Re: Public Education

["Patrick D. Beyer" <pbeyer@post.its.mcw.edu>]

I seems to me that perhaps the HPS should have these sort of things for 
us. The different sections have the expertice in all the different areas 
where such documents are needed. OR perhaps we need to take the 
information from the Position staements and add some examples and data to 
them to make it more educational for the "General Public". I also think 
that the society needs respond to these incidents as a representative of 
the profession as a whole. An example would be the Dry cask Storage 
question in Minnesota. The national Society should have put out some 
sort of position statement, not just the North Central Chapter. Its all 
well and good to have us doing public relations on the national scene, 
but what about the local stuff that will eventually affect us nationally. 
I wisconsin we are now about to revisit this whole dry cask storage thing 
with Wisconsin Electric Power Company - New state, Same issue......

Well I guess its time for a letter to Gen Roessler....

Pat Beyer
Medical College of Wisconsin



On Fri, 22 Jul 1994 JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com wrote:

> Date: Fri, 22 Jul 94 12:25:37 -0500
> From:JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com
> To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
> Subject: Re: Public Education
> 
> Tom,
> 
> >     Pat, your story about the "hot" firebrick, and the
> >attendant convocation, hit home with me.  I, and I'm sure
> >many others of you, have been involved in these civil
> >defense/police/fire/eyewitness news "radiation
> >emergencies."  The authorities' response and reaction to
> >the "crisis," is yet another great argument for VIGOROUS
> >public radiation education.
> >     Maybe these particular folks are beyond hope, with
> >hopelessly etched gray matter.  There IS hope, though,
> >for the young.  That's why efforts such as the North
> >Carolina HPS Chapter/ DOE Science Teacher Workshops
> >are so important.  Science ignorance is a real threat, but
> >it's a chain that can be broken.  Hey, a few of these fine
> >kids will go into journalism!    ;-)
> 
> You are right, but you need to expand your finger pointing.
> When the nuclear fuel accident in Springfield MA happened a couple of years
> ago, I commented to our Emergency Management management personnel that this
> was new fuel and the had no significant potential radiological public health
> concern. Yet from the utility, contractors, public health agencies, vendor,
> NRC, and the Nuclear Incident Advisory Team, everyone with a geiger counter,
> including HPs, were spun up. 
> 
> Obviously, the political process took over, to the extent that there was a
> great hue and cry about storing the fuel at Westover Airbase without proper
> warning and notification of the surrounding towns. My input was not heeded,
> and there may have been others knowledegeable, including HP professionals,
> not heeded, but there were no HP professionals from universities or
> elsewhere who publically advised that this was a grotesque over-reaction. A
> comment that there was no immediate public health threat, while running to a
> fire with geiger counter in hand, is not credible. 
> 
> And the HPs are responsible for training materials and training of most of
> these radiation-trained emergency response personnel, which includes heavy
> emphasis on all the techniques of protecting yourself and the public from
> radiation, with negligible consideration of what levels are significant,
> pushing ALARA and "any amount of radiation can kill", implicitly by our
> response and over-reaction if not explicitly in words.
> 
> How do we create statements that can be applied to balancing the message,
> and get them into the communications and training and responses to actual
> incidents. I'd like to have prepared sheets of good info, based on solid HP
> expertise, in my desk drawer to provide to any and all in discussing and
> responding to radiation incidents. Any ideas?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jim M
> 
>