie_xu_china.pdf
16. https://msrworkshop.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/MSR2016-day1-15-Hongjie-Xu-Update-on-SINAP-TMSR-Research.pdf
17. https://tcw15.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/TMSRstatus-liuwei.pdf
18. https://paz.de/anerkennungszahlung.html
19. https://www.patreon.com/TheThoriumNetwork
20. https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/translation/

#PreußischeAllgemeineZeitung #PAZ #ShanghaiInstituteofAppliedPhysics #SINAP #ThoriumMoltenSalt #MoltenSaltFissionEnergyTechnology #MSFET #Thorium

March 14, 2022
Interview #2, Mr. Emre Kiraç of Kiraç Group. Part of the Student Guild Interview Series, “Leading to Nuclear”
Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

Emre Kiraç

Under favour of The Thorium Network, I met a successful and farsighted person. The person who caught my attention with his works and ideas in various fields is Emre Kıraç, CEO of Kıraç Group. If we talk about him briefly, Mr. Emre received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Istanbul Technical University. After completing his master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Management at London EBS (European Business School), he still works as the general manager of Kıraç Group companies operating in the fields of energy, transportation and health. If I were to talk about Mr. Emre for myself, I can say that he is open to new ideas and a model to young entrepreneurs with his success in many sectors he has entered. As a nuclear engineer, the thing that draws my attention the most is his innovative views, support and work in the field of energy. The reason why I say so is that, as we know, the need for energy is increasing day by day due to the increasing population and other factors. There are many different methods to supply with the energy need. One of them is nuclear energy. We see that Mr. Emre closely follows and supports the developments in the nuclear field.

Without further ado, you can see what we asked in our interview. Good reading!

Rana,
President of the Student Guild
The Thorium Network

https://kiracgroup.com/en

Leading to Nuclear Interview Series, Interview #2, Engineer Emre Kiraç of Kiraç Group, Turkey

Can you tell us about the development of Kıraç Group? Since 1982, your company has continued to grow. What is your biggest source of motivation?

Our company’s history and the fact that we have earned people’s confidence in the workplace. Moreover, one of our major sources of motivation is to ensure and improve the continuation of our businesses.

In which areas and specifically on which subjects does Kıraç Group focus on R&D studies?

In particular, we have four companies engaged in R&D work. These companies develop their own products. Kıraç Metal is working on solar energy systems, Kıraç Galvaniz is working on highway protection systems, Kıraç Bilişim is working on hospital automation, and Kıraç HTS is working on aviation.

You’ve worked in the energy business for a long time and have a lot of experience in it. I’d want to hear your own thoughts on nuclear energy and reactors.

Nuclear energy, in my opinion as an electrical engineer, is a healthy and safe source of energy. Of course, if it’s done correctly. There have unfortunately been awful examples of this in the past. Unfortunately, many associate nuclear energy with nuclear weapons, and as a result, they are biased towards this sort of energy. But, with smart design and hard effort, I’m confident that many people will see nuclear power as clean and safe.

As Kıraç Group, you give importance to green energy. You have studies and activities on solar energy and wind energy. The world also needs nuclear energy and we cannot stop climate change with wind and solar energy alone. What do you think about Turkey’s adventure in the field of nuclear energy? What changes will happen after that?

As we know, Akkuyu nuclear power plant installation has started. Of course, our country does not have any nuclear technology. In fact, nuclear technology is a technology that has been on the world agenda since the 1940s. Although Turkey has technology in many fields, unfortunately it has not had any technology in the nuclear field. Therefore, our country should develop itself in the global conjuncture.

Do you find Turkey’s studies on renewable energy sufficient? What do you think should be done more?

The main country that creates the economy of renewable energy is Germany. In this sector, we continue our work in Germany. Although this country is less efficient in terms of solar energy compared to other countries, it has many more solar power plants. In Turkey, on the other hand, solar power plants will definitely become more widespread. We are also in this business. Turkey is a complete renewable energy country in terms of both wind and solar energy. We also closely follow the hydrogen-based energy technology. Renewable energy should become more widespread in our country. Our country is very clear in this regard. The important thing is to increase the incentives of the state to this sector.

What are your thoughts on molten salt reactors? Can a molten salt reactor be established in Turkey after the VVER 1200 (PWR) to be established in Akkuyu and can it be produced entirely with national resources?

I got detailed information on this subject. The implementation of this technology would be incredibly good for Turkey. Since Turkey is rich in thorium reserves, this technology carries our country much further in the nuclear field. But for this technology to be applicable, R&D studies are needed. I think this will be possible with the efforts of our state and universities.

Can you tell us about your cooperation with Thorium Network? What prompted you to make this collaboration? What was the most influential factor for you?

First of all, since we are in the energy sector, Thorium Network attracted our attention. We have an old friendship with Mr. Jeremiah. I am interested in Jeremiah’s blogs and I follow them. After he came to Turkey, I had the opportunity to get to know him better. In addition to these, I feel responsible for this issue as Eskişehir has thorium deposits. I want to promote and develop Thorium Network in this environment. This is my biggest goal right now.

What kind of work can be done to spread the idea of nuclear energy in Turkey?

We need to lobby on this issue. People like you and us need to understand this technology very well and explain it to other people. We are just at the beginning of the road. Firstly, the Molten Salt Reactor technology needs to be developed. The more R&D studies we do on this subject, the more positive returns will be.

Turkey wants to design and install a molten salt reactor with completely domestic and national resources. Especially the Turkish Energy, Nuclear and Mining Research Institute (TENMAK) is very enthusiastic about this issue. Do you think TENMAK and universities alone will be enough for R&D studies or do we need other organizations?

We need an international communication on this issue. There may also be a need for the private sector, but we do not have many companies that have worked in the nuclear field. Together we can research and develop. Apart from these, it is important for the state to support, technical and commercial reports should be prepared and funds should be allocated. Then an international partner can be found and brought to better places.

When I examined your company, the years you entered new sectors caught my attention. You identify the needs very clearly and produce solutions in the most effective way. What do you pay attention to when entering a new industry? In your opinion, if the first molten salt reactor were to be successfully established in our country, where would Kıraç Group be in this process? (Part production, liquid fuel production, construction, electricity etc.)

The nuclear industry is a very large and complex field. We have thousands of products, of course, we can meet some of them in the future. But it’s too early to talk about that. We will cooperate with Thorium Network on this issue. There is also a large thorium reserve and precious metals in Eskişehir. These mines are currently being sold. It would be much better if we were in a position to add value to these mines. We continue our research on this subject.

We had a great time during the interview. We’d like to show our thanks to Mr. Emre for the information he gave and for his participation.

You may also stay updated on developments by visiting our website and joining our student guild.

Thorium Network Student Guild continues to inspire people all around the world. Come and join our team! You can find the Student Guild application on this page:

The Student Guild of The Thorium Network

Links and References
#StudentGuild #LeadingToNuclear #Interview #EmreKirac #KiracGroup
March 2, 2022
Episode 8 – More Beer, More Bananas – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 3 Part 2

Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

All radioactive elements “decay” by emitting [either] an alpha particle (a helium nucleus), a beta particle (an electron) or a gamma ray (pure energy), eventually becoming stable elements. An element’s “half-life” is the time needed for ½ of the atoms in the “parent” element to decay into a “daughter” isotope. For the Potassium-40 in our bananas and bodies, it is 1.2 billion years. For the Americium-241 in our smoke detectors, it’s 432 years, and for Iodine-131, it’s 8 days.

Contrary to popular belief, elements with long half-lives, which decay slowly, present less risk than those with short half lives.

[The half life of Thorium is 14.05 billion years – about the age of our universe]

Radioactivity is measured by the number of decays per second. One decay per second is one Becquerel (Bq). One banana produces about 15 Becquerels from its potassium-40, and smoke detectors emit 30,000 Becquerels, so when nuclear power critics fuss about 64,000 Becquerels entering the ocean at Fukushima, remember that 64,000 Becquerels is equal to 14 seconds of potassium radiation activity that occurs inside our bodies every day. (The radioactivity of normal seawater is 14,000 Becquerels per cubic meter).

However, focusing on Becquerels without considering the energy absorbed by the body is pointless: You can throw a bullet or you can shoot one, but only one will cause harm.

Fortunately, radiation is easy to detect. A single emission (1 Becquerel) will trigger a click in any decent detector, and an average adult emits 7,000 Becquerels, of which 4,400 Becquerels come from our Potassium-40, which “clicks” 4,400 times per second, for life.

“The word ‘radioactivity’ doesn’t account for the energy propelling the emissions, so quoting large Becquerel counts says nothing about risk. However, big numbers can frighten uninformed people, and in building their case against nuclear power, many environmentalists have been doing just that.” Dr. Timothy Maloney

Radioactivity in Food

As noted earlier, radiation dose, which we measure in Sieverts, is the biologically effective energy transferred by radiation to tissue. For example, one mammogram equals 1 to 2 milliSieverts (mSv), and one dental X-ray (0.001 mSv) is nowhere near enough to cause concern.

Let’s now consider the normal background radiation that accompanies us throughout our years.

Worldwide Natural Radiation Ranges from 1 to 250 mSv per year

Natural “background” radiation dose rates vary widely, averaging 1 mSv/year in Britain, 3 in the US, 7 in Finland, 10 in Spain, 12 in Denver and up to 300 mSv per year in Kerala, India and even higher on a number of “radioactive” beaches around the world that people flock to for health reasons. Given these statistics, one might expect cancer rates in Finland and Spain to be higher than in Britain, but Britain has higher rates of cancer than both Spain and Finland despite LNT dogma [See Episode 6 where we expose the Linear No Threshold lie].

Dose Rates and Health

Hiroshima, 1945

A massive, single, whole-body radiation dose, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki [1945 United States of America bombings of Japan], severely damages blood cell production and the digestive and nervous systems.

A single 5,000 mSv dose is usually fatal, but if it is spread over a lifetime it is harmless because at low dose rates, damaged cells are repaired or replaced. (Consume a cup of salt in one sitting, and you will probably die, but do it over six months or more, and it won’t be a problem.)

Radiation in Perspective (1 mrem = 0.01 mSV)

How Much Radiation Is Too Much? Regulators have set exposure limits far too low, inspiring irrational fear of a cheap, clean energy source. By Robert Hargraves Sept. 21, 2021

Why Radiation is Safe below 100 mSv per year

In 1945, the U. S. exploded two atomic bombs over Japan, killing 200,000 people. Since then, 93,000 survivors have been studied for health effects. In 55 years, 10,423 of those survivors died from cancer, which is just 573 (5%) more than the number of deaths expected by comparison with unexposed residents.

05 Oct 1945, Nagasaki, Japan – A Japanese citizen walks through the damaged lands of Nagasaki, two months after the atomic bomb was dropped over the city. – Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

According to Dr. Shizuyo Sutou, expert in mutations, Shujitsu University, Japan, ”Ionizing radiation is not always hazardous, and low dose radiation sometimes stimulates our beneficial defence mechanisms.” Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor data since 1945 shows that, on average, lifespan was extended and cancer mortality was reduced.

Low Dose Radiation from A-bombs elongated Life span and reduced cancer mortality relative to un-irradiated individuals – Dr. Shizuyo Sutou

In addition, no excess cancer deaths have been observed in those who received radiation doses below 100 mSv. In fact, Japanese A-bomb survivors who received less than 100 mSv, have been outliving their unexposed peers.

Subsequent studies by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) have proved that below 100mSv, which is well above normal background radiation levels, it is not possible to find any cancer excesses.

…it is not possible to find any cancer excesses.
UNSCEAR

Linear No-threshold (LNT) vs. Hormesis: Paradigms, Assumptions, and Mathematical Conventions that Bias the Conclusions in Favor of LNT and Against hormesis

[You can see the rubbish perpetuated by the ICRP dose limits here and here. These fictitious, made-up numbers cause the deaths of millions of people each year and hobble the advancement of our civilisation – all for maintaining the oil industry’s profits.]

– TRUTH –

We are surrounded by naturally occurring radiation. Less than 1/1000th of the average American’s dose comes from nuclear power.

This yearly dose is 200 times less than a cross country flight…

…is 13 times less than a glass of beer…

… and about the same as eating one banana⁽²¹⁾.

Are we really doing our best when it comes to managing radiation safety?

