Re: One pound of Plutonium

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

Although this proves the statement regarding plutonium is the most
deadly substance known to man or 1 pound killing everyone on earth.
Do you really think telling people that it is ONLY going to kill 
800,000 is going to make people feel any better?  

People in the general public (non-science trained) react to topics 
such as those regarding radiation and things nuclear emotionally 
and not logically (otherwise the pr battles would be easy to win) 
and unfortunately, journalists feed off that emotional response.  
So by telling people this, we would be "scientifically" correct 
(LNT debate ignored at the moment as you requested) but we would 
still be losing in the public image arena.  So where is the benefit
in doing these calculations?

Mike Baker

	
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Michael C. Baker, Ph.D.            Safeguards Science and Technology
                                   Nonproliferation and International 
                                           Security Division
email:  mcbaker@lanl.gov             Los Alamos National Laboratory
Phone:  (505) 667-7334               P.O. Box 1663, Mail Stop E540 	
Fax:    (505) 665-4433                 Los Alamos, NM 87545 (USA)
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