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Nv H lode A VOLUME 78
Number 2

Journal of the June, 1988

WASHINGTON
ACADEMY ., aaa

ISSN 0043-0439

sys ow Issued Quarterly
; at Washington, D.C.

Nuclear Radiation and Public
Health Practices and Policies in
the Post-Chernobyl World

A Symposium at Georgetown University

Proceedings Edited By: Dr. Irving Gray and
Dr. Kenneth L. Mossman

Washington Academy of Sciences

Founded in 1898

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Guy S. Hammer, II

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Joann Langton

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Robert H. McCracken

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Joseph Neale
Lisa J. Gray, Managing Editor

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CONTENTS

RENNETH E MOSSMAN. Ph. D:lntroduetiony & 5.452 aec ces ss:

ARTHUR C. UPTON, M.D.: Health Effects of Nuclear Radiation: Intro-
PCARVaICCHIALKS ANG OVEIVIEW. Gar cern ieee cise. Ae Gate Fac ed oe 4 oie as

NIEL WALD, M.D.: Acute Radiation Injuries and Their Management

ROBERT W. MILLER, M.D., Ph.D.: Prenatal Effects of Exposure to Ion-
PEMA BERANE se tis cc nc a Roane eatin) Sos Aces dose Bay eens tee Nt oa

GILBERT W. BEEBE, Ph.D.: Carcinogenic Effects of Nuclear Radiation

SEYMOUR ABRAHAMSON, Ph.D.: Genetic Effects of Nuclear Radia-
TRAE enn ae o Pate Rey ela, ep aeba, MMS al ted PSs i MEE Bey cae

BOUND TABLE DISCUSSION: BIOMEDICAL ISSUES. .............

HERBERT KOUTS: Nuclear Power: How Safe Is It? How Safe Should It
Beri hors k Be gras BF SL th aes POR UA ERE ED Mw | Me ore eS eat e) Ma Oe

TieCiAM KERR: Chernobyl— lessons Leamed ...205. 1c ee es hese

PETER A. BRADFORD: Somewhere Between Ecstasy, Euphoria and the
SHEcdderRetlections,Onyuhe Penm jae FO-NUGIEAal jon)... 65.5 cts ceo lat j.<

BYRON LEE: Jr: Industry Evaluation and’ Response <...::....:-.- 2...

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEER-
Ge ee ee i eee ca Rea acl lane PEC cl oye, <a

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: JOHN F. AHEARNE: Fear and Trembling and
the Popul hat Didn't Bark-\Rolicy:and science | {0 see eee). Saas Lee

DAVID M. RUBIN: The Media’s Coverage of Radiation Risks ..........
RICHARD D. SMYSER: Covering Radiation Risks and Benefits ........
KARL ABRAHAM: Non-Media Communications .....................
FRANK E. TOOPER: Policy Perspective on Communications Issues .....
ROUND TABLE’ DISCUSSION: COMMUNICATIONS. 00.2020. ons.

WILLIAM R. HENDEE, Ph.D.: Physicians, Physicists, and Radiation Acci-
CRIES ee i i cy tn et Me a ee a Ba Mn Mle te cts

JOHN H. SORENSEN and BARBARA M. VOGT: Emergency Planning
fom Nuclear Accidents: Contentions, and ‘ssuesi 2. fie. ccs cee cot. Et

RICHARD J. BORD: Reactor and Nuclear Waste Siting: Problems and
EEOSPCE Sere et ier ma ee rN ee ite heats Da aise Roemer ere oe

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: POLICY CONSIDERATIONS .......

iil

87

88

94
101

117
122

125
s(83ih

139
143

148

158
167
173
178
186
190

205

210

Nuclear Radiation and Public Health:
Practices and Policies in the
Post-Chernobyl World

Introduction

Under normal operating conditions, activities in the nuclear fuel cycle (including
nuclear power plant operations) pose little hazard to public health. In fact, despite
the large uncertainties in risk estimates, coal fuel power plants result in a greater cost
of life and health than nuclear plants. However, unlike accidents which may occur in
fossil fuel cycle activities, accidents in the nuclear fuel cycle, especially nuclear power
plants, can have significant public health and environmental consequences. The ac-
cident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986 has served as a stark
reminder of the potentially disastrous consequences resulting from the uncontrolled
release of nuclear radiation into the environment. This issue of The Journal of the
Washington Academy of Sciences is devoted to a discussion of several important issues
surrounding nuclear power technology which were of considerable concern in the
aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. The papers presented in this issue are a result
of a symposium held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., on September
18 and 19, 1987. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together noted experts
to discuss various aspects of nuclear energy technology with Chernobyl as a spring-
board for discussion. The meeting was divided into four sessions, each concerned with
a specific issue of nuclear power technology. Following each session there was a round
table discussion among session speakers with questions and comments from the floor.
These discussions are presented in their entirety, with a minimum of editorial changes,
in order to represent fairly the spirited exchange of ideas and opinions which occurred
at the meeting.

The first session was devoted to a discussion of the biomedical effects of nuclear
radiation. At Chernobyl, 31 people were killed as a result of the accident and tens
of thousands of others received radiation doses that may increase the risk of genetic
effects and cancer. In this session, four distinguished scientists provide their views
concerning what is presently known about the biological effects of nuclear radiation.

The second session focused on environmental and engineering issues. Following
the reactor accident, significant concern surfaced about the reactor facility itself, what
particular design characteristics were responsible for the accident, comparisons with
American reactor designs and the possibility of a similar accident occurring in the
United States. The environmental impact of the accident became almost immediately
apparent with reports of contaminated milk and contaminated pasture lands in western

iv INTRODUCTION

Russia and in several neighboring countries. The Chernobyl accident clearly showed
that a major reactor accident cannot be expected to be confined to the “‘host” country
but may have significant environmental, social, and economic impact on neighboring
countries as well. In this session five nuclear technology experts discuss various en-
vironmental and engineering issues, including nuclear power safety and specific lessons
learned in the Chernobyl accident.

The third session was devoted to communications. Following the Chernobyl acci-
dent, as in the case of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the print and broadcast
media provided numerous technical reports and human interest stories. Did the print
and broadcast media present technical issues fairly and accurately? Have the risks of
radiations been overstated? These and other questions served as the basis for dis-
cussion of communications of nuclear technologies by noted authorities in the com-
munications field.

The final session was devoted to public policy considerations. The Chernobyl ac-
cident clearly emphasized the potential difficulties in implementing effective medical
management programs and emergency evacuation plans following nuclear accidents.
These and other public policy concerns were discussed by leaders in the medical and
nuclear technology fields.

This symposium was supported by the Departments of Biology and Radiation Sci-
ence and the Office of the Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown Uni-
versity, by the Institute for Health Policy Analysis, Georgetown University, and by
grants from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department
of Energy. The planning committee also gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
Ms. Alexandra Bernstein for her time and effort in editing and preparing the discussion
sections.

Kenneth L. Mossman, Ph.D.
Georgetown University

Planning Committee

Laurel Anderson

Research Associate

Institute for Health Policy Analysis
Georgetown University

Alexandra Bernstein

Symposium Coordinator

Institute for Health Policy Analysis
Georgetown University

Irving Gray
Professor, Department of Biology
Georgetown University

This symposium was supported in part by:

Stephen Klaidman

Associate

Institute for Health Policy Analysis
Georgetown University

David McCallum
Senior Fellow |
Institute for Health Policy Analysis
Georgetown University

Kenneth Mossman
Chair, Dept. of Radiation Science
Georgetown University

Office of the Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University
Department of Biology, Georgetown University

Department of Radiation Science, Georgetown University

Institute for Health Policy Analysis, Georgetown University

Washington Academy of Sciences

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, grant No. NRC-04-87-422

United States Department of Energy

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 87-88, June 1988

Health Effects of
Nuclear Radiation:
Introductory Remarks
and Overview*

Arthur C. Upton, M.D.

New York University Medical Center
550 1 Avenue
New York, New York 10016

The recent events at Chernobyl have
demonstrated how catastrophic and far-
reaching the consequences of a major
nuclear reactor accident can be. The oc-
currence of early fatalities from radia-
tion sickness among those on the scene,
the necessity to evacuate entire com-
munities in the surrounding area, and
the increase in the risk of cancer and
other late-occurring diseases posed to
those residing many miles downwind ex-
emplify the kinds and diversity of health
impacts that may result from such an
accident.

Because the health effects of ionizing
radiation have been studied extensively
for nearly a century and are better
known than those of most other envi-
ronmental agents, the potential impacts

* Preparation of this report was supported in part
by Grants ES 00260 and CA 13343 from the U.S.
Public Health Service and Grant SIG-009 from the
American Cancer Society.

87

of reactor accidents have been estimated
in detail. The public, however, is largely
unfamiliar with reactor technology and
radiation. Its views of nuclear energy in-
clude misconceptions about the perti-
nent risks and an exaggerated
perception of the levels of uncertainty,
confusion, and disagreement about the
risks that exist among experts. Prevail-
ing knowledge of the relevant issues
within the health profession is substan-
tially better, but few localities are
equipped to cope with a major nuclear
reactor accident. It is fitting, therefore
to begin a symposium on “Nuclear Ra-
diation and Public Health: Practices and
Policies in the Post-Chernobyl World’”’
with a review of the cogent biomedical
issues.

Since the health effects resulting from
a reactor accident can vary widely, de-
pending on the amounts of radioactivity
released, the numbers and ages of per-

sons exposed, the doses of radiation that
they receive, and other variables, the
public health strategies that are called for
vary accordingly. Each of the major types
of biomedical effects that are relevant,
their dose-effect relationships, and their

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 88-93, June 1988

public health implications thus deserve to
be considered in some detail. To sum-
marize the cogent information, this ses-
sion is devoted to presentations by four
noted authorities, whose discussions of
the different issues follow.

Acute Radiation Injuries and
Their Management

Niel Wald, M.D.

Dapartment of Radiation Health, Graduate School of Public Health,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261

ABSTRACT

The biological basis for injury produced by radiation lies primarily in its ability to kill
cells or to inhibit their reproduction, leading to cell depletion and resultant malfunction
of various organs, and, at supra-lethal exposure levels, to impairment of key organs
directly. This leads to clinical manifestations of the acute radiation syndrome or to local
tissue damage, usually from external irradiation sources. Radionuclide contamination may
also produce acute local tissue and internal organ damage. Complicating factors include
coexistent trauma or burns as well as manifestations of radiation-related psychological
stress.

The Chernobyl accident provided useful information and raised new questions con-
cerning mass triage, bone marrow transplantation indications, and our medical response
capabilities in the unlikely event of a major accidental radiation release in the United
States. Appropriate responses include an assessment of our current national medical
radiation accident response resources of experienced personnel and pertinent facilities.
Also, inclusion of the medical aspects of radiation accident management is proposed in
the training and continuing education of medical specialists in occupational medicine,
emergency medicine, hematology/oncology and nuclear medicine. With necessary federal
support, this could provide a continuing cadre of physicians to maintain competences and
facilities for a national medical response capability for radiation emergencies.

I. Introduction

The purpose of this presentation is to
review briefly some key pertinent facts
about the effects of radiation on cells and

88

tissues, and to consider the resultant
forms of clinical acute radiation injury
and their medical care. Then, in keeping
with the orientation of this symposium,

ACUTE RADIATION INJURIES AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 89

attention will be focused on some expo-
sure situations involving the general pub-
lic, including the most recent one at
Chernoby] in particular, to see what per-
tinent lessons have been or may be
learned concerning radiation injuries and
their management.

II. Biological Basis for Radiation Injury

Although radiation absorption in tissue
produces many significant effects at the
atomic and molecular level, time con-
straints require that we confine ourselves
to its general effects on tissue cells. This
can be a direct lethal effect on the cell or,
at lower exposures, an impairment in the
mechanism of normal cell division and
replication. Although at supralethal lev-
els of exposure there may be prompt func-
tional failure of key organ systems, such
as the neurovascular system, the usual ef-
fect is damage to the process of cell re-
production with resultant shortages of
cells, particularly in organs that require
high cell production rates. The clinical
manifestations then depend on the tem-
porary loss of key organ functions, with
treatment being directed at supportive or
more definitive replacement measures to
enhance the likelihood of survival of such
patients until cell repair and recovery of
the damaged organs takes place.

A. Acute Radiation Syndrome

Three clinical forms of the acute radia-
tion syndrome have been recognized as
the result of the injury of certain key or-
gans or systems, usually produced by
whole body irradiation from an external
source. These are the hematologic, the
gastrointestinal and the neurovascular
forms of the acute radiation syndrome.
The magnitude of exposure determines
the time of onset and the duration of the
syndrome as well as the possibility of a
successful therapeutic response. The
syndrome can be diagnosed by some

relatively simple nonspecific clinical in-
dicators when the possibility of radiation
overexposure is borne in mind.’ An even
simpler triage scheme based entirely on
the time of onset of symptoms and the
changes in the routine white blood cell
analysis can be used to identify and pre-
dict the severity of radiation injury.’

B. Partial Body Exposure

Partial body exposure to external ra-
diation sources causes a much more fre-
quent type of radiation injury. This is seen
in industrial radiographers in particular,
with the hand being the injured tissue
most often.’ A sequence of changes which
are rather similar to those of thermal in-
jury or burns evolves over a time period
usually of several weeks. Again, the time
of onset and duration are related to the
magnitude of the exposure and the depth
of penetration of the particular type of
radiation involved.

C. Radionuclide Contamination

The second major class of radiation ac-
cidents involves the deposition of the ra-
dioactive material itself on the surface of
the body as well as its incorporation into
the body by breathing or swallowing the
material or having it deposited in an open
wound. It is difficult to generalize about
this form of potential or actual injury
since each radioactive isotope has a dif-
ferent duration of activity, penetrating
power in tissue, mechanism by which the
body metabolizes the material in the spe-
cific compound in which it is present, and
other variables. As a generalization, how-
ever, the effects can range from produc-
tion of the acute radiation syndrome to
only the slight enhancement of the statis-
tical likelihood of developing a radiation
related cancer decades later. As another
generalization, the early management of
such contamination is the separation of
the individual from the radioactive ma-
terial.

In the simplest case the separation is

90 NIEL WALD

effected by removal of the contaminant
from the skin. A number of different
methods are available for this purpose.*
When the material has been inhaled there
is a paucity of definitive measures for its
removal. Lung lavage has been employed
to wash radioactive material out of the
lung when the material is large in quantity
and is considered highly toxic.°

The passage of ingested or swallowed
material through the gastrointestinal tract
can be enhanced by the judicious use of
cathartics, thereby minimizing the radia-
tion exposure. In dealing with wound con-
tamination it is necessary to perform the
maximum removal of radioactivity feasi-
ble prior to conventional treatment of the
wound. Of course, life-threatening bleed-
ing or interference with breathing must
receive the initial prompt attention be-
cause these are a greater threat to survival
than radionuclide contamination.

Once the decontamination effort has
been concluded, techniques are available
for measuring the amount of residual ra-
dioactivity incorporated into the body of
the injured person. These require the use
of a highly sensitive low background ra-
diation counting facility which can make
measurements over part or all of the en-
tire individual. The radioactivity excreted
can be measured to determine the amount
incorporated. If the radioactive material
is sufficient in quantity and activity to pro-
duce a potential health hazard, there are
a number of agents which are effective
for one or another of the radionuclides
which may be involved.* These can pro-
duce a marked reduction in the amount
of residual radioactivity in many in-
stances.

Ili. Complicating Factors

A. Multiple Injuries

The information presented thus far was
derived primarily from situations in which
radiation exposure was the only stressful

agent. Unfortunately, in the real world
there also exists the potential for events
in which more than one injurious agent is
involved. The mechanisms involved in
such problems are less obvious and their
management is clearly more complex. For
example, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ja-
pan, the atomic bombs produced not only
radiation effects but also those of heat and
blast. This resulted in patients with ther-
mal burns and multiple traumatic wounds
in addition to radiation injury.° Although
the combined injury problem was recog-
nized early in the use of radiation’ and
has been studied in experimental animal
research® with the development of pro-
posed approaches to its medical manage-
ment,’!° it remains a difficult clinical
situation, complicating diagnosis and
prognosis as well as treatment.

B. Psychological Stress

At the Three Mile Island Nuclear
Power Plant accident in Pennsylvania in
1979, another complicating factor became
apparent in the occurence of the effects
of perceived, but not actual medically sig-
nificant radiation exposure. This is the
problem of psychological stress and as-
sociated symptomatology in a population
which, within 50 miles of the plant, re-
ceived an average exposure of one or two
millirems, or one hundredth of the annual
natural background exposure which they
continually receive. Due in part to the
intense media coverage and the evidences
of unfamiliarity with this type of accident
on the part of government, industrial and
regulatory personnel as well as health care
personnel in the area, a significant pro-
portion of the area’s inhabitants devel-
oped the perception that enough
radioactivity had actually escaped the
containment of the power reactor to pro-
duce prompt harmful health effects. Psy-
chological studies carried out early after
the accident and thereafter have shown
increased depression and anxiety lasting
more than a year later in a portion of the
population,'' and occurring again at the

ACUTE RADIATION INJURIES AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 91

time of the start-up of the adjacent re-
actor in 1985.”

Several considerations to reduce psy-
chological stress in the management of
patients or the public with actual or per-
ceived significant radiation overexposure
were suggested by these events. They in-
cluded the need for one responsible in-
dividual to deal with communication with
the exposed; a requirement of clear and
open communication; the need for a cred-
ible and tested emergency plan to be in
place in advance of such occurrences; and
the necessity of adequate education con-
cerning radioactivity and its effects for all
of those who might become involved with
this agent. This includes the general pub-
lic whose education about radioactivity
should be a part of the primary and higher
education system.

IV. Biomedical Lessons
From Chernobyl!

A. Triage

The Chernobyl! accident has taught us
some new lessons. From the diagnostic
standpoint, the validity of the type of
triage scheme discussed earlier was borne
out by its effectiveness in sorting out 203
individuals from the 135,000 living within
a five-mile area as those in need of hos-
pitalization and supportive or intensive
treatment. In the absence of detailed
physical dosimetric observations, it was
the use of symptomatology, lymphocyte
and neutrophil levels and chromosome
damage that served to make these iden-
tifications which then were used as the
basis for the treatment decisions.

The clinical courses reported for the
various patients in the four level classifi-
cation used by the physicians in Moscow
and Kiev’ reinforced what earlier had
been noted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
A-bomb patients;° that is, that combined
injuries alter and increase the severity of
the clinical manifestations expected from

radiation overexposure alone. In partic-
ular, the occurrence of both thermal and
radiation-induced skin burns over large
portions of the body in the worker per-
sonnel was an important feature in all of
the fatal cases.

B. Bone Marrow Transplantation

Since bone marrow transplantation was
used rather unsuccessfully in 13 Cherno-
byl patients (11 deaths),'* and fetal liver
cells in 6 (6 deaths), we are left in uncer-
tainty about the efficacy of this form of
treatment for patients with equivalent ra-
diation overexposure in the absence of the
complicating injuries. In view of the only
previous timely and successful application
of this technique in an accidentally over-
exposed worker, who was fortunate
enough to have an identical twin donor,”
and in view of the 60-day radiation-re-
lated fatality rate of only 10% in several
thousand leukemic patients treated with
whole body irradiation of 1000 to 1500
rads in a brief exposure period followed
by bone marrow transplantation,’ it
would be premature to discard this ther-
apeutic approach on the basis of the com-
plex exposure experience at Chernobyl.

C. U.S. Radiation Accident
Response Capabilities

A third important issue raised by the
management of acute radiation injuries
that was performed so efficiently and ef-
fectively on the Chernobyl accident pa-
tients, is whether such rapid triage and
treatment could be made available to a
similar sized population with real or per-
ceived radiation overexposures of the
same magnitude in the United States.
How quickly could the resources be mo-
bilized to carry out all of the hematologic
and other evaluation studies on 350 pa-
tients in a few days, including chromo-
some analyses in 154 of them?!’ How
readily could we deploy 450 medical
teams using local personnel augmented to
a total of 5,960 health personnel (includ-

92 NIEL WALD

ing 1,240 physicians, 920 nurses, 720 med-
ical students, 360 physicians’ assistants,
and 2,720 aides) to carry out a screening
examination of some 135,000 people
evacuated from the 30 kilometer radius
around a malfunctioning radiation facil-
ity?'°

In the absence of federal support pro-
grams for the training and operational
support of medical and other health per-
sonnel as well as for related facilities for
the evaluation of acute radiation injury,
combined with the paucity of actual pa-
tients due to the success of preventive ef-
forts, are we prepared to manage a large
number of people who are, or think they
may be suffering from acute radiation in-
jury?

V. Considerations for the Future

Most of the medical personnel with ra-
diation accident training and experience
obtained them under military and Atomic
Energy Commission auspices in the pe-
riod from 1940 until the moratorium on
above ground nuclear weapons tests in
1960. This cohort is now rapidly being
diminished by ageing, as one can observe
in any current gathering of such person-
nel. The environmental movement of the
1960’s, the cessation of successful mar-
keting of nuclear power plants in the
United States since the 1970’s, the lack of
federal training support in this area for
more than a decade and the high fre-
quency of civil litigation in cases involving
allegations of radiation exposure have all
discouraged new physicians from entering
the field. Although the 108 nuclear power
plants in this country with NRC operating
licenses have all presumably identified the
medical personnel and facilities that they
would utilize in an emergency in order to
meet NRC licensing requirements, and a
list of nine definitive care centers was
published by Linnemann in 1983,’ the
reality of these resources and their ability
to deal with a problem in patient care

approaching the magnitude of the one
generated by the Chernobyl accident is
not clear.

Although the design of reactors in this
country and the preventive measures built
into the NRC’s regulatory requirements
make the probability of needing such re-
sources extremely low, it would be reas-
suring to have a better assessment of our
state of preparedness. An initial measure
to consider in this regard is the collection
and analysis of data about the present per-
sonnel and resources committed to the
maintenance of a capability to deal with
patients with possible acute radiation
injury stemming from organizations
operating under Nuclear Regulatory
Commission licensing.

Consideration should also be given to
the incorporation of medical radiation ac-
cident management into the training of
physicians preparing for medical special-
ties related to this problem. Specifically,
this would mean that physicians in resi-
dency training in occupational medicine,
emergency medicine, hematology-oncol-
ogy, and nuclear medicine would be in-
troduced to this subject because of
similarities with the medical care of the
patients in their chosen professional
areas. This would provide a cadre of per-
sonnel familiar with the problems and
treatment of radiation accident patients.
With federal support, the development of
the necessary teaching program, the
maintenance of a roster of the resultant
cadre and the provision for updated train-
ing as part of a continuing education pro-
gram would be feasible. Federal support
for the maintenance of appropriate spe-
cialized equipment, such as whole body
radiation counters and wound radioactiv-
ity probes, would also serve to give reality
to a necessary national resource for the
clinical management of radiation emer-
gencies.

VI. Summary

Some of the manifestations of acute ra-
diation injury have been reviewed along

ACUTE RADIATION INJURIES AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 93

with the radiobiological bases for their oc-
curence. The impact and implications of
the lessons learned from the medical man-
agement problems of such injuries, per-
ceived or real, in large numbers of people
have been considered with particular ref-
erence to the recent Chernobyl accident.
Suggestions for maintaining the contin-
ued national availability of a cadre of
medical personnel and facilities capable
of participating in the competent and ef-
ficient management of such population
exposures, however unlikely they may be,
were provided.

VII. References Cited

1. Wald, N. 1983. Diagnosis and therapy of radia-
tion injuries. Bul. N.Y. Acad. Med., 59: 1129-
1138.

2. Thoma, G. E. and N. Wald. 1959. The diagnosis
and management of accidental radiation injury.
J. Occup. Med., 1: 421-447.

3. Saenger, E. L., J. G. Kereiakes, N. Wald, and
G. E. Thoma. 1980. Clinical courses and do-
simetry of acute hand injuries to industrial
radiographers. In: The Medical Basis for
Radiation Accident Preparedness. K. F. Hub-
ner and S. A. Fry, eds., Elsevier/North Hol-
land, New York, pp. 169-178.

4. NCRP Report No. 65. 1980. Management of
Persons Accidentally Contaminated with
Radionuclides. National Council of Radiation
Protection and Measurement, Washington,
BC.

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Walker, R. I. and J. J. Conklin. 1987. Mech-
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625-628.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 94-100, June 1988

Prenatal Effects of Exposure to
Ionizing Radiation

Robert W. Miller, M.D., Dr.P.H.

Chief, Clinical Epidemiology Branch
National Cancer Institute
400 Executive Plaza
Bethesda, MD 20892

The Effects of Prenatal Exposure to
Ionizing Radiation

Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays in
1895. It was about 25 years later that a
serious effect on the fetus was first rec-
ognized. Initially there were case-reports
of mental retardation and microcephaly
in children whose mothers had received
therapeutic radiation early in pregnancy.
Ionizing radiation was, in fact, the first
environmental teratogen known to affect
the human. Certain chemicals and viruses
have since been identified as human ter-
atogens. Ionizing radiation was also the
first known human leukemogen. Interest
began to develop in this relationship as a
result of a review of case-reports in the
literature in 1942.' A few chemicals and
certain retroviruses have since been found
to induce human leukemia. The first re-
port suggesting the induction of leukemia
and other forms of childhood cancer by
in utero exposure to diagnostic x-rays was
published in 1956.7

As laboratory techniques were devel-
oped for studying the number and mor-
phology of human chromosomes in
somatic cells, the effects of radiation as a

94

clastogen were defined. How early in pre-
natal life this effect can be induced has
been studied in the Japanese survivors of
the atomic bombs.

Exposure to I-131 during intrauterine
life has caused cretinism due to ablation
of the thyroid gland.° Other findings from
exposure of the fetus to ionizing radiation
have been similar to those at other ages.
Additional studies are needed as the in
utero a-bomb survivors, now 42 years old,
reach the age when the risk of cancer
mounts rapidly.

Sources of Exposure

Knowledge of the effects of ionizing ra-
diation on the embryo or fetus comes
from studies of the atomic-bomb survi-
vors, Marshall-islanders exposed to fall-
out from nuclear weapons tests and from
persons exposed to radiologic proce-
dures, therapeutic or diagnostic, from
sources that were external or internal.
There is no information from occupa-
tional exposures of pregnant women.

PRENATAL EFFECTS 55

Embryotoxicity

Data on the group exposed in utero in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki show a defi-
ciency in the number of persons exposed
who were under 4 weeks of gestational
age. The only study* that has been made
of perinatal loss was conducted in Naga-
saki six years after the exposure, so the
information depended on the accuracy of
delayed reporting of miscarriages, still-
births and neonatal or infant deaths. The
study concerned exposure at any time
during pregnancy. The results showed
43% of 30 cases had adverse outcomes
among those exposed within 2000 meters
of the bomb whose mothers had major
radiation signs as compared with 8.8% of
68 cases in the same distance category
whose mothers did not have major radia-
tion signs. Another comparison group
which was 4000-5000 meters from the
bomb (ie, no radiation exposure) had ad-
verse outcomes in 6.2% of 113 cases.

The deficiency in the number of people
known who were exposed under 4 weeks
of gestational age is relevant to current
law suits in which it is claimed that birth
defects were due to exposures at a time
during pregnancy when the effect, if any,
on the embryo is likely to be catastrophic.
The stage of development is so early that
damage to a single cell will affect all of
the cells to which it gives rise as growth
and differentiation progress. In accord
with this reasoning are the results of a
study not related to radiation exposure,
in which human embryos from the general
Japanese population showed no birth de-
fects under 15-17 days of gestational age.”

Teratogenesis

A wide array of congenital malforma-
tions has been found in animal experi-
mentation after intrauterine exposure to
ionizing radiation. In the human the only
excess in frequency has been in small head
size and mental retardation. The first re-

port of the Hiroshima group exposed in
utero was by Plummer in 1952.° Since
then improvements in scientific design or
dosimetry have led to further reports.”"!

Until 1984 it was thought that ionizing
radiation depleted the cells of the brain,
which caused small head size, and when
depletion was severe enough, caused
mental retardation. Small head size oc-
curred after exposure at 4-17 weeks of
age. Severe mental retardation was de-
fined as the inability to form simple sen-
tences or to care for oneself. In 1984” it
was pointed out that severe mental retar-
dation occurred primarily after exposures
at 8-15 weeks of gestational age, with a
small excess at 16—25 weeks of age. The
explanation, based on recent experimen-
tal studies was that at 8—15 weeks cortical
neurons proliferate or migrate from areas
near the ventricles to the cortex, and ex-
posure to ionizing radiation impairs this
cell proliferation or migration. Cells
killed before this time apparently cause
small head size without severe mental re-
tardation, because cerebral histogenesis is
absent then. Similar histogenesis occurs
later in the cerebellum, but no dysfunc-
tions such as incoordination, ataxia or
abnormal eye movements have been
observed among those at highest risk;
namely those exposed between the 20th
week of pregnancy and 1 year of age.

Small head size (2 or more standard
deviations below the mean) is not so much
a late effect of radiation as an immediate
effect, recognition of which is delayed un-
til it can be measured when the child is
born. When it is said that as little as
1 cGy can double the frequency of severe
mental retardation, it is not meant that a
fetus destined to have an I.Q. of, say, 110,
can be severely retarded by this exposure,
but that a fetus destined to have a bor-
derline IQ will fall just below this cut-off
after such a small exposure.

Among atom-bomb survivors, the low-
est dose at which small head size occurred
in Hiroshima was 10-19 cGy in air in Hi-
roshima,'! ie, before the dose was atten-
uated by passing through the mother’s

96 ROBERT W. MILLER

body. This estimate was based on the old
dosimetry (T65), which has since been re-
vised (DS86),'° but with little change at
this dose-level. According to the DS86
estimates, 82 percent of prompt gamma
radiation would be transmitted through
the unshielded mother’s body to the fetus.
The estimate for delayed gamma rays is
85 percent, and for prompt and delayed
neutrons the estimates are 14 and 6 per-
cent respectively.’

The lowest dose that might increase the
frequency of severe mental retardation
has been estimated by downward extrap-
olation to 1 cGy from intermediate and
high doses at 8-15 weeks of gestational
age. However, the numbers of cases by
radiation exposure category were exces-
sive only after 50+ cGy in Hiroshima and
200+ cGy in Nagasaki, where only 2
cases were observed.’ Several persons ex-
posed at 8-15 weeks of gestational in
either of the two cities had mental retar-
dation attributable to causes other than
radiation exposure. Two of 4 exposed to
10—49 cGy had Down’s syndrome, and 1
of 3 exposed to 1-9 cGy had had enceph-
alitis.\* Exclusion of these cases did not
substantially change the _ regression
coefficients in the analysis by Otake and
Schull described above.”

Intelligence tests were performed at the
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1955-56. For
an analysis published in 1985,'° Schull and
Otake used the Koga intelligence test
scores, and found a dose-related reduc-
tion in the mean IQ scores for the groups
exposed at 8-15 or 16—25 weeks of ges-
tational age. These findings are consistent
with the occurrence of severe mental re-
tardation (as a more extreme effect). In
the report of a Task Group of the Inter-
national Commission on Radiological
Protection concerning the effects of ra-
diation on the brain of the embryo and
fetus,'* it is said that ‘‘the statistical un-
certainties in the data, and the known
problems of obtaining a high consistency
in intelligence testing, prevent quantita-

tive statistical analysis of these data from
refining these qualitative conclusions.”

Sixty percent of children with severe
mental retardation had small head size.
Thus a substantial proportion were nor-
mocephalic. Conversely, 10 percent of
those with small head size had severe
mental retardation. It was thought that
small head size which occurred without
mental retardation after exposure at 4—6
weeks of gestational age was due to loss
of glial (support) cells, which does not
seriously affect intelligence, as interfer-
ence with the development of neurons
does.

Head size was not standardized against
body size, and indeed stature tended to
be less than normal in the severely re-
tarded, but not enough to be proportion-
ate to the small head size.

The simplest most sensitive measure of
a human radiation effect is small head size
after in utero exposure. In Hiroshima 11
percent of those exposed under 18 weeks
of gestational age to a dose of 10-19 cGy
free in air were affected, as were 30 per-
cent of those who were exposed to 20—49
cGy.’ Small head size is detectable at birth
and at any age thereafter. So it should
have been sought among newborns ex-
posed close to Chernobyl, in proportion
to dose. All that is needed 1s a tape-mea-
sure. During a visit to Kiev almost a year
after the reactor accident at Chernobyl,
we learned that measurements had been
made,'° but apparently a relationship to
dose had not yet been sought. The Soviets
seemed to have looked instead for an ex-
cess of diagnoses, such as severe mental
retardation, which did not occur (and
would not be expected, given the number
of conceptuses exposed). We hoped that
after our questions, small head size with-
out mental retardation would be evalu-
ated, but have not heard that it was.

An extra dividend, should this infor-
mation be available from the studies of
those exposed at Chernobyl, would be to
settle a lingering question about the pos-
sibility that radiation alone was not re-

PRENATAL EFFECTS 97

sponsible for the in utero effects among
atomic-bomb survivors. The possibility of
an additive effect has been raised with
regard to infections, the trauma of the
bomb to the mother, nutritional depri-
vation and other stresses of war. If the
same effect were found in the population
at Chernobyl, one could be sure that the
standards for radiologic protection, based
on data from the in utero exposures at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are appropri-
ate.

Although a wide array of other con-
genital malformations has been induced
by x-irradiation of experimental animals,
none has occurred excessively in the hu-
man. Brent’’ believes that the interval of
susceptibility in the human, from the 20th
to the 32nd day of gestation, may be so
short that not enough embryos were ex-
posed to revea! the excesses. By contrast,
the interval for inducing severe mental
retardation lasts 8 weeks, and for small
head size lasts 14 weeks. The situation is
different in experimental animals: their
susceptibility to radiation-induced small
head size is of similar duration to that for
the induction of other deformities.

Carcinogenesis: In 1958 Stewart and
her associates’® published the results of a
comprehensive survey of childhood can-
cer deaths in relation to histories obtained
from the parents concerning radiation ex-
posure and other events during preg-
nancy. The radiation exposures were
mostly late in pregnancy, for pelvimetry.
Subsequent studies by Stewart showed
that the number of x-ray films taken were
related to the frequency of cancer, and
that the relative risk of each form of can-
cer was increased 1.5-fold on the average.
No concomitant variable could be found
to account for the increase. At first the
findings were supported in a study by
MacMahon,” who linked records of child-
hood cancer patients with obstetric rec-
ords in New England, but upon extending
the study in time and geographically, the
excess of cancers other than leukemia dis-
appeared.”” Other studies have not con-

firmed Stewart's work—in particular,
studies of the Japanese atomic-bomb sur-
vivors exposed in utero.” In one large-
scale U.S. survey, known as the Tri-State
Study, an increase was found in the fre-
quency of childhood cancer if the mother
or the father was exposed before concep-
tion of the child.” This implies that a ge-
netic effect due to very low doses was
responsible, although no genetic effects
have been detected by much more so-
phisticated studies of the progeny of
atomic-bomb survivors.~ When a recent
study of cancer in twins was related to
radiation exposures during gestation,”
MacMahon wrote in an accompanying ed-
itorial, “‘It seems likely that the question
of the association between fetal irradia-
tion and childhood cancer will fade into
medical history unresolved and remain a
source of more confusion than enlight-
enment.’”

Biologic plausibility is still another
consideration. The data of Stewart and
her co-workers show that each form of
childhood cancer is equally increased
by diagnostic prenatal exposures to x-ir-
radiation, but why should this be when
these neoplasms differ epidemiologically,
etiologically and with regard to patho-
genesis?*°*? Also one wonders why the
fetus, just before birth, should be so sen-
sitive to radiation-induced cancer, when
no such sensitivity is known in the infant?

Persons exposed in utero are now 42
years old, and are beginning to face a
mounting risk of cancer with age. In par-
ticular the frequency of breast cancer in
relation to in utero exposure to radiation
will be of interest, because the rates are
moderately higher in girls exposed to 50
cGy or more under 10 years of age (10
cases observed as compared with 2 ex-
pected) than in females who were older.*®
Breast cancer thus may have a long latent
period after exposure early in life, and an
effect after in utero exposure may be de-
tectable.

Radioactive iodine has long been
known to cause cretinism in children of

98 ROBERT W. MILLER

women given this radioisotope therapeu-
tically during pregnancy.’ A similar effect
was caused among infants in the Marshall
Islands exposed to fallout from a nuclear
weapons test in 1954, but not among the
three children in utero on Rongelap,
where the doses were heaviest. Two of
the children were in the first trimester,
before thyroid function is active. The
third was in the twenty-second week of
gestation, but did not suffer ablation of
the thyroid, although the gland ‘‘was
probably functioning sufficiently to have
absorbed a significant amount of ra-
dioiodines from the mother.’’”’ This child
and one of the two exposed in the first
trimester have developed benign nodules
of the thyroid, the latter presumably due
to the external radiation exposure, esti-
mated to have been 175 cGy.

Cytogenetics

Complex chromosomal aberrations
were seen at about 20 years of age in pe-
ripheral lymphocytes in 15 of 38 persons
who had been exposed in utero in Hiro-
shima or Nagasaki.*? Three were in the
first trimester. The estimated dose in air
was 104-477 cGy. The complex aberra-
tions included rings, dicentrics, fragments
and translocations. The authors pre-
sumed that in the first trimester stem-cells
for immunologically competent lympho-
cytes were present, and that the popula-
tion resulting from the divisions of these
stem cells apparently maintained the
chromosomal aberrations through many
cell divisions. A re-evaluation of the cy-
togenetics of in utero survivors at 40 years
of age has been made at the Radiation
Effects Research Foundation, but the re-
sults have not yet been published.

Sterility

Animal experimentation has suggested
that exposure of male fetuses to ionizing

radiation induces sterility,*’ but no such
effect has been observed among the Jap-
anese exposed in utero in Hiroshima or
Nagasaki.”

Lens Abnormalities

Polychromatic granular plaques have
occurred on the posterior capsule of the
lens of the eye among those exposed in
utero to the atomic bomb, as in other sur-
vivors.*> Examination at the age of 17-18
years showed that the frequency of
plaques among the in utero group in-
creased as the dose increased. Uncer-
tainty about the dosimetry when the study
was made in 1968 prevented a comparison
between Hiroshima and Nagasaki from
being made. None of the subjects had im-
paired vision due to the plaques, and none
had true cataracts.

The Future

The effects of exposure on the health
of persons exposed in utero are continu-
ously in need of reevaluation. The fre-
quency of neoplasia will be of primary
interest. Presumably the same cancers
that have occurred with increased fre-
quency in older cohorts of atomic-bomb
survivors will occur excessively among
those exposed in utero. Rates similar to
those of older cohorts, will not support
the claim that intrauterine exposure to di-
agnostic radiation increases the frequency
of cancer in childhood.

Effects on intelligence of the group ex-
posed at 8-15 weeks of gestational age
need to be evaluated to determine if
deficiencies less than severe mental re-
tardation can be defined. The Koga
intelligence test results from 1955 need
follow-up by more sophisticated contem-
porary test procedures. If possible, new
diagnostic imaging techniques should be
performed on persons with severe mental

PRENATAL EFFECTS 99

retardation to determine if abnormalities
occurred in accord with the current ex-
planation for radiation-induced mental
deficiency based on animal experimen-
tation.

Head circumference, a most sensitive
measure of an intrauterine radiation ef-
fect, is of great interest with regard to the
exposure at Chernobyl. As yet the Sovi-
ets, who presumably made these mea-
surements, have not made public their
findings. If the dose was large enough
(10-19 cGy) to compare with the findings
in Hiroshima, and no effect was found in
the Soviet Union, current standards for
radiological exposure of the embryo or
fetus will have to be reconsidered. A pos-
sible implication of a difference between
the two studies is that other environmen-
tal circumstances in Hiroshima from the
bomb or war combine with radiation ex-
posure to produce an effect different from
that in a medical radiology unit.

The study made in 1968* that showed
chromosomal abnormalities even after
first trimester exposure to the atomic
bomb needs to be reevaluated using con-
temporary techniques. A wide array of
other observations, too numerous to men-
tion here, would also be informative as
the in utero cohort moves through its full
life-span.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 101-116, June 1988

Carcinogenic Effects of
Nuclear Radiation

Gilbert W. Beebe, Ph.D.

Clinical Epidemiology Branch, National Cancer Institute,
Bethesda, MD 20892

ABSTRACT

The expanding knowledge base for radiation carcinogenesis derives from an extensive

experimental effort and increasing attention to the importance of human epidemiologic
studies. The relation between dose and carcinogenic risk is described by means of math-
ematical models without which low-dose estimates would be impractical. Aspects of the
exposure situation that influence the dose-specific risk of cancer include dose-rate and
fractionation, and the quality of the radiation. Organs and tissues vary widely in their
susceptibility to the carcinogenic force of ionizing radiation, apparently without relation
to natural incidence. The carcinogenic risk per unit of exposure also depends on a variety
of host factors of which age at exposure is the most influential. Others include sex, race,
genetic characteristics and, for breast cancer, reproductive history. Time after exposure
dominates expression of radiogenic cancers. Typically there is a minimal latent period for
a given type of radiation and site of cancer and a period of expression that may be modelled
as a wave function for leukemia and as some multiple of natural incidence for most solid
tumors. Although the evidence is limited there are a number of environmental influences
and characteristics of lifestyle that may also affect the likelihood of cancer following

exposure to ionizing radiation.

Introduction

Although ionizing radiation is capable
of producing many, if not most, forms of
cancer in man, there is no unique type
of cancer so produced, and radiogenic
cancers cannot be distinguished from
normally occurring cancer of different
etiology. The absence of a marker iden-
tifying the cancer as radiogenic forces in-
vestigators to employ statistical methods
to determine whether a particular expe-
rience may have given rise to an excess
that may be considered radiogenic.

Information on the carcinogenic effects

101

of exposures to ionizing radiation is ob-
tained from both experimental and ob-
servational studies. Experimental work
involves chiefly mice, rats, dogs, and
mammalian cells. Although the quanti-
tative aspects obtained through animal
experimentation may not be directly
transferable to man, there is so much sim-
ilarity between man and other mammals
with respect to cancer that experimental
research has made a great contribution to
the understanding of radiation carcino-
genesis in man.

The necessarily observational human
studies are built on diagnostic and ther-

102 GILBERT W. BEEBE

apeutic exposures, occupational expo-
sures, the bombing of Hiroshima and Na-
gasaki, fallout from nuclear weapons
tests, and differences in natural back-
ground levels. Although the methods
used in these studies may mimic those em-
ployed in experimental work, there is a
vast difference between them in the de-
gree of control exercised by the investi-
gator over the material. In consequence,
no single study of radiation carcinogenesis
in man can be taken as definitive, and
knowledge in the field grows only as dif-
ferent investigators gradually reach the
same or similar conclusions.

The literature on radiation carcinogen-
esis is continually being reviewed by
expert committees, especially those of
the United Nations, the International
Commission on Radiological Protection
(ICRP), the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), the National Council on
Radiation Protection and Measurements
of the U.S. (NCRP), as well as other na-
tional and international bodies. The ma-
jor reports that are current, and major
updates in process, include:

UN, Scientific Committee on the Ef-
fects of Atomic Radiation, 1977 (up-
date expected in 1988)

ICRP, Recommendations, ICRP 26,
1977

NAS, Committee on the Biological Ef-
fects of Ionizing Radiation: 1980
BEIR Il report on low-dose expo-
sure (update in work); 1987 BEIR IV
report on alpha radiation

NCRP, Recommendations, Report 91,
1987 and other more specialized re-
ports, e.g., Report 88 on radon, 1986

The relationship between exposure to
ionizing radiation and cancer is not simply
that the risk depends on dose. It also de-
pends on other characteristics of the ex-
posure, e.g., the dose-rate and the type
of radiation, on various characteristics of
the exposed subjects, on the organs ex-
posed, on time after exposure, and on
Other risk factors that may be present in
the environment or in the lifestyle of
those exposed.

Characteristics of Exposure

How the carcinogenic response de-
pends on dose is fundamental for predic-
tion, and thus for radiation protection,
and of some theoretical interest in regard
to the nature of the carcinogenic process.
Dose-response models have been pro-
posed on the basis of microdosimetric
considerations, but the response is prob-
ably determined by far more than the in-
itial biophysical events.' Nevertheless,
biophysical considerations have served to
rationalize the use of linear and linear-
quadratic equations that do fit much of
both the experimental and the human
data on dose-response. In addition, the
frequent observation in mammalian ex-
periments of a downturn in the dose-re-
sponse curve at high doses has led to a
general belief that cell-killing may be re-
sponsible. Figure 1, taken from the BEIR
III report,’ displays in the upper left-hand
panel a general linear-quadratic model of
dose-response modified by an exponen-
tial term to bring the curve down in the
high-dose region. The other panels con-
tain curves formed by dropping one or
more terms from the general model.
These models are especially important for
low linear-energy-transfer (LET), low-
dose risk estimation because low-dose
risks are usually too small to be observed
directly and must be estimated from an
equation fitted to the relevant human
data.

A crucial issue, not yet fully resolved,
is whether there may not be a threshold
dose below which the risk of at least some
forms of cancer disappears. For some ef-
fects, e.g., sterility and cataracts, thresh-
olds seem well established, but for cancer
this is not the case and it is generally as-
sumed, especially for purposes of radia-
tion protection, that there is no threshold
for cancer. Human data that suggest the
possibility of thresholds for certain forms
of cancer following particular types of ra-
diation include the absence of skin cancer
in heavily pigmented skin? and the ab-
sence of bone cancer following exposure

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 103

general form

cell killing
attenuates F(D)

Incidence

Dose, D

= 2
F(D) = a + a,D
quadratic

Incidence

Dose, D

F(D) = (a, +a,D +a,D7)exp(-6, D -6,07)

@

1S)

Ss

eS)

ne)

rs)

£

Dose, D
a3 2

F(D) =Q +a,D +a,D
linear - quadratic

i: 5)

oO

Cc

®

ne)

cE,

iS

Dose, D

Fig. 1. Alternative Dose-response Curves. Source: BEIR III Report

to low-LET radiation except in the high-
dose range.* There must be negligibly
small doses in the sense than any risk they
may entail is quite small in relation to
everyday risks assumed by most people
without a second thought but, because
both cancer and nuclear weapons are
greatly feared, it is difficult for many to
calibrate the risks from exposure to ion-
izing radiation. Many people fail to un-
derstand that they are exposed to ionizing
radiation throughout life from cosmic and
terrestrial sources, and even from radio-
isotopes within the body. The average ex-
posure of about 0.002 Sv (0.2 rem) per
year, or 0.15 Sv (15 rem) per lifetime is
well within the range that many people

anguish over and for which damage suits
are brought against the Federal Govern-
ment by people with cancer.

The lowest doses at which radiogenic
cancers have been demonstrated statisti-
cally are 0.09 Gy (9 rad) to the thyroid
gland in the Israeli tinea capitis series,*
under 0.15 Gy (15 rad) to the breast in
the Japanese A-bomb survivors? and, al-
though this is less certain, a few rad to
the fetus in large studies of x-ray exposure
of the fetus during pelvimetry.*’ Upton
has recently summarized the experimen-
tal evidence against the existence of a
threshold dose for radiation carcinogen-
esis.* }

There are many studies of the effects

104 GILBERT W. BEEBE

of exposure in the low-dose range, studies
undertaken for scientific, public health,
or even political, reasons but, apart from
the exceptions noted above, they have all
failed to provide any firm basis for direct
estimates of the risk at low doses.’~”
Their necessarily inconclusive nature has,
however, fueled the considerable contro-
versy over the magnitude of that risk.
The most recent systematic compilation
of risk estimates for radiogenic cancer ap-
pears in the NIH report on the probability
of causation,’ from which Table 1 is an
excerpt for cancers of particular concern.
Note that these are linear absolute risk
coefficients per 100,000 persons per year
per 0.01 Gy (1 rad) suitable for calcula-
tions of cancer incidence following low-
dose exposure. The rates that were ex-
cerpted all happen to have been up-dated
from the 1980 NAS BEIR III report but
others, not shown, were taken directly
from that report.’ All are linear coeffi-
cients; even when the linear-quadratic

dose response model is considered more
suitable than the linear model, it is only
the linear coefficient of the linear-quad-
ratic equation that is used for low doses.
For some sites and ages at exposure
within sites the NIH Working Group was
unable to provide estimates. Note that it
is only for the breast and the thyroid gland
that the linear model was used in Table 1
and in the source table.

