Patrick Moore's Nuclear Radiation Fantasy Shattered

In Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom, Patrick Moore sets out to dismantle what he sees as irrational public fear surrounding nuclear energy. Chapter 8, “Fear of Invisible Radiation from Nuclear Energy,” is a central pillar of his argument. Moore insists that radiation is misunderstood, and that nuclear accidents are overblown, and that nuclear energy itself is one of humanity’s safest and most essential tools. He contrasts nuclear power with fossil fuels and renewable energy, painting it as the only serious path forward for decarbonization, even though he spends countless pages elsewhere citing the lack of importance of climate change goals.

After debunking Moore in dozens of his other arguments, I understand that his case here is built on a familiar and extremely dishonest rhetorical strategy. He mixes selective truths with distortions, reframes risks through misleading comparisons, and dismisses decades of radiation health science. To the MAGA readers to whom he writes, his confidence and use of scientific terminology might suggest authority and understanding of the topic. A closer reading, however, reveals that his narrative is less about careful scientific analysis and more about minimizing legitimate dangers in service of a pro-nuclear ideology.

Where Do I Stand on Nuclear Energy

Before we dive into the evisceration of Patrick Moore’s case on nuclear energy, I should explain my own views on the energy form, and by extension the most common view among the marketplace and climate conservationists.

Nuclear energy’s potential role in decarbonization deserves honest attention. There is a class of advanced nuclear technologies, often called Generation IV Nuclear, that promise smaller, safer, and more efficient reactors capable of recycling waste and reducing meltdown risks. These experimental designs, such as molten salt or sodium-cooled reactors, are being explored as possible long-term complements to renewable energy. In principle, such systems could supply reliable, non-carbon baseload power while avoiding some of the structural vulnerabilities that define today’s nuclear fleet. 

Imagining, dreaming about, and seeing how such technology could impact our global race to decarbonize is fun. Efforts to pay for such research is laudable.

But these reactors remain largely theoretical. No commercial Generation IV plant has yet proven itself at scale, and the research prototypes that exist depend heavily on public funding. For all the talk of innovation, the reality is that nuclear power remains one of the most expensive ways to produce electricity. Every new project in the West has suffered from staggering cost overruns, engineering delays, and regulatory uncertainty. The true subsidies that keep nuclear viable are not just financial; they include hidden dependencies such as freshwater for cooling and state-backed insurance against catastrophic loss. The promise of future designs cannot erase the track record of an industry that continues to rely on public risk to sustain private profit.

Safety is another unsolved challenge. Modern reactors are certainly safer than those of past decades, yet the consequences of failure are still too great to ignore. Even if accidents are rare, they impose ecological and social costs so vast that their frequency becomes irrelevant. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people after Chernobyl and Fukushima exemplifies the asymmetry of nuclear risk: a single failure can undo decades of perceived stability. Until new systems demonstrate a truly fail-safe design, one that cannot melt down, burn, or contaminate, expanding nuclear power at scale remains a moral gamble.

This does not mean nuclear should vanish from the conversation. It may have a limited, transitional role within a diversified portfolio of non-carbon energy sources, especially in regions where geography or population density restrict large-scale renewables. But the global energy marketplace has already made its judgment. Wind, solar, and energy storage are now cheaper, faster to deploy, and improving every year. The learning curve for renewables is steep and accelerating, while nuclear’s costs remain stubbornly high and its timelines stretch across decades.

The energy future that Moore imagines, as a paid greenwasher for the nuclear energy industry, one centered on nuclear revival, is not the one unfolding before us. The momentum lies with decentralized, rapidly deployable, and increasingly efficient clean technologies. Nuclear may one day reemerge in a safer, more affordable form, but for now it is a legacy industry arguing against the gravity of economics.

Radiation Basics and the Comfort of Comparisons

Moore begins his argument by explaining radiation in simple terms. He talks about alpha, beta, and gamma particles, alongside the electromagnetic spectrum. His early framing is technically accurate but strategically reductive. By stressing that radiation is everywhere, from sunlight to bananas, he sets up the idea that nuclear radiation is just another natural phenomenon, unfairly singled out by irrational fear.

