Tuesday, April 05, 2011
NUCLEAR HORMESIS - SCOTSMAN LETTER
Scotsman today
The other very good news from Scotland is a recent opinion poll showing that Scots supporters of nuclear outnumber opponents by 2:1. This poll was taken a few days into the Fukushima failure and must be the best possible timing for the Luddites. If only Scotland's political class were even half as progressive as her ordinary people. I would like to think that the tireless efforts of Steuart Campbell, myself and others have influenced a few per cent of that.
*************************
This is an unpublished letter I sent in reply to Tim Flinn's published letter replying to my reply to his original letter. Tim's had attempted to justify his claim that 1 unit of nuclear costs more than the number of "all the atoms in the universe" on the basis that inflation over the 150,000 years he wrongly claimed waste needs to be guardedc would do that. His calculation was both meaningless and wrong:
"Well I must admit Tim Flinn has actually answered my query about his claim that the cost of disposing of nuclear waste would, for each unit produced, cost more than the number of atoms in the entire universe. In doing so he has shown far more courage than most "environmentalists" who, when their scare stories are proven bogus, simply change the subject moving on to new and invariably equally bogus, scare stories.
His case depends on nuclear waste being dangerous for 150,000 years, despite the fact that, as I pointed out, it is dangerous for only decades and less radioactive than the ore it was mined from in centuries. "Guarding" it beyond that time is no more necessary than it is to guard Ben Nevis to prevent it eating people.
His "assumption" that, even in that period, it would cost 0.01p per kwh produced annually to guard the waste is simply snatched from the air. At under a cubic metre of waste a reactor year, all the waste produced over the next century, if all our power was nuclear, would not fill a cube 18 metres on a side and could thus be safely stored in any of hundreds of abandoned mines. In fact since such "waste" contains actinides which are potentially very valuable we should not bury them too deep. The greens agree that any disposal should not be beyond reach, though I suspect this is because they think it would increase the cost of guarding it rather than because they understand that the "waste" is not waste but a valuable resource.
I must admit there are parts of Tim's calculations which defy my analysis but his final figure seems to be based entirely on the assumption of 5% inflation. By that standard in 150,2012 AD things now available in a Pound shop willl cost £2.28 X 10^3178, exactly 24.8 times the cost he gives of disposing of the "waste".
Another example of "environmentalist" scare stories not being constrained by reality Is Elizabeth Marshalls letter (Friday) warning us that our reactors are endangered because the Japanese tsunami was "in reality not too dissimilar to a North Sea storm surge". In real reality it was measured as high as 77 feet..That the Japanese reactors survived, while around 20,000 people didn't is a tribute to the designers. Western Luddites show their humanity by being much more concerned about the anti-nuclear scare story, with a death toll of zero, than about the true catastrophe
Of course the level of inflation, underlying Tim's assumption, can vary immensely depending on the amount money governments print to pay unfunded promises. Currently the Greens are getting £1 billion a year of various subsidies to "renewables" (equal to the 3p Tartan Tax, before the SNP made it unusable). This is a very small part of all the costs, regulations and subsidies done to placate Luddites, which, by the best calculations halve the size of economy we could have. This is why we are in recession. I have never met a Green activist, of any party, who was placated by that or looked likely to be by any higher amount. All the parties in Holyrood currently kow-tow to the Luddite religion, unanimously voting through an Act to destroy 58% of our electricity capacity, including the nuclear, over the next 9 years. This automatically means losing around 58% of all our national income..
The traditional way for governments to get round such a collapse is to print more money, with no way of redeeming it. In Zimbabwe they achieved a quindecillion novemdecillion per cent (10^108%) which would allow us to reach the dizzy heights of having more £s than "the number of particles in the universe" in about nine months. Such are the benefits of having a political class who think their wishes trump mere arithmetic, as our MSPs unanimously do and why I shall be voting UKIP."
Having disposed of him I used most of the letter to put the case, discredit the numptocracy and declare my intention to vote UKIP. I have previously had letters published advocating voting LibDem (a long time ago) and SNP but this may be an unpublishable step.
Elizabeth Marshall assures us that "Nuclear health specialists anticipate many thousands of deaths" from the Japanese reactors. This would be in line with the million cancers anticipated by similar self styled "experts" from Chernobyl, none of which have in fact happened. Perhaps it should be treated as seriously as her previous claim that we must expect a tidal surge matching that in Japan (77 feet) to roll up at Lieth.
The fact is that the entire scare story about minisucle levels of radiation are simply that - scare stories with no scientific foundation whatsoever.
There are many places in the world with natural background radiation level far higher than that at Chernobyl let alone Fukushima - Kerala in India, Ramsar in Iran, Yellowstone in the USDA, even parts of Cornwall and Aberdeenshire. By the theory millions of excess cancers should have been recorded but in fact the number of cancers is lower than average.