To the extent that risk coefficients have
been based on the experience of the A-
bomb survivors they will change as a re-
sult of the joint US-Japan effort to revise
the applicable dosimetry.*’ The magni-
tude of the changes has become evident
in recent months for leukemia and for all
cancers combined except leukemia.”
Figure 2 presents dose-response curves
for leukemia contrasting the old (T-65D)
and the new (DS86) dosimetries. The sec-
ond T-65D curve for the DS86 cohort is
included to show that the reduction in the
original cohort necessitated by the lack of

Table 1.—Absolute Excess Cancer Incidence per 100,000 Persons per Year per Rad (Organ Dose), at
Low Levels of Low-LET Radiation, by Site, Sex and Exposure Age, Averaged over the Specified Follow-

up Period.

Exposure Years*
Site Age Follow-up

Leukemia 0-9 5-26
(all types 10-19 5-26
except CLL) 20-34 5-26
35-49 5-26
50+ 5-26
Lung 10-19 10=—33
20-34 10-33
35-49 10-33
50+ 10-33
Breast 0-9 10-35
10-19 10-35
20-29 10-35
30-39 10-35
40-49 10-35
50+ 10-35
Thyroid 0-9 10-34
10-19 10-34
20-34 10-34
35-49 10-34
50+ 10-34

Sex
Dose-response Model M FE
Linear-Quadratic MS .110
.0854 .0543
.0846 .0538
105 .0670
.156 .0990
Linear-Quadratic .030 .030
056 .056
086 .086
120 .120
Linear —_ 38
— .76
— .49
— .49
— HL)
— .08
Linear lS 50
tS) 50
105 15
05 15
.05 tS

“Observed years over which risk was averaged to produce the risk coefficients shown.

Source: Rall et al.”°

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 105

20.

Excess Deaths/10% py

Die esn va rs
Dose Equivalent (RBE=10) to Bone Marrow (Sv)

—S

3 4. 5. 6.

Fig. 2. Excess Leukemia Deaths per 10* Person- Years (PY), A-bomb Survivors, 1950-1985, by Dose-

Equivalent, DS86 vs. T-65D.
Source: Preston and Pierce.”

DS86 estimates for some members of the
cohort has little effect on the dose-re-
sponse curve. These curves are based on
the dose equivalent to bone marrow with
the quality factor for fast neutrons set at
10. The overall effect of the adoption of
DS86 doses is to increase the linear ab-
solute risk estimate for leukemia by an
average of 80 percent. Figure 3 provides
parallel curves for all cancers except leu-
kemia, but on a relative risk scale. Be-
cause individual doses had not yet been
re-calculated for all organs under the
DS86 system, the dose to the large intes-
tine was used as a surrogate for the others.
The average increase in risk on this basis
is about 30 percent. If the quality factor
for fast neutrons were set at 20, a value
now recommended by the NCRP,”™ the
average increases in linear risk coeffi-

cients above the T-65D estimates would
be 136 percent for leukemia and 72 per-
cent for all solid tumors combined. Those
who may have been using risk estimates
from the A-Bomb experience expressed
in terms of rads, 1.e., with an implicit
RBE of 1, will see less change in the risk
coefficients, the increase for leukemia
being about 18 percent and that for all
other cancers combined, —3 percent (22).

In experimental work the rate at which
radiation is delivered to target tissue has
a major effect on the resulting yield of
tumor.” The 1980 NCRP report on the
effects of dose-rate on the carcinogenic
effect of low-LET radiation recommends
that low-dose estimates based on linear
dose-response equations fitted to largely
high-dose observations be divided by a
factor between 2 and 10.” The carcino-

106 GILBERT W. BEEBE

2.
Tele
3
oa
@)
=
2 1.
(oS)
om
4
(S)
x
Ww Os
0.
0. 1. 2.

= DS&6

=o =.1650
----- T650, OS86 Subcohort

3. 4, 5.

Dose Equivalert (RBE=10) to Large Intestine (Sv)

Fig. 3. Excess Relative Risk of Death from All Cancers except Leukemia, A-bomb Survivors, 1950-

1985, by Dose-Equivalent, DS86 vs. T-65D.
Source: Preston and Pierce.”

genic effect of exposure to high-LET ra-
diation is generally thought to be less
dependent on dose-rate than exposure to
low-LET radiation. Ullrich et al. have
shown, however, that the influence of
dose-rate on the effect of neutrons is
mixed, depending on the target tissue and
the size of the dose.*” Human data pro-
vide little evidence of a dose-rate effect,
although most non-medical exposure is of
the low dose-rate variety and some of the
medical exposure is fractionated. The
data on female breast cancer provide the
only substantial human evidence on the
dose-rate effect, for similar absolute risk
coefficients derive from the high dose-
rate experience of the A-bomb survivors,
the highly fractionated exposure of tu-
berculosis patients on collapsed lung ther-
apy monitored by an average of about 100

fluoroscopic examinations, and the lightly
fractionated exposure of mastitis patients
treated by x ray.*® Since the large differ-
ence in degree of fractionation of dose
between the latter two U.S. series is ac-
companied by little or no difference in
either absolute or relative risk, the fact
that the relative risk is very much higher
for the A-bomb survivors is of consider-
able interest but does not invalidate the
conclusion that the absolute risk of breast
cancer is insensitive to variation in dose-
rate. The high relative risk among A-
bomb survivors reflects the very much
lower breast cancer incidence of Japanese
women.

The apparently greater effect, per unit
of absorbed dose, of high-LET in com-
parison with low-LET radiation has been
amply demonstrated experimentally.”

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 107

Relative biological effectiveness (RBE)
ratios not uncommonly range well above
10 in experimental studies. Also, since
high-LET dose-response curves tend to-
ward linearity, while low-LET tend to-
ward curvilinearity, RBE ratios often
increase with decreasing dose. Human
data for estimating RBEs for neutrons are
lacking, now that the new DS86 dosimetry
for the A-bomb survivors has so down-
graded the neutron component of dose in
Hiroshima as to have effectively removed
the possibility of any realistic estimation
of the RBEs for neutrons on the basis of
Hiroshima-Nagasaki contrasts.” There
are both low-LET and high-LET data on
lung cancer, but the high-LET risk esti-
mates are in terms of Working-Level-
Months (WLM) and it is doubtful that
their conversion to estimates per rad of
alpha radiation to lung tissue is reliable
enough to produce trustworthy RBE es-
timates. Prevalent ideas about relative bi-
ological effectiveness ratios are illustrated
by the quality factors (Q) recommended
by the International Commission on Ra-
diological Protection (ICRP) in 1977:

X rayS, gamma rays and electrons 1

neutrons, protons 10

alpha particles 20
Further, as noted above, the Q factor for
neutrons is being reconsidered at the
present time and the NCRP has published
a recommendation that it be increased to
2074

Tissue Susceptibility

As was seen in Table 1, the absolute
risk coefficients for even the organs most
affected by radiation vary greatly. The
reasons for this apparent differential sen-
sitivity are not known and are little in-
vestigated. It is of more than passing
interest that the variation among the sites
for which estimates exist in no way par-
allels that for their normal incidence. Ta-
ble 2 contrasts BEIR III average sex- and

site-specific risk coefficients and average
U.S. incidence taken from the Third Na-
tional Survey by the National Cancer
Institute.*! Only for male lung cancer
and female breast cancer are high risk
coefficients matched by high incidence
rates.

Differentials in tissue _ sensitivity
can be demonstrated in comparisons of
absolute risk, as in Table 1, where the
risk coefficients for both breast and
thyroid cancer are well in excess of those
for leukemia, or in comparisons of rela-
tive risk where the risk coefficient for
leukemia is well above those for breast
and thyroid cancer. Thus the judgment
as to differential sensitivity will some-
times depend on the definition of the
measure of risk.

Omitted from the usual lists of sus-
ceptible organs are brain and ovary
for both of which there is now evidence
of some sensitivity to the carcinogenic
action of ionizing radiation. Multiple
myeloma occupies an uncertain posi-
tion among the radiogenic cancers,”
as do the lymphomas for which the
NIH Working Group found insufficient
data upon which to base risk estimates.
Skin cancer has long been known to be
radiogenic but the NIH Group also
found insufficient quantitative data for
risk estimation. If skin cancer could
have been included in Table 2 it also would
have been a marked deviant, with a
high natural incidence and a low risk
coefficient.

Cancers of a given organ are gen-
erally described in terms of their cellular
origin. Only for leukemia are there
reasonably adequate data on the risk
by cell type, and it is notable that one
form of leukemia, common at older
ages, seems definitely not to be respon-
sive to radiation, namely, chronic
lymphocytic leukemia. Other forms of can-
cer that have not been found to be asso-
ciated with radiation exposure include
prostate, uterus, and small intestine.
Nevertheless, it is generally suspected
that, given sufficient dose, any form of

108

GILBERT W. BEEBE

Table 2.— Average Linear Risk Coefficients for Various Forms of Cancer Induced by Low-LET Radiation

and Average U.S. Incidence Rates, by Sex.

Male Female

Type of Cancer Coefficient* Incidencet Coefficient* Incidence+
Leukemia** Syl Bil 2.0 sh
Thyroid 2 i 5.8 .50
Breast — — 5.8 7.4
Lung 3.6 2 39 1.4
Esophagus eS) “oi/ 3 .16
Stomach 5) MS) Llei/ .70
Intestine 1.0 S22 a 4.0
Liver 1) 133 a 14
Pancreas s) 12 1.0 7S
Urinary organs 8 372 BS) 1.0
Lymphoma 65) Iba 3 AE
Other Ms) 32 1.6 OG
All sites 1529 4.7 Dat 27.0

*Excess incident cases per million persons per rad per year, age adjusted, from BEIR III report.’
+Cases per 10,000 per year, age adjusted, from NCI survey.”

**Except chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

human cancer might be produced by ir-
radiation.

Host Characteristics

Age at exposure and sex are both
associated with differentials in risk esti-
mates, but there is a paucity of infor-
mation on the influence of other host fac-
tors, e.g., genetic constitution, immune
competence, and hormone status, that
might be expected to affect the risk of
radiogenic cancer. Age at exposure exerts
a particularly strong influence on average
risk coefficients, as may be seen in Table
1. Those coefficients were calculated after
excluding the first 5 or 10 years after ex-
posure in recognition of the length of the
minimal latent period. Since age at ex-
posure apparently determines the mini-
mal latent period before the radiogenic
cancers first appear (Figure 4), generally
at about the age when cancers normally
begin to appear, the age-specific coeffi-
cients in Table 1 carry both the influence
of the length of the minimal latent period
and the intrinsic effect of age at exposure

on risk. At a given age at death, as in
Table 3, groups exposed at younger ages
tend to have higher risk coefficients than
older groups once the age is reached at
which cancer normally appears.

For both leukemia and thyroid cancer
there are significant sex differences in ab-
solute measures of risk, males having the
higher risk for leukemia and females for
thyroid cancer. These sex differences tend
to disappear, however, when relative
measures of risk are calculated.

Race has not seemed to be an impor-
tant factor in the carcinogenic response
to radiation. The fact that Blacks in the
New York University tinea capitis series
did not suffer from skin cancer, while
those with fair skin had a marked excess,
especially in areas of the skin exposed to
sunlight, suggests that ionizing radiation
and ultra violet radiation interact to pro-
duce skin cancer in those whose skin is
sensitive to ultra violet radiation.* The
failure to find excess skin cancer among
Japanese A-bomb survivors in the careful
dermatologic survey in 1964-1966 may
not depend on degree of pigmentation of
the skin, for skin cancer has been re-
ported following medical irradiation in Ja-

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 109

| AGE ATBO9
ie)

| 10-19 |
ie)

20-34

30 35-49

50 +

CUMULATIVE DEATH RATE / 1000

60 0-9 RAD
100+ RAD

1960

1970 1978

YEAR OF DEATH

Fig. 4. Cumulative Deaths from Lung Cancer per 1,000 A-bomb Survivors 1950-1978, by Age in

1945 (ATB), Year of Death, and T-65 Dose.
Source: Kato and Schull.*

pan.** It may be explained in part by the
apparently long minimal latent period for
radiogenic skin cancer or, perhaps, by a
higher threshold for radiogenic skin can-
cer among the Japanese.

Certain genetic diseases, especially the
nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome and
hereditary retinoblastoma, are known to
predispose to radiation-induced cancer.

According to the two-stage model of
Knudson it is possible for the first, initi-
ating, event to be an inherited defect and
the second, promoting step, exposure to
radiation.»

Maternal history of breast cancer and
numerous inter-related characteristics of
the reproductive history have been shown
to influence the risk of breast cancer.

110

GILBERT W. BEEBE

Table 3.—Absolute Risk* by Age in 1945, A-bomb Survivors, 1950-1978 by Type of Cancer and Age

at Death.
Age at Death
Age in 1945 <30 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70+
(a) All cancer except leukemia
<10 1:22 4.35 13.41 — — os
10-19 — NZ 4.62 20.69 — —
20-34 — — 1.01 VS 10.25 —
35-49 — — — — 0.96 2.09 12.67
50+ — — — — JNehailh
(b) Stomach cancer
<10 0.18 0.40 13.84 — — —
10-19 — 0.57 0.47 5.05 —- —
20-34 — — eS 2.06 TEST
35-49 — — — = 12 — 0.08 6.15
50+ — = = = 8.82
(c) Breast cancer
<10 — —0.02 — — —_ —
10-19 — 0.80 1.16 —a _ —
20-34 —- — = (OL ls) gal) 4.49 a=
35-49 a — — — 0.08 — 0.10 — 0.34
50+ — — — — 0.38
(d) Lung cancer
<10 — —0.01 — 0.45 — — —
10-19 -— — 0.02 0.96 7.48 — —
20-34 a — = (0,23 Noe} 3.34 —
35-49 — — — 0.59 oll) 4.72
50+ 0.29

*Excess deaths per million persons per year per rad.

Source: Kato & Schull.*!

Although these factors have not been
extensively studied in relation to the
risk of radiogenic breast cancer, in at
least two independent studies there are
indications that nulliparous women and
those with delayed parity have a higher
risk of radiogenic cancer per unit of
exposure than do other women.”
That hormonal factors influence the risk
of radiogenic mammary cancer in exper-
imental animals has been shown in a num-
ber of studies.°’

Time-Response

The temporal distribution of radiogenic
cancers is a matter of considerable prac-
tical interest and possible significance for
a deeper understanding of the mecha-

nisms of radiation carcinogenesis. There
is, first, a latent period following exposure
before expression begins. This has been
reasonably well determined for leukemia
following low-LET irradiation, and for
bone cancer induced by Ra-224, as two
to four years.””? Following alpha irradia-
tion from the administration of Thoro-
trast, however, the minimal latent period
for leukemia is longer, 5—8 years.*®“? For
hepatic angiosarcoma following the ad-
ministration of Thorotrast the minimal
latent period, based on a compilation of
several series, is about 16 years in com-
parison with 9 years following initial
exposure to vinyl chloride.“” The NIH
Working Group modelled the latent pe-
riod for solid tumors on the assumption
that excess cancer begins 5 years after ex-
posure and in terms of relative risk is fully
expressed by 10 years after.

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 111

The duration of expression is clearly
much shorter for leukemia than for the
solid tumors. Although it is difficult to
specify the point in time at which the ex-
cess reaches zero, observations on A-
bomb survivors indicate that the duration
of the leukemogenic response depends on
age at exposure, with younger members
of the study cohort showing no excess
after about 20 years after the bombing,
and older survivors showing a slight ex-
cess even 30-35 years after exposure.”

Since no large cohort has been followed
to extinction there is some uncertainty
about the length of the period of expres-
sion for solid tumors other than bone. The
latest report on the British ankylosing
spondylitis series has a substantial expe-
rience more than 35 years after treatment,
75 deaths having been observed for all
causes vs. 66 expected at average national
rates, but for all neoplasms combined
there is no indication of an excess (14 ob-
served vs. 17.4 expected). In the previous
5 years there were 68 observed vs. 57.6
expected, an_ insignificant excess.”
Among the A-bomb survivors, on the
other hand, survivors exposed to 100 or
more rad (T-65D kerma) had 102 deaths
from cancers other than leukemia vs. 63.8
expected in the 30-33 year interval after
1945, a highly significant excess.*! For the
34—37 year follow-up interval parallel fig-
ures are not provided in the latest report,
but it is clear that the excess continued to
be a statistically significant one.* In the
large international study of second can-
cers among women treated for cervical
cancer the radiogenic excess is stronger
at 30+ years after treatment than ever
before.”

At present the investigation of time-
response centers on the overall pattern of
expression. The early experience of both
the A-bomb survivors and the British an-
kylosing spondylitis patients revealed that
radiogenic leukemia is expressed in a
wave pattern, with a peak 6-8 years after
exposure of the A-bomb survivors and
2.5—5 years for the ankylosing spondylitis
patients. The NIH Working Group mod-

elled the combined experience of the two
series for chronic granulocytic leukemia,
acute leukemias of all types, and all leu-
kemias combined except chronic lympho-
cytic leukemia. Figure 5 exhibits its time-
response model for acute leukemia by age
at exposure.

In an early paper on breast cancer
among A-bomb survivors McGregor et al.
showed that the radiogenic excess is dis-
tributed over time in accordance with the
age-specific pattern usual for this tumor
in Japan.* This was followed by a paper
by Land and Norman in which it was
shown that radiogenic tumors of both
breast and lung track natural incidence
over time.* These developments led to
the use of the “relative risk projection
model” of the BEIR III Committee and
its use of both an absolute and a relative
risk model to predict the radiogenic ex-
cess beyond the period of actual obser-
vation, as in making lifetime estimates.’

In the 1950-1978 report on the mor-
tality of A-bomb survivors Kato and
Schull compared absolute vs. relative risk
estimates over time within age-at-expo-
sure groups (Table 4). This material has
given considerable support to the hypoth-
esis of a constant relative risk time-re-
sponse function, 1.e., a multiplicative risk
model. It is by no means established,
however, that a relative risk model need
employ a constant ratio of radiogenic risk
to natural risk. In the 1950-1982 report
on the mortality of A-bomb survivors it
is observed that relative risks have de-
clined over the interval 1959-1982, but
not to a significant extent.* More impor-
tant is the conclusion of the BEIR IV
Committee that the data from the various
series of underground miners fit best a
relative risk model that declines with ad-
vancing attained age, first at age 55 and
again at age 65.*’

Other Risk Modifiers

Epidemiologists have not wanted to
overlook important interactions between

112 GILBERT W. BEEBE

.15
)
.1125
=
< .075 | 20
=
.0375

SS z
- LS

O') er) 10

15 20 25 30 35 40 45 &

Time Y in Years Following Exposure

Fig. 5. Fitted Time to Tumor Model for Acute Leukemia Induced by Brief Exposure to Ionizing
Radiation at Age A,. T(A,,Y) is the probability of diagnosis within one year after time T. Lines within

the graph represent the indicated ages at exposure.

Source: Rall et al.”°

radiation and other risk factors for cancer
but have mainly focused on smoking in
relation to lung cancer, perhaps prompted
by the example of asbestos and smoking
and by the high prevalence of cigarette-
smoking. Unfortunately the human data
are not yet sufficiently robust to deter-
mine the role of even smoking when com-
bined with exposure to radiation. Studies
of lung cancer among the A-bomb sur-
vivors suggest that the risks may be addi-
tive** but those on underground miners
have been interpreted as supportive of a
multiplicative interaction.*””

There may in time be a great deal more
information about interactions between
radiation therapy and chemotherapy for
cancer from the follow-up studies de-
signed to estimate the risk of second
primary tumors, but at present such in-
formation is very fragmentary and pro-
vides little insight into the way in which
chemotherapeutic agents and radiation
therapy combine to enhance the risk of
second tumors.

Investigators at the Radiation Effects
Research Foundation (formerly the
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission)

RADIATION CARCINOGENESIS 113

Table 4.—Comparison of Absolute* and Relative+ Risk Estimates by Age at Exposure and Age at
Death, All Cancer except Leukemia, A-bomb Survivors, 1950-1978.

Age, in Type of
1945 Coefficient <30 30-39
0-9 Relative 1 Kya 5.0
Absolute 1.2 4.4
10-19 Relative 1.0 25
Absolute 1:7
20-34 Relative — 1.8
Absolute —
35-49 Relative oo —
Absolute — a
50+ Relative — —
Absolute — =

*Excess deaths per million per year per rad.
7100+ rad vs. 0 rad.
Source: Kato and Schull.*!

have collected a great deal of information
on variables of epidemiologic interest in
addition to radiation and the obvious
demographic characteristics, e.g., on diet
and socioeconomic factors, but thus far
no environmental or lifestyle factor has
appeared to interact with radiation so as
to yield a risk greater than the sum of the
risks normally attributed to the two fac-
tors acting independently. For example,
Kato, in a recent review, reported that,
although the risk of breast cancer in-
creased with increasing socioeconomic
status, there was no evidence of interac-
tion.”

The most significant data in the epi-
demiology literature concern the relation
between ultra-violet radiation (UVR) and
ionizing radiation in inducing skin cancer.
The New York University tinea capitis se-
ries not only has an excess of skin cancer
among Whites and not in Blacks, but its
distribution over the scalp, face, and neck
is clearly related to the intensity of ex-
posure to UVR.’ The investigators be-
lieve their findings suggest that UVR
exposure levels, or sensitivity to such ex-
posure, interact with ionizing radiation in
causing skin cancer among Whites. Anal-
ysis of the number of tumors per person
suggested that there were subgroups of
more and less susceptible individuals.’

Age at Death

40-49 50-59 60-69 70+
6.8 = — —
13.4 — — —
2.4 8.2 — —
4.6 20.7 — —
2) 2.0 1.6 —
1.0 8.0 10.2
Iba | ES) 1.4
= Aled) 21 12.7
— 2.2 1.0 1.4
= == == 18.3

Experimental investigators have paid
considerable attention to the combined
effects of ionizing radiation and other
agents, especially chemicals, and have
identified agents that may reduce, as well
as agents that may enhance, the carcin-
Ogenic potential of ionizing radiation.*’

Summary

An extensive experimental effort, cou-
pled with growing epidemiological at-
tention to radiation carcinogenesis, has
created a large body of mainly descriptive
information on the risk of cancer follow-
ing exposure to ionizing radiation. A
general outline of the relationship of ra-
diation dose to the likelihood of cancer is
well established, but empirical informa-
tion is weak at the low-dose levels because
the risks themselves are evidently so low;
in general, estimates for the low-dose re-
gion can be made only by fitting simple
mathematical models to data covering a
range of dose that reaches into its higher
levels.

In addition to dose other major factors
influencing the magnitude of the risk of
cancer include the target organ, age at
exposure, and time after exposure. This

114

is an area of active investigation that ex-
tends to host factors, elements of lifestyle,
and environmental factors. The biologic
basis for the highly variable sensitivity of
various organs and tissues, apparently un-
correlated with natural incidence, awaits
explication through more fundamental
biologic knowledge.
There are several notable gaps and un-
certainties in present knowledge:
@ the magnitude of risk from low doses
@ the effect of I-131 on the thyroid
gland
® the RBE for fast neutrons
@ whether fetal bone marrow is much
more sensitive than that of infants
and young children
Major problems impeding the accu-
mulation of knowledge on radiation car-
cinogenesis include:
® limitations on the application of ex-
perimental findings to man
@ lack of any specific marker identi-
fying the cancer of an individual as
radiogenic
® paucity of human radiogenic cancers
in even the largest series, in the light
of the complex relationships requir-
ing exploration
@ practical difficulties of combining da-
tasets from different studies
Finally, there are powerful influences
in the scientific community attempting to
achieve consensus as the information on
radiation carcinogenesis expands. Na-
tional and international bodies of experts,
stimulated in part by concerns about ra-
diation protection, periodically synthesize
the literature and, on occasion, re-analyse
the larger series in combined fashion so
as to achieve new integrations of existing
data.

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 117-121, June 1988

Genetic Effects of
Nuclear Radiation

Seymour Abrahamson

Dept. of Zoology
University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI 53706

When we consider genetic disorders,
our concern lies specifically with the off-
spring of the exposed parents and their
descendants. Once a newly introduced ge-
netic change enters the germline of either
parent it is subject to various selective
forces such that the germ cell itself may
be killed, or be less able to produce prog-
eny cells or complete the maturation di-
visions required to transform it into a
functional sperm or egg. Given that a suc-
cessful fertilization has occurred the
newly formed zygote is again subject to
selective forces that may prevent success-
ful gestation, usually the genetic imbal-
ance leading to early abortion has caused
such severe physical and or physiological
abnormality that embryological or fetal
development could not be sustained. Such
disorders may well occur in at least 15%
and probably closer to 35—40% of all con-
ceptions normally. In other words nearly
one out of every two conceptions are be-
lieved to be spontaneously aborted, most
of these in the early stages of pregnancy
and many go unrecognized. The next
stage at which selection occurs is in the
new born, and as the major infectious dis-
ease have been successfully eliminated we

117

learn that the residue of neonatal deaths,
about 1% of all live births, die from pre-
dominantly genetic or developmental ab-
normalities. Recent studies carried out in
Canada have shown that genetic disorders
account for the major portion of pediatric
hospital stays through the first five years
of life.

What is not generally realized by the
public is that the current incidence of ge-
netic disease in the live born population
is estimated to be about 10% and is prob-
ably likely to rise as modern diagnostic
tools continue to elaborate the previously
unsuspected genetic involvement in a va-
riety of diseases. We have used the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences report on the
effects of low level radiation on popu-
lations as one of the major reference
sources. In addition The Nuclear Regu-
latory Commission report Nureg/cr-4214
Health Effects Model for Nuclear Power
Plant Accident Consequence Analysis
and the Department of Energy report on
Health and Environmental Consequences
of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Accident, 1987 served as major sources
of information for the estimates pre-
sented.

118 S. ABRAHAMSON

Table 1—Numbers of Naturally Occuring and Radiation-Induced Genetic Disorders In a Population of
One Million, According to the BEIR III Report Analysis to the Present Analysis, Assumes a 0.01 GY

dose.
This Study
BEIR III Report? (Central Estimates)°
Type of Normal’ First All First All
Disorder Incidence Generation Generations Generation Generations
Single-gene 4800 3-30 20-100
Autosomal 15 70
Dominant
X-Linked 4 20
Irregularly 43200 — 10-400 70
Inherited
Chromosome 2880 <5) 5
Aberrations
Aneuploidy 4 5
Unbalanced 6 8
Translocations
TOTALS 50900 — — 30 175

“For a total population of 10° persons (16,000 live births per year) for 30 years (480,000 live births).
’ Cases expected in each generation of children from a population of 10° persons each receiving a dose
of 0.01 Gy. Assume 30 year intergenerational interval and birthrate of 16,000 per year per 10° persons,

or 480,000 children per generation.

Broadly speaking we may classify ge-
netic diseases into three bins; (Table 1)
the first or monogenic disease, contains
those resulting from the action of a de-
fective gene as in the case of the dominant
gene disorders, Huntington’s chorea is an
example, and the sex-linked disorders for
example muscular dystrophy; or when
both members of a pair of genes are de-
fective in the case of recessive disorders
such as sickle cell anemia. About 1% of
all liveborn will suffer from these forms
of diseases.

The second broad class of diseases in-
volve changes in chromosome structure or
number. In the former case the organi-
zation of one or more chromosomes of
the set (23 chromosomes from each par-
ent) may be altered such that large seg-
ments involving blocks of genes may be
deleted, inverted, or reshuffled, so to
speak, either within the same chromo-
some or between two different chromo-
somes (this is known as a translocation).

All of these chromosomes derangements
can lead to a wide range of genetic ab-
normalities in liveborn and may constitute
a substantial portion of the abortus class.
Numerical changes are more commonly
known to the public. Down syndrome ts
the most famous example of this group,
in which the child suffers both physical
and mental deficiencies resulting from 47
instead of the normal 46 chromosomes.
In this case chromosome number 21 is
present three times. This particular dis-
ease is among the most common genetic
disorders in the human population, about
one in seven hundred live births are
Down’s children; and as is well known the
frequency of the disease increases with
the age of the mother, quite markedly
after age 30. Some of the disorders as-
sociated with trisomies of other chromo-
somes are even more devastating to the
health of the newborn and usually cause
death within the first years of life. Many
of the trisomies and the flip side, mono-

GENETIC EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR RADIATION 119

somies, where a complete chromosome is
missing, however, are so severe that they
contribute perhaps the largest component
to the abortus class. Collectively chro-
mosome aberrations of the types just
mentioned constitute about 0.6% of all
live births, based on the cytological anal-
yses of consecutive births in major re-
search centers in the world, with well over
50,000 newborns screened.

Finally the last category of genetic dis-
order is collectively known as the multi-
factorial class. As the name indicates
these diseases result from a complex in-
teraction of several to many different
genes and environmental factors. This un-
fortunately to date is the poorest under-
stood class with respect to mechanism.
And since this category is also the largest
class making up about 90% of all the ge-
netic ill health we presently document and
some will suggest even more, we are hard
pressed to make sound estimates of risk
with respect to mutagenic agents. Perhaps
the only bright spot in this vale of igno-
rance is the likelihood that the induction
of these events proceeds at a much lower
rate and apparently will have less impact
on offspring of the first several genera-
tions after parental exposure than do sin-
gle gene mutations and chromosome
aberrations, possibly providing the sci-
entific breathing room necessary to un-
ravel the host of factors involved in each
of these many disorders.

It may not have been apparent from
that which I have already said that not
all genetic diseases become apparent at
birth, in fact probably the majority begin
to phase in after childhood and some only
well after adulthood is reached. Though
there is still more thorough work to be
carried out I think it is fair to suggest that
the impact of genetic disease is such that
on average about 30 years of life expect-
ancy is lost per genetic disease, this esti-
mate also includes a component of disease
severity and years so impaired. I recog-
nize that years of life lost is a crude index
of personal pain, family anguish and so-
cietal cost; however, it does permit a

means of collectively weighing the diverse
health effects of cancer, teratology and
genetics. In terms of health effects it pro-
vides a better measure of the impact of
the diseases than does simply a listing of
cancer cases versus genetic disease cases
or developmental abnormalities resulting
from in utero injury.

When dealing with newly induced cases
of genetic disease it is customary to es-
tablish a baseline population, for example
one million people and a unit dose such
as one rem (.01 Sievert) and describe the
expected number of cases of each class.
For example a population of one million
persons composed of all age groups would
be expected to produce about 480,000 off-
spring in a thirty year period (one gen-
eration). About ten per cent of these
children would be expected to be genet-
ically abnormal from natural causes and
if this population had received an addi-
tional one rem exposure from a radiation
source such as a Chernoby] accident, then
among these 480,000 children in addition
to the approximately 48,000 naturally af-
fected children there would be approxi-
mately 20 children affected with dominant
or sex-linked disorders such as hypercho-
lesteremia, Huntington’s chorea, hemo-
philia, muscular dystrophy the latter two
are sex-linked and therefore would ap-
pear only in the male offspring of exposed
mothers. Some additional 10—12 children
might be affected with chromosomal de-
fects about one-half from numerical
changes and the remaining from struc-
tural unbalanced rearrangements. Thus
about 30 cases would be expected in the
first generation after an additional one
rem exposure to one million people. Since
the majority of the newly induced cases
will persist for no more than five to six
generations, calculations we have devel-
oped for the Nureg report suggest that
somewhat less than four times the cases
1.e. 120 additional cases will be distributed
over those five generations.

The frequencies of these diseases are
derived from experimental studies pri-
marily on mice and then extrapolated

120

S. ABRAHAMSON

Table 2.—Collective Dose Projections External Exposure

Population Ave. Individ.
Distance Size Dose Equiv. (Gy)
Pripyat 45 x 10° .033
3-15 km 24.2 x 10° 45
15-30 km 65.7 x 103 .053
Total 15 3< NC? x12. = 1.62 <0 2P-Gy
W. USSR 75 > 1e Tee MOR
E. USSR 400 x 10° 4.5, % 0s
Asia 2,350 x 10° 3 Xr lOse
Europe 450 x 10° 2 xs
USA DON xO? Biotec WJ
Total N. Hemisphere SHS) x 10? 4.92 xi 10a
using theoretical models based on_ be possible to refine our estimates even

experiments in a wide variety of animal,
plant material and human cell cultures. In
experimental test systems doses covering
a wide range of exposures delivered at
very low to very high dose rates have al-
lowed us to demonstrate the shape of the
dose response curve is a general phenom-
enon applicable to all animal and plant
forms studied to date.

Clearly there must be uncertainty in ex-
trapolating to humans in these situations,
we however believe that the central es-
timates as presented are probably accu-
rate to within a factor of three, that is to
say the true values are likely to be no
more than three times smaller or larger
than those we present. Of course as newer
information becomes available it should

further. It will be undoubtedly surprising
for the lay public to learn that the Japa-
nese A-bomb studies have to date pro-
vided no evidence for an increased
frequency of genetic disorders in the
offpsring of the exposed survivors who
compose the ongoing study group. I do
not mean to say that nothing was induced
but that the size of the studied group some
17,000 children in the exposed parents
sample and 35,000 in the unexposed
group and their respective received doses
were such that no more than 50-60 ad-
ditional cases of disorder was to be ex-
pected and therefore they would remain
undetectable relative to the natural oc-
curring level.

With respect to Chernobyl we have de-

Table 3.—Estimated Increase in Genetic Disorders Approximately 1st Generation

P-Gy x 10°
1986 Dose No.
Region Commitment Induced
Chernobyl 16 60
W. USSR 220 660
E. USSR 76 230
Asia 22 70
Europe 330 nt 1,000
USA 0.37 ~Il
Total N. Hemisphere 640 1,900 vs. 180 x 10° Spont.
Future Dose
Commitment <1000 <3200

Natural incidence assumed to be 10.7% of live births. Expect = 1.7 x 10° live births in next 30 years.

GENETIC EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR RADIATION 121

veloped global estimates on the impact of
the radiation release from the Russian re-
actor (Table 2) for the three major health
end points of concern namely cancer ge-
netics and teratological effects. As can be
seen in the (Table 3) the estimated num-
ber of induced genetic events will be lit-
erally swamped by the naturally occurring
ones such that it will be highly unlikely
that they can ever be detected. The ex-
ception to this statement may be a portion
of the Chernobyl population which re-
ceived an appreciable exposure of ap-
proximately 45 rem before evacuation.
This group of 22,400 people of the
135,000 in the region is the most likely
cohort to be followed for epidemiological
studies. With respect to other populations
the distribution of cases will be largest in
European Russia and Western Europe
but as shown in the table the number of
cases expected relative to the population
size is so small that it should go unde-
tected. Let me express this statement in
another way. Given that a child is born
over the next generation with any form
of newly arising genetic disease described
in the preceding discussion we can ask the
question: How likely was the radiation
from Chernobyl to have been a contrib-
utory cause? The answer for all popula-
tions outside of the Soviet Union is much
much less than one percent. Spontaneous
mutation or other events will contribute
over 99% the likely causation. Since for
Western Europe the exposure generally
amounts to an additional 100 millirem (.1
rem) it is equivalent to postponing repro-
duction by one year. For other parts of
the western hemisphere the probability of
causation from Chernobyl will be still
smaller than for Europe.

Summary

We have presented the major genetic
effects expected to be induced by high
energy radiation exposure over the next
five generations as well as the current nat-
ural incidence of those diseases. The es-
timated global distribution of doses were
given with the expected number of genetic
disorders resulting from the Chernobyl
nuclear accident. These estimates suggest
that it is extremely unlikely that the mi-
nute increases anticipated will be recog-
nized by any epidemiological studies
because they will be overwhelmed by the
natural incidence cases. The only excep-
tion to this may be in the high dose subset
of the Chernobyl population. We have
also presented calculations regarding the
probability of causation that radiation was
responsible for any genetically diseased
individual born subsequent to parental
exposure.

References Cited

NAS/NRC. 1980. “The Effects on Populations of
Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation.”
Report of the Committee on the Biological Ef-
fects of Ionizing Radiations (BEIR) Nat. Acad.
Sci, Nat. Acad. Press, Washington, DC.

NRC. 1985. Health Effects Model for Nuclear
Power Plant Accident Consequences Analysis.
NUREG/CR 4214. U.S. NRC Contractor Report
(SAND.85-7185). U.S. Gov't Print. Office,
Washington, DC.

1987. Health and Environmental Consequences of
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident.
DOE/ER-0332. NTIS. US Dept. of Commerce,
Virginia.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 122-124, June 1988

Round Table Discussion

Biomedical Issues

ELKIND: Mortimer Elkind, Colorado
State University. I have a question for Dr.
Beebe. I believe I understood correctly
that the new dosimetry at Hiroshima/
Nagasaki showed a marked departure
in incidence of leukemia as compared
to the old dosimetry, in particular a peak
ing at 300 rad, and for all other cancers
a similar effect, but perhaps not as dra-
matic.

Do you have any comments about the
change in the character of the curve, at
least for leukemia with dose, which ap-
pears to be coming out; secondly, if in
fact the quality factor for neutrons were
20 instead of 10, would that have any
bearing on the character of the curve and
in what way it would it be changed?

BEEBE: I think the full answer to that
is, I don’t know. I wished I did, but I
really don’t know.

PETERSON: Harold Peterson, U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I no-
ticed one of the things Dr. Abrahamson
showed as typical is that genetic effects
are depicted as per unit live birth. That,
of course, raises the possibility that there
is a component there that is lost and ob-
viously cannot be measured, which is the
transformations that are fatal in utero.
Has the reproductive capacity or the
fertility of the Japanese shown any in-
dication, perhaps of. a drop, because I
would suspect that was the only visible evi-
dence, that the birth rate might drop a
little.

ABRAHAMSON: In a sense, I am

122

going to shift that over to Bob Miller in
a moment, because Bob gave you some
data that showed earlier on that there
seemed to be a higher incidence in those
who were exposed early in gestation for
a drop in successful pregnancy. I know of
no data from Hiroshima/Nagasaki that
shows a signifcant increase in miscarriages
or stillbirths, having been looked at for
the multiple years.

My memory, if it is correct, says that
in a Neal and Shull publication back in
the early 1950s, there was, at first, an in-
dication of an increase in stillbirths, and
that disappeared with time.

Gil, you have much greater access to
the Hiroshima data than I do.

BEEBE: You remember that in the
early days, there was a difference in the
sex ratio, and that disappeared. But there
were Six or seven or eight measures of
genetic effects in the survivors of the
atomic bombs. It began with simple ob-
servations of the frequency of malfor-
mations or stillbirths, neonatal deaths,
body measurements, sex ratio, mortality
after birth, and finally biochemical ge-
netic studies. None of them show a de-
monstrable genetic effect among that
population.

ABRAHAMSON: Another phase of
the question I thought you were asking
is, since I have only been concerned about
genetic disorders among live born, you
might ask me whether or not I would pre-
dict there were induced abortis-type sit-
uations occurring, and clearly yes, there

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 123

can be quantitation for that as well. But
since you do not know when they are
dying within the first two, three, or four
weeks of gestation, most of them would
be in that first period, and they would go
unrecognized to a great extent.

MOSSMAN: Ken Mossman, George-
town University. Dr. Beebe alluded to
several studies, purportedly showing that
at low doses of radiation, one can dem-
onstrate cancer in the Israeli children and
in Alice Stewart’s studies. I am addressing
this to Dr. Puskin and the panel. In view
of the concern about Radon exposure, are
there similar studies which exist in which
environmental levels of radon are also as-
sociated primarily with lung cancer?

BEEBE: As far as I know, our data
line, the effect of radon in its quantitative
adequacy is coming from the studies of
underground miners, primarily uranium
miners. Others may know of information
I am not aware of, but I don’t know of
any environmental radon studies. Arthur,
do you?

UPTON: Dr. Puskin, do you want to
make a comment?

PUSKIN: There are a few studies that
have been done, but they are certainly not
definitive. In Sweden, there is an Island
which has fairly high radon levels in one
part of the island and not the other. A
comparison of the groups living in the
high-radon area and low-radon areas did
show an excess of lung cancer, which to
the first approximation is what you would
expect based on the uranium miner ex-
perience.

There has been a lot of concern about
the high levels in the Reading prong area
in Pennsylvania, and people have looked
for an excess of lung cancers in that area.
In fact, you do not see a high rate of lung
cancers in those counties as compared to
the country nationwide.

Very recently, Dr. Archer has looked
at this again, comparing the Reading
prong counties with neighboring counties
which had similar demographics and sim-
ilar age structure. He found that there was
an excess in the radon prong area. There

are all kinds of potential confounders, but
again to a first approximation, the excess
is about what you would expect. This is
still not shown definitively.

The biggest study underway is the one
being conducted under the auspices of the
Department of Energy, with Dr. Steb-
bings from Oregon as the principal in-
vestigator. He is going to look at lung
cancers in eastern Pennsylvania, outside
of Philadelphia. They are going to do a
case controlled study, comparing radon
levels in houses of people who have lung
cancer against the control group. They are
going to go back to try to measure radon
levels in people’s houses, going back in
time, to try to get a lifetime exposure es-
timate.

EPA also has a study underway in the
State of Maine to look at it. It’s another
case controlled study. I think there is also
one in New Jersey. There are some things
going on, and so far the evidence is just
not there yet.

UPTON: Did you have a comment, Dr.
Wald?

WALD: Yes. I was going to comment
that the estimate I heard is that it will be
about five years before we have any de-
finitive results from the studies that are
ongoing. So we really are not in a position
at this point to make any conclusions.

MOSSMAN: I have another question
for Dr. Abrahamson. I am not a geneti-
cist, by any means, but I get a feeling from
the genetics literature I have read that
genetic effects, unlike carcinogenesis, are
very wide-ranging. You can go from very
subtle changes, which are by no means
detrimental to the quality of life, all the
way up to lethal changes. Is there research
now underway to detect biochemical
markers, so it would be easier for a ge-
neticist to be able to identify genetic
changes which would ultimately result in
some alteration that phenotypically
would be unrecognized but would allow
you to make some type of risk estimate?

ABRAHAMSON: As you know, most
of the early mouse radiation studies, or
even chemical studies for mutagenesis,

124 BIOMEDICAL ISSUES

dealt with phenotypic markers—coat
color, tail, hair shape, and things like
that.

Over the last 15 years, extensive work
has gone into developing both enzyme
markers and other biochemical end-
points, and these are being used widely
at major laboratories that are doing mam-
malian studies. They are also being done
in cell culture work as well. The National
Institutes of Environmental Health
Sciences have a big project on contract
with other people at Research Triangle
Park, developing these biochemical
markers. Oak Ridge is dealing with them.
The large mouse research laboratory in
Germany is also extending the number of
locii that can be studied with biochem-
ical markers. I think we are up to about
75 now.

WALD: Can I add, your question re-
lates to the previous one that you asked,
in that biochemical markers are also being
used in epidemiologic studies for the early
detection of precancerous changes. In
fact, Dr. Luke Culler at the University of
Pittsburgh is looking at bronchial cells’
DNA content in high and low radon
homes.

PUSHKIN: It may be noteworthy in
this connetion to comment that at the ra-
diation effects research foundation in Ja-
pan, efforts have been made to exploit
biochemical markers to amplify what has
not been found using phenotypic changes.
As has been brought out, there really has
been no definitive evidence for the trans-

mission of inheritable damage to the chil-
dren of A-bomb survivors.

The biochemical genetic studies uti-
lized blood proteins as measures of mu-
tational change, and as many as a million
gene products have been examined with-
out detection of a significant excess of
phenotype variance among the children
of irradiated survivors. The effort is now
going into the use of recombinant DNA
methodology to look for changes at the
level of the genome itself, but I think this
is an area that is developing.

There has been evidence for mutational
change in the bone marrow cells of sur-
vivors, using another set of protein end-
points, glycoforin proteins, and the excess
incidence of glycoforin mutants as a func-
tion of those seems to correlate very well
with the excess of cytogenetic abnormal-
ities.

WALD: Could I just add one thing? I
think that many of the studies that just
use simple, “Is the enzyme altered in its
effectiveness by electrophoretic type
studies?” with radiation may be doomed
to failure. You need to have plus-minus
markers. Is the enzyme product there, or
is it not there. My bias is that most of the
x-ray induced genetic events we call gene
mutational and probably deletional, and
therefore, if you delete a gene or a major
part of it, you are not going to see a subtle
change in electrophoretic markers. You
are going to see the loss of the protein.
That may be part of the reason we haven’t
been able to detect it in the past.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 125-130, June 1988

How Safe Are Nuclear Plants?
How Safe Should They Be?

Herbert Kouts

Department of Nuclear Energy
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Upton, Long Island, New York 11973

We are becoming so accustomed to
thinking about safety of nuclear plants in
terms of risk as defined by the WASH-
1400 study that some of the implications
for the non-specialist escape out atten-
tion.

Even putting the question in these
terms upsets many people. Many do not
like to be reminded of their mortality, and
they become frightened when it is sug-
gested that some one thing can be singled
out as possibly having a chance of ending
their lives. This is especially true if that
something is unfamiliar to them.

It gets worse when we start to discuss
nuclear plant safety in probabilistic terms.
Probabilities are not widely appreciated.
Perceptions of probability are clouded by
widespread belief in good luck and bad
luck as an attribute of people or circum-
stances. It is usually not helpful to people
who believe that big shifts in luck are com-
monplace to be told that some event has
only a very low probability.

Yet we know that a rational program
to understand safety, to identify unsafe
events, and to use this kind of information
or analysis to improve safety, requires us
to use the methods of quantitative risk

125

assessment. How can we make this pro-
cess more understandable to a broader
group of nontechnical people? And how
can we develop a wider acceptance of the
results of the process?

These are questions that have been
struggled with for some time in the world
of nuclear plant safety. The Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission examined them for
several years as it moved toward devel-
oping a position on safety goals for nu-
clear plants, a requirement that had been
assigned it by Congress. Opinion was
sought from a broad spectrum of individ-
uals, within the field of nuclear power and
outside it, on the topic that was popularly
called, ““How safe is safe enough?” Views
were solicited on the answer to the ques-
tion and also on the way the answer
should be framed when it was adopted.

A first workshop led to a coalescence
of opinion that quantitative safety goals
should be developed. Simplistically, these
could be in the form that a nuclear plant
should be so safe that the risk from ac-
cidents should not exceed x early fatalities
and y late fatalities each year. Following
these conclusions, it was pointed out that
this would be interpreted by the public at

wn

126 HERBERT KOUTS

large and even by political circles such as
Congress that the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission thought it would be all right
if a nuclear plant killed x people outright
and caused y fatal cancers each year. That
spelled the end of strictly quantitative
safety goals for nuclear power plants.

A second workshop was held. The con-
clusions changed. There was now a rea-
sonably broad consensus that safety goals
had to be qualitative; that they had to
ensure safety of nuclear plants in the con-
text of nothing being absolutely safe in
this world, but nuclear plants being better
than the rest.

After some deliberation, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission adopted this
course last year. It adopted two qualita-
tive goals. The first was that nuclear
plants should not entail any significant ad-
ditional risk to life and health. This goal
limits the risk from nuclear plants relative
to the risks from ordinary living.

The second safety goals states that the
risk from a nuclear plant should be
comparable to or less than the risks
from viable competing technologies for
generating electricity, and should not be
a significant addition to other societal
risk.

The goals when stated in these forms
should be understandable to nontechnical
people, though they do include a potential
problem in that they use the word “‘risk”’
in its WASH-1400 technical meaning
while seeming to substitute it for a word
like “danger” for purposes of public inter-
pretation.

Though the intention to state under-
standable goals was probably accom-
plished by this adoption, the goals were
not very useful in this form for the reg-
ulatory staff. They were not a clear yard-
stick that could be used in determining
when they were met or were not met. So
the Commission also settled on what were
called quantitative objectives, that re-
stored some of the features of the quan-
titative goals that had been discussed in
the workshops.

One of these referred to the early ef-

fects of potential accidents on people liv-
ing near nuclear plants. It said that the
risk to an individual living in the vicinity
of a nuclear plant of being killed as the
result of a reactor accident should not ex-
ceed one-tenth of one percent of the sum
of prompt fatality risks resulting from
other accidents to which members of the
U.S. population are normally exposed.

The second said that the risk to the pop-
ulation near a nuclear plant of dying from
cancer caused by a nuclear accident
should not exceed one-tenth of one per-
cent of the sum of cancer fatality risks
resulting from all other causes.

These quantitative objectives were aug-
mented by what was called a “‘general per-
formance guideline” to the effect that the
chance of a reactor accident leading to a
large release should be less than one in
one million per year of reactor operation.

In adopting these goals, objectives, and
the guideline, the NRC quietly over-
turned a position it had taken several
years earlier when it attacked the concept
of risk assessment generally and WASH-
1400 in particular, and said that these
methods should not be used in regulatory
applications. This new policy on safety
goals could not be implemented other
than through use of risk assessment meth-
ods. In fact, the safety goals policy simply
gave formal recognition to the reality that
risk assessment by the best available
means has turned out to be a powerful
and even a necessary tool for ensuring and
improving the safety of nuclear plants. It
has put important new meaing into such
time-honored phrases in nuclear safety as,
“without undue risk to the health and
safety of the public.”

