038 DJ LeClear, Radiation Protection Specialist

[00:00:00] DJ LeClear: As your viewers might, might have already heard, Japan recently has begun their discharge plan of the tritiated water from Fukushima, and this has stoked a lot of fear, I would say and misinformation I say a particular that, that misinformation mostly is coming from China and, yeah.

They’re putting out a lot of propaganda out there about it as well, but I think a lot of people misunderstand what’s going on there.

Like I said, people don’t understand radiation. And my plan, and I’ve had this plan for quite a while, and I finally put it out, I think at just the right moment when Fukushima decided to do their discharge. I’m like, hey, I am going to go to Fukushima. I’m going to eat the food. I am going to eat the fish.

I’m going to swim in the water that’s next as close as I can get to where they’re discharging. I will swim in the water and not only am I going to do that, I’m going to bring my kids with me. I’m going to have them consume those same foods that I’m consuming, get as close as they can and swim in the water.

And even I, I’m not sure whether or not we can, but I would love to actually go into the exclusion zone as well and, and walk around and just show people that I, I really mean what I, what I mean when it comes to the safety around Fukushima and so I started to go fund me and it’s on my, my bio in tick tock, I should probably put it, Somewhere on, on Twitter, but it’s one of my tweets.

I put out a GoFundMe to support my trip to Fukushima, to, to do this. ’cause I, again, I’m not paid to, to do this. So I need some help.

So it’s, I think if you look on GoFundMe, it’s like, Send the rad guy to Fukushima.

[00:01:57] Mark Hinaman: Yep. It is. http://www.gofundme.com/f/send-the-rad-guy-to-fukushima 

[00:02:02] DJ LeClear: to Fukushima.

[00:02:03] Intro: Just because the facts are A, if the narrative is B and everyone believes the narrative, then B is what matters. But it’s our job in our industry to speak up proudly, soberly. And to engage people that are in energy poverty, they need us. America cannot meet this threat alone. If there is a single country.

Of course the world cannot meet it without America. That is willing to. We’re gonna need you. The next generation to finish the need scientists to design new fuels. And focus on net public benefit. We need engineers to invent new technologies. Over absurd levels of radiation. Entrepremeurs to sell those technologies.

And we will march towards this. We need workers to operate a. Assembly lines that hum with high tech, zero carbon components. We have unlimited prosperity for all of you. We need diplomats and businessmen and women and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy.

In other words, we need you.

[00:03:07] Mark Hinaman: Okay. Welcome to another episode of the fire division podcast, where we talk about energy dense fuels and how they could better human lives. Joined today by DJ Le Clear, a health physicist, but also known as the rad guy. DJ, how are you doing?

[00:03:21] DJ LeClear: Yeah, I’m doing great. It’s a Friday night. I’m ready to relax for the weekend, but yeah, it was a long day.

[00:03:30] Mark Hinaman: He’s got potentially kids in the background and he’s just like Friday afternoon. So I’m sitting on a patio also trying to enjoy last day of the summer. Cool.

DJ, I’m stoked to talk to you. You’re, you’re well known on.

Twitter and the interwebs. Am I incorrect in stating

[00:03:47] DJ LeClear: that? I mean, yeah, I think I have a decent following on on Twitter. I think the majority of my following would be on TikTok. But at least have an order of magnitude more followers on TikTok than I do on, on, on Twitter.

[00:04:01] Mark Hinaman: Why, why is that?

[00:04:02] DJ LeClear: Yeah. I mean, that’s a, that’s a big question right there. Right? I mean, I, I love being on Tik Tok. Tik Tok really allowed me to grow a following very quickly. Like it was, it was insane the number of followers I got just like. Within the first few weeks people just interested in following me and it takes significantly more effort to get more follow or to get followers on, on Twitter and other.

At least for me personally. And I, I can’t answer to why Tik Tok has been so more successful for me. I mean, I’m specifically putting out Tik Tok content, video content made on Tik Tok so I can imagine on other platforms. I’m not getting as many followers because I’m trying to take TikTok content and shove it on to other platforms.

So, that’s probably, probably why, but.

[00:05:07] Mark Hinaman: Gotcha. And your background? Health physicist. What, what does a health physicist do?

[00:05:13] DJ LeClear: Yeah, I think whenever I tell people that I’m a health physicist, I usually tell them I’m a radiation health physicist because I don’t think people really understand what health physicist means.

At least I didn’t until it took me quite a while to understand what that means. But basically even while you’re

[00:05:31] Mark Hinaman: studying it, right? You’re like, what is this?

[00:05:35] DJ LeClear: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically, it’s protecting people in the environment from the effects of radiation, while at the same time, utilizing the benefi the benefits of radiation.

So it’s kind of doing, doing both. Finding ways to to use radiation to save lives. While at the same time making sure people are protected.

[00:06:03] Mark Hinaman: And did you know that that’s what you always wanted to do? How did you find that field?

[00:06:08] DJ LeClear: Yeah, I mean, no. So, I found the field actually from the Navy. I was a Operator in on an aircraft carrier in the Navy as a Navy nuke, and I was a engineering laboratory technician.

So I did radiation protection was was what I did and took chemistry. Samples of the reactor and the steam plant and basically I was introduced because I got, went into the Navy and they’re like, Hey, you should be a nuke because you scored high. And I’m like, okay, I’ll, I’ll do that. I’m just trying to get my college paid for, you know.

Ended up doing nuclear operations on the, on the carrier and ended up really loving it, you know, like I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna, I’m going to get my degree in this. I was originally going to do chemical engineering, but decided, you know what, I’m already getting a foundation in nuclear science, might as well just keep, keep it going.

So I ended up getting my, my undergrad in nuclear engineering technology. And then when I got out of the Navy. I didn’t know what a health physicist was. Like, I remember looking for jobs and seeing things for like health physicists. I’m like, I guess maybe that’s what I do. I think I do health physics at the time.

Really? I was more of a health physics technician in the Navy. A health physicist usually is either like certified or has a degree specifically in health physics. So when I got out I didn’t have either of those. Things, but it wasn’t until, like, when I got out, I did work on some x ray machines.

Wasn’t really doing health physics, was doing more like mechanical electrical troubleshooting, basically. And I did that for like five years and it wasn’t bad. I enjoyed it. A lot of customer support, field support, but I was really itching to get back into. More nuclear stuff. So I ended up getting a job with the Wisconsin department health services.

They were hiring nuclear engineers. I was like, I’ll do this. Like, that sounds really cool to me. Why the heck would a state be hiring nuclear engineers? I thought that was weird, but ended up doing what’s it called? I was, I worked for the radiation protection section in Wisconsin department of health services.

And specifically, I was doing radiological emergency response, where I would plan for emergencies involving the nuclear plants that we have in the state of Wisconsin, and I would also respond to any sort of radiological emergencies around the state which was really cool. That’s where I really started becoming a health physicist.

