RE: [ RadSafe ] Nuclear accident exercise reveals 'fatal flaws'

[Eric D]

I read the article and could not really assess how bad the exercise was or
was not but I did find a statement that really says it all about the
standard used to assess risk of the incident and how they came up with the
adjective - deadly.

<"Many thousands of people would be put at risk," said Dr Frank Barnaby, a
nuclear physicist who used to work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at
Aldermaston in Berkshire. "If they get a speck of plutonium in their lungs,
the probability is fatal lung cancer.">

The statement could be parsed to be accurate but the message to the
non-health physicist is clear.  These kinds of statements actually increase
the risk and the harm caused by a real incident.  Many on this list have had
"specks" of plutonium.

Eric Daxon