Re: 60th criticality accident

[William V Lipton <liptonw@dteenergy.com>]

Unfortunately, the nuclear industry is seen as one entity by the public; and
when the industry screws up this badly, we lose credibility.  Being defensive
reduces our credibility even more.

Rather than presenting comparative body counts, we should be looking at the
lessons learned and thinking about means of ensuring the public that this
won't happen, again.

Until we have enough information to work on lessons learned, let's go back to
discussing something semi-useful; such as man-rem vs. person-rem.

The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
It's not about dose, it's about trust.

Bill Lipton
liptonw@dteenergy.com


Bernard L Cohen wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Philip Hypes wrote:
>
> > Now, anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many workers have died
> > in accidents at oil refineries or non-nuclear power plants since 1945?
>
>         --Much more relevant is the number of workers killed in producing
> electric power by mining coal. Early in this century. about 1400 miners
> died each year in coal mining accidents, and there are still about 100
> deaths each year. But this is just the tip of the iceberg -- many mine
> related diseases kill coal miners, causing their life expectancy to be
> about 3 years less than that of others of the same socioeconomic class.
>         One could go further and discuss all industrial accidents which
> kill many thousands of workers each year. All of the above numbers refer
> to the U.S. only.
>
> >
> Bernard L. Cohen
> Physics Dept.
> University of Pittsburgh
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> Tel: (412)624-9245
> Fax: (412)624-9163
> e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu
>
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