It was, it was, it was an interesting role because I had to both use nuclear engineering understanding, like how a nuclear plant works, as well as health physicists. So I was able to use that undergrad, got my graduate degree while I was working for Department of Health Services, and I was able to kind of bridge both of those subjects which I think is a really advantageous thing to have to be able to understand nuclear engineering while at the same time understand health physics.

So, worked there for six years, really enjoyed that. But I was ready to for one thing, get paid a little better, I think, because being a state worker, you don’t really get paid that that great. But and then I also was looking to utilize my degree a little more. Right? So my job for the most part in radiological emergency preparedness was working with others, like coordinating with others

counties, the feds local hazmat teams, which I enjoyed. But it was only maybe 10 percent health physics and nuclear engineering, right? I was looking to get more utilized, way more of my understanding of health physics, and so I ended up actually switching jobs at the beginning of this year and actually.

April to shine technologies and they’re actually a fusion company and a medical isotope production company, which is really cool. We can talk about that more if you want, but again, or I, I mentioned this all the time as I, I don’t represent my, I don’t represent my employer, my words of my own. 90%.

Utilizing health physics maybe sprinkled in with a little bit of nuclear engineering in there as well as all the other stuff. Yeah, it’s that’s how I got into it. That’s my whole life story there for you.

[00:11:26] Mark Hinaman: That’s awesome. I love it. It’s, it demonstrates, well, I was being pragmatic and I wanted to get my school paid for and then figured out, hey, here’s a topic that I really enjoy.

You know, I’m going to use, try and go make a living doing it and you found a job and a career and then recognize that like you arem’t getting enough. I mean, I think that’s a compelling story to tell the young professionals about how to go and live their life, right? Or even old professions. Yeah, that’s really cool.

So the, the health physics side, let’s, I mean, I wanted to have you on to chat about radiation and dose. You got a lot of content mm-hmm. out in public space, so I totally understand your, your words are not your employers. Right. So make that a button, . Yep. Yep. But why don’t you give us just kind of like a high level overview of.

Radiation dose arm for help, help people understand. I know you’ve given this speech a lot, but I think you’ve maybe even given it on a couple other podcasts, but for the benefit of folks that haven’t heard it before.

[00:12:28] DJ LeClear: Sure. I mean, I mean, that’s a, that’s a very broad topic too. And I think there’s a lot of questions.

Yes, there’s a, there’s a lot to discuss there. I think from a basic level, it is quite misunderstood as you probably know when it comes to radiation. And the word nuclear, right? Usually when people hear a radiation hazard or a nuclear hazard, they think it’s going to be the worst. Like it’s, they’ll, they’ll put it at the very top there.

Right. I, when I did my training with hazmat teams I mean, they, honestly, most of them already knew this, but. I would lay out like all the differemt hazards out there, right? Radiological, chemical, biological, and I’d ask them, which one would you say is the most hazardous? You come on an incident and you see you, which, which of these symbols I show them the symbols, which of them is going to tell you that this is going to be a bad day, you know, which one’s going to be the highest hazard for you that you are going to fear for your life.

And typically a, a well, informed hazmat team member they’ll say they’ll take a radiation hazard any day. Right. Because when it comes to the hazard chemical hazards, I mean, those will kill you like that, like right away, you know, biological that’s, that’s well, it’ll kill you later type of thing, but still in the medium term will definitely be very harmful and can spread, right.

Radiological. As long as you have the right detection capability it’s actually really easy to deal with and even if you didn’t have the, the proper radiation detection equipment if you’re coming upon a traffic accident, let’s say that has a radiological component to it, like they’re, they’re transporting radioactive material, we actually teach all of our hazmat team members to deal with all other hazards, And lifesaving before you even think about like dealing with the radiation stuff, like make sure everybody’s safe make sure there’s no chemicals that are spilling off into place.

Like then go take radiation measurements. And that’s actually spelled out in the books that the Department of Transportation hands out to hazmat team members on what to do when they see the differemt symbols, you know, on the, the placards on the differemt shipping containers. That’s what it says, like, almost word for word in those books on what to do.

So, I guess that’s from a very basic level when it comes to which one’s going to be the most…

[00:15:06] Mark Hinaman: Has anyone told the NRC that?

[00:15:08] DJ LeClear: No. I mean… Yeah, they’re, they’re well aware too. That might surprise you. In my last job, what’s that?

[00:15:20] Mark Hinaman: I said I was being facetious. Yeah, they’re well aware.

[00:15:24] DJ LeClear: In my last job, I, I worked with the, with the NRC quite, quite closely, you know, worked with them a lot.

I wasn’t being regulated by them at all. They were actually a partner. When it comes to radiological emergency preparedness, they are there to serve us, which is really great. I think now that I’m no longer in that role now, the NRC is more of a like, Hey. We’re your regulator now, like, so it’s a, it’s a differemt role, but I mean, I’ve had beers with NRC people and just like talk to them about all these differemt things and getting to hear, you know, their, their perspective and stuff.

And it’s very, it’s very interesting. I won’t, I won’t rat anyone out, but it, I mean, it’s they have a very interesting perspective and, but. Their role, they’re very, very hyper focused on radiological hazards, right? Like, it’s not in their purview to try to think of Say, I’ve, I’ve even asked them this question, like, think about climate change and, and Particulate emissions from coal plants.

You know, they don’t, they don’t think about doing or comparing nuclear to those differemt hazards when they’re making their recommendations or doing regulations. So, yeah, that’s, that’s unfortunate that that’s the way they roll. And I really, I really wish that that would change and it can change. I mean, Congress is the one that’s in charge.

Of the NRC, so Congress decides that that is going to be part of their role. It will be. So yeah,

[00:17:04] Mark Hinaman: I like it. Okay. So circling back to just radiation. I mean, there’s a dose and then a rate of dose and there’s grays and Becquerel’s and differemt measurements and units. I mean, Okay. Simplify this a little bit, maybe use analogies, I mean if you were to spell this out like with a crayon, make it easy for me.

[00:17:29] DJ LeClear: Oh boy, so you want a little master class on radiation.

[00:17:33] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, a little master class. Not as deep, as Mark Nelson, but a little master class.

[00:17:40] DJ LeClear: Yeah, I think, yeah. So. I know I was just listening to a to a decouple podcast, geothermal thermal one.

[00:17:50] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, it’s great. Yeah. They got it mostly right.

[00:17:55] DJ LeClear: Yeah. I, it made me really excited to look into it, but yeah.

Anyways, where was I going with it? Oh yeah. So I guess some, some basics of radiation. Radiation is essentially it’s energy. And when you’re exposed to radiation. It’s, it’s the measure of the amount of energy that’s deposited. in your cells. Like that’s, that’s really is as basic as basic as it gets there.

