newspaper

["DAVE GILMORE" <DGILMORE@navajo.astate.edu>]

Radsafers,
    Time for another edition of Radiation in the News.  The sunday 
paper had two articles.  The first was a look at Chernobyl.  It 
didn't say a whole lot, just painted a generally dark and frightening 
picture.  It mentioned some older people who had moved back because 
they figured they'd die of old age before radiation effects got to 
them.  The article also mentioned that while the Russian/Ukrainian 
governments predicted thousands of cancer deaths, many scientists say 
that those numbers are wildly overestimated in an attempt to get 
Western aid.
    The Second article was on the proposed low level radioactivity 
waste disposal site proposed in California by US Ecology.  The 
article pilloried US Ecology, listing all kinds of leaky sites, 
fines, mismanagement, etc.  The only people stated as supporting the 
site were Gov. Wilson and other industry/gov types (you know, the 
kind people intrinsically don't trust).  The article frequently 
compared the scene to some really messy waste disposal that took 
plave many years ago in the same area; I'm sure some of you would be 
familiar with that story.  One thing that got to me was that (not an 
exact quote) "people were so badly contaminated with plutonium that 
whole body scans were required".  Duh.  Don't we require bioassays if 
we're just _worried_ about exposure?  I don't think the press has a 
clue about how rad safety works.  No where in the article was there 
any reference to WHY a LLR disposal site is needed.  Is this site 
just for LLR waste from nuclear power, or is this use also for such 
things as hospital waste to keep all those paranoid Californians 
healthy?
dgilmore@navajo.astate.edu
David F. Gilmore,
Assistant Professor of          0  0
Environmental Biology            __    "have a day"
Arkansas State University