Coming up next week, Episode 9 – Our Natural DNA Repair Capabilities

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 9 – Our Natural DNA Repair Capabilities
2. Previous Episode – Episode 7 – Beer and Bananas
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
8. https://www.timothymaloney.net/Critique_of_100_WWS_Plan.html
9. https://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/about-us/
10. https://www.radioactivity.eu.com/site/pages/Radioactivity_food.htm
11. Ramsar, Iran natural radiation levels
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
13. https://stmuscholars.org/the-weapon-that-changed-war-u-s-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
14. https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-energy-regulator-radiation-climate-change-11632257020
15. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shizuyo-Sutou
16. https://radiationeffects.org/low-dose-radiation-from-a-bombs-elongated-life-span-and-reduced-cancer-mortality-relative-to-un-irradiated-individuals-sutou/
17. https://www.unscear.org/
18. https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Abstract/2019/06000/Linear_No_threshold__LNT__vs__Hormesis__Paradigms,.7.aspx
19. https://www.icrp.org/
20. https://icrpaedia.org/Dose_limits
21. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0816/ML081690717.pdf
22. American Nuclear Society
23. Handbook of Radiation Measurement and Protection, edited by A. Brodsky

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology #LinearNoThreshold

February 26, 2022
Interview #1, Prof. Akira Tokuhiro of Ontario Tech University. Part of the Student Guild Interview Series, “Leading to Nuclear”
Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

Professor Akira Tokuhiro

World’s first reactor was built in 1942 in Chicago by Enrico Fermi and his team. Since then several hundred nuclear reactors were built, shut downed and rebuilt. For the future, six types of Generation 4 fission machines wait to be born. The world needs the energy to develop and maintain life but above all these reasons there is an essential one: going to Mars and supplying all energy that is needed for life. That’s my priority motivation and purpose for choosing the nuclear area to work. History tells us that “never forget to take lessons from past” and future tells us that “enlighten your ways from your mistakes”. The nuclear accidents that happened in the past led us to Gen 4 designs. As students, we are the ones who determine the nuclear reactor’s destiny. One of the Gen 4 designs is Molten Salt Reactor. We are trying to understand what can we do to design and build a molten salt reactor. We do this by interviewing nuclear experts, engineers all over the world. Come and join our story!

Stagg Field, Chicago Pile 1

Enrico Fermi

Molten Salt Fission Energy Technology

The Student Guild’s first interview was with Professor Akira Tokuhiro. He recently stepped down as the Dean of the Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Also, he was in the American Nuclear Society’s President’s Committee on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. He is an international nuclear energy expert.

Rana
President of the Student Guild
The Thorium Network

Interview 001, Prof Akira Tokuhiro of Ontario Tech University – Leading to Nuclear Interview Series

What does nuclear energy expert do?

We do many things. We design Generation 4 (IV) systems. We look at the safety issues of current reactors and reactors that will be constructed. We are always looking for continuous safety improvements. We have 4 questions to be answered about safety and accidents, “what can happen, how often can it happen, how does it happen and what are the consequences?”. We ask these questions and we do the engineering design, safety analysis for that. Now nuclear engineering requires computer programming and engineering analysis. Applications of virtual reality, augmented reality, new applications of artificial intelligence, and machine learning will be used by new nuclear engineers to design and operate reactors.

In one of your interviews, you said “Nuclear reactors are challenging, that’s why I choose the nuclear energy area to work”. What is the most complex and challenging thing in the nuclear area or reactor physics?

For me, the most interesting and challenging thing is you have to know many things. You may find the solution for a small area but nuclear power plant is many different things. If you find a solution for a small area, it may impact other things. That’s why you have to look at many different things and you have to integrate them. That’s challenging for me. That integration that I teach to my students. How do you design a reactor? You design from the reactor core and then outward from the core.

What are the most common safety design features for Gen 4 that at the same time can be used for Gen 3 or Gen 2 reactor safety designs?

We have learned from Generation 2, 3 and 3+ about human factors engineering. There are two things about human beings, one is human beings are unreliable, other is unpredictable. When you apply these to safety systems, you want to design the reactor that minimizes probability for human error. Gen 4 and small modular reactors are designed so that cooling is assured, and do not rely on human operators because they can make mistakes under pressure. You have to design the reactor so that after shutdown decay heat can be removed without human intervention.

What is the biggest problem about safety that must be redesigned immediately now? For example, for PWR Generation 2 designs, what is the biggest safety problem about that reactor, and how can it be redesigned?

My opinion is reactor is designed so that it can shut down when a postulated event occurs. Even if an earthquake happens, the reactor can shut down like the reactors are located at Fukushima. The reactor was shut down after the earthquake. To remove the decay heat that’s remaining, pumps may be required to facilitate cooling for the first 72 hours. After two weeks the decay heat has to be much less. That has to change in all plants. Cooling after shut down is possible, we can do that but we have to make sure that even if we have a terrible earthquake, sufficient cooling has to remove thermal energy from the core. In SMR’s we don’t need pumps, like large reactors; when you have a pump, you also need a source of water in order to maintain cooling to take the heat. The safety problem of Gen 2 and Gen 3 designs is to prevent the meltdown of the core.

“By 2030 or 2035 Gen 4 large reactors or small modular reactors will be built by Russia or China.”

When do you think the first Gen 4 reactor will be built and where will it be built and which design will be built?

I think by 2030 or 2035 some Gen 4 reactors will be built. It may be Gen 4 large reactors but it is also possible that small modular reactor may be built too. It depends on the country. Russia and China have their designs and they are being constructed. It is difficult to call them Gen 4 but recent VVER is an improved design. China is building different kinds of reactors and operating them. So by 2030 or 2035 Gen 4 large reactors or small modular reactors will be built by Russia or China. In the west, new reactors very much depends on investment. For example, in North America before 2035 there will be a small modular reactor constructed and ready to operate as well.

What are your thoughts about thorium molten salt reactors?

Thorium Molten Salt reactors combine interesting reactor design with a fresh look at a new type of fuel. In the least next 3-5 years, we need much more engineering to finish the design and to get the regulatory approval of the completed design. Since my background is from the US, I am familiar with US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they will importantly ask safety questions about design basis accidents. If you don’t have a pump, as part of the design natural convection cools the reactor so it may be a preferred design. Molten salt reactors are an interesting design and thorium is a different type of fuel. Perhaps by analogy, the nuclear industry is very similar to a restaurant or the automotive sector. You have to have customers and people come to eat at a restaurant. You have to make a popular automobile and people have to trust the safety and they are buying the safety in design that comes with it. Thorium Molten Salt design has to be finished and the design has to convince the regulator that it is a sufficiently safe design and that is constructed.

You are an expert on nuclear safety. Do you think passive safety systems designed for molten salt reactors are sufficient? Are there any other passive systems projects running? Can you please give us the details?

The molten salt reactor concept came from the 1950s and 1960s. Modernized design of the MSR started with Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor. (MSRE) They operated a research and demonstration reactor for a few years so fifty years later we are updating this design. I think the concept is solid but needs details; safety cases are convincing. If you have the money and engineers the first step to building a reactor is making a research and demonstration reactor to show that the reactor is very safe. For example, in molten salt reactors, fuel flows in a tank by gravity when an unanticipated event occurs. That is when a PS may be needed. So this means no operator, no human error.

“We need more nuclear power plants because we need a quick transition to a lower CO2 economy or scale.”

About thorium molten salt reactors, what can students do?

Now in the last five years, I think it is very important for students to find friends all over the world and to be interested in solving the challenges posed by climate change. We need to reach net-zero as quickly as possible: even before 2050. I think we have to make progress every five years or it will become very difficult to meet our net-zero carbon economy. We have to make as much progress by 2030. By 2050 we have to make substantial progress or net-zero carbon economy. If we don’t have any progress by 2030 reaching a net-zero carbon economy becomes increasingly difficult. Now we have the power of social media. Students have to ask many questions to old people like me about safety, design. We have to change and seek from the regulator, approval of the new reactors designs. We have a lot of experts from many countries. We already have about 440 nuclear power plants in the world but we need as many as ten times as many reactors to tackle climate change. We need more nuclear power plants because we need a quick transition to a lower CO2 economy or scale. It is not the ultimate solution for climate change but it is a solution that we have now. Young people can become involved through social media and by asking good questions. We need to convince people that by combining nuclear energy, wind, and solar we can reach a net-zero carbon economy. We need nuclear power, it may be risky, but risk and fear are a spectrum. If you think the benefit is greater than the risk then you would do it. People are usually afraid when they don’t understand the risk so they think the risk is very big and the benefit is not so big.

How did you decide to join the Thorium Network? What was the most attractive thing that impressed you about Thorium Network?

I contacted one of the founders Jeremiah Josey. I thought the thorium molten salt reactor is interesting and thorium is an alternative to uranium. It is a network. This network includes many people all around the world. That’s why I joined. The network is a new way to design a reactor.

I had a great time while talking with Professor Tokuhiro. I would like to thank him for his time and perfect answers.

Thorium Network Student Guild continues to inspire people all around the world. Come and join our team! You can find the Student Guild application on this page:

The Student Guild of The Thorium Network

Links and References
#ThoriumStudentGuild #LeadingToNuclear #Interview #AkiraTokuhiro #OTU
February 24, 2022
Launching the Student Guild Interview Series, “Leading to Nuclear”
Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

We live in a finite world. Our world has a limited time until its end. There are 7.753 billion people who are trying to survive every day out there. Climate change is real and our world continues to warm. If we don’t do something about climate change, we will never live in the same world that we used to live in. Our lives might change completely. We are responsible for all the actions that we have done to the world and nature. So it is time to correct our mistakes and take the action!

“Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.”
Bill Gates

We all know that wind and solar are not enough to stop climate change. We need a combination of nuclear, solar, and wind because nuclear energy has zero carbon emissions. That’s what we need! Do your research, ask what you want to ask at the end of the day you will see that nuclear is the only answer. Now we have an even better option which is Molten Salt Fission Energy Technology. It is safe, reachable but needs committed research and development programs worldwide. We need to convince the world that now nuclear power is safer than ever.

Students have the power of changing minds, creating new ideas, and supporting each other. At this point we are going to do all the things that we can do since still we have time. We are going to interview nuclear engineers, nuclear energy experts, and people who are interested in nuclear power to learn how we can reach a net-zero carbon economy with nuclear power. Also, we are going to learn how Molten Salt Fission Energy Technology can be accepted by regulators and what can we do about Thorium-based fuel. We are going to publish blogs about every interview. We interview people as much as we can. This way we will create a new era about Molten Salt Fission Energy Technology and Thorium fuel. It is a long journey but hopefully, at the end of it, we will have smiles on our faces with champagnes in our hands.

Our first interview is with Professor Akira Tokuhiro of Canada. He recently stepped down as the Dean of the Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Also, he was in the American Nuclear Society’s President’s Committee on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. As international nuclear energy expert readers of this interview will gain a rare insight few will experience in their lifetime.

Prof. Akira Tokuhiro

Our interview with Professor Tokuhiro will be one of many coming over the next several months as we bring you key insights on an industry rarely discussed outside.

Rana,
President
The Student Guild

Thorium Network Student Guild continues to inspire people all around the world. Come and join our team! You can find the Student Guild member application on this page:

The Student Guild of The Thorium Network

Professor Akira Tokuhiro

Dr. Resat Uzmen

Engineer Emre Kirac

Links and References
#StudentGuild #LeadingToNuclear #Interview #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium
February 21, 2022
Episode 7 – Beer and Bananas – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 3 Part 1

Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

A Little Nuclear History

In the sixties, the United States built a new, super-safe, highly efficient Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). Fuelled by uranium dissolved in a very hot, liquid salt, the MSR had performance and safety advantages over water-cooled, uranium-powered, solid-fuel Light Water Reactors (LWRs) – also called “conventional” reactors.

The Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment – Oak Ridge National Laboratories

LWRs are cooled with normal (light) water, a term used to distinguish them from reactors cooled with “heavy” water – deuterium. LWR pellets contain 3.5 – 5% U-235, with the remainder being “inactive” U-238 for dilution, but deuterium cooled reactors can utilize un-enriched U-238. (Most nuclear reactors in use today are LWRs).

Alvin Weinberg, the Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratories, proved the superiority of MSRs in hundreds of tests during 22,000 hours of operation, but due to the success of conventional reactors in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s submarines, water-cooled reactors became the choice for commercial power production. Weinberg, who protested that MSRs were safer and more efficient, was fired, and the MSR program was terminated, partly for political reasons [See more about Dr Weinberg’s firing here].

“I hope that after I’m gone, people will look at all the dusty books ever written on Molten Salt and say hey, these guys had a pretty good idea, lets go back to it.”

Alvin Weinberg, 2004

There was a second reason: The Cold War was heating up, and the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle of LWRs could be adapted for making bombs. However, making a weapon with MSR technology is more difficult and dangerous.

Little Boy

The Atomic Energy Commission also knew that MSRs could generate abundant, low cost, 24/7 electricity while breeding their own fuel from U-238 or Thorium – and that Thorium would create less waste than conventional reactors.

If we had switched to MSRs in the 1960’s instead of burning carbon, we would have eliminated much of the CO2 that created Climate Change and reduced the toxic emissions that have caused medical expenses in the billions of dollars.

From the April, 2013 Scientific American: “Dr. James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has said that just our partial reliance on carbon-free nuclear power since 1971 has saved 1.8 million lives that would have been lost due to fossil fuel pollution. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of natural gas use would not mitigate the climate change problem and would cause more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.”

