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Editorial letter in Sydney (AU) Morning Herald
The following editorial letter appeared in the March 9, 2000 Sydney Morning Herald. The URL for the article is http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/09/text/features4.html
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Nuclear risks: myths and reality
Date: 09/03/2000
Most Australians can speculate on or dream about a "doomsday" scenario. Surrealistic visions of death and destruction were the Harbour Bridge to collapse during peak hour or the devastating impact of a large comet striking and destroying Canberra might create waves of fear and apprehension.
Behind such unlikely dramatic events are physical laws and mathematical probabilities. Those activists who wish to induce fear into an Australian community can ignore or manipulate these physical laws and mathematical probabilities and use pseudo-science to create an environment of terror and a distrust of all legitimate authority ("Why Sydney should be worried about Lucas Heights", Herald, March 2.)
It is most unlikely that such cerebral manipulation would cause the people of Sydney to cease crossing their harbour or the people of Canberra to leave their desirable habitat. But for anti-nuclear activists it is all a piece of cake.
If you do not want a research reactor at Lucas Heights you write about meltdowns, radiation leakage, nuclear waste, unacceptable risk and cover-up. You make use of the emotive impact behind these words, throw in as much innuendo and as many "what ifs" as possible, abandon the laws of physics, radiation biology and mathematical probability and the resulting climate of fear enables you to achieve your socio-political objectives.
Residents of Sutherland Shire are frequently assailed with pseudo-science concerning the supposed "danger" inherent in operating Sydney's High Flux Australian Reactor (HIFAR), the only research reactor in the country, and the even "greater danger" of replacing it with a new facility.
Last year, two of Australia's highest profile anti-nuclear activists wrote letters to an Australian newspaper in an endeavour to trigger "radiation phobia" over a HIFAR fuel handling incident which released some radiation. Relying on public ignorance of radiation physics, they tried to fabricate a scenario implying grave danger to workers and the public as the consequence of the incident.
Letters from the chief executive of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and a union representative of the workers involved in the incident told the true story. In fact, the radiation did not take place in the HIFAR building. The maximum doses received were well within the prescribed constraints for nuclear workers and were comparable to those which travellers might receive at 10,000 metres on a flight from Sydney to Melbourne.
The assessment of nuclear risk is a favoured strategy of Australia's radical activists, self-promoting eco-politicians with hidden agendas. It does not matter whether the infrastructure project is a uranium mine, a new research reactor, a nuclear waste repository or a potential nuclear plant for the production of greenhouse-friendly electrical energy. The radical activist will construct a threatening risk scenario to suit an eco-political objective. In this, informed realism, nuclear physics or the laws of probability play no part.
For more than three decades the Australian community has been assailed with false perceptions of danger or high risk emotively linked with such words as radiation, research reactor and uranium. In the absence of sound education and informed realism, some will react to this with fear and anger. In some personalities the cerebral manipulation may even lead to a phobia.
A phobia can be loosely defined as the reaction of the human psyche to an exaggerated or magnified sense of risk. Most Australians would be terrified of a chance encounter with a tiger, crocodile or snake in their suburban streets or gardens. If the same sense of fear persists when we visit the zoo and see the animals or reptiles in their enclosures, we may possess a phobic predisposition which could lead to a neurosis.
For nearly two decades, the London in which I lived and taught boasted five research reactors within 20 kilometres of Australia House. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology which I frequently visited housed its HIFAR-type reactor in the middle of its campus, a campus with 20,000 students in the heart of beautiful Cambridge, a suburb of Boston. Florida State University at Gainesville had a large nuclear engineering faculty with marvellous experimental facilities including a split-core research reactor. The main risk factor on campus was the occasional terrestrial excursion of alligators from their pond habitats nearby.
Of the five London research reactors, three were at educational institutions and two were operated by large industrial groups. My own was housed in a laboratory in the heart of the densely populated East End within two kilometres of one of the great teaching hospitals of the world. It was a highly prized research facility of great interest to scientists, engineers and medical researchers. Students were proud to show it to their parents and friends. They all seemed to survive the experience, and some of them are now operating bigger and better research reactors in Japan, Korea and Indonesia.
I have continued my close association with both power reactors and research reactors. Sponsored university research kept me on top of the HIFAR reactor for over 20 years. All this time I was keenly aware of the significant risks associated with the daily return drive to Lucas Heights from Kensington, and at certain times of the year the additional risk of a magpie attack as I walked through the beautiful grounds of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation from the main gate to the research facility.
My health is good and I do not glow in the dark. I look forward to the time when the darkness of nuclear ignorance in Australia is dispelled by good policy and sound education.
Australians should be pleased that at long last the HIFAR research reactor will be replaced by a new facility. This will mean that there will be a continuation of the production of valuable medical and industrial radio-isotopes.
University researchers will have access to neutron beam techniques for crystallography and radio-chemistry studies. And the operation of the reactor and measurements of its nuclear and physical parameters will help prepare scientists and engineers for the ever increasing role of peaceful nuclear energy in the new millennium.
Leslie Kemeny is the Australian member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy.
Jim Hardeman, Manager
Environmental Radiation Program
Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
4244 International Parkway, Suite 114
Atlanta, GA 30354
(404) 362-2675 fax: (404) 362-2653
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us
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