Re: Hanford Site cleanup standards

[Steven Dapra <sjd@swcp.com>]

Aug. 27



Jim Dukelow wrote:



"As one who bears a lot more of the remaining local risks of Hanford site

contamination than Bill does, I do not find my share of the overall

costs/risks of WWII and the Cold War to be unreasonable and do not find

AEC/ERDA/DOE behavior during that time unconscionable."



Barbara Hamrick replied to this, and as usual her comments are eminently

reasonable and sensible.  She said:



"I think this is an incredibly important point.  In fact, everything Jim

said in his post needs to be appreciated in its full context.  



"These DOE or DOD facilities that are the subject of these many contentious

clean-ups are not simply "evil" facilities run wild.  These facilities

served some (perceived or real) vital national interest at one time or

another.  They, and their original purposes, "belong" to the people of this

nation, as does the responsibility for remediating these sites at their end

of life.



"I have heard (as I'm sure you all have) the accusations about the evil

industrial-military complex, but frankly, we are all responsible for the

goods and the evils that come of these endeavors (and, as a side note, I've

never met any one of these alleged "evil" scientists).  I am actually an

extreme pacifist, but I still recognize that in order for a society to

survive someone has to make the hard decisions, and they won't always be my

first choice.  Nonetheless, I have responsibility, as a public citizen who

enjoys the many benefits of this society, to accept the responsibility for

the mistakes we make, even if I opposed the actions at the outset, because

I still benefit, in the end, overall from living in this society.



"What I oppose then is the idea that the DOE or the DOD is some "evil"

entity, bent on polluting our environment, and unwilling to take

responsibility for their damage.  We are them.  Given that, shouldn't we

not compound the possible mistakes we may have made by forcing the

expenditure of another billion dollars to spare a theoretical excess fatal

cancer of one in ten thousand, when one in four to five of us will die of

it anyway, irrespective of the residual radioactivity at these sites?  How

does it make anything better to waste substantial and scarce funds chasing

tooth fairies across the tundra?



"Again, I am emphatically NOT advocating ignoring sites with a real and

substantial threat to public health upon their release.  I just want reason

to play a larger role in our remediation decisions than the raw,

undisciplined fear that seems to drive them now.  We, in this on-line

community, are the ones with the expertise to provide the appropriate

guidance in these matters.  We need to make sure that we participate in

these "political" decisions at every level."





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