Re: Request for suggestion

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000, William V Lipton wrote:

> I think that you have become too immersed in your own arguments.  Public
> concerns about nuclear power are not over a theoretical, incremental increase
> in the cancer rate.  The concern is that many members of the public do not
> trust the utilities or the government to operate the technology safely; eg.,
> TMI, Chernobyl, and the many DOE fiascos.  Unfortunately, there are enough
> incidents out there to lend credibility to the anti-nuke arguments.

	--For my argument, no trust is required. Just consider the record
for the past 30 years. Even if they say we have been lucky, we would have
to have several melt-downs every year to cause as many deaths as coal
burning air pollution. Let the anti-nukes say what they think may happen
with nuclear plants -- still the number of deaths would be many times less
than the number from coal burning.


> 
> Trust will NOT be restored by comparative body counts (eg., "Chernobyl killed
> 1000 people , but coal killed 1002; hence nuclear is safer."

	--We are not talking about a slight difference. The difference is
a factor of 1000 or more, >10,000 vs <10 deaths per year on average. This
difference is not subsantially changed by different opinions about trust,
unless they claim that there will be several meltdowns per year.


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