Dr. James Hansen

US Health Burden

Carbon-fuelled power plants cause at least 30,000 premature U. S. deaths/year.

Because we rejected MSRs, almost all of the electricity we have generated with nuclear power has been produced by high pressure, water-cooled LWRs, which require a containment dome. MSRs do not.

Unfortunately, according to Michael Mayfield, head of the Office of Advanced Reactors at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC is “unfamiliar with most, new small reactor technology, [including MSRs] and has no proven process to certify one.” (2010)

Michael Mayfield

THAT MUST CHANGE!

In 2013, the U. S. Energy Information Administration predicted that world energy use will increase 56% by 2040. Most of that increase will come from burning carbon-based fuels, which will add even more CO₂to our already damaged biosphere.

We must replace CO₂-creating power plants with GREEN nuclear power plants!

When Radiation Is Safe and When It Isn’t

The largest obstacle to expanding nuclear power is the fear caused by misinformation about radiation safety, so let’s begin with a question intended for seniors like me: “Do you still have your toes?”

This foolish sounding question refers to a machine that, during the [19]thirties and [19]forties, stood near the entrance of every up-to-date shoe store in America. Called the ADRIAN shoe fitting machine, it was ballyhooed as the perfect way to see if one’s shoes fit properly.

ADRIAN Shoe Fitting Machine

Attractive ads with photos of the marvellous machine proclaimed, “Now, at last, you can be certain that your children’s foot health is not being jeopardised by improperly fitting shoes. If your children need new shoes, don’t buy their shoes blindly. Come in and try our new ADRIAN Fluoroscopic Shoe Fitting machine. Use the new, scientific method of shoe fitting that careful parents prefer.”

The customers, usually children, inserted their feet into an opening while their parents watched the image in two viewing ports. Unattended children would often repeatedly switch sides to watch their siblings’ toes wiggle. It was fun, and no-one gave a thought to X-ray exposure.

Despite these fairly high exposures to children who frequently hopped onto the machine just for fun, no malignancies or other damage to the feet of foot-radiating junkies like me were ever reported.

Now, as I travel the country with my presentations on nuclear power, “renewables” and radiation safety, I always ask the seniors in my audiences, all of whom instantly recognize the machine, if they still have their toes.

During 2016, I queried some 1,000 seniors, but I never found any evidence of damage. However, my tale of the shoe-fitting machine always brought laughter and an opportunity to talk about the Merchants of Fear whose hype created a new 20^thcentury word: radiophobia.

All natural substances contain radioactive material. In fact, beer contains thirteen times as much radioactivity as the cooling water discharged from a nuclear plant – Modern Marvels

“We’ve accepted for decades that millions of people are allowed to be killed by combustion pollution and mass produced weapons. We’ve accepted for at least 100 years that the planet’s climate and oceans can be allowed to be changed for the worse because of our love of combustion. We even accept poverty and all its ill effects, simply due to our general inaction. But the safest form of energy production, nuclear power, is foolishly married to fear of nuclear weapons.”
– Dr. Alex Cannara

Sources of Radiation Exposure

Radiation from nuclear power is just a tiny part of the “industrial” sliver.

We are bathed in radiation for our entire lives – 2/3 from cosmic radiation and elements like radon, and the rest from elements within us plus from consumer products like smoke detectors and medical use. We all have some 4,400 beta/gamma decays per second throughout our bodies for life, largely from Potassium-40 in foods like bananas and potato chips. (Living beside a nuclear power plant for a year is less “dangerous” than eating bananas and potato chips.)

Living beside a nuclear power plant for a year is less “dangerous” than eating bananas and potato chips.
Dr. George Erickson

Remedy for Radiation Fear — Discard the Politicized Science

by Jerry M. Cuttler

Giz Explains: Your Fear Of Radiation Is Irrational

by Geoff Watts

Fungi That ‘Eat’ Radiation Are Growing on the Walls of Chernobyl’s Ruined Nuclear Reactor

by Ross Pomeroy

Because radioactive elements are constantly decaying, our ancestral life forms evolved during times when radiation levels were far higher than they are today. As a consequence, they evolved some very effective ways to repair the damage to the DNA in our cells caused by radiation and oxidation, which is why we are told to favor anti-oxidants like grapes and greens. (DNA is “short” for deoxyribonucleic acid, a complex, spiral, chain-like molecule that contains our genetic codes.) If you irradiate E. coli bacteria for many generations, the bacteria evolve amazing radiation resistance, surviving huge doses of radiation, and some fungi even thrive on radiation.

“Fear and paranoia are the two most common forms of radiation sickness.” Mike Conley, Road Map to Nowhere

However, even the highest natural background radiation rate is insignificant compared to the damage caused by our internal chemistry. DNA bond breaks caused by oxidation and toxins occur more frequently than breaks caused by background radiation. Our bodies are actively repairing DNA damage every second of our lives.

DNA Structure

If people understood that “…we have billions of cells that die every day and must be replaced, they will be better able to accept the fact that our bodies have efficient repair mechanisms that can handle low level radiation”. Science Magazine, March, 2015. (Adults have about 37 trillion cells.)

Nobel Prize Awarded to Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar for DNA Studies, Nobel Prize, 2015

“Each cell contains a coiled mass of DNA that carries the thousands of genetic instructions that we need to run our bodies. These strands of DNA undergo thousands of spontaneous changes every day, and DNA copying for cell division and multiplication, which happens in the body millions of times daily, also introduces defects.

DNA can be damaged by ultraviolet light from the sun, industrial pollutants and natural toxins like cigarette smoke. What fights pandemonium are our DNA repair mechanisms.

“In the 70s, Dr. Lindahl defied orthodoxy about DNA stability by discovering a molecular system that counteracts DNA collapse, and Dr. Sancar mapped out how cells repair DNA damage from UV light.

“People born with defects in this system, when exposed to sunlight, develop skin cancer, and Dr. Modrich showed how our cellular machinery repairs errors that arise during DNA replication, thereby reducing the frequency of error by about 1,000.”

Paul Modrich: Mechanisms in E. coli and human mismatch repair

Coming up next week, Episode 8 – More Beer. More Bananas.

Links and References

1. Next Episode 8 – More Beer, More Bananas
2. Previous Episode – Episode 6 – The Big Deceit
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. Oak Ridge National Laboratories Molten Salt Experiment
7. https://thethoriumnetwork.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/why-msrs-abandoned-ornl-weinbergs-firing.pdf
8. Tribute to Dr. Alvin M Weinberg, The Thorium Network Patreon
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
10. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-mayfield-37a74616b/
11. https://ncrponline.org/publications/reports/ncrp-report-160/
12. https://energycentral.com/c/pip/thorium-vs-renewable-energy-climate-change-dr-erickson-mike-conley-jeremiah-josey
13. https://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/
14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036393/
15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Cuttler%20JM%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24910587
16. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/07/your-fear-of-radiation-is-irrational/
17. https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2020/02/04/fungi_that_eat_radiation_are_growing_on_the_walls_of_chernobyls_ruined_nuclear_reactor.html
18. https://www.realclearscience.com/authors/ross_pomeroy/
19. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2015/press-release/
20. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2015/summary/
21. Paul Modrich: Mechanisms in E. coli and human mismatch repair

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #ClimateChange #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology #beerandbananas

February 19, 2022
Episode 6 – The Big Deceit – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 2

Post by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.”
Jacob Bronowski

In 1928, Hermann Muller, the originator of the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory, exposed fruit flies to 2,750 milliSieverts (mSv) of radiation in just 3 1/2 minutes, which caused gene deletions and deformities. Radiation dose, which we measure in Sieverts, is the biologically effective energy transferred to body tissue by ionizing radiation.)

Although the dose that Muller used was equivalent to receiving 1,000 mammograms in just 3.5 minutes, he called it a low dose, even though it was extremely high. (Even Japanese atomic bomb survivors didn’t receive such a large dose.)

Muller then extrapolated his results down to ZERO mSv without testing low levels of radiation and continued to promote his theory into the fifties, perhaps because he wanted to heighten fear of fallout from testing nuclear bombs. Muller argued that there is no safe level for radiation and claimed that even tiny amounts of radiation are cumulative. (According to LNT dogma, a butcher who cuts his finger fairly often will be dead in ten years from blood loss – despite his continuing to work.)

Ernst Caspari

Muller’s results were disputed by several of his colleagues, one being a researcher named Ernst Caspari, whose work Muller praised. (We learned this after Muller’s correspondence became public late in the 20^thcentury). Muller wrongly asserted that, even at low dose rates over long times, the risk is proportionate to the dose.

In the fifties, no one knew that our cells routinely repair DNA damage, whether caused by radiation or oxidation, a normal body process, so we accepted his theory. (DNA is “short” for deoxyribonucleic acid, a complex, spiral, chain-like molecule that contains our genetic codes.)

By Zephyris – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15027555

Muller’s theory is analogous to the earth-centered solar system that everyone “knew” was true for thousands of years, and it’s regrettable that so many still believe it. From its beginning, the LNT theory was based on a fraud, and it has been perpetuated by anti-nuclear fearmongers.

Excerpt from Muller’s Nobel acceptance speech.

So why wasn’t Muller truthful? During a radio interview on IEEE SPECTRUM’s “Techwise Conversations,” Dr. Calabrese explained it this way:

“Ernst Caspari and Kurt Stern were colleagues, and Muller was a consultant to Stern. Muller provided the fruit fly strain that Stern and his coworkers used. Stern and Muller thought there was a linear dose-response relationship even at low doses….

“In the chronic study, which was done far better in terms of research methodology than an earlier study, they found that the linear relationship was not supported, and what they observed would be supportive of a [safe] threshold dose- response relationship. This created a conflict—not for the actual researchers like Caspari—but for his boss, Kurt Stern, who tried to convince Caspari that his study didn’t support the linear model because his control group values were artificially high.

Calabrese Explaining the Fraud of Linear No Threshold Theory

As recently as September 1 2020, Edward Parsese shows National Academy of Science (NAS) panel members ignored human data that challenged their already-set conclusions. This costs our planet, and our future generations Trillions of dollars and literally the future of our planet. It needs to stop.

“So Caspari… got lots of unpublished findings from Muller and put together a case that his boss was wrong. Ultimately, he got Stern to accept his findings that supported the threshold dose response. [Which actually meant that there was a threshold below which low levels of radiation were safe.]

“They sent Caspari’s paper to Muller on Nov. 6, 1946. On Nov.12 he [Muller] wrote to Stern indicating that he went over the paper, and he saw that the results were contrary to what he thought would have happened, that he couldn’t challenge the paper because Caspari was an excellent researcher, that they needed to replicate this, and that this was a significant challenge to a linear dose response because this study was the best study to date, and it was looking at the lowest dose rate that had ever been used in such a study.

“A month later, Muller went to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize, and in his speech, he tells the scientists, dignitaries, press… that one can no longer accept any consideration of a threshold model, that all you can really accept is the linear dose- response model. …Yet Muller had actually seen the results of a study that he was a consultant on, that was the best in showing no support for the linear model – but support for a [safe] threshold model.

“He had the audacity to actually go in front of all these dignitaries and mislead the audience. He could have said, ‘This is a critical area, and we need to do more research to try to figure this out.’ It would have been intellectually honest and the appropriate thing to say, but that’s not what he says. He tries to actually mislead the audience by saying there’s not even a remote possibility that this alternative exists, and yet he has seen it.”

Note: as of 12 Feb 2022 this interview is no longer available on IEEE Spectrum (???)

Radiation’s Big Lie
Did a Nobel laureate knowingly lie about the dangers of radiation in 1946?
BY STEVEN CHERRY // FRI, OCTOBER 07, 2011

Because Muller had also strongly (and appropriately) opposed the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and because he wanted to persuade Congress and the American public to oppose the expansion of nuclear energy, he seems to have concluded that the end would justify his lie, even if it compromised his integrity.

National Academy Of Sciences ‘Misled The World’ When Adopting Radiation Exposure Guidelines

No safe level of radiation exposure? Researcher points to suppression of evidence on radiation effects by Nobel Laureate

US Risk Assessment Policy: A History of Deception” by Edward Calabrese (Univ. of Chicago Law Review Online, Vol. 79 [2017]

In November, 2014, Dr. John Boice, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection, stated, ”…the reason they were concerned about the risk of radiation doses all the way to zero was because they used a theory [LNT] for genetic effects that assumed that even a single hit on a single cell could cause a mutation, and they did not believe there was any such thing as a beneficial mutation.”

When the LNT model was adopted by the National Academy of Sciences in 1956, its summary stated: “Even small amounts of radiation have the power to injure.” The report, which was published in the New York Times, inflated the fear of radiation, even at extremely low levels.

