Live webchat with Professor Paddy Regan, nuclear physicist, tonight, 21 Mar, 8-9pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're very pleased that Paddy Regan, professor of physics at the University of Surrey in Guildford, is our webchat guest this evening between 8pm and 9pm.

In the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan, you asked on this thread if we could get a nuclear physicist on. So thanks to Prof Regan for agreeing to come on to MN.

He's a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and holds visiting researcher and teaching positions at Yale University and the University of Notre Dame.

He's interested in measurements of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in the environment using gamma-ray spectroscopic techniques.

In his 'spare' time, he says he plays a poor game of squash, even worse golf and tries to do the occasional sponsored run for the Mental Health Charity MIND. He is married to Susie, a nurse, and they have four children.

[PaddyRegan]

@catinthehat2

"you can really used it covertly to make nuclear fuel for a weapon etc"

can???
or do you mean can't?

sorry...CAN'T for a Thorium reactor (unlike a uranium-based one which makes plutonium automatically)...sorry i'm typing too quickly and I (literally0 only have 7 fingers...

[PaddyRegan]

@LeninGrad

Thanks for the answer, I know it's all relative but these things are so routine now and we just submit to them without necessarily assessing risk.

If you get a chance, would be good to see your answers to the waste questions, thanks.

will try to answer waste ones in a few mos. The CT scans, X-rays etc. are all sources of radiation dose for sure....but these have to weighed up against the health benefits for the (often ill) person getting them. Having these 'for fun' when there is nothing wrong with you (i.e. as i sometimes see advertised in the US) is bad i think.

[ThisIsANiceCage]

On a previous thread, a poster (Terrytt) said:
"I must admit that I'm pretty pro nuclear power but I really don't want the Germans (RWE)nPower building powerstations over here. They built a plant in Coblenz and if I remember correctly weren't allowed to operate it. I've heard some real horror stories about how their power stations are built and wouldn't want them in this country."

I wonder if you could comment on that?

[PaddyRegan]

@exexpat

Hello Prof. Regan,

I am due to be in Japan (Tokyo) a month from today with my two children. At the moment, from everything my friends in Tokyo say, and from what information I have been able to find on the internet, I do not believe there will be any health risks for us in going. However, the situation at the plant in Fukushima is still evolving, so things could change, and I will be keeping a close watch on all information coming out of Japan over the next few weeks.

I think I have become quite good at ignoring sensationalist reporting and ferreting out actual facts about radiation levels etc, but as a non-scientist, it can be hard to know who to trust. What would you say were the most reliable public sources of information about this incident and the local/regional/international impact? There are several people in Japan posting live updates of geiger counter readings - they seem mostly reassuring, but is that useful information, or should I be more interested in radiation levels in the water, food chain, air etc?

Hi, i have a number of mates in tokyo who are working in their main (academic) nuclear physics labs in RIKEN. There has been a small, but measureable rise in the background radiation levels in Tokyo which is associated with the release of material from the Fukushima plant, but the level is (a) v. small and reflects the sensitivity of the detection system and (b) the main radioisotopes which were identified (Iodine) only remain radioactive for ~2 weeks. At these levels, the increased radiation dose is about the same (for a brief period) as it might be if someone visited their friends in Cornwall for a couple of weeks.

[Lilymaid]

In the light of what has happened in Japan, should we be over engineering even morethan in the past for the UK new build programme? Are there any other factors we should be taking into account?

[MistyMerkin]

Hi Prof, wanted to ask, Do you think that the British Government will now still go ahead with the planned 10 new reactors, despite the hype of it being clean energy and no inherent plans to deal with the waste generated(that being left up to our Grand children to deal with) or is the deal already done with the "fat cat" business men??

[PaddyRegan]

@MrsKwazii

What is your view on the reporting of the Fukushima nuclear situation so far? In Germany, people were apparently stocking up on iodene tablets and geiger counters - do you thin that the media is irresponsible when it comes to nuclear?

yes...and in many ways ignorant. The newspapers job is to sell newspapers...i learnt that a long time ago on my 'scientists meet the media' course ran by the science media centre (the Royal Institution). This does not mean that the individual journalists do not understand, but a sensationalist headline is there to draw in the eye so you buy the paper/watch the rest of the programme. i really think Germans (or Americans as I was asked on CNN on Friday) buying iodine tablets for this particular incident is ridiculous...I assume it was started by someone with shares in an 'iodine making factory...'

