RE: the RADSAFE tantrum re Lochbaum/NPR/UCS

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Weiner, Ruth wrote:

  So my question is: with all the
> highly credentialled scientists on the governing board, why does UCS follow
> (albeit not stridently) an anti-nuke party line?

	In the early days, UCS was led by Henry Kendall as an anti-nuclear
power organization. It built up sources of revenue on that basis. Then,
Kendall decided to concentrate on problems of nuclear weapons, like
opposing the star-wars program. A very prominent scientist I know who is
very pro-nuclear power was interested in the same weapons problems. He
reached an agreement with Kendall that he would join the Board of UCS if
Kendall would drop his personal opposition to nuclear power. Kendall lived
up to his word and to a very large extent, UCS has put only a very small
part of its effort into nuclear power issues, concentrating on nuclear
weapons issues. Still, UCS has always had one (or perhaps more) employees
who are active in opposing nuclear power and he is the one the Media
consult.
	I suspect that the other prominent scientists on the UCS Board
were recruited in the same way as my friend mentioned above.



> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dukelow, James S Jr [mailto:jim.dukelow@pnl.gov]
> Sent: Thursday, October 07, 1999 8:14 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: the RADSAFE tantrum re Lochbaum/NPR/UCS
> 
> 
> 
> 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.
> ************************************************************************
> The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
> information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html
> 
> ************************************************************************
> The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
> information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html
> 
Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html