[ RadSafe ] Your letter of Jan. 6

[Bernard Cohen]

    I am writing in response to your letter of Jan. 6 bemoaning the fact 
that theYucca Mountain repository seems to be going nowhere, summarized 
in your sentences "Maybe the repository will be finished bo 2030. Maybe 
not."
    I believe it is extremely important to educate the public to 
understand that buried radioactive waste is not an important potential 
threat to human health. I don't think the public can ever understand or 
become comfortable with the Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) approach 
used by DOE; It is vulnerable to criticism on many points and the 
critics are only too happy to take advantage of this, and the public 
cannot judge between "experts". I have long advocated doing a PRA for an 
average U.S. location (which I have shown is very easy to do and to be 
understood by the public, and which comes out quite acceptable), and  
relying on the public to believe that the experts can choose a site at 
least as good as an average site. My most recent presentation of this 
viewpoint is published in "Probabilistc risk analysis for a high level 
waste repository", Risk Analysis 23:909-915;2003
     An improved approach to achieving public understanding was recently 
published in my paper  "Understanding the toxicity of buried radioactive 
waste and its impact", Health Phys 89;355-358;2005. It shows in easily 
understandable fashion that the buried waste from a continuous nuclear 
power program operating over thousands of years will cause about 1.0 
deaths per year in U.S. based on assuming LNT and no improvement in 
cancer cure rates.
    If someone would figure out how to present these ideas to the mass 
public audience, I think it would do a lot of good. Any advice on how I 
might help in this would be greatly appreciated.