nuclear-news

Wade Allison, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Oxford University, Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Dec 3, 2014 (emphasis added):

• 7:30 — Nuclear protestors have no good arguments for saying that nuclear is dangerous, this is demonstrated by what happened at Fukushima.
• 19:30 – The scientific question is, ‘Why is radiation so safe?‘ Because it is very powerful and so that’s very surprising… That’s the job biology does… Any life form that did not look after the effects of radiation and oxygen, which does the same kind of thing, would fail.
• 27:30 — On holiday… we should take [children] around a nuclear power station.
• 31:00 — What can we do to explain… to people and shove under their noses?
• 39:15 – That excellent film Pandora’s Promise, anybody who hasn’t seen that should.
• 45:00 — [Bury the used nuclear fuel] anywhere, anywhere… Fission products [have a] half-life is 30 years or so… it quickly becomes the same activity as the stuff that you dig out of the ground. You need a mine or a hole in the ground which is going to contain stuff for 500 years — but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Here in Japan, people go to Onsen, and enjoy the effects of radioactive contamination of groundwater…everybody’s very happy to do that. That’s what they do on holiday.
• 47:30 — Triple meltdown? Where did you get those words from? Hollywood? What do you mean by a triple meltdown? So what? I’m telling you — so nothing, very much…Triple meltdown, well so what?… It wasn’t a tragedy.
• 52:45 — The sunshine… that’s much more dangerous… than nuclear radiation.
• 1:01:45 — We need people’s confidence. We need to talk to children in school.
• 1:04:45 — The idea that special precautions have to be taken just doesn’t wash,nuclear is not especially dangerous. It’s not as dangerous as fire.

Allison at the Institute of Physics: New safety levels for human radiation exposure are suggested… 100 mSv in total in any month; 5,000 mSv as a total of whole-of-life exposure.

Keith Baverstock, head of the World Health Organization’s Radiation Protection Program for Europe (1991-2003), Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Nov 20, 2014:

• 20:00 — Question: My name is Hiroyuki Fujita, [inaudible] Shimbun editor/writer… According to [Dr. Wade Allison], so called low dose radiation, 100 mSv or less, not so bad for human health… all the scientific knowledge is rooted on the experience of the fruit fly.
• 21:00 – Wade Allison, do you know what his scientific expertise is? Physics… not public health, not medicine, not biology… I did a review of [his] book… I said his book is highly entertaining… it is fiction… We don’t have to rely on fruit flies to know what the effects of radiation are. We know what they are on human health. We have a lot of epidemiological information — which he ignores. I think the man is dangerous, I think you are putting yourself in a dangerous position if you believe him… He’s a crank.

Watch Allison’s FCCJ presentation here | Watch Baverstock’s FCCJ presentation here