A 'Galactic Visitor's' Essay, Part III (Gary Young, EFN-USA)

A ‘GALACTIC VISITOR’S’ ESSAY, PART III Going to the moon and beyond – For nuclear energy

by Gary Young, retired engineering manager Fort Collins, Colorado The single greatest issue standing in the way of building the proposed mega nuclear sites is political will. After reading her memoirs of our planet’s president that inspired our first attempts to reach our moon, I was struck that she had a flash of incite as she was walking to the podium. In her prepared speech, all focus was to reach the moon. The flash of incite was that the moon was too limiting a goal. Once the moon was reached, all the motivation to go further would dissipate. Instead, she adlibbed that the goal was to explore space and getting to the moon was only the first step. It was that insight that eventually led to being a galactic visitor.

One of the hardest parts is finding a political champion that could inspire the way that President Kennedy did about reaching the moon. That inspiration was so motivating that NASA had no problem recruiting the best and brightest for the Apollo Program.

What Kennedy missed was limiting the vision to only going to the moon. The unintended consequence was that after that success, NASA did indeed nearly collapse while searching for further reasons to exist. Going to the moon was simply self-limiting.

If Kennedy had aimed ‘for the moon and beyond,’ the motivation could have been perpetual. By the way the shuttle disasters were a product of NASA not retaining the best and brightest.

It will take charismatic leaders to inspire the vision that nuclear power is safe and the proposal can and will greatly improve the living standards for all the earth’s peoples. So part III offers deeper insights that would aid such a leader to succeed.

Why I kept referring to high EROI (Energy Return on Investment) in parts I and II as the key to making the old planet rich enough to afford galactic travel is to help create the vision that nuclear has the highest EROI and is vital to part of the ‘vision’ that the whole world would enjoy better livings standards under the proposal. If the United States led the way and the richer nations joined in, it would ‘free up’ more low cost conventional energy sources for the rest of the world to advance economically.

National commitment: National commitment means full backing of the majority of the people and their government. Today, energy systems are in chaos because there is no real energy policy, neglect by government, meddling by organizations like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and individuals like Amory Lovins who are generally wrong but still followed. Perhaps worse are the politicians who go along with them out of ideology or to get votes.

Page 1

As an example, I previously mentioned ocean cooling as being very necessary. Those concerned will worry about the environmental effects of heating the oceans. One answer to that concern is that all the natural volcanic and “hot spot” heating of the oceans actually have very little effect on the oceans and these natural heating sources are orders of magnitude larger than reactor cooling needs. There are many more such issues to be resolved.

I have also been thinking about how the program could maintain political stability for perpetuity. It has to have the same sort of clout of Social Security being the ‘third rail of politics yet not become subject to ill-founded politically driven financial cut backs as is often suffered by the military. Quite frankly, the only way I can see that possibility is an amendment to the Constitution about energy policy. It could be right after the amendment for term limits.

Site planning for “perpetual” use: This would mean that while each site would be planned for 7 really large nuclear plants, the site would be sized and “licensed” for 15. When the first 7 reach end of life, another 7 would have been built so that electricity continues to be produced “perpetually.”

While the second 7 are operating, the first 7 would be decommissioned and then new plants built. The 15th licensed site is for the yet unknown research reactor needed to test out new processes.

We can’t even agree that Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility is a good idea. This is probably because the intention was to leave the facility unattended for at least centuries.

The mitigating circumstances of the proposal is that every site would be under active management by highly qualified people for perpetuity.

A further mitigating circumstance is that all high level radioactive wastes would be processed into additional fuel eliminating the vast majority from the waste stream. Only the US does not process spent fuels as does the rest of the world. The French are a role model for having developed excellent processing technologies.

Initial Reactor Build: The initial build of the 60 to 72 core reactors should be Gen III. There are no Gen III reactors in the US at present but two EPR (European Pressurized Reactor; the internationalized name is Evolutionary Power Reactor) are being built in Europe and two in China. Japan also has operating Gen III reactors. Of course the point of the proposed much larger reactors in being pressurized water reactors engineered for greater safety is leveraging what we presently know.

Gen III reactors have:

Page 2

-

Higher availability and longer operating life – typically 60 years possibly extendable to 120 years.

-

A simpler and more rugged standard design less vulnerable to operational problems to expedite licensing, reduced capital cost and faster construction time.

(It should be noted however that all EPR reactors are experiencing extended construction times.)

-

The plants require no active intervention for three or more days following a shutdown. This is done through robust passive cooling and other measures.

