The linear no-threshold (LNT) model is not science it's junk science.

The linear no-threshold (LNT) model recognises that even a small amount of radiation produces a small amount of damage.

The linear no-threshold (LNT) model is not science it's junk science. There never was any legitimate foundation for the theory and, in fact, the original purveyors of BEIR I made several mistakes, touching on actual fraud.⁽¹⁾

There's never been a scientific consensus on radiation risk.⁽²⁾ LNT was always a theory lacking evidential support aka a "hypothesis". The only reason LNT even became a theory in the first place was because it was easiest thing to model. All 3 fundamental assumptions in LNT were formulated to make it easy to model:

1. Linear
2. No-threshold
3. Dose-response is additive over time.

Only the first assumption is approximately valid. The 3rd assumption is clearly nonsense w.r.t. radiation because radionuclides are generally not concentrated when taken up in the food chain, and actual exposure to radioactivity is not additive. The 2nd assumption (no-threshold) was always disputed too.

OK, so those are some arguments against LNT, why why am I calling it junk science? It's junk science because non-scientists, and non-radiation specialists rely on it to scare-monger over radiation and nuclear power.

References:

1. Edward Calabrese challenges Science Magazine to right a 59 year-old case of scientific misconduct
2. Dose-effect relationship and estimation of the carcinogenic effects of low-doses of ionizing radiation, by Maurice Tubiana, André Aurengo, 2005
3. Nor does enforcing LNT for radiation make any sense. Better safe than sorry is an idiotic policy too: Radiation Risk and Ethics, by Zbigniew Jaworowski

Green FUD about new Vogle Nuclear plants spins revenue into costs.

The projected revenues from the two new nuclear plants at Vogle, Georgia, USA were calculated to be $65 billion over a 60 year projected plant lifetime¹. Each plant is 1117 MWe in capacity (net). Assuming a conservative 90% capacity is reached². They can be expected to generate 1056.77 TWh of electricity, or 1056.77 billion units (a 'unit' is a kWh in Britain)³. The expected revenue works out at US 6.15¢ per kWh. In Britain my current electricity tariff is 14.04p per kWh (equivalent to: 21.9¢/kWh)⁴. So I'm paying 3.56 times the cost of Vogle electricity. I should be so lucky to have such low cost nuclear power.

The electricity cost above assume the new Vogle reactors (units 3 and 4) will undergo a cost overrun. Total costs to build them are projected at USD $7.5 billion.⁵. Even with a cost overrun Vogle plants will still make cheap electricity. One might think this is good news. Perhaps we should break open a bottle of Prosecco or Cava? No such luck. At least two green websites have spun this revenue projection by Bobbie Baker into "a case study of nuclear power’s staggeringly awful economics"^6,7.

They took Baker's expected revenue and turned it into expected costs! In the source they cited, Bobbie Baker is quoted saying: "The current total revenue requirement for the Project is approximately $65 billion"¹. This was spun into: Vogtle: at $65 billion and counting, it’s a case study of nuclear power’s staggeringly awful economics⁶. Some people have blinkered vision. They're so certain that nuclear power is expensive, their minds turn revenue into costs, and their prophecies are fulfilled.

Notes:

1. To get the quote for $65 billion (what Commissioner Baker said):
   1. Follow this link: Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP Lawline Alerts
   2. Click on the link for "Georgia Utility Update – July 2015"
2. US nuclear power plants had an average capacity factor of 91.8% in 2014. See: US nuclear plants set capacity factor record in 2014: industry group
3. 2 × 1.117 GWe × 365 × 24 × 60 × 90% = 1056771.36 GWh
4. My tariff of 14.04p includes the effect of a standing charge. See: EdF Energy 'Unit rate comparison'
5. Plant Vogtle nuclear reactors expected to cost $7.5bn
6. Vogtle: at $65 billion and counting, it’s a case study of nuclear power’s staggeringly awful economics,
7. Atlanta Progressive News: Vogtle Nuclear Expansion Total Cost Is 65 Billion Dollars, Former Commissioner Says

Interesting online discussion I unearthed on the AREVA EPR

The question of why the EPR is turning out to be so much more expensive than other reactors is interesting. It looks like the EPR has overspecified safety requirements. For example: rather that just be certain the core could not melt in the event of an accident, the designers went one step further and built a core catcher in as well. Some people blame German Greens for the design complexity: (here:)

lion :

The EPR must meet the security demands of the ASN and, above all, the demands voiced by the German Green politician, Jürgen Trittin, who made the restrictions applying to the design and build so severe that it is almost unfeasible. So I wonder whether the EPR is not “over secure” in terms of design and build, a fact that would not even mean that it is optimally secure when it comes to operations.