Let’s now examine the implications of
these positions taken by the Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission. The Center for Dis-
ease Control of the U.S. Public Health
Service issues statistics on the causes of
death in the United States. In the Decem-
ber 19, 1986 issue of the Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report can be found sta-
tistics for the year 1984. Injuries or ac-
cidents accounted for 4.6% of all deaths.

HOW SAFE ARE NUCLEAR PLANTS 127

According to the first quantitative safety
objective, nuclear plant safety would
therefore require that nuclear plants meet
the criterion that nuclear plant accidents
will not lead to a probability of accidental
death greater than 4.6 x 10~° for individ-
uals at risk.

The same publication states the relative
mortality rate from malignant neoplasms
as 22.1%. The second quantitative safety
objective therefore implies that for the
population living near nuclear plants,
these plants should not contribute more
than a probability of 2.2 x 10~* of inci-
dence of fatal cancer over lifetime.

These are cold-sounding statistics, of
the kind that have a tendency to disturb
most people. They give an impression that
nuclear power safety advocates first de-
termine that there is a hazard attached to
a nuclear plant, and then they say—go
right ahead with it after all. There are
plenty of unprincipled politicians ready to
take advantage of this kind of public gut
reaction, and the country is plentifully
supplied with other individuals who are
eager to take advantage of public fears to
further their private objectives.

But I do not see how we could avoid
use of such statistical methods if we are
to improve safety of nuclear power plants,
any more than we could avoid use of
similar statistical methods to determine
where to find the most urgent areas for
research against mortality from disease,
or to locate the region of the country most
in need of improved measures for com-
mercial air safety.

Other safety goals and safety criteria
than the ones adopted by the NRC have
sometimes been proposed, and some are
incorporated in more or less obscure
forms in some standards and regulations.
One of the oldest is that nuclear power
plants should not directly contribute to a
time-averaged increase in radiation level
by more than some factor times the nat-
ural rate. This has been the basis for some
ICRP and NCRP standards and recom-
mendations regarding radiation levels
from normal operation of nuclear facili-

ties. Another concept has been proposed
to the effect that nuclear plant activities
should contribute a time-averaged radia-
tion level not exceeding the variability in
radiation dose absorbed in connection
with variability of choice by individuals.
This is apparently the basis for the EPA
regulation 40CFR190.

The former of the two criteria would
lead to an annual average radiation level
to an individual from all causes attached
to operation of nuclear plants of no more
than about 140 mR/year. A direct com-
parison between this and the NRC’s
safety objectives is not possible. For one
thing, interpretation and use of the NRC
objectives requires use of a dose response
curve with inherent difficulties as to wide-
spread acceptance and as to how to add
long-term and one-time doses. For an-
other, the annual dose limit of 140 mR/
year would have to be added up over a
lifetime to determine statistics. Naive use
of the BEIR-3 value of LET dose per can-
cer at low dose, low dose rate implies that
the 140 mR/yr value exactly coincides
with the NRC delayed fatality safety goal
for an individual exposed at this level for
ten years of his life. The latter criterion
based on the effect of variability in choice
would be comparable to the NRC delayed
fatality objective for an individual who
spent his full lifetime at the 140 mR/yr
annual radiation level.

I summarize all of this by noting that
all of the objectives and criteria that have
been discussed are in aproximate agree-
ment. They are in much better agreement
numerically than the uncertainties in the
numbers themselves. Risk assessment is
still an inaccurate science.

There are other interesting aspects to
the question of how safe nuclear plants
should be. Analysis of the source term of
fission product release from postulated
severe accidents to nuclear power plants
of the type used in the United States now
makes it clear that the off-site conse-
quences of a severe accident would de-
pend very strongly on the length of time
the containment remained intact, holding

128 HERBERT KOUTS

in any fission products released from the
reactor’s primary system into the contain-
ment. If an accident were to lead to melt-
ing of the core of a reactor, if the fission
products escaped from the primary sys-
tem into the containment, and if the con-
tainment remained intact for a few hours
longer, say more than three or four hours,
the effects of plateout and of agglomer-
ation and settling of aerosol particles
would dramatically lower the amount of
fission products available for release to
the environment. It is found that almost
all the contribution to risk is the result of
severe accidents that could lead to early
containment failure. Mechanisms for this
have been identified, and recent NRC-
sponsored research has addressed the
probability of early containment failure
and the effect on consequences of severe
accidents.

It is found that the NRC safety goals
and the numerical safety objectives are
met if the probability of a severe accident
with early containment failure is less than
approximately 10~° for an average nu-
clear plant. This finding has considerable
uncertainty associated with it, much being
the result of variation in meteorology,
population distribution, design of the
plant, and general difficulty in accurate
analysis of risk.

This raises an important problem which
will be solved only very slowly in the fu-
ture. I referred a few moments ago to risk
assessment as an inexact science. This
leads to lack of ability to be absolutely
sure if the goals and objectives are met.
We are using a yardstick whose length is
somewhere between one foot and ten
feet:

This means that for the time being, at
any rate, the ability to meet the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission’s safety goals can
be only one index to the safety of nuclear
power plants. It is widely accepted that
these methods cannot be used to settle
absolutely the question of adequate safety
of a particular nuclear power plant. Prob-
abilistic analysis has to be added to other
methods to reach an overall conclusion

based on many perspectives. Other kinds
of questions that need addressing are:
How well is the plant managed? What is
its operating record? What is the char-
acter of the operating staff—how expe-
rienced are they? How well-trained? How
well do they know their plant? How well
do design and operation of the plant avoid
potential problem areas that have come
to be recognized over the years?

From answers to all of these questions
can be developed a profile that can be
used to identify weaknesses that might
undermine the safety of a specific plant.

The safety goal structure of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission is more usable to
assess the safety of the nuclear power in-
dustry, where the inputs from many risk
assessment analyses should lead to some
improvement of the statistical results and
where an accumulation of historical in-
formation begins to be useful.

This leads us into the second of the two
questions I want to explore. This is, how
safe are nuclear plants? I want to consider
this point from the standpoint of how well
nuclear plants have measured up histor-
ically to the NRC’s safety goals. This
aspect of the question is especially
important in view of the emphasis on
Chernobyl in the title of this symposium.

But before we consider the implications
and impacts of Chernobyl, let’s concen-
trate on the United States, where nuclear
plants very different from Chernobyl’s
RBMK design are used.

The United Staes has specialized in nu-
clear power plants with water-moderated
and water-cooled reactors. All but two
U.S. nuclear plants are of this general
class; one of the exceptions is a small,
demonstration size plant in Colorado us-
ing a gas-cooled reactor, and the other is
a government-owned plant at Richland,
Washington which produces plutonium
for nuclear weapons and also supplies
steam to turbine-generators operated by
the Washington Public Power System.

As is well-known, the one substantial
nuclear plant accident in the United
States occurred in 1979 at the Three Mile

HOW SAFE ARE NUCLEAR PLANTS 129

Island Unit 2 nuclear plant in Pennsyl-
vania. This accident destroyed the reactor
and led to permanent shutdown of Unit
Number 2. Though hydrogen was gen-
erated as a result of extensive oxidation
of the zirconium-based nuclear fuel clad-
ding during the accident, and the hydro-
gen was released into the containment
building where it burned, the integrity of
the containment structure was preserved,
and it was apparently not threatened. The
only radioactive material released from
the plant because of the accident con-
sisted of the noble gas inventory and
about 18 Ci of active iodine. Radiation
levels outside the plant were far below
life-threatening values and the total pop-
ulation dose was about 5000 man-REM.
According to the BEIR-3 model this is
assumed to be productive of a probable
0.8 cancers over the period of 30-50 years
following the accident.

About 1000 reactor years of U.S. com-
mercial water reactor experience have
now been accumulated. A similar number
of reactor years has been accumulated in
other countries with nuclear plants of the
same type. This is not enough for an ad-
equate statistical basis for a test of meet-
ing of the safety goals and objectives, but
it is close. So far there have been no early
fatalities in the U.S. or elsewhere as a
result of accidents to water reactors, and
an upper limit to the rate at which light
water nuclear plants may have induced
cancer is about 4x10~* per operating
year (we use the full 2000 reactor years
of experience in deriving this number).
There are now almost 400 light water nu-
clear plants in the world, so another 1000
reactor years of experience will be accu-
mulated every 2-1/2 to 3 years. Thus ac-
curate historical tests of the safety goals
and objectives are almost at hand.

Let me recall that the second NRC
safety goal compares electrical generation
by nuclear plants against viable compet-
ing technologies. The principal compe-
tition is coal. To make a comparison
between the two, I draw on some analyses
made four years ago by Hamilton and co-

workers. The comparison is made for the
full fuel cycle, including not only electrical
generation but also mining and transpor-
tation. It is seen that in all categories
the risk from the nuclear option is lower
than that for coal. The comparison is,
however, not as reliable as one would
like it to be. The range of the estimate
of mortality from air pollution reflects
the great uncertainty in use of a linear
hypothesis for the effects of pollution
at low doses. If anything, the use of
this sort of hypothesis for organic
pollutants and other components of
smoke from a coal plant is more ques-
tionable than it is for effects of nuclear
radiation.

To summarize, the safety goals and ob-
jectives estalished by the Nuclear Regu-
latory Commission seem to be met for
nuclear plants in this country, for the in-
dustry as a whole. The statistical evidence
supporting this conclusion is not yet ad-
equate in some respects, but the statistical
situation is improving rapidly.

These conclusions also seem to apply
to other countries using water cooled and
moderated nuclear plants of the western
type.

What is the effect of Chernobyl on all
of this? In the averaging process that
tells the historical story of safety of nu-
clear plants, there is some temptation to
add to the effects of TMI those from
Chernobyl. I have thought about this
possibility, and believe that for any in-
ternational objectives that consider the
effect of nuclear power world-wide, and
that contemplate improvement of nuclear
safety world-wide, there is some merit to
this. But in doing so one should realize
that any averages formed this way are
taken over two very disparate distribu-
tions. The RBMK’s in the Soviet Union
are so different in their design and their
safety features, and their mode of oper-
ation has been so singular, that averaging
over the two sets loses a great deal of
meaning. Certainly to form such an av-
erage would not improve our understand-
ing of how safe U.S. types of nuclear

130 HERBERT KOUTS

plants are, when operated by U.S. prac-
tices.

The Soviet government gives all signs
of believing that the past characteristics
of RBMK’s and their mode of operation
at Chernobyl are not acceptable accord-
ing to safety objectives of the Soviet
Union. A number of physical changes are
being made to RBMK reactors. New op-
erational practices have been substituted
for old discredited ones. Management
personnel from Chernobyl have been sub-
jected to criminal trials, found guilty, and
are undergoing punishment. I believe that
it would be wrong under the circumstan-
ces to use the historical record of RBMK’s
including the Chernobyl! accident in eval-
uating the safety of these plants under
present circumstances, and it would be
even more wrong to apply such results to
U.S. nuclear plants.

At the end of an analysis such as that
preceding, I am left still unsatisfied as to
the way the conclusions would be received
by a broad public. The case for nuclear
plant safety will probably have to become

so clear that the analyst is obviously in-
nocent of any charge of using numbers to
obscure reality. Nuclear plants will have
to show in real life a level of safety that
reassures the public through pervasive
excellence. I believe that it is not the
function of the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
mission to achieve this. They have de-
veloped a set of safety goals that I believe
are rational and laudable, and which are
suited to the responsibility of a regulatory
body of this type. There should be no
tightening of the screws by the NRC sim-
ply to reassure the public.

Achieving a level of excellence beyond
that required by the regulators should
be the responsibility of the nuclear in-
dustry. They are the only group able to
do this, and they should do so as an act
of social responsibility. If they are to
have any sponsors and helpers in the
Federal establishment in their enter-
prise, it should probably be the Depart-
ment of Energy, which still has such a
responsibility according to the Atomic
Energy Act.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 131-138, June 1988

Chernobyl—Lessons Learned
William Kerr

Professor of Nuclear Engineering
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

ABSTRACT

Although the significant differences in design and in operating philosophy of the No.
4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant preclude the possibility of an identical accident
at an operating US reactor there are lessons, applicable to US reactors, to be learned.
The Soviet reactor had identifiable design weaknesses. Some US reactors have design
features which, if improved, could eliminate or make less serious hypothesized accidents.
The Soviets appeared to have become complacent because of a good operating record.
There is evidence that some US reactor owners should be more aware of the potential
for and methods for avoiding low probability severe accidents. It appears that Soviet
operators found it easy to defeat a number of safety systems in the course of performing
an unusual operation. We must continue to emphasize the importance of careful exami-
nation of possible consequences of abnormal operating modees. The Soviets had emer-
gency plans which could not be followed in the actual accident. There is evidence that
some of our own emergency planning needs reexamination in light of experience gained
in emergency drills. Finally, since it is to be expected that severe accidents will occur
infrequently, it is imperative that we continue to study this accident carefully in an effort
to make serious accidents in operating US nuclear power plants less likely.

Prologue

Apprehension about the use of nuclear
energy to generate electricity has a pos-
sible parallel in the fear associated with
the application of steam power to trans-
portation in the eighteenth century. Ex-
plosion of boilers on boats used in river
transportation became frequent enough
that several cities, including Cincinnatti,
where one explosion took 150 lives, set
up special committees to investigate the
hazards of steam boilers, and to ask for
legislation restricting their use. In 1832 a
Select Committee of the twenty second

131

Congress of the United States was con-
vened to investigate the dangers. The
opening passages of the committee’s re-
port bear a striking resemblance to some
of the public concerns expressed today
about nuclear power.
“The distressing calamities which have
resulted from the explosion and collap-
sion of the boilers of steam boats, the
increasing dangers to which the lives
and property of so many of our fellow
citizens are daily and hourly exposed
from this cause, unite in their demands
upon that Government, possessing the
competent power and authority, to

132 WILLIAM KERR

throw around the lives and fortunes of

those thus exposed, all the safeguards

which a wise and prudent legislation
can give.”’

The Select Committee gathered a wide
variety of testimony by distributing ques-
tionnaires and by advertising for infor-
mation in newspapers. After considering
the collected testimony, the committee
reported ‘“‘A Bill to provide for the better
security of the lives of Passengers on
board of vessels propelled in whole or in
part by steam.” The bill required periodic
inspection of steamship boilers to ascer-
tain that the boilers could withstand three
times the pressure to be expected in nor-
mal operation. Passed in 1838, it did not
prevent the further occurrence of boiler
explosions. However it did set a prece-
dent for government regulation of ship-
ping in the interests of public safety.’

Today, the application of nuclear
power is more closely regulated than any
other energy source, and the excellent
safety record is, to some extent, a reflec-
tion of this regulation. But, in spite of
both public and private efforts to ensure
safety, we cannot guarantee that serious
accidents will not occur. In the US we
have been able to accumulate a significant
amount of operating experience with no
accidents that have caused physical dam-
age to the public. On the other hand,
studies indicate that improvements in
both design and in operation which should
be achievable with an expenditure of
modest resources, can decrease further
the likelihood that serious accidents will
occur.

The accident at the Chernobyl] nuclear
power plant has heightened public con-
cern over reactors operating in this coun-
try. However after extensive studies by
the nuclear industry, by the Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission, and by the Depart-
ment of Energy, it has generally been
concluded that, because of the differences
in the design and of the operating char-
acteristics of the RBMK 1000, and of the
reactor power plants in operation in the
United States, an accident of the kind that

occurred at the Chernobyl plant cannot
happen here. Nevertheless there are les-
sons to be learned from this accident, and
since it is unlikely that many serious ac-
cidents will occur, it is important that we
study this one carefully in order to make
subsequent ones even less likely.

Introduction

Almost 18 months ago, the Soviet
Union experienced, in one unit of a large
nuclear power station, north of Kiev, the
most serious power reactor accident that
has yet occurred. Before the accident, de-
tails of the design of the RBMK 1000 re-
actor, and information on its operating
experience, were not readily available in
the West. Since the accident, the Soviets
have been very open in making infor-
mation available in both areas. Because
of the wide dissemination of information
on the causes and of the course of the
accident, no effort will be made to du-
plicate that information in this paper.*°“
However there are certain key elements
of the accident from which useful infor-
mation can be adduced.

Brief Comments on and Key Points in
the Accident Sequence

In retrospect a number of factors ap-
pear to have contributed to the occur-
rence of and to the serious damage
produced by the accident. Some of those
considered most important are listed and
discussed below:

a) Design Weaknesses—lIt is generally
agreed that a major contributor to the
onset of the accident, and to the se-
riousness of its consequences, was the
existence of a positive coolant void
coefficient of reactivity. It appears
that the designers of the RBMK-1000
were fully aware of the positive void
coefficient, and of its potential con-

CHERNOBYL—LESSONS LEARNED 133

tribution to reactor instabilities. How-
ever because of economics (a lower
fuel enrichment results in a larger pos-
itive void coefficient; greater enrich-
ment increases fuel cost), because the
technology for producing large pres-
sure vessels was not available in the
Soviet Union when the design was
made some 25 years ago (the use of
the pressure tube design requires a
large amount of graphite in the core,
and produces an over moderated sys-
tem), and because they already had
experience with this design (although
this was not made explicit, this expe-
rience was probably gained with re-
actors whose principal purpose was
plutonium production) they decided
to use it for all of their early power
producing reactors. The designers
concluded that careful attention to op-
erating procedures could ensure that
the reactors operated safely.

Further, the design of the reactor control
system reflects a different balancing of on-
line availability and safety than is char-
acteristic of US designs. Because of the
importance of maintaining a reliable
source of electric power, great emphasis
is placed on high availability. In US re-
actors, rather small deviations from nor-
mal operating conditions produce rapid
and complete shutdown (scram) of the re-
actor. The same set of conditions in this
reactor would normally lead to a gradual
control rod insertion, lowering power, in
the expectation that whatever caused the
transient could be corrected without tak-
ing the reactor off line. Automatic scrams
for these reactors are extremely rare, and
the reactivity control system is not de-
signed for automatic rapid insertion of
negative reactivity. Thus when operating
conditions arose that produced a large,
rapid insertion of positive reactivity,
there was no mechanism for automatic
insertion of negative reactivity to prevent
the huge power surge that resulted.

b) “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It’ Syn-
drome—Significant successful opera-

tion of these reactors over an extended
period had given those responsible for
their operation an undeserved sense of
security. The Soviet spokesman in Vi-
enna commented that this power sta-
tion had an unusually good operating
record. Because of this the operating
organization may have grown compla-
cent. The Soviet team stated that after
the TMI 2 accident they conducted a
thorough review of the designs and op-
erating procedures of their power re-
actors. For whatever reason, they
missed some important accident pre-
cursors. One can hope that this acci-
dent has convinced them that a
continuing careful search for other
possible precursors of severe accidents
is necessary if we are to avoid addi-
tional accidents.

There is evidence that before TMI 2 some
US organizations had concluded that
since no serious accidents had happened
none could happen. Indeed there is evi-
dence that a few organizations still retain
this misapprehension. It is to be hoped
that a third serious accident will not be
required to bring them face to face with
reality.

c) Planning for the Unusual—lIt is signif-
icant that this accident occurred in the
course of an experiment, performed
on a midnight shift, on a weekend, and
after some twelve hours of delay (dur-
ing which time a shift change oc-
curred) in the planned schedule,
caused by a load dispatcher’s request
for continuing power production dur-
ing the daytime hours. To complicate
things further, this experiment had
been tried once before, with unsatis-
factory results, and there was pressure
to complete it during this planned out-
age. If this try was unsuccessful, the
next opportunity was not to occur for
more than a year.

One cannot identify any one of these fac-
tors as the major contributor to the ac-
cident. Nevertheless it is clear that each

134 WILLIAM KERR

contributed to an unusual situation for the
operating staff, and thus each deserved
special care both in the planning and in
the performance of a set of unusual op-
erations. Available evidence indicates
that a number of these contributors was
not given adequate consideration in the
planning and in the performance of the
experiment.

d) Adequate Safety Analysis of Unusual
Operations—US regulations require a
detailed safety analysis, reviewed and
approved by the NRC, before an ex-
periment of the kind performed at
Chernobyl, is undertaken. The Soviets
reported that the station manager was
responsible for the performance of
such an analysis, and that one was
performed. No additional detail was
given, but it was implied that the anal-
ysis was inadequate, perhaps perfunc-
tory. Remembering that this was the
second time for this experiment, and
that the first time the experiment was
run the reactor was shut down when
the turbine was tripped, it is plausible
to suppose that, having performed a
safety analysis for the first experiment,
little attention was given to the addi-
tional risk associated with keeping the
reactor operating after turbine trip
had occurred. Indeed it is possible
that, since the planned standby power
was about 1000 Mwth, little or no con-
sideration was given to the possibility
of having the power go as low as it
did (recall that it dropped as low as
30 Mwth, and was eventually stabi-
lized at about 200 Mwth before the
turbine was tripped). In any event
the evidence available suggests that
an inadequate safety analysis was
performed.

It is worth noting that current practice of
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls
for a stepped ascent to full power oper-
ation for new plants coming on line, the
philosophy apparently being that there is
less risk in operating at low power than

at full power. However there does not
appear to have been any careful study of
this question by either the NRC staff or
by licensees. It would appear, in the light
of the Chernobyl experience, that this
question deserves some attention. Al-
though the RBMK reactors have signifi-
cantly different operating characteristics
than US water reactors, the US reactors
are designed and are analyzed primarily
for full power operation. If they are to be
operated for extended periods at low
power, it would appear prudent to make
a careful search for any unanticipated risk
that might be produced thereby.

e) Those Responsible for Plant Operation
Were Not Aware of the Plant’s Off-
Normal Characteristics—Even though
the plant designers were aware of the
instabilities that could occur at low
power, those responsible for plant op-
eration almost certainly were not.
They surely did not understand the
likelihood of a large rapid insertion of
positive reactivity given the operating
conditions that existed at the begin-
ning of the experiment. Nor could they
have been aware of the possible con-
sequences. They also must have been
unaware that with the control rod ar-
rangement that existed at that time,
not only was it impossible to achieve
a rapid insertion of negative reactivity,
but to make matters worse, the initial
control rod insertion actually intro-
duced positive reactivity! US experi-
ence, however, suggests that lack of
communication between those who
design reactor systems and those re-
sponsible for their operation is not
unique to the Soviet system.

f) It Was Surprisingly Easy for the Plant
Operators to Defeat a Variety of Safety
Systems and Operating Restrictions—
It appears that the planned experi-
ment called for some of the normally
operable safety systems to be made
inoperable, and we assume, from the
Soviet report, that there had been an
analysis of the risk associated with this

g)

CHERNOBYL—LESSONS LEARNED

configuration. However, for unex-
plained reasons, during the entire 11
hours from the time when the exper-
iment had been scheduled, to the time
at which it actually began, the ECCS
was disabled. Further, although some
of the unusual safety system configu-
rations may have been analyzed, the
final configuration of control rods that
existed at the time of experiment ini-
tiation almost certainly had not been,
since it was arrived at during the
course of attempting to reach a stable
power level for the reactor during re-
duction from the 50 percent power at
which it had been operating since early
the previous afternoon to the planned
level for the experiment. The Soviet
spokesman commented that the nor-
mal complement of inserted rods was
30. That with specific approval of the
station manager, this could be re-
duced, but to no less than 15. At that
point, he said, “not even the prime
minister could authorize any further
reduction”. (The number still in-core
when the experiment began was re-
ported to be as low as six!) During the
Vienna meeting the Soviet spokesmen
gave the impression that they could
not understand how a decision could
have been reached to go to that con-
figuration. The implication was that
the decision was made by the opera-
tors. Since then there are indications
that the local plant manager is being
blamed more than one might have
expected from the reports made in
Vienna.° A question was raised during
the Vienna meeting about the ad-
visability of automatic ‘‘stops” that
would have prevented withdrawal of
control rods beyond a certain point.
The answer of the Soviets was that
when this reactor system was designed
it was concluded that humans were
more reliable than the hardware avail-
able at that time!

Emergency Plans Existed, but the
Plans Had to be Revised Once the
Accident Had Occurred—Although

h)

135

emergency plans for accidents at the
Chernobyl plant existed, they had to
be revised once the accident occurred.
For example, initial measurements in
Pripyat indicated that evacuation
would likely not be required. A day
later, when the release mechanism
had changed, and atmospheric con-
ditions were different, measurements
convinced those responsible that evac-
uation was required. However at this
point, because local deposition of
fission products had occurred, the
original evacuation plans had to be
modified significantly. The evacua-
tion, when it did occur, apparently
proceeded with dispatch. Further, the
treatment of those injured during the
accident, and the monitoring of those
in the zone near the reactor, appears
to have been carried on with remark-
able efficiency. Several of those who
listened to the description of how
evacuation and treatment were con-
ducted concluded that the Soviets
must have had previous experience
with some similar accident. (Indeed
Dr. Sakharov is reported as having
stated at a meeting in Moscow in Feb-
ruary of 1987, that several hundred of
those involved in an accident in the
Urals about 1970 experienced ex-
treme radiation sickness.°)

The Soviets Claim to Have Learned
from TMI 2—The Soviet team re-
ported that after TMI 2 they reviewed
their own reactor power plants and
their operational program extensively
and applied the lessons learned. Ob-
viously they overlooked some impor-
tant contributors to the TMI 2 accident
that were clearly identified by several
reviewers of that accident. Of special
relevance to the Chernobyl accident
were the recommendations of several
of the various TMI 2 review groups
that operational personnel be better
trained to deal with the characteristics
of the reactor systems in off-normal
situations, and that more attention be
given to risk produced by operating

136 WILLIAM KERR

personnel in contrast to the emphasis
that had been placed, up to that time,
on risk produced by equipment mal-
functions.

What Can We Learn From The
Chernobyl Accident?

The philosopher Santayana is reported
to have said that those who do not learn
from history are doomed to repeat its mis-
takes. What can we learn from Cherno-
byl?

a) We Cannot Have a Chernobyl Type
Accident—Many US commentators
have assured us that a Chernobyl type
accident cannot happen in US reactors
because of the significant differences
between the RBMK-1000 and US light
water reactors. This is true. Neverthe-
less it is possible that US power re-
actors may be subject to some as yet
not thoroughly evaluated abnormal
situations that could cause serious dif-
ficulties. We should continue to look
for them.

For example although the issue of Antic-
ipated Transients Without Scram has
been studied at length, and is now con-
sidered a resolved safety issue by the
NRC, we nevertheless still depend heav-
ily on a remarkably high estimated scram
system reliability in our calculations of
risk attributable to this transient. For ex-
isting reactors this situation may be tol-
erable because of the difficulty of making
significant changes in reactors systems al-
ready in operation, but for reactors not
yet constructed there are changes in de-
sign for both PWRs and BWRs that
could, with modest cost, make this tran-
sient a much smaller source of risk, even
if the scram system failed completely.
Should we continue to use the same de-
signs for future reactors just because our
experience to date has been acceptable?
The consequences of an unmitigated

ATWS in some power plant systems could
be very severe.°

b) We Should Not Accept the Limited
Positive Experience That We Have
Had With Operating Plants as Ade-
quate Assurance That no Further Se-
rious Accidents Can Occur.—Such
accidents are not expected to occur
very frequently. Furthermore experi-
ence on the part of those who have
examined plant systems in detail (us-
ing, in most cases, Probabilistic Risk
Assessment) has indicated that such a
plant-wide examination, done system-
atically, frequently reveals weaknesses
that are obvious enough when discov-
ered that they are corrected without
any formal action on the part of reg-
ulators. All nuclear power plant op-
erators should perform at least a Class
1 PRA using, for the most part, their
own staff. A similar thorough evalu-
ation of containment system perform-
ance in severe accident situations
should be performed. The results will
be useful not primarily as a numerical
indication of expected risk, but be-
cause of a better understanding of in-
tegrated system performance to be
expected in both normal and abnormal
situations. This understanding is most
useful if it becomes part of the back-
ground of the permanent operating
staff.

c) Someone, Very Near the Operations
Level, Should Have a Thorough
Knowledge of the Off-Normal Behav-
ior That Has Been Observed in US
Nuclear Power Plants.—Experiences,
good and bad, should be shared freely.
If the present regulatory system makes
it difficult to be frank about some of
the incidents that have occurred, as
some have claimed, those responsible
for plant operation should work to
correct this situation. It appears, in
retrospect, that if information, that al-
ready existed, on observed and ex-
pected behavior of B&W reactors had
been available to the operators at TMI

d)

CHERNOBYL—LESSONS LEARNED

2 this accident could have been
avoided. But those responsible for
safety should go beyond what has oc-
curred. For example what instrumen-
tation, not then available, might have
either prevented or ameliorated the
consequences of the TMI 2 accident?
What would have been the conse-
quences if the TMI 2 accident had
been accompanied by loss of off-site
power? What emergency measures
could have been devised under those
circumstances?

Further Attention Should be Given to
the US Practice of Testing Reactor
Power Plant Systems While the Plant
Is In Operation.—Testing at power is
now done presumably because such
testing enhances system and plant re-
liability. Little or no attention is given
to the possibility that such tests
may introduce severe transients or
accidents. Although no serious acci-
dents have been initiated in the US
by testing during operation, numer-
ous examples exist of automatic
shutdowns that have been caused
by mistakes made during a test. The
results of a recent study reported by
the MITRE Corporation indicate that
in the period 1984-1985 about 20 per-
cent of the reactor trips, for which a
cause could be identified, were due
to errors made during testing and
maintenance carried out during
plant operation.’ The Japanese, it ap-
pears, do not test plant systems during
operation, but rather test during down
time. The Chernobyl accident empha-
sizes the need for additional exami-
nation of this issue.

Emphasis on Severe Accidents—Since
TMI 2 there has been a significant em-
phasis on dealing with severe core
damage accidents. Further, most in-
vestigations of severe accident sce-
narios have assumed that once the
capability to cool the core has been
lost, the core will, in a very short time,
become completely molten; and that
all of the molten core, plus some frac-

f)

137

tion of the core supporting structure
will penetrate the vessel and reach the
containment floor (or alternatively
will be sprayed into the containment
atmosphere). Although such studies
provide useful information, we may
have, as a result of this emphasis,
failed to place enough emphasis on
prevention of core melt, and on the
possibility of arresting, in-vessel, the
progression of a core melt once it has
begun. Experience at TMI 2 demon-
strates that partial core melt does not
necessarily lead to complete core melt,
or to vessel penetration. Chernobyl
has produced considerable discussion
of containment performance. While
there is general agreement in the US
that existing power reactors should
have containments, it is not clear that
all of the existing US containments
would have contained the Chernobyl
accident. In any event it is clear that
prevention needs continuing empha-
sis. What avenues should be explored?
Studies should be made to determine
which normal operations, and which
emergency Operations, now per-
formed manually, should be auto-
matic. Those that are now automatic
should also be examined. (Incidentally
whatever decision is reached must be
carefully explained to the plant oper-
ators, since operators are ingenious in
disabling or ignoring systems in which
they have no confidence.) Some Jap-
anese companies have already made
progress in automating both opera-
tions and testing.®

There Should Be Further Examination
of Emergency Planning—Much of the
emergency planning in the US is based
on the assumption that there will be
evacuation beginning perhaps as much
as two hours before any major release
of radioactive material occurs. The ex-
perience at Chernobyl indicates that
releases may occur without this warn-
ing time. The Soviets report that their
plans for evacuation could not be used
in a situation in which significant re-

138 WILLIAM KERR

leases had occurred before evacuation
began.

It is interesting that there have been re-
cent studies in the US, making use of in-
formation collected from a number of
evacuation drills held in connection with
NRC requirements, which indicate that
US officials are likely to be reluctant to
order evacuation until a release begins.
The studies indicate that under these cir-
cumstances immediate evacuation may
not be the most effective method of pro-
tection of the local population. Under
some circumstances sheltering, followed
by later evacuation of selected fractions
of the population, may be more benefi-
cial.’ Furthermore, our present emer-
gency planning is not geared to an
emergency of the magnitude encountered
at Chernobyl. The formalized parts of the
plans, the detailed planning and the drills
do not consider such an emergency be-
cause of its small likelihood. The ability
of the Russians to marshal the resources
of material and manpower needed to cope
with the Chernobyl accident is impres-
sive. Some preliminary thinking about
how we might approach recovery from
such a disaster would be worthwhile. The
disaster for which such planning might
prove useful is unlikely to be a nuclear
plant. But it would be worthwhile for
some agency, probably FEMA, to give
further thought to coping with large-scale
emergencies. The Soviets apparently
made considerable use of military per-
sonnel. In any event their ability to co-
ordinate such a large effort rapidly and
efficiently deserves serious study on our
part.

Conclusions

Although it is generally agreed that an
accident similar to that which occurred at

Chernobyl cannot happen to a US reac-
tor, there are features of the accident
from which US plant operators can learn.
Since serious nuclear power plant acci-
dents occur infrequently, it is incumbent
upon us to learn as much as possible from
those that do occur in order that the
likelihood of future accidents be made
low. Lessons learned can contribute not
only to public safety, but also to a more
reliable source of electric power, and to
the financial stability of utilities which op-
erate nuclear power plants.

References Cited

1. Editorial Comment from ‘“‘Nuclear Powered
Ships”, Phoenix, University of Michigan Mem-
orial Phoenix Project, 1962.

2. “The Accident at the Chernobyl’ Nuclear Power
Plant and Its Consequences”, USSR State Com-
mittee on the Utilization of Atomic Energy, Vi-
enna, Austria; August, 1986.

3. “Report on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nu-
clear Power Station”, NUREG-1250, US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, 1987.

4. “Report of the US Department of Energy’s Team
Analyses of the Chernobyl-4 Atomic Energy Sta-
tion Accident Sequence”, DOE/NE-0076, US
Department of Energy, 1986.

. R. Wilson, Private Communication.

. See, for example, M. K. De and W. Kerr,
“ATWS: A Retrospective”; Proceedings of ANS
Topical Conference on Anticipated and Abnormal
Transients in Nuclear Power Plants; Atlanta;
April, 1987.

7. S. Seth, R. Lay, G. Malone; “‘Balance-of-Plant
Transients: A Review of Recent Experience’;
Proceedings of ANS Topical Conference on An-
ticipated and Abnormal Transients in Nuclear
Power Plants; Atlanta, Ga.; April, 1987.

8. M. Makimo and T. Watanabe; “Operational Ex-
perience of Human-Friendly Control and Instru-
mentation Systems for TOSHIBA BWR Nuclear
Power Plants”; Proceedings of ANS Topical Con-
ference on Anticipated and Abnormal Transients
in Nuclear Power Plants; Atlanta, Ga; April,
1987.

9. Frank R. Rowsome, ‘‘Assessment of the Effect
of Evacuation on Risk for Indian Point’’, enclo-
sure in a letter dated July 28, 1987, Rowsome to
Thomas E. Murley, Director Nuclear Reactor
Regulation, USNRC.

NN

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 139-142, June 1988

Somewhere Between Ecstasy,
Euphoria and the Shredder:
Reflections on The Term
**Pro-Nuclear”’

Peter A. Bradford

Chairman, New York State Public Service Commission
Albany, NY 12223

In devising sensible nuclear regulatory
policies for a post-Chernobyl world, it is
important to try to identify the signifi-
cance of Chernobyl. You are hearing from
others better qualified than I am on the
subjects of radiation effects and accident
sequences. I will address the regulatory
environment and, with some hesitancy,
the broader political and governmental
environment.

In these contexts, Chernobyl acceler-
ated forces that were already in motion,
and it may have made irreversible some
trends that were dominant in any case. It
has certainly made life more difficult for
those who would license Seabrook,
Shoreham or the other plants remaining
under construction, but I don’t think that
it has produced a fundamental realign-
ment of forces in this country. Let me
explain.

Nuclear power in this country has never
stood lower in public esteem. The polls
are clear on this point, and Maine voters
may well this November vote to close a
nuclear power plant that they have twice

139

in this decade voted to keep open. Sea-
brook and Shoreham together have $10
billion invested in them, and I have yet
to hear even one among the dozen pres-
idential candidates urge that they be op-
erated. Nor do any urge that more plants
be built.

The nuclear industry in the late 1970’s
blamed its declining fortunes in substan-
tial part on an “antinuclear” president
and on “antinuclear activists” at the Nu-
clear Regulatory Commission. Indeed,
the President of the Atomic Industrial
Forum said that the nuclear industry’s re-
action to President Reagan’s 1980 victory
was ‘‘somewhere between ecstacy and eu-
phoria.”’

Well, we are now seven years into the
most ‘“‘pro-nuclear”’ presidency in our his-
tory. Yet the nuclear achievement of the
1980’s is closer to Ralph Nader’s agenda
than to Ronald Reagan’s.

—The Clinch River Breeder is gone.

—So is reprocessing.

—The waste repository program is

stalled and mired in nationwide con-

140 PETER A. BRADFORD

troversy. The target date has slipped
a year for each year of the program’s
existence.

—No new plants have been ordered
since 1977.

—Every plant ordered since 1975 has
been cancelled.

—Legislation to “‘streamline”’ the licen-
sing process for new plants has gone
nowhere in twelve straight Congres-
sional sessions.

At the bottom of this collapse is a de-
cline in public trust almost without par-
allel in industrial history. I suppose that
one could argue that the Hindenburg was
to dirigibles what Three Mile Island and
Chernobyl were to nuclear power, but air
travel has seen worse accidents since,
and—in recent months at least—highly
publicized near misses and ineptitude.
Yet many people opposed to nuclear
power still fly; a lot of them sit in the
smoking section.

To judge from the operating record in
the U.S. to date, nuclear power is a rel-
atively low risk public health proposition.
It’s impact on public health has almost
certainly been better than coal to say
nothing of the automobile.

Still, the public does not trust it— and
endorsements of all sorts from scientists
and public health officials through the
years haven’t changed that situation. Nor
has the enthusiasm of a popular president
or the adoption of reasonable safety
goals.

Unlike most NRC commissioners, I
have lived for most of the last 15 years
within a fairly short distance of an oper-
ating nuclear power plant, one whose op-
erating history and economics have been
favorable, one that may well not obtain
majority support this November in a state
where 95% of the electorate lives beyond
the 10 mile zone.

I have friends who are long term op-
ponents of the plant and friends who have
come recently to that view, as well as
some who still support keeping it open,
as I did in the two earlier referenda. I can

tell you with some confidence that the
concerns of those who oppose it will not
be met by some new way of presenting
the data or by a public relations cam-
paign. The matters that dismay them
about nuclear power do not reach them
on that level. They include the following:

First, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
caused a massive discrediting of the ‘“‘ex-
perts,” a discrediting that has in any case
been going on throughout our society
since Vietnam and that has recently been
embodied by the Challenger, by the Iran/
Contra affair, by Bhopal, by disillusion-
ing conduct among Fundamentalist min-
isters and by Gary Hart. For each of these
events you can find many people saying,
‘“T used to believe in [fill in the blank],
but I don’t any more.”’

This destruction of misplaced faith is
basically healthy, but a craving for faith
remains. If that craving is filled by the
casual embracing of yet another unrelia-
ble creed, the inevitable cycle of betrayal
can only lead to levels of cynicism and
apathy that threaten democracy itself.
The alternative of a more active and in-
formed citizenship is one about which nu-
clear proponents have at best been
schizophrenic, and their tolerance for
those among them who would frustrate or
dismiss public inquiry has bred wide dis-
trust among people who know little about
man rems or defense-in-depth or safety
goals.

Second, the failure to achieve a waste
program concensus is deeply perplexing
to anyone inclined to believe that nuclear
power is in good hands. To state that the
waste problem is largely political is not to
discredit those concerned about it. Indeed
their concerns, nontechnical though they
may be, are not an irrational response
either to the general decline of faith in
expertise or to the specific self-destruc-
tion of the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-
sion’s public position.

Of that, more later. I cannot leave the
nuclear waste issue without remarking on
the devastating counterproductivity of
last year’s maneuverings regarding the

REFLECTIONS ON THE TERM “PRO-NUCLEAR” 141

second round repository sites. If the De-
partment of Energy had set out to un-
dermine its own position, it could not
have done so more effectively.

The choice of several of the second
round sites was ill-considered. One of the
two in Maine was relatively highly pop-
ulated, an area heavily dependent on
tourism, an area dominated by Sebago
Lake, which is the City of Portland’s
water supply. DOE’s effort to defend the
choice only made things worse. It is this
venture even more than Chernobyl that
has put the Maine Yankee referendum in
doubt.

To make matters worse, the Adminis-
tration then, for political purposes, with-
drew the entire second round process,
infuriating the first round states without
improving its position in the second round
states, who were further dismayed when
DOE moved gingerly to reinstate the pro-
gram after the 1986 elections, which went
against Administration candidates in
every state in which the wastes were a
serious issue. So transparent were the po-
litical motives in these wrenching changes
of course that those in charge lost all claim
to being in pursuit of the technically op-
timal solution.

Now the intractability of the waste
problem is cited to explain the political
opposition while the political opposition
is cited to explain the intractability of the
waste situation.

Those who urged a decade ago that we
pay more attention to the wastes and less
to the breeder, to reprocessing and to ac-
celerated power plant licensing were re-
garded (and disparaged) by the industry
as being antinuclear. In hindsight, the sin-
cere ones appear to have been among nu-
clear power’s last real friends.

Meanwhile what of the NRC? Given
the source of my invitation, it would be
impolite for me to dwell on that subject
at length. The recent Union of Concerned
Scientist book Safety Second says about
what I would (or, in some cases, did) in
any case.

I will, however, spend a moment on

lessons that I think the Administration,
the NRC and the industry need to learn
about the consequences of excessive zeal
in the setting of public policy. These les-
sons are not unique to nuclear power; in-
deed they emerge just as clearly from our
recent exposure to Iran/Contra policy-
making, with which our nuclear experi-
ence shares the following:

First, both sets of policies have lavished
discredit on their intended beneficiaries
and goals, beneficiaries and goals that
may at one time have deserved better
fates.

Second, both sets of policies have been
driven by obsession and ideology in di-
rections directly contradictory to funda-
mental and bi-partisan American
principles.

Third, the label “‘national security” has
been so abused in both contexts that its
repetition has come to warn of skuldug-
gery rather than justify the policy.

Fourth, funds have been channeled—
publicly when possible, clandestinely
when necessary—in ways inconsistent
with professed policies (‘‘no dealing with
terrorists’ in the one case, “‘noninterfer-
ence in the free market” in the other).

Fifth, in both cases we have assisted
foreigners in travelling roads that the
Congress, public opinion or other forces
constrain the U.S. government from trav-
elling itself (reprocessing and breeder re-
actors in the one case; grants of money
for arms through Switzerland and Costa
Rica to the Contras in the other).

Sixth, both sets of policies have been
promoted in the U.S. by private groups
spending large amounts of privately
raised money but coordinating closely
with the relevant agencies of the federal
government.

Seventh, in both programs lack of ac-
countability, easy access to too much
money and a pervasive mistrust of the
American public has furthered interests
inclined in any case toward arrogance and
self-enrichment.

Finally, in a bizarre irony, both sets of
policies have benefitted the Ayatollah im-

142 PETER A. BRADFORD

measurably. In the one case we have un-
dermined our domestic energy policy in
ways that have tended to support the price
of his oil; in the other we allowed his
agents to ensnare us in a vat of global
humiliation whose bottom is not in sight.

So what does it really mean to be “‘pro-
nuclear” or “‘pro-Contra?” If one believes
that the answer to Harold Denton’s ear-
lier question is that reactors are a “‘good
bet,’ what to do about their manifest un-
popularity?

At the very least, a pro-nuclear policy
would have the following characteristics:

First, it would take the public and our
democratic and federal/state systems of
government as a given, not something
that can be manipulated to private ends.
Engineers who know perfectly well that
the boiling point of water at given pres-
sures cannot be manipulated much seem
unwilling to learn that the public also
inevitably boils over (granted that the
precise moment cannot be predicted) in
the face of accumulated disillusionment
on a threatening topic.

Obvious or gauzy though this first prin-
ciple may sound, it cannot be said to un-
derlie the preemptive features of the
Atomic Energy Act or the NRC’s pro-
posed rule on emergency planning, to
name two examples.

Second, a truly “pro-nuclear’’ policy
would accept “‘no”’ for an answer at some
sites. It is one thing to preempt on-site
safety findings to the federal level. It is
another to require states to operate the
plants in the face of their own adverse off-
site emergency planning conclusions. The
issues of fairness to investors and impact
on rates are much more familiar to the
states and to the courts than they are to
the NRC, and they should be left there.

Third, the next few years must be ac-
cepted as a time of consolidation. Expe-
dited licensing should be explicitly
disavowed. The operating plants and the
wastes should be the sole focus of atten-
tion. Public opinion should be allowed to
follow performance.

Fourth, the industry must realize that
it can only lose public trust when it de-
mands that Jim Asselstine not be reap-
pointed to the NRC while maintaining a
dignified silence about conduct—and I
have in mind shredding or other loss of
documents relating to an investigation—
elsewhere on the NRC, an event for
which any utility would have to sack its own
vice president for nuclear operations.
This is, I know, superficially impolite to
say, but no safety goal, no statement of
good intent can transcend a lack of
public confidence in those who must
enforce it. For the industry to accept
such conduct because it comes from
someone whom they have labeled “‘pro-
nuclear” is, in fact, profoundly anti-
nuclear conduct.

Finally, to decompress a bit, nuclear
plants in the future must expect to com-
pete on a levelized per kilowatt hour and
per kilowatt basis with other sources of
electricity. Otherwise no state commis-
sion will certify them.

I don’t know that the public will ever
be willing to accept more nuclear units.
What I have tried to outline are some of
the conditions under which they might,
though not soon. If these conditions are
unacceptable to the industry, if the in-
dustry response continues to be—as it was
in the 1970s—that such conditions would
mean an end to new nuclear units, then
I do know the outcome after all.

It is not necessarily the wisest public
health outcome measured in terms of en-
vironmental impact, but an energy source
that has as a precondition the belief that
the public’s concerns must be “‘stream-
lined” away will not be judged on envi-
ronmental impact alone.

More importantly, the fortress mental-
ity that goes with such conduct will ulti-
mately encourage unsafe practices that
will vitiate safety goals, safe designs and
years of safe operations. That is the cycle
that led to Three Mile Island, if not Cher-
nobyl. In this cycle, Chernobyl has deep-
ened a downswing that it did not initiate.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 143-147, June 1988

Industry Evaluation and Response

Byron Lee, Jr.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Nuclear Management and
Resources Council, Inc. Washington, DC 20036

I am pleased to be a participant in this
important symposium. It is clear that the
speakers include some of the top radiation
health experts in the country. My inten-
tion this afternoon is to summarize the
results from the U.S. nuclear power in-
dustry evaluation of the Chernobyl acci-
dent, and to describe to you the manner
in which we responded and how we com-
municated our conclusions. I will share
some thoughts on my favorite (and now
well rehearsed) topic, the near term
future of nuclear power and how
NUMARC will help shape that future. I
will then close with some thoughts on ra-
diation health—not as a scientific expert,
but as an individual representing the cor-
porate executives in this country who are
entrusted with the safe operation of nu-
clear power plants, and who must apply
the research and wisdom of radiation
physics and medical experts to the public
health aspects of safe nuclear operations
in and around our plants.

This afternoon’s session speakers are
well qualified to discuss the environmen-
tal, engineering and political implications
of the Chernobyl accident. All have been
deeply involved in assessing Chernobyl or
in leading teams of experts charged with
responsibilities for evaluating the acci-
dent. I was asked by the Utility Nuclear
Power Oversight Committee (UNPOC)

143

to chair the Industry Technical Review
Group on Chernobyl in May 1986. The
Group consisted of thirty industry leaders
who shared the tremendous resources
they represented to study the accident.
They represented nuclear utilities, nu-
clear steam supply vendors, architect en-
gineer firms, universities, and industry
Organizations such as the Institute of
Nuclear Power Operations (INPO),
the Electric Power Research Institute
(EPRI), the Atomic Industrial Forum
(AIF), the American Nuclear Society
(ANS), and Edison Electric Institute
(EEI). Our Group had three objectives:

. To learn as much as possible of the
causes of the accident as well as the
post-accident response and recovery
experience;

. To identify whatever lessons there may
be for U.S. reactor design, construc-
tion and operation; and

. To give direction to the response from
the legitimate questions raised by this
event.

In my opinion, the industry responded
quickly and effectively to the Chernobyl
accident. We conducted extensive reviews
of Soviet documents to understand the
design and operation of RBMK reactors.