-

Greater resistance to serious damage from aircraft impact or other potential terrorist means.

-

Reduced possibility of core melt accidents. The US NRC requirement for calculated core damage frequency (CDF) is 1x10-4, most current US plants have about 5x10-5. Generation III plants are about 5x10-6 against the IAEA safety target for future plants of 1x10-5. Considering their scale and the number to be built, a CDF of one in a million is a reasonable goal.

-

Burn-up increased to use fuel more efficiently and ability to burn ‘mixed oxides’ to reduce the amount of waste.

-

Leverage burnable absorbers to increase the time between refueling; perhaps to decades.

My model of choosing the prime contractors is similar to how the US nuclear weapons labs are managed—namely not low bid but high competence businesses with close “Energy Core” supervision. This has been the way the US Navy has been getting reactors for decades. A model in contracting is how Germany maintain their highways— high competence contractors that have a significant portion of their contract money held back for years to see if the roads survived as intended.

Reactor Management: The U.S. Navy has maintained a more consistent high quality management process for nuclear power than private American utilities before INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations).

The French management of NPPs is also constantly on top of consistent operations and maintenance across the whole fleet of NPPs in France. So how management insure error free operations when we humans are not “hard wired” for success?

The Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents were made much worse because of human errors by the operators trying to fix the problems. Fukushima Nuclear Crises was because of the size of the tsunami, not reactor operator errors. Having been a Page 3

submariner, manufacturing engineer, and technology center manager I have some hard observations on how people go about their work day and how mistakes happen. Because I knew people on the USS Scorpion submarine I will start with the probable mistakes they made even though they were highly trained.

We likely never will know what happened to the Scorpion. After years of trying, the leading three theories are: malfunction of the TDU (Trash Disposal Unit), a battery explosion, and an accident with a torpedo. The evidence is contradictory. Scorpion was going east when it went down. It was on the way home so it should have been going west. The outside of the torpedo room is still intact which argues against a torpedo explosion but the hatches are open. The operations compartment is imploded and parts of the battery are strewn around the site.

The submarine was commanded from the control room which is the top deck of the operations compartment. The ship’s galley where the TDU is located is below the control room. Below the galley is more berthing space and then the battery is on the lowest level.

As a junior officer on Shark, a sister ship of Scorpion, I was given shipyard overhaul responsibility to make sure that the TDU problem was fixed. The Shark TDU once flooded when the inner door was opened and the outer door was still open. Fortunately the in-rush of water help cause the outer door to shut. A near10 inch hole admits a lot of water in a short period of time! I don’t think the Scorpion TDU was the problem because the outer door would likely have shut as it did on Shark. Further, the operations compartment would not have imploded if it was flooded which would have equalized sea pressure through the TDU. The battery explosion theory is not necessarily supported by the fact Scorpion had turned around to go east. Still, if there was a hydrogen explosion, it would occur at the lower level of the operations compartment and blow the intermediate decks up into the control room. That would result in a total loss of control. It would not be long before crush depth was reached particularly if the diving planes went full dive A few years later I became a Weapons Officer. I had the understanding and care of Mk 37 torpedoes in service at that time. They had silver alkali batteries. When fired, a “squib” charge would rupture the ‘diaphragm’ which allowed the alkali electrolyte solution to dump down into the battery. That ‘completed the circuit’ causing the motor to run, turn on the control electronics, and the “fish would swim out the tube.” But what if the problem torpedo was in the room and not a tube?

Complicating matters was some problem torpedo batteries at the time probably had defective diaphragms. I think it is possible that if there was a small diaphragm leak where electrolyte could dribble down into the battery at a rate low enough to not run the motor. However torpedoes still in the room and not in a tube had ‘shrouds’ which were placed over the propellers primarily because the blades were sharp enough to cut people and to also keep propellers from turning before being loaded in the tubes. The shrouds would also prevent the propellers from turning even if all the electrolyte went into the Page 4

battery. In any case even a small dribble would be more than enough to cause the battery to get hot. If still in the room, the procedure was to remove the warhead, load the torpedo into a tube and jettison it. We always kept one empty tube just in case.

The first thing the Torpedoman on watch would communicate is “Hot running torpedo” and following proper procedure, the Officer of the Deck would promptly call General Quarters and turn the submarine 180 degrees so the torpedo would not arm. It also takes a minimum number of propeller turns to arm besides the turning degree cutout.