And I guess a way to think about it is we have differemt types of radiation, right? So we have alpha radiation, beta radiation, gamma, x ray. I can mention probably five more and I’ll probably just confuse everybody, but the basic part of it is the energy of it.

And some of the radiation, it’s just purely energy. So you’re thinking x rays, gamma rays. That’s electromagnetic radiation. It’s, it’s purely energy. And then there’s other radiation, which is particles. But those particles have energy, and it’s the energy of those particles which is sort of the hazardous part of it, right?

So an example there is an alpha ray or an alpha particle. That that is a particle radiation. And when that particle, that alpha particle has no energy. So basically it’s just kind of floating around. It’s simply helium. That’s all it is. You know, and helium is one of those things that, you know, we, we inhale into our lungs, you know, and, and talk funny.

But if you give that helium a lot of energy, it can do harm at least. Internally, so that that is that that is the basic part of it is that energy so that that causes it to be a hazard. And if if you want me to, I can get into kind of how that energy is hazardous at a cellular level that affects.

You know, the human is that, is that what you want me to, yeah, I’m curious. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:07] Mark Hinaman: So I think a lot of people like miss it. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what we’re trying to protect against. And I guess my end goal is people are terrified of radiation. They’re scared of nuclear because radiation exists and radionuclides, which is the materials that come out of a nuclear accident have radiation and Reactor creates radiation, but like, how does that act?

How would that actually get to the environment and like, what’s the actual mechanism this could happen?

[00:20:38] DJ LeClear: Yeah, so I think A key thing there, so we’ll hold off on the whole energy departed on cells, right? I’m going to put a pause on that and talk about one other misunderstanding I think is good to clear up before moving on a little deeper into that, but the differemce between radiation and radioactive material or contamination.

Radioactive material and contamination are pretty much exactly the same thing. It’s just, contamination is where you don’t want it. Radioactive material is a more generic form. You know, you can have radioactive material that is somewhere where you want it or you don’t want it. And when you, it’s where you don’t want it, it’s called contamination.

So, radioactive material. Those are that can be really any sort of element. Hydrogen all the way up to uranium and into beyond uranium, right? When it comes to size. It can be any of those differemt elements. And it is specifically unstable forms. So an example is tritium. Tritium is an unstable form of hydrogen.

And it has too many neutrons in it. So it wants to get to a stable state and it will emit radiation and then go into a more stable form. It will actually go into helium. So, when you say something is leaking radiation, That doesn’t really make any sense, because radiation, remember, that’s the energy coming off of it.

So you’re not really, you don’t leak energy. There’s very specific instances where that would happen, but not, not in the sense that people are usually talking about. They’re like, oh, there’s a radiation leak from a nuclear plant, right? No, a radioactive material or contamination leak. And that is the element or the isotope that is unstable.

That is leaking itself. And then the radiation again, that is that energy or those, those particles with energy that are coming off of the radioactive material. So I think that’s a, that’s a key thing to know when, when, whenever anybody is learning about radiation is the differemce between those 2 things.

And 1 of the ways that I, I like to describe it as material

[00:23:01] Mark Hinaman: that’s released a plant, right? It’s like, This dust of radioactive material contamination. That is radioactive, as radiation, but like, that’s what gets into the environment that the NRC tries to protect.

[00:23:18] DJ LeClear: Yep, yep, it’s, it’s, it is the material itself that is emitting the radiation, and I like to think of it as like, think coals of a fire, right?

So the fire’s died down, you just have coals, right? The coals, you put your hands up to it, and you can feel the heat coming off. That heat is literally radiation, just, Infrared radiation. And so that heat you’re feeling off of it is the radiation and then the coals themselves are like the radioactive material, right?

You can take that coal, you can put it somewhere else and It’ll start emitting radiation in that other place, right? You can feel the heat coming off of it, which is the radiation. That’s the differemce between radiation contamination. Think of hot coals. Some people like to say I, I, I hate the analogy.

I don’t even know why I’m talking about it, but they, they think of it as like, poo, you can smell it, which is like the radiation, but the poo itself is the, the contamination or the radioactive material. I don’t really like that one. I like the coals. So you can.

[00:24:19] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, that’s, that’s kind of a shitty example.

[00:24:25] DJ LeClear: Yes, very, very well done there. A little bit of comedic relief there, but… Anyways, I think that that’s a good distinction there. So talked about differemt contamination radiation. So I’ll go ahead and again get into more of at the cellular level, which affects people at a organism level or human level, right?

So. Just like how getting hit with a punch or getting hit with a bullet or getting hit with a baseball is going to harm you. Same thing when the radiation comes out of the radioactive material and hits your cells. But it’s going to, the, the damage that’s done is not At a very large level. It’s a very molecular level, right?

So it’s going to actually harm your DNA in your cells, right? And it’s going to cause DNA breaks either by directly hitting your DNA, which doesn’t happen very often, or it’s going to actually hit the water in your cells, and it causes those that water to create what’s called free radicals. And I know I’m getting really in depth here.

It’s for a reason. It’s it causes free radicals in in your cells, right? And those free radicals will then go on to harm your DNA. So kind of those two differemt ways. Either directly hitting your DNA or creating those free radicals, which will then go and harm your, your DNA. And one of the things that’s really important to understand when it comes to DNA damage and DNA breaks, is DNA breaks happen in every single cell.

thousands of times a day, thousands of times a day. And and it’s not the radiation for the most part, like radiation only makes up a really tiny, tiny portion of those DNA breaks. A vast majority of it is just from your body’s metabolism and, and breathing oxygen. So those types of things will create those free radicals again inside your cells, which then can cause the DNA breaks. And because of this, your body is extremely good at repairing those DNA breaks. So, radiation, only, it doesn’t cause anything unique inside of your body when it comes to DNA breaks. Because, like I said, that’s just a common thing.

All of our cells, it happens thousands of times every single day. So, radiation basically just kind of amplifies. Those DNA breaks adds more to those DNA breaks and the amount that it increases your DNA breaks is actually a lot smaller than people think it’s it’s again. It’s very, very small amount and that’s why even if you get a very large dose of radiation, say I’m going to start speaking some, some terminology here that might not make sense to people, but rem is usually what we talk about, or sieverts, so 100 millisieverts, which is equivalent to 10 rem even at that level, which is a lot of radiation to the body, it still only accounts for a very small portion of those DNA breaks in your body, but it does.

cause in a large population of people a statistically significant increase of those DNA breaks in the body that can cause a statistically significant increase in your chances or the chances of that population of getting cancer. And Because, again, your body has those DNA breaks going on every single day your chances of getting cancer just from a baseline, no radiation at all are like 40%.

I think that surprises people when they hear that statistic but it is a reality, and it’s the reason why I’m actually working for Shine now, because Shine one of their things is cancer fighting radionuclides. But yeah, so. Because your body has those DNA breaks happening all the time anyways, and there’s misrepair going on inside your body your chances of getting cancer are already up here.