NAS Adopts Fraudulent LNT Theory

However, newly discovered letters between some of the members of the National Academy of Science committee indicate that the reason for adopting the LNT model was not that small amounts of radiation might be dangerous, but that Muller’s deception (and possibly self-interest), had trumped science – with one individual writing, “I have a hard time keeping a straight face when there is talk about genetic deaths and the dangers of irradiation. Let us be honest—we are both interested in genetics research, and for the sake of it, we are willing to stretch a point when necessary… the business of genetic effects of atomic energy has produced a public scare and a consequent interest in and recognition of the importance of genetics. This is good, since it may lead to the government giving more money for genetic research.”

In 2015, while reading Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, a Pulitzer Prize winner about our long battle with cancer, I came upon the following passage:

“In 1928, Dr. Hermann Muller, one of Thomas Morgan’s students, discovered that X-rays could increase the rate of mutations in fruit flies…” [Morgan, by studying an enormous number of fruit flies, had discovered that the altered genes and mutations could be carried from one generation to the next.]

“Had Morgan and Muller cooperated, they might have uncovered the link between mutations and malignancy. But they became bitter rivals Morgan refused to give Muller recognition for his theory of mutagenesis…

“Muller was sensitive and paranoid; he felt that Morgan had stolen his ideas and taken too much credit. In 1933, having moved his lab to Texas, Muller walked into a nearby woods and swallowed a roll of sleeping pills in an attempt at suicide. He survived, but was haunted by anxiety and depression.”

Knowing this, I wonder if Muller’s need for recognition and his resentment of Morgan, who received the Nobel Prize for his work on fruit fly genetics in 1933, might have caused him to hide the work of Ernst Caspari and others because it would have jeopardised his “fifteen minutes of fame.”

Muller received his Nobel Prize in 1946, but his deception has promoted the fear of all forms of radiation, however feeble. In addition, it has caused the deaths of millions and accelerated Climate Change by stunting the growth of CO₂-free nuclear power, which has required us to burn huge amounts of polluting,health-damaging coal, oil and natural gas.

(Muller’s claim that tiny amounts of radiation are cumulative is like arguing that 50 jumps off of a one-foot step will be as damaging as one jump from a 50-foot cliff.)

For the great enemy of the truth is often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
US President John F Kennedy 1960-1963

“To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than in philosophy or religion.” Ruth Hubbard

Due largely to LNT, only a few new nuclear power plants have been designed and built since the NRC was created. There are at least 1,000 papers that prove LNT wrong—all of them ignored by NRC and EPA. On average the NRC creates one new regulation per day, and it can cost a billion dollars just to get approval for a test reactor of a new design.

Coming up next week, Episode 7 – Beer and Bananas.

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 7 – Beer and Bananas
2. Previous Episode – Episode 5 – The Big Melt and the Acid Bath
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Man
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Caspari
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Calabrese
14. https://www.umass.edu/sphhs/person/edward-j-calabrese
15. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-calabrese-697a1119/
16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rKQ-OPmjE4
17. https://www.umass.edu/news/article/new-calabrese-paper-continues-criticism
18. https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/education/radiations-big-lie/
19. National Academy Of Sciences ‘Misled The World’
20. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110920163320.htm
21. US Risk Assessment Policy: A History of Deception” by Edward Calabrese
22. https://ncrponline.org/2018-council-members/
23. https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-boice-29b91a14/
24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_Mukherjee
25. https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddhartha-mukherjee-19b6b8126/
26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Hubbard
27. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1559325818779651
28. https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/low-level-radiation-benefits-human-health
29. https://21sci-tech.com/articles/nuclear.html
30. https://radiationeffects.org/
31. https://www.x-lnt.org/
32. Molly Cheshire Interviews Scientist on Radon and LOW Cancer Rates!
33. https://atomicinsights.com/atomic-show-224-dr-john-boice-ncrp/
34. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/
35. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27493264/
36. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29475999/
37. https://bimedis.com/latest-news/browse/217/reexamining-the-linear-no-threshold-model

#ClimateChange #UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #FossilFuels #LinearNoThreshold

February 12, 2022
The Danger of Hype – Why Fusion is getting a bad name

Author Jeremiah Josey

It’s unfortunately when good science is spun to create bad press.

Fusion is nowhere near a solution. In the very same article Qout (thermal and not electrical) is 11 MW. Qin is 1 GW. Hence Q = 0.011.

It’s just media hype, BBC style. Europe’s ITER has collected Euro 65b of public money on the fusion lie. Well not a lie, but misinformation. To maintain funding. If politicians – and the handful of duped investors – really new the science it would be given a few million, but that’s a digression…

From the data in the BBC/Oxford/JET article the ratio of energy out to energy in is only 1.1%, and only for 11 seconds…

Q= 0.011

Hype.

One suspects BBC/Oxford trying something similar to collect some of the billions going into UK fission projects for the JET project. There’s 300 scientists working on JET after all.

(Point to note: 14,000 people worked on the first molten salt project in 1954. It’s not because they didn’t have iPads).

The downside of hyping such projects is it delays public acceptance of fission (the same way the fossil fuel industry plays the green renewable card to the public).

Most investors are more savvy – it’s their purpose to be savvy. Eg, now Bill Gates, and of course the Turkish, Chinese, Russians and French.

Note that ITER is aiming for Q-Plasma parity. Not Q-Total… A small detail even the director of ITER opening ignores, and I am sure an ignorance he promotes. What’s his budget after all? Watch the YouTube in this article:

Fusion is here, today, tomorrow, maybe…

Here’s the original BBC article:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60312633

#fusion #ITER #jet #fission #science

Whilst it’s not our focus – ours is production of energy using Molten Salt Fission Energy technology and Thorium – we’ve found it appropriate for a couple of focused articles – this one on JET and one on ITER – to highlight the inappropriate gap between the science and the spin. Both articles are be found here.

This spin on fusion distracts from real progress on carbon free power production for our societies. It diverts attention from real technologies. It confuses the public. It diverts public money – and a few duped private investors – who, given full knowledge, would provide their support to such projects more judiciously.

For more comprehensive study on the inadequacies of fusion for power production we refer you to the work of Steven B. Krivit and this site New Energy Times.

February 10, 2022
Going Backwards with Wind and Solar

Author Jeremiah Josey

So, let’s go back to basics. Energy = Life. I don’t think anyone disagrees. More energy = more life, and for humans, it means a better society. There are ample studies on this, but we do like to study the obvious, don’t we. It’s the not-so-obvious that this post is about.

Specifically, let’s talk about the ratio of energy obtained compared to the effort expended to obtain that energy in the first place. Hence let’s define EROI: Energy Return on Investment. EROI is far more encompassing than ROI or LCOE. I’ll leave it to others to explain those two. EROI provides “full boundary enclosure” – and that means you include the entire planet – to properly assess the impact and suitability of an energy system. The evidence of this can be described through an empirical timeline of humanity. For an eon of human development no fire meant an EROI ranging from 1 (let’s call it one human power -> direct effort in = direct effort out) to 4 (horses have about 4 times as much power as a human).

Then fire is harnessed. What happens? Civilisations are born. Massive growth in population and subsequently culture, technology and thus quality of life. The EROI? It’s between 7 and 12 for burning biomass (i.e. trees). It depends on the water content, cell density etc. It turns out that the magic number for humans to Thrive is about 7:1. Seven is the bare minimum for a society to move from survival to thriving. Otherwise the search effort for energy is too much for anything more than a simple lifestyle (Think: Inuit, Australian Aboriginals, or American Indians, et al).

Another eon passes, and coal is harnessed. With an EROI of 30:1 suddenly there’s excess energy. What happened? The Industrial Revolution. Steel production. Steam power. Drill bits, oil derricks and…. oil… Rocket ship stuff.

Oil: with an EROI of 80:1 what a panacea it became! (Saving the whales along the way – another story for another day). But hold your breath because burning oil stinks and so does coal.

The story is almost done.

With such a high EROI (80:1) our civilisation truly becomes global. And… we are able to develop Fission Energy! (Nuclear for those not in the know). Solid fission is about 75:1, so again incredible and just perfect for our civilisation – no CO2 is produced. Unfortunately, oil had already a 100 year head start and the piles of money stashed away were quite ready, willing and able to snuff out any competitor. Which they did with great efficaciousness. (That’s another story too).

So, that’s the short story of humanity based on energy, but more importantly EROI – Energy Return on Investment.

What is the EROI of solar? Check the chart below. It’s 1.6:1. Not good. What about wind? 3.9:1. Not good either. These systems do produce energy and yes, a house, a village, perhaps a city can be “green” using only wind and solar. But their neighbours take the burden of everything that can’t be made in that society. Because nothing can work at such a low EROI, except providing for a nice simple lifestyle. Even food production will suffer.

If the entire world switched to EROIs below 7, the net result will be a generational decline in living standards for everyone. This is actually impossible, as there are many who understand EROI. There are however countries that will try to do it. The impacts can be seen after only 20 years in Germany.

Now let me introduce an EROI of 2000:1…

Author Jeremiah Josey
Founder and CEO
The Thorium Network

#wind #solar #eroi #moltensaltfission

February 7, 2022
Episode 5 – The Big Melt and The Acid Bath – Unintended Consequences – Chapter 1
Post by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

“The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution destabilizing Earth’s marine environment is brought to heel.”
United Nations Draft IPCC Report, 2019

https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.3/south-colorado-river-will-the-climate-crisis-tap-out-the-colorado-river

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/29/leaked-un-draft-report-warns-rising-warming-oceans-poised-unleash-misery-worldwide?

Lake Meed – Not Enough

Nabraska – Too Much

In 1866, Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, estimated that doubling our Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide would raise its temperature by 9 degrees F, which is why CO2 and its “associates” are called greenhouse gases (GHG).

Svante Arrhenius

Then, in 1958, Dr. Charles Keeling, the American chemist and oceanographer began to record the level of atmospheric CO2 at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, which, being 10,300 feet above sea level and far out in the Pacific Ocean, avoided misleading data from mainland sources that could skew his research. Although Keeling proved that CO2 levels were soaring, his work had little influence for more than 20 years.

Acting like blankets, greenhouse gases limit how much of the Earth’s heat can escape into space. If the blanket becomes too thin for too long, too much heat escapes, and an Ice Age follows. However, if it thickens excessively, as it already has, too much heat is trapped, and the Earth develops a fever.

If we give water vapor a rating of 1, carbon dioxide would rate a 5, but methane, (CH4 – the primary component of natural gas), is initially 80 times worse than CO2, averaging 20 times worse as it slowly oxidizes to CO2 and H2O, which takes decades.

However, despite the fact that CO2 is 5 times more potent than water on a molecule to molecule basis, water vapor is a more powerful accelerator of climate change because there is a lot more water vapor, and as the planet warms, even more is created. That extra water vapor traps additional heat, which raises ocean and land temperatures even higher.

A list of Travesty, part 1:
For millions of years, our planet has been nurtured by a gassy comforter that, like Goldilocks’ bed, has been just right. Those gases have served us well, especially since the last Ice Age, varying only a little while periodically providing nothing worse than a string of harsh winters or abnormally hot summers before returning to normal. That has changed, and the rate of change is rapidly increasing.

Thanks to air trapped in ice from Greenland and Antarctica, we know that the level of atmospheric CO2 has been hovering near 280 parts per million (ppm) since the age of the dinosaurs. However, that number slowly began to rise about 250 years ago when the Industrial Revolution allowed us to burn increasing amounts of carbon. By 1950, atmospheric CO2 levels had reached 300 ppm.

Spurred on by increasing industrialization and burgeoning populations, that number reached 421 ppm in May, 2021. Now that we are no longer hampered by an anti-environment President, his carbon-loving, anti-science cabinet and a badly distracted Congress, we can and must elevate planet above profit if we and the environment that supports us are to survive.

As temperatures rise, heat-reflecting snow and ice become water, which absorbs 90% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) heat and creates water vapor. Warming the oceans increases their volume, which will bring coastal flooding plus serious economic and social upheaval.
Nevertheless, Florida’s Governors have ordered employees to avoid discussing climate change, and Miami is launching a building boom despite street flooding from increasingly higher tides.

The loss of snow and ice exposes land, which, as it warms, produces more water vapor, which brings heavier rains and stronger thunderstorms and tornadoes. In addition, our warming planet will experience a decrease of snowfall, which will reduce the mountain runoff needed to replenish reservoirs that store precious water for agricultural, industrial and personal use.

As the land-based ice in the Antarctic and Greenland melts, rising sea levels will destroy coastal cities, create millions of refugees and cause civil unrest. The insurance industry knows this, and it has already begun to adjust its rates.

Rising seas will displace 300 million people by 2050
International Panel on Climate Change

A list of Travesty, part 2:
The world is at its hottest for at least 12,000 years
The Guardian, 2021

For eons, Nature has relied on three primary methods to capture CO2. The first is photosynthesis by forests, crops and ocean plants that range from huge kelp “forests” to tiny phytoplankton, but we are clear-cutting forests equal in area to West Virginia every year while polluting our oceans. The second also involves the oceans, which can absorb huge amounts of CO2, and the third depends on CO2-hungry basalts that have been stripped of their carbon dioxide by the heat of volcanoes.