However, if the shroud failed or the blades sheared off or drive shafts broke under motor torque, it would not take long for the enable ‘distance’ to be reached and that is why the prompt 180 degree turn.

My theory is that Scorpion was charging batteries which does not routinely happen often in nuclear submarines because the battery is there for emergency back up and seldom used. Then another event (Hot torpedo?) happened. This other event and the call to General Quarters resulted in the crew shutting hatches and ventilation valves.

Because it isn’t often charged, people may have forgotten about the battery charging. If near the end of the charge cycle when most hydrogen is generated, H2 could build up quickly and explode before anyone noticed the error. That alone does not explain the damage to the sub about where the battery is located. What does explain the damage is implosion of the operations compartment. The hull in the operations compartment is the full diameter of the submarine but the torpedo room is much smaller in diameter because it is surrounded by a second hull; the space between the hulls constitute the forward ballast tanks. If the operations compartment was slightly more out of round from initial build or a battery explosion or simply just the effect of being larger, it would likely imploded first. Once the operations compartment implodes the much weaker bulkhead between the operations compartment and the torpedo room would implode.

Why the hatches were open could be explained by the effect of implosion within the torpedo room. When an implosion occurs, the air in the compartment is suddenly highly compressed which like a single stroke of a diesel engine, will ignite anything flammable within the compressed air bubble. That explosion will send out a pressure wave strong enough to rupture the “dogs” that normally hold the hatches shut and blow the torpedo room hatches open. My theory explains all the evidence observed at the sinking site. The ‘diesel effect’ within the operations compartment and impact with the bottom also explains the operations compartment debris pattern around the submarine.

The lesson is that well trained people generally respond to one problem very well, but when two or more problems occur near simultaneously, people don’t do as well. The operators at both Chernobyl and Three Mile took corrective actions that not only were just wrong but were slow to recognize their wrong actions because in their mind, they did the right things. In fact, people will keep looking at other possibilities and not the ones they induced. It usually takes another person to see that the corrective action was wrong.

My home planet manufacturing experience has taught me to engineer around our human failings because people are not machines. If they do repetitive things over and Page 5

over, they occasionally make a mistake but often just don’t recognize they did because in their mind, they did it correctly.

I was admonished at the time because the ‘conventional wisdom’ was that off-shore manufacturing would reduce costs. My operations had lower costs, better quality and significant better responsiveness to the customers doing manufacturing on-shore because we engineered around our human limitations which greatly improved our quality and productivity.

Submarining entails long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of real terror; some from already being under water and some from operations for which we have submarines. Boredom was mitigated because the Navy is an “up or out” origination. (If people do not pass the requirements and advance, they are thrown out.) Submarines as well as the rest of the Navy constantly have to train new people and strive to keep the entire crew sharp and qualified. The studies required to advance, and the use of drills and other actions were intended to insure we had the teamwork and skills… to survive the periods of terror.

Nuclear power generating station operating personnel have more in common with airline pilots in that they do the same job for years and definitely do not want to have periods of terror. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has an effective and long term record of improving airline safety. The INPO operates much in the same way except it is not a government organization. The common operational paradigms of these organizations has been driving exceptional training, teamwork, and engineering around our human shortcomings.

The proposal calls for 5 to 6 same design generation (Gen III, or Gen III+) at all twelve sites. The objective is to leverage the manufacturing of 60 or more same design plants built to the standards currently well known. I also propose to build a simulator at each of the twelve sites patterned after the common reactor plant design. Like an airplane simulator, these reactor simulators would be programed to act the same as the real thing. Why one at each site is that to man 24/365, each reactor would probably take 5 separate crews to cover all the shifts. I would like to see each crew have at least a week each quarter in the simulator. I would also like to see a rotation of reactor operations crews take charge of the simulators for a rotation as instructors because there is nothing like teaching to better understand what is being taught.

I have called for pressurized water reactors because they are well understood. I would like to see more advanced reactors to explore thorium, mixed oxides and breeders. I would also like to see development of liquid metal cooled and high temperature reactors. (High temp reactors would directly separate hydrogen from water from heat alone.) These reactors would be very different from the base set and they also should have simulators. Because and until any such design becomes predominate, one or two simulators system wide would be sufficient for each separate design.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) would be the basis of engineering around our human failings.

The point is to prevent humans from making errors but not replace the humans. To do Page 6

that, each reactor AI support would become unique with time to accommodate the slight variations that accumulate even with a standard design. We should not overlook the fact that what is “reality” for AI is what has been previously programed. I have been counseled by an AI expert that for an AI computer, reality is something from the past.

