"Perhaps you jumped too fast (to stay on the right side of your subscribers?)" wrote Prof. Lidsky [AtE Feb 88] on the copy of a 1986 lecture he gave on HTGR's (which, I claimed, are inher-ently safe and do not use light water as the coolant that disturbs Lidsky). The lecture supports my point very nicely. The logic of his stand escapes me.
"I refer to your article in the WSJ. . . In light of the thousands of women needing abortions because of Chernobyl, . . . are you still willing to state that the anti-nuke activists are fear panderers? . . . This planting of destruction [by the nuclear industry] has finally resulted in a new and deadly harvest
¾in the form of RADON GAS¾which has already contributed to the deaths of thousands- " G.J. Orlowski, Box 10013, Scottsdale, AZ 85257"I tend to favor nuclear power but that should not influence, one way or another, scientific description of the effects of radia-tion. The enclosed article from the Economist (1/30/88) sounds like a plausible study linking low-level radiation to [a slight in-crease in the US death rate during the summer of 1986]."
R.S. [no address]
I heartily agree with the first sentence, but I am disappointed with the second. AtE aims to provide not only facts, but also method, and any reader should be perfectly capable to see through this hoax by himself even if he forgot the facts that I published at the time (e.g., to reach the iodine exposure a healthy patient gets in a thyroid scan, an American would have to drink at least 63,000 gallons of Chernobyl-contaminated rain water). But if this minute amount was the culprit, why does background radiation, hundreds and thousands of times stronger, not kill? Why would the effect not show up in Colorado with twice the background of Florida? Why would it not show up in the annual fluctuations to which background radiation is subject?
That should be enough (I lack space for more), and in general it is the issue, not the author, that matters. However, when one of the authors of the "report" is a Fellow of the central disinforma-tion by the far radical Left, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the other is Ernest Sternglass, whose amusingly fraudulent "corre-lations" have been described many times in these pages, it is vir-tually guaranteed to be a hoax. It is typical for the Economist's shoddy science reporting that they treat the two as credible scien-tists and print a piece that might raise eyebrows even at the National Inquirer. Yes, the Economist is better than Time or Newsweek
¾just as the fragrance of a goat is more delectable than that of a skunk.The American Scientist, unlike Science, Scientific American or Science News, has always been non-political and never partici-pated in the antinuclear rituals. Not any more: In a two-page "Profile," the Jan/Feb 88 issue palms off the Union of "Con-cerned" "Scientists" (UCS) as a scientific organization and echoes its anti-scientific sentiments. Yet its history shows it to be a far Left, $3,500,000/year disarmament lobby, as well as a cynical center for disinformation and legalistic sabotage of nuclear power. As a member of Sigma Xi, its parent organization, I in-tend to find out more and will report to you.
On March 1, control of Soviet psychiatric hospitals will pass from the police to the Ministry of Health. This may be good news for the victims in the torture chambers of Soviet "science;" or it may be that, as the proverb-loving Russians say, horse radish is no sweeter than radish. In either case it makes me nervous to see the Mafia under a more efficient godfather.
|
|
Vol. 15, No. 7
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 15, No. 7 Date: December 01, 2004 01:08 PM Title: Seabrook and the West
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
|