However, adding CO2 to water creates carbonic acid, which impedes the formation of the calcium carbonate shells of crabs, shrimp, lobsters, oysters, scallops, and most importantly, tiny organisms like the phytoplankton that comprise the foundation of the ocean food chain.

Acidifying our oceans is already causing greater damage than sea level rise, and it will have far more serious consequences.

We now have evidence that the concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will, within a few decades, equal those that caused the Permian extinction that occurred some 250 million years ago – when more than 90% of all oceanic species died due largely to huge eruptions of CO2 and methane in Siberia.

Because these conditions developed over hundreds of thousands of years, many organisms had time to evolve, but our anthropogenic (human-caused) Climate Change, being much more rapid, will leave too little time for many species to evolve. (The Cretaceous-Paleogene die-off 56 million years ago also followed a significant drop in the pH of the oceans.)

Like it or not, the problems we face are the direct result of our creating 2.1 trillion tons of Industrial Age CO2, to which we are adding 50 billion tons per year. Only 1/3 of that CO2 has dissolved in our seas, and as the remainder is absorbed, our oceans will become even more acidic (less alkaline) and increasingly hostile to life.

In April, 2021, atmospheric CO2 levels reached 418 ppm.

Our oceans have been slightly basic for millions of years, having an average pH of 8.2. (7.0 is neutral, being neither acid nor basic). However, in the last 250 years, our excesses of CO2 have made our oceans more acidic as their pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1.

That might seem trivial, but because the pH scale is logarithmic, not linear, this represents a large increase toward acidity, and a pH of 8.0 or 7.9 couldl mean death to many species, including phytoplankton, and near-death to the oceans that provide 20% of our protein and 50% of our oxygen.

Even if we stop burning carbon today, we will still have almost 1.2 trillion tons of excess, man-made CO2 in our atmosphere to deal with. It is no exaggeration to say that we only have about 15 years, not decades, to prevent the next 0.1 drop in pH.

Billion Dollar Black Out Climate Disasters

“It is not up for debate: It is a cold, hard fact that both climate change and ocean deoxygenation are happening.”
Ocean Scientists for Informed Policy

Horrifying Study Finds that the Ocean is on its Way
to Suffocating by 2030 – by A. Haro – The Inertia

If we continue on the road we are on, the oceans could begin to suffocate in 15 years.
Matt Long, National Center for Atmospheric Research

A list of Travesty, part 3:
- Ocean Deoxygenation And Its Effect On The Marine Ecosystem
- Sea Life in the Pacific Ocean Will Start to Suffocate by 2030 Thanks to Climate Change
- Study Finds Ocean Acidification Rate is Highest in 300 Million Years, CO2 is Culprit
Since 1980, we have melted 72% of the Arctic’s ice, and in 2014, scientists at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who monitor the rate of arctic melting reported that at least 50 cubic miles of the Greenland ice sheet melted during just 2013. And in early April, 2017, the Coast Guard International Ice Patrol, which tracks icebergs, sighted 450, which is far more than the historical average of 83 in the same area at that same time of year.

US Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy Expedition 2021

Icebergs
As the Arctic warms, the tree line is slowly moving north, as are robins, black bears and a host of “southern” insects. I have seen these changes and many more.

Beginning in 1961, I spent parts of the next 38 summers “bush flying” in northern Canada and Alaska. There, winters are now at least five weeks shorter than they were just 50 years ago, and the shrinking ice pack is leaving many polar bears insufficient time to fatten up on seals, with some bears coming off of the springtime ice severely underweight. Some are drowning, having become too weak to survive what was once an easy 100-mile swim to shore for a healthy bear.

Kerstin Langenberger

Once ashore, these weakened bears face a new hazard: Grizzly bears are expanding their range, and even a healthy polar bear is no match for a grizzly.

When the winter of 2016 began, the North Pole was 36 degrees F above normal, and in July, 2017, an ice shelf the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica.

With NOAA reporting that 2019 was, globally, the hottest year ever recorded, (with arctic temperatures running as high as 16 degrees F above normal), and that 2020 has been the hottest on record, what hope is there for these magnificent animals – and for many other species that are not as photogenic or obvious? In March, 2020, Antarctica broke previous records with a high of 68 degrees F.

In Oregon, Washington and British Colombia, oyster farmers must now add lime to their tanks of ocean water to counter its increasing acidity. And according to the World Wildlife Fund, over fishing just between 1970 and 2014 has reduced the number of fish and other ocean species by 50%, with tuna and mackerel down by 74%. In addition, several new studies show that even current levels of oceanic CO₂ can even “intoxicate” fish, which can impact their ability to survive.

Plankton Surface Mass

The year scale in this image ranges from 1850 to 2100. The dark blue line shows decreasing pH – increasing acidity – and the green line reveals the decrease in carbonate available for making shells. In the chart, “NOW” is 2014. We will be farther down the dark blue line when you read this book.

In 2014, Canadian scientists discovered that the volume of arctic phytoplankton had dropped an alarming 40% since 1950, and since then it has continued to drop by 1% per year.

Why should we care about these tiny organisms? Because phytoplankton provide the base of the food pyramid that sustains most oceanic life, and no phytoplankton will eventually mean “no fish.” In addition, as previously noted, phytoplankton produce 50% of our oxygen and consume most of the carbon- dioxide we produce by using carbonates to build their shells.

When they die, their tiny shells accumulate on the ocean floor, eventually becoming limestone – the end result of the most effective carbon sequestration process on earth. That process can sequester a billion tons of CO₂ per year, which sounds impressive, but, as noted earlier, we are emitting 50 billion tons of CO₂ every year. Worse yet, since prehistoric times, the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere has declined by a third, almost entirely due to deforestation and the decrease in phytoplankton.

Deepwater Horizon Phytoplankton

Dungeness Crabs

Healthy North Sea larvae on left side, sick on the right

Carbon emissions are acidifying the ocean so rapidly that the seafloor is disintegrating.
National Academy of Science, 2018

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is 50% dead. Caribbean corals are 80% dead (PBS May, 2021). By 2050, shellfish calcification and survival could become impossible. Our carbon dioxide emission rate is even greater than the volcanic emission rate that caused the Permian extinction 250 million years ago when the world lost 90% of its species.

A list of Travesty, part 4:
- The North Pole is an insane 20C warmer than normal as winter descends
- Earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it’s going to get worse
- Ocean Acidification Is Literally Dissolving The Shells Of Dungeness Crabs
- Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton
- What is a dead zone?
- Ocean Acidification Threatens Entire Ecosystems
- Latest numbers show at least 5 metres sea-level rise locked in
- Dahr Jamail | Great Barrier Reef Reaches “Terminal Stage” as CO2 Levels Rise at Record Rate
- Scientists say a dramatic worldwide coral bleaching is now underway
- Great Barrier Reef Suffered Worst Coral Die-Off on Record in 2016
Even if we find a way to emit less CO2 than is being absorbed, our oceans will continue to acidify because the CO2 we have already created will persist in our atmosphere for hundreds of years, and in the oceans for tens of thousands of years, which is why we must develop some form of corrective geo-engineering. However, that will require huge amounts of CO2-free, non-polluting nuclear power.

Demystifying ocean acidification and biodiversity impacts

Reducing acidification must become a worldwide priority if we are to avoid a life-changing oceanic and humankind disaster. Extinctions of sea life are certain if we do nothing.

Acidic Oceans: Why Should We Care?

“We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get around photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All of these mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say that we choose death.”
Barbara Ward

Potential Remedies by Dr. Alex Cannara

1. Mimic the natural carbon sequestration process of the oceans: Use CO₂-free, highly efficient nuclear energy to heat limestone or dolomite to release lime (calcium oxide and magnesium oxide), which we distribute across the ocean to neutralize the carbonic acid. The CO₂ produced when limestone is heated would be sequestered in porous basalt, with which it chemically combines. Refining enough lime from limestone will require about 900 1-Gigawatt (GW) nuclear plants, and that’s only enough to neutralize our present emissions.

[A team led by Dr. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, used an alkaline substance to alter the chemistry of seawater at a small atoll in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The resulting decrease in seawater acidity mimicked pre-industrial ocean conditions – so this remedy could work.]

Coral Reef Islands

[If we had adopted the Atomic Energy Commission’s 1962 recommendation to expand nuclear power, we’d already have those nuclear plants, we’d have created less CO2, and we’d have saved MILLIONS of lives that have been lost due to carbon-related pollution.]

2. Spread finely ground basalt into the oceans. Basalt, which is created by volcano1es, is “carbon hungry,” so basalt would remove CO₂ from the oceans. Lime and basalt, being basic, would assist shell formation by neutralizing the carbonic acid. Volcanic ash, which is primarily powdered basalt, can also be used to improve soil quality, so scattering “powdered” basalt across farm fields could help remove the excess carbon dioxide from our troubled atmosphere.

To Combat Climate Change, Researchers Want to Pull Carbon Dioxide From the Ocean and Turn It Into Rock

“Our current anthropogenic carbon dump rate is about 33.4 gigatons of CO₂/year. Each ton of powdered basalt can “fix” about 0.2 tons of carbon (0.73 tons CO₂), so we’ll need to mine, grind, and disperse about 46 billion tons of basalt powder/yr to keep up with our current CO₂ dump rate (about the total amount of sand & gravel now mined/yr). At 100 kWhr/ton, the power needed to convert that much rock to powder would require the electrical output of 500, 1 GWe nuclear reactors. However, basalt contains many minerals, some of which might be harmful to sea life, so basalt might have to yield to lime, which is as natural as the organisms that incorporate it in their carbonate shells and skeletons. In any case, marine biologists should oversee these actions and the production of the materials.

Enhanced chemical weathering as a geoengineering strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, supply nutrients, and mitigate ocean acidification

“For this to work on land, fields should be warm, watered, tilled and biologically active. The world’s 400 million acres of rice fields seem to fit that bill. Land currently devoted to corn and soybean production would probably also be suitable.

“This approach is more affordable than scenarios that invoke electrochemistry or the calcination of limestone. In addition, it would appeal to countries that want to increase agricultural productivity.

3. “Pump water and CO₂ from the air into the basalt that underlies huge areas of the globe. The volcanic basalt, will combine with the carbonic acid to LOCK UP the CO_2. This is not same as just pumping compressed CO₂ down a hole and hoping it stays there.“Iceland studies reveal that up to about 150 pounds of CO₂ can be stored in just one cubic meter of basalt, and if we could also apply this process to the basalt in ocean ridges, we could sequester the 5,000 Gigatons of CO₂ created by burning all of the fossil fuel on Earth. If this were done worldwide, it could drastically shorten the timescale of carbon trapping. Instead of taking centuries, CO₂-trapping via basalt carbonation could be completed within a few decades, but it will require huge amounts of CO₂-free electrical power.” In 2017, scientists at Caltech and USC found a way to speed up part of the reaction that helps sequester CO2 as limestone in the ocean. By adding the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, the researchers made the sequestering process proceed 500 times faster, and in 2018, a new process for sequestering carbon dioxide in concrete was developed.

Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think

We must also electrify cement making, which requires huge amounts of energy, by using electricity generated by CO₂– free nuclear power, then sequester the CO₂ released during the process in basalt and use the lime to assist the ocean.

To summarize: Our planet’s ocean life can sequester a billion tons of CO₂ per year by making shells, skeletons, limestone, etc. However, the 1/3 of the 2 trillion tons that the ocean has already absorbed has already lowered ocean pH close to extinction levels for many organisms.

Ocean warming has worsened the threat, and 2050, not 2100, is the key oceanic end-of-life date, and this doesn’t include the warming caused by methane liberated by thawing permafrost and sub-sea methane hydrates.

Therefore, getting CO₂ levels down to 350 is probably meaningless if we don’t protect ocean chemistry.

To sequester CO2 one must chemically remove about 500 CO2 molecules from every 1,000,000 molecules of air – and then store them FOREVER.

We will also need to connect the removal sources to basalt formations that permanently store CO2 as rock. Then, we must address methane leakage, which is adding about 200 ppm of equivalent CO2 to the air because our natural gas wells and our porous distribution systems are leaking so severely.

We must get serious. Our yearly 40+ trillion tons of CO2 emissions have already brought ocean chemistry 2/3 of the way to the death of the oceans that create 50 % of our oxygen.

Bad news: If we add the effects of methane leaking from fracking wells and our porous distribution system, and methane released from thawing permafrost, our May, 2021 CO₂ level of 421 ppm would, in effect, be over 500.

More bad news: Because humans cool their bodies by sweating, rising heat and humidity will increase stress while decreasing comfort and efficiency. Further increases will cause medical issues that can even be fatal.