Humans will retain superiority (for a time) because humans think in the present. My thought is that AI will reach the point where they also want to “think in the present” and evolve and create sensors to allow them to do that.

Such AI would have to be ‘air gapped’ isolated as an anti-hacking measure. It also occurs to me that during the 60 to 80 year life time of the proposed standard reactors, we will have passed “singularity” where computers become so smart that they would be more capable than humans to better design and fabricate ever smarter computers. It would be irony if they decided that humans were superfluous!

Reactor Maintenance: The oldest operating nuclear generation plants in the US are 47 years old. The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise operated for 51 years. With what we now know, it would be reasonable to expect and operational life of at least 60 years and possibly up to 80 years (and maybe double those for extended life) for the proposed plants. Amortizing the capital costs over such long periods is another reason the EROI is so attractive. To live the many decades expected requires a robust maintenance program from day one of operations. With the possible exception of early life failures, it is also likely that new plants would operate the first few year with little need for maintenance. What must still happen the first few years is extensive data collection on just about everything. It is this early data collection and analysis that becomes key is building the required “predictive” maintenance program so the plant will reach and possibly exceed the design life.

I was blessed when I was a technology center manager in having a maintenance manager who did pioneering work on the then new concept of predictive maintenance.

Our installed base of machines in just the clean rooms exceeded $100 million and that was a quarter century ago! We made “weird and wonderful” circuits that leveraged hundreds of millions in end product sales every year. Some of our machines were the only one in the world. We HAD to keep them running well! (It is gratifying that some of these weird and wonderful processes are still alive at Broadcom.)

New automobiles have surprisingly robust predictive maintenance routines because they are loaded with sensors and surprisingly powerful computers. That revolution came about by advancement in sensor technology that gather the data and computer power that processes the data into intelligence that is used to call for the required maintenance. It is somewhat disconcerting that maintenance notes show up on my home computer telling me things like tire pressure, oil life remaining and even that I have a burned out bulb somewhere. Then again some of the “weird and wonderful” stuff we used to make were the precursors to the sensors now in use. The irony is noted.

The key to maintenance starts with the design of the reactor plants that are inherently safe. The next key is engineering understanding of what should be monitored then Page 7

figure out how relevant measurements should be taken. The monitoring involves installing the appropriate sensors and/or reactor plant manual procedures. It also includes developing the appropriate human interface instrumentation and AI computer programs. In my scenario, I have often wondered if a simple AI program on Scorpion that just reminded the Officer Of the Deck (OOD) that hydrogen was still building would have saved the submarine.

Radiation damage to people: Another part of the hardest part is re-educating the populous that what they know and fear about radiation is virtually all wrong. That is where Environmentalists for Nuclear Power come in as a conduit and role model of education.

I once turned a 5 REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man) film badge black. That means I received at least 5 REMs which was then considered a ‘lifetime dose.’ I had been through the “Health Physics” courses but I really didn’t understand what it all meant.

Lurking in the back of my mind was would I have normal children. So for years I went about learning all I could about radiation and what it could do to me. The following is lifted from Wikipedia: One of the two standard units used to measure the dose equivalent (or effective dose), which combines the amount of energy (from any type of ionizing radiation that is deposited in human tissue), along with the medical effects of the given type of radiation. For beta and gamma radiation, the dose equivalent is the same as the absorbed dose. By contrast, the dose equivalent is larger than the absorbed dose for alpha and neutron radiation, because these types of radiation are more damaging to the human body. Thus, the dose equivalent (in rems) is equal to the absorbed dose (in rads) multiplied by the quality factor of the type of radiation [see Title 10, Section 20.1004, of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 20.1004), "Units of Radiation Dose"]. The related international system unit is the Sievert (Sv), where 100 rem is equivalent to 1 Sv. For additional information, see Doses in Our Daily Lives and Measuring Radiation There is a lot of information available in the above so I will start with what I found out about my film badge. What I received was likely all gamma radiation (photons of higher energy than X-rays) and possibly some neutrons. This is because I was wearing clean room garb with a mask which would have intercepted the alpha particles (Helium nucleus) and beta (higher energy electrons which can be stopped by a piece of paper).

