Decouple26 Jan 2021

Means, Motive, Opportunity: Fossil Fueled Radiophobia feat. Rod Adams

There is money to be made in Nuclear Fear. Consider this. In Japan over the last 10 years since the Fukushima accident, approximately 50 billion USD a year in additional fossil fuels have been traded to supply energy demands that would have been provided by Japan's shuttered nuclear plants. The ability to terrify people with the prospect of serious health harms from low dose radiation has kept most of the Japanese nuclear fleet idle and created an enormous market for LNG and Coal as well as a significant burden of disease secondary to particulate air pollution.

On June 12th 1956 the National Academy of Sciences released its report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR.) It became part of the basis for a paradigm shift in radiation protection towards the Linear No Threshold model which proposes that radiation is a uniquely dangerous toxin with no safe lower dose limit.

The BIER report was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation whose endowment came directly from the Standard Oil Company. Did the Rockefeller Foundation and its fossil fuel baron patrons have a vested interest in exagerating the dangers of radiation to disparage a potentially disruptive, air pollution free technology that threatened the market share of the fossil fuel industry? Was their support coincidence, conspiracy or just good business acumen?

I am joined by Rod Adams, a former US nuclear submarine engineer officer, who runs the Atomic Insights blog and hosts the Atomic Show podcast to discuss this tantalizing question.

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Episoder(321)

The Rise of Nuclear Fear feat. Spencer Weart

Is part of our rejection of expertise, distrust of science and weaponization of the precautionary principle tied to how suicidally close we came to mutually assured destruction during the cold war? Wh...

30 Jan 202155min

The Politics of Energy Transition feat. Robert Bryce

I am joined by Robert Bryce, an American author, journalist, filmmaker and podcaster in a wide ranging discussion of the politics of the world's unfolding energy transitions. Energy illiteracy is epi...

20 Jan 20211h 3min

The Nuclear Fusion Energy Delusion? feat. Gerrit Bruhaug

Fusion is supposed to be even more powerful than fission but without the baggage. It resonates with the appeal to nature fallacy with notions of bringing the power of the sun down to earth. 39 years a...

6 Jan 20211h

Gaia, Technology, and the Anthropocene feat. Lewis Dartnell

Decouple is a show which is fundamentally about attitudes to technology and the role that decoupling technologies, so called technofixes, can play in mitigating and solving our environmental challenge...

29 Des 202056min

Hope, Hype, Hubris, and Deep Decarbonisation feat. Nick Touran

Nick Touran is a Ph.D. nuclear engineer and advanced reactor designer who runs the science education website whatisnuclear.com. Advanced and Small Modular Reactors have become the only politically saf...

20 Des 20201h 13min

China’s Great Climate Leap Forward? feat. Seaver Wang

"China will cut carbon emissions by over 65% by 2030" according to Chinese President Xi Jinping. In addition two new studies published by the leading and highly influential Chinese Climate research in...

15 Des 20201h 4min

The Heterodox Anthropologist of Nuclear feat. Bret Kugelmass

Sometimes an outsider's perspective can lead to startling conclusions. Bret Kugelmass is a successful tech entrepreneur turned climate activist. His empiric analysis of the problem of climate change l...

8 Des 20201h 12min