[MrsKwazii]

Apologies for my errant spelling in my previous question! If I can sneak another q in, of the media interviews you've been doing, how many have been with science correspondents?

I know that this is a bugbear of Ben Goldacre, and probably shared by many scientists - and it really does have a knock-on effect on the general public's understanding of the actual situation. Shocking really.

[PaddyRegan]

@dawntigga

Hello Prof. Regan.

Question: What is the question you've been asked recently that had annoyed you most?

Sneaky second question - what's your favorite biscuit?

SomebodyHadToAskTiggaxx

I get a bit hot under the collar at continually being asked / reported on by 'other independent web sites' that I 'would say that as i am funded by the nuclear industry' and am somehow in their pocket....(I am not!) I am simply a university-based academic who does research into how the elements are formed in stars and uses his knowledge in this area to teach/train future radiation protection/measurement experts.
The 'I'm in the industry's pocket' line shows a real ignorance of how nuclear physics research is funded in the UK (research councils etc.) and I really am never given a chance to rebut it.
People forget that if they want 'independent experts' in such times of 'crisis' (such as this) the UK government has a responsibility to fund basic research at a sensible level....this was a massive issue last year, but is now forgotten in all the cuts...see for example

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6957776.ece

re biscuit...either bourbons or chocolate digestives (milk choccy though).

[PaddyRegan]

@moonbells

Prof. Regan, thankyou for braving Mumsnet!

I have been reading about thorium/molten salt reactors today; their safety features seem to be quite good, especially in the case of an emergency shutdown.

Admittedly what I've read does come initially via a newspaper, backed up by Wikipedia (I don't have time to check journals this week!) but could you speculate please why these seem to have been quietly ignored? I never heard about this type in my degree course!

Thankyou

these are v. interesting...it's quite along read, but one of my excellent MSc students did a project on Thorium reactors a few years ago for his dissertation..see
personal.ph.surrey.ac.uk/~phs1pr/msc_dissertations/msc-diss-2007/zeleke-thorium-project-07.pdf

also, there was a recent full edition of Physics World on these (this is the professional magazine of the Institute of Physics) see
physicsworld.com/cws/search?siteCode=phw&query=thorium+reactors

[PaddyRegan]

@MrsKwazii

Apologies for my errant spelling in my previous question! If I can sneak another q in, of the media interviews you've been doing, how many have been with science correspondents?

I know that this is a bugbear of Ben Goldacre, and probably shared by many scientists - and it really does have a knock-on effect on the general public's understanding of the actual situation. Shocking really.

most of the journos i speak to are science correspondents (in the papers at least) but few have science backgrounds...that said, they are usually very impressive I think (e.g., Hannah Devlin and Mark Henderson at the Times; David Derbyshire and Fiona McCrae at the Daily Mail; Roger Highfield from New Scientist and formerly from the Telegraph (he does have a PhD) and others...all are very good journos, but the paper's thread is usually decided by the editors/sub-editors who i never meet. One thing from this experience and others I have had dealing with the london press at least, is that the journalists themselves are a pretty good and impressive (intellectually speaking) bunch....i don;t know about editors etc. (I don't know anyway.)

[MrsKwazii]

Must be v frustrating for those journos then!

[PaddyRegan]

@MistyMerkin

Hi Prof, wanted to ask, Do you think that the British Government will now still go ahead with the planned 10 new reactors, despite the hype of it being clean energy and no inherent plans to deal with the waste generated(that being left up to our Grand children to deal with) or is the deal already done with the "fat cat" business men??