144 BYRON LEE, JR.

A number of U.S. industry representa-
tives participated in the post-accident re-
view meeting held in late August 1986 to
receive and analyze the Soviet written
report of the Chernobyl accident. We
conducted a significant amount of inde-
pendent analyses of the Chernobyl acci-
dent, which generally agreed with
analyses by our U.S. government agen-
cies and by foreign countries. We helped
write the U.S. “Report on the Accident
at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station”
(NUREG-1250) which was a joint report
prepared by the NRC, DOE, FEMA,
EPA, and two industry-sponsored organ-
izations, EPRI and INPO. Hundreds of
industry personnel have conducted brief-
ings for local, state, and federal officials,
as well as the general public, on the Cher-
nobyl accident.

The Industry Review Group on Cher-
nobyl prepared two documents: The U.S.
Nuclear Industry Position Paper on the
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Accident in the
Soviet Union, and The U.S. Nuclear In-
dustry Plan of Response to the Soviet Nu-
clear Plant accident at Chernobyl, both
dated February 2, 1987. The “Position
Paper” reviewed the Group’s assessment
of the accident, including the conse-
quences and the causes of the accident,
and has been given wide distribution. Our
general conclusion was that the accident
was the result of significant design weak-
nesses coupled with several human factor
breakdowns by management and the op-
erators of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant. It was the consensus of the Group
that one cannot be separated from the
other, but that the ‘root cause’’ of the
event was design weaknesses.

As we became more familiar with the
Soviet RBMK reactor design, we recog-
nized how difficult it is to make direct
comparisons between the Soviet RBMK
and the U.S. LWR. The differences were
so great that a strong consensus began to
emerge from the technical experts in the
industry that this accident had little direct
relevance to U.S. light water reactors.
Nevertheless, we were committed to a

thorough search for any possible lessons
or insights. Our conclusions compared
well with the conclusions drawn by the

NRC, DOE, Congress, the national lab-

oratories, and the mainstream of the U.S.
scientific and academic communities. The
Industry Position Paper presented three
major conclusions that emerged from our
analysis:

1. The design and institutional differ-
ences between the Chernobyl-type,
water-cooled graphite reactor and
U.S. light water nuclear power plants
are so fundamental that the Soviet ac-
cident should not impact the processes
of design and regulation of U.S. nu-
clear reactors. The accident does point
up the importance of the emphasis that
the U.S. plants place on high quality
training and procedures, and strict ad-
herence to administrative controls.

2. The Chernobyl accident confirms U.S.
choices in nuclear technology, sup-
ported by our public regulatory pro-
gram. A very deliberate determination
was made at the foundation of the U.S.
nuclear industry that we could not
tolerate the same risks as other indus-
tries. From the beginning, conserva-
tive reactor plant and containment
designs, high safety standards, de-
fense-in-depth, and operating disci-
pline were imposed. Our record of
protecting the public is an affirmation
of our safety philosophy.

3. Comparisons made between the Soviet
accident and the less severe Three Mile
Island accident led to very important
observations. The TMI-2 accident
caused no physical harm to the public
or the plant’s workers, primarily due
to defense-in-depth design features in-
cluding a full containment. However,
the TMI-2 accident identified weak-
nesses in U.S. reactors and their meth-
ods of operation. Major industry-
initiated self-improvement efforts
were made as a result, which are con-
tinuing to this day.

As I mentioned, our group also pre-

INDUSTRY EVALUATION AND RESPONSE 145

pared a ‘Plan of Response”’ to Cherno-
byl. This document covered efforts
already taken and those that we believed
needed to be considered more thoroughly
by the industry for future action. You
should all recognize that the plan is a
roadmap for a comprehensive search for
lessons to be learned from Chernobyl.
Even though many of us had high confi-
dence in our own technology and stan-
dards of operation, we felt that as a
responsible industry we must undertake
our Own review to satisfy ourselves that
potential lessons were learned and ap-
plied.

The Plan is broken into three levels of
response. Level I covers the evaluation of
the accident and the identification of find-
ings. Many different industry organiza-
tions were asked to help complete the
reviews called for by the industry plan.
These efforts are proceeding well and are
essentially complete. ©

Level Ii addresses the challenges to
U.S. nuclear safety in light of the Cher-
nobyl experience. Most are not a result
of any specific findings from Chernobyl,
but more a result of issues raised by public
concerns, NRC, and the media following
Chernobyl. In addressing these chal-
lenges, the industry has conducted, and
will continue to conduct, a thorough
search as more information becomes
available for potential applications of the
Chernobyl experience to our reactors.

Our level II efforts are leading to con-
clusions that generally dovetail with ex-
isting safety initiatives. We are finding
that the lessons of Chernobyl either con-
firm actions already taken or add further
confirmation that ongoing efforts are ap-
propriate. No situation has been found
that indicates a blind spot in our own de-
signs, regulations, or operational prac-
tices. Rather, we are finding a few areas
that need to be reemphasized, repriori-
tized, and in some cases expanded to take
advantage of new insights.

These results appear to be completely
consistent with my reading of the NRC’s
recently released draft NUREG-1251:

“Implications of the Accident at Cher-
nobyl for Safety Regulation of Commer-
cial Nuclear Power Plants’’.

The NRC has concluded in their report
that ““No immediate changes are needed
in the NRC’s regulations regarding the
design or operation of U.S. commercial
reactors.”’ The NRC has also determined
that: ‘““The most important lesson is that
[Chernobyl] reminds us of the continuing
importance of safe design in both concept
and implementation; of operational con-
trols, of competence and motivation of
plant management and operating staff to
operate in strict compliance with controls;
and of backup features of defense in
depth against potential accidents.”

I agree wholeheartedly with those
statements and am confident that the en-
tire leadership of the nuclear industry
supports them also.

Level III of the Plan suggests an in-
creased participation by the U.S. industry
on the international nuclear scene. The
industry has been involved in interna-
tional activities through EPRI, INPO,
AIF, ANS, and individual company con-
tacts, but has had no comprehensive or
coordinated international program. It was
the consensus of our group that a more
coordinated and involved industry pres-
ence is required.

The Chernobyl accident has provided
this industry with a vivid case study in the
results of complacency in reactor opera-
tions and a reason to continually strive to
improve our operational performance. I
would like to briefly review for you some
of our actions to demonstrate our own
commitment to operational excellence.
To fully appreciate industry actions to im-
prove operational safety, we need to con-
sider briefly what has happened since the
TMI accident.

In the early days after TMI, the In-
stitute of Nuclear Power Operations
(INPO) and the Nuclear Safety Analysis
Center (NSAC) were created. The Sig-
nificant Event Evaluation and Informa-
tion Network (SEE-IN) program was
developed, and operating experience and

146 BYRON LEE, JR.

safety information was shared on the
‘Nuclear Network” electronic mail sys-
tem. INPO began setting standards of ex-
cellence in nuclear operations through a
variety of assistance, evaluation, and
monitoring programs.

The National Academy for Nuclear
Training was formed in September 1985.
Over 600 nuclear training programs were
completed at our operating nuclear plants
and made ready for accreditation by the
end of 1986.

The industry, through INPO, devel-
oped a set of performance indicators over
four years ago. The program was refined
in 1985, and ten overall indicators now
provide an important management tool
for monitoring plant performance. Trends
over that four year period show significant
progress by the industry in most of these
areas.

The utility industry has not rested on
its record and is looking to the future. It
has developed, with the help of EPRI,
nuclear suppliers and architect-engineers,
an advanced light water reactor program
drawing on our experiences that should
provide extremely safe standardized re-
actor designs available to meet the in-
creased base load demands of the mid and
late 1990’s. These designs emphasize op-
erational simplicity and human factors en-
gineering.

A detailed study of the industry’s ac-
tivities was initiated by the utility lead-
ership which resulted in the publication
in August 1986 of a report entitled ‘“‘Lead-
ership in Achieving Operational Excel-
lence: The Challenge for All Nuclear
Utilities,” better known as the “‘Sillin Re-
port.”’ The authors were three gentlemen
with vast experience in nuclear power—
Lee Sillin, Marcus Rowden, and Dennis
Wilkinson. The report proposed recom-
mendations in three. major areas:

1. Improving operational performance of
nuclear power facilities.

2. Improving the nuclear utility interface
with the NRC.

3. Establishing a unified nuclear utility
industry organization.

When the Sillin Report recommended
the establishment of a unified nuclear util-
ity industry organization that would in-
terface with the NRC, many in the
industry felt we already had the basic ele-
ment that was needed in the Nuclear
Utility Management and Resources Com-
mittee formed in 1984. For three years the
NUMARC executives had been interfac-
ing frequently with the NRC staff to iden-
tify areas in our industry where
improvements could be made. A positive
course of action had been taken on a num-
ber of issues. We believe that through this
process an increased sense of cooperation
and trust has developed between the NRC
and the industry. We view our new or-
ganization, the Nuclear Management and
Resources Council, as an opportunity to
build further upon the successes this pro-
cess has achieved.

The Nuclear Management and Re-
sources Council, retaining the acronym
“NUMARC,” was established to provide
a unified nuclear power industry ap-
proach on generic regulatory and tech-
nical issues. Our responsibilities include
coordinating the combined efforts of
licensee utilities, and other industry or-
ganizations that are NUMARC partici-
pants, in all matters involving regulatory
policy issues, and on the regulatory as-
pects of operational and technical safety
issues.

NUMARC serves as the industry’s
principal mechanism for conveying our
views, concerns, and policies to the NRC
and other government agencies as appro-
priate. We will also initiate industry self-
improvement efforts when deemed nec-
essary, and direct attention to and act on
regulatory issues the NRC considers im-
portant.

We carry out our responsibilities by
drawing upon the knowledge, operational
and technical experience, and safe oper-
ational responsibility of the entire nuclear

INDUSTRY EVALUATION AND RESPONSE 147

industry. We seek to improve the indus-
try’s effectiveness in developing and ana-
lyzing information concerning generic
regulatory technical and operational is-
sues and to improve the quality and con-
structive character of contributions made
by the industry to the evolution of regu-
latory analyses and decisions.

NUMARC must work closely with the
industry and with the NRC—the two ma-
jor repositories of nuclear operational
safety expertise—to further enhance the
industry’s pursuit of operational excel-
lence. NUMARC is dedicated to improv-
ing communications between the industry
and NRC. We believe very strongly in the
publicly controlled regulatory process.
We believe that process best serves the
public if the regulator and the regulated
industry treat each other with openness
and respect, and always exercise technical
objectivity. This formula has worked in
other U.S. industries and in the nuclear
industries of other nations such as France,
Japan and Canada. Here in Washington
this professional approach is periodically
branded as ‘“‘Coziness.”’ A few real or per-
ceived abuses of open communications
have preoccupied the thinking on the
NRC/industry interface to the exclusion
of the thousands of sound technical in-
terfaces that occur each year. They also
cause us to forget the overwhelmingly
positive safety and economic benefits to
the American people from a less adver-
sarial approach.

It is the same spirit of cooperation and
professional exchange that I wish to offer
to the medical and health physics com-
munity. Our industry respects the re-
sponsiveness and technical objectivity of
the U.S. experts on radiation health ef-
fects who have contributed to the body of
knowledge and public awareness since
Chernobyl. I would encourage you to
continue to help in the important effort
of educating the public and the media on
radiation health effects. The public needs
sound scientific estimates of the real risk

associated with radiation exposure. They
have become confused by bounding or
conservative upper limits. The public par-
ticularly needs help understanding the un-
certainty in health effects predictions for
very low doses of radioactivity to large
populations.

Much of the confusion and debate on
nuclear issues are not based on legitimate
technical arguments. In many cases, these
situations have been exacerbated by false
claims in the media that a Chernobyl-type
accident could happen at these reactors.
These situations have been exacerbated
by a lack of public understanding of the
nature and relative importance of radia-
tion health risks, and the level of emer-
gency planning in place in the U.S. in the
unlikely event of nuclear accident. The
future of the nuclear option will depend
on educating the non-technical policy
makers and the majority of the public on
the benefits and risks.

I think it is important that we focus our
educational efforts toward three groups:
first the broad medical community, par-
ticularly the younger generation of med-
ical students and professionals; second,
our public and private schools as they are
gearing up with renewed interest in the
sciences; and finally the media, who des-
perately need more expertise in this field.

I am optimistic about the future role of
nuclear power in this country. I believe
the nuclear option can be improved sig-
nificantly by improving the credibility of
the regulatory environment. That is one
of NUMARC’s objectives.

In closing, I would like to stress that
our industry has made a substantial in-
vestment in reviewing and assessing the
implications of the Chernobyl accident.
We have determined the responses
needed and are taking action toward im-
proving our operational performance. We
at NUMARC are dedicated to doing our
share. We must all work together to en-
sure the continued viability of nuclear
power in the energy needs of our nation.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 148-157, June 1988

Round Table Discussion:
Environment and Engineering

DENTON: Getting back to the new
dosimetry estimates from Hiroshima/Na-
gasaki, I was at the ICRP (International
Committee on Radiation Protection)
meetings in Lake Como last week, and
the new papers by Preston and Pierce
would indicate that the cancer risk from
that radiation probably will go up by at
least a factor of five. It may go up less.
It may go up more, but right now the
factor of five increase in cancer risk seems
to be where it is going. This would then
mean that the health effects to workers
in the field may have to be adjusted by
that factor of five; it may or may not be
that.

The last speaker, Mr. Lee, was saying
that in fact you now have excluded work-
ers from having in excess of 5 rem per
year, but there is still a reasonably large
group, I would think, perhaps 8 or 10 per-
cent of the tail of your population of ex-
posures, that may be getting between 1
and 5 percent. I think about 90 to 95 per-
cent get under 1 rem, if I’m not mistaken,
in the point of .6 or 600 mg.

These points may in fact require in-
creasing the safety components to still
lower than 1 to 5 rem exposure. Will in-
dustry be prepared to do so?

LEE: After all the technical experts in
the world analyze that information, and
if the conclusion is indeed that is a fact
and that the risk is considerably higher, I
think we will work on trying to reduce the
exposure limits at our facilities. As you
point out, for the vast majority of our

148

employees, the levels are extremely low
in comparison to the standards.

We have been working with the efforts
here to keep moving that down, and that
will continue to be our goal. But again,
this is where we have to rely on the ex-
perts. We have to avoid jumping into
doing things hastily before we have some
kind of a conclusion from the experts, but
I’m sure if that’s the fact, we will respond
accordingly.

DENTON: Dr. Wald, how do you see
that data? Would you like to comment?

WALD: I haven't really seen the data
either. I think it’s probably premature to
say what it will do.

KERR: Refresh my memory. I
thought I remembered that the BEIR III
reports (Committee on Biological Effects
of Ionizing Radiation of the National
Academy of Sciences) that we are still not
certain that a one-time exposure of 10 rem
has any significant harmful effects. Isn’t
that the case?

SPEAKER: BEIR III says the epide-
miological data cannot prove below 10
rem whether or not there is a cancer effect
because you don’t have a population size
large enough to make that study. BEIR
III also says there are three potential ways
of doing risk estimates: the linear, the lin-
ear quadratic, and the quadratic. BEIR
III chose the linear quadratic as its most
reasonable way of recommending risk es-
timates.

I think the present NCRP/ICRP risk
estimates—and I’m not sure now whether

ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEERING 149

EPA adopts this—generally internation-
ally suggested that 1 rem of exposure had
a probability of inducing one cancer per
10,000 people, one rem exposure to a
population. What I’m saying now is—and
BEIR probably adopted a number of
about 1.7—that number is up by a factor
of five, if you look at the new dosimetry
data and recalculate the cancer incidence
in Hiroshima/Nagasaki. That is essen-
tially what Gil Beebe was referring to this
morning, but he didn’t have the final data.

KERR: It seems to me what you were
referring to is not really calculating the
risk estimates for large populations but,
rather, dealing with fairly small popula-
tions of people who work in nuclear
power plants. My next question was going
to be, if my memory was correct, and I
wasn’t sure it was, Is the next edition of
BEIR III going to make about that same
statement?

SPEAKER: BEIR V is now in prep-
aration. In fact, Arthur Upton is chairing
the BEIR V committee. It expects to have
its report completed, I believe, by Sep-
tember of 1989. So both BEIR V and the
newest UNSCR will be coming out within
six months of each other. They will have
this new data. But neither the BEIR com-
mittee nor the UNSCR Committee make
recommendations with respect to risk lim-
its. All they do is provide the risk esti-
mates that are used.

KERR: I recognize that, but it seems
to me, it’s one thing to predict estimates
of populations, which one does in deter-
mining risks to large populations, and it’s
another thing to deal with a fairly small
population of people in nuclear plants in
a situation in which, if I interpret the
BEIR III report correctly—and I may
not; I’m certainly not a radiation biolo-
gist—there is uncertainty as to whether
low levels of radiation have any significant
effect, which is what I am interpreting
that statement to mean.

SPEAKER: That is one interpreta-
tion. It is not the one that would be used
by most radiobiologists. I think we would
argue that the linear quadratic model best

fits the data, although we do not have a
population size that would permit an ep-
idemiological study at the levels of 10 rem
or below at this point.

KERR: I do not know what radiation
biologists use or what they use it for, but
when they tell me, as a possible user, ““We
don’t know whether 10 rems of exposure
to an individual has any harmful effect,”’
I guess I do not know what they mean if
they don’t mean that this has some sig-
nificance.

SPEAKER: I think you took that out
of context. They gave you a risk estimate
down below 10 rem. They give you a risk
estimate per rem, but say they cannot ac-
curately—which is obviously true—make
an estimate below 10 rem that they have
great confidence in. It could be zero. The
report that was just quoted by Marv Gold-
man on the DOE report says that the
number of cancers induced by Chernobyl
could equally be zero or 28,000. That
number now could go from zero to 85,000
with the new risk estimates, but very few
radiobiologists would accept the value of
zero, although it is not impossible.

YANIV: Shlomo Yaniv, Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission. As far as BEIR III
is concerned, BEIR III did not give risk
coefficients for single exposures below 10
rem or 20 exposures below 1 rem per year.
They made a statement which was in
BEIR I, repeated in BEIR III, that they
do not know whether the level of expo-
sure of those that are 100 mg per year are
detrimental or not.

With regard to Hiroshima/Nagasaki, I
have seen the Preston paper, and as far
as the dosimetry impact itself, it is de-
pending upon the RBE chosen for neu-
trone. It is on the order of two, not five,
based on the paper. That does not imply
that the risk coefficient that might come
out of the deliberation and combination
of the new radioepidemiological data and
the dosimetry might not be higher, the
reason being that it has to do with tem-
poral projection of risk beyond the period
of observation.

ICRP-26, which has a risk coefficient

150 ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION

of 1.25 times 10 to the minus 4 per rad in
little cancers is based upon absolute risk
projection UNSCR-77. A new UNSCR
already has come out, which basically en-
dorses a relative risk projection model.
The new radioepidemiological data sup-
port a relative risk projection model for
most of the solid tumors, and that, in com-
bination with a much higher relative risk
observed dose irradiated young in life,
will lead to a higher risk coefficient than
presently is given in ICRP-26.

HERN: John Hern. I have a question
for Byron Lee. I have read the Sillen
report. You talked a little bit about out-
liers, and as I recall the report, one of
the recommendations was that the
nuclear industry identified publicly
those outliers, those companies or plants
that really were not performing well.
What is the industry doing about that
recommendation?

LEE: That was one of the recommen-
dations of the report. That was considered
by the INPO Board, which I am not a
part of, and the INPO organization has
been re-reviewed several times. Their de-
cision is that at the present time, they
don’t think that is in the best interest of
the effort to achieve excellence.

We kind of beat ourselves very badly
in this country in the media as it is. The
old saying of taking somebody to the
woodshed and beating them works on a
rare occasion and in a really extreme case,
but I don’t think, the industry does not
think, INPO (Industrial Nuclear Power
Organization) does not believe, that is the
way to solve our problems; to expose to
the public who happens to be the worst
case.

Georgetown is a good example. The
worst student in the class obviously is
above the level to get in here, but he is
still the worst student. So you have to put
it in perspective, and it’s like this radia-
tion issue. The public does not read that
situation. The headline will be, this is a
plant that the industry thinks is bad. If
the industry thought it was bad, they
would take some dramatic actions, and

you would know about it if they thought
it was an unsafe plant.

DENTON: Perhaps some other panel-
ist would like to comment?

KERR: I cannot speak for the indus-
try, obviously, but one of the concerns I
have had about INPO—and I have asked
this question of INPO people on a num-
ber of occasions—is that I think they have
a good mechanism for identifying prob-
lems, but I have not been able to discover
a mechanism for dealing with recalcitrant
organizations. There may be one, and if
there is, I would feel better about INPO’s
influence.

SPEAKER: I don’t want to speak here
for INPO, but I will have Zach Peyton or
somebody else give you a contact on it. I
think there are mechanisms that are in
place to deal with it.

BRODSKY: Allan Brodsky, George-
town University. I would like to get back
to talking about something like prepara-
tions for something like Chernobyl or
TMI, along the line of what Neal Wald
alluded to this morning a little bit. In a
moment, I am going to introduce another
young friend, Dr. Ken Inn from the Na-
tional Bureau of Standards to say some-
thing along these lines because he wants
to talk.

Going back to the days of Three
Mile Island, and we have seen some of
the things after Chernobyl, there was a
clamor to find out how much radiation
exposure these people got, not only the
workers but the public. I have heard a lot
about, ‘“We don’t know what the doses to
the workers were at Chernobyl.” I think
we have a better handle on what the doses
to workers were at Three Mile Island, in
terms of the external exposures, because
they wear badges.

But I happen to know that in terms of
estimating internal exposures, we were
not prepared very well to examine what
happened to some of those people im-
mediately after the accident. You know
that Three Mile Island called in a whole
body count, two of them, about seven or
eight days after the accident, and it took

ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEERING 151

them a little while to set up. One of them
got contaminated and had various cali-
bration difficulties.

This shows, in the event of this rare
incident of an accident in a nuclear power
plant, that people do clamor to know
what the exposures are in the first place,
before you estimate what the risk are. In
fact, how low are some of the exposures?
This is something we have to be able to
prove also.

Neal Wald alluded to the fact that you
have to do some planning for the internal
exposures months and years in advance.
I think he has to be given some credit for
that kind of insight 20 some years ago,
when he built a whole body count without
any funds from the nuclear industry. Be-
cause it was there, a number of very 1m-
portant radiation incidents were handled
without too much information in the news
media, among non-nuclear, but materials
facilities.

Although these things were rare, we
realize that they were important in con-
text, because each individual who gets
20,000 or 50,000 rem becomes a very im-
portant case. It’s important from both as-
pects, both to take care of the individual
and from the standpoint of the govern-
ment officials who were very interested
at that moment—they were all over the
place after each one of these accidents—
to be able to show that they were not only
concerned about the individual, but they
have been prepared to take care of that
individual and follow up appropriately on
each one of these cases.

] don’t want to over-emphasise this
matter because I also believe that the
probability of further accidents at nuclear
power plants injuring any member of the
public is extremely rare. But of course,
we believed that before Three Mile Is-
land, and it occurred. It turns out that
after Three Mile Island, one of our col-
leagues published articles saying that Dr.
Allen Brodsky, an expert from the Nu-
clear Regulatory Commission, has said
that the internal exposures of people
around Three Mile Island were 130 times

what they have reported. They were tell-
ing false information. I have copies of this
headline: The government may be lying.

Friends of mine called me up all over
the country and said, ‘‘Brodsky, are you
crazy, supporting that?’’ I said, ‘“‘He
didn’t even consult me before he pub-
lished that.”’ He pulled something out of
context from the literature, where I cal-
culated something for a full fission prod-
uct release. Seven or eight articles came
to me around the country about that. I
couldn’t refute it. First of all, the media
were not interested in publishing what I
said at the time. I had gotten on a couple
of programs, but that wasn’t adequate.

But more importantly, when I ran into
my colleague one day, he pulled out the
item he found, but there were no specific
measurements of the public that I could
use, if I had to, to show how low some of
these claims were. So it leads to a question
for Byron Lee.

In looking at the emergency planning
again, from the lessons learned at Cher-
nobyl, from the lessons learned at TMI,
did you look at the possibility that for a
relatively small sum of money compared
to what we have been spending on emer-
gency evacuation and planning and what
else, did you look at the possibility that
one could fund the training and the setup
of some centers, such as Neal Wald did
on his own, in at least a few places around
the country so they would be ready in case
another accident occurs?

LEE: That is one of the things that
Roger Linneman has been talking to the
industry about; some increased capabili-
ties to respond not to the public situation
but to the internal situation. I think there
is a possibility: We have all had in our
plans, the capability to respond to one,
two, or three individuals who were over-
exposed.

The question becomes, When you get
a combination of an accident—steam
burn situation is the most likely thing that
would occur in the plants, we think—and
low-level contamination, possibly, are we
capable of handling that? We are. The

tv

152 ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION

industry has been taking a look at that. I
know he has looked at the possibility of
developing some major centers. But I
think the conclusion they came to is that
the capabilities already exist. There are
some major medical centers that are ca-
pable. You may disagree with that, but
the feeling was that there are.

In fact, I think Commonwealth Edison
was one of the first, with Dr. Bud Main,
to have a whole body counter at all of our
plants, probably way back in 1970 or
something like that.

SPEAKER: Neal, I think, was correct
in asserting that an accident the size of
Chernobyl would tax our medical system.
It’s remarkable how the Soviets were able
to assemble so many resources so quickly,
and he has made a number of proposals
to the government that, so far, have not
been acted upon, but that whole area is
always worth considering.

WALD: [’m Neal Wald, University of
Pittsburgh. The question of the medical
preparedness and the emergency prepar-
edness to deal with medical problems is
one that has, as Mr. Denton suggested,
been occupying us for quite awhile. Our
concern really is not with the Chernobyl
size population problem, because we do
agree that it is less likely because of our
reactor designs and our operations.

On the other hand, somewhere be-
tween the individual worker who is in-
jured at the plant and the 135,000 people
that are predicted—even if you follow
WASH 1,400 for some small or moderate
sized accidents. The problem that con-
cerns us is that if 50 people come to a
hospital for attention, and the hospital is
fully occupied, as they are, with their own
problems and their own commitments to
incoming patients, even though you think
you have in your plan, and every one of
the 105 operating reactors has a plan, we
are not quite sure that the reality behind
the plan is what we think it is.

We have been proposing to the NRC,
to FEMA, to the Department of Energy
that the database should be compiled. I’ve
never seen a listing by NRC of the 105

hospitals which are involved. I know you
could probably dig this out in the public
document room, but I don’t think we have
looked behind the paper to any great ex-
tent to see whether this is real.

I point out, hospitals have a liability
which requires them to take care of the
patients in house. The fact that a hospital
says it will handle a problem at a local
plant does not mean that it can, willy nilly,
dispose of the other patients or close
down the emergency room without being
at moral as well as legal risk. So the reality
of some of these things in our medical
system is a little different than it is in the
U.S.S.R.

I am not advocating changing the sys-
tem to accommodate this particular un-
likely problem, but I think we ought to
at least compile a database to see what
resources we really have in hand. I know
of several institutions which come to
everyone’s mind as being available. I also
know that the head of one of these be-
came professor emeritus at the beginning
of this month, and this kind of thing, as
I suggested in my talk, is going on. So
what is listed now as being available on
the basis of a look two or three years ago
may not really be there.

This is something we finally have been
talking to EPRI (the Electric Power Re-
search Institute) about, and I think EPRI
is interested in the possibility of pursuing
it. We will see.

SPEAKER: Dr. Wald is certainly cor-
rect that we don’t have the capability, and
almost heroic measures of this kind will
be necessary to get it to us. I would like
to hark back to the years 1950 to 1955,
when there was a very strong civil defense
effort in this country. It was policy to alert
hospitals to the requirements that radia-
tion cases be dealt with and to inform the
staff at hospitals how to do this and to tell
what facilities had to be acquired at hos-
pitals so as to take care of radiation cases
that might arise as a result of civil defense
requirements.

That was a period when this capability
that we see present in the Soviet Union

ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEERING 153

now was present in the United States. The
Soviets were able to take care of Cher-
nobyl principally because they have never
relaxed in their civil defense efforts. They
have maintained training of a large corps
of physicians in civil defense activities as-
sociated with radiation injury, and drew
on this to a substantial extent.

Not only was this true in the medical
capability that they drew on, but the ac-
tual physical response to the cleanup pro-
cess took advantage of a great deal of
thinking which had gone into civil de-
fense. The activity that in fact was used
to restore the Chernobyl area to some
accessibility—to the degree that allowed
them to restart Chernobyl I and Cher-
nobyl II and to get ready to restart Cher-
nobyl III later this year—that massive
effort was incredible. It is something that
we, in this country, are not capable of
mustering on short order.

BURLEY: Gordon Burley, the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency. I would
like to pursue this question of lessons
learned a little bit further. The general
consensus after Chernobyl seemed to be
that this was the type of accident that
just couldn’t happen with our types of
reactors. With the exception of some
Department of Defense reactors, that cer-
tainly seems to be true. However, Dr.
Kerr also indicated that there are some
things that we might want to look at out-
side of the hardware. One thing that
comes to mind is the commonality of hu-
man errors. What I would like to know
is, what has been done, in the light of
Chernobyl and all the other reactor op-
erating errors, to again look at this human
factor from the broader perspective of
preventing these major accidents?

SPEAKER: I guess I’m not so sure
how to respond to that very broad ques-
tion. All I can say is that since Three Mile
Island, that has been our major effort; to
look at improving the operating capabil-
ities, the capabilities of people to respond
to events beyond what we had normally
been training people for, to the emer-
gency cases, maybe not as far as some

people at this point believe we should.
That is still one area that we are looking
at and will have to look at.

When you say the commonality of
cause, I guess I am not sure what you are
talking about. Human error is something
that we understand is going to happen. I
think we don’t give any credit on the other
side for the human intervention. From an
old operating standpoint, I would say that
there are probably five cases where op-
erators have prevented something for
each case where they have caused some-
thing. You never hear about that. There
are all kinds of examples, like Brown’s
Ferry that he referred to, although not
that extreme, where operators have done
things.

People are ingenious, if they under-
stand the plant and the circumstances,
and you give them the ability to respond
and to act on their own, not to follow
prescriptions come Hell or high water. It’s
amazing what good, trained, qualified
people can do. That’s a key, and that’s
what we're trying to do: to get people to
better understand. One of the things they
looked at in one area, and they will look
at others, is symptom-based. It’s kind of
like the physician: don’t just have pre-
scriptive rules to follow; look at symptoms
and have enough knowledge to under-
stand or at least guess where you should
go from that.

INN: Kenneth Inn, National Bureau
of Standards. The Chernobyl incident
has sparked renewed radioactivity mea-
surements in Europe. The Radioactivity
Group at the National Bureau of Stan-
dards is interested in providing standards
which may make a positive contribution
to needs you see as necessary, given the
Chernobyl experience—for example, ra-
dioactivity in foodstuff standards.

I would like to ask the panel and the
audience for suggestions as to what kind
of standards you feel would be nice to
have, good to have, necessary to have, so
that we will be prepared in the future.

PUSKIN: Jerry Puskin, E.P.A. After
the Chernobyl accident, everyone might

154 ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION

recall that in Europe there was a lot of
confusion and inconsistency about levels
that should be allowed in food. Some
countries set their levels practically to
zero and others followed ICRP (Inter-
national Committee on Radiation Protec-
tion) recommendations. That got us to
thinking in this country too, because we
really didn’t have that much of a problem
here with respect to radioactive contam-
ination. The simplest thing to do was to
say, ‘““Let’s follow the FDA Protective
Action Guides,” which allowed, depend-
ing on the situation, one-and-a-half rem
or 15 rem to the thyroid and one-third of
that to the whole body.

That is a nice marker, but these guides
were devised for an accident that was
acute, in terms of it happened immedi-
ately and you don’t have too much time
to respond, and people have to eat. I
think both Chernobyl and TMI point up
the fact that nuclear accidents, and re-
leases particularly, often could be spread
over time and you have plenty of time to
respond. There may be cases where an
area has its milk contaminated to a level
which is lower than allowed by PAGs, but
people could very easily obtain other milk
which was essentially free of radioactive
contamination. It wouldn’t make sense
for them to drink that milk.

The FDA guides actually allow for this,
and the States have the ultimate respon-
sibility for setting these. There are States
like Oregon which recommended you not
drink the rain water at that time. We need
to think about setting levels, to use a dirty
word in some quarters, on a LARA type
of basis: we should set them as “‘low as
reasonably achievable” given the circum-
stances. We need better guidelines, de-
pending on the circumstances and how
acute it is, as to what is an acceptable level
of contamination in food and milk.

LEE: I guess I am not sure how you
apply ‘“‘as low as reasonably achievable”’
to an accident event, if that is what you
were inferring. From an industry stand-
point, again, I think we have to turn to
the experts in the field. We do need some

kind of a number that is a reasonable
number, that allows some safety factor in
it. But again, I think we have the public
confused.

We deal also in the electric utilities
business with PCBs and all of the other
toxic substances. It’s not just radiation.
It’s the same issue: what is a safe level?

I live southwest of Joliet. It’s in a very
high-limestone area. The radiation levels
in the wells there—I remember at our
Dresden II hearings, Meryl Eisenbud
came out and testified that what we ought
to do is spend our money working on the
well water in the town of Joliet, rather
than trying to take the squeal out of the
pig coming out of the plant.

I get a little thing in the mail that says,
‘Your water is above the safe guidelines
for radiation, but don’t be concerned.
We are working on it.” That, to me, is
crazy. I get that about every six months
from my water company because they are
required to do that. That is not the kind
of thing we need to do. I think we
have to do something better than that,
or the public is not going to believe any
of us.

SPEAKER: I would like to comment
a little further on the earlier question
about what is being done about human
contributions to risk, because I personally
think it is an extremely important ques-
tion. Indeed, I would say that perhaps if
we are going to make any significant
improvement in risk, I think the risk
is already clear, we probably should con-
centrate on that area rather than on
equipment.

If you will recall, most of the investi-
gating groups that looked at the TMI-II
accident did recommend that more em-
phasis be placed on human contribution.
The human contribution, as Byron has
said, can be both positive and negative,
and we don’t know very well how to de-
scribe it quantitatively. But experience
certainly does indicate that not only li-
censed operators but people who do
maintenance construction, people who
work throughout the plant can contribute

ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEERING 155

both positively and negatively to a trou-
ble-free plant operation.

I am trying to speak in terms of the
industry, and I do not represent it very
well, but it seems to me that most of the
people involved in developing the nuclear
industry up to now have been people with
technical backgrounds—engineering, sci-
entific—and they therefore feel more
comfortable working on what one might
call scientific, technical or equipment
problems. They are not trained and do
not understand very well how to deal with
some of the human problems about which
we need to know more than we now know
in order to train people better, select peo-
ple better, motivate them better, manage
them better. All of those things clearly
contribute to not just safer but more
reliable and more economical nuclear
power plants.

Anybody who has seen power plants in
operation, who has observed a number of
them, who has compared them, knows
how important these things are. But very
few people, I think—maybe nobody—
has a good recipe that says, ““This is the
way you produce an organization that
does a good job.” I certainly don’t know
how to solve the problem, but I think we
need to give it continuing attention. It is
receiving some attention, both on the part
of industry and on the part of the regu-
latory agency. But from my view, the re-
sults are still rather sparse and the study
is in its infancy.

SPEAKER: I would say that in all of
these areas, the industry has put a lot of
emphasis in the last few years. It is a grow-
ing area. Human factors, before Three
Mile Island, was a hardly recognizable
term in this country. It has expanded and
grown considerably. EPRI and INPO are
working very diligently in those areas
trying to develop programs to meet the
concerns that Bill just expressed.

We talked about one of the responses,
I think, after Three Mile Island was in the
human factors area. If you had asked at
that point of time of the utilities, ‘““Did
you apply human factors engineering to

your control room?” the answer would
have been yes. That is true. We did. We
applied what was in those days human
factors terms, but we were applying it to-
ward normal operation as such. We had
not really thought about the transience
condition, and that was a major lesson
that was learned at Three Mile Island. A
lot of the instruments were behind the
board and around the corner, and they
weren't in a location that the operator or
the supervisor or some person could
quickly get a glimpse of the critical pa-
rameters that were required. That was a
major change that was made. ,

CONWAY: My name is Kathleen Con-
way. I am a sanitary engineer, and I ex-
pect that, given the illustrious and
experienced company in this room, I am
probably the closest thing you have to the
great unwashed public. I would like to
share a couple of experiences with you
and then address some of the comments
you made today.

In the early 1970s, I went for a tour of
the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant with a
group of engineers. To my great embar-
rassment, one of the engineers in the
group asked why you cooled the water
down after it goes through the blades of
the generator. My embarrassment at his
feeling the need to ask that question was
overwhelmed by my shock when the guy
from the power plant did not know the
answer. That was kind of a surprise to me.

I was sent for a health physics course
this spring. We had a mix in the class of
about one-third Canadians and two-thirds
Americans. Most of the people worked
at nuclear power plants. There were a few
people like myself who were coming in
for crash training. Most of them had been
working for years in your areas. I found
the discussions that the Canadians and the
Americans would have about how their
plants were managed and operated to be
simply fascinating.

The Canadians clearly were far more
interested in training. They would tell sto-
ries of having to go to six weeks of health
physics classes before people were al-

156

lowed to push a broom through the plant,
being five or six deep in the number of
people who could handle a particular job
at a plant. The Americans would tell sto-
ries that, although they had educational
requirements, they did not appear to be
as demanding. It struck me that they were
often only one or two deep for certain
tasks, often had to rely on traveling gypsy
bands of atomic workers. It seemed to be
a different situation.

In my work, I come across other risk
numbers. I don’t find the ones that you
present particularly frightening. I find
your comparison to the coal industry very
interesting. I find your track record as an
occupational group looks pretty good. I
think a lot of people in the public are
capable of looking at numbers, comparing
them, and deciding whether they look big
or not. I think they are also capable of
looking at people and saying, ““Would I
buy a used car from this person?”

I was not impressed at that power plant
when that spokesperson could not answer
a very simple question that really did not
even relate to nuclear operations but just
to the whole business of using steam to
drive a turbine. I was impressed by the
Canadians.

I would have been very impressed, Mr.
Lee, had you given Dr. Kerr’s speech. I
found some of the comments about the
confused public to be insulting. I am not
sure that when the public does not agree
with the position taken by an industry that
it is because the public is ignorant or con-
fused. I found Mr. Bradford’s arguments
very sympathetic. I know that this would
not be the place for you to be supporting
those arguments. I trust that there are
places where you can make some of those
arguments effectively.

I think if you are to restore the credi-
bility in this country of the technology
which actually holds promise—I mean,
the Canadians seem quite happy with it,
and the French seem quite happy with it,
and indeed, as I said, I was impressed by
the Canadians in this group—I think you
are going to have to consider some of the

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION

things that Mr. Bradford said this morn-
ing and take a slightly different path. I
know this is a little bit off what you were
talking about earlier, but you had men-
tioned the public a number of times, and
I just thought I should give you that feed-
back.

SPEAKER: I was on a team that vis-
ited Canadian plants recently in an at-
tempt to become more international in
our outlook, and they do operate their
plants very well.

SPEAKER: I would be the last person
to try to justify ignorance as a recipe for
operating a nuclear plant or anything else.
Certainly, the accident at Three Mile Is-
land had as one of its major ingredients
a lack of understanding of the physics of
fluids associated with the way things were
going on in that plant. On the other hand,
I would like to point out that this is not
the only thing you have to take into ac-
count, and the Chernobyl] accident I think
was perhaps one of the strongest sources
of recognition of this point.

The Soviet attitude toward operators in
nuclear plants is extremely different from
that in the United States. It’s almost at
the opposite pole. To be an operator in
the Soviet Union, you have to be a li-
censed engineer. You are a graduate en-
gineer from a university. You go into an
apprenticeship program for five years be-
fore you can become a licensed operator
at a nuclear plant, and then you have to
pass the examination on your understand-
ing of the plant. After some additional
period—and I’m not sure what it is; I
think it’s something like three years—you
can advance to the next level of operator
in the nuclear plant, and so on up the
stage until you become a supervisor. It’s
a very strongly structured program to em-
phasize training and understanding of the
way things go on in these plants.

The Soviet scientists in Vienna last year
told us that this was the key to why the
accident actually took place. They said
these individuals thought they were so
good that they could do anything to that
plant and get away with it. They did do

ENVIRONMENT AND ENGINEERING 157

some things, and they didn’t get away
with it.

The only lesson I could draw at the mo-
ment is that you have to balance your
understanding of the plant with this con-
cept that we have pushed in the United
States, that Byron Lee talked so much
about, and that is defense in depth. De-
fense in depth is a management concept.
It is a technical concept. It’s a thing you
draw on to structure your defenses against
mistakes that people make, mistakes that
mechanisms make, and that still provide
you safety back-up when you get failures
of any of these kinds.

The difficulty that occurred at Cher-
nobyl was that there was not a defense in
depth. At least there was not a defense
solidly in depth, so that certain things
could happen and did happen to the
plant that could not be taken care of
by the structure of the plant. This is
the additional ingredient that I think cer-
tainly took care of Three Mile Island and
prevented widespread public disaster at
that place and, I would hope, would do
the same if we ever got into such a fix
again.

SPEAKER: Can I respond to one
comment that was made about the con-
fused public, versus the ones that disagree
with me. I did not consider the people
who disagree with me confused. I was
talking about the masses: people who do
not disagree with me or agree with me. I
was talking about what I think. We dealt,
in my business, with a lot of people. They
were all our customers, the 7 million peo-
ple. We met with them and talked with
them and did a lot trying to educate. That
is what I was basing it on, not the people
who disagreed with me.

STANGLER: Arnold Stangler from

FEMA. I just wanted to comment on the
medical services capability. As a result of
some Atomic Licensing and Safety Board
hearings, some Atomic Safety and Licen-
sing Board Appeal Board hearings, and
I believe a court decision involved U.S.
Guard versus NRC and SONG’s facility,
the San Onofrey Nuclear Generating Sta-
tion, there has been an effort over the last
nine months to reassess and reevaluate
and improve the medical capability at all
the operating plants.

I believe there is a requirement placed
on all utilities to respond roughly a month
ago with their assessment. This included
the requirement for a minimum of a pri-
mary hospital, one backup hospital min-
imum, and minimal medical and nursing
staff to handle radiologically injured as
well as contaminated individuals. All
State plans also have an annex that would
include the medical facilities. There is a
requirement for letters of agreement for
both the hospitals, the transportation ca-
pability with ambulances, et cetera. So I
think it would not be too much trouble to
look these annexes up and assess the num-
ber of facilities.

In the case of the San Onofrey facility,
I believe there is like a dozen hospitals
within 15 miles but outside 10 miles of the
nuclear power plant that have letters of
agreement and have agreed to take care
of injured personnel.

SPEAKER: As part of our program—
I cannot speak for all of the programs—
we did work with those hospitals at least
once a year to review the programs. It
really was a training, drill kind of a pro-
gram that we went through.

STANGLER: Right. There is a re-
quirement for an annual medical drill,
minimum, for each hospital also.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 158-166, June 1988

Fear and Trembling and The Dog
That Didn’t Bark:

Policy and Science
Keynote Address

John F. Ahearne

Vice President, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC 20036

I. Introduction

I start by quoting from an economist:

‘. . .Pd just like to offer a few thoughts
about the future, looking ahead. . . .I see
the potential of big changes coming about
in the future. . . .there are smart people
everywhere. And there are people all
over this world that are working very hard
along with their smarts. So that this
spread of capability and capacity is going
to change the structure of the world econ-
omy and the strategic situation, and we
have to try to understand it. There is, I
think, a gigantic amount of change in
technology to go with this. . . .It’s acliche
to say that it’s a small world but it is a
small world. We are a big part of it. There
is no way that we can, once again, as we
did after World War I, sort of remove
ourselves from the world—it is impossi-
ble. The only question is how effectively
are we going to engage. . . .And one of
my fears right now is that somehow as we
look at all of the difficulties and some of

©Resources for the Future, 1987

158

the things that you have brought out that
there will be a tendency for people to
throw up their hands and say, ‘Stop the
world. I want to get off.’ We can’t get off,
we have to be engaged.”

Those are final remarks of Secretary of
State Schultz, at the recently completed
Iran/Contra hearings.’ I think they char-
acterize the view of many people that
technology is here, it is changing our life,
it is changing the world. My comments
address what role will technologists have?

This evening I wish to address a range
of attitudes about technology. I will focus
on what has been called the hazards, or
risks, of technology.

By the phrase “‘policy and science,” you
should suspect that I am concerned
whether policy and science go together. I
believe they can, but often they conflict.
Tonight I will address some problems in
the application of science to policy in gen-
eral, and to radiation safety policy in par-
ticular.

I speak as one who has had the advan-
tage and the disadvantage of spending al-
most twenty years in Washington. This

POLICY AND SCIENCE 159

city has been described as a bottleneck
for information. The government and its
associated support groups produce vol-
umes, tons, of information, much of
which does not seem to pass beyond the
local area (usually described here as “‘in-
side the Beltway’). The other difficulty
is that the vast amount of knowledge,
opinions, concerns, outside the Beltway
seldom seem to penetrate effectively into
Washington. The bottleneck works both
ways.

I will make three principal points to-
night. First, I will remark on a particular
argument in the area of technological risk,
how safe is safe enough. Second, policy
in the area of technology is strongly af-
fected by three major groups. I will de-
scribe at length one of the groups and
some of the concerns I have with them.
And third, how can technologists become
more effective in developing policy, or
affecting policy? My comments are in-
tended to apply more broadly than to ra-
diation safety policy. I intend them to
apply across the spectrum of technologi-
cal safety issues currently being addressed
in the United States.

Before I go much farther, I will identify
the sources of my title. I have taken it
from two literary allusions. Fear and
Trembling is the title of a book by Kier-
kegaard, a Danish philosopher writing
in the mid-nineteenth century.” The book
is based on a subject—appropriate at
Georgetown—from the Bible, the Old
Testament: how far can faith take a be-
liever. The second is from a story by Ar-
thur Conan Doyle, ““The Adventure of
Silver Blaze.’

II. How Safe is Safe Enough?

A debate that has particular signifi-
cance to this conference’s topic is on the
question: How Safe is Safe Enough? In
recent years, the EPA has tried to apply
cost-benefit analysis to answer this ques-
tion for some of the activities regulated
by that agency. This approach has been
criticized on many grounds, including the

inappropriateness of applying economics
to safety, the absence of ethical consid-
erations, and an over reliance upon tech-
nical experts.

However, economics as a conceptual
approach is based on rational analysis.
Economic analysis does use what are
called utility functions. But it is incorrect
to infer that such a definition of utility is
restricted to what can be bought and sold.
Utility can include non-market goods,
such as the value of unsullied mountain
slopes, clean air at the Grand Canyon,
and other environmental amenities. It can
also include what might be called psycho-
logical satisfaction.

Some discussions imply a confusion be-
tween technology and the application of
technology. This leads to the argument
that a technology is unethical. Most tech-
nology is neutral. I grant there are ex-
ceptions: most would grant that poison
gas is ethically negative. But usually, eth-
ical issues are introduced in addressing
how technology is used, under what con-
straints or controls, but not the technol-
ogy per se. The aspect of the debate which
directly involves the role of the technical
expert involves a specific issue, that un-
derlies all Federal safety regulation: What
is an acceptable risk, or, how safe is safe
enough?

This issue has been argued for decades.
In a famous—to those in risk analysis—
series of papers in 1975, published in The
George Washington Law Review, Harold
Green, an eminent jurist, and Philip Han-
dler, a research biologist then president
of the National Academy of Sciences, en-
gaged in a discussion of—in Green’s
term—the risk-benefit calculus used in
safety determinations.* The debate is over
ten years old—but is still fresh.

Green wrote:

‘‘Whether or not something is accept-
ably safe usually requires consideration of
two aspects: an identification of potential
injury and an assessment of the quantum
of injury, and an identification of poten-
tial benefits and an assessment of their
magnitude and importance... .

160 JOHN F. AHEARNE

‘Scientists and engineers have an im-
portant role to play in the making of
safety determinations. Representatives of
these disciplines are obviously better
equipped than others to identify and
quantify potential risks and to identify po-
tential benefits.’’ Here, Green hits on the
sore point for experts. “It is questionable,
however, whether they have special com-
petence to quantify benefits in a manner
that can be regarded as authoritative in
the formulation of public policy. No elite
group of experts, no matter how broadly
constituted, has the ability to make an
objective and valid determination with re-
spect to what benefits people want and
what risk people are willing to assume in
order to have these benefits.”