And adding radiation to it just barely moves the needle at all. To where you have to get a very significant amount of radiation to even barely move that needle. You could even get, honestly, A, a dose of radiation that could almost kill you in the short term, which I can talk about that after I’m done talking about this cancer part, you can get it.

Maybe it doesn’t kill you. You just get radiation sickness and you, you get treatment and then you survive your chances of getting cancer still only move from that 40 percent maybe to like 44%. So, which is statistically significant in a large population, and nobody wants to increase their chances of getting cancer.

So, you would have rather not got that 4 percent extra but if you think about it 4 percent added to 40, I mean, it’s not a huge increase in getting chances of getting cancer. And, It’s really good to remember that because a lot of people think like, Oh, wait, I got exposed to radiation at these low levels and I got cancer.

Or I live next to Three Mile Island and I got cancer. And I think it is natural for us as humans to want to attribute something to what is hurting us. We want to attribute something to that cancer because we do not like the idea of something just kind of randomly happening to us and harming us. And that, that is so throughout our, our culture and our, our human psyche that we want to attribute it to this thing that happened to us or this company here.

They’re the ones that gave me the cancer. And even if. It would only make up a very tiny percentage of that increase of your already existing one to where you couldn’t even tell whether or not it was that outside thing or not, because your chances of getting it anyways was already very high. So, yeah, any questions on that?

[00:31:05] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, questions class. I’ll say it back real quick. We’re pretty sure that DNA strand breaks are. They cause cancer. They happen naturally. If you get blasted with radiation, there’s a good chance that more of them will happen than happen in the background, and your probability of getting cancer goes up.

I think everyone agrees on that, where I think some of the industry disagrees is like, At what level and how much and how much should we protect against, right? So there’s, there’s nuance. I’ll say it’s the lowest protection necessary. Yeah, for the, for the dose piece, I mean, we mentioned rems and sieverts.

Let’s circle back on that a little. Because it drives me crazy, and I, even though I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time, like, I still can’t get it straight. And, like, the fact that REMS is 10 of something, I mean, yeah, okay, metric system is 10, but, like, it is kind of a nefarious conversion, and they, you know, I guess, can, can we use bananas as a, as a metric?

I find, I do find the banana analogy helps a lot. So, what, what do these things mean?

[00:32:14] DJ LeClear: Yeah, so, I mean, Like I mentioned in the beginning, it’s all about energy, right? Energy that’s imparted on your body. And If you actually break down a sievert, which is how we measure radiation at least from an international standpoint it is actually joules per kilogram, which, for those who understand, joules is just a measurement of energy.

So it’s basically all it is is the measurement of the amount of energy per your body weight that was imparted on it, right? So the amount of energy that was deposited per unit mass. And that really, again, just goes down to those basics of what radiation is. It’s just energy deposited. On your tissues, and I do want to get to some of that what it means when it comes to or the in the industry when some people think at lower doses, you, you have either no health effect or.

Increased health effect or negative health effect. So you actually have a better outcome. I’ll get to that a little bit, but I think I want to, I want to talk about some of the other effects that we know for a fact are, there is a threshold. So, for those, for those lower doses of radiation, or the cancer effects, the existence of a threshold that is widely debated, of whether or not at, below a certain dose, you won’t see any health effects or you’ll get better health.

But, When it comes to large doses of radiation in a very short period of time, so a lot of those joules per kilogram, maybe, maybe we should just talk joules per kilogram. That might actually just shut people down, but for the

[00:34:17] Mark Hinaman: businesses and engineers that listen, we’ll get it because it’s, it’s metal units where you break it down to the fundamentals.

It’s energy per unit mass, but for everyone else, they’re like, we don’t know, man, banana equivalent dose, we want BEDs, give us those. How many bananas? Yeah. Okay.

[00:34:33] DJ LeClear: The nice thing is at that one sievert or that one joule per kilogram of radiation, that’s about that threshold where we know that you will start seeing negative health effects in the short term.

So acute effects is what we call that or short term effects. And that is what radiation sickness is. So we know for a fact. At that one Sievert which is equivalent to a hundred REM for my friends who are which actually includes me because all of our regulation is built on REM or I actually not even that, let me, let me, Oh man, there’s, there’s too many, too many units because Sievert is, is actually a little differemt, but.

I’m just going to talk in Sieverts, even though for my health physicist, it’s technically it’s gray, but we’re just going to talk in Sieverts. Are we the

[00:35:31] Mark Hinaman: same?

[00:35:34] DJ LeClear: Not quite. So, Sieverts is helping equate those cancer effects. So, if you received one gray to the body of gamma radiation, that is equivalent to one Sievert of radiation. And then from there, after converting it to Sievert, which is a one for one for gamma radiation, but it’s differemt for other types of radiation then you can start saying, okay, here’s your increase in your chances of getting cancer.

So that that’s why we convert to Sieverts. It helps us out with that. That’s really helpful. Yeah, yeah. So usually when we’re talking about those short term effects, you don’t need to convert to Sieverts. So we are talking in gray at that moment, which again is equivalent. To the one joule per kilogram, so, but yeah, so at those high doses of radiation, those, those one gray or those one sieverts we know for a fact that you start getting radiation sickness.

And from there, your severity of your radiation sickness goes up. So, all the way to about 10 sieverts. And then at that point, you’re probably going to die. Basically, and it gets severe, more and more severe as you go higher in that amount of radiation. And that is a ungodly amount of radiation, like that is the first responders to Chernobyl, the people who are like staring into the reactor basically, or, or grabbing the, the graphite that wasn’t there, you know, so, there’s a very large dose of radiation and they’re like, As far as

[00:37:21] Mark Hinaman: hazards in life are concerned, it, it would be so difficult to get exposed to that level of radiation.

Like, I mean, this would be like the equivalent of like, I mean, I can’t even think of a great example because it’s just bizarre. It’s like, hey, how how about you suddenly become exposed to 17 missiles striking you lava.

Like, there’s only a few man made lava pits throughout the world, and they’re all guarded heavily. Like, it’s just irrational to think that people could ever be exposed to these. Levels as members of the public.

[00:38:01] DJ LeClear: Right? Like, and I think when people think about radiation, they go, shoot, I’ve been exposed to radiation.

Their brain automatically goes to those worst case scenarios. Right? Yes,

[00:38:15] Mark Hinaman: which is silly, right? It’s like, it’s almost like, no, you put your hand next to the coals of campfire. You didn’t just douse yourself in gasoline and have 7 torches thrown at you. Right? Yeah, that is. Yeah, maybe that’s

[00:38:29] DJ LeClear: I think that’s a good, I think that’s a good one.

