Where the Deer and LNT-lope play?

["Vincent A King/KINGVA/CC01/INEEL/US" <KINGVA@INEL.GOV>]

Contaminated sites are fenced and posted to keep out people who can read

the signs.  Having animals fly/crawl/burrow/leap under, over, and around

these fences is not an indication of a "serious programmatic failure." It

is inevitable.



Furthermore, if these sites are posted and fenced because of surface

contamination, then detecting those materials in the environment (including

the four-legged, antlered part of it) is not surprising, it is expected.

Those familiar with environmental science, which environmental activists

typically are NOT, know this.



Failure to detect the transport to the environment (if it is at measureable

levels) would be a programmatic failure.  That obviously did not occur

here.  Failure to model transport of environmental contaminants to human

exposure would be another, but I'll wager that such modeling is extensively

documented for this site as well.  Failure to recognize anomalies and

investigate the cause of the variance would be yet another programmatic

failure (but again, that is not indicated in this case).



I guess one could post armed guards to shoot the next deer that tries to

jump the fence, but that seems somewhat extreme, especially considering

that the radioactive material and concentration being discussed will have

zero health impact on them.  Deer don't worry too much about hypothetical,

one-in-a-million chances of cancer based on LNT models since they will die

from more "natural" causes (like our "deerly departed", two year old

road-killed fawn) long before the latent period for postulated cancer onset

is reached.  (Personally, I'd choose to stay inside the fence if I were a

deer...I'd live longer!)



In short, programs that detect and track movement of contaminants in the

environment and that are forthright about reporting their results do not

qualify, in my opinion, as experiencing "serious" failures.



Vincent King,

Idaho Falls



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