Re: Nuclear Safeguards

["Michael Stabin" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 19:17:58 -0600

From: maury <maury@WEBTEXAS.COM>

Subject: Re: Nuclear Safeguards



Mr. Jim Lehrer

News Hour

Public Broadcasting System

11 November 2001



Dear Jim;



You were a welcome guest in my home for several years, but the general

slant of your network has become such that I don't see you much anymore.



The 2 Nov broadcast, however, about nuclear safeguards does interest me.

It appears that your program along with many of the news media has

singled

out the nuclear power industry for special attention in contrast with

other large comparable industries. In so doing, you  have capitalized on

an

exaggerated public fear which your own network helped build. In this

context of terrorist threats, I wish you could have tried to provide

your

listeners with a much more balanced overview..



There are quite a number of nuclear power opponents who have employed a

wide variety of tactics to obstruct or shut down nuclear power as a

source for the clean production of electricity. Rep. Markey and Mr.

Lochbaum have long been in the forefront of that emotional opposition.

These folks often deny their opposition to nuclear power - they claim

simply to care about safety. Jim, you could have asked them to identify

the kind and degree of safety they want, but you did not do so. In fact,

they level some absurd claims of danger, but they offer no safety

measures which would satisfy their criticisms. In their unctous view,

the safety measures are never sufficient and reasonable safety is only

to be found in the total absence of nuclear power.



The suggestion that if terrorists could access the spent fuel rods and

if these could be dispersed into the atmosphere, then the damages would

be the equivalent of a 10KT atomic bomb - conjuring up images of the

atomic bombs in WW2. This is an absurd suggestion. There is no way to

produce a nuclear explosion using expended fuel rods. If the cooling

water is removed from spent fuel rods, then, yes, they could melt.

However, how the expended fuel rods could catch fire and send their

radioactive residue into the atmosphere, as suggested by Mr. Lochbaum,

will remain a mystery. References to Chernobyl are made frequently by

anti-nuclear activists to invoke frightening images and dire

consequences. This too, is deliberately misleading  in order to engender

public fear and misunderstanding. Chernobyl involved a massive steam

explosion. Then, fire which did spread some radioactive residue resulted

from burning graphite - a feature peculiar to obsolete Russian power

plant designs and not used elsewhere for years.



It should be noted that in spite of the serious disaster sixteen years

ago at Chernobyl, the damages and health effects have not even

approached the effects claimed by the likes of the Markey's and the

Lochbaum's. One hundred deaths and about 2000 cases of thyroid cancer is

the approximate toll of the Chernobyl explosion. Anti-nuclear zealots

and other so-called victims of Chernobyl have promoted claims of thirty

thousand deaths and untold other imaginary effects.



Chairman Meserve and Mr. Beedle were able to provide a more accurate

review of the effectiveness of some safety measures used in the design

and operation of nuclear power plants. I wish you had questioned them

further. My subjective impression was that their broadcast responses

were truncated from their original comments.  Even better balance was

available to you, however, if you had extended your interview to

additional designers, planners, health physicists, and other

professionals who are also routinely involved with nuclear power issues.



The allegation is often made that nobody ever thought of an airplane

being crashed into a structure such as the WTC or into a nuclear power

plant. Jim, all of us are fabulous creatures (yes, including

terrorists). with fantastic

imaginations. Yet, a B-25 bomber already flew accidentally into the

Empire State Building in the 1940's. And over a decade ago an actual

test was

conducted crashing an F-4 Phantom aircraft into a massive reinforced

concrete barrier. The results of these events along with other

engineering analyses have been performed which show rather conclusively

that nuclear power plants in the US are reasonbIy secure from terrorist

attack. I am convinced that you know full well that security cannot be

absolute; it is always a tradeoff between the degree of security and the

resources invested. You also are well aware of the fact that no honest

scientist or engineer will promise anything with absolute certainty. You

can receive pretty reasonable (very high probability) assurances of

tomorrow's sunrise, but that sunrise is not an absolute certainty. What

engineers and scientists (and terrorists)  have thought of is treading

on the outer limits of speculation.



Some anti-nuclear zealots have made much over how easy it must be to

crash into the WTC, a storage pool containing expended nuclear fuel, or

a containment structure. I submit that they are selling the task short.

The second aircraft to strike the WTC appears to have been maneuvering

rather desperately to hit the target. It also appears possible that the

pilot of the  aircraft striking the Pentagon had substantial difficulty

even finding his target. Many WW2 kamikaze aircraft struck targets, but

a great many more missed - and those were small, slow, highly

maneuverable aircraft. The performance required to land a heavy aircraft

at the end of a runway is quite

different from that required to hit a structure at three or four times

normal landing speed. In short, Jim, spare us the sensationalism of such

fears and possible disasters. Surely those possibilities do exist and

you can gain audience share by using them, but that approach degrades

your stature as a journalist and diminishes the respect for PBS as a

news source.



Sincerely yours,

Maury Siskel

4516 Cummings Dr.

Ft. Worth, TX 76180

maury@webtexas.com

817-498-7135





************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.