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Re: nuclear safety groups?- UCS
Steve:
Your remarks are well stated.
Back about 1974 I had the opportunity to address a few hundred attendees of the opening plenary session of the Massachusetts Safety Council about the beneficial environmental aspects of nuclear energy [I was a staff scientist for a nuclear services company at the time] and found myself following the leadoff speaker, Dr. James McKenzie a founder of the UCS.
McKenzie's talk was a litany of anti-nuclear charges, but he made one glaring error where he mistakenly referred to the LOFT [Loss of Fluid Test] test facility as a 1/60 [one sixtieth] scale reactor whose test results meant NOTHING.
After my prepared remarks, I couldn't help but point out that McKenzie's talk contained many errors [this wasn't meant to be a point counter point debate] but that his misrepresentation of the LOFT facility repeated a clever distortion, but with an additional major distortions, than that which had appeared on an anti-nuclear TV program on NOVA of a few weeks prior. In this NOVA special against nuclear power the 1/4 scale LOFT facility was accurately [but slyly] referred to as a 1/60 VOLUME reactor.
I pointed out in my brief aside comments to my talk, that Dr. McKenzie went one step further in his distortion to mislead the audience about LOFT. In his anti-nuclear zeal, he inaccurately referred to the LOFT as 1/60 SCALE, a distortion in terms of its 1/4 SCALE [built at a cost in t he early 1970s of over $200 million] of 15 fold smaller, or a distortion in terms of actual VOLUME of over 3000!! This simple ad lib statement resulted in a long running laugh from the audience of safety professionals and a reaction from Dr. McKenzie of clear shock and embarassment. I then asked a hypothetical question of the audience of how many full-scale ships are built to test to destruction to see if the lifeboats work [a tip of my hat to the late Dr. Petr Beckman of Access to Energy] ? The point was made.
After the plenary session, Dr. McKenzie of the UCS, and I were escorted to a media room to be interviewed by some local TV stations. I tried to make some small talk with him in the hallway as we walked along to be interviewed, but he was still so angry about being publically embarrassed he could not even speak because his jaw was still clenched so tight.
It's been said that "Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned".
Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Public Health Sciences
172 Old Orchard Way
Warren, VT 05674
[802] 496-3356
email: SAFarberMSPH@cs.com
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In a message dated 11/5/01 3:51:32 PM Pacific Standard Time, sfrantz@YAHOO.COM writes:
Subj:nuclear safety groups?
Date:11/5/01 3:51:32 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: sfrantz@YAHOO.COM (Steve Frantz)
Sender: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Reply-to: sfrantz@YAHOO.COM (Steve Frantz)
To: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu (radsafe)
The UCS and other groups say that they are not anti-nuclear,
they are pro-nuclear safety.
OK, then let them define their safety goal in measurable means.
How thick of a containment is safe? How many hours of training
per year for the licensed operators? How many backup deisel
generators? What level of releases above background? How many
hours of NRC inspection per year? How many radiation induced
cancers in the neighboring population? Anything at all
quantifiable?
They will not answer these questions. They will only say that
what is being done is not enough. Anything more that is done is
also not enough. The plants are not safe.
Can the plants be made safe through modification? NO! They are
very dangerous and we can’t trust the utility or the NRC to do
what they promise!
Will the plants be safe if they are shut down? NO! The spent
nuclear fuel at the site is very dangerous!
Should the spent nuclear fuel be moved to Nevada or some other
storage facility? NO! Moving it is much too dangerous!
They say that the plants are unsafe if operating, unsafe if
shutdown, and unsafe if the utility tries to remove the
radioactive material.
What is their solution? THERE IS NO SOLUTION!!!
Now, why would anyone think that they are anti-nuclear?
Stephen Frantz
Reed College
sfrantz@reed.edu
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