Re: Request for suggestion

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

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Jim Muckerheide wrote:

> Bernard L Cohen wrote:

> >         --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).

	--I am using the entire spectrum of meltdown accidents, with their
probabilities, as given by the Probabilistic Risk Analyses like WASH-1400

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