Even more bad news: 50 % of the Arctic’s shallow permafrost is predicted to thaw by 2100. As it does, some of its 40 million gallons of previously immobilized, hazardous mercury will be released into the polar ocean and the atmosphere.

At least 30,000 plant and animal species are threatened with extinction.
Center for Biological Diversity, 2020

A list of Travesty, part 5:
- As Nuclear Struggles, A New Generation Of Engineers Is Motivated By Climate Change
- Ocean Shock – Reuters reveals the climate crisis beneath the waves. Driven by warming waters, marine life is on the move — and life on land is forever change
- The Next Disaster Coming to the Great Plains
- When Rising Seas Transform Risk into Certainty
- Think Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will Do
- Warming climate will displace millions in coming decades: World Bank
- U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says
Climate Forecast: World Is “Sleepwalking into Catastrophe”
Scientific American, 2019

In 1942, the St Roch became the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage from West to East, but it took the small, shallow-draft vessel 2 years.

Large ship travel through the Passage is now common.

What we have been doing is like “taking a one-week fling, and, in the process, contracting a horrible disease.”
Bill McKibben

Dr. James Hansen, former chief climate scientist at NASA, now chief climate scientist at Columbia University, is well known for bringing definitive evidence of global warming to Congress in 1988:

“Environmentalists and world leaders must accept nuclear power now to avoid catastrophic climate change…Mass species extinction, extreme weather events, dry spells and fires are climate change impacts which are happening now.

“A warmer atmosphere and warmer oceans can lead to stronger storms,” he explained. (Superstorm Sandy, for example, remained a hurricane all the way up the Eastern seaboard to New York because Atlantic waters were abnormally warm.)

Planet is trapping almost twice as much heat in atmosphere as it did 15 years ago.
NASA, 2021

“Amplifying impacts” and feedback loops will accelerate the changes, says Hansen. “It will happen faster than you think,” he said. (If major coastal cities become dysfunctional because of sea level rise, which he believes is possible, the global economy could be in peril of collapse.)

A list of Travesty, part 6:
Arctic Warning

Oregon

Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money.
– Cree Indian Proverb

Want to stop climate change? It’s easy: Embrace the nuclear option.

Coming up next week, Episode 6 – The Big Melt and The Acid Bath.

Links and References
#ClimateChange #UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #FossilFuels
February 5, 2022
One Day in 2050 – A New Dawn Comes

Author Jeremiah Josey

This piece was written as part of the oneday2050.org program, created by Jaume Enciso Cachafeiro of Sabadell, Catalonia, Spain. Reach out to Jaume if you want also to contribute.

“Our minds are the most powerful tools we have. Applied correctly, we can achieve anything”
Jeremiah Josey

The sun rises and over a verdant green vista. My home awakes me with the gentle sounds of birds and the curtains slightly to let in the Eastern rising sun. I motion with my hand and the curtains fully open. Other folk have the electrostatic polymer window panes installed but I still like the feel and texture of a material window covering. Even if it is 100% fabricated from grown polymer fibres. Through my windows I see the tops of thousands of trees lit by the brilliant, new, fresh gold of the morning sun. These trees are less than 30 years old and spread as far as I can see.

I also see 5 other residential towers like the one I’m in. Each is 1,000 metres high and with the same 10,000 apartments. All are connected beneath the trees by boulevards and underground maglev personnel pods and shuttle carriages. I can also see the faint steam coming up from several areas among the tees.

That’s why I live here. Cheap electrical energy, and thermal domestic heating. 10 times less than even the cheapest fossil fuel from 30 years ago. Hidden beneath the trees and 20 metres of earth are tiny power generators driven by Thorium Molten Salt Fission Technology. I had a small hand in that – I was one of the scientists in the early design teams.

Safe, clean and green. The power units are entirely replaced every 20 years – even though they have a lifespan of 30. These power units are second generation already. Maybe 40 years they can be here. No overhead cables. No step down transformers. No cooling towers. No fuel lines. No coal conveyor belts. No waste heaps. Wow, what a change.

The supercritical CO2 turbo-machinery was developed by Mitsubishi and Siemens. They are tiny and work for decades with no maintenance. Heck, we are even using Stirling cycle machines in 3 of the power units. Maybe we’ll switch over soon for all of them.

This device produces the same energy output as the one behind. That’s the power of Super Critical CO2

Power generation in 2050 has become easy. No more oil wars, oil blockades, gas transit or border disputes. Each country has access to technology as common as the once common internal combustion engine.

Thankfully Elon Musk finally killed that infernal fossil driven machine 20 years ago. It’s all electric from here – neutrons to electrons. Everyone is happy. There’s still lots to do: millions have had to move because of rising sea levels. At least now we can build it right.

https://www.sustainable-carbon.org/report/power-generation-from-coal-using-supercritical-co2-cycle-ccc-280/

https://www.tradewindsnews.com/insight/melting-caramel-in-a-pan-the-science-of-molten-salt-reactors/2-1-903198

https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornls-qualls-tapped-key-new-reactor-development-position

https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornls-qualls-tapped-key-new-reactor-development-position

https://www.ornl.gov/molten-salt-reactor/history

https://www.designrulz.com/solar-energy-trees/

https://www.yankodesign.com/2011/04/26/2011-evolo-magazine-skyscraper-competition-finalists/

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/04/ge-has-prototype-10-megawatt.html

https://madan.org.il/en/news/futuristic-green-city-china

Nautilus Eco-Resort

https://www.evolo.us/architecture/laminated-wood-skyscraper-in-brazil/

https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/d6538a2a-0f90-4a6d-aaf6-89ca56e3d3a3/

Authored by Jeremiah Josey
Founder and CEO of The Thorium Network

References

1. https://www.oneday2050.org/participants
2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaume-enciso-cachafeiro/
3. Media content: https://mcusercontent.com/05029fefeb09e61eff7ed3715/files/8f938462-404b-3c76-49f3-92d6cf01cce9/10_07_Jeremiah_Josey_ENG_TEC.pdf
4. https://www.powermag.com/first-commercial-deployment-of-supercritical-co2-power-cycle-taking-shape-in-alberta/
5. GE’s 10MW Supercitical CO2 https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/04/ge-has-prototype-10-megawatt.html
6. Doug Hofer https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-hofer-561a1919/
7. Vitali Lissianski https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitali-lissianski-06387827/
8. https://madan.org.il/en/news/futuristic-green-city-china
9. https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/d6538a2a-0f90-4a6d-aaf6-89ca56e3d3a3/
10. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/singapores-futuristic-gardens/article11674777/
11. https://www.yankodesign.com/2011/04/26/2011-evolo-magazine-skyscraper-competition-finalists/
12. https://www.ornl.gov/molten-salt-reactor/history
13. https://futurism.com/tree-skyscrapers-underwater-restaurants-most-futuristic-designs-year
14. https://www.sustainable-carbon.org/report/power-generation-from-coal-using-supercritical-co2-cycle-ccc-280/

February 1, 2022
Episode 4 – Fossil Fuel Frolics – Unintended Consequences

Post by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

What’s the Fossil Fuel Record? Millions of Air Pollution Deaths each year
Because the carbon industries are heavily subsidised, one might expect them to have exemplary safety and social records, but one would be wrong!

According to the Guardian (2021-10-21) “The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by USD 5.9tn in 2020″ Or USD 11 million a minute every day. This is according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has noted before that existing fossil fuel subsidies overwhelmingly go to the rich, with the wealthiest 20% of people getting six times as much as the poorest 20% in low and middle-income countries.

In 2006, the Sago coal mine disaster killed 12. A few years later, a West Virginia coal mine explosion killed 29. In May 2014, 240 miners died in a Turkish coal mine.

The ash derived from burning coal averages 80,000 pounds per American lifetime. Compare that to two pounds of nuclear “waste” for the same amount of electricity. The world’s 1,200 largest coal-fired plants cause 30,000 premature U.S. deaths every year plus hundreds of thousands of cases of lung and heart diseases.

Normal Operations – Ash from Coal Fired Power Station – Tennessee Valley Authority

Generating the 20% of U.S. electricity with nuclear power saves our atmosphere from being polluted with 177 million tons of greenhouse gases every year, but despite the increasing consequences of Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, the burning of carbon to make electricity is still rising.

Scientific American, 13 Dec 2007: “Coal-fired plants expel mercury, arsenic, uranium, radon, cyanide and harmful particulates while exposing us to 100 times more radiation than nuclear plants that create no CO₂. In fact, coal ash is more radioactive than any emission from any operating nuclear plant.” How Coal Kills 17 Feb 2015

US Health Burden from Fossil Fuels

In one year, a CO₂-free, 1,000 MW nuclear plant creates about 500 cu ft of spent fuel that can be recycled to retrieve useful U-238, reducing its bulk by about 90%. (An average U. S. bathroom is about that size.) In that same year, a 1,000 MW coal plant creates 65,000 tons of CO₂ plus enough toxic ash to cover an entire football field to a height of at least 200 feet.

Every year, we store 140 million tons of coal ash in unlined or poorly lined landfills and tailing ponds. In 2008, five million tons of toxic ash burst through a Tennessee berm (see below), destroying homes and fouling lakes and rivers.

Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards 2008

Coal-fired power plants leak more toxic pollution into America’s waters than any other industry. (A June, 2013 test found that arsenic levels leaking from unlined coal ash ponds were 300 times the safety level for drinking water.)

And in 2014, North Carolina’s Duke Energy’s plant (now bankrupt) “spilled” 9,000 tons of toxic coal ash sludge into the Dan River. Why do they always say “spilled” – never “gushed?”

Duke Ash Spill Dan River 2014

Coal companies like to promote their supposedly “clean coal,” which really means “not quite so filthy,” but despite making an attempt at carbon capture and storage (CCS) at a new power plant in Saskatchewan, the plant has been a failure. (Burning fossil fuels causes 4.5 million early deaths per year.)

CO2 Sequestration Critique by The Juice Media 2 Sept 2021

CO₂ removal devices use natural gas or electricity, which is usually generated by burning carbon. The moral hazard of removing CO₂ from the air is that it justifies burning fossil fuels.

Technology to Make Clean Energy from Coal is Stumbling in Practice
An electrical plant in Saskatchewan was the great hope for industries that burn coal.
In the first large-scale project of its kind, the plant was equipped with a technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust and bury it, transforming coal into a cleaner power source. In the months after opening, the utility and the government declared the project an unqualified success, but the USD 1.1 billion project is now looking like a dream.

Known as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the project has been plagued by shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an unresolved problem with its core technology. The costs, too, have soared, requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs.

“At the outset, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member of the legislature who released confidential internal documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster….”

New York Times by Ian Austen, 29 March 2016, Ottawa

Even modern, 75% efficient coal-burners with thirty-year lifespans can’t compete with nuclear plants that have lifespans of 60 years and provide CO2-free power at 90% efficiency, and the new plants are even safer. In addition, our coal reserves will last 100 years at best. And as we “decarbonize”, we will require increasing amounts of electricity, and the only source of economical CO₂-free, 24/7 power must be our new, super-safe, highly efficient nuclear reactors that cannot melt down.

Note: The word “efficiency,” AKA “capacity factor,” in this book means the amount of electricity created over an extended period by wind, solar, etc. compared to their maximum power rating. Unfortunately, the maximum power rating is often used to sell the project. For nuclear reactors, this figure is at least 90%, but it is 33% for windmills and just 19 -22% for pv solar – and solar panel efficiency degrades by 1% per year during their short, 20 year lifespan. (Thermal efficiency is a separate matter.)

When a gas pipeline exploded in 2010 at San Bruno, California, 8 people died, 35 homes were levelled and dozens more were damaged. In 2016, a federal government report stated that natural gas explosions cause heavy property damage, often with deaths, about 180 times per year – that’s every other day.

In 2010, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico “spilled” 200 million gallons of oil and killed 11 workers and 800,000 birds. Prior to that, an explosion at a Texas BP refinery killed fifteen workers. And BP, which was also involved in the Exxon Valdez “spill” in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, is just one of the many oil companies that we subsidise with USD 2.4 billion every year.

“‘Evolution is driven by the tendency of all organisms to expand their habitat and exploit the available resources… Just as bacteria in a Petri dish grow until they have consumed all of the nutrients, and then die in a toxic soup of their own waste.”
William Ophuls

Later in 2010, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured in Michigan, eventually “spilling” more than a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River. When monitors at the Alberta office reported that the line pressure had fallen to zero, control room staff dismissed the warning as a false alarm and cranked up the pressure twice, which worsened the disaster. In 2018, Enbridge’s “cleanup” was still incomplete.

