Re: AW: more st lucie workers expsoed

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@richardhess.com>]

At 03:29 PM 11/23/2002 +0100, Franz Schoenhofer wrote:

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]Im Auftrag von Richard L. Hess

Gesendet: Montag, 21. Oktober 2002 00:58

An: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Betreff: Re: more st lucie workers expsoed

At 05:06 PM 10/20/2002 -0400, RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:

I

http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/trib_local_news/article/0,1651,TCP_1107_1482702,00

.html

Can someone explain to me why external occupational exposure to 20 to 25 mrem and internal occupational exposure to 1 to 2 mrem are news?

Yes, Ruth,

It's easy.

The lay population is very afraid of nucular (sic) accidents because there is the image of the huge destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the image of the atmospheric testing in the 40s and 50s, the image of Chernobyl ingrained in our minds.

] --------------------------------------------------------

Sorry, I cannot confirm that the Chernobyl accident had any impact on the minds of the US population and even on US scientists. When I spent six weeks in the USA in 1988 I gave quite a few presentations on the consequences of the Chernobyl accident in Europe. To me it seemed, that hardly anybody knew about the accident and that nobody was informed about the consequences in different parts of Europe. After that I noticed, that some US institutions had made some modelling on the Chernobyl accident impact - but they neglected wash-out from rain - which was the most important factor of contamination in Europe. They did not regard the fact of precipation and not that in Northern Europe still snow was on the ground. These model-drawbacks might hopefully have been  considered. in US-models since then.

There may NOT be any major official acknowledgement of Chernobyl in the

U.S., but there is acknowledgement from the populace. Remember, I'm NOT

an HP, but came here looking for information about the rather scary

radiation-centric scenarios I've been reading and hearing 

about.


At least some of the folksingers I know have written about it or

mentioned it in songs. I know folk music isn't as popular as it once was,

but there are still people out there doing it. In fact, one friend of

mine, Kristin Lems, wrote a song called simply, "Chernobyl."

She used to have a clip of it on her Web site, but it appears to have

been taken off.

Regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which I have visited, I can only hope that this will forever be on the mind of mankind. This was no accident - how can you dare to call this an accident????.

Franz, I never called it an accident. I said we were afraid of nuclear

accidents because of "the image of the huge destruction at Hiroshima

and Nagasaki, the image of the atmospheric testing in the 40s and 50s,

the image of Chernobyl ingrained in our minds." 


I would be one of the last people to say that our bombing of Japan was an

accident. However, I will not engage in discourse about the mindset or

the rightness or wrongness of that fact. I personally feel remorse that

we did this. I also feel remorse as a German-surnamed person for what my

(VERY distant) relations did in the Holocaust in Germany. 


However, I did not live through it. My father who did live through it

feels it was the right decision, and he and I have been in many debates

over this. 


I have recently licensed the use of some artwork owned by the Hiroshima

Museum of Art for a CD cover. The artist and I are both very pleased with

that little bit of synergy and we now only regret that there isn't an

anti-war song on the CD to tie into the source locale of the cover

art.

Comparing Chernobyl with Hiroshima and Nagasaki is unacceptable: Hiroshima and Nagasaki was intended to kill as many people as possible, Chernobyl was an unexcusable accident, provoked by the NPP staff by violating clear rules.

As I said, it's the image of the destruction that has infiltrated our

consciousness here...not COMPARING, but ENUMERATING the things that come

to mind and cause fear among our populace.


You must understand that the normal person in the street in the U.S. does

NOT understand the subtleties of what you're describing. We all started

this with chants like "Hell no, we won't glow." and applying

that to a wide range of nuclear and atomic enterprises. The uninformed

public (which I'm TRYING to graduate from) is, indeed, very uninformed on

these matters. Obfuscation (to put it mildly) on the part of the antis is

at least part of the cause.


Cheers,


Richard