[ RadSafe ] Nuclear power plants; radiological bombs not on top of list o...

[BLHamrick at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/16/2005 3:16:34 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
crispy_bird at yahoo.com writes:

"There's  risk everywhere; risk is a part of life," Mr.
Chertoff said in testimony  before the Senate last
week. "I think one thing I've tried to be clear  in
saying is we will not eliminate every risk."


This is the most intelligent statement I've seen with respect to our  
response to potential, future terrorist attacks.
 
There are two things that I think have substantially reduced the risk of  
another attack with the same MO as the 9/11 attacks:  1)  we're  locking the 
cockpits, and 2) everyone now knows that the highjackers don't  necessarily want 
to land safely (as was the prior "common" wisdom), so  passengers will be more 
aggressive in defending the airliner.
 
Other measures taken or proposed will only reduce additional risk in  very 
small measure.
 
And, to bring this around to radiation safety, I think we see the same  
misguided over-reaction to potential risks in our regulation of radiation  
exposure.  Whether or not the LNT represents reality, let us at least  consider that a 
goal of limiting any increased risk of  cancer incidence to 1E-6 or less over 
a lifetime is a silly goal (and,  I mean literally silly, as in absurdly 
humorous and frivolous and wasteful to  boot), given that the overall lifetime 
risk of cancer is about .3.7E-1 for women  and 4.9E-1 for men (in the U.S.).
 
Those billions of dollars we could be spending on universal healthcare, or  
to maintain some public system of social security are just being siphoned away  
by fear of an agent that is not actually known to cause harm in low doses or 
at  low dose-rates.  Those dollars could prevent the very real deaths we  see 
every day from gang violence, from lack of emergency (or even routine)  
healthcare, or from lack of proper support equipment for our troops around the  
world.
 
Billions over the years (really, add it up), spent on hypothetical,  
unidentifiable future deaths vs. real dead people.  We need a better system  of risk 
communication to put these things in perspective, in my opinion.
 
Barbara L. Hamrick