Nuclear Power Could Save The Planet

AS WE ALL KNOW, our American liberals see themselves as the “reality-based” community that believes in science rather than religious superstition and myths. If so, they will be interested in the emerging science of hormesis, the idea that small quantities of toxins, even those that kill at high concentrations, may actually be beneficial.

The principle was demonstrated by Dorothy L. Sayers in her Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Strong Poison. The not-very-lovely mystery novelist Harriet Vane is accused of poisoning her lover, the avant-garde novelist Philip Boyes, with arsenic. But it turns out it was the oily family lawyer Norman Urquart what done it. Over several months he had ingested small quantities of arsenic and developed a tolerance for the poison. So when he shared an omelette with Philip Boyes that was laced with the stuff, Boyes died in horrible pain while he experienced no ill effect.

It turns out that small amounts of nuclear radiation are beneficial too. Theo Richel reports that they are reducing the estimates of death from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Right now, it is estimated that about 4,000 people will die prematurely from exposure to Chernobyl. But it may be that the estimate of excess deaths will be one day be reduced to a deficit, because “many people in the area [will] not have cancer as a result of their extra doses of radiation.”

Only about 140 people around the reactor received very high doses (28 of them died as a result), the rest of the population received an extra dose that was lower than normal background radiation

The notion that any exposure to nuclear radiation would increase cancer death arose in a report in 1958 analyzing cancer deaths among the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The more radiation, scientists found, the bigger likelihood of cancer death.

But the question is, what happens as you lower the radiation dose. Does the likelihood of cancer reduce slowly toward zero?

Some people had received an amount of radiation that was about 50-100 times the normal, natural, background radiation that the rest of the Japanese receive (about 2.5 milliSieverts/year). In this group of so called Habakushas (bomb survivors) they could not find enough cancer deaths to create a decent statistic that showed radiation is carcinogenic even at these low doses. So the straight line of dose and effect suddenly stopped.

But the scientists didn’t say, well, we don’t know what happens at low doses. Instead, they extended their graph and invented a hypothesis called LNT (Linear no threshold). Radiation was dangerous all the way down.

But maybe they were wrong.

In the past half century it became clear that there are many places on earth where background radiation is 50, 100 or more times higher than the sea level average of 2.5 milliSievert... In all these places epidemiological studies were started and they produced a remarkably consistent picture: the people there have either the same or a slightly lower chance of cancer compared to their less-irradiated countrymen. They live just as long or a little bit longer.

You can see that this rather makes a mess of the nuclear meltdown hypothesis, celebrated on stage and screen. If Chernobyl caused no excess deaths, except for the people actually at the reactor attempting to contain the meltdown, then why are we worried about radiation from nuclear plants and from nuclear waste disposal sites?

Naturally, all you folk in the “reality-based” community will be eager to understand the emerging science of hormesis, and you will want to seek additional information here and here.

Imagine. Maybe hormesis points the way to solving the nightmare of global warming. Instead of burning fossil fuels to power our cars and homes and destroying the planet, we could use nuclear power. Because hey, a little extra radiation might do us good. And it could save the planet.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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