Re: Request for suggestion

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

Bernard L Cohen wrote:
> 
> 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.

OTOH, you need more than a few meltdowns if TMI killed <1 (and would actually
be +<1 based on hormetic dose-response); and though Chernobyl is NOT a
"meltdown," by exploding and dispersing the core directly to the environment,
even it killed 1-3 from thyroid cancer (due to treatment failure), with about
1800 (treatable) thyroid cancers - and then only because of no evacuation nor
interdiction of ingestion pathways? (comparing the 31 workers to coal miners).

Regards, Jim
============

> > 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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