Re: Why nuclear is a "no-win" in the USA

[Jeff Eichorst <myself@lanl.gov>]

Very simple.  DOE feels that it must continue to propogate public fear by
demanding that facilities report even the smallest of incidents to DOE
headquarters.  Every time a facility reports an incident (500 dpm of alpha
contamination on your pants requires reporting) the finished report ends up
in a public reading room.  Of course the only people that look at the stuff
in public reading rooms are the media and those that are wanting to make a
case against the DOE and their operations.  So, the more we "act" like 500
dpm is significant enough of a health hazard to warrant spending a minimum
of $12,000 to write a report (cost at Los Alamos), the more these yahoos
believe that 500 dpm must really be dangerous.  God help us if they should
try and calculate a curie content from that and compare it to the curie
content release at BNL!  If that were done, it would be obvious to the same
yahoos that life would soon end for all in the BNL area.

And as one of the first things a risk "communicator" learns, perception is
everything - or, perception is reality until you can convince the perceiver
otherwise.  Therefore, the DOE will spend millions and millions to try and
ease the tensions of the public who believes there is a risk - partly
because of the DOE's own stupid political mandates.

At 10:10 AM 9/4/97 -0500, you wrote:
>    Doug Minnema, CHP
>    Defense Programs
>    Department of Energy
>    <Douglas.Minnema@dp.doe.gov>
>    
>   Doug, Granted we have a communication problem with the general public. 
>The problem is that we are letting this drive us to do things that don't
>make sense.  It seems iresponsible to me for you guys in DOE to develop and
>encourage a battle plan to spend $220 BILLION on a publically percieved
>problem when we have so many actual problems that need solving.  
>
>	On the enviroinmental front, I would suggest the parks service could
>better use these dollars to restore our national parks;  of course there's
>education, helath, Brookhaven ...
>
>Jim
>
>James R. Goodgame
>Radiation Engineering & Physics
>Certified Radiological Physicists
>Charleston, SC
>http//www.sentinelnode.com
>
>
Jeff Eichorst
Occurrence Investigator
Los Alamos National Laboratory
ESH-7, MS K999, Los Alamos, NM 87545
505.665-6980		505.665-6977 fax
505.996-1117 digital pager,	myself@lanl.gov

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
	- JFK