The book will be a living document at least for a while. Corrections and suggestions for improvements, complaints about unclear or unpersuasive passages, additional material, photos, or citations should be posted to this thread. As the book is modified, release notes and acknowledgements will be posted here.
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On page 71 in the print version, the figure for LNT cancers should be 153, not 312.
The 312 figure was based on the doses as estimated by Chen.
The 153 is based on the doses as estimated by Hwang.
Theis has been corrected in the website version.
On 2020/10/05, a new version of the book was uploaded.
This version has better graphs and a host of other changes.
If you want to be sure, you have the most recent version,
check the page after the title page, and look for Version
under the ISBN number. It should be /nfs/TC/gordian/vN.
Put Ted Rockwell’s chapter on LNT on the downloads page. This piece is not only must read for its cogent arguments against LNT, but also to the indifference/hostility that the nuclear complex showed towards his efforts.
Rockwell was almost alone and he understood the reason why. By the 1980’s
the US nuclear complex was more interested in grabbing taxpayer money to solve
manufactured problems than in expanding nuclear power.
Version vO uploaded 2020-10-19. Fixed some typos. Thanks Matt Wilkinson.
Rewrote Preamble to more forthrightly put the blame for the Flop where I think it belongs.
Uploaded A. C. Rodenburg’s Nuclear FAQ to our Downloads page
with A. C.’s kind permission. The FAQ is an informative introduction to
nuclear power with a light touch. Thanks A.C.
Version VU uploaded 2020-11-11. Expanded NCRP quote p 93,
added new cost tables p 133, more typos thanks to Charles Ivey.
Do you email those who have left their email addresses when you post an updated version of Flop?
No. Currently we are not set up to do that.
Version vY uploaded 2020-12-12. New section on subseabed disposal
and how the complex killed it in favor of Yucca Mt. Many smaller changes.
I think you should end chapter 1 with a copy of Fig A.1: Resources per Terrawatt-hour, and a paragraph explaining that nuclear power has the lowest resource requirement of any sustainable energy source and and lowest impact on the environment of any energy source. That will smooth the transition from chapter 1 (about why we need more power) to the rest of the book (how to fix nuclear power).
Also, maybe update the version of the same graph in the renewables chapter to include fossil gas (which requires much less material than any other), for completeness, but also it helps to explain why gas works so well with renewables.
Posted ” What should we do with barely with barely used nuclear fuel?”
This note makes the argument for indefinite dry cask storage
to allow our descendants to decide when and how much of this
potentially valuable material to extract and reuse.
Posted version w1 2021-03-29. Major changes to the nuclear waste, and
nuclear complex chapters, and wind/solar appendices.
Text in this area co-mingles consumption and capacity units.
Figure 1.3 and Page 22 “For example, one company, Swedish iron ore giant LKAB,
estimates they will need 6.3 gigawatts (GW) to move their mining and steel making away from
fossil fuel and coke.[93] 6.3 GW is one-third the current Swedish very high per capita electricity
consumption.”
Does the steel plant require 6.3 GW of generating capacity (1.5 Palo Verdes) to replace burning coke? Is their annual energy budget 6.3 GWh? I can’t tell.
6.3 GW’s of power is correct. Guessing something like 50 TWh/year.
Technical details on the Swedish HYBRIT process are scant.
But the number appears to include both
the power required to convert the iron ore into iron sponge
and direct reduction of the iron sponge to steel.
HYBRIT is a partnership between LKAB, the mining giant,
and SSAB, the steel making giant. The book is a little misleading here.
Added a section on the Rockefeller Foundation’s role in funding
research into genetic damage from radiation. Although it turned
out the fears were unfounded, this was the real genesis of LNT.
It’s also a fascinating story about how a combination of high minded concern
about nuclear weapons and lust for grant money led to
scientific misconduct and outright deception.
Amplified Rockefeller Foundation section with some recently found material.
Added section on clever Columbia University experiments which
contradict the single hit theory. A bunch of more minor changes.
I just finished the book. It’s important and revolutionary—and will have very little impact. The problem is the writing. You’re an engineer, and write like one. That’s great for an academic paper, but not for a popular work meant to move opinion and public policy. You need to hire a professional writer to rewrite it from front to back—keeping the information and message, of course, but presenting it in a much more palatable way. This isn’t a matter of little fixes (like defining the specialized terms that keep popping up, like “casualty” and “dispatchable”). This needs a thorough going over, which is likely to take a reasonable sum of money.
But I hope you do so, because the world needs this book.