This rhetorical move conflates two very different realities. Background radiation, such as cosmic rays or the potassium-40 in a banana, is fundamentally different from ingesting or inhaling isotopes like cesium-137 or strontium-90 released in a nuclear accident. The former is fleeting and biologically managed; the latter persists in the body and environment for decades, concentrating in bones, soil, and food chains. By lumping them together, Moore trivializes risks that health science has painstakingly documented.

He then leans heavily on the toxicology maxim “the dose makes the poison,” comparing radiation exposure to table salt. Swallow four tablespoons of salt, he reminds us, and it could be fatal. But this analogy is misleading for two reasons. First, ionizing radiation is not merely a “toxin” but a mutagen that directly damages DNA, creating stochastic cancer risks that can manifest years later and at very low doses. Second, unlike salt, radionuclides can integrate into ecosystems and persist across generations, contaminating farmlands and waterways. The danger is not just immediate overdose, but chronic, cumulative, and geographically widespread exposure.

Moore also argues that most radiation exposures are below thresholds of harm, citing the average U.S. nuclear worker’s 150 millirem annual dose as trivial compared to everyday exposures like airline travel or medical scans. This rhetorical trickery ignores a central consensus of radiation protection science: the linear no-threshold model (LNT). Agencies from the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences endorse LNT because the weight of epidemiological evidence suggests no safe dose of ionizing radiation, only a sliding scale of risk. Moore dismisses this model as a conspiracy of the “anti-nuclear movement,” but he offers no serious engagement with the vast body of research that supports it, from Hiroshima survivors to uranium miners to Chernobyl cleanup workers.

By starting with these comparisons, sunlight, bananas, salt, airline flights, Moore achieves a rhetorical sleight of hand. He shifts the conversation away from nuclear accidents and long-term contamination toward a comforting but distorted narrative: radiation is natural, manageable, even beneficial. In doing so, he lays the groundwork for the next stage of his argument: that low doses of radiation are not only harmless but potentially good for us.

Hormesis, the LNT Model, and the Science of Low-Dose Radiation

After laying the groundwork with his banana-salt-sunlight comparisons, Moore advances a more provocative claim: that low levels of nuclear radiation may actually be beneficial. He frames this in terms of hormesis, the idea that exposure to small doses of an otherwise harmful agent can stimulate biological defenses and improve resilience. Like salt or water, he argues, radiation may be toxic at high levels but health-enhancing at low ones.

On the surface, this sounds like a scientific breakthrough the world has irrationally ignored. In reality, Moore is using a minority scientific hypothesis to cast doubt on mainstream radiation protection standards.

Hormesis is not a fiction; there are studies suggesting that low doses of radiation may trigger adaptive cellular repair mechanisms. But these studies are mixed, often based on laboratory or animal models, and their translation to human populations is uncertain. The vast weight of epidemiological evidence, particularly from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, medical radiation workers, and populations exposed after Chernobyl, supports the LNT model as the most reliable framework for public health. LNT does not claim that every photon or particle is deadly, but that the risk of cancer rises proportionally with exposure, with no demonstrable threshold below which risk disappears. It is a precautionary model, designed to protect public health in the face of uncertainty.

Moore dismisses LNT as “patently false,” a lie propagated by the anti-nuclear movement to unfairly penalize the industry. But his dismissal glosses over decades of careful scientific debate. Even the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the industry he champions, explicitly states that LNT remains the most scientifically credible model for radiation protection. To discard it in favor of hormesis would be to gamble with public health on the basis of an unproven minority view.

Moore also argues that since our bodies are capable of repairing cellular damage, there is no net harm from low-dose radiation. This is yet another oversimplification. While it is true that cells have repair mechanisms, those mechanisms are imperfect. Radiation damage can lead to misrepairs or permanent mutations that accumulate over time. Cancer is a stochastic effect: it does not require overwhelming exposure but can result from a single misrepaired DNA strand. To argue that repair cancels out harm is to ignore why radiation-induced cancer is such a central concern in medicine and occupational health.

