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Though I am pretty skeptical about the value of the Whitehouse.gov petition system, I have been convinced that it might sometimes be a vehicle for starting an important conversation. Recently, someone started a petition asking the Obama Administration to stop using the Linear, No-Threshold Dose response...

Dr. Jerry Cuttler has been concentrating his research on the health effects of low dose radiation for more than 15 years. The events at Fukushima and the human tragedy of the poor decision making both during and after the release of modest quantities of radioactive material have reinforced the importance...

On March 21, 2013, Ed Calabrese, professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, gave a talk to Cato Institute titled A Looming Scientific Revolution in Environmental Regulation. During the talk he provided a brief history of dose response models, the evolution of regulations based on those...

The results of a study titled Mortality (1950–1999) and cancer incidence (1969–1999) of workers in the Port Hope cohort study exposed to a unique combination of radium, uranium and γ-ray doses have recently been published on BJM Open, which describes itself as follows: “An open access, online-only...

By Robert Hargraves Nearly a million people each year die of breathing particulates from burning coal; the climate temperature may increase 2°C this century; more than a billion people have no electricity. Yet within our reach is a solution to these global crises of increasing air pollution deaths, climate...

Ted Rockwell has been an active participant in the development of nuclear energy production in the United States since the very earliest days of the technology. He started his nuclear career as an engineering troubleshooter in 1943 at the site that is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the Manhattan...

Edward Calabrese has published a fascinating and terribly important paper in the University of Chicago Law Review titled US Risk Assessment Policy: A History of Deceptionthat needs to be widely distributed and discussed. Here is the quoted introduction: Strategies to limit the  general  public’s  exposure...

Dr. Wade Allison, author of Radiation and Reason, recently shared a short paper titled A revolution in radiation protection that would lead to safer and cheaper nuclear power. He described it as “reference light”, explaining that his intended audience for this work is not the journal-reading...

On November 8, 2012, Environmental Health Perspectives, a monthly journal supported by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a report titled Radiation and the Risk of Chronic Lymphocytic and Other Leukemias...

A friend shared a link to a prize winning essay titled The path to reconstruction in Fukushima as seen through fieldwork in Eastern Japan. It was written by Jun Takada, Doctor of Science Professor, Sapporo Medical University. Here is a sample quote: Following the nuclear accident in Fukushima that occurred...

Last week, Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, stepped way outside of his area of expertise by publishing a paper titled Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that claimed to quantify the number of cancers...

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has a well known belief that human society can be powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight. He was a coauthor with Mark A. Delucchi for a November 2009 Scientific American cover article titled A Path to...

By Ted Rockwell An increasingly used anti-nuclear argument claims “it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something,” therefore we can’t be sure that low-dose radiation is harmless. Some day we may discover victims of low-dose radiation, just as we one day discovered the existence of black swans...

Dr. Kiyohiko Sakamoto was one of the presenters at the American Nuclear Society 2012 Annual Meeting President’s Special Session on Low Level Radiation and Its Implications For Fukushima Recovery. The session organizers thought that his work on using whole body and half body radiation treatments...

Ted Rockwell, one of my favorite nuclear pioneers, was unable to attend the American Nuclear Society annual meeting despite having worked diligently to help organize a President’s Special Session titled “Low-Level Radiation and Its Implications for Fukushima Recovery.” He eagerly looked...

During the Australian Broadcasting Company documentary titled I Can Change Your Mind About … Climate there is a scene where Anthony Leiserowitz (via Skype video) shares some of what he has learned during his research about climate change attitudes with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose, the show’s...

One of the privileges of being a long time pronuclear activist on the Internet – an activity that I have been enjoying since “atomicrod” started posting in USENET discussion groups in the early 1990s – is that I often see communications between talented, highly qualified professionals...

A friend tweeted a link to a terrific satire titled Roentgen Shrugged that was published in the March 2011 issue of Health Physics News. The piece describes what might happen to modern medical care in the foreseeable future if the radiation protection guild keeps ratcheting down allowable radiation dose...

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a press release on December 20, 2011 titled New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels. The press release summarizes the results of a paper that has...

I correspond regularly with advocates for various nuclear fission technologies, there are many disagreements about the best way forward. The advocates can get pretty passionate about what they believe to be the weaknesses of competing technologies; however, there are times when I need to step in to remind...

By Ted Rockwell How are Permissible Radiation Limits Set? How Much is Science, How Much “Prudence”? U.S. Regulatory Report NCRP-136 examined the question of establishing permissible radiation limits. After looking at the data, it concluded that most people who get a small dose of nuclear...

A few days ago, I wrote What should “Radioactive Wolves” teach critical thinkers? and promptly got really busy at work. I put in several “half-days” (Navy lingo for a 12 hour work day) and did not have much time for paying attention to Atomic Insights. When I finally got around to checking...

One of my favorite jokes about the difference between scientists and engineers is the one in which a scientist and an engineer are both put into a room with a pot of gold on the other side. They are given the rules of the challenge – the gold will be given to the person who... ...read more

Dr. Wade Allison, the author of Radiation and Reason addressed the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) Food Safety meeting on October 3, 2011. Unlike Arnie Gundersen (sometimes misspelled as Gunderson), an unlicensed nuclear engineer from Vermont who has been working hard for several months...

On September 14, 2011, the BBC aired a documentary titled Fukushima Disaster: Is Nuclear Power Safe?. Near the end of the video, the host makes the statement that it is quite likely that the main health impacts of the event (leaving aside the direct effects of the initiating earthquake and tsunami) will...