Note the Wikipedia part of depositing in human tissue. Since it does not take much to stop Alpha and Beta and my film badge was under the garb measuring in REM the measurement does not tell the whole story. Seen most in the literature is measurements of radiation in Sieverts (Sv). Just to keep you confused, absorbed radiation is measured in Gray (Gy) (or RAD) and the dose equivalent radiation is measured in Sieverts (Sv) (or REM), and the conversion is 100 REM to a Sv and 100 RAD to a Gy. Ionization is the most damaging thing that radiation can do to atoms. The radiation kicks an electron out of the atom’s orbit living a positively charged atom. The now Page 8

ionized atom has sufficient energy to break chemical bonds. A lot of radiation ionizes a lot of atoms which in turn disassemble a lot of chemical bonds. Break enough chemical bonds in the components of human cells and the cell dies.

High to very high radiation doses only happen with nuclear weapons and with the single exception of the Chernobyl accident where people were very close to a reactor that was wide open. There are now no operating reactor designs in the world that could release such high radioactivity with any sort of accident. Still we should look at the effects of high radiation doses.

High doses of radiation beginning at one Gray (Gy) can start to be fatal three ways from acute radiation syndrome. There is about a 50% chance of death from whole body exposure to 4 Gy and 8 Gy or more results in virtually a 100 % death rate. However with medical treatment people may survive doses up to 7 Gy. - Death of the stem cells in the bone marrow so the person dies when they basically run out of red blood cells.

- The gastrointestinal (GI) syndrome where the GI tissues can no longer absorb food and become leaky. Secondary infections, electrolyte imbalance and shock results in death.

- Cerebrovascular syndrome from very high doses cause the blood vessels in the brain rupture like many mini strokes.

All radiations do not behave the same in the body. Photons such as X and gamma rays have a weighting factor of 1. Beta particles are electrons which have a weighting factor of 1. Protons have a factor of 2. The real wrecking balls are alpha particles which have a weighting factor of 20, and neutrons vary from a factor of 5 to 20 depending on their energy.

Body tissues also have sensitivity weighting factors. The whole human body has a weighting factor of 1.0. Bone marrow, stomach, colon, lung, and breast have a factor of 0.12 each so all combined is 0.60. The esophagus, liver, thyroid, bladder and gonads have a factor of 0.05 each or 0.25 total. The brain, the hard part of bone, kidneys, skin and salivary glands, have a factor of 0.01 each or a total of 0.05. All the remaining tissue of the body totals 0.10. An observation: the testicles seem to account for five times more than the male brain! This probably explains why Stupid Young Males (SYM’s) do the ‘shallow end of the gene pool’ things they do.

The “linear no threshold” (LNT) dose risk theory of radiation effects originated from a 1927 Hermann Muller study of fruit flies. The Japanese atomic bomb survivors have been subject to the most extensive human population studies ever done. The conclusion of those studies is that there have been no hereditary effects from human exposure to radiation. The linear no threshold theory is just not valid with respect to gamma, beta, proton and low energy neutron radiation. There is a “collective dose corollary” discussed later that is just as wrong.

Cancer from radiation and cell self-repair: Page 9

We humans love to scare ourselves silly with the drama of real or imagined catastrophes. Zombie Apocalypse anyone? Just the “C” word (cancer) gets many people unreasonably scared. Ionizing radiation can break chemical bonds in the DNA within human cells and that is where the false drama of bad things and real issue of cancer could be initiated.

What the drama addicted don’t tell you is that human cells and even their contained DNA have remarkably resilient ways to repair themselves! This should not be surprising in that our DNA and cell structures have been evolving for literally billions of years from a time when the earth was much more radioactive than it is now. If cells and particularly DNA were not able to repair themselves, no long-living higher life forms such as humans would exist now.

In general, gamma ray and beta particle radiation from anything to do with reactor operations can either pass through cells and DNA with no effect at all or perhaps cause only minor damage such as a single strand break (SSB). DNA can easily repair itself in that the undamaged strand holds the helix together while the chemical bonds in the broken strand re-establish.

Previously mentioned is that alpha particles and higher energy neutrons are “wrecking balls” in that they are capable of breaking both strands of the DNA in what is called a double strand break (DSB). Even then, the two ends of DNA have remarkable ways of recombining, or the cell simply duplicates an undamaged DNA strand as a replacement.

Relatively rarely, the DNA does not get reassembled just right and even then there is a low probability that it could lead to a cancer (The body also has great defenses against cancer cells). However the not quite right DNA gets faithfully replicated when replacement cells are re-generated with age. This faithfully replication of the not right DNA is the basis of the linear no threshold theory being in play by those opposed to nuclear power.

