Wade Allison

Wade Allison is Emeritus Professor of Physics and Fellow of Keble College at the University of Oxford, and the author, most recently, of Nuclear is for Life. He is also Honorary Secretary of SONE (Supporters of Nuclear Energy).

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The Energy Revolution Must Be Nuclear
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The Energy Revolution Must Be Nuclear

Jun 6, 2019 Wade Allison argues that the fuel the world most fears is actually the safest, greenest, and most reliable option.
Rediscovering the Promise of Nuclear Power
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Rediscovering the Promise of Nuclear Power

Jun 21, 2018 Wade Allison busts myths about the world's most efficient and environmentally safe source of renewable energy.

Unhappy Birthday, Andrei Sakharov
May 31, 2022

You are repeating the standard mantra. However, all the experience of nearly 80 years and the understanding of radiation biology that confirms it, shows that the effect of a nuclear bomb are indeed "somewhat contained", as you put it. Sakharov, and Einstein and other serious scientists of his day, were wrong. They did not have the evidence we now have. It is a biological matter that low and medium exposure to nuclear radiation is harmless and its effects do not accumulate. They could not possibly know then what we know now. I am not in favour of nuclear weapons, but they should no longer be a source of extreme irrational panic and horror as Sakharov and others thought decades ago.
Unhappy Birthday, Andrei Sakharov
May 27, 2022

Fortunately this is an exaggeration. The blast and fire from a nuclear weapon are awful but relatively local and short term. Medical evidence confirms that long distance and long term effects were massively over estimated in earlier decades and the greatest dangers are fear and panic. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359117826_A_scientific_and_responsible_view_of_a_nuclear_threat_in_war The extra cancer deaths among the 100,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1950-2000) were measured to be less than 600 while the fatalities from panic evacuation at Fukushima Daiichi were over 1600. wade.allison@physics.ox.ac.uk
- Adolfo Villanueva May 28, 2022
  
  Incredible naive. One bullet can only kill one person, but there is never only one bullet. Or only one bomb, of any kind. And when one side fires one, there comes the response and so on. That's why it's known as MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. A conventional war can be considered somewhat "contained", and in many cases that's just a poor assessment of the consequences. In a generalized nuclear war, Sakharov is right. And, for the record, nuclear bombs has been used only once (two bombs), by the then sole owner of the technology. Now there are thousands of bombs around the world, and ICBM, and the whole lot...
  - Wade Allison May 31, 2022
    
    You are repeating the standard mantra. However, all the experience of nearly 80 years and the understanding of radiation biology that confirms it, shows that the effect of a nuclear bomb are indeed "somewhat contained", as you put it. Sakharov, and Einstein and other serious scientists of his day, were wrong. They did not have the evidence we now have. It is a biological matter that low and medium exposure to nuclear radiation is harmless and its effects do not accumulate. They could not possibly know then what we know now. I am not in favour of nuclear weapons, but they should no longer be a source of extreme irrational panic and horror as Sakharov and others thought decades ago.
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The Energy Revolution Must Be Nuclear
Aug 19, 2019

Energy density refers to the fuel mass. There is no fuel mass for solar. However it is at least as destructive of the environment as wind. Tens of sq kms of panels are needed to match a GW powerstation on less than 0.15 sq km.
The Energy Revolution Must Be Nuclear
Jun 17, 2019

She lived to the full life expectancy of her time, eventually dying of cancer like many people. Not unusual. Her co-Nobel Laureat husband died 28 years earlier in a horsedrawn traffic accident in Paris, but that does not mean this transport technology is dangerous, of course. Nor may any conclusion be drawn from Mme Curie's death
The Energy Revolution Must Be Nuclear
Jun 10, 2019

You are incorrect. We know from Hiroshima/Nagasaki, from Goiania, from laboratory experiments on animals, from human exposure to radiation in clinics to diagnose (and cure cancers) that the radiation received by the people at Fukushima, even the plantworkers, were far too low to cause extra cancers. There are places in Iran, Brazil etc where far greater doses are received all the time from the rocks. Extreme safeguards just inflict greater dangers elsewhere - as caused the 1600 extra deaths from the evacuation at Fukushima.