Handler countered: “The principal dif-
ference between my approach to the sub-
ject of ‘safety’ and ‘risk’ and that of
Professor Green is that I insist on quan-
tification wherever possible whereas Pro-
fessor Green appears more comfortable
with ‘perception,’ ‘values,’ ‘order of
safety,’ ‘judgment,’ etc. This is made ex-
plicit, for example when [Professor
Green] states that ‘safe is rarely defined
in the real world in terms of a one-in-a-
million chance of an accident, except,
perhaps, as a standard for assessment
chosen by experts.’ ’’ Handler then asks:
“What other choice is there?”

“. . .government regulation of techni-
cal products and processes must rest on a
rational and sufficient scientific base.
Everyone has gained heightened aware-
ness of the natural and man-made hazards
to our environment. Governmental reg-
ulations or programs intended to combat
those hazards must, as a minimum, rest
on detailed appraisal of the nature and
magnitude of those risks, of the monetary
and other costs of measures intended to
reduce the severity of each risk, and of
the nature and magnitude of the benefits
involved in the process or product under
consideration. If those in public office
choose to flaunt such data, let that then
bevlear.

Green had a different conclusion:
“Even though a scientist may not regard
a safety determination as incorrect, he
feels uneasy. . .when the decision is not
rooted in an assessment of soundly pre-
sented scientific fact. In this view, where
the ultimate decision turns upon scientific
questions, scientific fact should dictate
the ultimate decision, or, at the very least,
should define the factual predicates on the
bases of which value conflicts are re-
solved. To the lawyer and the politician,
on the other hand, facts (including sci-
entific facts) exist to be used selectively
and with variable weight as tools for fram-
ing positions in an adversary context and
for making decisions of a practical, utili-
tarian nature. To the scientist, truth, ob-
jectivity, and accuracy are the ultimate
desiderata; to the lawyer and the politi-
cian, the ultimate goal of public policy
decision-making is the optimum resolu-
tion of conflict, and achieving this goal
may require the symbolic acceptance of
something as true which in fact is untrue
or only partly true. This is not to say that
truth is or should be cynically sacrificed
at the altar of expediency; it is merely to
recognize that decision-making in a dem-
ocratic society almost always involves
compromising, and temporizing, and
therefore error, and that a democratic so-
ciety can tolerate error in the expectation
that ultimately truth will pre-
vail. . . .Scientists are newcomers to the
area of public policy decisionmak-
ing. . .and [must] develop the capability
of functioning within the institutional
framework in a manner consonant with
the basic principles of our forms of dem-
ocratic society.”’

The Green-Handler debate has not
been resolved, and technologists are
still uncomfortable in public policy
debates.

The groups most influential in deter-
mining public policy in the area of hazard
management are technologists, man-
agers, and concerned citizens. Here I will
address the first.

POLICY AND SCIENCE 161

Ill. Technologists

I will describe weaknesses in the ap-
proach many in this group now take, but
in a short talk I can only sketch the prob-
lems. In my concluding remarks, I will
describe how scientists and engineers can
better affect the policy process.

I want to separate the general body of

scientists, engineers and technologists
into three subgroups:
(1)those who really know science and
technology, (2) those who know a lot but
are not experts, and (3) those who op-
erate high technology systems but do not
really understand the technology they are
using.

A. The first group contains those who
really do know the science or the tech-
nology—the true experts. Unfortunately,
many cannot communicate their knowl-
edge. They are not able to reduce their
discussion to a level that can be translated
by the media or understood by lay people.
In some cases, this lack of communication
is not due to an inability, but rather to a
belief that it is not worth their valuable
time. Perhaps there are none such here
tonight, but I have met scientists who be-
lieve that writing for the general public is
a waste of their time, that it is of little
professional benefit, and that it also does
little good. However, in the area of haz-
ards and management of risks, it is critical
for the experts to take time to commu-
nicate well. Doing so reduces the possi-
bility and, for complex issues, the high
probability, that technical accuracy will
be lost in the translation to lay language.
In addition, there is a point made by Rob-
ert Samuelson: “It is not an onerous re-
quirement that when writing about risk
assessment to make the assessment intel-
ligible to the people who might be ex-
posed to that risk.”’

I grant that many good scientists do try
hard but have difficulties dealing effec-
tively with the media. Many scientists cor-
rectly are reluctant to say more than they
know. Journalists have a tendency to treat

this as equivocation, and so describe it to
the public. Many lay people believe that
when a scientist refuses to be definitive,
it is equivocation, or, at least, indicates
the scientist does not know much about
the area. Many lay people believe that if
you know something, you should be pos-
itive about it. Unfortunately, what a sci-
entist can be positive about is often not
what the lay person is interested in. This
is a difficulty that will face all technolo-
gists who try to deal with the media. I
encourage you to be patient with this
problem, and to work with the media. I
have found that most representatives of
the media are willing to take the time to
try to understand what you are describing,
if it is obvious that you are making an
effort to help them understand.

My hypothesis is that when an expert
is not communicating effectively, that
usually is due to inability or unwillingness.
There are other reasons that I will men-
tion in connection with my second sub-
group.

B. The second sub-group of technol-
ogists are those who are well-informed
about the science and technology, but do
not really have a complete understanding.
They are not what we would call experts.
Unfortunately, they often believe they
are. These take a paternalistic or mater-
nalistic attitude towards the public: ‘“‘Par-
ent Knows Best.”

This subgroup can be split into two fur-
ther subgroups: Those believing the so-
lution is education, and those believing
the solution is trust. I recognize there are
many experts who will also fall into these
categories in the sense that they share the
problems that I will now identify.

(1) Those who believe the problem is
education. Their attitude is that if only
the public were educated, they would
agree with us. Although I do not imply
Chauncey Starr does not fully understand
technology—he is an expert—many of
Starr’s writings have this flavor. They im-
portune the public to understand. Starr
was one of the first to attempt to classify

162 JOHN F. AHEARNE

what he would probably call true risks and
to rank such true risks relative to each
other. This approach has not been aban-
doned, and was recently demonstrated in
an article by Bernard Cohen in which he
criticized what he sees as the irrational
spending on cost per life saved in the
United States. He wrote, “With any rea-
sonable consideration. . .we are spending
the equivalent of innumerable billions of
dollars per life saved in our radioactive
waste management programs.” He also
estimated that “. . .[the] NRC program
of regulatory racheting [has led to] . . .an
average of at least $1.6 billion extra [for
each nuclear plant], for a total cost of
$100 billion in an effort to save. . .fifty
lives.”’ He then commented, ‘“‘Why is this
insanity taking place?. . .the problem is
that public concern is driven by media
coverage rather than by rational scientific
analysis. The media have driven the pub-
lic insane over the fear of radiation and
of nuclear power accidents.’

The attempt to address risk manage-
ment by ranking risks from different haz-
ards has led to an attempt to define
acceptable risk. I can sympathize with this
attitude. For many years, I shared it.
When I was on the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, I tried to get the National
Academies to undertake a study of the
comparative risks of coal and of nuclear
power, believing that the development of
an objective view by a credible organi-
zation would significantly help the debate
on the risks of nuclear power. However,
I am now shifting to agree with the po-
sition of some who have concluded, ‘‘The
acceptable risk formulation has provided
increasingly elaborate and precise an-
swers to the wrong question.’’’ It is the
wrong question because it is not linked to
participation by and dialogue with the
concerned public.

A similar conclusion, that education is
necessary to resolve risk controversies, is
seen in a recent study examining whether
the sources of environmental conflict can
be explained by the characteristics and
views of the participants in the conflict.

The researchers polled a variety of people
as to what are the most important causes
of environmental conflict. Nearly three-
quarters of those polled labeled “‘public
misunderstanding”’ as a major source. But
those polled did not agree on what the
public did not understand. The respon-
dees whose educational background was
in “hard expertise [viewed] environmen-
tal conflict as scientific rather than polit-
ical, while those. . .individuals educated
in the humanities or social sciences reject
knowledge differentials as a major source
of controversy. . . .Physical scientists, as
expected, endorsed knowledge differen-
tials, and reject value differences.’’®

As a technologist, I must admit I do
lean towards what may be a biased in-
terpretation of those results. I read the
results as showing that those who
understand technology see the conflict
being between those who understand
technology and those who do not. How-
ever, those who do not understand tech-
nology, do not see understanding as
important. Unfortunately, this is a weak-
ness, I believe, in many non-technol-
ogists, t.e., they <do’ not +believe
understanding the technology is impor-
tant to understanding risks of technology.
I will return to this point.

These attitudes can also be seen in nu-
clear industry comments on the TMI and
Chernobyl accidents. I ascribe this indus-
try attitude as seeing the accidents as the
“dog that didn’t bark.’ You may recall
that in the Sherlock Holmes’ story,
Holmes commented that the unique fea-
ture that led him to the solution of the
case was that the dog didn’t bark.’

Some of the nuclear industry have
pointed to TMI and Chernobyl in a sim-
ilar way. Three Mile Island destroyed a
major reactor. It nearly bankrupted a
major company. The cleanup has been
underway for nine years, is still not
completed, and the costs of cleanup will
be about a billion dollars. But the health
studies done by the Pennsylvania State
Department of Health and the United
States Health and Human Services De-

POLICY AND SCIENCE 163

partment indicate there were no signifi-
cant adverse physical health effects as-
sociated with that accident and there are
unlikely to be many. The Chernobyl! nu-
clear accident, the worst accident known
at a power plant, led to thirty-two deaths,
several hundred people hospitalized, and
a high radiation exposure to many thou-
sands of the Soviet public. Nevertheless,
the immediate deaths in the surrounding
vicinity were much less than estimated by
some previous studies from such a mas-
sive release of radiation. Consequently,
some members of the nuclear industry
have said TMI showed how well-built re-
actors are and Chernoby] showed that the
worst accident would not be a calamity.
In other words, the dog didn’t bark. This
argument, while perhaps scientifically
correct, should not lead to the conclusion
that nuclear power is now acceptable. The
flaw in the conclusion is that it avoids ad-
dressing the public. And therefore, I in-
cluded this attitude in the category: if the
public were only educated, they would
agree with us.

(ii) The second subgroup are those
whose attitude is “‘trust me, I know best.”
This is characteristic of the approach that
the U.S. Federal government has taken
to deciding the location for nuclear waste
sites, starting with the Atomic Energy
Commission approach in Kansas, contin-
uing with the Energy Research and De-
velopment Administration approach in
the Midwest, and now seen for many
years with the Department of Energy.
This has led the chairman of a mid-West
compact commission to describe the cur-
rent situation for the case of low-level ra-
diation waste siting as “the lines are
clearly drawn: it is a battle between the
technocrats and the public over whose
values the technology will ultimately re-
flect.”’'° “Trust me”’ is still used as the
principal answer to ‘‘why are you doing
that?”

Nuclear power has been afflicted with
this approach. Many early advocates of
nuclear power convinced electric utility
executives of the advantages of nuclear

power. These executives went ahead—
aggressively—with ambitious nuclear
programs. Much to the chagrin of later
executives, who have found public op-
position being reflected in adverse public
utility commission rulings on rates. The
latest trials facing such utility executives
are prudency hearings. Essentially these
are public utility commissions examining
many years after a plant construction be-
gan whether the electric utility was wise
to have built the plant. Frequently, the
commission decides ‘“‘no,’’ and conse-
quently the rate payers do not get charged
for the plant. The President of the Edison
Electric Institute earlier this year said,
“Technology was the Siren who beckoned
us to nuclear power—power that was sup-
posed to be too cheap to meter but turned
out to be too expensive to bill.’’'! Thus it
is not only the general public who are now
skeptical of technologists who present an
argument based on “trust me, I know
best.”

C. The third technology group are
those who are engaged in operating high
technology systems without really under-
standing them. Perhaps these should not
really be characterized as technologists,
but for the purposes of this talk I am
lumping large groups of people into sim-
ple structures. In some cases, people in
this group have had significant technical
training, while in others, part of their
problem is they have had too little. But,
nevertheless, they use and therefore are
strongly associated with high technology
systems. The major weakness repre-
sented in this group is complacency.

Complacency can be reflected in many
ways: a lack of recognition by manage-
ment that increased attention need be
given to technologies which have the po-
tential of serious consequences; inade-
quate attention by operators, based upon
a belief that the technology is so well de-
veloped that monitoring is not really
needed; a belief it is not important to un-
derstand the technology; and a lack of
attention to mundane matters, such as
regular maintenance.

164 JOHN F. AHEARNE

Aircraft accidents and near accidents
have been attributed to complacency in
the cockpit. These include a 1978 crash
of a DC-8 in Portland, Oregon, when the
plane ran out of fuel. The plane circled
the airport while the crew tried to solve
a landing gear problem. The flight engi-
neer mentioned the plane was running out
of fuel, but apparently the captain and
co-captain did not hear, or did not react
to the message, and the plane crashed.
In 1978, a plane crashed three miles short
of landing in Pensacola, Florida. An
automatic warning device for rapid
descent sounded, but was disarmed by
the crew, which continued the descent
to impact. This complacency could also
be seen in the airline pilot who cut all en-
gines during a recent takeoff from Los
Angeles International Airport. The most
recent example, which has not yet been
resolved, is the apparent failure of the
crew in Detroit to extend flaps during
takeoff.”

The Challenger shuttle disaster led to
a major review chaired by William Rog-
ers.'° The report makes interesting read-
ing for those concerned with the effect of
complacency. The complacency problems
surfaced between the lower levels of
NASA and its contractors and the top of
the agency.

The Rogers report described the pres-
sures on NASA which followed the an-
nouncement that the shuttle was fully
operational. The Rogers report states:
“From the inception of the shuttle,
NASA had been advertising a vehicle that
would make space operations ‘routine
and economical.’ The greater the annual
number of flights, the greater degree
of routinization and economy, so heavy
emphasis was placed on the _ sched-
ule???

"’. . .resources were strained to the
limit, strained by the flight rate itself and
by the constant changes it was forced to
respond to in that accelerating sched-
nlese.

‘“. . .arguing in support of the space

station [in September, 1983], [NASA
Administrator] Beggs said, ‘We can
start anytime. . . .the shuttle is now op-
erational.’ ’’'®

However, ‘“‘according to Astronaut
Henry Hartsfield:

‘Had we not had the accident, we
were going to be up against the
wall. . . .somebody was going to have to
stand up and say we have got to slip the
launch because we are not going to have
the crew trained.’!””

‘“As [Shuttle] Program Manager, Ar-
nold Aldridge reported to the Commis-
sion: *. . .intentional decisions were made
to defer the heavy buildup of spare parts
procurement in the program so that the
funds could be devoted to other, more
pressing activities...”

“Those actions resulted in a critical
shortage of serviceable spare compo-
nents. To provide parts required to sup-
port the flight rate, NASA had to resort
to cannibalization. Extensive cannibali-
zation of spares. . .became an essential
modus operandi in order to maintain
flight schedules.”’®

Thus, underlying the problems that
led to the Challenger disaster, was sim-
ply a disbelief that this technology was
really hazardous—complacency by
those who did not really understand
their system. Many reports on the
Three Mile Island accident showed that
a lack of operator understanding was a
precipitator of the accident. With ap-
propriate understanding by the opera-
tors the accident probably would never
have happened.

Similarly, the reviews of the Chernoby]
accident illustrate the complacency which
had afflicted the crew of this plant, be-
cause it had been operating so well. The
judge who recently sentenced the plant
director to ten years in a labor camp said,
“There was an atmosphere of lack of
control and lack of responsibility at the
plant,” adding that “workers on duty
played cards and dominoes or wrote let-
tesa

POLICY AND SCIENCE 165

IV. Conclusion

What can be done if anything to address
these problems. I will only speak to tech-
nologists and scientists, because I believe
they are the heart of the problem. Now,
what can they do:

1. They can understand the technology
that they deal with. They should be
alert to surprises. Anyone growing up
with an understanding of the many sci-
entific discoveries that were the result
of intelligent observation of experi-
mental accidents should not misun-
derstand that lesson.

2. They must be alert for signs of com-
placency.

3. They should listen and discuss with the
public. It is the public’s lives that will
be affected. It is both right and, since
we are in a democracy, the only con-
stitutionally valid approach to use.

And, you may learn something impor-
tant. Uneducated does not mean not in-
sightful.

This listening must be a true dialogue.
Public hearings should be hearings, not,
as was recently mentioned in a description
of a New York City Board of Estimates’
meeting, only “‘public talkings.”’

4. You should push for competence in
government. You understand technol-
ogy. You should not allow superficial
treatments of technology to pass for
understanding on the part of govern-
ment officials. Scientists involved in
making science policy, however, often
have not demanded competence on
the part of government officials.
Worse, they themselves demonstrate a
willingness to use less than their nor-
mal standards of professional behav-
ior. Harvey Brooks pointed out:
“Scientists inexperienced in the polit-
ical arena, and flattered by the unac-
customed attentions of men of power,
are often inveigled into stating their
conclusions with a confidence not war-

ranted by the evidence and. . .not
subject to the same sort of prompt cor-
rective processes that they would be if
confined within the scientific commu-
nity.”’°

5. In the U.S. all controversial issues
seem to end up in court. ““Expert”’ wit-
nesses proliferate—and disagree,
often strongly. I believe that we should
establish a system of “friend of the
court.’’ The professional societies,
American Chemical Society, Ameri-
can Physical Society, etc., should de-
velop pro bono experts. A panel from
the Society could use consensus agree-
ment to address issues that courts need
addressed. These ‘“‘friends of the
court” should be paid through the
court system. Then if in a significant
court hearing a scientist is needed to
address a scientific issue, or an engi-
neer is needed to address a technical
issue, one of these friends of the court
would appear to discuss the scientific
or technical issues. If a scientist or an
engineer wanted to appear for one of
the sides in the case, the technologist
could not appear as an “expert” wit-
ness, but as an ‘‘advocate”’ witness.
This would address a major reason for
a growing disbelief on the part of the
public in what scientists and technol-
ogists say.

The public is not fooled by the disputes
between scientists, or expert witnesses.
Rather they are beginning to become
skeptical of the objectivity of science and
technology. A recent controversy with re-
gard to whether the large funds spent on
cancer research have done much good led
to charges being thrown back and forth,
heating up the pages of Science and the
general press. Daniel Greenberg wrote
about this controversy: ‘““‘When scientists
become abusive, pay attention. The de-
parture from professional decorum means
something important is at stake.’””!

We scientists and technologists have
not been much help in developing rational

166 JOHN F. AHEARNE

policy in the areas of hazards. We share
significant responsibility for what Bill
Clark has described: ‘‘Society’s attitudes
towards risks such as cancer and nuclear
reactors are not readily distinguishable
from its earlier fears of the evil eye.”’”

Each time a technological disaster oc-
curs, TMI, Challenger, Bhopal, Cher-
nobyl, meetings like this one are held.
Unfortunately, the general descriptions
of the problems and the recommended
solutions are uncomfortably similar.
Progress is not our most important
product.

References Cited

1. Schultz, George P., testimony, Iran-Contra
Hearings (pp. 51-1 to 55-1 transcript text). July
24, 1987 (pm).

2. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Penguin
Books, Ltd., 1985, p. 18.

3. In the Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes,
Arthur Conan Doyle, Castle Books, Secaucus,
New Jersey, 1977.

4. Green, H. “The Risk-Benefit Calculus in Safety
Determinations,” 43 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 791,
pp. 796-807 (1975). Handler, P. “A Rebuttal:
The Need for a Sufficient Scientific Base for
Government Regulation,” 43 Geo. Wash. L.
Rev. 791, pp. 808-813 (1975).

5. ““A Reporter’s and Father’s Perception of
Risk,” The Colloquium by and for Regulatory
Analysts,” 24 March 1986, Washington, D.C.

6. “Insanity in Action; Reducing the Hazards of
Nuclear Power,” Bernard L. Cohen, Physics
and Society, Volume 16, No. 3, July 1987.

7. “Beyond Acceptable Risk: On the Social Ac-
ceptability of Technologies,” Harry J. Otway
and Detlof von Winterfeldt, Policy Sciences 14
C1982) Spe 255:

8. “Defining Conflict as a Means of Legitimizing
Resources,” Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and
Robert W. Rycroft, unpublished manuscript,
July 1987.

9. ‘“‘Inspector: Is there any other point to
which you wish to draw my attention? [ Holmes],
‘‘To the curious incident of the dog in
the nighttime.’’ [Inspector] “‘The dog did
nothing in the nighttime.” “‘That was the
curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
(pp. 196-197) ‘‘. . .significance of the
silence of the dog... he had not barked
enough. . .” (p. 199). ‘““The Adventure of Sil-
ver Blaze,” op cit.|

10. “Issues in Radioactive Waste Management,”
Clark W. Bullard, Chairman, Central Midwest
Compact Commission for Low Level Radioac-
tive Waste Management, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, April 30, 1987, p. 13.

11. Speech by Jerry Geist, 55th Annual EET Con-
vention, June 8, 1987.

12. “Automation, Routine Can Produce Cockpit
Inattentiveness,” Douglas B. Feaver, Washing-
ton Post, 8/23/87, p. Al.

13. Report of the Presidential Commission on the
Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, June 6, 1986,
Washington, D.C.

14. Ibid, p. 164.

15. Ibid, p. 164.

16. Ibid, p. 165.

17: Ibid, *p. 170:

18. Ibid, pp. 173-4.

19. “Chernobyl Officials are Sentenced to Labor
Camp,” The New York Times, July 30, 1987, p.
AS.

20. H. Brooks, “‘Expertise in Politics: Problems and
Tensions,’ Proceedings, American Philosophi-
cal Society, 119: p. 259, 1975.

21. Quoted in The Public Interest, No. 88, Summer,
1987, p-sloke

22. ‘““Witches, Floods, and Wonder Drugs,” Wil-
liam C. Clark, R-22, Institute of Resource Ecol-
ogy, University of British Columbia, January,
19807 pail

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 167-172, June 1988

The Media’s Coverage of
Radiation Risks

David M. Rubin

Center for War, Peace and the News Media, New York University,
New York, NY 10003

In 1979, I was the head of the Task
Force on the Public’s Right to Know for
the President’s Commission on the Ac-
cident at Three Mile Island. One of the
opportunities of that experience was that
I had a chance, with my group, to practice
journalism with subpoena power. I have
practiced journalism with subpoena
power, and journalism without it. Let me
tell you, having subpoena power is the
only way to go, if you can get it. But it’s
the only time I’ve had it.

As a result of the Three Mile Island
experience, I was able to reach some ten-
tative conclusions about why mistakes
were appearing in the news media during
the first really difficult week of that ac-
cident. We examined what utility officials,
the NRC officials, and state government
officials were saying to the press and the
public, and we identified where the bot-
tlenecks in communications occurred. We
made recommendations in that report to
the utility companies, government offi-
cials, and the press on how better to per-
form their jobs in emergency situations.

Fortunately, there has been no com-
parable test in the United States since
Three Mile Island to determine whether
any of the procedural problems we iden-

167

tified have been solved, or whether any
of the specific recommendations have
been adopted.

The accident at Chernobyl in April and
May of 1986, however, provided the
American press with a second opportu-
nity to report on a serious power plant
accident. As a co-director of the Center
for War, Peace, and the News Media, at
New York University, which looks at how
the media cover U.S.-Soviet relations and
the arms race, I examined American and
European coverage of the Chernobyl ac-
cident during the first three weeks, when
events were quite confused. I was able to
draw some comparisons between cover-
age of the Chernobyl accident and Three
Mile Island.

There are enough similarities in cov-
erage of the two events that I have now
reached some tentative conclusions about
how journalists operate—indeed, must
operate—during events of this type. Be-
cause of the way journalists in the United
States work and the pressures they work
under, and because of the nature of the
events themselves, I fear it is inevitable
that critics of journalism will say that cov-
erage of serious power plant accidents is
“sensational” or “inaccurate,” for lack of

168 DAVID RUBIN

better words. Further, there may be little
that journalists can do to head off these
charges.

Having studied these two accidents, I
am, therefore, going to offer you ““Rub-
in’s Four Rules” that govern media cov-
erage of serious, or seemingly serious,
nuclear power plant accidents. I admit
that concerning the Chernobyl accident,
I was unable to answer many questions
about information flow in the Soviet
Union, so I had to make some educated
guesses about who knew what, and how
much was being communicated by Soviet
officials. I obviously have much more de-
tail about TMI than Chernobyl.

With that caveat, let me offer these four
rules. By the end of the presentation, you
will see that criticism of press perform-
ance is probably inevitable.

Rule No. 1: Big stories demand lots of
space in newspapers and lots of air time
on television and radio, because that is
what signals they are big stories. Once
those who determine news play have com-
mitted to the notion that a story is “a big
story,” then they signal their readership
or viewership that this is a big story, not
just by the positioning of it on the front
page or at the top of the newscast but also
by the amount of space that they choose
to give it. Once editors have committed
all those column inches and all that air
time, they must fill it with words or im-
ages, even if there is little hard, confirmed
information to report.

I wouldn’t quibble with editors who de-
cided that both TMI and Chernobyl were
“big stories.”’ Both clearly fit the defini-
tion of “news.” TMI was a potentially
serious nuclear power plant accident. It
was ongoing; that is, it was not over by
the time the press found out about it,
which meant that journalists could get to
the scene and actually witness it as it was
playing out. There was evacuation poten-
tial, which meant that large numbers of
people might be involved. The location
was near enough to major media cen-
ters—New York, Washington, Phila-
delphia, Pittsburgh—so that many

journalists could get there quickly. It was
not clear how serious this accident was
going to become. All these factors made
it a “big story.”’

Chernobyl evinced some of the same
“big story” features, as well as others.
First, it happened in the Soviet Union.
From an American perspective, that im-
mediately makes it news. The United
States was still very much in the grip of
an “evil empire’ view of the Soviet
Union. The accident was viewed as a test
of ‘“‘glasnost,’’ Soviet Communist Party
leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of
openness; how would it apply to this ac-
cident? This was a test of Soviet secrecy.
It was also unclear how serious the acci-
dent was, although from the beginning it
was correctly viewed as more serious than
TMI, and probably more serious than any
other past accident. And like TMI, it was
ongoing.

The “big story” rule really gets the ball
rolling toward charges of media sensa-
tionalism and inaccuracy. Once the press
is committed to the notion of the big
story, it must fill a lot of space to prove
it.

This leads to Rule No. 2: Newspaper
space and television time will be filled
with something, for better or worse. Ed-
itors cannot signal that TMI or Chernobyl
is a big story and then say, ‘““‘We don’t
know anything else” and provide only two
or three paragraphs. The large news hole
must be filled. The question is, ““How?”’

In reporting such stories, journalists are
essentially captives of their sources. Good
journalists will try to contact those
sources they believe are in the best po-
sition to know what is happening at a par-
ticular point in time. Sources, of course,
vary in quality. Good journalists will
bring to the interviewing process suffi-
cient knowledge of the subject so that
they know what to ask sources, and how
to evaluate the answers by comparing
them to what they are hearing from other
sources.

If journalists cannot interview the
sources they want on a story like this, they

THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF RADIATION RISKS 169

do not have the option of saying to their
editors, “I can’t speak to any of the peo-
ple who really know what is going on. I
don’t have a story.” Editors expect sto-
ries. They need to fill space. Journalists
will have to seek alternative sources to
report some sort of story.

If one examines the inaccurate, spec-
ulative or sensational information re-
ported during TMI and Chernobyl, it
almost always appeared because journal-
ists were forced to rely on sources who
were themselves uninformed, specula-
tive, or sensational.

For example, during Chernobyl, some
of the most incendiary information came
from foreign ham radio operators, whose
broadcasts were picked up. In one case,
this resulted in a story that thousands
were dead as a result of the accident, and
that they were being buried in mass
graves.

Should those ham radio operators have
been credible sources? Some media ac-
corded them more credibility than did
other media. Those wild estimates of the
number dead received bigger play in some
media than in others. But at root, it was
the lack of information from key Soviet
sources that permitted those ham radio
operators to gain any credibility at all.

Similarly, many journalists resorted to
interviewing Ukranian Americans about
what they were hearing from relatives liv-
ing close to the accident. Many of these
interviewees were strongly anti-Soviet
and prepared to believe the worst about
what was happening. Much of what they
said appeared in newspapers that serve
large Ukranian-American communities,
such as Chicago or Cleveland, as well as
in New York and Washington.

A lack of sources also produces ‘‘man
in the street” coverage. A reporter may
legitimately want to plumb reactions of
local residents, but there is also pressure
to do that if one is having difficulty getting
information from other sources. Such
‘“‘man in the street” information can often
be wildly inaccurate as to what is hap-
pening, and it can even be an inaccurate

indication of what the community is in
fact thinking.

Citizen activists—in the case of nuclear
power, generally opponents of the tech-
nology—often receive much attention in
the press during an accident, because
journalists know who these people are.
They have their phone numbers. They
know how to reach them. During Three
Mile Island, some came to the plant site
to be available to journalists. These ac-
tivists know how the journalism game is
played. They are aware that they can get
their views into the press at that time. It
is another way for reporters to fill space.
Some citizen activists have technical ex-
pertise and can provide a useful perspec-
tive. Others offer a political perspective
on these questions.

All these groups are alternatives to the
kinds of sources journalists would prefer
to have during such accidents; that is,
sources who are on scene, fighting the
emergency, who can explain why it hap-
pened, what the status of the reactor is,
when it is likely to be under control, and
the amount of radiation released.

Rule No. 3: In any nuclear power plant
accident, there is built-in controversy.
Conflicting charges and counter-charges
are inevitable. A power plant accident is
a disaster like no other. As a news story,
it cannot be compared to a hurricane, an
earthquake, a flood, or any other kind of
disaster. One reason for that is the large
number of groups in the United States
well-organized in opposition to the tech-
nology. There are no strong citizen groups
in opposition to hurricanes, earthquakes
or floods.

In addition, journalists have come to
the conclusion there are no neutral
sources on nuclear power plant accidents.
This is not the case concerning sources of
information on hurricanes, floods, fires,
famines and so on. On nuclear power,
sources are on one side or the other.
Therefore, reporters can and do pit
sources against each other. This creates
conflict in news stories, and conflict is one
important element of journalism. This

170 DAVID RUBIN

also helps to contribute to what appears
to be sensational or inflammatory news
coverage.

Journalists have by now decided on the
likely bias of potential sources in the nu-
clear power area, and they therefore ap-
proach those sources with certain
assumptions. For example, most journal-
ists assume that utility officials are pro-
nuclear power; that they are, in whatever
they say, protecting their own careers and
the technology to which they are com-
mitted; that they are unduly optimistic
about what is happening at the plant dur-
ing an accident; and that whatever they
say needs to be discounted or played
down in light of that. Journalists also as-
sume that most NRC officials share the
bias of utility officials, largely because
NRC officials have the same stake in the
safety of the technology that utility offi-
cials have and, therefore, they would pre-
fer to see the optimistic aspects of an
accident emphasized, as opposed to the
worst-case fears.

On the other side of the ledger, jour-
nalists believe that most citizen activists
are opposed to the technology and are,
therefore, grinding an ax. Academicians
fall on both sides: some are well known
to support the technology, and others are
well known to oppose it. Journalists know
which are which, and they seek them out
precisely to elicit contending, conflicting
views.

One of the few groups that journalists
might concede is neutral or unbiased in
this area is meteorologists, who will dis-
cuss wind currents and possible patterns
of radiation dispersal. A second group
might be persons gathering data about ra-
diation releases. During Chernobyl, for
example, Swedish and Finnish meteor-
Ologists and radiation experts were ac-
corded high credibility with the
worldwide press corps, although I do not
believe Soviet scientists from the same
disciplines would have been believed by
American journalists, just as they mis-
trust utility officials in the United States.

It is still possible that State government

officials—in the case of TMI, Pennsyl-
vania—maintain a reputation for honesty
with the press and are viewed as sources
who have no ax to grind.

It should be added that I do not believe
journalists themselves are objective about
this story, given its emotional content and
history. Journalists have views. They
bring to stories all kinds of baggage. They
are now suspicious of any story that deals
with radiation releases or nuclear power,
in part because of the past history of gov-
ernmental secrecy in this area. The con-
straints on information concerning
matters nuclear have made journalists
rightfully suspicious of whatever is said
about the technology. They are also sus-
picious of utility cover-up, because the
utility has the most to lose during an ac-
cident. Indeed, they are now suspicious
of the entire nuclear power plant program
of the last 35 years because of the manner
in which it was oversold to the public.
Journalists do not like to be used in a
public relations program.

During Chernobyl, American journal-
ists were, of course, also suspicious of the
Soviet government. Almost every Soviet
statement during the first three weeks was
greeted with great skepticism, even
though many turned out to be accurate,
if woefully incomplete and late.

Finally, in reporting any serious acci-
dent, journalists are going to look for
blame. This element is absent in coverage
of a hurricane, earthquake or flood.
Looking for blame automatically injects
controversy and sensationalism into a
story. All of these suspicions and biases
which journalists bring to nuclear acci-
dent stories serve to heighten controversy
and create the appearance of sensation-
alism.

Rule No. 4: Journalists care more
about the future than about the past. One
might even go further to say that they care
more about the future than the present.
Look, for example, at the coverage in
September 1987 of the agreement in prin-
ciple with the Soviet Union to sign a nu-
clear weapons treaty. The most

THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF RADIATION RISKS 171

interesting questions are what this will
mean for President Reagan’s influence on
Capitol Hill, for his ability to conclude
future treaties, for Mikhail Gorbachev’s
power in the Soviet Union, for future
agreements between the two countries.

It is amazing how much of the infor-
mation does not deal with what happened
yesterday, or what it says about the re-
lationship between the two countries over
the last six years, but rather is speculative.
This is a key reason journalists write all
the worst-case scenario stories, or ask the
what-if questions that utility and NRC of-
ficials hate and fear. Such questions force
them to lay before the public the worst
possible consequences of an accident,
consequences they feel will not happen
and which they honestly feel are irre-
sponsible to discuss. People read their re-
sponses, become alarmed, and then
blame the press for sensational coverage.
This phenomenon is also related to the
difficulty of discussing risk during an ac-
cident. It is hard to put risk into a proper
perspective when one is asked these what-
if questions. The press asks them, in part,
because they are interested in the future,
but also because the press feels it has a
responsibility to protect the public.

On this score, the American press and
the Soviet press disagree on how best to
protect the public. The American press
does not want to be in the position of
having underestimated the risk. If the
American press were to cover an accident
in a fairly low-key and reassuring manner,
and then something terrible were to hap-
pen, the press would be seen as having
been in league with those who were giving
an optimistic view of the accident and
would be blamed for it. The American
press very much wants to avoid that. In
the Soviet Union, it is just the opposite.
The press does not want to alarm the pub-
lic. It played down the seriousness of the
accident at Chernobyl so as not to alarm
the public. One could debate which
method is more responsible and which
better serves the public. But there is that
difference.

As a result of these four rules, should
another serious power plant accident oc-
cur anywhere in the world, certain aspects
of the coverage can be predicted.

First, a wide variety of sources will be
consulted because of the need to fill
space. Sources will vary widely, and
wildly, in their credibility and in the qual-
ity of information they have. Second, as
a result, there will be many mistakes in
the coverage—some of them big, most of
them small—because the sources them-
selves are incorrect. They have false in-
formation, or they have old information,
or they are shading the truth, or they are
lying. Third, journalists will be under
deadline pressure, and many will be un-
derprepared. They will hear what they
want to hear and see what they want to
see. They will bring some of their own
baggage to the story. Journalists will inev-
itably charge officials with covering up or
lying. Often, these words are an exag-
geration. In most cases, sources simply do
not know. But reporters cannot be in the
position of saying ““We don’t know.”’ They
have to fill that space. As a result, re-
porters press for answers from whoever
can supply them. Often those answers
turn out to be incorrect.

As a result, there will inevitably be pub-
lic confusion. The public will proclaim a
continuing erosion of confidence in the
media. There will be much breast-beating
about press performance. If one goes
back to examine press coverage of both
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—par-
ticularly Chernobyl—it is surprising how
much of the information reported at the
time was fairly accurate. If one had thor-
oughly read three or four different news-
papers, and watched all three television
networks, it was possible to get a good
picture of what was going on. But then
not many people in the audience do that.

Many in this audience are persons who
function as sources for journalists and
who would like to make this process work
better. There are some things they might
do to improve the situation.

First, the Denton-Blix approach. Har-

172 DAVID RUBIN

old Denton, on the third day of the ac-
cident, was sent to Three Mile Island as
a sort of information czar to bring order
out of the chaos, to provide regular brief-
ings, and to become a central source of
accurate information for the press, so
journalists would not have to keep scur-
rying around to alternate sources collect-
ing misinformation. That system worked
pretty well at Three Mile Island. It finally
worked at Chernobyl, where Hans Blix
of the International Atomic Energy Com-
mission was a much more credible source
than anyone the Soviets could have pro-
vided.

If government and utility together can
designate a Denton or a Blix early in the
accident, and set him up in a place where
the press had gathered, this will reduce
the press’ need to go to alternate sources
to fill space. A Denton or Blix might pro-
vide so much information that reporters
would have little—or less—need to go to
outside sources. While journalists will al-
ways go to some outside sources as a
check on what they are hearing at the site,
the more information the utility and the
government provide to the press, the
more space they will fill. The more space
they fill, the less need journalists will have
to consult other sources.

One risk with a Denton-Blix approach
is that if the press ever catches the infor-
mation czar in a lie, then the game is over.
Reporters will never forgive an informa-
tion czar in whom they have placed that

kind of trust for misleading them. A Den-
ton or Blix must be selected very care-
fully. An examination of Denton’s
performance at Three Mile Island indi-
cates that he did a very good job, partic-
ularly since he did not know he was going
to be playing that role, had never done it
before, and was really improvising when
he did it. While he wasn’t totally candid,
the press didn’t find him out at the time.
That was key. Had he been found out at
the time, even more serious information
problems would have ensued.

Also required is that the information
czar have a support group of other people
available to provide information across a
range of topics right at the site so the press
need not go to other sources. Any source
caught in a situation like TMI should not
lie, and should attempt not to provide old
or outdated information. Journalists, if
they are given outdated information, and
then hear newer information, are likely
to assume a coverup. They are less likely
to assume that a source had old infor-
mation. It is also advisable not to be too
optimistic during an accident, because
journalists are suspicious of such opti-
mism.

In conclusion, however, do not be sur-
prised if coverage of the next TMI or
Chernobyl is just as controversial as it
was in 1979 or 1986. This is a situation be-
yond remedy so long as the press in the
U.S. works under the pressures that it
does.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 173-177, June 1988

Covering Radiation Risks
and Benefits

Richard D. Smyser

Editor, The Oak Ridger, Oak Ridge, TN 37831

Preparing for this talk and going
through my large, if not well organized,
accumulation of newspaper and magazine
articles related to nuclear power, I dis-
covered that I have a collection. Well, not
a collection, but at least the start of, an
idea for a collection. Until a better name
occurs, I shall call it my collection of
“Obligatory Skeletons.”

Could I have the first slide please:

(Slide of ad in the Philadelphia Evening
Bulletin promoting a coming series of ar-
ticles on nuclear wastes. Ad features a
large skeleton.)

This is an ad from the Philadelphia Eve-
ning Bulletin, or I should say the late Phil-
adelphia Evening Bulletin. It died in
1982, like so many metropolitan after-
noon newspapers have died.

Next slide, please.

This is an illustration in Deadline, a
publication with which a fellow speaker,
David Rubin, of New York University, is
associated. The skeleton here, you will
note, is digging his own grave while the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, I pre-
sume, looms in the background. These
are the only two “obligatory skeletons” I
have now in my collection but I know that
in time Ill locate many others that have
appeared as illustrations with nuclear ar-

173

ticles. I call them “obligatory skeletons”
because, on this subject, it seems they are
expected, required.

Next slide, please.

(Slide of Washington Post special sec-
tion cover showing cooling towers.)

And if not a skeleton, then some men-
acing cooling towers, either conceived by
an artist to suggest something other than
benign energy or taken by a photographer
with a telescopic lens so that they loom,
loom, loom.

Next eight slides please, somewhat
slowly, with pauses between.

(Early man lying in shadow of cooling
tower);

(Cooling tower with ‘“‘What if?’’);

(Cooling tower with question mark);

(Cooling towers presented as grotesque
heads);

(Cooling towers in vivid purple and
pink);

(Russian bear emanating from cooling
tower);

(Wash flapping in foreground, cooling
tower in background);

(Cooling towers belching smoke and
fire).

Now just a few more from my very be-
ginning collection:

Next slide please:

174 RICHARD D. SMYSER

(Slide of vivid yellow radiation hazard
symbol with headline ‘‘Deadly cargo.”’)

Plutonium has inspired many newspa-
per graphic artists too. Next slide please:

(Slide of another page from Anchorage
Daily News.)

Stories on the possible preservation of
foods by radiation still further inspire
both artists and photographers. Next slide
please:

(Slide of page from Charlotte Ob-
server. )

This appeared just two weeks ago in
the Charlotte Observer. It’s a presenta-
tion on the pros and cons of food irradia-
tion, although I tend to doubt the
objectivity of the photo editor at least.

So much for my beginning collection.
Pll welcome contributions.

I have just a few more slides on a some-
what different aspect of my subject. Next
slide please:

(Slide showing nuclear story on inside
page of paper.)

Note that all of the stories I have
marked on these pages are, on any rela-
tive scale, positive stories about nuclear
power. Note also that they all appear on
inside pages of the newspapers—not on
page one. Now all but the last slide please.

(Pause for comments on appropriate
slides.)

And here’s some interesting media risk
analysis: A trace of radiation exposure is
given greater, if not really much greater,
prominence than the evacuation of 5000.

I could, of course, have shown an equal
number of front pages featuring, with
quite large headlines, first reports on the
nuclear accidents concerned here, chiefly
Chernobyl, but you are all well aware of
those.

Let me have the last slide, please, one
that is somewhat out of sequence but I
show it now rather than interrupt again.

(Slide of The Oak Ridger’s weekly
“Radiation Report” included with the
other weather information.)

This is something my paper has been
doing since the summer of 1979, just after
Three Mile Island. We may be unique.

The slides I have shown make it clear
that the emphasis of media coverage on
nuclear power is negative—significantly
more negative than is the emphasis on
most other subjects.

Why? Because nuclear is a terribly
flawed and deadly technology? Or is it
some sort of liberal media or subversive
plot?

I don’t really know why the emphasis
is so negative, although I do know that it
is not a media plot, nor do I think it is a
subversive plot. For myself, in the very
final analysis, I reason that any technol-
ogy that we learn about first in terms of
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people, even though they are hundreds
of thousands of people in an enemy coun-
try during a terrible war that has killed
millions—any technology born in the
public consciousness in this context is
going to have a lot of trouble developing
a positive image. Nor do subsequent
events like Three Mile Island or Cher-
nobyl help.

But I don’t really want to talk today
about why nukes get such a bad press. I
want to suggest instead some things that
all of us might consider toward giving the
public, through the press, a fuller, fairer
base of information on which to evolve
future judgments of nuclear technology.

I have separated my suggestions into
three parts:

First, what we of the media might do;

Second, what you of science, technol-
ogy and government might do;

Third, what we all might do together.

I have oversimplified the separation as
I have oversimplified, for the sake of
time, many of my suggestions.

First, the media:

Process reporting: News is not just a
succession of events. Most things don’t
just happen—they evolve. Events are
news, but so are processes and especially
the process of the development of tech-
nologies.

Media suggestion number two: Do we
tend to report so heavily on the potential
dangers of nuclear power plants because

COVERING RADIATION RISKS AND BENEFITS 175

these dangers have been so widely as-
sessed and extrapolated? Are the “‘worst
case scenarios’ that have been developed
for nuclear power plants a weakness or a
strength of the technology?

Joe Kramer, in an article in the March
issue of Quill, writes of the “‘sixth w’—
‘What if?’ Have we done so much “what
if?” reporting of nuclear power because,
other than Three Mile Island and now
Chernobyl, we have had no specific ex-
amples? Have we “what iffed”’ any other
story so constantly, so thoroughly?

Let’s reexamine our use of words. Have
we developed some cliches? Does radia-
tion always spew? Is plutonium always
deadly? Was Darrell Eisenhut, member
of the NRC staff in 1979, really “‘big-
boned, square-jawed, wire-rimmed,
blond—the compleat nuclear man,” as
the Philadelphia Inquirer described him?
Is there no one on the NRC staff who
looks like Woody Allen?

Relatively recent surveys show that 40
percent of the public still believes that a
nuclear power plant can explode like a
nuclear bomb. It is not taking sides in the
nuclear power debate to try to correct that
wrong impression.

We should recognize that on this is-
sue—in fact on most issues in these
times—pro and con is not enough. There
are not just two sides in many of the dis-
agreements. There are, instead, three,
four, five different positions. Let’s make
sure we present them all.

And still more suggestions for us of the
media:

Develop not just a passion for accuracy
per se, but also for context, qualifiers,
perspective, background.

Is nuclear really so “‘Dr. Strangelove’’?
Or it is something very much of nature—
of this earth? How many newspapers have
written about the natural chain reaction
that occurred 2000 years ago in uranium
deposits in Gabon, Africa—a natural re-
actor that, over eons, disposed of its own
nuclear wastes too?

Let’s report the total energy story. Put
nuclear power into the context of the

‘““greenhouse effect’? and the Persian
Gulf.

My suggestions for science, technology
and government:

Help us to do process as well as event
reporting. Be available to explain your
processes as well as your events. Appre-
ciate that the public is capable of under-
standing the uncertain, the incomplete,
the ongoing.

Work to still further eliminate elitism
and clubbiness within science. The value
of peer review notwithstanding, develop
an equal respect for public review.

Stop making lepers out of those injured
in radiation accidents. (And stop calling
those accidents incidents.) Report the
names of victims of these accidents as you
report the names of other accidents—ve-
hicles, falls, fires.

Aside: I suggest that Charley Foust is
a hero of sorts in the cause of public ac-
ceptance of nuclear power. Charley works
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and
he suffered a small exposure in an acci-
dent there in early 1986. Charley didn’t
actually aggressively announce himself as
a victim, but when he was quoted anon-
ymously and incorrectly in another news-
paper about the accident and then was
contacted by us, because we had learned
his identity unofficially, he did not object
to our use of his name to correct the mis-
quotation. And soon after that, another
of our Oak Ridge nuclear workers, L. D.
Conger, of the Y-12 Plant’s Metal Prep-
aration Division, suffered an exposure
and specifically asked that his name be
used. Nor have either Foust or Conger
been shunned or otherwise abused by the
public.

Still more suggestions for you of sci-
ence, technology and government:

Work to get the NRC to open all of its
hearings, meetings.

Stop comparing nuclear power risks to
highway fatalities and airline crashes. It’s
boring.

Combat the kind of mentality that was
apparent when, after Chernobyl, DOE
slapped a gag rule on its scientists and

176 RICHARD D. SMYSER

engineers—the people most capable of in-
telligent comment and reaction.

Watch your jargon: You know what the
“BEIR report” is, but I had to spend
more time than I should have spent to find
out that it’s the 1972 report of the Com-
mittee on Biological Effects of Ionizing
Radiation of the National Academy of
Science.

And heed this advice from Elizabeth
M. Whelan in her book ‘“‘Toxic Terror,”
as adapted for the December 1985 Quill:

“Obviously, all scientists and health
professionals can’t be expected to ditch
their careers in favor of media tours, but
it seems reasonable to ask some of them,
particularly academic physicians, to make
themselves available to the media from
time to time, and to learn to present their
messages with a proficiency comparable
to that of the average quack.

‘All health professionals, however,
should make a point of keeping track of
the current fads and frauds being pro-
moted by the media. Even if they never
go on the air, health professionals can ex-
ert some social and economic pressure by
praising those stations that are fair and
responsible in their coverage of health
topics. . .

“Physicians and scientists should not
deny or fight the power of the media; they
should join it. If a charlatan is in town, a
qualified professional should be demand-
ing a debate. To stand back is to permit
facts to be distorted—a dangerous error
of omission.”

These are things we need to work at
together:

How can we make the public more
aware that the effects of low level doses
of radiation are simply not yet substan-
tially known and will not be known for
who knows how long?

Can’t we find some way to make the
language of radiation exposure measure-
ments simpler, more consistent—as sim-
ple as temperature and barometer
readings? My own newspaper’s regular
printing of the background radiation
readings in our community is an indirect

effort toward that end. Rads, rems, body
rems, man rems, milirems, person rems,
becquerels, rutherfords, curies, roent-
gens, coulombs: Help! High level scien-
tific committees have been formed to
attack many other problems. Why not a
blue ribbon group from the National
Academy of Sciences to simplify the lan-
guage of radiation exposure: Two dental
X-rays, membership in a Frequent Flyer
club, sleeping with your spouse, sleeping
with your spouse in a masonry building?

Let’s work together toward mutually
agreeable guidelines for check backs,
read backs on sensitive stories. I empha-
size mutually agreeable. There are very
good reasons why we of the media are
cautious about read backs.