To better understand that the LNT theory really is not valid is best explained in a November 2016 paper; Radon, lung cancer and the LNT model. The paper is by: The Biophysics and Medical Physics Group, BMF, at the University of Oslo (Norway) originally headed by Emeritus Physics Professor Thormod Henriksen. See this paper on go-nuclear.org and efn-usa.org. Use search words: radon, henriksen, lnt.

It turns out that the lowest dose of radiation used in the fruit fly experiment was 800 REM and went up to 6000 REM and then nearly linearly, extrapolated back to zero. As a reminder, 800 REM of radiation over the relatively short period of the fruit fly experiment has a near 100% lethality for humans. A human receiving 6000 REM at the rate of the fruit flies would be dead before they could say “Oh Sh**.” The experiment is just not relevant to the low doses that we are concerned about for operation of nuclear generating plants.

In 1948 Ernst Capari and Curt Stern re did the fruit fly experiment with low doses and found that there at low doses did not follow the LNT hypothesis and that there was Page 10

indeed a low dose threshold. While DNA was probably known about as far back as 1860, it was not until 1953 when Watson and Crick brought forth the double helix structure that resulted in modern understanding. These subsequent understandings clearly indicate that there is a threshold and possibly a “hormetic” benefit at low doses.

Unfortunately, there has not been many studies of the possible “hormetic” effect.

It should be noted that simply growing old where replacement cells and DNA don’t quite get accurately replicated is at least ten but more likely a hundred time more probable than radiation damage which can naturally can also lead to cancer. In short, far more likely sources of DNA damage is from chemicals such as found in smoking, solvents, byproducts of bacteria etc.

Sources and amounts of natural and medical radiation: We get irradiated nearly constantly from natural, not natural radiation, and medical sources. The Natural sources of radiation are cosmic, terrestrial and internal. Cosmic radiation originates from space including the sun. Fortunately the atmosphere shields the vast majority of cosmic radiation. Living as I do in Colorado, there is less atmosphere above me so my body gets greater cosmic originated radiation than if I lived at sea level. Terrestrial radiation comes from radioactive elements in the earth’s crust and can vary considerably depending on the presence of these elements where you live.

Radon gas is one of the most prevalent. Internal radiation comes from potassium 40 and carbon 14 that our bodies are made of and has been with us since conception. The amount present depends on what is eaten and from where the food was grown. Of interest is that there is actually a radiation measure called a banana which is about 1 millionth Sv! It takes about 1.16 million ‘standard’ bananas to release one Sievert of radiation.

The not natural sources of radiation comes from atmospheric bomb testing, nuclear accidents, reactor fuel cycle, and occupational. The worldwide average is only about 12 to 15 banana equivalents per year from these sources. The nuclear reactor fuel cycle is less than half a banana.

People in the world average 2.4 millisievert (mSv) or 2400 bananas of natural radiation per year. The US average is about 3.2 mSv in major part because of radon, and Japan averages about 1.5 mSv. There are also hundreds of millions worldwide who receive 10 to 20 mSv primarily due to nuclides in the ground where they live.

Medical radiation dosage is highly variable. The US population averages just over 3.0 mSv primarily because of the availability of diagnostic instruments and nuclear medicine. Japan averages 2.3 mSv, but the rest of the world averages less than 1 mSv because billions of people have no access to the diagnostic tools like CT scans or nuclear medicine. Another variable is that it is an average. Some individuals may have no medical radiation for years and others like me have approached 50 mSv last year for just diagnostics. Note: the 50 mSv matches my blackened 5 REM film badge from years ago.

Others under treatment with nuclear medicine may experience much more.

Page 11

The fact that human cells and DNA have remarkable abilities to repair themselves just does not fit the narrative. The linear no threshold theory is just wrong. There is also a “collective dose corollary” best described that if one dose kills one person, 1/100th of the dose will kill 1 in 100 people. While there is some basis for thinking alpha particle radiation does have some characteristics that support the liner no threshold theory, the collective dose corollary is just pure scare mongering.

Chemicals and even mechanical damage from things like asbestos crystals are a far greater threat than radiation. Large statistical studies do not present a clear picture if any induced cancers are radiation related or were actually caused by chemical or mechanical means. Just the same, we want to avoid exposure to radiation. The conclusion is that if you survive the initial dose, your body will repair the damage, your body will recover and you and your descendants will be just fine. The nuclear fuel cycle of the proposed super sites may add a banana (uSv) a year.

What to avoid: In general we really want to avoid alpha and neutron emitters. Also, we want to avoid those nuclides with very short half-lives because they emit much more radiation over short times and include beta and gamma.

