The sad news of Daniel Hirsch's passing was recieved today.
Dan Hirsch was founder and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, and we have all been learning from Dan Hirsch for many decades.
Prompted by his lectures, it was Dan Hirsch's students at UCLA who brought to light that the Santa Susanna nuclear meltdowns were much worse - and caused many more health effects to the local community - than had been previously made public.
Earlier this month he gave a brilliant presentation to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about the dangers to us all from Trump's Executive Order 14300 Section 5(b) (images from his presentation are shown below).
Dan's presentation (along with his oral comments) contains an abundance of evidence that the NRC should abandon any attempt to relax radiation protection standards. Instead, Dan explained that the NRC should actually continue to tighten those same standards, as has happened several times in the past as new information arrived. As Dan Hirsch's last presention made clear (hopefully to the NRC as well as to the public!), new information continues to arrive, indicating that radiation standards are STILL way too lax and should be tightened, not loosened.
One never needed a degree in anythng to follow Dan's train of thought, and in this case he showed the NRC that Trump's new regulations could result in radiation exposures to the public 100 to 1000 times higher than permitted today, resulting in as many as four out of every five citizens getting cancer! An outrageous risk, but it's being presented by the NRC as a change that might be so slight that the Hormesis mystics think it might be beneficial to the public to relax these regulations (and in some cases, abandon NRC regulation entirely for some nuclear materials in some situations).
Nuclear issues are inevitably complex, and people always have motivations for their actions. Recognizing this, in his last presentation Dan Hirsch stated that: "Supporters of nuclear expansion should worry that massively weakening radiation protection standards will damage prospects for public support since it demonstrates that nuclear plants can't operate unless allowed to expose the public to unacceptible radiation levels."
Always the consumate polite professional, Dan's breadth of expertise will be dearly missed. His legacy will surely last for decades, if not for centuries (but nothing any of us do will last as long as the nuclear waste we produce).
Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
Below are the slides from Dan Hirsch's last presentation, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, July 16, 2025. (I also attended the hearing but the NRC's technology failed for many people who wished to speak, including myself. My previous newsletter contains my own written comments to the same proposed regulation change that Dan Hirsch's comments address.)
Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company
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