Work together also to develop lively,
colorful, but accurate and fair analogies.
Like this one: Fusion scientist describing
problems of dealing with exceedingly high
temperatures: “It’s not something we can
fan with a hat;”’ a nuclear reactor engineer
describing a long since abandoned reactor
concept, the homogeneous reactor: “It’s
a soup instead of a Swiss watch.”’

Work together to make organizations
like Scientists Institute for Public Infor-
mation (SIPI) work better: scientists and
engineers by adding their names to the
tens of thousands already listed for all-
hours availability for media inquiry; me-
dia people by spreading the word about
and using SIPI.

And that NAS committee seeking a
simplified language for radiation expo-
sure measures might do at least beginning
work on developing a scale for measuring
all risks. We tossed this around in the ed-
itorial columns of my paper and got some
interesting suggestions. What about say-
ing that such and such a risk is so many
“cigs —for cigarette—or so many “Na-
ders” for you know who? Or, more spe-
cifically, my Oak Ridge friend John
Haffey suggested: ‘“‘Why not evaluate
risks in relation to their known record and
potential benefits, hazards and conse-
quences on three major areas: Lifespan
(health and mortality), livelihood (jobs

COVERING RADIATION RISKS AND BENEFITS 177

and economics) and lifestyle (environ-
ment and quality of life)?”

Further, let’s agree on what “melt-
down” means—literally.

The word has now entered the language
in the figurative sense. We now have all
sorts of meltdowns—stock market melt-
downs, Chicago Cubs meltdowns (when
they let the Phillies score seven runs in
the seventh inning Wednesday night). But
what does a reactor meltdown really
mean? Now that it has been established
that the core did indeed melt at Three
Mile Island but that all but only infini-
tesimal amounts of radiation were con-

tained, is that a meltdown, or must there
be devastating effects on the public—a
China Syndrome?

And perhaps most important of all, in
conclusion, let us guard against becoming
preoccupied with—hung up on—each
other: Government and scientists vs me-
dia. We need to communicate with each
other, but only because we both need to
communicate with the public—and a very
smart public—a public that, like the late
Raymond Clapper told us many years
ago, “knows only half as much as we think
it knows but is twice as smart as we think
jteiS/7/ |

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 178-185, June 1988

Non-Media Communications

Karl Abraham

Senior Public Affairs Officer
Office of Governmental and Public Affairs
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
King of Prussia, PA 19406

ABSTRACT

People who are very worried about the effects on themselves of the various uses of
radioactive materials and radiation will tell you they are less interested in statistical or
technical discussions of relative risks than they are in obtaining some practical advice that
recognizes their own desires and fears and that is given in a language with which they are

comfortable.

People will call up a government infor-
mation officer and ask questions that they
feel are too delicate to be asked of their
family physician. They will, in the most
hushed, discreet-sounding tones ask for
financial information that they believe to
be too sensitive to be anything but “‘in-
sider” information. They don’t know that
it is locatable at any time in Standard &
Poors. They will try to get from you a
special dispensation to wear radioactive
jewelry a week after every newspaper in
the country has carried NRC warnings
against it because “‘it’s just so very, very
beautiful. It was the last present my sister
ever gave me. I promised her I’d wear it
always.” We “‘negotiated”’ that she could
wear it to dinner on her late sister’s birth-
day (for about three hours, once a year)
on the theory (altogether lacking any
proof) that the small exposure probably
would do her less harm than feeling guilty
about it all the time by never wearing the
keepsake at all.

178

Many people, most of the time, aren’t
sure how to even ask questions about the
nuclear business. They will begin by ex-
plaining that they have an open mind and
don’t want to be labeled either “‘pro-nu-
clear” or “anti-nuclear.” They don’t want
to sound “ridiculous” or “ignorant” and
often will begin by saying “this may sound
like a dumb question, but. . .” to which
I always reply that there are no dumb
questions, only dumb answers.

In my schooldays, somebody told me
that there were only seven great plots in
all of fiction, and all the others that we
found in literature were variations and
elaborations on these basic seven plots.
When it comes to the asking of questions
about radiation, whether the questions
are asked by members of the news media
or by the non-media public, I think there
are only two basic questions: first, how
much radiation am I going to get from
this [source, procedure, experience, etc. |]
and, second, what will that dose do to me?

NON-MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS 179

All of the questions I get from the pub-
lic boil down to that. Sometimes there is
a reasonable answer to the first part, but
there hardly ever is a good answer to the
second one.

People who aren’t either occupation-
ally involved with large radiation sources,
or getting radiation treatments for ex-
tremely serious illnesses, stand only the
remotest chance of getting a serious ra-
diation exposure—one serious enough so
that the experts can agree, within narrow
limits, on what the consequences will be.

The radiation incidents that most peo-
ple worry about fall between an exposure
from a real or imagined source that is a
small fraction of their annual natural en-
vironmental exposure, on the low end of
the scale, and an exposure that at the high
end is still less than 10 rem.

Even nuclear industry workers very
rarely get exposures of more than 10 rem
in a year. In the NRC’s last published
annual report on such exposures covering
the year 1984,’ out of about 195,000
workers, only 24 had exposures of more
than five rem that year, and only two of
these were more than 10 rem.

It isn’t common experience of individ-
ual radiation exposures that makes most
people so afraid of radiation. It is, rather,
the vivid memory of large-scale events,
like the accident at Three Mile Island, and
the one at Chernobyl. And it is the in-
visibility of radiation. If only we could
give it a bad smell, the way the gas com-
pany does with otherwise equally invisible
natural gas, attitudes would change a
great deal. When people smell gas, they
go make a telephone call, with some ur-
gency, but usually not in panic. It is the
invisible presence in our midst, and the
common knowledge that in large enough
amounts it can kill or make its victims
seriously ill, that makes most people will-
ing to accept some other, potentially
much more imminent, dangers while
wanting to be spared even the slightest
radiation exposures. And, the discovery
that naturally occurring radon gas has
been building in concentration in many

American homes, unsuspected and until
a couple of years ago a matter of academic
interest rather than public health concern,
that has alarmed the public, in this in-
stance for good reasons.

When the National Academy of Sci-
ences published the report popularly
called the ‘“‘BEIR-3,’”? what it said in the
Summary and Conclusions section at the
front of this 524-pager was that the in-
crease in lifetime risk of getting cancer
and dying from it for somebody who had
absorbed a dose of 10 rads at one time
was 0.5 to 1.4 percent of the naturally
occurring rate among people who had not
absorbed such a dose. They estimated
that people who had a continuous lifetime
exposure at a rate of 1 rad per year would
have a 3 to 8 percent higher rate of dying
of cancer. Then the committee said that
it did not know whether getting an ad-
ditional dose of gamma or X-rays com-
parable to what many Americans get as
an annual natural environmental expo-
sure—100 millirads per year—was detri-
mental. I am advised that there is a
“BEIR 4” in preparation, but I don’t
know whether it will help with this prob-
lem of putting low exposure “in perspec-
tive.”’

Of the many hundreds of questions I
get in a year from people who are worried
about a possible radiation exposure, 99
percent, or more, concern exposures that
are a small portion of that 100 millirad.
Everything that passes in our conversa-
tion between the asking of the question
and the giving of the only entirely accu-
rate and honest answer I could give,
which is “I don’t know and I doubt any-
body anywhere else does either”’ is an at-
tempt on my part to figure out if the caller
wants the truth, or a comforting answer.
Put that bluntly it sounds tactless, even
arrogant, and begging for the retort,
“well, if you don’t know send me some-
one who does!” If the caller is quite in-
sistent, I do send them elsewhere. Clearly
there are people with really impressive
expertise in the NRC, and I don’t doubt
for a second that they could give a thor-

180 KARL ABRAHAM

oughly correct answer with very formi-
dable technical rigor. But, a great many
intelligent but technically undereducated
people find the technical discussions quite
emotionally unsatisfying. Sometimes the
people who press hardest for numbers,
end up confessing that they don’t really
understand probabilities couched in dec-
imal fractions amply sprinkled with zer-
oes. The world is filled with people who
elected to take biology in high school or
college in the belief, sometimes true, that
this was the way to avoid having to deal
with scientific notation, also called ex-
ponential numbers. Some of these gen-
erally well educated people think that
writing a number as a single digit followed
by the capital letter ““E”’ and another one
or two-digit number must be some secret
code used only by people who have se-
curity clearances. My most-frequently
asked question is, “what is my chance of
being killed by an accident at the nuclear
plant near me?” Answer: ‘‘Well, it’s
about one in a million, and that estimate
may be as much as ten-to-a-hundred times
too low, or ten-to-a-hundred times too
high.”’ Retort: “what is that supposed to
mean?” I thought you wanted a number.
“Yes, but is there any other way to de-
scribe it? Is there no way you can describe
it in ordinary words?” Well, yes, I can.
Your chance of being killed by a nuclear
power plant accident is a lot less than your
chance of being killed by an automobile
accident but its a lot more than your
chance of being killed by a falling meteo-
rite while engaged in an act of love in a
gondola on a canal in Venice.

There may be a few of you who can tell
right off, at the very beginning of a con-
versation, what kind of a person you have
at the other end of the phone, but I’m not
one of them. I used to think I had de-
veloped a kind of sixth sense about the
credibility of the people I talked to, after
20 years as a newspaper reporter, but I
was cured of that delusion by a grand-
motherly sounding lady in New Jersey.
She had begun by writing me letters, to
express her concern over non-radiological

environmental damage caused by a nu-
clear power plant on her much-beloved
Jersey Shore. The damage was real
enough and so were the steps the NRC
was taking to help bring the problems un-
der control. She enclosed a newspaper
clipping that had triggered her concern. I
sent replies to the street address on her
envelope, and we exchanged about four
letters. Eventually I had a telephone call
from her. Her speech was deliberate,
calm and she asked me a question to
which I didn’t know the answer, so I asked
to call her back. “‘Please give me your
telephone number, and I'll call you some
time tomorrow,” I said. She gave me an
area code and telephone number, and I
ended the call. A little later, I realized
that “tomorrow” was going to be a Sat-
urday. That apparently had not occurred
to her, either. I tried to call her back, but
the phone rang a long time without being
answered, and I gave up. At mid-morning
Monday, I placed the call again. It must
have rung eight or nine times, and then
a young man answered. I asked for her.
He said she was not able to come to the
phone. “When will it be convenient for
me to call her again,” I asked. ““You can
call any- time you like,” he said. “Can I
leave a message to have her call me
back,”’ I asked? ‘“‘No, I don’t think so,”
he said, and then politely said ““goodbye”’
and hung up. I thought that was very odd
and my curiosity led me to exercise some
slightly rusty reporting skills to identify
the location of her telephone number. I
found out that it was a pay phone in one
of New Jersey’s larger mental institutions.
So I called the head of the place and asked
about the name that the woman had
called herself. She had given me her cor-
rect name. She had been institutionalized
for many years, was very old, indeed, had
only rare moments of lucidity, in which
she wrote letters to all kinds of people.
She had money, her relatives brought her
stamps, and she had a telephone credit
card for which the relatives also settled
the bills. I asked why she couldn’t have
her own phone in her room. “We tried

NON-MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS 181

that, but most of the time she would just
sit and listen to it ring, so we finally took
it out. She never complained about that
either,” said the director. A few days later
I decided to write another letter, giving
her the answer to her question. I never
heard from her again. If people who have
the unimpaired use of their mental facul-
ties are sometimes worried, alarmed or
frightened by something they have heard
or seen about radiation and its practical
uses, imagine the terror in those who be-
lieve that extraterrestrial beings are using
nuclear radiation to inflict pain on them,
or that our government is using it to spy
on them, and would it help if they papered
their bedroom walls with aluminum foil?
The Northeastern United States is filled
with lonely people who have discovered
that their local telephone book blue pages
contain government telephone numbers
where collect calls are accepted, and so
they call. I’ve never thought that my ap-
pointment to federal service qualified me
to practice electronic group shrinkery, or
any other kind of shrinkery. But who is
to say that graduate students anxious to
complete a class paper by deadline or
elected officials who want to appear to be
well informed when meeting with their
constituency are entitled to have their
anxieties relieved with a little bit of con-
versation, but people who wear hats fes-
tooned with old radio tubes and Tarot
cards are not?

In the last week of August I had a
phone call from a woman who started
right out by asking me, ‘How dangerous
is it to have a CAT scan?” I explained
that medical X-rays from machines like
CAT scan equipment do not come under
NRC jurisdiction. I suggested she call her
state health department. She appealed,
“Won't you please just try to answer my
questions.” Well, I began, there are three
answers: (1) under some circumstances a
lot less dangerous than not having one;
(2) not very dangerous at all if the ex-
posure is accurately planned and the
administration carefully controlled; (3)
have you asked the doctor who told you

to have one?”’ It isn’t me, it’s my husband.
He has these headaches. How much ra-
diation would he get from a CAT scan?”’
she asked. ‘Let me think about it,” I
stalled. I remembered in the middle
1970’s playing a very minor role in helping
the Philadelphia Food & Drug Adminis-
tration to put a South Jersey practitioner
out of the business of giving people a large
dose of X-rays over a period of many
weeks or months, as treatment for all
kinds of minor complaints for which X-
rays were So inappropriate as to constitute
medical quackery. ““Your husband’s doc-
tor recommended the CAT scan?’’ I
asked. ‘‘Yes.”’ Well, I suggested, if you
have some doubt about the validity of that
recommendation, why not get a second
medical opinion on whether the CAT scan
is really needed for a diagnosis. There
may be a medically sound alternative.
“No,” she said, “I’ve already gone to four
other doctors and they all say he has to
have the CAT scan. Well I said, the
amount of exposure really depends to
some extent on the location they want to
look at. If it is deep beneath bony struc-
tures, they may need to use more radia-
tion than if they are looking just through
soft tissue. One of the basic benefits of
the CAT scan technique, in addition to
giving a clearer picture of a possible prob-
lem area is to distribute the exposure of
the overlying tissues by rotating the beam
around the body. “You're not answering
my question,’ she said. ‘““How does it
compare with a single chest X-ray? How
much radiation do you get from a single
chest X-ray?” “If it is a well calibrated
and well colimated machine, and the
techician has been trained to use the min-
imum exposure for the tissues involved,
probably between 20 and 40 millirem, and
possibly less than that with the latest fast-
est films.” “And how much from a CAT
scan?” Well I finally confessed that I’ve
had three of them, one of my head and
two of my abdominal area, and after the
second one I browbeat the radiation phy-
sicist into calculating my exposure, and it
was in the neighborhood of 2,500 to 3,000

182 KARL ABRAHAM

millirem. ““That sounds like really a lot,”
she said. ““That’s all relative,” I said. I
explained that NRC regulations allow a
nuclear industry worker to receive up to
that much radiation exposure to his whole
body in a 13-week period, but that we try
to get employers to keep worker expo-
sures well below that. I think you might
try to weigh the potential benefit against
the potential risk. For the industry worker
it’s his weekly paycheck. For me it was
the peace of mind that came from finally
knowing, after the CAT scan, that I didn’t
have a tumor.

By now you should have caught on to
the idea that I don’t think it’s right for
people in my position to try to talk the
public into either ignoring their concerns
or ignoring the risks, though they often
are small risks. I think it’s more appro-
priate to try to nudge them along the road
to confronting their fears and recognizing
their doubts, and getting them to make
one more try at getting a medically com-
petent opinion that they will accept as
good advice.

I have read some of the studies that
have been done on the health effects of
exposures to low levels of ionizing radia-
tion, and they all have two things in com-
mon: They make enough points with
statistical analysis to be persuasive, if not
convincing to practitioners of the scien-
tific method, and they are uniformly lousy
in helping the layman understand the rel-
ative risks he assumes in enduring a ra-
diation exposure in any terms other than
numerological. Numerology is what I call
lists of numbers that compare the risk of
dying of cancer from the routine radio-
active emissions of nuclear power plants
to the risks associated with smoking some
trivially few cigarettes per year, or to tak-
ing a few canoe rides, or crossing streets
against the light, ete., etc. Good scientific
statistics do not always make for useful
human communication.

Sometimes people will ask you the
wrong question because they misunder-
stand the real problem. It isn’t because
they are dumb, but most often because

they have become so afraid of one thing,
and are so intensely focused on that con-
cern, that they have altogether over-
looked the real danger, which sometimes
hasn’t much to do with radiation at all.
At the beginning of June, 1979, when
my calls about the consequences of the
accident at Three Mile Island were still
running 20 to 30 a day, I had a call from
a woman who said she lived in a far north-
western suburb of Harrisburg, maybe 25
miles from the cooling towers seen round
the world. “‘Please tell me how dangerous
the radiation from TMI still is?” she
asked. After some preliminary discus-
sion, it boiled down to her being worried
about radiation at her home. I said I
doubted that there would have been any
measurable amount at that distance and
in that direction. The wind was blowing
away from her nearly all the time, not
from TMI toward her, at the times when
significant radiation releases were coming
out of TMI-2. I injected a lot of long si-
lences into the conversation and finally
she got down to her real worry. For many
years, she said, her married sister, who
lived in the Miami area, escaped the broil-
ing Florida summer by visiting her in Har-
risburg. She was scheduled to come up
early in July and stay all summer. But,
she had just called. She had heard about
the TMI accident, and within the past
week had learned she was pregnant. Was
it really safe for her to spend the summer
in Harrisburg, just 25 miles from the ac-
cident. “‘She says she is worried about her
baby.”” Have you ever spent the sum-
mertime in Florida? I asked. ‘“‘No.”’ Well,
this is a very good year to go and be there
with your sister. ““Oh, you think the re-
actor is still that dangerous?” No. Not at
all, but you are worrying about the wrong
thing,” I said. Suppose your sister comes
up here, has a wonderful summer, and
then goes back to Florida and next spring
delivers a baby with a gross birth defect.
There is no way in the world anyone will
ever be able to prove that the defect was
caused by radiation from TMI, nor could
anyone prove that it was not. But just the

NON-MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS 183

suspicion that it could have been avoided
will poison your relationship with your
sister forever. About one out of every
thousand babies is born with a serious
birth defect, even in places where there
have been no nuclear accidents, even
where there are no nuclear reactors, even
in times long before mankind ever dis-
covered radioactivity. Your sister runs
that risk, even in Florida. She might al-
ready be carrying a fetus with a genetic
or environmentally caused birth defect.
She might already be the one-in-a-thou-
sand mother unfortunate enough to de-
liver such a baby. There is nothing much
the mother can do about that risk, after
she’s made up her mind to follow the best
pre-natal care advice any modern obste-
trician would give her. But there is some-
thing you can do about the risk of having
later regrets. Avoid that risk, go to Flor-
ida this summer, wear a big hat when out
in the sun and enjoy the peace of mind.

In the early 1980’s New York City dis-
covered the ionization chamber smoke
detector (ICSD)... I mean DISCOV-
ERED! Between reporters wanting to
know all about how they worked, and
which type was the best, and other people
wanting to know how much radiation they
emitted and how dangerous they were,
and public officials debating the best
places to mount them in a home, and how
many, there was a period of about three
months when, it seemed, all other radia-
tion risks were forgotten. Of course,
many local firemen across the country did
the best job of putting the health prob-
lems into perspective when they advised
parents that their children ran a far
greater risk of death by smoke inhalation
or burning than the risk of death from
smoke detector radiation. That simple
statement, and the many instances of local
government enacting ordinances requir-
ing smoke detectors in new residential
construction, have undoubtedly saved
many, many lives. At the beginning of the
controversy, I sent some copies of
NUREG 1156’ to people in the New York
area. I had skimmed the book, and it all

seemed to be there. Then, one day, a man
from somewhere in Nassau County called
up to ask if I could translate some of it
for him. He had asked me on the phone
a few days earlier how much radiation he
would get from the smoke detector, and
I had told him the answer was in this book
I would send him. Now, he began to read
from the second page of the Executive
Summary of the report. ‘““The use of Am-
241 ICSD’s does result in exposure of
people to low levels of radiation. Analysis
shows that the manufacture, distribution,
normal use, and disposal of 14 million
Am-241 ICSD’s each containing 3 uCi of
Am-241 will result in a collective total
body dose of 1100 person-rem. The useful
life (of the ICSD) is assumed to be ten
years. Disposal is by either sanitary land-
fill or incineration. Fourteen million
ICSD’s will service about 21 million peo-
ple. Analysis also shows the risk to the
exposed population is about 0.1 fatal can-
cer.’’ The report went on to say that in
this same group of 21 million people,
about 35,000 would die each year from
cancers. It is really just an average high
school algebra problem, I said. Let’s see
if I can remember how to do it. If you
have a dose of 1100 person-rem spread
out among 21 million people, the average
dose per person is 1100 divided by 21 mil-
lion, or about one-twentieth of a millirem.
Out on Long Island, you probably get
about 1,500 times more than that a year
from natural background radiation. Since
finding out that you may become the pos-
sessor of a 0.1 fatal cancer is not exactly
a self-explanatory fact, what is one sup-
posed to think that means? I have a lot
of trouble putting *‘0.1 fatal cancer”’ into
meaningful words. It’s sort of like having
a 0.1 pregnancy. Does it mean that after
the fourth week you’re suddenly not preg-
nant anymore ... is a 0.1 cancer death
one that is cured nine times out of ten,
before it kills you? Or does it mean that
if there were ten times as many people at
risk, say 210 million instead of 21 million,
that among the 350,000 yearly cancer
deaths there would be one cancer death

184 KARL ABRAHAM

that could be blamed on exposure to ra-
diation from a smoke detector? Of course
there would be no way of telling whose
cancer death it would be. It reminded me
of the old story of the firing squad com-
mander giving out nine live rounds and
one dummy so that no one soldier would
know for sure if his was the fatal bullet,
but all could believe it was not theirs if
they wished. I doubt that this kind of sta-
tistical blizzardry will cause anyone to be-
lieve or disbelieve in the much publicized
dangers of radiation. NUREG 1156 con-
tains a kind of cost-benefit approach that
might arouse some people’s sense of self-
interest enough to help them manage
their fear of very, very small exposures to
radiation, if they have one. The report
points out, and I read to my caller, that
‘The ratio of potential lives saved to the
possible fatal cancers due to the use of
ICSD’s ranges from 15,000 to 51,000.”
There was some silence, and the man
asked, ‘“‘Based on what statistics?’ So I
read from the first page: “Between 7,500
and 12,000 lives are lost in fires every year
with 70 percent of these occurring in
residential fires .. . Based on theoret-
ical studies and case histories, the esti-
mated percent of residential fire-related
deaths that smoke detectors could save is
between 41 and 89 percent,” and I added,
that’s between 3,075 and 10,680 lives
saved per year, compared to one cancer
death in ten years. There was another
long silence, and then the man said,
‘“That’s all very well, but you still haven’t
told me how much radiation I am going
to get from the smoke detector if I put it
up in my house.” Ah, I said, you should
look on page 3-23. After taking into ac-
count your picking up the smoke detec-
tor, transporting it home, installing it on
the ceiling, testing it with its test-button,
doing periodic dusting or other mainte-
nance, such as changing batteries, and
then letting it operate while you walk un-
der it so many times a day, and making
a few assumptions about how people do
these steps, the study arrived at an av-
erage annual exposure of 9.3 urem (mi-

crorem) per year, which is a figure much
smaller than the earlier one I gave you
because that one included the exposures
of people who handle the radioactive
americium-241 material during its man-
ufacture and during the smoke detectors’
manufacture, and while their exposure is
higher than the average exposure of the
consuming public, it is still a small frac-
tion of the occcupational exposure limits
in NRC regulations.

Now if that all sounded quite reason-
able, and I think it is, then it should also
have sounded quite unsatisfying. There is
another answer, probably more accurate,
and also bordering on rudeness. “‘Mr,” I
could have said, “get a notebook and
count the number of times each day that
you walk under the smoke detector, and
how much time you spend in a chair or a
bed or standing by a telephone, and how
far those locations are from the detector.
Then hire yourself a competent health
physicist to measure the radiation from
the device to wherever you are for how
long you are there, and he will give you
a reasonably close figure of your annual
exposure.’’ At which point my caller
would say, “‘is that what I pay taxes for,
for advice like that?” Actually, in trying
to give him the best approximation to a
precise answer that the documentation
suggested, I had simply exhausted his in-
terest, or his patience, or both. In a quite
flat tone, he said ““Thank you very much”
and hung up.

I don’t think the way that researchers
are accustomed to phrasing applied
research results and publishing them
necessarily lends itself to use in pub-
lic information. I have become quite
shy about quoting studies, setting aside
for now the question of their intrinsic
merit, in the areas of biological effects
of low level radiation and in the area of
nuclear power plant probabilistic risk
assessment.

I am amazed by people I know who
sometimes are so inattentive when driving
that they go through a red light. You
would think that they would become ab-

NON-MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS 185

solutely paralyzed a few blocks down the
road, when they realize what a huge risk
of automobile accident fatality they have
just taken. But, the incident quickly slips
from their mind. Yet they fight bitterly
with their dental hygienist to avoid the
small added risk from having a mouthful
of asymptomatic, probably unnecessary
X-rays. I know there are people like that,
because I’m one of them.

Maybe it isn’t so much that we don’t
know enough about the effects of low-
level radiation exposures as that we just
don’t know enough about human nature
and the perception of risk. I’ve read a
couple of luxuriantly statistical studies on
that also. They didn’t do much for my
perception of perceptions of risk, except

to make me accept their seemingly infinite
variability as a fact of life.

References Cited

1. Brooks, B. G. 1986. Occupational Radiation Ex-
posure at Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors
and Other Facilities 1984. U.S. Nuclear Regu-
latory Commission, Office of Nuclear Regulatory
Research (NUREG-0713, vol. 6) pp. 1-9.

2. Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing
Radiations. National Research Council. 1980.
The Effects on Populations of Exposure to Low
Levels of Ionizing Radiation:1980. National
Academy Press. pp. 2-3.

3. Belanger, R., Buckley, D. W., and Swensen,
J. B. 1979. Environmental Assessment of Ioni-
zation Chamber Smoke Detectors Containing
Am-241. Science Applications, Inc. U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NUREG/CR-1156)
Executive Summary.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 186-189, June 1988

Policy Perspective on
Communications Issues

Frank E. Tooper

Office of Nuclear Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, DC 20585

It seems as though whenever two
Or more parties with diverging view-
points need to communicate an issue
arises. That leaves the topic of my talk
open to a wide array of discussion points.
Therefore, today I will offer a com-
munications issues perspective in the con-
text of the future of commercial nuclear
power.

The prospects for nuclear power and
attendant communications issues associ-
ated with the formulation and adoption
of policy in the United States after Cher-
nobyl can best be gauged by examining
the conflict between two competing
forces:

@ The emergence of nuclear energy
as a vital and growing source of
electricity worldwide which is in-
extricably tied to energy security,
and

@ Anti-nuclear strategies which are
focussed on altering the polit-
ical climate.in Western coun-
tries thus making policy deci-
sions regarding the deployment of
nuclear power unrelated to need or
economics.

186

Nuclear Power is Vital to
Energy Security

Since the Atoms for Peace Initiative of
1954, nuclear technology has been trans-
formed from a scientific curiosity to an
economic powerhouse. By any measure
the commercial introduction of nuclear
power has to be one of the great success
stories of this century. Consider the role
of nuclear power in reducing worldwide
dependence on oil. Nuclear power cur-
rently offsets the equivalent of about 8
million barrels a day of oil in the United
States. It has been a potent force to break
the grip of OPEC and restoring energy
security.

Moreover, the transition to an electric-
ity intensive economy powered by nuclear
energy has been a principal element of
national policy in countries such as Japan
and France. In those countries, and oth-
ers, nuclear power continues to be
cheaper and more viable than other forms
of electricity supply. An economic edge
in the price of power production brings
benefits beyond energy security.

Nuclear power construction worldwide
has almost reached the end of its first
phase—that of replacing fossil supplies.

POLICY PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATIONS ISSUES 187

Nuclear power is now entering a phase of
lower growth—competing for a share in
meeting new electricity demand.

The sharp reduction in the rate of elec-
tricity growth that took place in the
United States due to the 1970’s recession
caused an unforeseen shakeout in the
U.S. nuclear industry. What occurred in
the United States presaged the more gen-
eral shakeout that is now taking place
worldwide. The prospects for new orders
are much lower than some projected a
decade ago. Nuclear vendors and sup-
pliers are leaving the scene. In the mean-
time, the shakeout is putting great strain
on the U.S. nuclear industry.

Overlay this reduced demand for new
construction with institutional and polit-
ical forces that tend to further curb the
prospects for new nuclear powerplants
and you have the ingredients for energy
security concerns—even without Cher-
nobyl. :

Opposition to Nuclear as an Effective
Political Tactic

The level of rhetoric concerning any-
thing nuclear is very high. Public officials
have the ability to hold up construction
projects in ways that are qualitatively dif-
ferent for the nuclear option as compared
with coal, oil, natural gas, or doing with-
out. Some Federal officials have regarded
nuclear as an option of last resort. Many
equate civilian nuclear power programs
with concerns about nuclear weapons.

In large measure, the sophistication
and complexity of nuclear technology is
such that public acceptance of nuclear
power involves an act of faith and trust.
Those unalterably opposed to nuclear
power have, over the years, attempted to
undermine confidence in nuclear power.
A host of strategies have been used to
discredit the industry and challenge the
effectiveness of the agency charged with
assuring good industry practice.

The strategies find special fuel in events

such as Chernobyl. When Chernobyl! oc-
curred, some were quick to sound the
theme that nuclear technology is funda-
mentally unsound—claiming that Cher-
nobyl proved their point.

The fact is that nuclear power can and
does come in all shapes and sizes. A de-
signer of a nuclear powerplant can choose
from among several fuel types, coolants,
and nuclear moderators. These choices
can be configured to optimize fuel econ-
omy, power output, assured safety, ease
of construction, or some other set of per-
formance values.

The Soviets, at the Chernobyl] Post-Ac-
cident Review Meeting of August 25-29,
1986, went to some lengths to explain the
rationale for selecting the Chernobyl type
design. Features were selected that re-
flected the particular circumstances of the
Soviet system—such as their inability to
manufacture the large thick-walled ves-
sels needed for light water reactors. The
result was a design that was unstable at
low power, operators who apparently did
not understand the safety weaknesses of
their machine, and a management system
which did not encourage open discussion
of safety issues.

The weaknesses in the Soviet technol-
ogy and the susceptibility to human error
have been used by some to criticize U.S.
technology and practices. The truth is that
the Chernobyl accident has little or no
bearing on the commercial technology de-
ployed in the United States except to the
extent that it reenforces what we already
knew—that these machines should be as
resistant as possible to human error, and
that safety in design, construction, and
Operation are of paramount importance.

Communications Issues

There is an old adage that truth is the
best policy. I firmly believe in this. The
truth, however, sometimes takes some in-
teresting turns between the source and the
receiver. This may result from the receiv-

188

ers level of understanding, preconceived
notions or biases, or the number of in-
termediaries between the source and the
receiver. Viewing the general public as a
receiver it is not surprising how public
perception can become distorted.

History shows that public policy and
public perception ultimately converge.
Therefore, communications issues asso-
ciated with the formulation and adoption
of sound public policy must be addressed,
hand-in-hand, with issues associated with
prevailing public perception.

The ability to communicate effectively
among parties with diverging viewpoints
and the general public will ultimately
shape policy and public perceptions in the
future. As we look to the future, I believe
it is time to leave ideologies such as pro-
nuclear and anti-nuclear behind us. We
need nuclear power for energy security
and economic growth. It is time for re-
sponsible parties truly concerned about
nuclear safety and economics to start ef-
fective and constructive communications
for the benefit of the general public.

I have observed a considerable amount
of counterproductive and wasted effort
between pronuclear and antinuclear
forces in the United States. In the mean-
time, other nations move ahead and we
stagnate. For example, electricity de-
mand in the northeast is growing at a rate
of six to seven percent annually. That re-
gion of the United States needs new cen-
tral generating capacity that can only be
provided from coal or nuclear. However,
the investment risk for these types of
plants is too high for utilities in that region
to entertain new construction requiring
large capital commitments over an un-
certain period of time. Recent experi-
ence, specifically regarding nuclear
powerplants already completed yet not
operational, demonstrates the magnitude
of the investment risk. What is happening
in the Northeast may presage what will
happen in the rest of the country in the
future when new large capacity additions
are required.

Canada, observing these trends, built

FRANK E.

TOOPER

nuclear powerplants near our border with
the specific intent of selling power to the
United States. This is a disturbing situa-
tion, particularly when we have the tech-
nology, and the diverging forces that
come to bear in our system derive the
nation of the benefit of using it appro-
priately. Communication is a key to cor-
recting this situation.

Health, Safety, and Economics

In the past, health and safety are issues
have been discussed apart from consid-
erations of economics. This is consistent
with the philosophy adopted in the United
States long-ago that safety comes first at
any cost. However, in the wake of TMI,
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
promulgated many additional require-
ments aimed at enhancing the safety of
reactors in operation and those under
construction. The cost of implementing
these requirements was enormous. In ret-
rospect, while most of these requirements
were advantageous from a safety stand-
point, some requirements may not have
been. From a consumer standpoint, some
retrofits may not have been cost/effective.
Thus, it brings into question whether the
regulatory process should enable deter-
minations whether or not a proposed
safety improvement is worth the money.
Generally speaking, experience shows
there is a point of diminishing returns in
increased safety for capital spent.

Pragmatically, it seemed this experi-
ence should lead to the formulation of an
improved regulatory policy that allows
the cost of a safety improvement to be
judged in the context of the benefit de-
rived. While this may sound reasonable
and serve to lend stability to the regula-
tory process, it did not win unanimous
support.

The proposed policy evoked a response
that it was intellectually inconsistent with
regulatory responsibilities. Cost should
not enter into safety considerations, par-

POLICY PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNICATIONS ISSUES 189

ticularly those which involve backfitting
operating plants or those under construc-
tion. Backfitting, by definition, requires
additional expenditures and contributes
to the cost of the power produced by the
plant in most cases. Thus, the cost of nu-
clear plants is an open question. A utility
never knows when the plant is completed.

The point here is not whether the policy
was right or wrong, but rather that the
process of attempting to develop and
adopt seemingly better policy provided an
arena that resulted in miscommunication
to the public. The intent of the NRC, and
basis for that intent, was never commu-
nicated to the public. Instead, the public
heard that the NRC held industry inter-
ests as a priority over public safety. This
is one example of how the truth takes
many turns.

Relative Risk and the Perception
of Risk

Many ardent supporters of nuclear
power have tried in many ways to com-
municate to the general public the relative
risk of nuclear power. Lists showing the
risks due to smoking, flying in airplanes,
driving automobiles, and many other
every day activities purport to illustrate
how acceptable the risk is from nuclear
power. While many people who already
view nuclear power as essential find these
comparisons convincing or enlightening,
these comparisons are, for the most part,
irrelevant.

Generally individuals can and will ac-
cept almost any risk as long as they are
in control of that choice. However, if an
individual feels they have no control over
a particular risk, real or otherwise, then
it is unacceptable. This response to risk

is true for all electricity generating tech-
nologies. However, perceptions of the
risk from nuclear power appear to be
more acute.

The communication issue at hand is
how to increase public understanding of
relative risk and what constitutes levels of
acceptable risk.

In summary, key communications is-
sues are:

@ How to communicate the need for
nuclear power as a vital and grow-
ing part of our electricity supply mix
for energy security and economic
growth?

@ How to leave the ideologies of pro-
and anti-nuclear behind, and move
toward timely and constructive dia-
logues among responsible parties
having diverging viewpoints regard-
ing the safety and economics of nu-
clear power?

@ How to communicate that societal
risk is unavoidable and, as far as elec-
tricity technologies go, the health
risk from nuclear power is relatively
small—acceptably so.

As I mentioned before, truth is the best
policy. It is a fact that only coal and nu-
clear can provide large central supply ca-
pacity increases for meeting anticipated
electricity demand in the foreseeable fu-
ture. Conservative estimates of electricity
demand to the year 2000 indicate about
100 GWe of additional capacity will be
needed over and above that which 1s cur-
rently planned or under construction. Gas
and renewables will play an important
role in adding relatively small increments
of supply. However, we are going to need
further contributions from nuclear power
if energy security and economic objec-
tives are to be met. Communications is-
sues must be faced squarely and now.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 190-204, June 1988

Round Table Discussion:
Communications

RUSSELL: Before we open the panel
to discussion, we are going to have a few
comments from Robert Alvarez, who is
here as a discussant. He is with the En-
vironmental Policy Institute, a Washing-
ton group that is often referred to by the
media as a watchdog group. The Envi-
ronmental Policy Institute has been
around since the early 1970s, and Bob’s
group was among the groups that has
monitored Three Mile Island and other
nuclear problems.

ALVAREZ: I would like to discuss
just two basic issues here: one is, what
has been the impact of media coverage as
a result of the Chernobyl accident and the
issue of risks.

I think that Mr. Smyser has raised a
very important point which I want to ex-
pand upon. I think a lot of public per-
ception of atomic energy does stem from
its birth during World War II and the det-
onation of atomic bombs over Japan. I
think, moreover, the impact of the media
relative to the Chernobyl accident has
been more profoundly felt on our nuclear
weapons program than commercial nu-
clear power, and that this media coverage
has implictly cast the long shadow of the
nuclear weapons program over our com-
mercial nuclear power industry.

About four or five years before Cher-
nobyl, several of the regional dailies—
Oak Ridge, Knoxville, Cincinnati, South
Carolina and Georgia papers, Colorado
papers, Washington State papers—began

190

to publish stories about largely the lega-
cies of the Department of Energy nuclear
weapons industry and certain things that
were coming out. Over the years, these
papers in a sort of mosaic form presented
a picture of a technology or an industry
which has depended very heavily on the
use of air, soil, water, ground waters as
disposal media for some of the world’s
most dangerous pollutants.

For example, at the Hanford Plutonium
Works, before the Three Mile Island oc-
curred—several months before that,
probably about a year before that—it was
reported that approximately 200 billion
gallons of radioactive and hazardous con-
taminated liquids were deliberately
dumped into the soil there, using the soil
as a disposal medium. This is roughly
equivalent of creating a lake the size of
Manhattan to a depth of 40 feet.

By the time Chernobyl came, the re-
gional media were primed. I recall two or
three days after the accident was re-
ported, the first serious reporting in this
country started on Monday, I believe,
from the weekend. A gentleman from
Oak Ridge National Lab was on CBS
Evening News and made the point that
our commercial nuclear power plants are
much different from that of Chernobyl
largely because they contained these con-
tainment shields, these concrete, steel
domes that are there to prevent the es-
cape of radioactivity as a final safety
backup in the case of a severe accident.

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 191

However, this gentleman failed to note
that the Department of Energy, who was
his employer, has been running several
reactors without containment shields for
decades. This point was eventually made
known, largely because of the “‘hysterical
environmentalists.”’

What has resulted of this knowledge is
that the regional dailies essentially pro-
vided a groundswell for national media to
draw attention to the most dangerous as-
pects of the nuclear industry in this coun-
try, which are their military applications.
This has resulted in some very significant
impacts.

Ask yourself, How many commercial
nuclear power plants have been shut
down or had their activities curtailed in
direct result of Chernobyl? I cannot think
of one example. However, if you asked
that question in regard to its impact on
the Department of Energy’s nuclear arms
program, the Hanford N-Reactor, which
has general design similarities to that of
Chernobyl—in fact, the Soviets more or
less stole their reactor designs from those
developed at the Hanford Plutonium
Works—is now shut down. The Senate
Armed Services and Appropriations
Committees have just recently voted to
put it on permanent standby status.

The reactors at the Savannah River
plant facility, which also produced nu-
clear explosive materials, are of a differ-
ent design, but it has been discovered that
they have been operating under condi-
tions with inadequate safety systems, and
they are running at much lower capacities.
At the Oak Ridge facility, several “Class
A” reactors, the DOBP’s largest reactors,
have been shut down because of age and
fatigue, and there is some question as to
when or if those reactors are started up.
In essence, the impact of public awareness
about our nuclear weapons program pro-
vided by the media has sharply curtailed
the production of nuclear explosives in
this country and is leading to a reeval-
uation of that.

Also, it has drawn attention to the fact
that the nuclear weapons program is far

more dangerous but yet controls most of
the information upon which we determine
the risks. For example—this is something
that has been reported off and on but
more people are becoming aware of this,
largely because of the media—the De-
partment of Energy funds over 60 percent
of all radiation health effects research,
and most of this research is derived from
activities stemming from the production
or deployment of nuclear weapons. The
baseline epidemiologic information upon
which we determine our radiation risks
are derived from the health and mortality
experience of the Japanese A-bomb sur-
vivors. The other data that are now being
generated are those derived from the
studies of workers who helped make the
nuclear arsenal possible. So there has
been a very prominent role which the nu-
clear weapons program has played in
things concerning nuclear power.

Now in terms of modern times, there
is also the situation of the declining budg-
ets in the Energy Department’s civilian
nuclear R&D program for actual civilian
application and the increased spending
for military uses. What this means is that
the Department of Energy is taking
money away from developing advanced
reactors which could be used for com-
mercial use or to improve the safety of
existing reactors in order to enhance the
use of reactors for military purposes,
mainly for Star Wars. You merely have
to study the Energy Department budget
to figure this out.

To reiterate what I said before, I think
media coverage has had a more profound
effect on our military program than the
civilian.

Now in terms of the issue of risks, first,
there is the risk of the accident, which has
been characterized in terms of the method
that has been used to portray this risk,
which is probabilistic risk assessment.
This is a method that is widely used by
the chemical and nuclear industries. The
gist of how the method works is that it
compares the probability of failure from
events which occur fairly frequently,

192 COMMUNICATIONS

which have small consequence, to the
probability of a failure of events that are
very infrequent and that have, nonethe-
less, a catastrophic consequence.

This is very much like comparing the
risks of getting AIDS from unscreened
blood from the risk of catching a cold by
going to work in the wintertime. If this
were adopted as a public health policy, it
would be advised that people can receive
unscreened blood because the risk of get-
ting AIDS compared to that of getting a
cold is so small that the screening of blood
is not warranted.

This particular method is shunned by
an industry whose business is risk assess-
ment, which is the insurance industry. No
insurance company will use a method to
provide an insurance policy to an activity
that could ultimately lead to catastrophic
consequences, with a very small proba-
bility that it would bankrupt that insur-
ance company. This is why, historically,
the insurance industry has not been will-
ing to assume full liability for nuclear
power and why the government contrac-
tors who operate nuclear weapons fac-
tories refuse and are fighting adamantly
in the Congress this year to not accept
any form of financial responsibility for
catastrophic accidents which they may
cause from their own negligence and mis-
conduct in the nuclear weapons program.

This is one of the problems. Any risk
assessment where you are involving a cat-
astrophic event, where the potential is
quite severe, there has to be a major ele-
ment of risk assessment, and it has been
basically excluded.

In terms of the biological risks of ra-
diation, as we have been told and as we
probably know, radiation has been one of
the most studied phenomenon in the
world. To the credit of our government
nuclear program, this is the only industry
I am aware of where, since its inception
in World War II, there were conscientious
people who had access to very large re-
sources who were able to set up a system
where, one, the workers in these facilities
are individually monitored, and two, the

environment is monitored. There is no
industry in the world that has ever done
this, or even does this to this day, with
the kind of detailed practice that occurs
in our nuclear program. When you deal
with asbestos, for example, in terms of
estimating doses from asbestos, it is more
of a hand-waving exercise as opposed to
dealing with the radiation risks, because
there is a record there.

But at the same time, the irony of this
is that it’s true we know very little about
the biologic effects of radiation, but we
also realize that there are still very great
uncertainties about the nature of these
risks when you start to get down to the
almost invisible level of the single cell.
What is really going on there? This is
where the debate is going on relative to
the risks of low-level radiation.

You have heard various risks presented
to you, in terms of your risk of getting
cancer versus this. First of all, I have
heard no discussion about fetal risks. The
fetus is considered the most sensitive form
of human life to ionizing radiation.

The fetus, it has been discovered, is
very Sensitive to radiation, and I just draw
your attention to two types of studies, one
dealing with cancer and the other dealing
with teratogenic problems.

The studies dealing with cancer are
those which are derived mainly from the
study of children who were x-rayed in
utero during pregnancy. Those studies
generally suggest that a single x-ray can
initiate a childhood cancer. Now, child-
hood cancer, as some of you may know,
is the single biggest cause of death by dis-
ease in this country for children. Yet, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after 30
years, is finally producing a standard to
protect pregnant working women many
years after these data have been made
known.

The notion of risk, in terms of radia-
tion, is rarely ever presented in terms of
range of risk. It’s always given as a certain
figure. Your risk of developing cancer
versus your risk of cancer from smoking
cigarettes is x, y and z. But I think that

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 193

the risk has to be portrayed in the true
reflection of its uncertainties, and I do not
see that happening. This leads me to some
other basic issues.

When you have this kind of uncer-
tainty, upon whom does the burden of
proof rest? For example, the Energy De-
partment is consistently saying that their
practice of dumping large amounts of ra-
dioactive and toxic materials into soils
poses no hazards to people. Well, how do
they know that? They do not even have
standards for soil contamination or
ground water standards. This obviously
puts the burden of proof on the people
who stand to be contaminated by this.

First of all, the way the burden of proof
has been portrayed, for example in the
Three Mile Island accident, there has
been a lot of paper and a lot of infor-
mation generated about Three Mile Is-
land, but empirical evidence? Thirteen
monitors. The stacks went off scale. They
do not know exactly what went out of the
reactor itself. There is a tremendous
amount of uncertainty, despite the reas-
surances of small amounts of radiation re-
leased. There is no empirical evidence to
support that. There is a lot of extrapo-
lation from a small amount of evidence
to that effect.

Let me give you an example of how
extrapolations are used. At the Savannah
River plant and at nuclear power plants,
the way doses are estimated to members
of the public is by extrapolation. In other
words, a number, which represents the
amount of radioactivities being released
from a point source, a stack, is then put
into a rather elaborate computer model,
which takes into account the weather con-
ditions and the distance from people and
other variables. Then a number comes
out.

At the Savannah River Plant, the
model suggests that the radiation being
emitted from their two reprocessing
plants which are in the middle of the site
are so dilute by the time they reach the
plant boundary, they cannot be mea-
sured. Well, according to a study done by

the Energy Department, the Air Force,
and the Weather Service, they tracked a
Krypton-85 plume, just a radioactive gas
that comes out of one of these reprocess-
ing plants, and discovered that it was 10
times more radioactive at several hundred
miles than what the model said it would
be at the plant boundary.

The models that you are looking at, in
terms of these risks, basically have not
been validated by empirical evidence.
The monitoring systems around commer-
cial and civil facilities are not designed to
validate these models. I was told by Dr.
William Mills many years ago in writing,
who was with the EPA and then joined
the NRC and I believe has retired now,
that monitoring around nuclear power
plants are for public reassurance. This is
what we are dealing with, the uncertainty
of risk.

I think that when you are getting into
the uncertainty of risk, there are two basic
principles you have to operate under. One
is conservatism. When you do not really
know what the nature of the risk is with
any precision, you have to assume the
worst can happen. And two, there is a
question of trust. For example, the En-
ergy Department, it has been revealed
over the years, has released very large
amounts of radiation deliberately in order
to produce nuclear weapons and never
told anybody about it. I served as a panel
member for the Centers for Disease Con-
trol, looking into matters concerning
Hanford. The CDC in the State of Wash-
ington estimated infant thyroid doses in
1945 which were on the order of 2,950
rem. Nobody was told about this. Can you
trust the people who are doing the pol-
lution to tell you the truth.

I say that we need better forms of in-
dependent regulation, and we need to be
more conservative.

LIDSKY:;,J°m:, Larry.Lidsky.. .fsom
M.I.T., and that has something to do with
what I am going to say. M.I.T. is in Mas-
sachusetts. We have a State lottery. The
chances of winning the State lottery are
somewhat less than | in a million. Every-

194 COMMUNICATIONS

body in the State buys a ticket, and every-
one is surprised when they do not win the
next week. One in a million to the public,
if you are concerned about the answer is
sort of 50/50. So you have a real problem
with that number.

The other real problem you have in
communicating risk is a point that was just
raised. That is the risk of serious exposure
due to an accident in a nuclear plant is
calculated by the engineers working on
the plant. At the end of that process, they
say, ‘The risk of a serious exposure is 1
in 10’. And I calculated this, doing a very
careful calculation. I am a scientist. Trust
me.” The public says, “I don’t trust you
anymore.”

So you have two problems. One is that
1 in a million is not a real number to the
public. But more to the point, and I think
deservedly so, the public does not trust
you—the scientist or the industry or the
government—to tell them what the risks
really are. I think that is the fundamental
problem in communications we have now.
It may well be that the communications
have been accurate.

