correction - "development of... irrational, popular fear of radioactivity"

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

oh-oh ! ..the dreaded "from" bug struck once more - sorry !

> FYI :
> posted at
> http://www.cap.ca/pic/current/opinion-J00.htm
> 
> Physics in Canada - Vol. 56, No. 1, 2000 January/February
> 
> The Centennial of the Atomic Reformation
> Lawrence Cranberg, Consulting Physicist, 
> Austin Texas 
> Since Greek antiquity, and until the discovery of radioactivity by Henri
> Becquerel, of atomic transmutation by Ernest Rutherford and Frederick
> Soddy, and the valuable researches of Pierre and Marie Curie at the turn
> of the last century, it was unquestioned dogma that the elements of the
> universe were few in number and their constituent atoms were everlasting.
> Such a conception gave a comfortingly simple view of the universe that it
> was, at its atomic core, permanently stable. It was this basic idea that
> Becquerel-Rutherford-Soddy overturned in favor of a a universe that was in
> constant transformation down to its atomic constituents. It was an idea of
> the universe that was on the surface destabilizing, but it was also
> liberating because it enlarged our conception of what we could accomplish
> with the materials provided by Nature. And accomplish we did as the 20th
> century amply proved in the evolution of nuclear science and of its
> applications. 
>>>From this historical-philosophic perspective, the development of recent
years of irrational, popular fear of radioactivity is disappointing and
disturbing, with negative consequences for science-society relations.
According to a survey of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis[1], the
radioactivity associated with nuclear power is a number-one popular fear and
jeopardizes its future, despite the far lower risk assessment of experts.
With all due respect to the health hazards of radioactivity, to the frequent
neglect of those hazards in the early days before the hazards were
recognized, and to the sensational accidents of the recent past marked by
uncontrolled release of radioactivity into the environment, scientists,
educators, and leaders of public opinion share a responsibility to deal
rationally with radioactivity and its risks. 
> Fear of radioactivity is inevitably fed by the fact that radio-activity is
> associated with explosions of nuclear weapons, many of whose
> radioactivities persist in the environment long after their explosive
> effects have dissipated. Those delayed effects add a new threat to weapons
> of war, and add a new set of difficulties in coming to terms with
> radioactivity. The situation is further complicated for the scientific
> community by those in that community and out of it who blame that
> community for its role in creating nuclear weapons and nuclear power
> systems generally. 
> A notable and influential case is that of J. Robert Oppenheimer. His
> famous words of 1947[2], just fifty years ago, to an American scientific
> audience, "the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which
> they cannot lose" is a fatalistic condemnation that implies irretrievable
> loss. It is burdensome and unfair. It implies a policy-making role by
> physicists that in fact was the responsibility of political leaders
> responding to the terrifying threats of the forties of Nazism and
> Tojo-ism. It unjustly brands physicists as self-confessed, guilt-ridden:
> "Mad Scientists", and ignores their role as invaluable warriors on many
> fronts in the war against Nazism and Tojo-ism. Yet Oppenheimer was elected
> President of the American Physical Society in 1947 to serve a term as
> President of the Society in 1948, and neither Oppenheimer nor the Society
> has publicly analyzed or repudiated the confession of "sin". It is no
> wonder, therefore, that the public has a suspicion of the works of
> physicists, and in particular of nuclear energy, that is tantamount to
> nuclear Luddism, and contributes today to an emerging global energy
> crisis. 
> But can physicists allow a single one of their ranks, however
> distinguished, to speak for the world community of physicists without
> question or criticism, and to contribute to our disrepute? If some
> American physicists persist in their guilt response, then others in
> America and elsewhere must take a broader view. 
> Life on earth has had to overcome many obstacles and cata-strophes in the
> course of evolution, from asteroid extinctions to ice ages, deadly storms
> and plagues, and chronic man-made wars and genocidal catastrophes.
> Compared to such hazards, any risk of radioactivity is a measurable,
> control-lable one, an aspect of Nature that is in our own very bones, in
> the air we breathe and wherever there is matter in the cosmos. And it can
> be turned enormously to our benefit. Such an attitude of reason must
> replace fear as an essential part of what history should call the Atomic
> Reformation. In an age of impending energy scarcity we cannot allow
> irrational fears to preclude the atomic energy option created by the
> Atomic Reformation. The responsibility for dealing with those fears rests
> not only with the scientific heirs of the founders of the Atomic
> Reformation, but most particularly with those who shape and guide
> responsible public opinion through the press and other media. 
> The year 2005 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the First Geneva
> Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy sponsored by the United
> Nations, and the centenary of the Age of Reformation. Might that double
> anniversary be the beginning of a new era of deeper understanding of the
> risks, problems, and opportunities of the Atomic Reformation? 
> REFERENCES 
> 1.   Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, quoted in "Homegrown Hazards",
> Health, September 1995, p. 67 
> 2.   J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoted in Familiar Quotations by John
> Bartlett, Thirteenth edition, 1955, Little Brown and Co., Boston, p. 992,
> from a lecture, "Physics in the Contemporary World" at Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology on November 25, 1947. 
> 
> 
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