>>  That makes me feel BETTER about a possible nuclear 
>> accident? I guess I
>>  wasn't paying attention...

> Point being that we are running risks all the time, and 
> having
> accidents at a level that would make headline news if they 
> were
> "nuclear accidents", but since it was "just" a gas tanker 
> or such,
> somehow it's no big deal.

A factor is that the "just a gas tanker" accidents have 
relatively well defined outcomes. Those who die in fireballs 
or being crushed etc are able to be counted with some 
certainty. The injured may be categorised statistically by 
means which are good enough for demographics and never good 
enough for the victims. The more abstruse outcomes such as 
poisonings, mutations, xxx due to release of yyy into the 
environment are usually small enough to be comfortable with. 
Every now and then you get a Bhopal or Thalidomide to shake 
you. But usually not.

There would be every right for accidents at the gas tanker 
level to be headline news if they occurred. It's all too 
pervasive once it does get out.

Nuclear has the nasty ionising radiation effect which I 
mentioned yesterday and which was noted as a given but not 
addressed. It's pervasive enough that it can sneak up on you 
in impossibly small doses such that eg the (largely 
childhood) cancer clusters at Sellafield can't possibly have 
been caused by radiation / nucleotides / ... so are 
stunningly and stupidly rejected by science as 'just 
something that happened" when it is obvious to ALL others 
that the methodology and measurement has holes in it and 
that death and mutation stalks the land invisibly - albeit 
at a very very very small scale. As long as science is going 
to be used as a club to prove white black and black white 
then you are not going to sell yer nuclear cocktails to the 
great unwashed. And even if it's not you will probably have 
a hard time doing so :-).

While one is working on levelling the playing field one may 
wish to deal with eg DU used in weaponry but sourced from 
nuclear waste so that it contains subtly different trace 
level radio isotope mixes. Quite why people decided to cost 
and corner cut to get rid of their waste profitably this way 
who can tell?

Must be time to go to sleep ... :-)


        Russell



 

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