I do hope so....we need to get our energy from somewhere and we also need to develop enough technical skills to do this. Regardless of what people think the stats say that nuclear power is at least as safe as any other in terms of accidents and health risks. The idea that there is no plan to deal with the waste is not true. There are basic reprocessing ideas but the real question is whether we would have a single through fuel cycle and throw away the unused fuels or reprocess and use the plutonium to make more fuel. The first solution would only give us around ~100 years worth of Uranium left to do this with; the reprocessing and useage in for example a thorium reactor or an energy amplifier (sometimes called an accelerator driven system) would increase this to thousands of years. Nuclear waste is an issue really for the PR people to sort out. Gas and coal stations give out lots of chemical waste which never decays (as it turns out, they also release radioactivity into the atmosphere from the natural uranium and thorium decay products in the coal).

[PaddyRegan]

@Lilymaid

In the light of what has happened in Japan, should we be over engineering even morethan in the past for the UK new build programme? Are there any other factors we should be taking into account?

The reactors in the UK are getting quite old and if there is a decision for rebuild they will be newer designs. These would be the so called 'generation 3+' reactors which have many passive safety systems in them. Reactors are really, in the simplest cases, big kettles...you need to get the heat out at some point or the element melts...
But if we want to have these in the UK, i agree that we do need a better educated and trained staff of health and reactor physicists and scientists who understand how you measure radiation accurately and who can give 'cold blooded' calculations and predictions on the potential healths risk. These are known and can be found at the ICRP web site. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is the world body who has collated all the data from the Japanese atomic weapons survivors, people exposed at Chernobyl and others, plus data on medical X-rays / radiotherapy treatments to give us our best estimates as to the biological effects of radiation on humans.

[Donki]

How do you think we can encourage the uptake of science (and Physics) amongst 16 year olds?

[PaddyRegan]

@ThisIsANiceCage

On a previous thread, a poster (Terrytt) said:
"I must admit that I'm pretty pro nuclear power but I really don't want the Germans (RWE)nPower building powerstations over here. They built a plant in Coblenz and if I remember correctly weren't allowed to operate it. I've heard some real horror stories about how their power stations are built and wouldn't want them in this country."

I wonder if you could comment on that?

We don;t have the manpower or training or political will at the moment to build our own (UK) nuclear power stations...the big guys are Westinghouse (who think are now Japanese owned) ARRIVA and EDF I guess. Rolls Royce might be interested in bidding for some of the 'action' but the question is whether there is the political will in the UK to fund the training of engineers and scientist to do this...and also to back the industry....i'm not sure there are many votes in it (until the lights go our and/or we are buying our electricity from the French nuclear reactors across the channel).... I must be getting tired, I'm turning into a grumpy old man...

[DamnYouAutocorrect]

Wow, this has been properly informative. Thanks Prof Regan!

[PaddyRegan]

@ilovemydogandMrObama

My mother lives in California on the coast and they have been advised that the radiation from Japan will not be a factor. How accurate is this keeping in mind that the reactors, per my understanding, haven't been cooled yet? How can anyone predict the future location of radiation as it seems so unpredictable....

No one who lives in California will be affected by any radiation leak in Japan...the amount of radiation released and the distance it would have to travel mean that any risks from it are virtually unmeasurable...certainly compared to the lifetime risk of dying in a car accident, which for a californian is around 1% I think.

[PaddyRegan]

@DamnYouAutocorrect

Wow, this has been properly informative. Thanks Prof Regan!

thanks...I'll need my pint of best bitter after this for sure...this has been a real grilling (but also lots of fun!)

[ObscureReference]

One last question - and thank you for all the great info! - What about the cat? Or was the reference too obscure! LOL (More likely it was too stupid!!)

[PaddyRegan]

some useful physics links in general

www.surrey.ac.uk/physics/
www.sepnet.ac.uk/

and also see the Sense About Science web site for loads of useful (and correct) info. For example on dangers/risks of radiation see

www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/pdf/makingsenseofradiation.pdf

[ChickensHaveNoEyebrows]

If you don't answer my question from page 1, I will cry proper tears.

[PaddyRegan]

@ObscureReference

One last question - and thank you for all the great info! - What about the cat? Or was the reference too obscure! LOL (More likely it was too stupid!!)

I don't have a cat....(but Schroedinger does....)

[ObscureReference]

[ObscureReference]

And apologies, I know it was corny, but I have always wanted to ask a physicist that!!