Jürgen Trittin is a German Green politician. He was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from October 1998 to November 2005 in Germany. Angela Merkel was the Minister before him: From November 1994 to October 1998. [ Merkel was and is a pro-nuclear power person. ]

It seems to me that the design was substantially complete before 1998 when the Greens took over control of the German energy ministry. See this PDF report, which has some history and these NRC slides. The design continued from 1997 to 1999 with an updated "Basic Design Report" for the EPR issued in February 1999.

Edward Calabrese talking about hormesis

Youtube video. Time: 40:37

I wanted to validate the hormetic model in some sort of way and test its frequency in the population and in studies. And so I said how did the government and how did the scientific community validate the threshold model. Because I'll just copy how they did that, because I never validated a model before. So I'll just find what they did, follow what they did. Maybe I'll do it right. So I looked and I looked and looked and I looked and I looked and looked and, guess what, I never found that any government, any scientist, any industry, any expert committee, ever ever published a paper in which they attempted to, or showed validation of the threshold model for making accurate predictions below the threshold. Never. And we live below the threshold. All of our standards were based upon a model that was never validated by anyone. OK. All the drugs, all the environment contaminants that are based upon the threshold model have a model that was never a validated. Never thought to be validated.

So I decided to try to validate it. And so what happened is I got 3 or 4 very large datasets. Looking at a wide variety of compounds. Applied statistical analysis with a team of researchers to test the linear threshold and hormetic dose responses. And guess what happened. In every single case the threshold and the linear model fail to make accurate predictions in the low-dose zone. And the hormetic model was the only one that actually did it. We submitted it to the leading toxicology journals went through some tough peer reviews and all three made it through.

And basically what we showed, for the very first time, was that in fact the models that are used by the regulatory agencies fail when put to the test. The only one that actually passed the test was the one that the regulatory agencies actually ignored, marginalized, and basically would never consider. And so what you have is, you have a world that is governed by non-science really. And it's hard to tell them, it's hard to tell the teacher that they're wrong.

Case study in anti-nuclear power FUD

I noticed it here: Tas Uni academic less than “abundantly clear” about Generation IV nuclear reactors. An article by Dr Jim Green, the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia. It's purpose is to discredit pro-nuclear activist Barry Brook. It has a few misleading claims but the standout false claim is:

France has used a fast reactor to produce plutonium for weapons.

No such thing ever happened. France did have fast reactors which made plutonium, but they were never used to make nuclear bomb material. When challenged on this point, eventually a friend of the author (Dickie) narrowed down the claim:

Fact: The fast-neutron reactor Phénix, which operated at significant power level until the late 1990s, produced about 340 kg of plutonium for WMD.
- Dickie, Comment no. 17

, and sourced it to a website: International Panel of Fissile Materials. That website had 3 documents claiming Phénix made weapons grade material but only one claim mentioned 340 kg:

Global Fissile Material Report 2010, page 91

The claim begins:

To estimate the contribution of Phénix to the French stockpile of weapons plutonium, it is assumed that only the surplus plutonium—not the total amount of weapon-grade plutonium—extracted from the blankets was transferred to the weapons program.

So we're really dealing with guesswork here (to estimate, it is assumed), rather than fact, as was originally claimed. What of the guesswork? Is it likely, or even possible? No, not likely at all. There are several reasons to avoid using fast reactors to make weapons grade plutonium. First, let's figure out what ideal weapons grade plutonium contains. It is defined as being predominantly Pu-239, typically about 93% Pu-239. Additionally, three particular radionuclides pose a problem:

• First and most important, plutonium-240, Pu-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission, meaning that the plutonium in the device will continually produce many background neutrons, which have the potential to reduce weapon yield by starting the chain reaction prematurely.
• Second, the isotope plutonium-238, Pu-238 decays relatively rapidly, thereby significantly increasing the rate of heat generation in the material.
• Third, the isotope americium-241, Am-241 (which results from the 14-year half-life decay of plutonium-241 and hence builds up in reactor-grade plutonium over time) emits highly penetrating gamma rays, increasing the radioactive exposure of any personnel handling the material.

- Weapons-Grade Plutonium ... U.S. DoE

To summarize: people trying to make weapons grade plutonium want 93% Pu-239, with as little as possible Pu-238, Pu-240, and Am-241.

How to get there?

