Re: more st lucie workers expsoed

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/20/02 5:33:45 PM Mountain Daylight Time, lists@richardhess.com writes:



> If we can't explain depth of field to people, how can we explain nuclear engineering? It's hard to get people to understand basic units of measurement beyond feet, inches, miles, and degrees Fahrenheit. 
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> I have worked fairly hard (yes, I could work harder and understand more) to understand what I've learned from everyone on this list. 
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> I think the one feeling which this type of investigation engenders in the non-scientific mind is "if they can't even get this right, how can we trust them if something really bad happens." We have management oversight problems in many areas. For example Enron, Worldcom, why not have these problems in nuclear power? The D-B non-event showed substantial managerial failures...as did the Challenger. 
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> The one question that I have is that the usual rule is "follow the money" to find out why people have the agendas they do. I'm not sure this is true of the anti-nuclear community...or at least a good portion of it. As I've stated before, I do think that a portion of the anti-nuclear people are virtuous ideologues who believe that this stuff is bad for the world.
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> What happens is that the science is too complex and the source of the science is sometimes not to be trusted.


A simple explanation, which I have used with a lot of people, is comparison with dental x-ray -- something almost everyone, certainly every middle-class anti-nuke, has every year or so.  Moreover, one doesn't have to understand nuclear engineering to understand what "background" means.  I have also found that several middle-school and high-school science teachers of my acquaintance are doing a first-rate job with respect to these issues.  In fact, I am going to talk to a middle-school class next week about the atom bomb!  I believe that we exaggerate the fears of the "general public" since the newspapers tend to amplify the anti-nuke propaganda.


You are right on when you say "follow the money."  A couple of years ago I urged RADSAFERs to look at the recipients of foundation money, particularly the foundations like Rockefeller and W. Alton Jones, who get their money from oil revenues.  Some branches of the oil industry appear to have been funding anti-nuke propaganda for years.


Why does the press do it?  Some years ago I invited the envrio reporter for the Seattle Times to talk to my class, and he essentially said they knew a lot of the anti-nuke stuff was phony, but if they didn't print it, someone else would.  I think that has mitigated somewhat in recent years.


Just thoughts


Ruth

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com