Do NOT rewrite this book. There are plenty of videos to move popular opinion, and even opinions of engineers like myself. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a video ten-years old of Kirk Sorensen explaining molten salt reactors. That knocked me loose from my anti-nuclear, but mostly inattentive attitude, and started a quest to learn more. After watching more videos and even digging into some physics, I saw the need for a comprehensive, well-sourced summary of what I had learned. This book is it. Anyone serious about the renaissance of nuclear power should read it. I still see a need for something shorter, peer-reviewed, and more accessible to the public (and perhaps some reporters who are ignoring nuclear while sounding the alarm on climate change). I’m thinking of a Wikipedia-style article, but without the mob-editing hassles. — David MacQuigg, Associate Editor, Citizendium
Thanks, David. Jim’s complaint was wounding . I try hard to not write
like an engineer. But he’s right. The book is very uneven. Some parts
are easily accessible. Other parts get deep into the weeds. I played
with dumping some of the chapters, but then the full argument
wasn’t there. Perhaps a MacKay style, pushing the more technical
stuff into appendices, would have worked better. Anyway I encourage
anybody who wants to extract and rearrange as they see fit.
Jack
I can see both Jim and Mac’s points. Singing to the choir, the book is great. It summarises much of what we all have already read, and adds more data in new forms.
But in my opinion it fails as a popular book, for being too technical and a bit highbrow for a normal reader. For instance, the word ‘casualty’ is used not to mean ‘someone harmed by war or accident’ but ‘incident’; this is not intuitive. Or, how many people know the meaning of the word ‘dirigisme’? I didn’t before reading, and I have a fair vocabulary.
The problem IMO for nuclear is not technical. The case to me seems totally overwhelming. The problem is marketing. To state the case so simply and so interestingly that a normal person couldn’t fail to understand it, and would in fact read it. And then to make politicians take notice.
I haven’t come across such a book yet; Dr Devanney’s book would be input to it. Incidentally, well done sir.
And in answer to the obvious retort, No; I’m neither a good enough writer nor knowledgeable enough.
I hate the euphemism “accident” which implies an event
that’s nobody’s fault. But changing “casualty” to “accident”
and “dirigisme” to “direction” won’t solve the problem.
How do you make the argument that just about everything
you’ve been told about nuclear power, including by the
nuclear power establishment, is wrong, without getting
into the weeds? I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.
Volunteers?
Jack
On page 224, last paragraph: “According to the M.I.T. paper, solar is cheaper than wind. So solar dominates their `zero’ carbon solutions, especially in their low cost scenarios. However, despite all the favorable assumptions, to get to `zero’ carbon in these scenarios for the New England grid requires about 5 times as much solar capacity as the peak load. They also need about 1 times as much wind
capacity as the peak load.”
I am thinking that the ‘1 times as much wind’ is supposed to be ’10’, or ’11’ (??) as the wording suggests a number higher than 1 was intended. Kind regards, Chris Davey
Chris,
The number as written is what MIT came up with.
They needed 5x solar plus 1x wind, so overall
W/S nameplate capacity was 6X the peak demand.
Awkward use of the plural on my part.
Jack
Does anyone know the source of Fig A4 Retail electricity price against installed Wind/Solar capacity?
Peter,
Good question. I have not been able to track down the source
of this figure. But I did spot check some of the numbers
with other sources, and got reasonably good agreement.
Jack
Yeah – I have seen it before, or one like it.
It is difficult to find a pure reference. They are all stated with subsidies in mind. Solar and wind cannot compete with nuclear if there are no subsidies.
Uploaded Version w9., July 12.
Main change is a new section (5.5) applying SNT to Fukushima.
Also extensive changes to Section 5.6. More evidence
that the NCRP/ICRP massive changes in dose limits in the 1950’s
were ALARA based targets, rather than harm based levels, Section 7.8.
Any chance of getting an EPUB version of the book? Or alternately, the raw LaTeX source and image assets?
Wisnij,
No plans for Kindle or the like. Everything floating looked too difficult too implement, or at least more trouble than it was worth.
The book is a work in progress. Reluctant to distribute the source at least
until thing stabilize. Send me an email djw1 at
thorconpower.com, with what yr thinking.
Jack
Version wB posted on 2021-09-04. Major changes to Chapters 4 and 5.
New analyses of the Lost Life Expectancy due to radiation
at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Changed the SNT “repair period”
from a month to a week, bringing the legal repair period more in line
with the actual. More emphasis on dose rate and less on LNT.
In particular, see the new Table 4.17. Recommendation that
we go back to the pre-1950 NCRP/ICRP tolerance dose
of 1 mSv/day as a regulatory harm limit. Many smaller changes.
page 13, you write; “A sievert is a large amount of joules per kg”. A Sievert is one joule per kg by definition. One hundred rads equals on sievert. A rad is 100 ergs per gram by definition.
Saints preserve us from the overly literal doryphores.
And the last thing we need to do is further confuse
the public with non-standard units.
