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Re: COGEMA Says No to LNT



Dear Rick,



	COGEMA is not alone! They got their position from a report of some

panel of the Academie Francaise (I forget which).  In addition, our

Health Physics Society also states that risks for doses below 10 rem

should not be calculated due to an uncertainty that is larger than the

risk. For an honest scientist, any such number is pure nonsense, as it

cannot be shown to be different from zero! 

	There are many people such as myself that are scientists first and risk

assessors and health physicists second.  We all deplore the flagrant

abuse of the Scientific Method perpetrated by the LNT proponents. If you

are interested, I can put you in contact with people and data bases that

show what I am talking about.



Best regards and have a nice weekend,



Fritz





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



Fritz A. Seiler, Ph. D.

President

Sigma Five Consulting

P.O. Box 1709

Los Lunas, NM 87031, USA

Tel.    505-866-5193

Fax.    505-866-5197

e-mail: faseiler@nmia.com



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





"Richard F. Orthen" wrote:

> 

> >From today's IEM news launch:

> 

> May 10, 2002 - IEER Press Release (05/07/02) - French company with US

> contracts choosing its own science and radiation risk estimates - U.S.

> Subsidiary Should Be Barred From Plutonium Work Pending Investigation of

> Parent Company, New Study Recommends. COGEMA, the French nuclear giant,

> which reprocesses more commercial plutonium in the world than any other

> company, has taken the science of radiation protection into its own hands,

> overriding official scientific bodies and regulations, a new report claims.

> The report, COGEMA: Above the Law? Concerns about the French Parent Company

> of a U.S. Corporation Set to Process Plutonium in South Carolina, was

> released today by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)

> and the Safe Energy Communication Council (SECC). COGEMA, Inc., a U.S.

> subsidiary of COGEMA (Compagnie Générale des Matières Nucléaires), is part

> of a consortium that is designing a plant to produce plutonium fuel from

> U.S. weapon-grade plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, South

> Carolina. The report found that COGEMA had arbitrarily established its own

> threshold for radiological dose impact in Europe. Furthermore, the report

> uncovered several instances of disregard by COGEMA of French nuclear waste

> laws, prompting the law's author to declare that COGEMA was setting itself

> "above the law." COGEMA is more than 85 percent owned by various French

> government entities. "COGEMA has simply declared by fiat that there is a

> threshold below which it will assume that radiation doses have 'zero

> impact'," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of IEER and a co-author of the

> report. "This is an ominous and disturbing development. A company ought not

> to be taking law and science into its own hands. U.S. and international

> scientific bodies and regulatory authorities have repeatedly rejected the

> idea of a threshold for radiation damage, most recently in 2002. COGEMA's

> subsidiary should not be allowed to process plutonium in the United States

> until it explicitly rejects the position of its parent company in a legally

> binding declaration."

> 

> Rick Orthen

> 

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