By championing hormesis, Moore flips the narrative. Instead of defending nuclear energy against charges of danger, he goes on the offensive: radiation is not a poison but a nutrient we have unfairly maligned. This rhetorical move is powerful because it recasts critics as not merely mistaken but willfully blind to benefits. Yet it is also disingenuous. The global scientific community has not ignored hormesis; it has studied it extensively. The consensus remains that while hormesis may exist in certain contexts, it is not a reliable basis for public health standards. Safety policy must protect the most vulnerable, not assume that everyone will benefit from low-level exposure.

Rewriting Nuclear Accidents from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima

With radiation reframed as harmless or even beneficial, Moore turns to nuclear accidents themselves. His goal is to show that even when things go wrong with nuclear meltdowns, the risks are wildly exaggerated. Wow, he is full of bananas!

He begins with the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) incident. He emphasizes that no one died, no one received radiation above background levels, and that the reactor’s partial core meltdown was contained. This is factually correct, but his telling obscures the big picture. The real significance of TMI was not mass casualties but the near-miss of catastrophe it represented. A cascade of mechanical failures, poor communication, and human error led to a partial meltdown; a vivid warning about the risks of complex nuclear systems. The accident sparked widespread fear, contributed to the halt in new U.S. nuclear construction, and exposed how ill-prepared the industry was for serious emergencies. By presenting TMI as a non-event, Moore dismisses the legitimate lessons it offered about safety culture and the fallibility of “fail-safe” technologies.

Moore’s treatment of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is even more problematic. He acknowledges the initial deaths: two workers killed in the explosion and 28 more from acute radiation syndrome, but downplays the long-term consequences. He cites WHO and other reports suggesting that, outside of thyroid cancer, no significant increase in cancer mortality has been conclusively proven in surrounding populations. He further argues that the social impacts of relocation, from alcoholism to suicide to poverty, outweighed radiation health effects.

This telling omits as much as it reveals. While it is true that estimates of Chernobyl’s long-term death toll vary widely, respected studies from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) project thousands of excess cancer deaths across Europe attributable to Chernobyl’s fallout. Radiation epidemiology is notoriously difficult because cancers take decades to manifest and cannot be traced individually to a single cause. But to suggest that the absence of precise numbers means the absence of harm is bonkers and bananas.

Moore also glosses over the vast environmental consequences: hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland contaminated, entire forests rendered radioactive, and the permanent creation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The fact that 350,000 people were displaced is not a trivial social outcome but a direct consequence of radiation risk. Treating these displacements as overreactions is to ignore the real life experiences of those forced to abandon homes and communities.

He applies the same minimization to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. He argues that the true culprit was poor backup generator placement and bad decision-making, not nuclear power itself. He points out, correctly, that most of the nearly 20,000 deaths were caused by the tsunami, not radiation. He stresses that “not a single person died from radiation exposure” and cites the World Health Organization’s finding that future cancer increases are expected to be small.

Once again, Moore minimizes key realities. While acute radiation deaths were avoided, the Fukushima disaster led to the evacuation of over 150,000 people, many of whom have yet to return home more than a decade later. Evacuation itself caused immense hardship: studies attribute over 2,000 premature deaths to stress, suicide, and disrupted medical care. Agricultural regions were contaminated, fisheries collapsed, and Japan faced billions in cleanup and compensation costs.

Across these accidents, Moore employs the same pattern:

• Minimize human health impacts (“few or no deaths from radiation”).
• Shift attention away from radiation (blame relocation, poverty, or natural disasters).
• Frame accidents as anomalies (freak design flaws, not representative of nuclear energy).

This narrative erases the most important lesson of these disasters: that nuclear accidents, while rare, have catastrophic social, ecological, and economic consequences disproportionate to their frequency. The problem is not just how many people die in the short term, but the long shadow cast by radioactive contamination, displacement, and mistrust.

