RE: [MbrExchange] Re: NG blast (again)

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

So, I don't get it...it's like another line in an anti-nuke song

  "If Einstein says he's scared...I'm scared"


I don't think I was blaming the public, but I was blaming the radiation

professionals for not providing a proper education--but now I see, at

least from your perspective, that at least some radiation professionals

are providing an education, albeit the wrong one.


I can understand some of the fears from the cold war. I grew up with

air-raid drills, CDV-700s at my school, and the posters that offered

instructions of what to do in case of a nuclear attack. The one that made

an indelible impression on me was the one that had the last few steps

as.

   11. Crawl under your desk

   12. Put your head between your legs

   13. And kiss you [rear] goodbye!


So in the late '60s we were joking about nuclear bombs--sort of black

humor.


I still don't get it. You and others on this list are saying the fears

are overblown. Alvin Weinberg says it cannot be safe.


We've discussed pieces of this before: You can't prove perfect

safety--you can only prove the possibility of harm. How do the real

scientists say it, you can't prove a negative?


Where do we go from here? Who's correct? Who is the general public to

believe? Why is the industry doing this to itself? Where IS the money

trail to all this? Who is Alvin Weinberg? Why should someone believe him

more than you?


Cheers,


Richard


At 11:13 PM 4/28/2003 -0400, Ted Rockwell wrote:

> Richard:
>
>  
>
> There is a very simple reason why the people
>
> are afraid of radiation.  It's NOT that we haven't gotten our
>
> message across.  Quite the opposite.  People were quite pleased
>
> about the positive health potential of radium and x-rays when they were
>
> first discovered.  WE told them to be scared.  We invented the
>
> China Syndrome and mass evacuations and KI and nuclear mutants.  And
>
> we keep telling them, in government-sponsored reports and news releases
>
> and interviews, that nuclear technology presents unprecedented threats to
>
> humanity and the earth.  
>
>  
>
> When I was in Oak Ridge last week, Alvin
>
> Weinberg invited me up to his house to urge me to back his msg that
>
> nuclear energy is a Faustian bargain--uniquely and inherently and
>
> inescapably dangerous.  I told him I could not support such a
>
> message because I think it's demonstrably false.
>
>  
>
> Don't blame the public.  They fully
>
> understand our msg, and it scares them.  They know that the
>
> prescribed evacuation plan for Indian Point has been deemed
>
> "unworkable" by FEMA, and they want it shut down.  I don't
>
> see how we can fault them for that.
>
>  
>
> Ted Rockwell