RE: Dateline NBC TMI story - A different evaluation

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

> We're not a perfect industry. We

are not infallible. Don't promote us as if we were.



Valid point, Sandy.  But the most important point about TMI, from the public

hazard standpoint, is that they melted down a big chunk of the core and

nobody got even slightly hurt.  In addition, I believe that it is not

possible to create a realistic scenario that would hurt anyone.  I know the

regulators can't buy that without eliminating much of the reasons for much

of what they do.  Moreover, even the most ridiculous scenario, involving

unfavorable weather patterns, etc. doesn't lead to more than a few tens of

deaths. There is no longer any scenario on the books that can lead to

hundreds of deaths. That's with premises analogous to assuming that two

fully-loaded 747s collide over the superbowl at half time.



Neither the airlines nor the superbowl planners base their operations on

such assumptions, and neither should we.  Occasionally a truckload or a

trainload of toxic chemicals goes awry, and they have to evacuate 200,000+

people (Mississauga, 1979).  And sometimes someone is killed in these

accidents.  Nuclear does not present any greater hazards than these old

familiar problems we have long tolerated.



We've got to get away from the "unprecedented hazard potential" mind-set.

It is scientifically indefensible.  And we're laying it on ourselves.



Ted Rockwell









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