Re: loosing, Tooth Fairy Project

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@cpcug.org>]

You wrote:
..
    When I visualize a world in which low-dose radiation exposures are
generally accepted as being safe or possibly beneficial, I see the abolition
of ALARA, along with more than half of the jobs held by health physicists.
Essentially, you are asking people to commit occupational suicide.
    I don't know  the extent to which the current highly restrictive
criteria for radiation exposure might have been motivated by self-interest ,
but I would not rule out the possibility that it played a significant role.
jjcohen@prodigy.net

There is certainly a problem there.  But that is true for every
technological change.  (The post-office is worried about competition from
e-mail.  Light-bulbs drove out gas lights.)  But people who were once fully
occupied making bombs are now presenting papers on the complicated problems
of protecting the environment from the perils of low-level radiation.

These people were smart and creative enough to make a career out of the new
field of atomic bomb design.  And then they were able to use the talents
developed in that enterprise to get into risk analysis.  I am completely
confident that such people are also smart enough to help us make the
literally thousands of new nuclear power plants, and all the nuclear
technologies not yet even envisioned.  And health physicists will still be
needed in an ALARA-free world, to show us how to run facilities more
effectively, more profitably and still ensure worker safety.  No other
public hazard protection is based on ALARA; neither should radiation be.

Ted






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