Best use of resources

["Vincent A King" <slavak@gj.net>]

Radsafers,



Stewart Farber hit the nail on the head regarding the recent ‘vulnerability of nuclear power plant’ discussions.  The resources we use on additional ‘protection’ for nuclear power plants are resources not available to protect other areas. 



And anyone who puts their political ideologies (anti-nuclear or otherwise) ahead of implementing effective and realistic improvements to national security in a time of crisis should be ashamed of themselves. Any other time, I wouldn't care too much about anti-nukes and their poster-waving parties, but in these times, diverting discussion from facts to propaganda in order to advance a pet philosophy truly increases the risk of losing more innocent lives.  I take a dim view of such opportunists who try to take advantage of a crisis situation.



It's true that nuclear power plants are potential targets...but for exactly the same reason as ANY power generating plant is.  The risk is loss of power to supply the infrastructure of the country.  In this regard, they must of course be protected.



Outside of this, however, nuclear power plants are quite UNATTRACTIVE as targets because of their security and structural design.  Anyone with the least bit of factual knowledge of their design knows that the offsite consequences from even a major attack would be virtually nil. 



Thinking we need to ‘improve’ the security of nuclear power plants, and diverting resources from other areas where significant improvements are really needed, is as silly as making a vault door thicker when the walls are made of plywood.  (And we’d better be consistent in how many feet thick we say that door is, or critics like Norm will point out that the door is useless altogether.)



(That reminds me: Franz is right, too.  I also got suckered into responding to Norm with a few reasoned replies a couple of years ago.  He never answered some rather simple questions (along the lines of “How does radiation slip by sensitive environmental monitors undetected and still damage the health of those poor people living near nuclear facilities?”).  However, my e-mails and address WERE apparently routed to some of his friends with the ‘Coalition for Peace and Justice’ (ironic name), and I received a rash of e-mails that were more hate-filled and threatening than I would have imagined possible.  They were also so incoherent and deranged that I would have turned them over to a law-enforcement agency if they had continued.  So much for ‘peace, norm’...)



Back to the topic: anything we Radsafers can do to provide simply worded, balanced viewpoints through any available media is valuable. I think there are at least a few members of the media who are beginning to suspect that not all national security secrets are cover-ups, not all ‘experts’ are government/corporate mouthpieces, and not all ‘watchdog’ organizations are the unbiased fountains of truth and consumer advocacy they claim to be.



Vincent King, CHP

Idaho Falls





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