The LNT Report: How the linear no-threshold model of radiation safety made the world afraid of nuclear power. This book is a fascinating detective story, uncovering the bad faith, muddled thinking, and ideological prejudice that led to a false and injurious conclusion: nuclear radiation is risky in any dosage, no matter how low. The truth, finally made clear by many years of careful scientific criticism, is that low doses of radiation are harmless, and even beneficial to health, because of the human body's natural ability to repair cells damaged by radiation. It follows that fears of the risks of nuclear power have been wildly exaggerated and then irresponsibly hyped.
Nuclear energy is not only clean and inexhaustible, its risks are far smaller than the hazards of any alternative-including not just fossil fuels but also 'renewables', solar and wind, which turn out to be far more dangerous than people have been led to believe. While radiation can indeed be dangerous at high levels, the issue has been blown out of proportion by an unsupported-and now known to be provably wrong-model of nuclear risk assessment called Linear No-Threshold or LNT. LNT was first presented to the world by Hermann Muller in 1946, when nuclear technology was in its infancy. LNT holds that "There is no safe dose of radiation, and all doses are cumulative. Both assertions are now known to be false.
Beginning with Muller's careless assumptions. The LNT Report traces the twists and turns of LNT's reception and dissemination by politicians, media, and the public. The propagation of LNT was boosted by some people's horror at the prospect of nuclear war, leading them to say anything to discredit nuclear energy, and also by fossil fuel interests, which had their own anti-nuclear bias.
The LNT Report
has been exhaustively vetted and approved by numerous scientific experts, whose names and credentials are listed in the book. This is solid science at its best, explained to the non-scientist reader by a brilliant professional writer. It's a companion book to Earth Is a Nuclear Planet (2024) by the same author.