ABRAHAM: I think that is an ex-
tremely important issue. I do not think it
is, however, a large mystery. The public
does not trust scientists because some of
them have lent their pedigrees and cre-
dentials to commercial enterprises that
have disillusioned kids who learned in
school that a scientist, like a physician,
was somehow on a higher moral plane. I
do not know how scientists will solve that
problem, but I do know that the public
will not solve it.

The government is not trusted because
some people who have been in the gov-
ernment in the past have shown them-
selves to be underserving of the trust that
was placed in them. There is no point in
my reeling off names. You read them all
in the newspapers. I think the biggest sur-
prise I got when I left the newspaper busi-
ness, where I had a fair amount of
credibility, and I joined the Federal Gov-
ernment in the fall of 1973, was to find
overnight and even more so in the next

couple of years that there was a wide mis-
trust of me that had nothing to do with
my personal reputation. That is another
fact of life that we have to deal with.

I think the mistrust of the industry
comes from the industry using the same
mechanism for product advertising that it
uses for communication with the public
on public interest issues. I do not believe
that the stereotype of the public relations
guy in the movie The China Syndrome
was, until very recently, very widely true.
It is a problem that the industry would
have to solve. I do not think that the so-
lutions to the problems are going to come
from anybody else. I think they are very
serious problems. You cannot help people
if they do not trust you. The physician
cannot help a patient if the patient does
not trust the physician.

SPEAKER: We are talking about pub-
lic perception. I think we tend to inter-
nalize too much about industry having to
do this, to improve public perception, and
the government needing to do this, and
the credibility source.

There was a study that did what I con-
sider to be an interesting survey of TV
programs and how movies and TV pro-
grams treat scientists and engineers versus
the doctor. The large majority, something
like 9 out of 10 programs that dealt with
problems pertaining to scientists and en-
gineers portrayed them as ogres, they do
more harm to the public than they do ben-
efit. However, the same fraction, 9 out of
10, of the medical programs, they were
all doing good. They were all saving peo-
ple and that type of thing.

Now you talk about public perception,
think of the impact the media in that re-
gard has on nuclear power and coal and
the preconceived notions and biases of the
general public. That is what I do not know
how to address, and that is where our
media professionals have to help us.

SMYSER: I would just say something
that I have said many times to my fellow
newspapermen. There has been some
trend in the media in more recent years,
and I am generalizing now, to get away

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 195

from old fashioned type of reporting. In
many ways, I think that has been good;
we need some innovations. But I think it
has been bad, particularly to the extent
that there has been some tendency to
think that local government matters are
boring to people and that we shouldn't
report them in the detail that we have in
many years past.

I think public trust only comes—We of
the media only create public trust by this
kind of day-in/day-out coverage. J. Ed
Murray, who was a Knight Ridder editor
and publisher for many years, a very
thoughtful man, speaks of what he calls
a reinforcing redundancy in our coverage.
I think this is really the only way, and this
is what I was trying to say when I referred
to process reporting. I think this is the
way that we of the media can help nuclear
power to become better trusted. Day-in/
day-out, over and over again type of cov-
erage that you can help us do.

HENDEE: I’m Bill Hendee from the
American Medical Association. All the
panelists today have identified the nuclear
power issue as one of the most conten-
tious and polarized technological issues in
our society, and there have been various
reasons for that. Among those reasons are
that it was born of the Hiroshima/Naga-
saki explosions. Therefore, the public has
a certain perception of it that is unlike
any other technology and is something
very hard to overcome. There are many
other reasons for that, too.

But Mr. Abraham brought up an issue
that seems to me to be a more funda-
mental issue that may be very difficult to
deal with, no matter how hard we try to
establish communication between those
who understand radiation, nuclear
power, and the public. And that is the
issue that radiation is something different,
because it is intrinsically mysterious and
difficult to understand. It is subtle; the
senses are not sensitive to it. And there-
fore, it is unlike the other types of tech-
nologies we deal with where we have
more of a sense of their significance.

If that is true, if that is one of the fun-

damental issues that confuses and con-
founds the problem of communicating
with the public about radiation, then my
question is simply, What can we do to try
to provide better public education and un-
derstanding of that issue when it is so mys-
terious and subtle and so intrinsically
difficult to talk about?

SPEAKER: I sometimes think that we
are not aware, we do not think about
gravity until we drop a bottle of milk or
somebody falls out a window. It isn’t the
underlying theory of the law of gravity
that people need to understand in order
to stay away from falls. It isn’t the un-
derlying research or the techniques of re-
search about the effects of radiation that
people need to understand the way sci-
entists and technologists think they un-
derstand it.

I do not know what it is that people
need to understand to take something for
granted, but people take a lot of things
for granted that they do not understand.
They are not willing to take radiation for
granted. They are not willing to take a
doctor’s word for the fact that a casual
contact will not communicate AIDS to
you. If I was going to suggest research, I
think it ought to be on why that is.

ALVAREZ: In following up on why
that is, I think the research could look
very closely at recent history, starting with
World War II. Indeed, the perception of
radiation, in terms of what you would call
the cultural or collective memory, cer-
tainly has its origin from the devastation
it caused in Japan. But also following
that, there was the atmospheric weapons
testing program, and the conduct of the
U.S. Government, the claims made by the
U.S. Government about the insignificant
dangers of testing, which were in effect
repudiated by the signing of a test ban
treaty.

To a large extent, government credi-
bility has never recovered from that and
it has washed over into the nuclear power
debate. We have to live up to these le-
gacies. Now why does this continue? It is
not just a matter of, how do we better

196

educate the public but looking more se-
riously at the roots of this problem. From
my point of view, it has been an historical
isolation of the radiation biological re-
search program from the mainstream of
public health science. This has been a dis-
cipline that has been dominated largely
by the military nuclear bureaucracy until
recent years. It is still funded very heavily
by the military program. You have to un-
derstand that you cannot ignore that
infrastructure.

If you were to transfer the research au-
thority for radiation health effects to pub-
lic health agencies and open that up to
those processes and to deal with that, you
would get more at the root of the prob-
lem.

ABRAHAMSON: I am Seymour
Abrahamson, Professor of Zoology and
Genetics at the University of Wisconsin.

One of the points I wanted to make was
with respect to the last point Mr. Alvarez
made. I have been a radiation geneticist
since 1950, working on just these issues
of health effects. In the 1950s and early
1960s, my research was funded almost ex-
clusively by NSF. By the mid-1960s, the
chairman of that program called me to
say, “I think you ought to go to DOE.
We don’t have enough funds to support
basic research. That’s the organization
that should be supporting your studies.”’
For 10 years, DOE did support the stud-
ies. NIH has picked up some of it. But in
fact, within the interagency government
research funding programs, DOE was the
source of most of the research, and almost
all the basic research in radiation came
out of that set of programs.

I do not know how you can knock it:
if they were the ones giving out the
money, and that is where it came from,
and nobody else wanted to do that fund-
ing. That is the way it was, as far as I am
concerned.

I have a couple of other points. One is
a point of correction to Mr. Abraham,
who said that when he informs people that
1 in 1000 is the chance of a congenital
child defect, you are inaccurate because

COMMUNICATIONS

it is closer to two-and-a-half percent. So
you are giving them wrong information.
I just wanted to correct the communicator
on that. We know that 1 in every 750
kids born is mentally retarded just from
Down’s Syndrome alone, and there are
all sorts of other child defects.

You made the point in your discussion,
Mr. Abraham, that in general only a very
few people at nuclear power plants get
over 5 rem exposure. I have forgotten
what the number was, but it might have
been 24 or something in that range. Are
you using only the numbers of the work-
ers who are employed in the plant exclu-
sively as those who are monitored, or
is that number also including those
who were brought in as contractors
to do cleanup work and then moved
out?

One of the major problems in the es-
timation of what risk is that a large-dose
exposure was possible for those workers,
boilerplate makers, and what have you,
who came in, unbolted some of the units,
got 5 rem, and then were moved out, but
were never part of the monitoring system
of the individual plants. Do you have any
information on that?

ABRAHAM: Yes, I have it with me.
I will show you the book. It is published
annually, I think for the last 17 years.
Brooks at NRC is the author. If my mem-
ory serves me correctly, the table from
which I got the numbers has in it all peo-
ple who are badged. People who come
into nuclear power plants are badged.
Their radiation is tracked. When they
leave, I think the company has—I forget
whether it’s 30 or 90 days—to send them
a letter and tell them what their exposure
was. I occasionally go on tours of plants.
I get letters like that routinely. They al-
ways Say zero.

The system should embrace everybody
who comes to work in a nuclear power
plant that gets a badge. All the plants that
I am familiar with in the Northeast, no-
body walks in without getting a pocket
dosimeter and a badge. So I believe all
that data are reported to us. I will let you

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 197

look at the book and find out whether or
not I’m interpreting that correctly.

ABRAHAMSON: This is to Mr.
Tooper. You were lamenting the fact that
we are not putting up nuclear power
plants in the northeast sector of the coun-
try for the future growth and the needs
of the future, and that Canada might be
putting up plants in that area to supply
the future needs of our country. I think
that was the point you were making.

TOOPER: I wasn’t lamenting the
need. We are not doing it. Iam lamenting
the situation, the process that we have in
the United States.

ABRAHAMSON: As a member of
DOE, I guess my question to you would
be, until DOE and the public can get their
act straight on high-level waste reposito-
ries, should we be putting up any more
nuclear power plants when the NIMBY
syndrome exists throughout the entire
United States, and we haven’t really got-
ten a high-level waste repository accept-
ance at this stage of the game?

TOOPER: Clearly, the waste issue,
particularly high-level waste manage-
ment, is an issue that has to be addressed
hand in hand, but I do not tie it with the
deployment of nuclear power plants. For
example, if we did not deploy any more
nuclear power plants, we would still have
the waste issue. By deploying what I call
a robust redeployment or revitalization of
nuclear power with, say, 30 plants, that
is not going to significantly contribute to
our waste management problem.

So, no, I do not tie the deployment of
nuclear power plants in the foreseeable
future to the waste management problem,
albeit it clearly impacts the public per-
ception that we do not have a tangible
solution to waste management at hand,
and that is the subject of another debate.

BRODSKY: I am Allan Brodsky
from Georgetown University. Up until a
year ago, for 11 years, I was back with
the government’s Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. I guess I should point that
out, but my remarks are as an individual.

My question will be, what can be done

to interest the media in seeking further
the truth, plus a true perspective of sci-
entific opinion in their reporting?

RUBIN: What is the truth? You, I
gather, have a notion in your mind as to
what you think the truth is, but as far as
I can tell, this subject is sufficiently com-
plicated that reasonable people will dis-
agree on the truth. To expect the press to
tell the truth, you are going to have to
somehow demonstrate that there is a truth
to be told, and what areas of this subject
need to be told.

Beyond that, the press does not work
that way anyway. The press does not write
stories each morning in which they say,
“Now the truth about this subject,” and
then talk about nuclear power; and ‘““Now
the truth about that subject,” and so on
through the list of various controversial
issues in society. The press in this country
is very much tied to the reporting of spe-
cific events. It is event-pegged. Very
much of what you see in the press is dic-
tated by events that are out of the control
of the press. Either they are like TMI and
Chernobyl, which are out of the control
of everybody, or they are controlled by
government, in that government creates
events that it wants the press to cover.

The time at which the press spends the
most attention on discussing “‘the truth”
about nuclear power is during accidents
like TMI and Chernobyl, which I would
say is probably the worst time to attempt
to discuss the truth. It is the period in
which the truth, whatever it may be, is
most elusive, passions are highest, people
are most confused, and the audience is
most concerned and ready to believe the
worst.

So one really needs to understand bet-
ter how the press works when it is going
to cover events, and also not to expect
that the press is in any way the ultimate
arbiter of truth, although I think the ul-
timate truth of what Three Mile Island
has meant as an accident, slowly and
through the accumulation of stories, as
Dick Smyser points out, is now available.
It was not a very serious accident in public

198 COMMUNICATIONS

health terms, it was a very serious acci-
dent in economic terms for that utility,
and it was a very serious accident in public
relations terms for the industry. So what
is the truth of the importance of that ac-
cident? It depends where you sit?

SMYSER: There is a marvelous quote
by Walter Lippman. The effect of it is that
really the function of the press, the media,
is not so much to presume to give you the
truth as it is to signal some directions for
you in which you, as a reading public,
might seek out the truth yourself. I think
that is a very accurate description.

I have been many times distressed
about something in my paper, maybe
something that I have written and some-
times written under pressure and in a
hurry and without as much research as I
should have. I have been concerned be-
cause maybe there have been some nu-
ances of it that really are not quite correct,
and I worry. But then sometimes I satisfy
myself, ““Well, perhaps it wasn’t precisely
right, but at very least it called to the
attention of our readers some area which
they should know about that they might
not otherwise have known about, even
though maybe I called it to their attention
in a flawed fashion.” I think Lippman’s
quote is helpful.

RUSSELL: Time is very important. In
the accidents that we are talking about,
both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl,
often there was not much time to get a
lot of perspective. Initially, at the time of
the event, what you are really looking for
is information. What has happened in
both of these incidents is, there is often
a lack of information, and therefore you
are forced to get more opinion, and some-
times the opinion is very polarized.

I was very concerned as a reporter and
also as a member of a journalistic orga-
nization with Chernobyl, where not only
were we impeded in getting information
because the accident did not happen here,
and the Soviets were not very informative
about what was happening, but in that
case, again with all the problems we had
in getting accurate information, we had

problems with the government in getting
to the sources of information.

There was an attempt basically to try
to centralize information, which is a good
idea in theory so that everybody is not
making contradictory statements. But in
doing so, there was a sort of strangling of
information that was available. Fortu-
nately, it was a temporary problem. But
there was a lot of concern by journalists
about that because we couldn’t get infor-
mation, and we were forced to get more
opinion. I would be interested in a com-
ment from Mr. Tooper about this ques-
tion of access to information during a
crisis and how we can improve getting in-
formation from the people who really
know.

In that case, at Lawrence Livermore
Lab in California, there was a group very
experienced in tracking radiation that had
information that might have been helpful
and valuable for us to get. Suddenly, they
were precluded from providing that in-
formation. In my own instance, I called
in the morning and was told that I'd get
a call back. I missed the call because I
was on another call. By the time I called
them back, they said, *‘We are not al-
lowed to talk. Call Washington.”

TOOPER: Again, it is a matter of per-
spective. At TMI, there were so many
sources of information, they appeared to
be conflicting; the media journalists un-
fortunately had to go to more and more
sources, and no one really had a straight
story. So therefore, the lesson we learned
from TMI was that we really need a single
source, like a Harold Denton or a Hans
Blix. That works very well.

On the other hand, you are espousing
that the media is not too content just hav-
ing one source of information. They really
want to have several sources of infor-
mation so that they can get an objective
viewpoint. Well, it seems to be a bit con-
tradictory, in terms of objectives and how
to best serve the public. I think that DOE,
viewing the team I experienced, had a
multigovernment agency involvement, in
terms of accumulating all the information,

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 199

albeit through DOE contractors, through
EPA contractors. They were all focused
as a single unit, coming through Lee
Thomas of the EPA as the spokesman. It
was our attempt, to the best of my rec-
ollection, to focus all the credible sources
of information into a coherent package
that the media then could take and run
with. We have to move toward the de-
velopment of the credible source, and this
all loops back to DOE trying, in addition
to the other government agencies, to es-
tablish their credible source.

There was an interesting point in the
Kameny Commission report that the me-
dia perhaps failed in some regard because
they did not have the level of technical
engineering expertise unto themselves, or
they did not bring it with them to be able
to interpret the story.

RUSSELL: With all of these things,
it’s a question of time. By the time you
get all organized, it may be several days
after the story has unfolded.

TOOPER: The issue that I have is the
issue to serve the public and convey the
information at hand and the implications
thereof, or is the issue to be able to discuss
implications prematurely before the an-
swer is available.

ABRAHAM: Because of my grim ex-
periences at Three Mile Island, when the
Chernobyl accident happened, I read al-
most all the stories only for that aspect
that Christine talked about: how was the
information being made available, where
was it coming from, and who knew what
they were talking about or appeared to.

I have clipping services and things that
allow me to read a large cross-section of
newspapers every day. It seemed very ob-
vious to me that there were some things
going on that had nothing to do with the
accident or the availability of a spokes-
man per se. There was an enormous re-
luctance on the part of anybody in this
country to get involved in saying some-
thing outrageous that would be construed
as an anti-Soviet opportunistic slap at the
Russians, because everybody on both
sides I think was trying to improve rela-

tions. We can look now in hindsight at
what other things were going on.

I think people who might otherwise
have been willing to speculate, because
they are high enough in the scientific
pecking order or the governmental peck-
ing order, realized that if they really blew
it, the Russians could easily later prove it
was false and accuse us of doing it for
malicious reasons. But a government of-
ficial or a high person in a research center
that gets privileged information, I think
they would recognize immediately it
would be the end of their career to scuttle
a summit or to do any one of a number
of things.

Those were never considerations at the
time of Three Mile Island. I think some
of the news media gradually caught on to
the fact that the Americans were laying
back a little bit in their information be-
cause there were other things at stake. I
just recognized that as a fact of life.

KASPERSON: I’m Roger Kasperson
from CENTED at Clark University. Sev-
eral aspects of the communication prob-
lem have not been dealt with very much
and deserve mention. First, communica-
tion is a two-way process. If there has
been a major failure in this area, it seems
to me to be on the listening side rather
than on the communicating side or on the
portrayal of information. If one goes be-
yond noting that communication ought to
be two-way and really try to address what
those listening problems are, and the
kinds of impediments that exist in insti-
tutions, or the fact indeed that if you do
communicate accurately, risk perceptions
that are often fundamentally different
than the technical assessments, what are
you going to do with the information that
you have gathered? How are you going
to internalize it in the institutional struc-
ture of the way that regulatory agencies
operate? What role, for example, should
it play in definitions of safety goals for
nuclear power, licensing of nuclear power
plants, implementation of the LARA and
so on? That is one problem.

The second problem related to that is

200 COMMUNICATIONS

this: If we are smart enough or clever
enough to find out how to do the com-
munication, the presentation-of-infor-
mation job to the public in a really good
way that would capture the public’s at-
tention, get them to listen, get the right
information to them, that we would get
different kinds of decisions and response
to the public.

There is now a substantial body of ac-
cumulated social science research on why
the public responds to hazards in the way
that they do. Basically, most of that work
suggests that is probably not the case. We
now know that when the public assesses
nuclear hazards, for example, it comes
out to very different kinds of perceptions
than the experts do because they do it in
fundamentally different ways, consider-
ing fundamentally different properties of
the hazards, as well as the risk process
that delivered the hazard.

One of the questions is, When we are
done with the job of conveying all the
information well, and we still have this
major difference in assessment, do you
think that perhaps the problem is in the
inadequacies of the technical assessment
that fails to capture what is of concern to
the public and what is certainly relevant
to the public interest, rather than in the
kinds of responses that are occurring in
the public?

ALVAREZ: In regard to your latter
question about the technical aspects, I
think that the clarification of technical as-
pects again falls on access to information.
In the previous discussion from the pre-
vious question, we were talking about get-
ting access to information in the wake of
an accident, but I think more importantly
is the problem of getting information be-
fore an accident occurs, especially infor-
mation that deals with what if an accident
occurs. That is a very serious problem, in
terms of getting data out of the govern-
ment, both the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
mission and the Energy Department,
from my perspective as a public interest
advocate.

For example, we were very interested

and have been for many years in studying
the nuclear waste management aspects of
the Savannah River Plant in South Car-
olina and were only able to obtain the
safety analysis report that had been class-
ified secret after we went to court and
forced them to give it to us. So we wrote
a report, which we issued last year, and
the Dupont Corporation, with the sanc-
tion of the Energy Department, issued a
reply based on a new Safety analysis re-
port, of which they released the results
but not the method.

By not releasing your method, you can
juggle your stuff in secret, and there is a
definite lack of scientific integrity. You
need to have access to good technical in-
formation on a regular basis, and there
should be an open policy about this. But
that has been a problem. I think is a real
stumbling block in dealing with the thorny
technical problems.

MOSSMAN: Ken Mossman, George-
town University. I wanted to just make a
few comments about the peculiar char-
acteristics of radiation. The panel has al-
ready alluded to the unusual history, the
images of disaster that one thinks of with
atomic bombs and mushroom clouds, and
the history of nuclear testing, and Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl. I just wanted
to bring up a couple of others for possible
comment.

One, of course, is that the public is very
confused about radiations. They are used
in different ways. For instance, 500,000
people per year in this country are treated
for cancer by radiation. So a lot of peo-
ple know or know about either family,
friends, or relatives who have been
treated. Perhaps they have seen some of
the adverse effects that may come about
from the radiation treatment, and they
may incorrectly compare those kinds of
things with what goes on with radiation
accidents such as at Chernobyl and at
Three Mile Island.

Another situation in which I was per-
sonally involved was during Chernobyl. I
was asked a number of times to make the
comparison between the radioactivity re-

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 201

leased at Chernobyl with the radioactive
releases which occurred during the nu-
clear testing in this country. Really, that
is not a very fair comparison because, of
course, it implies that Chernobyl was like
a bomb going off. A lot of people have
these kinds of misconceptions, and it is
the kind of thing that I think journalists
ought to address, because it’s one of the
serious problems in the knowledge array
that the general public has.

One last thing. If you look at the radon
problem, where we are talking about pico
curie levels in the environment of radon,
and following Chernobyl, the release of
100 million curies of radioactivity into the
environment, you are talking about a 20
orders of magnitude range of radiations.
To my knowledge, I do not know of any
agent—chemical, physical, or other-
wise—for which one has to deal with the
public in which one has such a very wide
range of concentrations of some particu-
lar kind of agent, trying to explain away
that perhaps at the very low end you do
not have very many effects, but in the
treatment of cancer you may have some
very serious side effects to deal with. So
I think the public is very confused about
it, and it is because of these problems that
I have identified.

SPEAKER: I think something that
certainly adds greatly to public confusion
about radiation is the scattered and frag-
mented nature of regulation itself. I re-
cently had to do some work to look at this
problem and try to quantify just how scat-
tered it is. Really, you have several dif-
ferent players at the federal level. You
have 50 States imposing some form of reg-
ulation. When you get into the Energy
Department, they have site-specific reg-
ulations; there are no uniform standards
whatsoever. And you have double stan-
dards: if you live near a DOE facility,
particularly in terms of soil dumping of
liquids, you are allowed to receive 20
times more radiation than if you are living
near an NRC facility. Then you have the
Food and Drug Administration involved
in the contamination of food and medical

advices. Then you have several different
advisory committees giving different
kinds of advice to the agencies.

This scattered and fragmented program
of radiation protection really encourages
a dangerous form of self-regulation.
Without uniform and conservative stan-
dards that the general public can under-
stand, it is just going to add to confusion.

RUSSELL: I think some of the con-
fusion results from there being so many
different terms and so many different
sources. When you are trying to make
these analogies and you go to different
experts, many of us will go to someone
in nuclear medicine—so there is a natural
tendency to compare it to x-rays.

It is fascinating, on the radon question,
why the public alarm has not been as high
about that as it might be about something
that was nuclear power related. As jour-
nalists, we are always struggling with what
would be the right analogy to really make
people understand it. I think some sim-
plification of terms by professionals and
some attempt to work out some analogies
that might be more apt would be helpful.
I think that professionals have trouble ex-
plaining it to us, and we then have trouble
explaining it to the public. In any case,
none of us is out there holding the hand
of the person reading the newspaper and
helping monitor why they are reacting to
it. That is a whole different question.

SHARP: My name is Daniel Sharp,
and I am a health physicist at the National
Bureau of Standards.

With reference to Karl Abraham’s talk,
I do not work with the public. I work in
a large laboratory with hundreds of peo-
ple. At least half of my work is exactly
like his work. I give psychological coun-
seling to people, even though I am not a
psychologist. A lot of the damage that
radiation does is psychological, and I con-
sider that a real, valid injury. I have never
read anything in any book or heard any
lecture or talk like Karl Abraham’s. To
me, that is about the most meaningful talk
I have ever heard in five years of this
work.

202

The second comment is related to
something that Alvarez said, that the root
of the problem is in the psyche of people.
If there is a root of the problem, it is not
just that people do not understand all the
details. It is that there is a real psycho-
logical problem entrenched in people’s
minds, and there is no communication
that is going to change that.

The next comment is that people do not
evaluate risk-to-benefit, they just con-
sider benefit. So there is no risk so great
that will be ignored if they want to ignore
it, and there is no risk so small that it
would be the biggest thing in the world if
you do not want to accept it. All people
examine is benefit. So there will be a time
when people’s washing machines and
dishwashers and television sets, vacuum
cleaners, and air conditioners will not
work because there is no power, and they
will want nuclear power.

But I do not believe it is the place of
the government or of any big corporations
to try to force people to want things that
they do not want, especially in a democ-
racy. I believe you could have a whole
civilization filled with cheap power and
all the nuclear power plants to supply all
the energy everybody could ever need,
but the quality of life is not going to be
very high if everybody is super neurotic
about the radiation.

ABRAHAM: I will just mention in
passing that one of the issues the federal
court had to deal with in deciding some
compensation cases in connection with
Three Mile Island was the issue of psy-
chological damage. Everybody says there
was some and then finally agreed that the
scientific community that has the exper-
tise in looking at psychological damage
did not have a really good way of mea-
suring it. There was no really good way
of coming to grips with what you would
call damage and what you would say was
happening to people who had a predis-
position to be alarmed. Some very nasty
talk went around in the popular press on
the issue, but it is one area where every-
body who tried to deal with it in connec-

COMMUNICATIONS

tion with those lawsuits realized that we
do not have institutions, either legal or
scientific, that can effectively deal with
psychological stress from being afraid that
you might get a very high radiation dose
and then it turns out there is no really
high radiation dose.

SPEAKER: One quick comment per-
taining to the government and industry
forcing nuclear power. One has to rec-
ognize that government’s concerns are as-
sociated with the fact that you are not
building a nuclear power plant today and
we are probably not going to build any in
the very near future. The industry as in-
dustry is not something you turn on and
turn off. It goes away. People go on to
other activities, other portions of the pri-
vate sector. The concern 1s, if indeed you
are going to need significant additional
amounts of electricity generative capac-
ity, and coal and nuclear are your only
choices, then what do we do in the mean-
time to keep nuclear as a viable choice.
It is not a matter of forcing. It is a matter
of minimizing the risk and being able to
have that capacity available when needed.

FINUCANE: [’m Jim Finucane from
the Department of Energy, but my com-
ments or questions are specifically as an
individual. I observed, as I guess we all
have, that the good news appears on page
46 with the used car ads and the bad news
on the front page. Because of my interest
in the subject, I did watch very carefully
the Chernobyl reporting. I found it rather
uniformly bad, with the exception of pub-
lic television.

Mr. Rubin, to whom my question is
specifically addressed, alluded to the
ham radio operator and the 3,000 deaths
that were reported almost universally
throughout the media the first week after
the accident. By the middle of the second
week, at least the New York Times re-
ported, again on page 46, a fairly detailed
analysis of clues to the credibility of that
source, but I never say in any of the me-
dia, written or electronic, any formal
statement or retraction of the 3,000 im-
mediately dead. The 20,000 in a mass

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 203

grave, I think people would dismiss out
of hand from the New York Post, but the
remainder of the media never got up and
said, ““Hey, this was a mistake.”

RUBIN: Iam glad you raised that. We
cannot let the New York Post stand for
American journalism. The way the 20,000
deaths report from the ham operator was
really in fact covered by the elite media
was, I think, with a lot of responsibility.

I do not know what your memory of
this is, but The Washington Post ran that
report in a box, a small box, and made it
clear that it was unconfirmed. It was not
in any headline. It had none of the prom-
inence it had in the New York Post. When
UPI admitted, as they did on their wire,
that they were wrong, the retraction ap-
peared. The New York Times ran it in a
single paragraph within a much larger
story and also indicated that there was no
confirmation for this.

In fact, the New York Post’s running of
it was completely atypical of the way
American journalism handled the 20,000
death figure. It is unfortunate that the
New York Post is in New York. It is un-
fortunate that it exists, period, but that it
is in New York gives it greater promi-
nence. People assume that these kinds of
headlines were typical across the U.S.
The Soviets use the New York Post to
indicate the way in which the capitalist
press was bashing them over the head in-
accurately.

But I simply urge you to remember that
Murdoch is not American journalism.

RUSSELL: I just second that. Often,
even in the discussion today, we use the
word “press” and ‘“‘media”’ as if it is a
monolithic institution with one single
voice. All reporters are not alike, all
newspapers are not alike, all television is
not alike, all scientists are not alike. It is
dangerous to generalize in the same way
about good news and bad news.

MOORE: Scott Moore, U.S. Army.
The title for this discussion, part of it, “In
the Post-Chernobyl World,” indicates an
international flavor to the discussion. This
is directed at the journalists. How would

you characterize relationships between,
say, the Japanese press and the Japanese
general public, the French press and the
French general public? Is there anything
we can learn from these other nations and
their presses?

RUBIN: Let me only speak about the
French press, because that is the only one
that I am slightly competent on. The
French press is much less aggressive in
challenging its government and its policies
than our press is in challenging its gov-
ernment. Since the French government
seems fairly set on this particular course,
the French press does not challenge it. It
has not and is less likely to than is ours.
So that if you are a champion of press/
government cooperation in order to fur-
ther public policy, the French model
would appeal to you.

D’ARRIGO: My name is Diane D’Ar-
rigo. I am with the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service. We are a public
interest group which provides informa-
tion to the public and sometimes to the
media on nuclear power and waste ques-
tions. One of the things that I found dis-
tressing in a lot of the reporting after
accidents is that there can be a short or a
long article, but it always ends with “and
there was no risk to the public.”

It makes me not even want to give any
credibility to almost the rest of the report
because every amount of radiation has
some risk. It may be a very minute risk.
I sympathize with the reporters because
it is very difficult to present that risk to
the public. That is what this whole thing
is about today, how do we explain what
the risk is and how do people perceive it
and so on. But to give a blanket statement
at the end that there is no risk, and a lot
of times it is quoting someone from the
Department of Energy or the company
that had the accident or the release, it is
a real conflict of interest. There is not
going to be trust from that. The Depart-
ment of Energy is an advocate, even
though the people within the agency
themselves are honest and have integrity.
The agency’s mission is to promote nu-

204 COMMUNICATIONS

clear technologies, and people are not
going to believe when the promoter turns
around and says that there is no risk, be-
cause they are the ones that are promot-
ing.

If I was looking back at a lot of the
coverage, I was struck really, a little bit
in contrast to what some of our speakers
have said, that a lot of the stories that I
was reading emphasized uncertainty and
said the risk was unclear and said there
did not appear to be an immediate risk.
Particularly with Chernobyl, there was a
worldwide question of risk. So I think
there is not a single generalization about
how risk was covered, but I think a lot of
the coverage did make a single-bullet
statement.

ALVAREZ: Briefly, I think your point
is a very good one concerning coverage

of the plant before the accident. We found
in our TMI report, we looked at coverage
of the plants while they were being con-
structed, and we found that there had
been lots of little incidents. Typically, the
press release from the utility was that
there was no danger to the public, which
may be true or may not be true, but the
local press printed the press releases as
received. They did no investigation of
their own. They just took it at face value.
The effect of that is that the public is lulled
into thinking that there is no problem and
that there will be no problem. Then when
there is a problem, as there was, you then
have the credibility issue which lingers.

So in the short term, I suppose, it is
smart for the utility to take that position.
In the long term, if you have an accident,
you have real credibility problems.

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 205-209, June 1988

Physicians, Physicists, and
Radiation Accidents

William R. Hendee, Ph.D.

Vice President for Science & Technology
American Medical Association
Chicago, Illinois 60610

ABSTRACT

Emergency planning for radiation emergencies has been a long-standing activity of
regulatory agencies and medical institutions in the United States. This activity has been
re-evaluated following the Chernobyl accident, with the result that several changes have
been identified as desirable in current emergency planning measures. Among these
changes is the need for closer involvement in emergency planning by physicians and health
physicists available in communities where nuclear facilities are present. This involvement
requires increased education of these individuals on a variety of topics associated with
radiation. One model effort to provide this education has evolved from an International
Conference on Radiation Emergencies sponsored last fall by the American Medical As-
sociation. This effort is designed not only to enhance professional knowledge about ra-
diation accidents, but also to facilitate communication of this information to the public

sector.

The topic of preparing for and respond-
ing to radiation accidents is not a new
issue. Physicians and health physicists
have had a long standing commitment to
emergency preparedness and the design
of plans for responding to radiation ac-
cidents. Ever since the dawn of the nu-
clear age, we have understood that
radiation accidents can happen, and over
the past four decades such accidents have
happened. It would be foolhardy to be-
lieve that they will not continue to hap-
pen, especially with the increased use of
nuclear energy in defense and for pro-
duction of electricity, and with the ever-
growing use of radiation sources in in-
dustry and for diagnostic and therapeutic

205

purposes in medicine. These uses require
that radiation sources are handled by
technicians, transported from one site to
another, and shipped to remote sites for
storage and disposal. Under these circum-
stances, accidents involving nuclear facil-
ities and radiation sources are bound to
occur, and then physicians, health phy-
sicists and representatives of the media
have major responsibilities. Physicians
are responsible for caring for persons in-
jured during the accident and for those
possibly exposed to radiation. Health
physicists are expected to prevent or min-
imize exposures to individuals wherever
possible, and to control the environment
to prevent the spread of radiation and ra-

206

dioactive contamination. And the media
is expected to provide factual information
about the accident that is as objective as
possible and not slanted to either increase
anxiety about the accident or underesti-
mate its possible consequences.

Responsibilities assigned to physicians,
physicists and media representatives dur-
ing a radiation accident are reflected in
emergency plans required of hospitals by
various agencies, including the Joint
Commission on the Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations, the U.S. Nu-
clear Regulatory Commission, the U.S.
Department of Energy, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. They
are also encompassed in plans for radia-
tion accidents developed by state agencies
responsible for radiation safety. In most
communities these plans have been in ef-
fect for some period of time. Occasionally
these plans have been implemented for
events other than radiation accidents, in-
cluding natural disasters and industrial
and transportation accidents involving
hazardous substances other than radia-
tion sources. In fact, there are only two
major differences between radiation ac-
cidents and other types of emergencies for
which accident plans are useful. These
differences are the long-term conse-
quences of radiation sources released to
the environment during a radiation acci-
dent, and the exaggerated perception of
risk whenever radiation is involved.

Today there is renewed interest in
emergency planning for radiation acci-
dents. This interest is a reflection of the
accident at Three Mile Island, and, more
recently, the accident at Chernobyl in the
Ukraine. For example, the present sym-
posium is a direct result of the accident
at Chernobyl.

Although the management and public
information aspects of the Chernobyl
accident left much to be desired, the med-
ical response was excellent as demon-
strated by the fact that only 31 persons
died, and fewer than 200 persons are es-
timated to have been exposed to doses
exceeding 100 rams. It has also been

WILLIAM R. HENDEE

stated by the Soviets that the medical re-
sponse to Chernobyl exhausted the re-
sources of that country to deal with a
radiation accident.

Since the Chernobyl accident, there has
been much soul searching in the United
States about this country’s ability to re-
spond in similar fashion to a radiation ac-
cident, both medically and as a society.
In particular, there has been much dis-
cussion about whether our professional
teams would respond as well, and the
public reaction would be so controlled,
given our free press and delegation of re-
sponsibility of decision making more to
the individual and less to a bureaucracy.
These questions are reflected in the many
phone calls that I and many others re-
ceived immediately after Chernobyl from
physicians and representatives of medical
societies inquiring into their responsibil-
ities following a radiation accident, and
their feelings of inadequacy in meeting
those responsibilities. These phone calls
were part of the stimulus for development
of the International Conference on Non-
Military Radiation Emergencies that was
held last November in Washington, D.C.
The purpose of this conference was to ex-
amine the current status of emergency
planning for radiation accidents, and the
existing and desired roles of the medical
community in planning for such accidents,
educating physicians and the public about
radiation accidents, and responding to
them should they occur.

Several recommendations evolved
from the International Conference on
Non-Military Radiation Emergencies. It
is clear that significant engineering dif-
ferences exist between the RMBK-1000
graphite moderated reactor that caused
the accident at Chernobyl, and the reac-
tors in the United States that are used to
generate electricity. These differences
provide assurance that an accident of sim-
ilar magnitude in this country is unlikely
to occur. Nevertheless, radiation acci-
dents involving nuclear power facilities
can occur, as can accidents involving
other sources of radiation. Adequate pre-

PHYSICIANS, PHYSICISTS, AND RADIATION ACCIDENTS 207

paredness for such accidents, and edu-
cation of professionals including health
physicists and physicians, are absolutely
essential if the likelihood of these acci-
dents is to be minimized, and the conse-
quences are to be controlled when they
do occur.

The planning effort should include ob-
jective risk assessment of environmental
hazards in general and sources of nuclear
energy and radiation in particular. Risk
assessment is especially important with
regard to nuclear energy used to generate
electricity. We have too long tended to
separate this issue into two camps. One
camp, the advocates of nuclear power,
tend to trivialize the risk, saying that
an accident simply can not and will not
occur, and that even if it did the con-
sequences would be minimal. On the
other side are the opponents of nuclear
power who tend to exaggerate the risks
and claim that nuclear energy is the most
hazardous force ever unleashed upon
mankind. At present, the opponents
are ahead in this debate, as evidenced
by the fact that no applications for new
nuclear power stations have been filed
since 1977.

This country needs a renewed effort to
understand, appreciate and expand the
nuclear contribution to electricity gener-
ation and increased attention to ways to
achieve that contribution at minimum risk
to individuals and society. Shortly after
Chernobyl, a Gallup poll showed that
70% of those questioned opposed the sit-
ing of a nuclear power station within five
miles of their residences, in spite of over-
whelming evidence that a nuclear station
in this country does not pose a significant
risk to individuals in the vicinity. A major
public education effort is needed about
the risks and benefits of nuclear energy
applied to the generation of electricity.
This educational effort requires the par-
ticipation not only of representatives of
the print and electronic media, but also
of health physicists and physicians serving
as community resources knowledgeable
about the benefits and hazards of radia-

tion in general and nuclear power in par-
ticular. Similarly, the disposal of
radioactive wastes is an issue that de-
mands understanding leading to resolu-
tion in our society.

Several other issues evolved from the
International Conference on Non-Mili-
tary Radiation Emergencies. An inter-
national notification system for an-
nouncing the occurence of a radiation
accident of substantial proportions is es-
sential, and appropriate response mech-
anisms for addressing the consequences
of a radiation accident are needed. The
international notification system agreed
to recently by the Soviet Union, the
United States, and several other countries
as a result of the September meeting of
the International Atomic Energy Agency
in Vienna is a good beginning to meeting
the first need. Improved engineering and
safety inspections of nuclear power facil-
ities are needed at an international level.
The program on safety inspections and
planning efforts for criticality scenarios
recently made available through the In-
ternational Atomic Energy Agency are a
promising start toward addressing these
needs.

Both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
have enhanced the appreciation of the
role of human error in radiation acci-
dents. Improved training and testing of
radiation workers are needed to reduce
the potential of human error. Improved
vigilance against complacency and in-
creased attention to education and train-
ing of health physicists and physicians, as
well as the public, about radiation and
radiation accidents are needed. These
needs should be matched with improved
understanding of ways to mobilize the
medical and health physics communities
in the event of an accident, and with im-
proved planning for radiation accidents at
the community level.

The medical community needs to be
better educated about radiation and the
appropriate mechanisms of response in
the event of a radiation accident. Forums
for professional education on issues in-

208 WILLIAM R. HENDEE

volving radiation need to be established,
so that physicians can better understand:

1. Radiation exposure and radioactive
contamination.

2. Pathophysiology of exposure and con-
tamination.

3. Physical and physiologic behaviors of
sources of radiation.

4. Responsibilities of professional groups
in the event of accidents, including
their obligations to respond and the
limitations intrinsic in their response.

5. Role of medical schools and profes-
sional organizations in providing the
necessary education and training.

6. Existing response mechanisms (eg. the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Radiologic Assistance Plan, and the
Radiation Emergency Assistance Cen-
ter and Training Site (REAC/TS) in
Oak Ridge).

An improved understanding of levels of
risks is needed, together with a greater
recognition of the obligations of physicists
and physicians to respond to a radiation
accident if one should occur. These issues
need to be worked out before, not after,
an accident has occurred. We have as-
sumed for too long that professionals
would respond appropriately in the event
of an accident, without questioning
whether this assumption is reasonable.
We also have to wonder about the re-
sponsibilities of physicists, physicians and
others, whose homes and families are
threatened by a radiation accident and yet
whose professional obligations require
them to be present at the accident scene
or health facility. And, last but not least,
we need to examine carefully the role and
responsibilities of the electronic and print
media in the event of a radiation accident,
and of those individuals who have re-
sponsibility for interfacing with the me-
dia.

Three major actions resulted from the
international conference. The first was a
demand of the participants to publish the

proceedings of the conference. The pro-
ceedings are currently in press, and
should be available in a few weeks. The
second action was a request that com-
munications be established between the
American Medical Association and the
various federal agencies involved in emer-
gency planning and public education
about radiation accidents. These com-
munications were, in part, to express the
willingness of physicians to become more
involved in these issues, both proactively
and reactively. I have communicated this
offer of help to a number of agencies,
including the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
mission, Department of Energy, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, and
others, and have found a receptivity to
the involvement of physicians and health
physicists in emergency planning. I plan
to continue this effort.

The third major action of the confer-
ence was to establish an improved dia-
logue between representatives of agencies
operating nuclear power plants and con-
tractors for DOE facilities, and physi-
cians, other health providers, health and
medical physicists, and hospital adminis-
trators in communities where such facil-
ities exist. In response to this directive,
we have focused initially on improving the
dialogue in two states, Illinois and Penn-
sylvania. In Illinois, we are developing a
model program for improved dialogue in
communities around nuclear power facil-
ities, starting with a meeting last week
hosted by the Will-Grundy County Med-
ical Society. This meeting focused on
radiation accidents and involved repre-
sentatives from Commonwealth Edison
and physicians, physicists, technologists
and administrators from the community.
We pian to hold similar meetings in other
parts of the state where nuclear facilities
are present, with the intention of devel-
oping a model program that can be ex-
ported to other states. We are pursuing a
similar approach in Pennsylvania, where
Pennsylvania Power and Light is already
involved with the medical community in

PHYSICIANS, PHYSICISTS, AND RADIATION ACCIDENTS 209

a series of public forums about radiation
and radiation accidents.

There is one remaining issue that de-
serves mentioning as part of this presen-
tation. That issue is the current public
perception and misperception of risks,
both individual and societal, and how the
applications of risk assessment and risk
management techniques can be made
more objective and more efficient as
viewed from the public sector. There is
considerable information available about
the processes of risk assessment and risk
management, and more is becoming
available as time goes on. These processes
pertain to, but certainly extend beyond,
the specific issues of radiation, radiation
accidents and nuclear energy. This past
week the American Medical Association
held a teleconference on risk assessment
and risk management that was broadcast
to over 900 hospitals across the country.
We are also attempting to develop edu-
cational materials for school-age children
on risk assessment and management from
both a personal and a community level.
In helping the public gain a more objec-
tive view of risk assessment, factual, suc-
cinct and understandable information
about these processes is needed. In ad-
dition, a mechanism of transfer of this

information from credible sources to the
public needs to be available at the com-
munity level. This latter need is the one
that could be met by health physicists,
physicians and other health providers
working as resources in their community.
These individuals are knowledgeable, or
with education can be made knowledge-
able, about risk and risk assessment. Cer-
tainly they are credible sources of
information, and they are available in
communities around the country. We
need to develop ways to mobilize this re-
source of information providers, and use
it to provide education and guidance at
the community level about environmental
and personal risks.

One mechanism to mobilize this re-
source is through state and county med-
ical societies working in concert with
medical specialty chapters, chapters of
groups like health physicists and medical
physicists, and others. I have discussed
this approach with several federal agen-
cies, and have uncovered a lot of interest.
We are actively pursuing this approach
with the intent of mobilizing health pro-
viders and other knowledgeable indi-
viduals in communities around the coun-
try to help improve public perception of
risks.

nw

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 210-225, June 1988

Emergency Planning for Nuclear
Accidents: Contentions and Issues

John H. Sorensen
Oak Ridge National Laboratory* Oak Ridge, TN 37832-6206
and
Barbara M. Vogt

University of Tennessee

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss issues that have been raised con-
cerning emergency planning for nuclear power plants. The extent to which these issues
can be eliminated or dismissed on the basis of current physical and social science knowledge
is important for assessing the viability of emergency planning as a form of human pro-
tection. Where an issue is valid, it is important that emergency planning incorporate
knowledge concerning those issues.

The results of the analysis indicate that the critical point for changes made in planning
requirements was the TMI accident. Current plans, as a result of these changes are far
too complex, bureaucratic and rigid to permit flexibility in managing emergencies. Having
an adaptive and flexible organization is a key factor in having effective emergency man-
agement response.

Many of the issues in nuclear power plant emergency planning are derived from be-
havioral intent surveys. Research based on these methods which concludes people will
behave in certain ways in a future emergency is largely invalid and should not be the basis
for developing emergency plans. The basis for plans must be developed on existing knowl-
edge, not on speculative or inaccurate assumptions.

Based on the analysis three recommended actions are proposed:

1. Revise radiological emergency planning frameworks in a manner which promotes more
flexibility in response procedures and which is more responsive to local factors such as
unique topography and population distributions.

2. Develop policy positions on various issues including the validity of various contentions
and the conditions under which the contention are or are not valid.

3. Give local and state governments more legal responsibility for developing emergency
plans for nuclear power plants while placing the burden of proof on all parties.

Introduction
“operated by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, ; : 5 f
Inc. for the U.S. Department of Energy under con- The purpose of this paper is to identify
tract No. DE-AC05-840R21400 and discuss issues that have been raised

210

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 211

concerning emergency planning for nu-
clear power plants.* Some issues have
been raised by researchers and the sci-
entific community, others by concerned
publics, and still others by critics using
emergency planning issues as a means to
address other social controversies. Some
have generated significant public concern
and debate while others have been aca-
demic issues. These issues and beliefs are
important because they represent chal-
lenges to the feasibility and efficacy of
emergency planning and some can poten-
tially provide the means to improve emer-
gency plan implementation if properly
addressed.’ The extent to which these is-
sues can be eliminated or dismissed on
the basis of current physical and social
science knowledge is important for both
assessing the viability of emergency plan-
ning as a form of human protection and
eliminating unneeded research.** Where
an issue is valid, it is important that emer-
gency planning incorporate knowledge
concerning those issues.’’ The extent to
which an issue is unresolvable is also im-
portant for establishing agendas for new
research on emergency planning. Where
invalid, examination of the issues is im-
portant to prevent erroneous issues from
interfering with sound decision making or
even from leading to poor emergency
plans.

Contentions and Issues

The issues identified in this paper come
from a variety of sources, including re-
search reports, critiques of emergency
planning, editorials, transcripts of hear-
ings, litigations and newspaper articles.
Issues were initially summarized in a point
form for each hazard. A conceptual ty-

*This paper is drawn from a report prepared for
the Federal Emergency Management Agency: J. So-
rensen, B. Vogt, and D. Mileti. 1987. Evacuation:
An Assessment of Planning and Research, ORNL-
6376. Oak Ridge National Laboratory.—The find-
ings and conclusions are those of the authors and
not of FEMA.

pology of major issues was induced from
these lists and a hierarchy of issues was
specified under these five categories. The
major categories of issues and their def-
initions are as follows:

Physical Hazard: the nature of the
threat including the definition of areas at
risk, lead time, location, magnitude,
probability, and type of hazardous prod-
ucts.

Warning: the nature of the information
dissemination process including the abil-
ity to notify and provide a warning mes-
sage, the quality of the information, and
timing of the message delivery.

Social: the pre-emergency population
attributes including psychological, de-
mographic and social characteristics.

Organizational: the attributes of emer-
gency preparedness and response orga-
nizations.

Response: the behavior of people and
organizations in an emergency.

1. Physical Hazard Issues
Definition of Impacts

The area at risk for a nuclear power
plant accident is a function of source term
and meteorological conditions.' Consid-
erable research has been conducted on
establishing accident risk levels.’?**:*°
There is great controversy at present
about the size, composition and release
characteristics of source terms and the
areas they would effect. Research con-
ducted on the Three Mile Island (TMI)
accident has been interpreted in divergent
ways. The nuclear industry contends that
TMI did not demonstrate the need for
evacuation planning.’’** Research con-
ducted since the accident demonstrated
that source terms were smaller than ex-
pected and thus the emergency planning
zones for detailed evacuation plans
should be lowered to 1 or 2 miles. The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
maintains, however, that research has not

212 JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

reduced the uncertainties sufficiently to
change the Emergency Planning Zone
(EPZ) concept." Intervenors argue for an
expanded plume exposure zone because
accident that exceed the Protective Ac-
tion Guides (PAG’s) beyond 10 miles are
possible.

