[ RadSafe ] FW: New villainy for Fukushima?

Sat Feb 18 13:36:33 CST 2012

Sadly, despite Jerry Cohen's post below, there was an impact in Australia,
Austria, Alaska, ..............and every country in the world, A-Z. thru
Zambia. There were negative attitudinal & psychological negative impacts in
the public's perception and acceptance of nuclear technologies. There is a
massive amount of public outreach/relations needed to gain public
acceptance. Unfortunately too many utilities and other interests promoting
nuclear energy consider the public too stupid in my experience to even try
to approach and tell of nuclear power's benefits and trivial risks per unit
energy produced. The nuclear industry has not learned to reach and impact
the public -- whose attitudes drive the actions of legislators and
regulators.

But without nuclear interests telling their story, any nuclear project in
the US and most Western nations will be adversely affected as to schedule an
budget, or simply doomed to fail. 

Back in 1988 during the 1988 US Presidential election campaign,  I was the
invited speaker to a dinner meeting of the NE Chapter of the HPS which was
held at Seabrook Station. My talk was titled: "Nuclear Power and Public
Information -Suicide on the Installment Plan." I reviewed a number of cases
that I had seen to be successful in helping to make people think more
openly, to reach the public in a positive way,  and mistakes I had seen of
poorly conceived actions or simply inactions by nuclear interests. I
reviewed cases of active industry hostility toward public outreach including
a case where I was criticized for getting an op-ed column in the Boston
Globe. My B. Globe op-ed criticized nonsensical actions by the State of Mass
to have State troopers seal off a square mile of South Boston because a
medical technician had lost a 2 micro-Curie Co-57 source in his tool box
when his car was stolen. The Globe reported in banner headlines that a
COBALT source had been lost and anyone handling it would suffer "radiation
sickness and radiation burns".   Working through the Globe ombudsman the
Boston Globe gave me an op-ed in which I discussed how a 2 micro-Ci Co-57
source would increase background radiation levels at 1 foot distance by a
trivial amount, a fraction of normal background, and less than the elevated
exposure from use of granite at locations I had surveyed all around Boston
-the steps of the MA statehouse, the Christian Science Church, Bunker Hill
Monument, South Station, and others. The Globe front-page had showed MA
State Police running around with Civil Defense old yellow Geiger counters
thinking they would be able to find a check source at arm's length from the
ground when they couldn't find it if they were surveying at one foot. I
ended up being chastised by my then employer, a nuclear utility, for getting
an op-ed and publishing a few facts about normal background and slight
variations in it that dwarfed this radiation emergency with the check source
because the MA Dept. of Public Health was embarrassed they had done such a
lousy job of responding to this trivial incident.

My ANS talk title "Nuclear Power and Public Information -Suicide on the
Installment Plan"  was not meant to be flip. As of that date, the nuclear
industry had done an atrocious job of interacting and reaching out to the
public, and continued to generally shoot itself in the foot in its poorly
conceived initiatives to gain public acceptance. The nuclear utility
industry had had a foolish attitude that if they kept their head down, kept
a low profile and essentially hid in the trenches in dealing with the public
about radiation issues, the problem would pass. 

At one HPS annual meeting in DC at the Plenary Session many years ago,  a
senior executive with the Nuclear Energy Institute [formerly the Atomic
Industrial Forum [AIF] heavily funded by utilities to promote nuclear
electric generation by its presence in Washington, DC] gave a keynote
speech. He said that radiation scientists should simply "learn to embrace
zero" as he put it. He stated that scientists should not say, for example,
that nuclear plants release trivial amounts of radiation and  present a
trivial theoretical risk,  but say that there are "zero releases" and zero
risk. I spoke with this NEI exec after his talk and told him that if nuclear
technologists tried to tell the public that there were zero releases during
routine operations, the public would learn that there were not zero
releases, and regard the industry as being either stupid or duplicitous. He
dismissed this and refused to think about the futility of his NEI
recommended approach.

Prior to my talk at the ANS NE Chapter meeting, I had written a satire about
the health hazards of "Strepdukakis Anti-nucleosis". This satire was
published in newspapers throughout New England including the Boston Herald,
the HPS Newsletter, as a "Backscatter" contribution to the ANS Nuclear News
monthly, and many other places,  and irritated the Dukakis campaign beyond
belief. But it also helped make some important points about politicians
promoting false fears and obstructionism in a manner that made people think,
and cut through their defenses. Shortly after this, more for the benefit of
beleaguered nuclear staff-people than public relations, I issued a call for
the organization of the "Scientists' Committee for Opposing Radiation
Nescience" [SCORN]. SCORN was an acronym I chose because it so fit a quote
by the French philosopher, Albert Camus, in which he wrote: "There is no
fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn." This  comment in Camus' book, The
Myth of Sisyphus so perfectly fit the situation we  face.  Regarding the
endless task faced  by Sisyphus who has been condemned by the gods to push a
big rock up a hill for all time, only to have it roll down, to push up again
Camus wrote: "One has  to believe that Sisyphus was happy."

Well, enough ramblings for a Saturday morning. I'll have to post some links
to my "Strepdukis-antinucleosis" satire, a few columns, and
letters-to-the-editor about nuclear issues along with my SCORN initiative.
The US has to figure out a way to reach the public and change public opinion
or it can and will not participate in any significant way in a "nuclear
renaissance".

Stewart Farber
farber at farber.info

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Jerry Cohen
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2012 12:15 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] New villainy for Fukushima?

Australia?. Austria ?. Alaska ? What difference does it make. The impact of 
Fukushima was 
 likely equivalent to all of them--------~ZERO.

________________________________
From: John R Johnson <idiasjrj at gmail.com>
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List 
<radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Cc: radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
Sent: Sat, February 18, 2012 8:52:02 AM
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] New villainy for Fukushima?

Franz

Do you mean Australia, rather than Austria?

John

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:28 AM, <franz.schoenhofer at chello.at> wrote:

> Steven and RADSAFERS,
>
> In Austria many cats and dogs were found on roads, obviously killed by
> cars. The only reasons of that can be that either the car driver was
> influenced by the Fukushima accident or the cats and dogs. Furthermore
> doves and other small birds have been found dead. The usual "official"
> explanation that they have starved to death because temperatures reaching
> far below 10 degrees celsigrades have been refused by environmental
> activists.
>
> Want some more nonsense? Read newspapers!
>
> Best reagards,
>
> Franz
>
> ---- Steven Dapra <sjd at swcp.com> schrieb:
> > Feb. 17
> >
> >       A number of seals were found ill or dead in Alaska.  Radiation
from
> > Fukushima has been suggested as the cause of death, but tests of the
> > seals found normal levels of radiation.  (This happened last summer
> > and fall.  Takes a while for news to percolate down to the lower 48.)
> >
> >
>http://news.yahoo.com/radiation-ruled-now-cause-alaska-seal-deaths-02235414
8.html
>l
> >
> > Steven Dapra
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> --
> Franz Schoenhofer, PhD, MinRat
> Habicherg. 31/7
> A-1160 Vienna
> Austria
> mobile: ++43 699 1706 1227
>
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