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Stop the madness
Dear Radsafers -
Bob raises an important observation about the antinuclears' ability to rout us
with near-certainty in legislative, media, and public forums. In part we have
ourselves to blame.
In the interest of 'fairness', we as a profession have communicated directly
with antinuclear activists who contact us seeking technical information about
radiological science. These inquiries are made with great courtesy. Disarmed,
we tell them everything.
And then to our shock, we get clobbered in public. Every single time.
The scientific information that we convey to the antinuclears is never used
as we so naively intend for the common good. Instead, the antinuclears dissect it,
analyze the language, and develop potent emotion-invoking counterpoints that are
tailored to frighten the heck out of people. How many of you have ever explained
what a curie is to a sincere-sounding antinuclear activist in private, only to hear that
same person later tell in dramatic tones a shocked legislative committee holding a
public hearing that a curie is "thirty-seven MILLION(!)...DISINTEGRATIONS(!)
....per SECOND(!!!)"
And how do we respond? Terribly. We counter weakly that yes, that is correct.
And we don't bother to put it into a layperson's perspective, usually because by this
point the shrieking, crying, name-calling, and scornful shouting from the audience has
intimidated us into silence. As a result, we lose yet another round in the eyes of the
public. We never seem to learn or accept that the word 'disintegration', and 37 million
of them a second no less, means something vastly different and far more scary to
the public than it means to us. But you can bet the drama-coached, focus-group
savvy antinuclears know.
I propose that we stop this madness. Barring antinuclears from access to this forum
is a great place to start. They never come here for objectivity and open exchanges
of objective science, no matter how sincere or friendly they pretend to be. Instead,
they come here with sickening sweetness to mine us for popular radiological science
phrases and expressions, then use them to develop horribly-wrong but highly effective
counterpoint sound bytes with which to crush us whenever we speak in public.
Aiding and abetting the enemy is not a wise policy. We would help society benefit
better from radiological science if we stop showing the antinuclears our playbook.
Steve Frey
(the above is my opinion only)
-----Original Message-----
From: Westerdale, Bob [mailto:bwesterdale@edax.com]
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 12:44 PM
To: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Why is it...., Part 2
While getting my daily dose of News on CNN et al, I 've noticed the past few
days have once again taken a turn towards the possibility of an airliner hitting
a Nuclear Power Plant. OK, fine, it's a possibility. The news shows open with some
scary stuff about hellfire and brimstone, then they trot out the 'experts' to comment on
the prearranged conclusion that the plane will destroy the containment and
the resulting mess will force most of the US population to relocate to Antarctica.
One would like to assume in these prearranged TV 'debates' that both sides would be fairly
represented. One guy who would say the Plant will be completely shredded,
and the other will say the plane will bounce off. What concerns me is that
the Anti-Nuke pundits seem very well prepared, well rehearsed, and able to
strike fear in the hearts of the viewers. On the other side, The Pro-Nuke
guy is unprepared, speaks poorly, looks like Mom dressed him, and does a
really dismal job of presenting the case for minimal consequences in an
attack. This is not to imply that he is uninformed or unintelligent- merely
that he has lost the debate because he didn't have the same presentation
skills and 'charm'.
1. Has the media biased this discussion towards the death and
destruction scenario in the interest of network ratings? Is there really a
shortage of well spoken, highly regarded, interesting( i.e. TV-personable ) Nuclear
power proponents?
2. If everyone is so concerned about what will happen if a
plane hits a power plant, why don't we try it? I'm sure there are enough retired
jumbos that could be retrofitted with remote control, and I imagine there
is a retired, de-fueled nuke plant somewhere that could be the safely impacted.
Of course there is considerable peril in doing a real world test, but this is an important
decision: Do we continue live in blind fear of an attack, or do we try to discover
whether the fears are warranted? IF the plane wrecks the containment, well, we're
in for some changes, and if it emerges unscathed, the 'Chicken Little's' of the
world will have to findsomething else to pursue.
I understand that this is not by any means a trivial matter, and
that I have oversimplified things in a most sweeping manner. However, I do
not look forward to spending the rest of my life worrying about planes
hitting powerplants. Lets find out.
Bob Westerdale
( submitted with sincere apologies to any as yet undiscovered,
media-acceptable ProNuke newscasters..)
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