An obvious first step is to avoid fast reactors. A fast reactor has (n, 2n) reactions in addition to the normal absorption and fission reactions found in thermal reactors. To quote:

A side reaction chain also produces Pu-238:

U-238 + n -> U-237 + 2n
U-237 -> (6.75 days, beta) -> Np-237
Np-237 + n -> Np-238
Np-238 -> (2.1 days, beta) -> Pu-238

Pu-238: This isotope has a spontaneous fission rate, 1.1x10^6 fission/sec-kg (2.6 times that of Pu-240) and a very high heat output (567 W/kg!). Its very high alpha activity (283 times higher than Pu-239) makes it a much more serious source of neutron emission from the alpha -> n reaction. In high-burnup commercial reactor fuels it makes up no more than one or two percent of plutonium composition in extracted plutonium, but even so the neutron production and heating can make it very troublesome.

- Nuclear Weapons FAQ

A reactor may produce several kinds of plutonium. For example: Pu-238, Pu-239, and Pu-240, among other things. I'll concentrate on the plutonium made and particularly upon these 3 varieties. The kind required for nuclear bombs, and the two others most to be avoided. These 3 versions of plutonium are practically impossible to separate from each other. We can't use chemical means because they all have identical chemistry. We can't use physical means because they're nearly the same atomic weight. Once we've made too much Pu-238 and/or Pu-240, we must accept that our plutonium is bad for making bombs with. The smart A-bomb maker avoids Pu-238, Pu-240 and other such junk in the first place. They ensure their plutonium is nearly all Pu-239. They make plutonium under carefully controlled conditions, using thermal reactors, with slow burnups. Phénix was a fast reactor with a high burnup - the opposite of what a sensible person would choose.

Slow burnup is preferred because its plutonium has the least amount of spontaneous neutrons:

Type	Composition	Thermal power w/kg	Spontaneous neutrons /s/g	Origin	Use
Weapons-grade	Pu-239 with less than 8% Pu-240	2-3	60	From military 'production' reactors with metal fuel operated for production of low burn-up Pu. Purex separation.	Nuclear weapons (can be recycled as fuel in fast neutron reactor or as ingredient of MOX)
Reactor-grade from high-burnup fuel	55-70% Pu-239; more than 19% Pu-240 (typically about 30-35% non-fissile Pu)	5-10	200	Comprises about 1% of used fuel from normal operation of civil nuclear reactors with oxide fuel used for electricity generation	As ingredient (c. 5-8%) of MOX fuel for normal reactor
IFR-grade actinide	Pu + minor actinides + U, 50% Pu fissile	80-100	300,000	From fast reactor used metal fuel by pyroprocessing	recycle

- Plutonium, World Nuclear Association

Notice that two of the villains in plutonium atom bomb material are Pu-238, Pu-240. A fast reactor makes the most of this junk and a military reactor makes the least.

All this information used to find how not to make plutonium bombs has been readily available on the internet for decades. It's hard to understand how an august body such as the International Panel on Fissile Materials, with their swanky, plausible looking reports could've missed all this. It's almost as if they never did Nuclear Physics 101, but only write their reports to spread FUD. Perish the thought!

This blog has a lot of cut'n'paste in it. That's deliberate. I did it to show that you don't need a lot of know-how to decipher FUD. You just need to ask someone who knows, and do the obvious research (wikipedia)! The FUD promoted by Friends of the Earth and the International Panel on Fissile Materials misses out basic research. It begins with supposition (to estimate, it is assumed) and cross-references itself, claiming to be fact. A classic FUD technique that one.

Citations:

1. Plutonium, World Nuclear Association
2. Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions (internet FAQ)
3. Tas Uni academic less than “abundantly clear” about Generation IV nuclear reactors, by Jim Green
4. Wikipedia: Weapons-grade_plutonium
5. Global Fissile Material Report 2010, page 91
6. "Reactor-Grade and Weapons-Grade Plutonium in Nuclear Explosives", Nonproliferation and Arms Control Assessment of Weapons-Usable Fissile Material Storage and Excess Plutonium Disposition Alternatives (excerpted). U.S. Department of Energy. January 1997. Retrieved 5 September 2011.
7. Dickie, Comment no. 17

What to do with the British electricity market?

This began as a comment to a news article at Chemistry World: Austria to sue EU over UK nuclear aid. But a comment should raise only one point. I can't raise only one point because everything is interrelated.