There is not and never has been any scientific evidence for the bureaucratic decision that low level radiation is harmful. I would challenge Ms Marshall, or the Green Party or indeed anybdy scientifically qualified to produce the evidence which would be needed to make this claim scientific.They edited out my criticism of her previous letter which claimed tidal surges in the Notrtth sea were closely comparable with the Fukushima tsunami. That keeps the letter straight to the point of hormesis. Having spent years sending letters on the subject, and having one published by the Daily Mail, it seems that the issue has finally become discussable. It will be interesting to see if any scientist or politician feels able to dispute it.
The truth is that the opposite theory, known as radiation hormesis, has a vast amount of evidence, from numerous unrelated sources, to prove it. The truth may not get the publicity that false scare stories do but the facts are unequivocal.
The anti-nuclear movement and its fraudulent claims have cost the human race 40 years of inexpensive electricity. It can be proven that, simply because of increased deaths among pensioners because of fuel poverty, it has killed 19 million people. By comparison Fukushima has killed precisely zero,
The other very good news from Scotland is a recent opinion poll showing that Scots supporters of nuclear outnumber opponents by 2:1. This poll was taken a few days into the Fukushima failure and must be the best possible timing for the Luddites. If only Scotland's political class were even half as progressive as her ordinary people. I would like to think that the tireless efforts of Steuart Campbell, myself and others have influenced a few per cent of that.
*************************
This is an unpublished letter I sent in reply to Tim Flinn's published letter replying to my reply to his original letter. Tim's had attempted to justify his claim that 1 unit of nuclear costs more than the number of "all the atoms in the universe" on the basis that inflation over the 150,000 years he wrongly claimed waste needs to be guardedc would do that. His calculation was both meaningless and wrong:
"Well I must admit Tim Flinn has actually answered my query about his claim that the cost of disposing of nuclear waste would, for each unit produced, cost more than the number of atoms in the entire universe. In doing so he has shown far more courage than most "environmentalists" who, when their scare stories are proven bogus, simply change the subject moving on to new and invariably equally bogus, scare stories.
His case depends on nuclear waste being dangerous for 150,000 years, despite the fact that, as I pointed out, it is dangerous for only decades and less radioactive than the ore it was mined from in centuries. "Guarding" it beyond that time is no more necessary than it is to guard Ben Nevis to prevent it eating people.
His "assumption" that, even in that period, it would cost 0.01p per kwh produced annually to guard the waste is simply snatched from the air. At under a cubic metre of waste a reactor year, all the waste produced over the next century, if all our power was nuclear, would not fill a cube 18 metres on a side and could thus be safely stored in any of hundreds of abandoned mines. In fact since such "waste" contains actinides which are potentially very valuable we should not bury them too deep. The greens agree that any disposal should not be beyond reach, though I suspect this is because they think it would increase the cost of guarding it rather than because they understand that the "waste" is not waste but a valuable resource.
I must admit there are parts of Tim's calculations which defy my analysis but his final figure seems to be based entirely on the assumption of 5% inflation. By that standard in 150,2012 AD things now available in a Pound shop willl cost £2.28 X 10^3178, exactly 24.8 times the cost he gives of disposing of the "waste".
Another example of "environmentalist" scare stories not being constrained by reality Is Elizabeth Marshalls letter (Friday) warning us that our reactors are endangered because the Japanese tsunami was "in reality not too dissimilar to a North Sea storm surge". In real reality it was measured as high as 77 feet..That the Japanese reactors survived, while around 20,000 people didn't is a tribute to the designers. Western Luddites show their humanity by being much more concerned about the anti-nuclear scare story, with a death toll of zero, than about the true catastrophe
Of course the level of inflation, underlying Tim's assumption, can vary immensely depending on the amount money governments print to pay unfunded promises. Currently the Greens are getting £1 billion a year of various subsidies to "renewables" (equal to the 3p Tartan Tax, before the SNP made it unusable). This is a very small part of all the costs, regulations and subsidies done to placate Luddites, which, by the best calculations halve the size of economy we could have. This is why we are in recession. I have never met a Green activist, of any party, who was placated by that or looked likely to be by any higher amount. All the parties in Holyrood currently kow-tow to the Luddite religion, unanimously voting through an Act to destroy 58% of our electricity capacity, including the nuclear, over the next 9 years. This automatically means losing around 58% of all our national income..
The traditional way for governments to get round such a collapse is to print more money, with no way of redeeming it. In Zimbabwe they achieved a quindecillion novemdecillion per cent (10^108%) which would allow us to reach the dizzy heights of having more £s than "the number of particles in the universe" in about nine months. Such are the benefits of having a political class who think their wishes trump mere arithmetic, as our MSPs unanimously do and why I shall be voting UKIP."
Having disposed of him I used most of the letter to put the case, discredit the numptocracy and declare my intention to vote UKIP. I have previously had letters published advocating voting LibDem (a long time ago) and SNP but this may be an unpublishable step.
Labels: Hormesis, letters, nuclear, Unpublished letters
