Re: Energy site & education

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

I sent the following message to the first website:

I am absolutely appalled at your descriptions of nuclear power,
radioactivity, and
radioactive waste, and the thought that you are promoting this distorted
stuff as
"curriculum."  Curriculum for what?  An anti-nuke propaganda school?  To
take just
one example from your page:

The primary use for water in a thermal power generating plant (nuclear AND
coal
AND natural gas AND oil AND geothermal, etc) is to transfer hear from the
heat
source to the mturbine (the coil that need to rotate in magentic field) in
order to
generate electricity.  In transferring the heat, of course the source is
cooled.  that';s
why you have a heat transfer system -- because you can't generate
electricity without
transferring heat from the source.  Further cooling of the spent steam is of
course
needed for any thermal generator.  Nuclear plants do run hotter at the
source than
fossil fuel combustion, but fossl plkants are plenty hot also.

Your description of radioactive waste is distorted in the extreme, and
actually in
error.  Human intrusion is no longer a scenario under consideration.

It is disgraceful to masquerade your web site as "educational."
-----Original Message-----
From: Bjorn Cedervall <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sunday, December 24, 2000 1:49 AM
Subject: Energy site & education


>FYI: Ran across the following site by a chance:
>http://www.swifty.com/apase/charlotte/nuclear.html#RISKS
>It is at "Association for the Promotion and Advancement of Science
>Education, APASE". Nuclear risks are summarized as:
>
>"To understand the risks of nuclear energy, we need to know that uranium is
>radioactive, which means that it constantly gives off energy in the form of
>radiation. When plants, animals, or people are exposed to too much
>radiation, they can be burned, become sick, or even die. When uranium is
>mined, the leftover bits of uranium at the mine are harmful to plants and
>animals in the area, and pollute the soil and water."
>
>I find this level somewhat confusing, superficial, misleading and
>disturbing although worse stuff can be found in various media (including
>http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/moreinfo.html etc) - but here the
>agenda is "Advancement of Science Education". I doubt that a professional
>with a deeper nuclear/radiation background has been involved. There are
some
>other passages where text adjustments wouldn't hurt. As I have written
>before the disturbing part is that kids doing school projects etc find
these
>sites and they have no chance to filter out the relevant perspectives.
>Therefore we need to help clean up this type of stuff in a polite way -
with
>the right facts - the kids could probably often even teach their teachers
>something. I'll probably drop them a line.
>
>The origin is Vancouver:  info@apase.bc.ca  web@apase.bc.ca (webmaster).
The
>address etc is:
>APASE, 201-2929 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC V5N 4C8 CANADA
>phone (604) 687-8712, fax (604) 687-8715
>http://www.swifty.com/apase/charlotte/masthead.html
>
>OK, and Merry X-mas and all that - thanks to everyone contributing here,
>
>Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com
>http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/
>
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