Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Subject: Re: . . . Radioactive Sand Proves Nuclear Reprocessing Unlawful
Organization: Oracle Corporation
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:55:24 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
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In article <54216@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>In article <1992Sep30.165204.465@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>>>>>You're right, it's not reasonable. Why don't you look it up. The
>>>>>Windscale fire has been covered in the media, and I already gave you
>>>>>a reference.

>>>>First I'll let you be a little more explicit...

>>>It's easier than going to the library, I'm sure.

>>More to the point, I'm not going to bother hitting the books until I
>>can stick it to you good...

>The scientific attitude in action.

No.  More like I'm not going to bother hitting the books unless I can
get some moral satisfaction out of it.

>>Really, to be like Chernobyl, I think an accident has to be a fire in
>>a graphite reactor without a containment building in which there is a
>>significant release of radiation.

>And again I will tell you that in every decent library you will be
>able to easily find confirmation of the fact that the Widscale accident
>was a fire in a graphite reactor without meaningful containment in which
>there was a significant release of radioactivity. 

Great.  Now let's define significant radiation release.

In this context I think a good definition is "People get radiation
sickness from it."

Good definition?

>>>>>>>and put 1/2 million curies of Pu241 into the Irish Sea.

>>>>>>What't wrong with that?  Isn't the important thing how much people are
>>>>>>exposed to?

>>>>>That's the point of the GP press release: it's washing up on the
>>>>>beaches.

>>>>So what?  The important questio is whether enough is washing up on
>>>>beaches to hurt people.  So far we have received absolutely no
>>>>evidence that this is the case.

>>>The point is simple. You do not have the knowledge required to denounce the
>>>GP press release on rational grounds.

>>Sure I do.  The GP press release sounds oh so scary, but if you dig
>>into it you find out that none of the actual items cited are really

>You have not dug into it,

Jeeze... I posted a big analysis of it.  That's what started this
flame war.

>and you have absolutely no idea what you
>are talking about. Sellafield/Windscale *is* is a scary installation 
>with a terrible history.

So what's scary about it?  Are you admitting that the radiation on the
beaches is not enough to matter?  

>>all that dangerous. It's kind of like screaming that I am poisoning
>>Personally, I'd give good odds that if you actually calculated Z it
>>would be less than 1.

>How much?

$50.  Z is defined as the expected extra cancer deaths from the
plutonium on the beaches that was released from Sellafield.



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Newsgroups: sci.environment