Re: Security at U.S. Nuclear Labs Called Unacceptable

[Gary Isenhower <garyi@BCM.TMC.EDU>]

William V Lipton wrote:

> 

> They are successful because the seem to take away our capacity for critical

> self-evaluation.  We seem to have a circle the wagons, shoot the messenger

> attitude.  We thus too often fail to find and correct our own problems before our

> critics find them for us.



Respectfully, I think this is wrong and exactly the opposite of what

usually happens.  As radiation professionals, our capacity for critical

self-evaluation is so hyperdeveloped that we faithfully stop doing

usefull work and spend millions or billions in testing to show some

wacko group that:

	no, spent fuel isn't teleporting across miles of barren desset and

appearing in your hairspray, and

	no, those isotopes aren't evaporating thru the casket and we aren't

parking the trucks in your residential neighborhood, and

	no, none of the health physicists are aliens masqarading as scientists

in order to distribute deadly doses of 5 rad or so, thereby wiping out

humanity and leaving the earth ripe for colonization (actually, this has

not been conclusively studied - more funds are needed)



In fact, we are the best friend Chicken Little ever had.  We don't go

dashing off in fear, but we do break out our best Falling-Sky

particulate detectors to prove that the blue stuff isn't coming down

anytime soon.  Even so, 9 times out of 10 poor Chicken Little just

doesn't believe us.

    _______________________________________________



	Gary Isenhower

	713-798-8353

	garyi@bcm.tmc.edu

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