Summary: British nuclear power is over-regulated, and the market distorted, forcing potential new nuclear power here (Hinkley C) to be the most expensive in the world. Our system of non-carbon energy rewards and subsidy is complex and raises electricity prices far more than it should. This is all the fault of British Governments who have conspired with environment campaigner designs to overprice electricity so that it's becoming a luxury good. The regulations and subsidies introduced are all bits and pieces measures: tinkering here, but ignoring the distortion it introduced there. Living in a pretend world, where they pretend there's a market when none exists. There's been no overall plan and no understanding of how regulation increases cost in unexpected ways.

The solution:

1. Deregulate British nuclear power to enable competition for new nuclear builds.
2. Replace current UK non-carbon subsidies with a simple unified system: Fee and Dividend.

I will argue that the problem in British electricity is two-fold.

1. The market for nuclear power lacks competition due to over-regulation.
2. The subsidy system is wrong.

1. Weak competition in UK Nuclear power is due to over-regulation.

1. Only one consortia bid for the Hinkley C CfD. Nuclear power plants are expensive to build but, once built, supply inexpensive electricity. When the government began a bidding process to award the contract for difference, CfD, for new nuclear build, only two consortia entered. Possible consortia are limited to those who have a nuclear power plant design, can raise capital and have suitable experience. One consortium soon dropped out, leaving the Edf consortia with a monopoly as the only CfD bidder!
2. The reactor design selected by Edf is, perhaps, the most expensive they could've found. The AREVA EPR is huge (1650 MWe), and over-designed. Per MWe it's nearly twice the price of a South Korean, KEPCO APR1400 (1455MWe). KEPCO are currently building their APR-1400 in the middle east for the price of USD $5 billion per reactor. The capital cost comparison: ERP: £4242/kW; APR1400: £2186/kW.
3. The choices available to a supplier are highly constrained because it takes 5/6 years and £ millions in fees (£200 million per GDA was suggested to me) to obtain approval for a reactor design. UK Office of Nuclear Regulation, ONR, must do a Generic Design Assessment, GDA for every reactor design built in the UK. The GDA timescale is 5 to 6 years: (see page 5).
4. This monopoly "choice" (of 1 reactor design) suits Edf. Edf and AREVA are both majority owned by the French state. AREVA also own the EPR design, and will build it. They developed the EPR together. In an ideal world an electricity provider will pick their nuclear plant design from the best solution provided by the market. Yet, there's no market here at all.
5. There are 8 currently approved sites for new build nuclear power in Britain. These are the sites of decommissioned Magnox reactors (excepting Scottish sites where the SNP have banned new nuclear power). Each is owned by a potential nuclear plant builder and any new consortia wanting to build new nuclear power here must obtain such a site.

Five market failures lie at the feet of governments who've closed their eyes to the problems.

Two measures which could resolve this

1. Force each new nuclear build consortium to pick their reactor from the best solutions available.
2. Abolish the requirement for a specific UK generic design assessment.

My justifications

1. This requirement seems self-evident. For example, Edf should look at a number of compatible designs and sub-contract the build to a supplier providing the best solution.

2. At first glance, the UK ONR GDA approval process looks logical. ONR scrutinize reactor designs and make sure they're good enough for Britain. Our standards are very high. Yet ONR prefer to scrutinize designs which a peer has already approved. The preeminent ONR peer is the American nuclear regulator: NRC.

	NRC	ONR
EPR	Under Review since Dec 2007, currently suspended	approved Dec 2012
AP-1000	approved Dec 2005	expected approval in 2017
ABWR	approved 1997	expected approval by Dec 2017
ESBWR	approved Sep 2014
APR-1400	Under Review
US-APWR	Under Review

There are far more NRC approved designs available (3 modern reactors), and some of these, such as the ESBWR, are considered superior to similar types undergoing UK GDA certification, such as ABWR.

Britain gains nothing by imposing one GDA on top of another. We lose. We're forced to build the most expensive reactor design available anywhere in the world, or nothing at all. We should scrap the requirement for a specifically British GDA and simply accept that the US NRC do a thorough job. The US NRC have always taken a vanguard position in pushing through new nuclear reactor standards. Provided a new design satisfies core requirements for safety, or improves upon those requirements, it should be good enough for us. The NRC have many more GDAs under their belt than our ONR because the USA is a much larger market and acceptance by NRC is, to a degree, a gold standard. For my first recommendation to make sense, this next measure is essential. One can't select from several possible designs unless many designs are available.