But OK will reword.
Version wD posted 2021-10-02. Important fix to
SNT calc of Lost Life Expectancy at Fukushima.
New sections on INWORKS study, buffer zones,
and the lousy contractor argument.
More emphasis on daily dose rates, less on annual/monthly.
Version wE posted 2021-02-05.
Corrected another mistake in the SNT
calc of Lost Life Expectancy. Wrong
locale factors for rural outdoors group
underestimated their LLE.
When I began to download the Gordian Knot book, it initially failed, generating the following message:
“File not downloaded: Potential Security Risk
The file used an insecure connection. It may be corrupted or tampered with during the download process.
You can search for an alternate download source or try again later.”
I was unable to cut-and-paste the original message, so I re-typed it above. My typed version might differ slightly from the original.
My system uses Windows 10 and a Mozilla browser. I use the standard antivirus program built into Window 10 and also MalwareBytes premium. I’m not sure exactly where this message is being generated, but I suspect it is from the browser. It only shows up when I mouse-left-click the download status icon (sort of a down-pointing arrow) in the upper portion of the browser screen (and then ask for more information on why the download failed).
I took the additional step of authorizing the download and now seem to have the book downloaded OK (but haven’t started reading it yet).
For a test, I tried to download a few other files from your site. The Fukushima file downloaded without a hitch, but the others seemed to pause, giving the same warning is described above.
It occurred to me that this might be related to something called (I believe) something like an SSL certificate. The company hosting my personal web site bugs me about this occasionally (but I’ve never made the effort to learn how to obtain one and install it). I wondered if I would get the same message if I tried to download an item from my own web site (www.xenonsheepdog.org). I tried that as a test. I was able to download a jpg image from my own site (not a pdf). Not sure if that proves anything, since my computer may somehow recognize “it’s own” stuff — or maybe be suspicious of only certain files types.
Thanks for providing this book.
I learned about your book (and web site) from the December 2021 issue of “Nuclear News” magazine.
Thanks Carl. We are looking into the issue.
Jack
Uploaded version wK 2022-01-22. Corrected bad error in green hydrogen
section. The land area required for the model’s PV farms
is 1 to 2% of Germany, not 7%. Mea culpa.
Version wK, Page 16: Table 1.1 has Philippines twice and with two different values.
Good catch. Thanks. The correct number for the Phillippines is 106 W/head.
Fixed in the next version.
Version wK, Page 28: In the note 4, the video https://www.youtube/watch?v=ejCQrOTE-XA cannot be displayed at Youtube. The page says that the video is not available anymore. I don’t know if it’s some stuff about regional restrictions, I’ve tried accessing from outside the US.
Dont know what happened to the video link. Try
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VvGw1tkT1Q
The relevant bit of Winsor’s talk starts at about 25:00.
Jack
Hi, I really enjoyed reading the book and think it is an important message, wish there were more people thinking along these lines!
I wanted to point out what I think may be a small inaccuracy: in the section on Fukushima Tritium (11.5.3) you say that the beta decay of Tritium is less energetic than a cathode ray tube electron. Do you have a reference for this? The Tritium beta’s energy averages 5.7 keV, this is easy to look up and uncontroversial. It’s harder to know exactly what a CRT electron energy would be. However, I’d be surprised if a typical CRT used over 5700 volts, and the brief google search I did suggested that 450 eV was a rough energy per electron.
Tom,
Cant pretend to be an expert on antique TV’s but the sources I looked at
claim the old TV’s used more than 20,000 V. For example, the always accurate Wikipedia says 21 to 24 kV for black and white and 24 to 32 kV for color.
Can you point me to your source? 5.7 keV is the correct ave for tritium.
Jack
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your reply and sorry I didn’t see it until just now. You’re right, I think I should have tried a bit harder to find an accurate estimate for the TV—the short search I did turned up an estimate of 450 volts but I now realise this wasn’t actually for a television, but rather a crt used in a lecture demonstration of some kind. Sorry, a bit lazy on my part!
Best wishes,
Tom
See review of book published Tuesday, March 14 at https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2022/03/14/why-are-we-failing-to-address-climate-change
I just finished the main portion of revision wN. I found a bunch of typos, which I regrettably failed to keep notes on.
Something you can fix pretty easily are recurrent grammatical errors. You have a habit of beginning sentences with “And”, which is a conjunction and should follow a comma, not a full stop. Either deletion or a global search and replace with “Also,” (including the comma and case-matched) would be appropriate.
Something else that’s annoying is the employment of what looks like double em-dashes. I don’t know if it’s my reader or not, but on my screen these are so light that they’re practically invisible. Text should be BLACK, #000. It’s not like anyone’s screen is going to run out of toner.
Anyway, just some notes from another inveterate writer.