Nuclear Energy as Climate Solution — Promise and Blind Spots

With radiation rendered benign and accidents reframed as overblown, Moore concludes by championing nuclear power as the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels. He highlights countries like France, which generates over 70% of its electricity from nuclear, as proof of success. He contrasts this with Germany, which has shuttered its nuclear plants while still burning coal, and frames environmental opposition to nuclear as irrational, ideological, and even harmful to the climate cause.

There is truth in Moore’s argument. Nuclear energy is indeed low-carbon and has historically played a significant role in decarbonization. France’s nuclear build-out in the 1970s and 1980s remains one of the most rapid, large-scale transitions away from fossil fuels in history. Nuclear plants provide reliable baseload power, independent of weather, and countries that retain them often have lower emissions than those that abandon them prematurely. In this respect, Moore is correct to argue that outright rejection of nuclear energy is shortsighted.

But his vision of nuclear as the singular solution is deeply flawed. He treats nuclear as if it were simply a matter of political will, but he ignores the central challenge: cost and speed. In the past two decades, the construction of new nuclear plants in Western democracies has been plagued by massive cost overruns and decades-long delays. Projects in Finland, France, and the United States have each run tens of billions of dollars over budget. By contrast, renewable technologies like solar and wind have plummeted in cost and can be deployed at scale within years, not decades. Nuclear may remain an important part of the mix, but it is not the silver bullet Moore portrays.

Moore also downplays nuclear waste, which remains unsolved after decades of promises. High-level waste must be secured for thousands of years to prevent environmental release. Even if the technical solutions exist, the political and social challenges of siting permanent repositories remain immense. By ignoring waste, Moore sidesteps one of the public’s most legitimate concerns about nuclear expansion. Similarly, he does not address proliferation risks. Nuclear technology and materials can be diverted to weapons programs, a fact that complicates international expansion in regions with unstable governance.

Finally, Moore sets up a false dichotomy: nuclear versus renewables. He portrays solar and wind as inherently unreliable, incapable of scaling, and doomed to fail without backup. This characterization is outdated. Advances in grid management, energy storage, and distributed generation are rapidly addressing intermittency challenges. While renewables alone may not yet fully power industrial societies, they are scaling faster and cheaper than nuclear, and in many regions they already outcompete it. The future is not nuclear or renewables, but a hybrid system of renewables, nuclear, and flexible storage. By dismissing renewables as impractical, Moore oversimplifies the energy transition into a binary battle that does not reflect real-world innovation.

Conclusion: The Comfort of Simplification

In Chapter 8 of Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom, Patrick Moore attempts to rehabilitate nuclear power by stripping it of its dangers. He minimizes the risks of radiation, reframes accidents as overblown, and elevates nuclear as the only rational path forward. But his argument relies on a series of simplifications and omissions:

• He conflates harmless background radiation with hazardous isotopes.
• He invokes hormesis to dismiss the scientific consensus on radiation risk.
• He cherry-picks data to downplay the social and ecological impacts of nuclear disasters.
• He ignores costs, waste, and security in his advocacy for nuclear expansion.

In doing so, Moore does not advance a balanced case for nuclear energy. Instead, he constructs a dimwitted polemic that serves industry talking points while eroding trust in the nuanced, evidence-based discussions we need.

The tragedy is that nuclear power does deserve a place in the climate conversation. But it deserves that place honestly, with full acknowledgment of its risks, limitations, and trade-offs,  not through a deceptive narrative that treats fear as irrational and science as propaganda. Moore’s chapter, far from dispelling myths, replaces one kind of alarmism with another: the alarmism of dismissal, where dangers are waved away in service of ideological certainty.

Read my rebuttal of the other Patrick Moore chapters here:

Patrick Moore Credibility
Chapter 1 Fact-check: Baobab Trees
Chapter 2 Fact-check: Coral Bleaching
Chapter 3 Fact-check: Carbon Dioxide
Chapter 4 Fact-check: Polar Bears
Chapter 5 Fact-check: Estimated Threats to Biodiversity
Chapter 6 Fact-check: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Chapter 7 Fact-check: Genetically Modified Foods
Chapter 8 Fact-check: Nuclear Radiation