Like, you didn’t. Yeah. Like, touch like a slightly hot surface that was kind of close to the fire and like, oh, that was kind of hot. You didn’t just get third degree burns all around your body. Like, that’s the differemce there. So yeah, yeah. We’re feeling just a slight warmth, like, oh, shoot. Now I’m going to get third degree burns.

Like, no, you, you didn’t just dive into the fire. So, yeah, that, that is the differemce there. So, yeah. I just want to talk about that one when it comes to the effects is usually when people are talking about, you know, masterclass talking about the effects of radiation, they definitely talk about those, those short term effects.

And that those ones we like know what the LD 50 is. So like the, the dose of radiation that people would get that, 50/50 chance of dying. Basically. It’s like around 400, 400. Yeah, 400, 450 something, something like that. Is the range where it’s like you have a 50 50 chance without any medical care, and then if you do get medical care, it goes up by another a hundred rad.

Or I should say, I said four 50. I see. I’m, I’m confusing everyone with units here. , I should say four and a half. Seaver or gray or Seavers. Is that 50, 50, 50 threshold? And then it goes up to like five and a half if you, if you get medical care. So, which we’ve gotten, we don’t have a lot of doctors that are too experienced at it, but there’s.

Definitely people who are who know how to take care of people who have been exposed to a large dose of radiation. So I guess 1 of the things we can talk about a little bit of transition in here. Do you want to talk about that controversy? The linear? No threshold. Hypothesis you want to,

[00:40:18] Mark Hinaman: well, let’s preface it because when you look at why nuclear is hard to build, people will often point to the nuclear regulatory commission and say, well, it’s too hard to permit.

And I mean, they, they are protecting against people being exposed to radiation and they will certify designs that are that set in stone. And you literally have to get those rules changed as like, Okay. An active Congress to be able to make changes to those designs, which is not how we do engineering work.

It’s not it’s not how innovation works. And so something that really frustrates me is like, why are these rules so strict? And if you go and read the regs and talk to the people at the commission and. Trace it back. It goes back to this principle of well, any amount of radiation. It’s horrible and it will kill you And in my opinion, they’re drastically overprotecting and they would say well, no there so there’s some controversy and debate there, so

[00:41:17] DJ LeClear: Yeah, and I think there’s there’s there’s controversy and debate on whether or not that is in fact the reason why It’s not going anywhere.

And yeah, yeah, I think that there, there’s absolutely a argument to be made. In that direction. Because yeah, you’re, you’re right. Like we, we just had what’s it called? Olow re recently they had their application just denied. And I was actually in talking to them at that time when it, when it happened, and it, it actually caught them off guard.

And it’s like, Really? And we’re, we’re approving all of these other things out there that are way more hazardous and harmful. So absolutely. I think, I think that we have made it unnecessarily difficult to license a plant and approve a design and that that’s very unfortunate. I mean, at the same time there is a high level of safety that we have been able to maintain. And then there is then on the other, the flip side of the argument is like, now we’ve created this such high safety that we’ve created this illusion that it’s because it’s more hazardous. When in fact it’s not right, like we’ve created the illusion that radioactive material being transported is super hazardous compared to transporting what’s it called?

Ammonia, right? And ammonia truck. You crash an ammonia truck and you can kill a bunch of people really easily, and it just doesn’t have nearly an amount of regulations. But people again, they fear that, that radioactive symbol, that, that hazard a lot more than the, the, I think it’s corrosive symbol for ammonia and we’ve, we’ve just made it super costly compared to what the hazard actually is.

So, I mean, I’m proud to be somebody who is a radiation protection people person that is going through and making sure I’m following all the regulations and everything. But yeah, at the same time, I really feel personally, I feel like the rest of the hazardous materials industry needs to at least come up to our level.

Maybe maybe not all the way to our level. Because then honestly, it would shut everything down, but maybe they need to come up a little testing would get done. What’s that?

[00:44:04] Mark Hinaman: I was gonna say nothing would get done, but yeah.

[00:44:06] DJ LeClear: You’re right, you’re right. There needs to there needs to be a little bit of equalization. And even, I like to argue with myself, like this is, this is, I haven’t even formed a very good argument because within my own thoughts. Because I don’t believe that we should no longer fly or no longer drive cars, those all come with very high risk.

Well, not flying, but compared to a nuclear plant, yeah, flight is more dangerous than, than, than running nuclear plants. And I think on the flip side of the argument. We need to understand risk versus benefits, right? And we know that there’s a benefit to driving your car. We know there’s a benefit to flying.

And there’s absolutely a benefit to running a nuclear plant and using nuclear materials, and I think we need to have a better cost benefit. Analysis right on that, and I think that is something that we’re lacking a lot in the regulatory sphere. And just within my own industry, right? We need to we need to do better at at understanding that yeah.

And that does kind of transition a little bit into LNT, I think. Okay.

[00:45:31] Mark Hinaman: Well yeah, let’s talk about it. LNT. Yeah. That’s dominating. And it’s the idea that any dose is harmful and cumulative dose is impactful. I mean, the total dose received over time is just as harmful as receiving it all at once. Which I think there’s some debate around that topic.

But yeah, what, what is LNT and why do people think this exists?

[00:46:00] DJ LeClear: So, LNT Linear No Threshold this is talking about those cancer effects, right? And this is not talking about the short term effects from getting an ungodly amount of radiation. Those… We know very well have a threshold to it, and those

[00:46:23] Mark Hinaman: are linear, and we know mostly from Chernobyl and from the Hiroshima Nagasaki.

Right? That’s where all the data comes from. And you look at the data. It’s definitely a straight line.

[00:46:36] DJ LeClear: So, and those were talking about that linear kind of, I don’t know if it’s exactly linear, but basically, the more radiation, the more severe. Those acute effects of short term effects are when it comes to those low dose. effects, the cancer effects, it’s more of a numbers game, right? So the more radiation you get, the more likely you are going to get cancer.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to be really bad cancer just because you got more radiation. It just means you have statistically higher risks of getting cancer. And the Linear No Threshold, we know Like you said, Hiroshima and Nagasaki from studying that population of people who got exposed to radiation at differemt levels of radiation. We know that those people who got those very high doses of radiation we’re talking about greater than 10 rem or 100 millisieverts. Those are both equal quantities of radiation dose.

Greater than that, we see a linear increase of the chances of getting cancer. And here’s a here’s a controversial take for you here. But I think a lot of people think that Chemical hazards. We they they don’t treat that as being linear, no threshold. They do, actually, when it comes to any sort of hazard, and it might have came actually from our studies of the health effects and cancer effects of radiation.

I’m not I’m not sure about that, but because radiation is very, very well studied other hazards. That have long term cancer effects, they, they actually do attribute a linear no threshold hypothesis to those as well. So say alcohol, like you’ve probably heard it in the news recently, they say no level of alcohol is is safe.

