the RADSAFE tantrum re Lochbaum/NPR/UCS

["Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@pnl.gov>]

I was catching up on some back digests of RADSAFE and had the experience of
reading all at once the four day tantrum over NPR's decision to interview David
Lochbaum, a  Nuclear Safety Engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That leaves me in the position of defending UCS, an organization with whom I
hardly ever agree on nuclear issues, and NPR, which I listen to almost every
day, and with whose coverage on various issues I frequently disagree.

I took me 10 minutes on the Internet to verify that UCS, although clearly a
political and an advocacy organization (indeed, that is their purpose for
being), has rather substantial scientific credentials.  One of its co-founders
and for 25 years its chairman, the late Henry Kendall was a professor of physics
at Harvard or MIT and a Nobel Laureate in physics.  It current Board of
Directors includes Peter Bradford, a former NRC Commissioner; Sallie Chisholm,
McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT; Thomas Eisner, Shurman Professor of
Biology at Cornell; James Fay (emeritus board member), professor emeritus of
mechanical engineering at MIT; Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow Emeritus (and a
laundry list of other positions at the top of the national science advisory
structure for 30 or 40 years); Kurt Gottried (chair of the board), emeritus
professor of physics at Cornell; Mario Molina, Institute Professor at MIT and
Nobel Laureate in chemistry; Adele Simmons, president of the McArthur Foundation
and former professor and dean at Princeton and president of Hampshire College;
Victor Weisskopf (emeritus board member), emeritus professor of physics at MIT
and a former group leader at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.

The staff, as opposed to the board, has the variety of backgrounds that are
needed to run an organization like UCS.  Several of them have significant
academic credentials and/or work experience.  I would include Lochbaum in that
group, on the basis of the brief bio on the UCS web site and the detailed resume
eventually posted on RADSAFE.  The fact that he was a reactor operator and a
shift technical advisor and had a 17 year career in the nuclear industry,
including several utilities, a reactor vendor, and a couple of different
consultant organizations, suggests that he is competent to speak on nuclear
safety issues (the obvious question being, If not, what was he doing working in
that area in the industry for 17 years?).

All of this doesn't mean that UCS and its staff are right on the issues we are
interested in, but I think it does mean that we should respond to their
arguments with our arguments, not with childish and, in some cases, offensive
name-calling.

Although I could not chase down the interview with Lochbaum on NPR's 1 October
coverage, I was able to listen to several of their reports on the accident that
day.  One of the earliest reports involved a somewhat breathless interview on
Morning Edition with a Tokyo-based journalist, Juliette Hindell.  Her responses
to some questions exposed the limits of her knowledge of what she was talking
about.  Also, the interviewer  (Cokie or Linda, I believe) kept prodding her to
say something more sensationalistic.

On the other hand, the afternoon reports on All Thing Considered were pretty
good.  The first one was a fairly straightforward report by NPR staff.  The
second interviewed Richard Wilson, Harvard physics professor, and John Bisella
(sp.?), Johns Hopkins Director of Medical Physics.  The interview and the
commentary from both interviewees was careful, balanced, and informative.  All
in all, it was probably the best media coverage of the accident I saw/read/heard
during the early days of the accident.  Not like BBC, which ran a photo of a
hole in the roof of another facility caused by another accident, while
writing/saying repeatedly that it was caused by the "explosion" that occurred
early in the Tokaimura accident.

I suggest more reflection and some research before sending messages to RADSAFE
and further agree with McCarthy and Lipton that ad hominem attacks are
completely out of line.

Best regards.

Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA
jim.dukelow@pnl.gov

These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my
management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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