Re: Hanford Site cleanup standards

[Ted de Castro <tdc@XRAYTED.COM>]

Jerry Cohen wrote:

> 

> > > This discussion leads me to wonder what would result, in terms of

> adverse effects to humans and/or the

> > > environment, if no site cleanup activity were undertaken at Hanford.

> >

> > Which brings us back to LNTH once again!  Until that issue is resolved -

> > legitimate and rational questions such as this cannot be answered.

> 

> Ted,

>     Not necessarily. Even if you buy into the LNTH, with the reasoning that

> Fritz Seiler gave in his last posting, the theoretical dose consequences

> could still be well below any level worth worrying about. Of course without

> LNT, the whole thing becomes nonsense.



The latter is of course my point.



The "not worth worrying about" is a professional judgment even though

LNTH produces those projected body counts that the anti's keep beating

us over the head with and prompts political responses to "fix the

problem".  The general public seems not to come to so rational a

conclusion when face with such "risk" calculations.



Most of us realize here that within the error bars the answer to the "I

wonder what would happen" question could range from n deaths through

nothing to possibly -n deaths or +n years average life or other positive

effect.



To us - "we don't know for sure" is not a problem that needs fixing or

throwing money at - which brings us back to the starting part of this

thread.

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