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

[William V Lipton <liptonw@DTEENERGY.COM>]

I agree with your first two points, although, after reading some of the Radsafe

postings, I would hesitate to deny that some hp's are "aliens masquerading as

scientists..."



Unfortunately,  you overlook a few things:



1.  TMI - What we'd been saying couldn't happen, did.  Although the actual release was

negligable, our confused and contradictory response reenforced public fears.  The

incident, itself, was more an emergency planning failure than a hardware failure.  That

it happened at all is largely because the industry ignored precursor events - A FAILURE

OF CRITICAL SELF-EVALUATION.



2.  The Soviets used to say that their plants are so well designed, they don't need

containments.  What couldn't happen, did.  OOOP's; a slight loss of credibility.



3.  Hanford - Unfortunately, spent fuel waste IS transporting across the barren desert

and is approaching the Columbia River, from which it's likely to get into someone's

hair spray.  In the meantime we spend $$$$ trying to clean up this mess and don't seem

to be making much progress.



4.  Davis Besse - FENCO  tried to save a few bucks and put the whole industry at risk.

There were all sorts of indications of a serious problem for anyone who wanted to look

(eg., air sample filters rapidly becoming clogged, a layer of oxide on the vessel

head); but no one wanted to look .  We were down to our last safety barrier and then

some.  How can we assure the public that this is an aberration, not "business as

usual"?



5....



The Radsafe response SHOULD be:  What went wrong?  What's the root cause?  What's the

most appropriate corrective action?



Instead, the usual response on Radsafe seems to be:



1.  It's a media conspiracy.



2.  A little radiation is probably good for you.  (The only reason people think it's

bad for you is a media conspiracy.)



3.  [Fill in the blank]  kills more people.



4.  All of the above.



I'm beginning to think that we should change our name from "Radsafe" to "Kneejerk."

We blame everyone and everything but ourselves.



The opinions expressed are strictly mine.

It's not about dose, it's about trust.

Curies forever.



Bill Lipton

liptonw@dteenergy.com



Gary Isenhower wrote:



> 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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