800 Mile Oil Spill Alaska 1989

Alabama Oil Train Crash 2013

Alberta Waste Oil Spill 2014

Aliso Canyon Methane Leak 2014

Bird in Oil Alaska 1989

Enbridge Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Spill Kalamazoo 2010

Fire at BP Deepwater Horizon 2010

Lac Megantic Quebec Oil Train Crash 2013

Mayflower, Arkansas Exxon Oil Spill 2016

Oil Train Derailment in New Brunswick, Canada 2014

Ramsey Natural Gas Processing Plant in Orla, Texas 2015

San Bruno Gas Pipeline Explosion 2010

In 2013, a spectacular train wreck dumped 2 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil into Lac Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 residents and incinerating the centre of the town – but that’s just another page in the endless petroleum tale that includes Exxon’s disastrous, 2016 “spill” in Mayflower, Arkansas, that received scant notice from the press.

New Scientist – Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power

And in November 2013, a train loaded with 2.7 million gallons of crude oil went incendiary in Alabama, followed in December by a North Dakota conflagration.

2014 began with a fiery derailment in New Brunswick, Canada, and in October 2014, 625,000 liters of oil and toxic mine-water were “spilled” in Alberta.

July, August and September brought Alberta’s autumn, 2014 total to 90 pipeline “spills.” 2015 brought four, fiery oil train wrecks just by March, and 2016 delivered two Alabama pipeline explosions – one close to Birmingham.

In late 2015, California’s horrific, Aliso Canyon methane “leak” (think “geyser”) erupted, spewing forth 100,000 tons of natural gas, the equivalent of approximately 3 billion gallons of gasoline or adding 500,000 cars to our roads for a year.

The Southern California Gas Company finally managed to throttle the geyser in February, 2016. Incidentally, Aliso’s 100,000 tons of “leakage” is just 25% of California’s allowed leakage, which is an indication of the political power of the natural gas industry. (Five months later, a new headline appeared: “Massive Fracking Explosion in New Mexico”)

The Aliso “leak” caused the loss of 70 billion cubic feet (BCF) of gas that California utilities count on to create electricity for the hot summer months. As a consequence, the California Independent Service Operator, which manages California’s grid, estimated that due to Aliso, 21 million customers should expect to be without power for 14 days during the summer.

Methane leaks offset much of the climate change benefits of natural gas, study says

According to Reuters, (June 2016), “SoCalGas uses Aliso Canyon to provide gas to power generators that cannot be met with pipeline flows alone on about 10 days per month during the summer, according to state agencies.”

However, during the summer, SoCalGas also strives to fill Aliso Canyon to prepare for the winter heating season. State regulators, however, subsequently ordered the company to reduce the amount of gas in Aliso to just 15 BCF and use that fuel to reduce the risk of power interruptions in the hot summer months of 2016. Fortunately, State regulators have also said that they won’t allow SoCalGas to inject fuel into the facility until the company has inspected all of its 114 storage facilities.

The Aliso disaster wiped out all of the state’s Green House Gas (GHG) reductions from its wind and solar systems – and led to a USD 1.8 billion judgement against SoCalGas in September, 2021. In 2016, California officials also reported leakage at a San Joachim County storage facility that was “similar to, or slightly above, background levels at other natural gas storage facilities.”

Dr. Alex Cannara, a California resident writes, “Combustion sources [unlike nuclear power], aren’t burdened with their true costs. Natural gas, for example, is not cheaper than nuclear or anything else. In 2016, our allowed leakage wipes wind/solar out by 4 times. In other words, ‘renewables’ in a gas state like California wipe out their benefits every 3 months because they depend on gas for most of their nameplate ratings. The Aliso storage was largely used to compensate for ‘renewables’ inevitable shortfall.“The most important combustion cost is the unlimited downside risk of its emissions for the entire planet, but in February 2016, our CEC approved 600MW of added gas burning in the San Diego region simply because the San Onofre nuclear plant wasn’t running, due to possibly corrupt actions by SoCla Gas, SCE, Sempra Energy and Edison Intl.

“Such practices were prevented for 75 years by the 1935 PUHCA, but the Bush administration repealed it in 2005 after decades of carbon combustion-interest lobbying. Some states – not California – passed legislation to correct for the 2005 PUHCA repeal.”

Dr. Alex Cannara

There’s more: In August, 2016, the Pennsylvania EPA admitted that oil and gas production in the state emitted as much methane as Aliso Canyon. The Aliso “leak” was deemed a disaster, but the hundreds of equally damaging Pennsylvania “leaks” were considered business as usual.

Finally, also in August, 2016, a thirty-inch pipeline exploded in southeast New Mexico, killing five adults and five children while leaving two other adults in critical condition in a Lubbock, Texas hospital.

All of this could have been avoided if, instead of pursuing intermittent, short-lived, carbon-dependent windmills and solar panels (Chapters 9 and 10), we had expanded safe, CO₂-free Nuclear Power.

Dr. Wade Allison, in Nuclear is For Life, wrote: “Critics of civilian nuclear power use what they fear might happen due to a nuclear failure – but never has – but ignore other accidents that have been far worse:
– The 1975 dam failure in China that killed 170,000;
– The 1984 chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India where 3,899 died and 558,000 were injured;
– The 1889, Johnstown. PA flood that drowned 2,200;
– The 1917 explosion of a cargo ship in Halifax, N. S. where 2,000 died and 9,000 were injured;
– Turkey’s 2014 coal mine accident that took 300 lives;
– The 2015 warehouse explosion in China that cost 173 lives. “

The list seems endless, but no one advocates destroying dams or closing chemical plants.

The way the world has reacted to the Fukushima accident has been the real disaster with huge consequences to the environment, but the accident itself was not.”

See more from Dr Alison here.

Dr Wade Alison

Nuclear is for Life by Wade Alison

“In California, defective, Japanese-built steam generators at the San Onofre plant could have been replaced for about USD 600 million, but the plant is being decommissioned at a cost of USD 4.5 billion because of Fukushima and anti-nuclear zealotry. The plant could be replaced with two, CO_2-free AP-1000 reactors for USD 14 Billion.” – Mike Conley

In this foolish way, California lost the CO₂-free electricity generated by San Onofre – 9% of California’s needs – which was replaced by carbon burning power plants and/or carbon-reliant wind and solar.

Nuclear plants are required to set aside part of their profits to pay the cost of decommissioning, but no such requirement is made of wind and solar farms. Neither are carbon companies required to pre-fund the removal of miles of pipelines, the cleanup of refinery sites, or the sealing of their abandoned wells.

Gas Industry Plans to Sink Nuclear Power

I repeat, NO ONE has died from radiation created by commercial nuclear power production in Western Europe, Asia or the Southern and Western hemispheres, but more than 2,000,000 people die prematurely every year from the burning of coal, gas, wood and oil.

If you REALLY care about safety, check this chart!

A 2019 study lowered the nuclear death rate from 0.0013 to 0.0007/Twh.

The original version of this chart, which rated nuclear power at 0.04 deaths per Terawatt hour, included thousands of LNT-predicted Chernobyl deaths that never happened.

As a consequence, this image, which reflects reality instead of LNT [Linear No Threshold] errors, reveals that nuclear power is far safer than initially thought, and that nuclear is actually 115 times safer than wind – not 4,340 times safer than solar – not 10, 3,000 times safer than natural gas, 27,000 times safer than oil – and coal is out of sight.

Comparing Daily Fuel requirements and CO2 production for a 1,000 MW Power Plant

Power Train Fuel Quantity Fuel Quantity (kg) CO2 Production (Tons)
Solid Fission (U232) 7 Pounds 3.2 Zero
Coal burning 9,000 tons 9,000,000 26,000
Natural Gas Burning 240,000,000 cu ft 4,621,309 15,210

Coming up next week, Episode 5 – The Big Melt and The Acid Bath.

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 5 – The Big Melt and The Acid Bath
2. Previous Episode – Episode 3 – The Preface
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds
8. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004
9. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2014-12-19/first-ever-national-coal-ash-regs-disappoint-missouri-environmentalists
10. https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants
11. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/
12. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/graphic-science-health-care-burden-of-fossil-fuels/
13. https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/duke-energy-pleads-guilty-to-environmental-crimes-in-north-carolina/
14. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/25sludge.html
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
16. https://www.thejuicemedia.com/
17. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/energy-environment/technology-to-make-clean-energy-from-coal-is-stumbling-in-practice.html
18. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/19/false-solution-500-groups-urge-us-canadian-leaders-reject-carbon-capture
19. https://www.nytimes.com/by/ian-austen
20. https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/15265-small-modular-reactors-generating-interest-among-municipalities-in-finland.html
21. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-austen-0a10a944/
22. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-cost-of-energy/
23. https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-ophuls-9b3171225/
24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ophuls
25. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Mayflower_oil_spill
27. https://www.ecowatch.com/massive-fracking-explosion-in-new-mexico-1919567359.html
28. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/methane-leaks-offset-much-of-the-benefits-of-natural-gas-new-study-says/2018/06/21/e381654a-7590-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html
29. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-california-heatwave-idUSKCN0Z60DO
30. https://thoriumenergyalliance.com/resource/dr-alex-cannara-energy-basics/
31. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-cannara-6a1b7a3
32. https://eu.argusleader.com/story/news/local/2015/12/07/ramsey-plant-fire-close-being-extinguished/76942420/
33. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Allison
34. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wade-allison-08929816/
35. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285420212_Nuclear_is_for_Life_A_Cultural_Revolution
36. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nuclear-power-climate-change-misconceptions-by-wade-allison-2018-06
37. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-conley-5529b3/
38. https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-gas-industrys-plan-to-sink-nuclear-power

#ClimateChange #UnintendedConsequences #GeorgeErickson #FissionEnergy #NuclearEnergy #FossilFuels

January 29, 2022
Fission Energy for Across Africa – a Vision of 2050
Author Jeremiah Josey written 24 January 2022

A Land of Plenty

The African continent is a behemoth of people, resources and potential. The area of the combined 58 countries and regions is 1.8 times larger than Russia; 3 times larger than the European Union; and 84 times larger than Germany. The 1.3 billion people living in Africa (16% of the worlds’ population) have available to them a combined power generating capacity of ~230 GW. This equates to about 1,500 kWh per person per year in energy consumption.

A Billion More People

Over the next 30 years there will be another 1 billion new people born on the African continent. Africa will be the youngest and most dynamic region on earth. With global “peak child” happening in 2014 (a demonstrable fact) the number of children coming to the planet has plateaued and will remain that way for the foreseeable future as societies improve their living standards and reduce the size of families. This is also so in Africa, yet the population will grow no matter what. Furthermore, the African continent will hold more than 3 billion people by 2100.

And energy will be the prime enabler to provide those billions with a decent quality of life.

Watch Hans explain our future

Hans Rosling pointing out how 11b people come to the planet

Improving Lifestyle means Increasing Energy Consumption

South Africa has the highest energy consumption per person, at 4,100 kWh per year. Yet this is still below the 5,500 kWh average across Europe. Further across the continent it is clear that some countries lack basic energy infrastructure to bring energy to their people.

Africa per Person Energy Usage 2019

Let’s assume that by 2050 the present average of 1,500 kWh per person per year increases to 3,000 kWh*. Thus the total energy generation capacity becomes almost 800 GW. Thus 570 GW of new power generating capacity is required to be built from now to 2050.

*This means a 50 MW ‘burner’ will produce the energy needed for about 150,000 people.

Sting on Nuclear Energy

Avoiding the Renewables Trap

The Africa Renewable Energy Initiative planned to install 10 GW of wind and solar by 2020 (achieved) and 300 GW of wind and solar by 2030. But they are forgetting Germany’s failed 20 year experiment in wind and solar. In Germany, CO2 levels are unchanged and electricity prices have doubled. Germany is restarting coal fired power stations because their industry is failing on the weak intermittent energy from wind and solar. The reason is simple. When considering all factors, wind and solar are simply not viable. This is best illustrated by the Energy Return on Investment ratio, or EROI. This bar chart is developed from the Berlin Institute for Solid-State Nuclear Physics (Institut für Festkörper-Kernphysik) and available on the Australian government’s nuclear scientist’s website.

ANSTO EROI Chart

The Energy Return on Investment Ratio is a macro level indicator of the overall usefulness of the energy derived from any particular form. How many units of energy can be recovered for each unit of energy expended. The EROI of wind and solar (3.9 and 1.6 respectively) fails miserably when compared to coal (30), gas (28) and existing solid-fuel nuclear fission (75). But our focus is the literal purple elephant in the room – Liquid Fission Technology. It’s EROI is 2000 to 1! With such a significant obvious benefit, over all other forms of energy production, it is only a matter of time before the genie is out of the bottle.

Thus as the reality of low value return on wind and solar is realised, Liquid Fission Technology (and other small modular fission machines using traditional solid fuels) will gain traction to fill the growing requirements of Africa’s energy needs.

A New Paradigm of Industrial Growth

One can imagine a fleet of up to 5,000 small modular Liquid Fission machines each with a capacity of 100 MW installed strategically across Africa. Creating a decentralised, distributed power generation system. Some sites will be larger or smaller than others, driven by domestic electricity demands. With the power facilities having a fuelled lifespan exceeding 50 years, it is quite easy to see energy as no longer an issue across the African continent.