I hate that term and I’ll talk about that. Remind me to talk about that term. But basically. No matter how low of, of level of alcohol you’ve had, it’s going to cause an increase in your, your chances of having a health effect right long term down the road. So we do see that in other industries.

I’m just gonna that’s a controversial thing that I think I’ve heard people say incorrectly. We, the other industries do believe in or have a linear, no threshold type of thing to it. But anyways what that is is they say, okay, linearly, we see after 10 REM going up and up and up and up, we see an increase of getting chances of getting cancer from those survivors, right?

So let’s. For a prudence and a simplicity of regulation, let’s assume that any radiation you get is going to cause harm. And we follow that line at those high doses and we draw that line All the way to zero radiation dose, and we say any increase in that radiation dose from zero will cause a increase in your chances of getting cancer.

And the reason why that is something that they think is the case, at least the proponents of linear no threshold, is because, like I said, Radiation is energy being deposited on your cells, causing those free radicals to be formed, causing damage to your DNA. Right? And one little thing of radiation going in causing One free radical, let’s say one pair of free radicals could have a chance of damaging your DNA, so therefore has a chance of causing cancer.

So that’s, and, and linearly up into whatever doses. That, that is what linear no threshold is. And the alternate to that. is a threshold, right? Hypothesis or a technically speaking, it’s actually it’s all hormesis. If you don’t think linear threshold is true, you think hormesis is true. Because If you want a threshold, hermesis has to be true as well.

Putting it out there, and I think people don’t understand that, but this is a new term I’m mentioning now, hermesis. That’s the alternate, the anti no threshold. They say, wait a minute, wait a minute, no. At these low doses, there is actually it is not linear. And what’s interesting is We’ve not really measured it very well at those low doses because it’s very hard to measure at with, since we all 40 have that 40 percent chance of getting cancer anyways.

So, we’re all arguing about something that’s very hard to see and they say no at those low doses. It doesn’t it doesn’t go linearly down to zero, your chances of getting cancer. It actually drops down, either down straight to zero, and then stays at zero at a certain level. That’s called threshold.

Right? So basically after a certain point that line goes down to zero and then after that you have no increase in your, your chances of getting cancer. And then what people commonly refer to as being hormesis is not only does it go down to zero, it drops down below zero. So you have a negative statistical chance.

of getting cancer, which means and in fact decreases your chance. Of getting cancer is what people commonly call hormesis for either hormesis or threshold hypothesis to exist, you need to have a hermetic effect that, that basically drops that statistical chance of getting cancer down below that, that line to zero, there has to be some sort of benefit that comes out of it to counteract that increase or that, that cancer chances of getting cancer basically.

So that when it, when it, the threshold theory is actually weak hormesis and then the other one would be just hormesis basically. Those are kind of the three differemt camps and actually there’s another camp. And that is not only is it linear, it’s not linear. Actually, it’s super linear. So at low doses, there’s actually a higher, not, not higher than the high doses, but like, it doesn’t go linearly down to zero.

It actually has like kind of a hump. So, It kind of like almost flattens out and then goes down to zero. So it goes above that line down to zero. So, they say you don’t even draw a line straight to zero. You actually have your, your chance, you, you have a greater risk. to getting cancer than what linear no threshold says.

So there’s, there’s proponents of that. And there’s actually recent evidence that might point to that actually may be true. I still, I’m still evaluating that evidence myself, but yeah, that’s, that’s the, the whole argument in there. Do you have any questions on? Those differemt kind of stances there.

Did I, did I clearly state that for you?

[00:54:10] Mark Hinaman: It was, it was very detailed. I guess the whole time when I was listening to it, it’s like, one question that’s screaming in my mind is why, why does it matter?

[00:54:21] DJ LeClear: There you go. And I, let’s go back back to like 2017 for me, right? That’s when I started really becoming a nuclear advocate because that’s when I kind of had this epiphany, like, wait a minute.

Climate change is a big deal and we need to address it and that’s when I started becoming a nuclear advocate and in the nuclear advocate community, there’s a very strong group or a belief that linear no threshold is so wrong and it is evil. It is, it is what’s keeping nuclear from, from being a Being a thing, right?

It’s, it’s what’s holding us down, right? And so, they’re back in 2017. I was like, yeah, this is stupid. Like, I heard, I heard some of the arguments about this, this hermesis thing. Like, I bet you hermesis is true, you know, like, and I definitely was very. On the anti LNT train, basically, 2017 all the way until about 2000 and I want to say 19, I think, so a couple years and, and there was a lot of good arguments out there.

And on why LNT is just not a real thing. And then I remember I virtually attended the health physics ANS symposium on low dose radiation. Listeners can, can check on me if that was 2018 or 2019. But I remember coming out of that, like going in, right? Strong anti… Lnt and then coming out like not really having a good opinion either direction actually really understanding that at those low doses the amount of population that you would need to study in order to figure out whether or not there actually is a health effect radiation is so large that it’s just infeasible to be able to do that. People kept during the symposium, like you’d have to have a billion people that you were studying. I’m like, geez, which you just can’t do it. It’s just not possible. But I will say the thing that I got out of it was like, wait a minute. Like why, why do we argue about this when The reason why it’s so difficult to study is because the health effects at those low doses is so incredibly low.

Even if it was linear, why do we care? Like, again, I talked about it before health or there there’s risk versus benefits. We all drive our car. We all know: chances of getting in a car accident and dying is actually pretty large, right? Yet we do it anyways because it has so much benefits. And even if LNT was true, The amount of benefit that we get from nuclear power, nuclear medicine using radiation, using x rays is so high, it, it just so dwarfs any risk that is there at all.

And it kind of started getting me to like, I don’t know if I even care about which, which one’s actually true anymore. Like, it has no, I think a lot of nuclear advocates have tied their belief. Anti l and t so tightly to to their, their nuclear their, their, their nuclear advocacy. Like, they don’t wanna let go and just realize, like, it, it, it doesn’t matter.

When it comes to what, what really matters is our understanding to not treat the risk that comes from radiation. differently than other risks. I think that is the battle that we need to be to be really fighting the belief that radiation and nuclear power and anything that comes any risks that come from that.

We, we weight them higher than other risks. That is the problem to me. That’s my, that’s my statement.

[00:58:49] Mark Hinaman: I couldn’t agree more. I think why advocates get wrapped up in it is because I mean, literally in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s, in Title X, CFR, Title X, where all of these rules are written, and there’s thousands of pages of rules, like the words as low as reasonably achievable are in place because of this principle.

And that is then motivating the Commission to make rules and prevent people from developing technologies and iterating on them and testing them and making them better and better because they think they’re protecting. But they’re irrationally protecting against this risk that is not that dangerous. I mean, yeah, you said, you said it very well.

If you compare it on a net basis, net benefit, net public benefit, then it’s not even close. Which I mean, that, that’s why we included part of that a quote from an expert in the industry in our intro that says if there’s a country that can get over net public Benefit or use net public benefit as a metric instead of ridiculous levels of radiation detection.

