[ RadSafe ] Salsman warning

Thu Apr 8 13:24:14 CDT 2010

Servus Franz:

There is a difference - in the 1978 referendum in Austria, Bundeskanzler
Bruno Kreisky of the SPÖ put his entire political weight against nuclear
power and specifically Zwenttendorf. He verbally staked his entire political
career on the outcome. So it wasn't just a few nuts running around against
nuclear, it was a primary plank of Kriesky's political platform.  So it
wasn't just a debate of the scientific concepts, pros and cons, it became
primarily a defining political debate and a personal appeal of support for
the SPÖ.  At that, the outcome was almost a 50-50 tie. Kreisky used "sound
bites" for his arguments; true scientific debate is difficult to put into
"sound bites".

Regarding Salsman: The decorum of courtesy is always an important constraint
in a group such as RadSafe: without it, people tend not to post their points
of view and so it has a detrimental effect on the free exchange of ideas.
Salsman's history has run counter to this: Not only is he proposing an
actively anti-nuclear point of view, but for those people he finds himself
in conflict with, he attempts to destroy by writing to the CEOs of their
companies.

Salsman says that he is "pro peer review".  However, when this is put to the
test, he has never given-up on any point of view (save the minor U-nitrate
issue several years ago) regardless of the weight of evidence against him
and then actively engages in ad hominem attacks to defeat his opposition.
But his language doesn't just end there, he actively attempts to destroy the
individual's livelihood.

In Salsman's argument, "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?"

His argument is based on a maximum 1.9 millirem dose to those living
literally in the shadow of the stack of a coal-fired power plant.  His
reference to this states, "McBride and his co-authors estimated that
individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of
1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly."

How he links these two arguments is baffling. He rejects the evidence of
uranium mill workers, exposed to high levels of serum uranium do not develop
elevated cancer, liver or kidney disease, and are healthier in these types
of diseases as well as heart disease than the average population. He also
does not see that it was the early uranium workers when exposed to high
levels of radon and progeny who developed lung cancer, not "uranyl" ion, and
the later uranium mine workers did not have such high levels of lung cancer
when the exposure to radon and progeny was significantly reduced.  This is
reflected in the settlements to miners based on the radon exposure.

The arguments against coal are based on the 1) Extensive destruction of the
natural environment, 2) Release of CO2, SOX & NOX, and 3) The high human
cost of the coal fuel cycle in terms of lives. China loses about 5000 miners
each year in mining accidents not to mention transport accidents. Compare
this to the nuclear fuel cycle!

Mit herzlichen Glückauf!

Dan ii

--
Dan W McCarn, Geologist
2867 A Fuego Sagrado
Santa Fe, NM 87505
+1-505-310-3922 (Mobile – New Mexico)
HotGreenChile at gmail.com (Private email)

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Franz Schönhofer
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 09:57
To: 'Ahmad Al-Ani'; jsalsman at gmail.com; jdaitken at sugar-land.oilfield.slb.com
Cc: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Salsman warning

Ahmad, 

This is in my opinion one of the most foolish approaches. 

First of all you have to distinguish between different countries and their
approach to nuclear power. .......

Etc. etc. I am not going to waste my time on this topic.

Topics have to be discussed in detail, on a country specific basis. There
are so many factors for such a decision, public opinion being just one of
them! To ignore the anti nuclears is just another way of showing them that
you do not take them serious, enhancing their efforts. In my home country
Austria we did not take them serious before the (silly!) referendum in 1978,
we ridiculed them with correct arguments etc. and then the referendum was
against the opening of the NPP in Zwentendorf. 

Do you want to repeat this disaster somewhere else??? Or do you want to have
a dictatory governement which would simply declare what is good for their
citizens?

Best regards,

Franz 

Franz Schoenhofer, PhD
MinRat i.R.
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Wien/Vienna
AUSTRIA

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] Im Auftrag von Ahmad Al-Ani
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 07. April 2010 08:59
An: jsalsman at gmail.com; jdaitken at sugar-land.oilfield.slb.com
Cc: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Betreff: Re: [ RadSafe ] Salsman warning

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.pd
f
>
>Sincerely,
>James Salsman
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