Accepted Positions

[BYRPV@ccmail.ceco.com]

When building an argument for or against something, it doesn't help to 
lay a foundation of 'unaccepted positions'.  Bernie Cohen uses these 
accepted positions such as Rn exposure is bad for you; rates at which 
certain minerals are transferred from rock to ground water to 
stomachs; and the supposition that humans are going to be here on 
Earth for thousands or millions of years.  If you don't use accepted 
positions as your premises, your readers will not be able to believe 
you conclusions---you have to start somewhere.

As for your interesting position on Radon (daughters presumably), 
there is solid epidemiological data to show excess lung cancer from 
large exposures to Rn daughters.  However, it's true as in other areas 
of HP that when it comes to the small stuff, you just can't see the 
effect.

As for your apparent position on nuclear fission as a power source, it 
is a gross simplification of the matter to look at only the 
radiological risks involved.  For both generating techniques, the 
radiological risks are vanishingly small compared to the causes of 
actual, measurable blood and guts risks taken by coal miners day in 
and day out.  There is considerable mortality and morbidity amongst 
coal miners.  And if one happens to subscribe to the notion of global 
warming, 9.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per 1000MW-years should 
make you wonder.  If one takes the popular position on acid rain, he'd 
be against burning coal too.

This is clearly a matter of personal beliefs for most.  To some, it 
doesn't matter that probabilistic risk analysis of nuclear plants has 
identified a 1 in a million or 1 in 100,000 chance per reactor year of 
a core melt.  It doesn't even matter that U.S. plants are designed to 
tolerate a melted core without a significant radiological release (you 
could fit all of the people who died at TMI on the head of a pin).  
Some people just believe that radiation and nuclear accidents are the 
worst conceivable hazard out there and 'just because they don't kill 
anyone, don't think for a moment that they won't.'


P.S.  No fair bringing up Chernobyl--that accident just doesn't apply 
here.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Coal vs. Nuclear -Reply



I would say that Dr. Cohen is the master of taking accepted positions (Radon 
is bad for you) and turning them to show that even if you ignore data to the 
contrary and take one of those accepted positions then nuclear fuel cycle 
activities are still beneficial to society.

He might even agree that this argument supports coal if you believe low 
doses are good for you.  But, based on the epidimilogical (sp?) data, some 
of us might even say that there is no observable effect for Radon exposure 
anyway.

The beat goes on.