I’ll have prosperity for everyone.

[00:59:59] DJ LeClear: Yup. And I think you hit on something very important there. ALARA, right. I, I remember after my kind of epiphany or maybe my moving to a differemt kind of stance I was thinking like, wait a minute. This Alara thing, that’s the issue. Right. And then I was strongly on like Alara.

That’s the problem. And I’d like to take it even a step farther than that. I, I want to say our interpretation of ALARA and our misquoting of ALARA. If you look it up, ICRP, and I’m probably gonna, I’m not, I’m not gonna perfectly quote it. That’s not the full sentence. It does not say we need to keep doses as low as reasonably achievable.

It says we need to keep doses as low as reasonably achievable, taking into account societal and economic what are they, there’s a differemt, there’s a word they use taking, taking those, those things into account, right? We need to take those things, we need to take those benefits and those other things into account when we’re trying to keep things as low as reasonably achievable.

People don’t finish the sentence. That’s the problem.

[01:01:15] Mark Hinaman: Which, you could interpret that as, hey, look at the net public benefit, meaning the opportunity cost. If you eliminate the death from another form of energy, then immediately be using nuclear. If that was your metric, because it’s just so much safer. It doesn’t kill anybody.

[01:01:34] DJ LeClear: So I think the interpretation of as low as, excuse me, as low as reasonably achievable is really the big problem right there. We, we need to take economic and societal benefits and detriments into, into effect. I, I feel like my curremt job our radiation protection, like we do think about those things, we actually talk about it which is a good thing.

And I, I wish more industry, more people in the industry would think about what talk about it is, is talk about, yeah, okay, we’re going to cure this dose, but we’ll look at the benefit over here. But I think we really do need to look into making sure that we’re doing that cost benefit analysis.

Quite often. And this was talked about during that symposium again. We will reduce doses to a detriment because we’re trying to follow this as low as reasonably achievable. With, for one thing, our interpretation of reasonable is, is not great. We, we have sent people to the morgue in body bags, trying to reduce a dose out in the desert that is going to have no effect on people, type of thing.

Like, that, that was talked about during that symposium, is where you will harm people trying to reduce, A dose that would have caused much, much less harm. So we cause more harm than the harm that we were trying to reduce, basically. And when I was working for the Department of Health Services in radiation protect, or sorry Radiological emergency preparedness.

One of the things that we talked about was after nuclear plant emergency happened and maybe you did a shelter in place or you did a temporary evacuation, which there’s an argument on whether or not which one of those is going to be better and more beneficial. There is this idea that, okay, now we need to say, Hey you left home in an emergency for just like a temporary evacuation, but it turned out there was some radioactive material that was deposited on your home and now we would, we would say, we don’t want you to go back home and the amount of detriment that comes from that is so high.

I actually did my my capstone project on this for my masters and the amount of detriment from radiation. So the harm from radiation that you were reducing versus the harm that you were doing from removing people from their homes. It just did not make sense. Whatsoever and all of that, because we just have this belief that we need to reduce doses as low as reasonably achievable without thinking about all those other things.

So, it has always been my recommendation that we do not move people from their homes urgencies.

Like Fukushima, probably evacuation, maybe permanent relocation from their homes. Not at all. It was not worth it per the math that I did and on my capstone project.

[01:04:46] Mark Hinaman: I love it. All right. DJ, are you familiar with any of Jack Devaney’s work? I’m I’ve absolutely loved all of the content that he puts out.

He’s actually denied being on the podcast because I mean, he’s getting up there in years. But he’s happy to let us, well, I don’t know. I, I quote his work often, but I, I, he has a metric or he’s going to metric. Yeah, he probably wasn’t the first one. Actually, but dollars spent per life year safe, right?

I think that kind of captures the idea of trying to articulate that. Meaning any additional dollars spent on radiation protections arem’t saving as many lives as we could be spending dollars on any other protection for other chemicals, more seatbelts, more education about drug use, right, like literally anything else that we could do has a better health impact.

On society that radiation protections, would you agree?

[01:05:49] DJ LeClear: I like that. I’ve heard about that before. So, I wasn’t familiar with the name, but that does sound familiar and I, I’ve heard of attempts of doing sort of those sort of metrics and I think it’s not a bad idea and it’s kind of. I feel like we should be talking to an economist because I feel like that that’s what they do, right?

When it comes to hey, should I spend my money on this, this, this large project here when and then we discount it years into the future based off of Oh, what if I spent my money on this other project type of thing? So yeah, I I do I do like that Approach.

[01:06:31] Mark Hinaman: Okay. Well, we’re coming up on our time DJ.

Actually, we’ve already gone over it. We want you for an hour and love that so What, what do you think is the most impactful step that folks can take to build more nuclear or maybe ask a differemt way? How can people help?

[01:06:47] DJ LeClear: Yeah. Yeah, so I think one of the things I mean, there’s a lot of differemt things we could talk about and There’s a lot of opinions out there, right?

Some people are like hey We need to get on the SMR train so small modular reactors or no, we need to focus on large model reactors. We need to just keep building those because those are more economical, right? And I think there’s a lot of arguing on those, those, those fronts right there. But I think, I think it is, there is something to say of like, We shouldn’t always be chasing the shiny thing.

I think going the boring way is just fine. Unfortunately, and I, I, I really, really feel like that is the way to go. So, yes, large modular reactors while at the same time looking towards maybe small modular reactors and I think a lot of people are, and a lot of what’s it called? The utilities are really like, Hey, I can’t afford to put all of my money into these multi billion dollar projects.

I’d rather do it on this less than a billion dollar project of an SMR. But I think a really important thing and I think that’s fine. I’m kind of contradicting myself, but I feel like we shouldn’t be chasing the shiny things. I think we also think, Oh, we just need to do molten salt reactors. That’s just, or thorium reactors. No, let’s stick to boring. If we want to add in boring SMRs to that, as well as doing. Large modular reactors. I think that’s really what we should be going for.

And I don’t think, I think what we need to make sure we’re doing is sticking to those standardized designs that you’ve probably heard about. And I don’t know if it’s been talked about in here and, and basically we need to build our construction industry back up is really what we need to do is we need to learn again, how to be a a nation that can actually deliver on construction. So, I know I wasn’t very specific on that, but I, I really do think we need to focus on the basics.

[01:08:58] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, I I literally just talked to D. J. Hanson, the Chief Operating Officer of Flibe energy, so we’ll have a good counterpoint to the don’t build thorium reactors.

I like it.

[01:09:11] DJ LeClear: Which I think is fine. In tandem, but I don’t think that we should say, no, only build thorium. We need to direct everything to thorium. I think thorium is just fine. Adding it to our repertoire.

[01:09:23] Mark Hinaman: It’s America, man. Right. We can, we’ve got the freedom to go and build whatever the market wants.