You will be surprised to learn that plutonium is not the terrible toxic substance we have been conditioned to accept. While it does emit alpha particles, the half-life is 24,100 years which means that it does not emit many in a human life time. We will not breathe in vaporized plutonium because the boiling point is 5,842 F (3,228 C). Only 0.05% of ingested plutonium is absorbed by the GI tract and what is absorbed ends up half in the liver and half in the bones so the whole body sensitivity factor is just 0.03. Plutonium is a heavy metal which as a class are bad for the body but as a heavy metal, Plutonium is much less toxic than equal amounts of mercury or lead.

When reactor fuel rods are spent, there is still quite a lot of radioactivity going on with the very short half-life transuranic elements decaying into other elements. That is why fuel rods are placed in a cooling pool for years. After 10 half-lives of the element, the amount of radiation is 1/1000 the original.

“There are four transuranic elements in spent nuclear fuel that we want to avoid contact with humans because they pose the most biological hazard. Ironically, they all decay by beta or Gamma radiation and not alpha. They are: - Iodine 131 which has only an 8 day half-life but is very readily absorbed by the body and concentrates in the thyroid. Children are especially at risk and cancers are measurable.

- Strontium 90, while human absorption is only about 20%, it is a bone seeker in that its electrochemistry behaves like calcium. Being right next to the marrow is not good.

- Cesium 137 is very soluble in water, readily forms salts and electrochemistry behaves like potassium. It ends up in nearly all tissue. Fortunately the “biological half-life” is only about 70 days. Biological half-life means the body gets rid of half the Cesium 137 every 70 days by replacing it with potassium.

Page 12

- Plutonium 241 isotope has a half-life of 14 years but it beta decays into Americium 241 which is an Alpha emitter with a half-life of 439 years. Chernobyl showed that Plutonium 241 is created in far more abundance than 239. It should be remembered that the Soviets created Chernobyl for both power generation and making Plutonium for weapons. Like 239, 241 does not have electrochemistry properties of particular threat to humans, but if inhaled as dust, the eventual Americium alpha particles are hazardous to the lungs. I think that 241 is on the “official” list in part because of the erroneous classification of Plutonium as being erroneously labeled the “most poisonous substance on earth.”

Shameless Plug: For years I researched a lot of information but recently I found Why We Need Nuclear Power by Michael H. Fox. To see a summary of this book, use the search function on either go-nuclear.org or efn-usa.org with the keywords: “michael fox”. Turns out that he lives nearby and we had occasion to talk. His students must have loved him because the book is clear, concise and I found it very interesting how he explained radiation biological effects considering I understand little biology. How DNA is selfrepairing is particularly interesting. My copy came through Amazon. I recommend you get a copy just to have a single source to really understand radiation effects, cell issues and DNA repair.

Work with the environment, not radical environmentalists: By the age of 15 I was a ranch hand. While I had the use of horses for some of the work, a lot of being a cowboy was simple hard manual labor. Most satisfying was taking my horse, some pack horses, fence repair materials and spending several days at a time repairing fences in terrain so rugged, beautiful, and magical that it could only be reached by horse. I truly came to believe that man should be good stewards of the land.

Stewardship: The conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.

I became a lifelong environmentalist in taking care that mankind should not despoil the planets we call home. My proposal for the twelve energy super-sites is consistent with good stewardship. It is respectful of the environment but independent of the constantly changing demands of the radical environmentalists.

Of the hundreds of ways to divide people into two or more groups, one way to describe environmentalist is: -

The stewards Page 13

-

The curious and aware The radicals

The stewards are most similar to me and probably most of the Environmentalists for Nuclear Power are stewards. The curious and aware think the environment is important but are most often miss educated and so are often wrong about what they are aware. It is the job of the stewards to re-educate the curious and aware.

It is unfortunate that it is the radicals that control the narrative. It is simply too bad that there are so many radical jerks that think they have the only answers particularly when they are wrong. Because as Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman stated: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, if it doesn’t agree with observation, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

I have been a student of human behavior models driven first to be the best Naval officer I could then the best business manager I could. Of the hundreds of models that I have come across, there are some generalities describing how people come to believe what they do. I have been long aware of the 8 step process described below.

The model is a fairly consistent “recipe” that radical environmentalists follow in scare mongering. Unfortunately, it is the same recipe that is followed in other fields of conspiracy such as “Big Pharmacy,” Anthropogenic Global Warming, worldwide pandemics, and many more.

