Re: Atomic Train Farce

["Roy Craft" <rcraft@wcnet.net>]

I agree 100% with Sandy on this.   The Drills and Exercises cause nearly as
much fear and doubt about the safety of nuclear energy as the regulators.  I
guess that this makes it more than 100%, since Sandy didn't include the
Regulators.

After many ridiculous drills and exercises, I finally got to write the
Radiation Protection section of a Graded Exercise, with FEMA requirements.

The first requirement was for the wind to blow to the north west directly to
the nearest school, 10 miles away.  The dose to the school children was to
be 10 rads/hr for 10 hours, to test the emergency facilities.  The chemistry
representative and I told them that we could not have that radiation level,
especially for that length of time.  After two weeks, we convinced them that
it would tale 10-20 core loads of iodine to cause this problem, and that we
could challenge the facilities at a much lower dose.

I think the most likely scenario would have been that the creature from the
black lagoon rose up and crunched the containment, steam generators and all
of the control systems.  This was feasible because we had a cooling pond.

Roy C. Craft,CHP
1707 Pecan Street
Bay City, TX 77414
rcraft@wcnet.net

----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy Perle <sandyfl@earthlink.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 1999 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: Atomic Train Farce


> > I think there is a big difference between
> > radiation professionals preparing for a worse case scenario and the
media's
> > gross negligence in concocting a story line to play on people's fears
and
> > generate $.
>
> Jim,
>
> I agree with some of your comments. I do disagree with the basis
> for the worse case scenario, when the worse case is not plausible,
> whatsoever. I also have a problem when the not so real worse case
> scenario IS not only played out internally, to test technical basis,
> worker skills and communication, but also includes the media. It is
> the media participation in a not real scenario that bugs me the
> most. For they truly believe that these scenarios can happen.
>
> Sandy Perle
> E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
> Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205
>
> "The object of opening the mind, as of opening
> the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
>               - G. K. Chesterton -
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