Whatever they buy, right?

[01:09:29] DJ LeClear: So it’s just like, it’s just like, I hear a lot of people who tell me like, no, we don’t need to be. Building nuclear. Nuclear had its day. We need to be focused on wind and solar batteries. We shouldn’t be spe we money spent on nuclear is wasted. Like, I feel like that’s such a bad thing to be saying, right?

Like, saying money spent on thorium reactors is wasted I think is a wrong thing to say as well. So,

[01:09:54] Mark Hinaman: DJ, where can people find you if they want to engage Twitter and TikTok? But is it just at the rad guy?

[01:10:02] DJ LeClear: So on TikTok, it’s the rad guy glows. The rad guy was already taken. So, the rad guy was taken everywhere. So, I, everything was, on Twitter, it’s actually I want to say it’s that rad guy. I’m spelling it in as I’m doing this.

Bye. Yes, it’s @ThatRadGuy5. I should have chosen one.

[01:10:29] Mark Hinaman: I mean, you post videos, you do inspirational stuff, educational stuff. Yeah. What do you get out of it?

[01:10:39] DJ LeClear: Are you saying out of this interaction that we’re having right now? No, no, no. Out

[01:10:43] Mark Hinaman: of social media. I mean, you could say, yeah, you could say, Mark, I don’t know, it’s been kind of boring talking to you.

I feel like I’ve been talking to a kindergarten kid.

[01:10:51] DJ LeClear: I really appreciate this conversation because I usually when I go on podcasts, and I think it’s fine, I’m usually asked about like, Hey let’s talk about your tech talks. Let’s talk about how to make videos and how to how to communicate on social media, which I enjoy talking about that, but this has been refreshing because I’m, I’m really going into some other subjects that I’m also passionate about, but I don’t really get asked about that much.

I think the last time I was asked about that was in my very first podcast with it was on the rational radio. I don’t know if you’ve. Heard or no, not the rational radiance, right? The rational view. And it was right before I became the rad guy. Really? It was like my, my, Hey, I’m going to start this at the very end.

We, they were like, Hey, I’m going to start this YouTube channel, which. Ended up actually being a TikTok channel, but that, that was my first time being brought on. And I did talk about kind of this subject that we’re talking about now. But yeah, it was really refreshing to get into that, that topic.

And I enjoy talking about it a lot. And I, I get up on my, my My, what’s that called? Stool. I get on my pedestal or not pedestal.

[01:12:05] Mark Hinaman: Soap box. Thank you. I figured it as a stool, but I think it’s a box.

[01:12:11] DJ LeClear: I get up on my, my, my soap box and, and, and talk about the whole, like, stop focusing on LNT.

That’s my, my soap box there. But that was, I, I really was very happy to, to be able to get on that. And I, yeah, I, I’m on social media. I don’t really talk about that much. And I really, I probably should talk about it much. I don’t know if the general public is interested in hearing about my stances on LNT like, Oh yeah.

Thanks.

[01:12:39] Mark Hinaman: I’m making that trick. Apparemtly you’re good at this, right? Like, make it, make it fun.

[01:12:45] DJ LeClear: Yeah, but I do feel that, that advocates of nuclear, which I’m, I’m hoping you have a lot of advocates who are listening. I feel like they need to hear what I had to say, so.

[01:12:57] Mark Hinaman: I agree. Well, DJ, this has been fantastic.

Why don’t you leave us on a positive note? Where, where are we going to be in 10, 20 years?

[01:13:06] DJ LeClear: Oh, boy. Oh, we’re gonna, we’re gonna be building a lot of nuclear. Like, I, I, I, I, I feel very confident. About that, there’s a lot of goals we’re trying to make and we’re, there’s a lot of goals to make a lot of nuclear and which really excites me because I would not have said that maybe a year ago, you know, I would not have been as confident maybe a year and a half ago, but I, I, I’m feeling very confident in, in where we’re going.

And I think it’s. My, my confidence is getting increasing more and more as, as time goes on. Awesome.

[01:13:42] Mark Hinaman: Well, that’s a great place to leave it, DJ LeClear. Thanks so much for coming on the Fire2Fission Podcast. Great show.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, so we had, we had stopped recording, then we started recording again, but we forgot to mention this. So, DJ, you’re, you’re fundraising for yourself, right? You’re trying to make, trying to make a point about how hysterical the world is being with this Tritium release from, for Japan. So why don’t you give us kind of a perspective on what this Tritium release has been and then what you’re trying to fundraise for.

[01:14:12] DJ LeClear: Yeah, so, as, as your viewers might, might have already heard, but Japan recently has begun their discharge plan of the tritiated water from Fukushima, and this has stoked a lot of fear, I would say particular and, and misinformation I say a particular that, that misinformation mostly is coming from China and, yeah.

They’re putting out a lot of propaganda out there about it as well, just because I think of the Japanese, Chinese that whole thing that’s been going on for almost 100 years now, or probably more than that. I’m not, I’m not a historian, but I. I think a lot of people misunderstand what’s going on there.

Like I said, people don’t understand radiation. And my plan, and I’ve had this plan for quite a while, and I finally put it out, I think at just the right moment when Fukushima decided to do their discharge. I’m like, hey, I am going to go to Fukushima. I’m going to eat the food. I am going to eat the fish.

I’m going to swim in the water that’s next as close as I can get to where they’re discharging. I will swim in the water and not only am I going to do that, I’m going to bring my kids with me. I’m going to have them consume those same foods that I’m consuming, get as close as they can and swim in the water.

And even I, I’m not sure whether or not we can, but I would love to actually go into the exclusion zone as well and, and walk around and just show people that I, I really mean what I, what I mean when it comes to the safety around Fukushima and so I started to go fund me and it’s on my, my bio in tick tock, I should probably put it, Somewhere on, on Twitter, but it’s one of my tweets.

I put out a GoFundMe to support my trip to Fukushima, to, to do this. ’cause I, again, I’m not paid to, to do this. So I need some help.

[01:16:15] Mark Hinaman: What, People Google to GoFundMe to,

[01:16:19] DJ LeClear: to fund. Yeah.

[01:16:20] Mark Hinaman: Yeah. Let me DJ look clear. And the RAD guy came up on Twitter, so,

[01:16:28] DJ LeClear: yeah. So it’s, I think if you look on GoFundMe, it’s like, Send the rad guy to Fukushima.

[01:16:38] Mark Hinaman: Yep. It is. http://www.gofundme.com/f/send-the-rad-guy-to-fukushima 

[01:16:43] DJ LeClear: fukushima

[01:16:44] Mark Hinaman: Cool. I’m going to make a donation right now.

[01:16:48] DJ LeClear: I appreciate it.

[01:16:51] Mark Hinaman: That’s great chat.

[01:16:53] DJ LeClear: Absolutely.

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