Re: Your expert perspective...

[mgoldman@ucdavis.edu (Dr. Marvin Goldman)]

>          Good day radsafers
>
>          An associate of mine is taking a general biology class at a
>          local community college. The instructor has an anti nuke
>          agenda. She has given the class an assignment asking the
>          class to answer particular questions concerning the nuclear
>          power industry. One question suggests that the nuclear power
>          industry started to replace REM with the SI unit Sieverts
>          for dose equivalent reporting. This instructor is convinced
>          that this was done because the sv equivalent for rem would
>          appear to be a smaller number, and would not be such a shock
>          when reported to the public. Rather than reporting 100 rem,
>          the industry would fool the world by reporting 1 sv. This
>          change, as the instructor points out, was done after the
>          Chernobyl accident.
>
>          Would anyone care to shed some light on this assumption? I'm
>          sure one rational shotgun blast will blow her theory away.
>          Sorry if it raised your blood pressure. Thanks in advance. I
>          can't imagine anyone being further off base.
>
>          T.Fox
>          Sr. HP Tech
>          Office of EH&S
>          University of California, San Diego
>          tom_fox@ehs.ucsd.edu
>
And (sic) of course the same reasoning went into changing curies to Bq! It
was all one package.  Give me a break!

Marvin Goldman