I have recently had several comments questioning¹ my ‘scientific integrity’ and implying that I have a political agenda. I can assure them that I definitely and unashamedly have a political agenda – if I am not writing about nuclear power, I am writing about politics.  I am an anti-nuclear campaigner. If I were writing scientific papers, I would have them published in a respected scientific journal. However, even a basic literature search may take several months, and I do not have the time or the resources to carry this out.

I do on occasions carry out some analysis (for which I provide spreadsheets to show my workings) which you could class as scientific. However, they are quite trivial, and I am not expecting ‘that phone call from Stockholm’ any time soon.

This blog is mainly trying to counter some of the misleading information that is given in the mainstream media. For example, just because background radiation is ‘natural’ it does not mean it is safe², or that uranium is an excellent energy source due to its enormous energy density when in fact the average purity of the ore is 0.2%³.

The nuclear industry has a well funded media campaign, and I am trying, in a small way, to unwind some of their spin. Despite their spin, the nuclear industry is continuing to fail to meet it promises and declining relative to the growing renewable sector. The reason given by some people that this is due to a global conspiracy against nuclear in favour of renewables supported by well funded anti-nuclear campaign groups (we only do the jumble sales for fun) – I find many other conspiracy theories easier to believe.

As one commentator pointed out ‘The precautionary principle is not a scientific principle’ but that does not mean that it should be abandoned. From a ‘scientific’⁴ point of view, there has to be a significance with a p value of 0.05 – you reject a correlation because there is more than a 5% probability that it happened by chance. That may be fine in scientific discussion, but not on the politics of the lives of children. Scientifically thyroid cancer is ‘curable’ in most cases but why worry because from a scientific point of view it can be argued that ‘babies are replaceable’.

I do try to reference my material where possible. As I have indicated before, I have not done, or claimed to have done, a full literature search and meta analysis. The selection of references may be biased (I am human) and people are welcome to comment giving opposing views and references. Undoubtedly I make mistakes (again, I am human) and I am happy if people point them out. I will try to respond to these when I can. However, Roberto Kersevan wrote 13 comments (often quite extensive) in 9 days – he has a lot more spare time than I do.

If you do wish to comment, then please read the post first and keep it to the topic being discussed. Some of the comments made are less than scientific – again this is fine since this is not a scientific journal but a personal blog page.

Again, if you are commenting, please attack the arguments and not the character of the person making them – whether it be myself or anyone else.

Anyway – enough of this. We need to get on and kill the zombie nuclear power industry once and for all.

¹ See comments on the two posts referenced below.

² Is Natural Background Radiation Safe (http://www.plux.co.uk/is-natural-background-radiation-is-safe)

³ Energy Density of Uranium (http://www.plux.co.uk/energy-density-of-uranium)

⁴ I personally do not think that this cut off for significance has any scientific foundation. Either you understand what a p value is or you don’t. Worse still is that even in scientific publications authors will say that no correlation was found when in fact there was a correlation but did not meet the required level of significance.