[ RadSafe ] Wind Farms Satire has a role to play!

[stewart farber]

Hello all,

Regarding Dr. K.S.Parthasarathy's post below about satire,  some may be interested in the following.

For those interested in satire applied to risk perception of nuclear power, prior to the 1988 Presidential election I authored a satire on the health hazards of "strepdukakis antinucleosis". This satire was published very widely in the popular press including the Boston Herald, the Mancester [NH] Union Guardian, and others.  The Health Physics Society Newsletter also published this satire along with Nuclear News publishing it as a "Backscatter" column.  I facetiously organized at that time the "Scientists Committee Opposing Radiation Nescience" [SCORN] which I described in a Nuclear News column. "Nescience" is a wonderful word which basically means the negation of science.

My "strepdukakis" satire and announcement in Nuclear News about organizing "SCORN" led to the Energy Advisor to Governor Dukakis phoning me prior to the general election to ask if I was working for the Bush campaign [which I was not!]. I told Dukakis' Energy Advisor [Dr. Jan Beyea who at the time was a senior scientist with the National Audubon Society] that I wrote the satire because Governor Dukakis was a hypocrite on his energy and environmental policies given that he had held up the licensing of Seabrook Nuclear Station for several years by refusing to cooperate in letting the Massachusetts Public Health Department meet its obligations regarding the Emergency Plan for Seabrook Nuclear Station. The 10 mile EPZ overlapped into Massachusetts so in effect Gov. Dukakis exercised a pocket veto on the licensing of Seabrook.

At the same time, major coal fired stations in his state were continuing to pollute, mercury pollution from air pollution largely attributed to coal combustion had been documented in Quabbin Reservoir, the main water supply to Boston, and the State of MA was doing very little on real environmental issues.  

At one point around this time, Gov. Dukakis recommended that Seabrook Nuclear Plant be converted to a gas fired power plant before it went operational,  and that LNG tanker trucks from LNG depots in Everett, MA [a mile or two north of Boston], and another large LNG depot in Quincy, MA [just a few miles south of Boston] make constant highway trips right through downtown Boston on Interstate 93 to bring the gas needed for Seabrook had it been converted to a gas fired plant.  Bringing in enough LNG to these two Boston LNG depots would have greatly increased LNG tanker traffic coming into Boston harbor waters from Algeria, despite the safety, economic, and strategic impacts this would have.  As humor columnist Dave Barry often writes in his humor columns: "You can't make this stuff up!".

Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Consulting Scientist
Farber Technical Services
1285 Wood Ave.
Bridgeport, CT 06604
[203] 441-8433 [office]
[203] 522-2817 [cell]
email: radproject at sbcglobal.net
          radproject at aol.com
=================
----- Original Message ----- 
  From: parthasarathy k s 
  To: stewart farber ; Maury Siskel 
  Cc: efforrer at aol.com ; radsafe at radlab.nl 
  Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 4:41 AM
  Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Wind Farms Satire has a role to play!


  Daer Mr Stewart Farber,

  Estimating the probability and consequences of  weird accidents conjured up effortlessly is a skill which can be developed easily. Mr John Dunster (NRPB) once calculated the maximum permisible volume of coffee one can drink safely every day as half a cup. He used conservative assumptions. If I recall correctly he published it in the Health Physics; he was then News Editor of Health Phys. Satire has a place in every field

  regards
  K.S.Parthasarathy


  ----- Original Message ----
  From: stewart farber <radproject at sbcglobal.net>
  To: Maury Siskel <maurysis at peoplepc.com>
  Cc: efforrer at aol.com; radsafe at radlab.nl
  Sent: Thursday, 19 April, 2007 12:45:31 AM
  Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Wind Farms


  Hello all,

  For those who requested a copy of my earlier  LOBA [Loss of Blade Accident]
  satire, and asked that it be posted to radsafe, it is copied below. ...................
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