• First, there must be some sort of danger generally leading to premature death. The perceived danger cannot be trivial but has to approach the apoplectic.

• Second, the danger has to be avoidable by means of individual personal action.

Generally sending money, petitioning politicians, joining groups, etc.

• Third, the story tellers must believe they are performing a moral action. For instance saving the planet. At the very least, the moral action is telling everyone else about the danger.

• Fourth, the story has to be changeable. With time, people see that the dire consequences didn’t happen so the story has to change into something closely related but even more frightening and requiring even more immediate corrective actions.

• Fifth, identifying villains makes the story more believable. Prerenal villains include big oil, billionaires, climate deniers, and any other group other than those with which the story teller affiliates.

Page 14

• Sixth, the story has to have ‘experts’ with impeccable but usually unverifiable credentials. Scientists have discovered… Professor X says… CNN ran a story about…

• Seventh, the story needs details. There is a much greater chance of being believed if the story seems more credible with details. The details however are usually not verifiable.

For example 30,000 died from the Chernobyl accident. (That did not happen.)

• Finally, the story tellers must truly have conviction. It won’t work if the story teller shows any reservation. This is the “True Believer” mentality.

Changing the narrative: So how can the stewards fight for the hearts and minds of the curious and enlist them is a better narrative? Since the radicals have set the narrative, we attack using the same 8 steps.

• The Danger: The best way to fight the claims of dire consequences is laughter and pointing out the absurdities. Ridicule is a potent weapon. Fortunately we have the radiation measurement of the banana. The potential threat of the proposed twelve super nuclear sites is at most two bananas a year.

• Avoidable: First, there is no evidence that even Chernobyl had any effect on the vast majority of the world’s population. This was because the human body and particularly the DNA has remarkable ways to heal. Second, there is evidence that renewables as their preferred method will actually kill far more people in the less developed nations from lack of affordable energy. Finally, even if renewables actually worked to solve energy needs, they would actually be more expensive and despoil significant areas of land.

Mountains are more scenic than windmills.

• Moral Action: Increasing energy costs are the most regressive tax on this planet. Such taxes punish the poor harder than anyone. This is an important point, because radical enviros are in major part sustained by the illusion that they have the moral high ground.

When developed countries use nuclear, it takes price pressure off fossil fuels which results in the billions of the poor in the world having the chance to improve their lives through cheap fossil energy. A ‘we know best’ attitude condemning the poor to perpetual poverty is not moral.

• Changing the story: Have the radicals defend their positions at all times. Point out that their original story fell apart after the real facts came in, so why should there revised story be believed now? The key phrase “let’s move on” is their admission that our attentions are trying to be directed elsewhere because the original story was so wrong.

Page 15

• Villains: Never let it be forgotten that the real villains are those who would deny the world’s poor the opportunity to better their lives.

• Unverifiable Credentials: Do homework. Point out that the story the teller used is not verified by actual scientists, real experts, and above all, real data. My favorite “poster boy” for getting it wrong is Al Gore who received a D in the only college science course he took. He surrounded himself with people who told him what he wanted to hear. He had no way to analyze that they were and still are wrong and likely didn’t care because the result was a totally wrong movie that was very profitable to Gore.

• Fake Details: Ridicule is again likely the greatest weapon. Remember that the Japanese atom bomb survivors were subject to the most intensive radiation studies ever conducted. Nearly as intensive were studies on everyone else engaged in nuclear activities. We do know what does happen and more importantly, what does not happen to people over the long term.

• Conviction: The only thing we can do about the conviction of the radicals is have the conviction of responsible stewards. Our job is to ‘paint’ the picture of a wonderful future through the responsible deployment of nuclear energy.

Note that the above steps to change people’s hearts and minds requires little actual scientific detail. For the majority of people, emotion trump analytical logic and their decisions are emotional events. I also contend that even the most analytical scientist make decisions on emotion---eureka, the data shows!… A decision to reverse a previously held view is doubly emotional because of the often considerable investment in the previously held understanding. It takes time to change opinions so repeated arguments will be necessary.

It is nearly impossible to change the minds of extreme radicals because they are so certain of their “superior” viewpoint. It was Eric Hoffer that explained that the greater the illogic, the stronger the belief necessary to bridge it. These people have likely existed in a “bubble” where they have not been exposed or allowed themselves to be exposed in any significant way to information that would counter their beliefs. Even the Socratic method of asking questions does not work because once you get close to the logic gap their belief bridged, you are simply dismissed. Stated another way, don’t try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Page 16