The Radiation Exposure Lie

Stating something confidently doesn't make it true. Show me the data.

The article is long on emotion, exposition, but very short on the data.

There's a big concerted effort to change this regulation, but it's not based on data, it's based on feelings.

It's quite likely that there's non-linear response, but it could just as easily be that the dose that's tolerated well in a 1 day exposure, might have higher risk when spread out over 365 days. When they say something like:

> nor any major chromosomal aberrations.

They don't have the technology to measure DNA damage that might be significant. I've spent some time in the past examining the REBC dataset of whole-genome sequencing of tumors of thyroid cancers from Chornobyl, where you actually do see the types of translocations that cause cancer from radiation.

We can't detect these types of translocations in non-cancerous tissue. The only reason we can see them in cancer is that the cancer has replicated billions of times, giving us many many many copies of the translocation to put through DNA sequencing. Doing the type of sequencing where we identify translocations that happen in individual cells, before the cell has become cancerous, would require a good amount of engineering effort, and I've never seen anything like it. And in 2006, when the study was published, we barely had any of the latest sequencing technologies.

> Chen interpreted this as evidence of the health benefits of radiation. This theory, known as hormesis, holds that low doses of stressors, including ionizing radiation, can improve health (in this case, reducing cancer risk) by triggering the body’s repair systems in much the same way that exercise improves fitness by stressing the cardiovascular system. While popular among a small community of researchers, it has not gained widespread acceptance due to limited and conflicting evidence in humans.

Yes, limited and conflicting evidence in humans. Yet these sorts of propaganda efforts are pushing hard on the idea being present, being obvious.

This article is not science, despite trying to put on airs of science. The data does not support their claims.

Let's see actual review articles published making these claims that aggregate over large numbers of small data. Let's see whether such aggregation claims hold up on scrutiny from those that have spent a lot of time thinking about this.

The active regulatory push to invalidate LNT should follow the science, not be ahead of the science.

Plus, the whole goal of this, to somehow how make nuclear construction cheaper, does not seem to be well served by changing LNT. The costs of nuclear are massive because it's a big constructuon project with lots of coordination. Making concrete walls 50% as thick is going to do very little to lessen the massive costs, which are related to construction productivity, or rather the lack of it in the West.

It seems like the nuclear industry tries to focus on anything except the one thing that will actually make it succeed: get really good at construction.

I think the author would have no problem with mushrooms from Chernobyl given that they were under a specified level of activity.

Boy (or gal), do I have news for you...

More seriously, whether the author is right or wrong (I cannot judge), assessing these things scientifically is warranted. You cannot simply appeal to emotions or alleged common sense.

Radiation response shown to be sub-linear (in flies)!