[ RadSafe ] Salsman warning

[Ahmad Al-Ani]

James Salsman wrote:
I honestly do not know why people who I am sure are in favor of 
nuclear power don t explain that uranium is one of the reasons 
that coal is so dirty. Is it possible instead, or in addition, 
that they don t want people to know about high cancer rates 
in uranium miners?

In a recent IAEA workshop for Stakeholder s Engagment plan for countries which are introducing NPPs for the first time, and the public relations excercise, I asked the top PR manager of one of the top US NPP management companies a similar question, what is your advice for us to handle nuclear opposition groups as we expect them to excert some pressure to stop our project?

Her answer was that we want to avoid an endless futile discussions with nuclear opposition parties, and hence I advise you to just ignore them . 

I think this old ignore them approach is the easy, lower political risk method, but results are not guaranteed.

Ahmad Al-Ani

On Tue Apr 6th, 2010 11:37 PM AST James Salsman wrote:

>On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Doug Aitken
><jdaitken at sugar-land.oilfield.slb.com> wrote:
>>
>>... you now make the wonderfully illogical statement: " some in the HPS
>> have become so accustomed to defending the use of pyrophoric depleted
>> uranium munitions that they aren't willing or able to articulate the extent
>> to which coal ash presents a more serious uranium contamination problem
>> than nuclear reactor waste?"....
>
>I was asking the question "Is it possible that" some in the HPS have
>become so accustomed....  I honestly do not know why people who I am
>sure are in favor of nuclear power don't explain that uranium is one
>of the reasons that coal is so dirty.  Is it possible instead, or in
>addition, that they don't want people to know about high cancer rates
>in uranium miners?
>
>> where is the evidence of this?
>
>Web searching finds dozens of examples of HPS members and official
>documents claiming that uranium nephrotoxicity (toxicity to kidneys)
>is the most important aspect of uranium toxicity.  The peer reviewed
>research, on the other hand, says that the kidneys build up a
>tolerance to uranium. (Pellmar, T.C., et al (1999) "Distribution of
>uranium in rats implanted with depleted uranium pellets," Toxicol Sci,
>vol. 49, pp. 29-39.)
>
>> And how have you connected these topics? In fact, it has been stated on this
>> forum that the fly-ash of coal-fired power stations contains a reasonably high
>> content of naturally-occurring radionuclides (to the point that it has been
>> suggested that this fly-ash represents an interesting source of such nuclides:
>> http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html ).
>
>They are connected that way, yes, but I've been complaining about
>uranium contamination from coal power plants for many years; including
>here on RadSafe.  The large coal ash slurry breaches a little over a
>year ago focused more attention on the toxicology of coal ash.
>
>As for the relative economics of wind on a larger grid,
>hydroelectricity, and pumped storage hydro, there is plenty of
>documentation readily available, but none of it is really on topic
>here.  (One interesting fact:  The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy
>Information Administration assumes that the renewable tax credit will
>never be renewed after 2012.  Seriously! Check out
>http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/speeches/newell121409.pdf on page 21.)
>
>As for the historical economics of nuclear power, this document seems
>accurate in that even when it is vociferously attacked, the attacks
>usually amount to very small criticisms in terms of the accuracy
>tolerance of the figures in its conclusions:
>http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
>
>Sincerely,
>James Salsman
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