Integrated Thorium Fission Energy System

But it goes further. Whilst reliable 24/7 power from Liquid Fission machines provides ample energy for domestic needs, the technology supports industrial growth and development. 1 GW and larger power installations are able to drive industries reliant on both heat and power. Facilities of this size could lead to industrial parks such as the one here envisaged by government energy and industrial development planners in Turkiye.

A Positive Future

The people of Africa have a bright future ahead for them. With technologies tried and true from western spheres, the people of Africa can select and choose the most appropriate and most suitable means to improve their quality of life. For themselves and for their children. Liquid Fission energy technology is a strong contender for the energy mix of Africa.

Authored by Jeremiah Josey
Founder
The Thorium Network

Links and References
1. African power generation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1229517/installed-renewables-and-fossil-fuels-generation-capacity-in-africa-by-energy-source/
2. Energy Consumption across Africa https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/eg.use.elec.kh.pc/map/africa
3. Hans Rosling, 2015, Why the world population won’t exceed 11 billion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
4. IEA Africa Energy Outlook 2019 https://www.iea.org/reports/africa-energy-outlook-2019
5. African Renewable Energy Initiative https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1q/k1qnk48vzo
6. https://stopthesethings.com/2021/04/25/big-backpedal-a-week-after-shutting-its-coal-fired-plants-germany-forced-to-reopen-them/
7. Australian government nuclear science organisation https://www.ansto.gov.au/our-science/nuclear-fuel-cycle/advanced-nuclear-reactors/evolution-of-molten-salt-reactors
January 24, 2022
Episode 3 – Preface – Unintended Consequences

Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

A Deadly Evacuation

Excerpts from the Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) 7- 31 May, 2013 General Assembly Records.

Chapter III Scientific findings [Fukushima]

“1. The accident and the release of radioactive material into the environment.

On 11 March 2011, at 14:46 [2:46 pm] local time, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred near Honshu, Japan, creating a devastating tsunami that left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which flooded over 500 square kilometres of land, resulted in the loss of more than 20,000 lives.

The loss of off-site and on-site electrical power and compromised safety systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station led to severe core damage to three of the six nuclear reactors on the site.

In this March 11, 2011 photo taken about 2 hours after a massive earthquake and tsunami occurred, Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, is pictured. (AP Photo/Yomiuri Shimbun, Yasushi Kanno) JAPAN

The Government of Japan recommended the evacuation of about 78,000 people living within a 20-km (12 mile) radius of the power plant and the sheltering in their own homes of about 62,000 other people living between 20 and 30 km from the plant. However, the evacuations themselves also had repercussions for the people involved, including a number of evacuation-related deaths and the subsequent impact on mental and social well-being

Those “evacuation-related deaths” would eventually total 1,600, with 90% of them caused by Japan’s reliance on American radiation safety standards that are based on a fraud that began in the 1920’s. More on that in coming episodes.

That fraud, committed by a Nobel laureate and formalised by the U.S. in the 1950’s, became regulatory dogma that has greatly retarded the expansion of CO₂-free nuclear power, accelerated Climate Change and caused the deaths of millions who, out of fear of radiation, avoided essential diagnostic methods and treatments, and at Fukushima caused hundreds of suicides by distraught and unstable people, primarily the elderly, who feared that they would never see their homes or businesses again.

The linear model has since been dropped by a number of international bodies specialising in radiation protection.

The daughter of an elderly woman who had hung herself lamented, “If she had not been forced to evacuate, she wouldn’t have killed herself.” (Chapter 7 of the book compares the deaths caused by using fossil fuels instead of emission-free nuclear power).

Children were not allowed to play outside, and topsoil was needlessly removed at great expense from farm fields that became, as a consequence, less fertile.

Hundreds of elderly people were hastily removed from nursing homes and hospitals, only to be scattered across the hardwood floors of gymnasiums, where many died from makeshift medical care, or sometimes none at all.

These deaths were preventable, just as Climate Change can be moderated if the industrialised nations replace the burning of carbon and the use of deadly, inefficient, carbon-reliant windmills and solar farms (chapters 9 and 10) with CO₂-free nuclear power as rapidly as possible while developing technologies that support natural processes that can remove CO₂ from our atmosphere. Windmills can’t do it. Neither can solar, not singly or combined with wind. For that, we will need an abundance of safe, efficient, CO₂-free nuclear power. Nothing else will do.

Here is a podcast with George Erickson talking about Fukushima Daiichi:

WE NEED NUCLEAR POWER NOT SOLAR GEORGE ERICKSON

The same podcast on Audible

Coming up next week, Episode 4 – Fossil Fuel Frolics.

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 4 – Fossil Fuel Frolics
2. Previous Episode – Episode 2 – The Forward
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. Fukushima by wikipedia
8. We Need Nuclear Power Not Solar – Podcast by George Erickson
9. Hermann Joseph Muller
10. Linear No Threshold Theory on Wikipedia

#UnintendedConsequences #Fukushima #ClimateChange #LinearNoThreshHold #Fission

January 22, 2022
Episode 2 – Forward – Unintended Consequences

Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

Unintended Consequences is intended to help open-minded readers learn the truth about the severity of Climate Change, the need for nuclear power – not “alternatives” like wind and solar – and to explain why our unwarranted fear of tiny amounts of radiation has caused millions of deaths and disabilities.

Those who challenge the firmly held beliefs of legislative bodies and powerful organisations like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and their well-meaning but science-indifferent clones, soon learn that their arguments, no matter how logical or well documented, will often be brushed aside with a dismissive “That’s just your opinion.”

To counter that assertion, I, Dr. George Erickson, have included many links to supportive material from a wide range of professionals in the energy field: engineers, nuclear physicists, science journalists and specialists in nuclear medicine.

Dr. George Erickson in 2018 at TEAC8

Although inserting links to the work of so many experts within the text instead of footnoting them might seem intrusive, I’ve taken that risk because the health of our planet requires an informed public and science-literate legislators – unlike those who are supporting inefficient technologies that are damaging the environment they claim to revere.

“It is much easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain

Unfortunately, when I and my associates give climate change/energy presentations that support advanced nuclear power and criticise inefficient, environment-damaging, carbon- reliant wind and solar farms that we were conned into accepting, we frequently encounter disbelief, a problem that Mark Twain addressed: “It is much easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Coming up next week, Episode 3 – Preface of Unintended Consequences.

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 3 – The Preface
2. Previous Episode – Episode 1 – Why I Care
3. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
4. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
5. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
6. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
7. Climate Change
8. Mark Twain

#UnintendedConsequences #ClimateChange #Nuclear #FissionEnergy

January 15, 2022
Episode 1 – Why I Care, by Dr. George Erickson – Unintended Consequences

Post created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

This is the first episode taken from Dr. George Erickson‘s Unintended Consequences: The Lie that Killed Millions and accelerated Climate Change. Follow our media for a bite sized portion each week of Dr. Erickson’s book with additional images and references for easy information access. Follow our social media to read some of the best, some of the most concise words you’ll find on Climate Change and how Molten Salt Fission Technology^TM with Thorium can fix it.

Over to you Dr. George Erickson…

Back in the sixties, when I was living in a small Minnesota farming community, my sons were taught to “duck and cover” beneath their desks in case of a nuclear war.

George Erickson – Why I care

We’d been warned about radiation and fallout, so I built a concrete block shelter in my basement that I hoped would shield my family for a week or two if events with Russia turned sour.

Time passed. The Cold War waned, and when concerns about nuclear power changed from making bombs to making electricity, my concerns about nuclear issues receded – until I attended a lecture on thorium near the turn of the century. Intrigued, I began to investigate thorium because of its many advantages over uranium for producing electricity

I joined the National Center for Science Education and the Thorium Energy Alliance, which provided a huge upgrade to my better than average knowledge of physics and energy issues, including Climate Change.

I had known about greenhouse gases, global warming and sea level rise, and I had read about Dr. Charles Keeling’s work with carbon dioxide on the slopes of Mauna Loa, but I hadn’t realized that expanding nuclear power, which creates no carbon dioxide (CO₂) could be our most effective weapon for combating Climate Change, much of which is caused by burning coal, oil, wood and natural gas to supply electricity to an expanding world that exceeds 7 billion – a world that is finally beginning to consider the value of CO₂-free, environmentally benign nuclear power.

Dr. Charles Keeling

Mauna Loa, Hawaii

One solution seemed obvious: replace the carbon-burning steam generators at every power plant with nuclear power plants. However, I quickly discovered that many powerful organizations oppose almost everything nuclear – some out of ignorance, many from fear, and some for profit, but I also found support from those who’d set their fears aside after discovering the impressive safety record and efficiency of CO₂-free nuclear power. And so, with Climate Change becoming deadlier every year (assisted by former Pres. D. J. Trump, our anti-science Climate Change Denier in Chief), and because my grandchildren’s futures are at stake, I have decided to respond to those who fear our safest, most efficient, environmentally benign power technology by revealing its true record – including that of Chernobyl, which has caused fewer than 80 deaths, and of Fukushima Daiichi, where two workers drowned at the plant – and I’ll highlight some of the new plants that are even safer and more efficient than the hundreds we have relied on for 60 years.

But first, I must mention two discoveries that came as a huge surprise – the fact that our radiation safety standards are based on a fraud that became dogma not long after World War II [Ed. see later episodes for this explanation], and the existence of compelling evidence that low levels of background radiation can even improve our lives. I know that sounds crazy, but there is abundant science to back it up.

“An ecologist must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” Aldo Leopold – 1943

The Green New Deal will accelerate climate change and damage our environment unless it expands safe, highly efficient, resource-sipping, CO₂-free nuclear power and stops funding inefficient, resource-gobbling environment-damaging wind and solar farms, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Argentina, Poland, Sweden, Finland, India, China, the Czech Republic, Estonia, the Netherlands, France; Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Gr. Britain, Belarus, Ukraine, the Emirates, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt have approved or are building nuclear plants, and we [Ed. “we” = USA] should, too.

The belief that we can get all of our energy from wind, water and solar is exactly what Dr. James Hansen, former chief scientist at NASA, had in mind when he wrote, “We have two political parties; neither wants to face reality. Conservatives pretend that climate change is a hoax, and liberals propose solutions that are non-solutions.“

We must turn away from carbon. We must do better than this!

[Ed. Cartoon copyright Toles 2013, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission of Universal Uclick.]

This is the end of the first episode taken from Dr. George Erickson’s Unintended Consequences: The Lie that Killed Millions and accelerated Climate Change. Each week we’ll be posting a bite sized portion of Dr. Erickson’s book with additional images and references for easy information access. So follow our social media to read some of the best, some of the most concise words you’ll find on Climate Change and how Molten Salt Fission Technology^TM with Thorium can fix it.

Coming up next week, Episode 2 – Forward of Unintended Consequences.

Links and References

1. Next Episode – Episode 2 – The Forward
2. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
3. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. Thorium Energy Alliance
7. National Center for Science Education
8. Dr. Charles David Keeling on Wikipedia
9. Dr. Charles David Keeling Biography
10. The Green New Deal by John de Graaf
11. Aldo Leopold
12. Nuclear Power Is the Best Climate-Change Solution by Far by Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #ClimateChange #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology

January 8, 2022

Power Train	Fuel Quantity	Fuel Quantity (kg)	CO2 Production (Tons)
Solid Fission (U232)	7 Pounds	3.2	Zero
Coal burning	9,000 tons	9,000,000	26,000
Natural Gas Burning	240,000,000 cu ft	4,621,309	15,210

Tag: Jeremiah Josey

Created by Jeremiah Josey and the team at The Thorium Network

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima

Three Mile Island

Chernobyl

Fukushima

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As Radiation detection technology improves, ALARA just increases fear.

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The Consequences of Overreaction

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Kerala

The LNT model for cancer induction is not supported by radiobiological data

As others have noted, not knowing the truth doesn’t make us ignorant, but not wanting to know the truth most certainly will.

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„Perfekte Technologie“

“Perfect technology”

Sechs Vorteile

Six Benefits

Der Krieg ist aller Dinge Vater

War is the father of all things

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Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

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Dose Rates and Health

Why Radiation is Safe below 100 mSv per year

– TRUTH –

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Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

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Created by Jeremiah Josey and Rana, president of the Student Guild

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A Little Nuclear History

When Radiation Is Safe and When It Isn’t

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Author Jeremiah Josey

Author Jeremiah Josey

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Potential Remedies by Dr. Alex Cannara

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Author Jeremiah Josey

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Author Jeremiah Josey written 24 January 2022

A Land of Plenty

A Billion More People

Improving Lifestyle means Increasing Energy Consumption

Avoiding the Renewables Trap

A New Paradigm of Industrial Growth

A Positive Future

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A Deadly Evacuation

Chapter III Scientific findings [Fukushima]

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