2. The subsidy system is wrong.

Non-carbon energy is subsidised under 4 schemes in the UK:

• Renewables Obligation, RO. It is only available for renewable energy.
• Contracts for Difference, CfD. It forces government into decade long price support contracts. The Hinkley CfD is 35 years long.
• Climate Change Levy aka 'carbon tax'. The carbon tax is now £18/tonne CO₂ emitted. In electricity, it raises the price produced via fossil fuel. That increases profits for non-carbon electricity (renewable energy and nuclear power). It also increases minimum electricity prices; by about £1/MWh for each £1/tonne of tax. It hurts coal generation about twice as much as natural gas.
• EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). This is notoriously gamed by business, and considered a sick joke by climate change campaigners.

[Hopefully I've haven't forgotten any. There are so many now, one loses track!].

The problem with subsidies is they distort the market, but some introduce worse distortions than others. Businesses will build their business model by chasing subsidy. This introduces inefficiencies into the national market. Because such businesses depend upon subsidy to keep them alive, they will lobby and fight tooth and nail to keep those subsidies going. A bad subsidy system is hard to abolish once introduced. A complex subsidy system, such as Britain has, enable businesses to play off one subsidy against another. Subsidies are gamed by business.

Most people pushing forward measures to account for fossil fuel externalities had an environmentalist mindset. It's a mindset that cares nothing for efficiency, and despises cheap, plentiful, energy because many environmentalists see energy as the problem: energy as the preeminent tool allowing humanity to harm the environment. Measures which unduly raise electricity prices are regarded as hidden bonuses by such people. As such we've ended up with an evil system of subsidies which unduly raise prices, and allow business to milk the system. With RO, environmentalists, must've thought they'd gained a major victory in pushing through their 100%-renewable energy utopia. Not quite. It lacks both legitimacy and public support. Because it only favours renewables it is illegitimate. Perhaps that illegitimacy has something to do with it's lack of public support?

The 'Fee and dividend' alternative.

In electricity, an alternative: "fee and dividend", could replace all current UK energy subsidies. It has few of the drawbacks of any of the 4 current systems.

Fee and dividend will work by charging fossil fuel electricity suppliers a fee for carbon burnt. Such a fee might be £40/tonne CO₂ emitted. [ Many climate campaigners propose a tax of £75/tonne CO₂. Done as Fee and Dividend instead, that would require a £75/tonne CO₂ fee ]. In UK, a £40/tonne CO₂ fee will raise the minimum wholesale electricity price to a floor of about £75/MWh. Any non-carbon supplier will, get this as the minimum price for their electricity. The fees raised are immediately given back to customers (to lower the actual price paid). The customer sees this 'dividend' on their bill as a refund. A fee and dividend will not raise prices by as much as a carbon tax.

Advantages

Fee and dividend is simple, hard to game, does not force government into decades-long price support contracts, favours no particular technology over any other (in the same way RO do), cannot be challenged in the courts (as the Austrian Government or Greenpeace may do with the Hinkley CfD). It cannot be toyed and gamed with as ETS is. It increases electricity prices by the least amount possible while being compatible with maximum carbon dioxide reduction. It has an advantage to an environmentalist, of introducing a system to penalize fossil fuel emissions just like a carbon tax would, yet will not raise consumer electricity prices to the same degree. A £75/tonne CO₂ tax looks impossible from where I sit. A £75/tonne CO₂ fee in electricity generation is almost doable.

Disadvantages?

Seven criticisms are made of fee and dividend (in the link above), but many of them are clearly nonsense. Just Gish Gallup, piled on. Legitimate criticisms of fee and dividend must acknowledge the existence of externalities in energy production and seek the best means to mitigate these externalities. In other words: if you have a criticism, then what's your, proposed alternative for dealing with externalities?

One legitimate criticism may be that it would be easy to introduce for electricity generation but difficult for other fuel uses. To answer this, for a start, the UK does not need any carbon taxes on vehicle fuel because we already tax motor vehicle fuel at about 4 times the level of the proposed carbon tax! UK motorists pay the equivalent of over £300/tonne CO₂ in taxes. That leaves heating and industrial fuel use as two areas to be covered for externalities.

Acronyms

CfD

Contracts for Difference. A complex price support mechanism

RO

Renewables Obligation. A complex renewable energy subsidy.

ETS

Emissions Trading System. A complex carbon trading system. Shockingly easy to game.

CCL

Climate Change Levy. More complex than it need by. It may be traded off against the ETS.

Carbon tax

Climate Change Levy

ONR

Office of Nuclear Regulation. The British nuclear power regulator.

NRC

Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The USA's nuclear regulator.

EPR

3rd generation (Gen III) pressurized water reactor (PWR) design. Developed by Edf and AREVA.

APR1400

3rd generation (Gen III) pressurized water reactor (PWR) design. Developed and designed by the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO).

European renewable energy by country

This is quite instructive because