The accident at the Chernobyl reactor
in the Soviet Union (1986) raised different
issues about areas at risk because the area
impacted was much larger than expected
and the risk from exposure did not decline
in a linear fashion with distance from the
reactor. The Chernobyl accident also
pointed out the critical role that rainfall
plays in particle deposition.

Uncertainty in Ability to Detect

Inability to recognize that a threat ex-
ists makes it more difficult to issue a pro-
tective action warning or prompt people
to move away from the threat. That one
cannot see it, smell it, taste it hear it, or
feel it is a popular “battle cry” of nuclear
power opponents. Critics of nuclear
power hold that because radiation is in-
visible, the public at risk will not see the
approach of the hazard and therefore will
not take protective action. An additional
issue is that people who do evacuate will
not know where radiation exists and may
be exposed during an evacuation.

Physical cues are important determi-
nants of evacuation behavior.*?*! It is eas-
ier to achieve high levels of evacuation
when cues are present to aid detection.
Substitution of visual cues in the warning
process may help overcome this con-
straint but the specific impacts of varia-
tion in the style and content of warnings
on propensity to evacuate is largely un-
known. At TMI attempts to educate the
public to use monitoring equipment met
with mixed results.

Planning Increases the Risk of
an Accident

Critics have argued that planning
changes the likelihood of nuclear power

accidents. It has been reasoned, albeit in
a somewhat tautological fashion, that
emergency planning, because it sanctions
the operation of a plant, and because it
rests on the assumption accidents will oc-
cur, increases the likelihood of an acci-
dent.” A related issue that is more
relevant and of greater importance is
whether emergency plans increase the
threat or consequences of a hazard if it
occurs because it creates a false sense of
protection should the threat actually oc-
cur.

There is no research which proves or
disproves the validity of this issue. Logical
arguments can be formulated to support
Opposite positions or a “no effect” con-
clusion. The motivation for preparing
such arguments is largely ideological or
political in nature and further research is
unlikely to change the arguments.

2. Warning Issues

Uncertainty in the Ability to Alert

The speed of onset of some hazards dic-
tates that warnings be issued in short time
frames. Critics of emergency planing
claim that the warning systems will not
provide timely information and therefore
evacuations are not feasible. According
to federal regulations, 100% of the public
within 5 miles of the plant must be alerted
within 15 minutes following a decision to
warn and the rest of the public, including
those not receiving the initial alert, within
10 miles must be warned in 45 minutes.*°
Nuclear power plants have developed sys-
tems that can theoretically provide quick
alerts, but the systems remain question-
able as to their ability to perform under
emergency conditions and to provide in-
structional information about protective
actions.°® Additional research is needed
on how to improve planning for issuing
warnings within short time frames to sup-
port evacuation efforts as well as other
forms of protective action. The current

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 213

methods for evaluating alert systems fail
to provide data for addressing this partic-
ular issue.

Public doubts have surfaced about the
persons and organizations involved in the
warning process withholding information
from the public. Litigation has arisen over
whether or not utilities would try to cover
up an accident instead of reporting it to
local officials or would delay the com-
munication until the problem was cor-
rected. The rationale is that because of
their vested interest in keeping the plant
operating if would be advantageous to un-
der-report risk. Poor abilities to com-
municate also constrain issuing warnings
for protective actions such as evacuation
or sheltering. Public doubts do arise about
persons and organizations involved in the
warning process withholding information
for a variety of reasons. Anecdotal evi-
dence from case studies indicates that, on
occasion, some warning or parts of a
warning to support an evacuation are in-
deed withheld from the public. Often this
is done by rationalizing that the public will
panic, that the evacuation will be expen-
sive or that it will be a false alarm. Re-
search does not indicate how prevalent
the problem of deliberate withholding of
information is in reality. Furthermore,
the conditions under which information is
withheld have never been systematically
identified or analyzed, but doing so is un-
likely to result in improved emergency
planning.

In some cases inadequate organiza-
tional communications have led to poorly
implemented warnings.?°”" Such was
certainly the case at TMI.'”'* Suffi-
cient organizational research exists to
demonstrate that communications are
major determinants of organizational et-
fectiveness in emergencies.'®'*°’ While
poor communication does impede effec-
tive evacuation it does not preclude suc-
cessful evacuation. The conditions that
lead some organizational systems to good
versus poor communications in emergen-
cies are not well understood. Hypotheses
based on organizational theory could be

developed and tested to improve our un-
derstanding of communication failures.

Another issue centers on transient pop-
ulations. Transients are defined as people
in an area at risk that generally live some-
where else. Typically, transients are
people travelling through an area or va-
cationers in an area of risk for a short
period of time. Litigation over nuclear
power plants such as the Seabrook Nu-
clear Power Plant in New Hampshire has
focused on the issue of the difficulty in
warning people in recreational areas as
well as alerting seasonal tourist popula-
tions. Transient populations do present
difficulties in evacuation warnings.
Anecdotal information suggests that
problems have occurred in notifying
vacationers of hurricanes. Warning camp-
ers in recreational areas to evacuate has
been a problem in several flash floods.
Little systematic data exists on the receipt
of warnings and evacuation behavior of
transient populations.*° Research on this
topic could be valuable in developing
evacuation plans in areas with large tran-
sient populations exposed to threats.

Another issue concerns conditions un-
der which sirens would not be heard by
people at risk. At the Shearon Harris Nu-
clear Power Plant intervenors maintained
that sirens cannot be heard at night by
people inside residences when air condi-
tioners are operating. Considerable re-
search has been done on receipt of
warnings in general and some on the re-
ceipt of warnings made with siren sys-
tems.** This research suggests that a
contagion or confirmation process ac-
counts for much of the early notification
in disasters.° In addition much is known
about how people can be warned effec-
tively and the problems involved in issu-
ing warnings.* 4!”

Information Constrains Protective
Action Implementation

People may receive a warning but the
information in that warning may not lead
them to evacuate or go to the best location

214

for safety. One issue is over the adequacy
of messages to get people to evacuate
from hazardous areas. Intervenors charge
that sample messages prepared by plan-
ners for nuclear power accidents are in-
adequate. Inadequate message content
does constrain evacuation. The problem
exists, however, in defining what is ade-
quate. At this point research has outlined
what is believed to be necessary, but that
base of knowledge can be improved.®
Additional research on effectiveness of al-
ternative message content could help to
fine tune warning message content. Im-
plementing what is currently known into
practice is the second issue of great im-
portance. The state of knowledge about
effective warning content is not reflected
in practice in many evacuation situations.

A second issue involves credibility.
This issue questions whether people will
believe warnings from organizations with
low credibility and take the protective re-
sponse needed. It has been argued by in-
tervenors that companies that operate
nuclear power plants are not a credible
source of warning information. If the pub-
lic perceives the information is not cred-
ible then people will ignore it, fail to
follow it, or deliberately engage in a dit-
ferent course of action. It is well known
that credibility of information affects its
use by potential evacuees. Research has
shown that credibility is an important fac-
tor in evacuation decisions and has illus-
trated some of the ways it may constrain
evacuation efforts. Some ideas exist on
how to deal with credibility problems that
have been induced from general knowl-
edge. Knowledge also exists regarding
how emergency warnings can be made
credible.“ The precise ways in which
credibility effects evacuation decisions
have not been sufficiently researched to
understand when credibility specifically
interferes with evacuation behavior.

A third issue concerns the impact of
false alarms on subsequent evacuation be-
havior—the “‘cry-wolf’ syndrome. The
false alarm issue has also been raised for
a number of other hazards including hur-

JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

ricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and tor-
nados. The basic issue is that people who
keep hearing false alarms due to inad-
vertent warnings will not respond to a real
warning. Contrary to popular belief, false
alarms have not been a constraint in get-
ting people to evacuate in events subse-
quent to the error. This conclusion is
largely based on anecdotal evidence from
recent hurricanes but is also supported by
experimental research. If people under-
stand the uncertainty and basis for the
false alarms, issuing a warning is less
likely to pose problems when a subse-
quent event occurs. Further research on
this topic could be conducted in a field
setting if a series of false alarms do occur.

3. Social Issues

Social Factors Color Risk Perceptions

A major social issue concerns the ef-
fects that pre-emergency risk perceptions
have on human evacuation behavior in an
emergency. Nuclear power evacuation
planning critics feel that radiation is a
unique threat and because of the public’s
great fear of radiation people would be-
have differently when warned to evacuate
in the event of a radiation emer-
gency.*’?!8 The differences cited have
included panic, a psychic numbing ren-
dering people incapable of evacuation,
and, conversely, chaotic flight behavior.
Yet such problems did not occur at TMI
and would not likely occur in a future
accident.”

Social Factors Color the Ability to
Receive Warnings

Another issue is whether social char-
acteristics affect the way in which people
interpret a protective action warning mes-
sage. One major issue is that warnings are
not geared to ethnic, racial, or non-Eng-
lish speaking groups, but to the dominant
population or political groups. As a re-

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 215

sult, minority groups are more vulnerable
to the risk because they are less likely to
evacuate or less likely to receive or un-
derstand a warning message. There is suf-
ficient knowledge on the behavior of
ethnic groups in disaster situations that
this should not be an issue in emergency
planning.***’°’ Research shows that mem-
bers of societies with distinct cultural
characteristics are less likely to evacuate
for several reasons including language,
isolation from authority, beliefs and risk
perceptions.

A second issue is that some people dis-
tort or do not understand the nature of
risks from nuclear power plant accidents,
even when told of the risks in a warning
message. A consequence of not under-
standing would be to delay evacuating
and remain at an area of risk. There is
little evidence to suggest that fear of
radiation will constrain evacuations
by causing panic or massive population
moves.*’*!© This knowledge, however, is
based on a limited number of observa-
tions. In a situation where a very large
amount of radiation is released we can
only hypothesize that human behavior
would be similar to those incidents ex-
perienced to date where this did not oc-
cur. Additional research on human
evacuation in radiological accidents
should be conducted following any future
events.

Social Factors Affect the Ability
to Evacuate

The basic issue is that certain popu-
lation characteristics constrain peoples’
ability to evacuate even if they are ade-
quately warned. The major issue centers
around whether special populations and
institutional populations can be effec-
tively evacuated. The key parameters in-
clude identifying the particular problems
of these populations and what the differ-
ent groups or institutions need to be told
to evacuate effectively. The ability to de-
velop and implement plans for institu-
tional facilities and special populations

has been questioned. This issue also con-
cerns whether or not detailed plans are
needed to evacuate individuals within the
general population such as the hearing
impaired or mobility impaired, as well as
institutional populations such as schools,
hospitals, nursing homes, or correctional
facilities. Second, if these plans are lack-
ing, what information the plans need to
cover. The third concern is whether or not
resources will be available to evacuate
these individuals or facilities during an
emergency.

The issue of institutional populations is
a valid and important one in evacuation
planning. There are special populations
and institutional populations that require
specialized warnings and assistance to
evacuate. The key issue is identifying the
particular problems and establishing what
the different groups or institutions need
to evacuate effectively. Some research
has been done on this topic and current
work is addressing some additional
groups.~ Overall, however, the knowl-
edge base to plan for such groups is lack-
ing and needs to be improved.

4. Organizational Issues

Planning Elements Are Inadequate

A series of issues have been raised
about the scope and content of emergency
planning. Planning for evacuations and
other forms of protection is done by sep-
arate jurisdictions and different levels of
government. The overall question is
whether or not these plans are coordi-
nated and, if not, if the absence of
coordination will lead to ineffective
evacuations. The issue of coordination of
plans has developed in nuclear power
plant planning where local governments
have refused to participate in planning ef-
forts for that specific hazard.”

Two shelter issues have emerged for ra-
diological emergency planning. First is
the ability to evacuate people to decon-

216 JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

tamination shelters in the event of con-
tamination from radiation. It is known
that people go to a variety of different
destinations in an evacuation—friends,
relatives, motels, hotels and so forth. The
portion of people who would go imme-
diately to a decontamination site largely
depends on how information in warning
messages is distributed at the time of the
event.

The second issue concerns the ade-
quacy of mass care shelters. Sufficient re-
search has been conducted on the
provision of temporary shelters for eva-
cuees.” The problems in operating cen-
ters are largely understood and
documented. Demand for shelters or ex-
pected use by evacuees is also known.
However, it is an issue as to whether this
knowledge is being utilized in evacuation
planning by the agencies responsible for
evacuation planning. The evidence on
that front tends to suggest that shelter
planning for most evacuation situations is
adequate.

Definition of emergency planning
zones has been a hotly debated issue at
nuclear power plants. At issue is whether
the size of the planning zone covers the
true area at risk (see above) and if evac-
uation is feasible outside the detailed
planning zone because of the lack of de-
tailed evacuation studies. The nuclear
power industry maintains that detailed
planning within a ten mile radius provides
the basis for expanding the areal coverage
if protective actions are needed beyond
ten miles. An EPZ is mainly developed
on the basis of the physical impact area
of a hazard, the resources at risk, and the
protective action feasibility. It is beyond
the scope of this research to determine if
the distance of ten miles for a nuclear
power plant EPZ is correct. The research
reviewed does suggest, in a different light,
that the definition of an EPZ is not critical
and may obscure the important point that
evacuation plans must be flexible to han-
dle a range of scenarios. Those scenarios
not only include disasters which extend
beyond the EPZ but emergencies that af-

fect only a small part of an official plan-
ning zone.

Another issue concerns emergency
planning for nuclear power accidents that
occur because of another hazard such as
an earthquake. Opponents of the Diablo
Canyon plant in California argued that
emergency planning needs to factor in the
occurrence of an earthquake that would
disrupt communication capabilities,
hinder evacuation efforts and disrupt
other emergency response functionings.
Anecdotal case studies suggest that evac-
uation plans for secondary hazards are in-
adequate. Notable situations include
volcano-induced mudflows and floods,
ashfall, sunny-day dam failures, flash
floods during tornado episodes and seis-
mic-induced landslides. This points out a
need for research that can better support
the development of flexible emergency
plans for multiple or concurrent hazard-
ous situations.

Training of Workers

Evacuations are supported by a variety
of emergency personnel who often per-
form different tasks than normal during
an emergency including warning, trans-
port, traffic control, and jaw enforce-
ment. The issue has been raised at nuclear
power plants that these types of workers
have not been adequately trained to sup-
port an evacuation effort. Better training
will likely improve evacuation planning
and execution. This is a problem of or-
ganizing existing knowledge into training
courses and then providing all emergency
personnel with training. It is not a re-
search issue because knowledge exists to
do this type of training. It is mainly a
problem of implementation, resource al-
location and political priorities.

The Technical Basis for Planning

Another set of issues regarding plan-
ning is the lack of data or information on
which to base the planning. A major issue
concerns the accuracy of evacuation time

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 217

estimates. A variety of models exists to
estimate the time it takes to evacuate geo-
graphical areas.°°849.91.79.71,72.> Different
model types are used for different loca-
tions. Issues have been raised about which
models are appropriate to use and
whether or not the results are valid. Many
of the issues regarding validity are over
the assumptions used in the models. Some
of the major assumptions that have been
challenged include mobilization time, de-
parture time, road capacity estimates, im-
pacts of bottlenecks, number of vehicles
used per household, impacts of accidents,
route selection, and effectiveness of
traffic control. A variety of models exist
to estimate the time it takes to evacuate
specific geographical areas. The models
are definitely useful in evacuation plan-
ning and likely provide better estimates
than seat-of-the-pants guesses. How ac-
curately they predict actual evacuation
times is a valid issue.'* Assumptions in the
models require closer scrutiny. There is
a need to conduct empirical research to
fine tune and validate the models to pro-
vide more accurate and certain estimates
of evacuation times.

5. Response Issues

Physical Factors Constrain Evacuation

Many people have questioned the abil-
ity to evacuate large densely populated
areas such as New York City, Long Island
or other major urban areas near power
plants in a timely or orderly fashion.
Problems cited include lack of transpor-
tation for large numbers of evacuees, in-
adequate road capacity, traffic jams and
the litany of issues associated with large-
scale evacuations. Anecdotal information
exists from case studies regarding the abil-
ity to evacuate some densely populated
areas but not extremely large popula-
tions. Such evidence comes from studies
of war time evacuations, events like
the large-scale Mississuaga evacuation,

or during Gulf and east coast hurri-
canes.’°’°*-’° Additional knowledge has
come from modeling studies but the re-
sults have been questioned regarding
their assumptions. It is unclear, therefore,
how long it would take to evacuate large
and densely populated cities or regions
and further investigation is needed.

The ability to relocate tourist and per-
manent populations in areas with large
seasonal populations has been raised at
several nuclear power plant sites. Ques-
tions have been raised regarding the or-
ganizational ability to warn vacationers,
transients’ knowledge of evacuation
routes, sufficiency of shelters, behavior of
transient evacuees, timing of evacuation,
and traffic congestion. Near Seabrook as
many as 40,000 people may occupy
coastal beaches during peak tourist sea-
son. The ability to evacuate tourist pop-
ulations from areas subject to nuclear
power plant accidents is a valid issue.
Questions regarding knowledge of evac-
uation routes, use of shelters, behavior of
evacuees, timing of evacuation or the po-
tential problems of traffic congestion
should be addressed in emergency plans.
There is not a great deal of research to
support analysis of these issues. Anec-
dotal experience provides some infor-
mation, but even good case studies are
lacking Behavioral research has not fo-
cused on studying tourists as a population
so behavioral knowledge is poor. Traffic
modeling studies provide data on the
length of time to evacuate some areas and
are useful within the bounds of uncer-
tainty governing those studies. Applica-
tion of general knowledge does not
suggest traffic simulation models are not
feasible, but additional knowledge would
improve planning to implement evacua-
tion plans effectively.

Critics of nuclear power evacuation
planning have said that traffic accident
rates will increase in an emergency evac-
uation and this will cause excessive acci-
dents that will tie-up traffic trying to
leave. There is no research to date that
suggests traffic accidents are more likely

218 JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

in an evacuation. Limited research and
observation suggests there are lower ac-
cident rates during evacuations.*4”° This
may be due to increased driver vigilance
and lower vehicle speeds.

Public Behavior

These issues relate to people respond-
ing in a way that will jeopardize the ef-
fectiveness of evacuation. Evacuation
shadow is a point of litigation at nuclear
power plant hearings. Based on the ex-
perience at TMI, critics charge that peo-
ple will evacuate from far larger areas
than are officially advised.°!0:19.702133.86
Because plans do not exist to handle this
withdrawal phenomenon, the contention
is that evacuations will fail. The evacua-
tion shadow exists by definition either
spatially or demographically. A shadow
is judged retrospectively and often with
an arbitrary indicator of who or what area
was ordered to evacuate.” As such, the
definition of shadow ignores the social
processes in disaster.'°!* Research has
shown that perceived personal threat or
risk at the time of the disaster is a central
reason for persons evacuating.**® Re-
search also shows that evacuation declines
as the perception of threat decreases and
distance from the threat increases. Even
if one accepts the validity of the shadow
concept, it can be concluded that it has
been poorly studied. Behavioral studies
have either failed to include a variety of
risk areas in investigations or have inad-
equately sampled the alleged areas of
shadows.

Panic is defined as acute fear of en-
trapment coupled with attempted flight
behavior.» Critics maintain that people
will exhibit this type of response to an
earthquake, nuclear power accident or
nuclear crisis warning. This panic behav-
ior will lead to increased traffic accidents
and dysfunctional behavior. The condi-
tions under which panic occurs are well
understood. Panic rarely occurs in evac-
uations because the conditions for panic
are not likely to occur although not im-

possible.***> One problem regarding the
panic issue is that officials and the media
often mislabel some behavior as panic and
thus the myth is perpetuated. No further
research on panic is needed unless a sit-
uation does occur in which panic actually
does take place.

Spontaneous evacuation is commonly
defined as leaving an area before the
warning to evacuate is given as an Official
order.® The claimed impact is increased
congestion on roadways. Another pro-
posed problem of spontaneous evacua-
tion is that it makes zonal or staged
evacuations (eg. evacuating a two mile
radius, then the five mile and so forth)
infeasible. As for shadow, this concept of
spontaneous evacuation exists by defini-
tion. The issuance of an official order is
an arbitrary yardstick by which individual
behavior is judged. Other types of infor-
mation, including messages that an evac-
uation is likely or that an unofficial
evacuation is recommended, will cause
some people to evacuate. The reasons
why are more speculative. Anecdotal in-
formation suggests that it is due to avoid-
ing having to evacuate when officially
ordered and erring on the side of caution.

Aberrant behavior includes looting,
anti-social aggressive acts, or other crim-
inal acts. Some believe that this type of
behavior increases during emergencies
and would be more prevalent in the event
of a nuclear power plant accident or nu-
clear crisis situation. The research evi-
dence against aberrant behavior of
evacuees is fairly overwhelming to the
contrary. Hostile behavior, particularly to
emergency workers does not occur during
evacuations. Looting occurs, but is ex-
tremely rare. Crime rates are believed to
decrease during evacuations and the de-
mand for police services for non-evacu-
ation or emergency functions decrease.
Aberrant behavior is typically a myth that
tends to be perpetuated by the media
which covers isolated instances, misinter-
prets behavior, or falsely associates an un-
related incident with an emergency.

Traffic time estimates and planning as-

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 219

sume that people will use certain optimum
traffic routes. Critics content people will
not use those routes and therefore the
evacuation will not be effective. Further-
more, congestion will occur on the routes
that people will try to use or routes will
be used that place evacuees at higher risk.
No one has investigated the actual routes
which people use when evacuating with
any specific detail. Thus it remains a ma-
jor issue with traffic time estimation
models. The most reasonable assumption
is that people will use routes they nor-
mally use except if the routes are blocked
or if evacuees are specifically directed by
law enforcement personnel to use differ-
ent routes.

Another contention is that people
won't obey officials managing an emer-
gency. The issue centers around the belief
that people will disregard traffic control
guides or warning instructions while evac-
uating. Critics also argue that people will
disregard traffic signals or roadblocks.
There is considerable amount of anec-
dotal evidence which suggests that a very
small percentage of the public will disobey
official orders. Part of the problem in ad-
dressing this issue is the definition of an
official order which ranges from recom-
mendations to evacuate to active attempts
to get people to leave designated areas.
In other words, this problem is related to
the strength and perceived credibility of
the official orders. Much is known about
how to increase evacuation rates.” In
high risk situations where door-to-door
evacuations are ordered, 98 to 99 percent
of the population under threat will likely
evacuate. In less forceful situations the
number evacuating can be substantially
lower, but it would be improper in those
situations to define that behavior as being
disobedient.

Another issue raised is that people will
not go to designated host or reception
areas. Evacuation planning at some sites
assumes people will go where they are
told. This issue raises the point that peo-
ple will go to areas other than what the
evacuation plans dictate. By implication

this makes traffic time estimates and re-
source availability analyses inaccurate. In
most evacuations people are usually not
told to go to designated areas. (This is
different from going to assigned shelters. )
When instructions are absent, research
has shown the destinations people choose
when evacuating. Research does not exist
to infer how many people would go to a
designated host area if instructed to do so
by acredible source given adequate warn-
ing. In part, the number of evacuees going
to assigned shelters would be determined
by the information provided and the de-
gree to which transportation movements
are controlled.

Emergency Worker Behavior

This set of issues contend that emer-
gency personnel will engage in behaviors
counter to evacuation goals.*°’? Role
abandonment is conceptualized as emer-
gency workers leaving their jobs to per-
form other roles. The main issue is over
how many workers will engage in this be-
havior. A secondary issue is whether this
will constrain an evacuation. Role aban-
donment has also been a controversial is-
sue for other hazards. Research suggests
that total role abandonment has not been
prevalent in disasters and certainly has
not been dysfunctional in organizational
behavior.*” Some people have hypothe-
sized that role abandonment would be
greater and likely problematic in a nuclear
power plant accident or during a nuclear
war threat. This remains somewhat spec-
ulative. Research suggests that in the for-
mer case there may be an increased
potential for conflict and role strain but
emergency functions would not be threat-
ened. In the latter case the issue is highly
uncertain. Additional research on role
conflict would be confirmatory but is not
of high priority.

Larger Issues
1. TMI And Emergency Planning

The accident at TMI continues to be
the dominant reference for emergency

220 JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

planning issues around nuclear power
plants.’-”4’88! Drastic changes were im-
plemented on the basis of that experience.
There is little doubt that if an accident
similar to TMI does occur in the future,
the response will be greatly improved.
Accidents, by definition, include a host
of unanticipated events. There is no guar-
antee that research to date has identified
the next accident sequence or scenario.
Witness the Chernobyl accident. The
U.S. response was that it cannot happen
here. This is probably correct, although
not provable. A more important issue is
that does this country have its Chernobyl
class accidents. The answer is likely yes.

The changes in emergency planning
due to TMI are a prime example of crisis
management. A crisis occurs and changes
are made which will improve response
given that set of historical conditions. Yet
science is not that deterministic. Rarely
do scientists in either the physical and so-
cial fields make conclusions based on one
data point. Yet our current plans are
based on that single point.

The accident at Ginna Nuclear Power
Station in New York involving a steam
tube rupture provides a second data
point. This accident involved a release of
radiation, led to activation of the emer-
gency warning system and caused a pre-
cautionary early dismissal of area schools.
People did not spontaneously evacuate.
There was no shadow, panic, aberrant be-
havior, role abandonment, etc. Several
interpretations exist. First is that the ac-
cident demonstrated that changes in
emergency planning solved the problems
that occurred at TMI. Better, more cer-
tain, and credible information was given
to the public. Second is that the Ginna
utility plays a much different role in the
local community than the one at TMI and
it’s integration into the structure of the
community led to a good community re-
sponse. A third assessment was that a
snowfall on the day of the accident acted
as a constraint against spontaneous evac-
uation. In reality it was a combination of
factors that help explain this different pat-

tern of response. The emergency planning
changes that occurred since TMI cannot
take full credit for the improved manage-
ment nor should the lack of spontaneous
evacuation be attributed to the fact it was
snowing. As a competing hypothesis the
snow explanation, like snow, does not
hold much water.

The critical point is that the dramatic
changes made in planning requirements
because of TMI do not insure good re-
sponses to a future event. Elsewhere we
have argued that the plans are far too
complex, bureaucratic and rigid to permit
flexibility in managing emergencies. At
one reactor site alone we have identified
over one hundred separate plans for the
utility, government and private facilities.
The sheer number makes consistency
among the plans unlikely. Even if the
plans were consistent, the problems of
continued coordination during planning
and in an actual emergency are immense.
Yet having an adaptive and flexible or-
ganization is a key factor in having effec-
tive emergency management response.
The current plans do not promote flexi-
bility. If a future accident does not fall
within the confines of the plans, the abil-
ity to adapt to problems posed by an ac-
cident may be constrained by the
structured plans. If the Chernobyl acci-
dent had occurred in the U.S., current
plans would have been of little utility in
guiding response. The extent to which the
planning process had facilitated inter-or-
ganizational coordination among the ap-
propriate people and the extent to which
organizations could adapt plans to the dif-
fering situation would be critical factors
in determining the effectiveness of re-
sponse.

2. Use of Behavioral Intent Studies

One of the ways suggested to resolve
these contentions involves the use of be-
havioral intent studies for future events.
For many of the contentions the burden

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 221

of proof involves the use of behavioral
intent studies. However, most behavioral
intent studies rest on the results of survey
research. For example, several studies
have polled emergency workers and
asked them about role abandonment.” In
a study of school teachers at the Califor-
nia Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant
teachers were asked: “‘Assuming the Dia-
blo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is li-
censed and begins to operate, we are
interested in knowing what you think you
would do if there was an accident at the
plant on a school day during normal op-
erating hours. Everyone living within ten
miles were advised to evacuate. Teachers
were expected to help evacuate school
children. What do you think you would
do first?

1. Help with the evacuation of school
children outside of the designated dan-
ger zone; or |

2. Go to make sure family members were
safe; or

3. Leave the evacuation zone to make
sure you were in a Safe place; or

4. Do something else.”

The results of the survey, at face value,
indicate that only two-thirds of the teach-
ers would perform their specified emer-
gency roles. Several specific problems
exist with this literal interpretation of the
research. First, the researcher failed to
provide a realistic set of responses to the
teachers that encompassed all possible be-
haviors and categories that were mutually
exclusive. Adding a catch-all category
does not alleviate this problem. No at-
tempt was made to provide a response
category that includes checking on the
safety of family while performing an
emergency role. Secondly, the wording of
the responses were unclear. One may well
interpret the first option as evacuating
children who are located in schools out-
side of the 10 mile radius. Certainly a
teacher inside the ten mile zone would not
choose this option. Third, the question
forces the assumption that all teachers

have emergency roles that last the dura-
tion of an evacuation. This is likely to be
unrealistic. Thus a teacher who does not
have a specified role could legitimately
answer with responses two or three.
Nevertheless, a response of 61% of teach-
ers to perform emergency roles for the
duration of the emergency is likely to be
more than sufficient to effectively evac-
uate the schools. Even this interpretation
of the results were taken at face value, it
is unwise to believe that this estimate is
an accurate predictor of actual behavior.

This research is problematic for several
other general reasons. First, polls are
premised on the notion that statements
about current attitudes or thoughts about
future behavior can be used to predict
actual future behavior. This assumption
is wrong when that behavior concerns a
future emergency situation. Most social
scientists would say that people’s attitudes
and their speculation about future behav-
ior are imperfect predictors of behavior
except when that behavior is frequent and
repetitious. Asking a person to make a
‘cold’ judgement about how he or she
might hypothetically react in a complex
future situation for which they have had
no previous experience, and giving him
or her a few seconds to answer, is not a
good predictor of future behavior. Be-
havior in an emergency is a social process
and is situationally determined. In that
process notions about appropriate ways
to act emerge based on the information
being disseminated at the time.

The factors that influence human re-
sponse to emergencies are relatively well-
known and accepted as valid by most sci-
entists in this area. These factors can be
addressed in an emergency plan to help
achieve the desired response when the
plan is put into operation. An attitude or
opinion profile or a catalogue of behav-
ioral intentions would not appreciably
help address these factors in planning or
upgrade good organizational or public re-
sponse when the plan is activated. In fact,
a compilation of behavior intentions—
which is certain to be wrong when com-

222

pared to actual emergency behavior—
could hurt planning efforts because plans
would be based on incorrect assumptions
about behavior.

Consequently, research which asks
teachers or school bus drivers what they
would do in an emergency is not a good
way of predicting nor understanding role
conflict issues. Research based on these
methods which concludes people will
abandon their roles is largely invalid and
should not be the basis for developing
emergency plans. The basis for plans must
be developed on existing knowledge, not
on speculative or inaccurate assumptions.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In conclusion we make three recom-
mendations for changes in policies re-
garding emergency planning for nuclear
facilities.

1. Revise radiological emergency
planning frameworks in a manner which
promotes more flexibility in response
procedures and which is more responsive
to local factors such as unique
topography and population distributions.

This change would re-orient planning
guidelines to encompass a broader range
of accidents than current plans describe.
Additionally, this concept involves chang-
ing the structure of planning regulations
to encourage a more adaptive and flexible
approach by emergency organizations.
While flexibility can be considered as a
trade-off with the formalization of pro-
cedures, the current planning philosophy
only emphasizes a strict implementation
of narrowly-defined tasks. Therefore, the
policies, and hence planning regulations,
need to encourage a different approach
to emergency planning. The regulations
should be changed to encourage adaptiv-
ity to local situations, while at the same
time giving guidance on how to manage
the hazard in question. The greatest con-

JOHN H. SORENSEN AND BARBARA M. VOGT

sequences of not adopting this approach
is that organizations will not be effective
in an anomalous situation and that local
Organizations will concentrate plans
around the wrong accident scenarios.

2. Develop policy positions on various
issues including the validity of various
contentions and the conditions under
which the contention are or are not
valid.

It is the basic responsibility of the NRC
to license nuclear power plants. As part
of that procedure the NRC should de-
velop consistent positions on common
contentions. At present, the NRC at-
tempts to avoid committing to a position
on many contentions. This stance allows
the process of licensing to be judged on
the basis of a comparison of the ideologies
of experts representing the intervenors
and those of the experts representing the
utility. A set of guidelines based on sci-
entific evidence and previous Atomic
Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) rulings
should be established for all major con-
tentions. This should not exclude litiga-
tion over any issue, but make the
resolution of these contentions more con-
sistent. In time this should decrease the
time spent in resolving generic issues.

3. Give local and state governments
more legal responsibility for developing
emergency plans for nuclear power
plants while placing the burden of proof
on all.

Currently local and state government
can hold hostage utilities seeking a license
for nuclear plant. The local decision about
nuclear power should be made at the sit-
ing stage. Subsequent actions to negate a
poor siting decision should not centrally
involve the procedure of emergency plan-
ning; albeit the contents or effectiveness
should be addressed. If analysis are done
which conclusively demonstrate that
emergency plans cannot mitigate accident
consequences, then a siting decision

EMERGENCY PLANNING FOR

should be reconsidered. If analyses are
done that suggest improvements in the
emergency plan can reduce risk or con-
sequences, those changes should be
adopted. Emergency planning has be-
come a means of fighting other issues.
This is a problem in that it detracts from
the goals of planning. We hope that such
issues are refocused and the legitimate as-
pects of emergency planning are brought
forward instead.

10.

jh i

i

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Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 226-239, June 1988

Reactor and Nuclear Waste Siting

Problems and Prospects

Richard J. Bord

Associate Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802

ABSTRACT

It has become virtually impossible to site risky waste disposal facilities or waste treatment

facilities, especially those handling radioactive wastes. A growing army of experts has
joined the fray with suggestions for solving the impasse. Three of the more popular
proposed solutions are: improved risk communication; improved disposal or treatment
technology; and the provision of incentives and assurances to affected communities. This
paper argues that these proposed solutions ignore fundamental realities. The proposed
solutions are juxtaposed with the realities facing those responsible for siting. These include:
the popularization and democratization of risk; a host of problems associated with risk
information and communication; problems with improved technology including its cost,
the inability to create anything foolproof, and the issue of adequate management; the
inability of incentives to address health and safety questions and the legal and practical
limits to assurances. In addition, the fundamental political dimensions of the problem are

addressed and future prospects explored.

Introduction

Effective opposition to risky facilities
has assumed the dimensions of a signifi-
cant social problem. The growing famil-
larity of the neologisms ‘“‘LULU”’
(Locally Undesireable Land Use) and
“NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) reflect
the reality of effective pubic opposition
to many types of unwanted facilities. Fa-
cilities bearing the burden of the label
“radioactive” appear to generate even
more intense negative emotions and have
the distinction of being targeted by
professional opposition groups.! This pa-

226

per constitutes an evaluation of the prob-
lems facing those responsible for siting
hazardous facilities, with an emphasis on
radioactive waste treatment and disposal
facilities, and a brief assessment of cur-
rently proposed solutions.

The evolution of the siting problem has
witnessed the co-evolution of a number
of proposed solutions. Experts of many
persuasions have leaped into the fray in
the hope of providing techniques which
will result in successful siting. This paper
examines each of these proposed solu-
tions in light of the network of problems
which presently characterize radioactive

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING 227

facility siting. It concludes with a discus-
sion of likely paths that future siting at-
tempts may take.

Siting Risky Facilities: The Search
For Solutions

Before discussing specific siting diffi-
culties it is necessary to set the general
problem within its cultural context. There
exists a matrix of common understand-
ings, conditioned by our unique liberal
democracy, which shapes the nature of
the problem and the search for solutions.
It is this culture which makes it highly
unlikely that solutions which are success-
ful in other countries can be transferred
here with similar results.

Public participation is part of our Jef-
fersonian heritage. The American Rev-
olution, the Civil War, and the Westward
expansion have institutionalized a general
lack of respect for constituted authority
and that tendency persists. It is commonly
understood that the citizen should not be
timid in fighting ‘“‘the establishment.” In
the decade of the 1960’s, public partici-
pation in decisions involving the siting of
risky facilities was mandated by law.
These legal innovations have made it pos-
sible for citizens, even small groups and
individuals, to delay or stop the imple-
mentation of many risky technologies.
From this perspective opposition should
be expected because the socio-political
system encourages and reinforces it. Fur-
thermore, since the nuclear industry, both
private and public, depends on capital in-
tensive technology which is managed by
large organizations and regulated by the
Federal government, it is easy to construe
the situation as one of the powerless in-
dividual and/or community against the
mobilized forces of corporate wealth and
political power.

An understanding of this cultural con-
text highlights the limitations of many at-
tempts at solution presently being
pursued. A problem which is inherently

political in nature tends to be treated pri-
marily as a problem in attitude change.’
A basic argument in this paper is that ap-
proaches emphasizing attitude change
have little chance of success because they
fail to address to real issues. Other ap-
proaches have a higher probability of suc-
cess but the magnitude of that probability
is Open to considerable debate.

Various experts have promoted basi-
cally three classes of solutions to the siting
problem:

1. improved risk communication;

2. improved disposal or treatment tech-
nology;

3. and, provision of the opportunity to
negotiate incentives and assurances to
affected communities.

Each of these proposed solutions, and
their limitations, will be discussed in turn.

Improved Risk Communication as
a Solution

Those favoring improved risk commun-
ication as a solution to public intran-
sigence view the problem as one of
correcting errors in perception and judg-
ment. The assumption appears to be that
if the public only understood the problem
as the experts, at least those experts in-
volved in the siting process, understand it
then fear and resistence would diminish.
An excellent example of faith in improved
risk communication is provided by EPA
administrator, William Ruckelshaus in a
speech delivered before the National
Academy of Sciences at the beginning of
his second term. Quoting Jefferson,
Ruckelshaus stated:

“Tf we think (the public) not enlight-

ened enough to exercise their control

with a wholesome discretion, the rem-

edy is not to take it from them, but to

inform their discretion.’
Unfortunately, less than two years later
Ruckelshaus was having second thoughts
about the sentiments expressed in that
quotation.

228 RICHARD J. BORD

Two issues are viewed as keys to un-
derstanding the limitations of improved
risk communication:

1. the popularization and democratiza-
tion of risk;

2. and, problems associated with the risk
information itself.

While there are excellent review articles
detailing problems in risk communica-
tion,*° they do not generally address the
first issue to be discussed.

The Popularization and
Democratization of Risk

Concern with risk is certainly not an
invention of modern technological soci-
eties. It can be argued that the major
function of religion and law has been risk
control or avoidance. All religions include
rituals through which spirits can be in-
voked to protect person, family, and
property. Law focuses on the social con-
trol of risk and risky individuals and what
is considered as the equitable distribution
of risk in a society.

However, concern with risk in modern,
democratic society has become fine-
tuned. There are now hosts of profes-
sionals devoted to discovering new risks,
more accurately estimating known risks,
better communicating risks, and more ad-
equately controlling risks. Risk has be-
come big business. In fact, risk discovery,
estimation, communication, and control
is fast becoming a somewhat independent
academic discipline embracing natural
and social-behavioral scientists of many
persuasions and even publishing its own
professional journals.

While this growth of the risk establish-
ment has much to commend it, there may
be unexpected consequences which have
not been adequately addressed. Consider
that it is now virtually impossible to es-
cape news of the latest “significant” risk
on an almost daily basis. Newspapers, tel-
evision news and advertising, government
pronouncements, and popular books and

magazines provide constant reminders
that life is one constant flirtation with dis-
aster. Questions about fiber, fat, alcohol,
sugar, and caffeine in the diet, the relative
safety of flying congested airways with a
suspect population of air traffic control-
lers, the possibility of terrorism abroad,
the need to get more (or less) exercise,
the threat of the AIDS virus, the latest
crime statistics and so on ad infinitum cre-
ate a climate in which attention to risk
may have become almost pathological.
While the mental and behavioral out-
comes of constant attention to risk are
debatable, there has been virtually no re-
search on that specific topic, there is little
reason to believe that lowered anxiety or
a willingness to assume greater health
risks are among them.

Another historical dimension of risk is
that it is seldom distributed equitably.
The poor generally bear greater burdens
of risk than do the rich. Modern studies
demonstrating that the poor breath fouler
air, experience more occupational haz-
ards, and tend to live nearer to environ-
mentally risky facilities should come as
little surprise.° The more affluent have
always had greater opportunity to relo-
cate to areas of less risk, to purchase more
adequate diets, and to assume safer jobs.
However, contemporary “. . . features of
environmental risk seem so ubiquitous
... that even the wealthy and the pow-
erful are becoming anxious.”’’

Risk experts have made it clear that
environmental pollutants in the air, soil,
water, and food chain are no respectors
of social status. Nor is it possible for most
people to geographically relocate to es-
cape the more common environmental
hazards. Modern surverys of environ-
mental attitudes, especially attitudes to-
ward risky facilities, tend to demonstrate
no consistent pattern for social class vari-
ables such as education, occupation, and
income.® One resonable interpretation of
those results is that everyone is frightened
or anxious to some degree. The only con-
sistently discriminating demographic vari-
able is sex: women demonstrate higher

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING 229

levels of concern than do men and, at least
in my data on LLRW siting, proclaim
themselves as unequivocal ‘““NIMBY’s”’
more often than do men.’ In this context
it is worth noting that emergent local op-
position is often lead by middle to upper-
middle class women.”

Sensitivity to a wide range of risk has
been popularized and democratized. The
risk enterprise continues to document
possible health hazards and the various
information media helps keep the general
public aware of the latest health threat
fad. The ubiquitousness of modern pol-
lutants insures that everyone shares in
exposure to some degree. Heightened
anxiety and avoidance is a reasonable re-
sponse.

Paradoxically, while we may be the
healthiest and long-lived peoples to ever
inhabit the planet we may also be the most
concerned with issues of health and
safety. It makes little sense to label this
a phobia or some other mental health ab-
erration. There is a dense network of or-
ganizations whose major goals include
keeping the public concerned about their
health. That is how one garners contri-
butions to health organizations, how nu-
merous magazines and newsletters are
promoted, how exercise equipment and
health foods are sold, how careers in var-
ious health organizations are maintained,
and how a plethora of health and beauty
aids are marketed. Promoting anxiety
about health is a very profitable enter-
prise.

Problems Associated with
Risk Information

Much has been written about the ra-
tionality or irrationality of the public’s re-
sponse to risk information, especially risk
information dealing with radiation haz-
ards.''!* The more technically minded
tend to see the problem as one of properly
educating the masses so that decisions are
made which allow the utilization and fur-
ther development of the technology.
However, judgments of rationality-irra-

tionality are clearly value based. The
more pertinent question is exactly how do
people process risk information and what
is the probability that their judgments can
be modified. Three issues are crucial:

1. how is risk information processed;

2. what information is available for pro-
cessing;

3. and, who provides the information
with what effect.

Problems in Risk
Information Processing

Three interrelated aspects of risk in-
formation processing are central to this
discussion:

1. the importance of attention selectivity;
2. the perceived voluntariness of the risk;
3. and, the issue of generalizing risks.

‘People’s perceptions of risk .. . are
influenced by the memorability of past
events and the imaginability of future
events. As a result, any factor that makes
a hazard unusually memorable or imagi-
nable, such as a recent disaster, heavy
media coverage, or a vivid film, could se-
riously distort perception of risk.’’’ Cog-
nitive pyschologists agree that attention
selectivity is a key issue in information
processing. The more vivid or dramatic
the event the more likely it will garner
attention. That is why advertisers employ
unusual scenes, loud and rapid sounds,
brilliant colors, sex, and other attention-
getting devices. It is worth noting that in-
formation about a plane crash which kills
200 people is attention getting, informa-
tion about the hundreds of planes which
fly daily across the country is not.

Related to the issue of attention selec-
tivity is the fact that people seldom ac-
curately interpret information based on
probabiliites.'* While this tendency is
sometimes used as a example of irration-
ality it may be more pertinent to ask why
anyone, except a scientist doing imper-
sonal analysis, should pay any attention

230 RICHARD J. BORD

to probabilities. From an attention getting
perspective, news that something in
drinking water increases the incidence of
annual cancer by one in ten-thousand is
simply news that the cancer rate has in-
creased. The “‘red-flag”’ is more cancers.”
The one in ten-thousand is personally ir-
relevant. After all, the individual either
gets cancer or does not get cancer, he or
she cannot experience a probability.

The perceived voluntariness of the as-
sumed risk is close behind attention se-
lectivity in importance. People routinely
assume all sorts of risks on a voluntary
basis. They do so because the risk taking
provides benefits such as easier living,
personal satisfaction, ego-enhancement,
or simple physical pleasure. Comparison
of this type of risk taking with living next
to waste disposal or power generating fa-
cility is futile. They are not comparable
within any reasoned frame of reference.
However, the involuntariness per se is not
the critical issue. Involuntariness arouses
public ire when it is imposed by some per-
son or agency who Is perceived as occu-
pying a position of power.'® Recall the
discussion of our historically based cul-
tural hostility toward authority viewed as
arbitrary. In addition, there are enough
examples of corporate, industrial, and
governmental insensitivity which results
in significant negative outcomes to justify
suspicion and hostility toward those who
would impose unwanted risks.

Finally, the current state of risk esti-
mation is greatly deficient in one aspect
of central concern to many citizens, the
ability to estimate the cumulative effect
of exposure to many environmental haz-
ards. The person who is informed about
the increased risk posed by a particular
substance quite logically wonders about
how it interacts with all the other hazards
being ingested, inhaled, or absorbed. This
is especially the case in our highly charged
risk information society. While the EPA
is presently considering a “‘total human
exposure” methodology, useful informa-
tion will not be forthcoming soon.!’ Fur-
thermore, it should not be assumed that

once this information is made available
that it will diminish public anxiety. The
accuracy of the information can always be
challenged, its sources impugned, or it
can result in increased fear and a more
militant avoidance response, a frequent
result of risk information campaigns. A
typical reaction to such news is, ““My God
I didn’t know thing were so bad.”

The Availability of Information

The importance of selective attention
has been established. It now becomes im-
portant to explore what kinds of risk in-
formation is readily available to the
general public. In my own research on
public attitudes toward a proposed
LLRW volume reduction facility and a
LLRW disposal facility'®” several events
are frequently mentioned: Love Canal,
Three Mile Island, nuclear bomb testing,
and the movies ‘‘Silkwood”’ and “China
Syndrome.”’ These examples are used by
people to illustrate the perceived serious-
ness of the risk, the callousness of gov-
ernment and industry, and the reason why
no governmental regulator or facility
manager can be trusted. In other words,
these events appear to be part of a com-
mon culture through which related pieces
of information are filtered. If indeed these
are elements of a coherent cognitive sys-
tem they may have the same effect as any
deeply held belief system: they are vir-
tually impossible to change.

Exploring my own ““memory dump” of
fairly recent related bits of information
produces the following: the infamous gar-
bage barge looking for a home; an article
in an outdoor magazine advising that if
you must hunt waterfowl make sure you
only eat one a month because of PCB and
EDB contamination; a similar advisory
on fish from the Great Lakes and bottom
feeders from the Atlantic; a local advisory
on fish from my favorite fishing lake; the
Bhopal tragedy; Chernobyl; the death of
porpoises off the east coast being tied to
possible offshore chemical dumps; and
the recent discovery that our local water

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING 231

supplies have unacceptably high levels of
PEC's:

I am sure the reader can supply their
own shopping list of environmental hor-
rors which would vary in specifics but not
in general impact. Whether the items in
any particular shopping list are truly en-
vironmental disasters is not the issue. The
fact is they are dramatic, frightening, and
frequent. That is, they embody all the cri-
teria for attention getting stimuli and they
do remain in memory. Even if people
were regularly exposed to more objective
information, which they are not, it could
not hope to compete with that informa-
tion which is already stored and which
comprises daily risk information fare.

However, perhaps the single most vex-
ing issue facing those who favor more ob-
jective risk information as a palliative to
public opposition is the lack of certitude
which plagues risk estimates. For exam-
ple, the problems with low dosage radio-
active materials is that they carry some
degree of risk but the magnitude of that
risk is largely conjecture and open to chal-
lenge:

“There appears little consensus among

scientists over the health effects of ex-

posure to low-level radiation. In an ex-
tensive study done by the Committee
on the Biological Effects of Ionizing

Radiation issued in 1980, the authors

reported that health risk estimates are

based on incomplete data and involve

a large degree of uncertainty, especially

in the low-dose region.’’”’

The kind of uncertainty permits British
anti-nuclear activist Dr. Alice Stewart to
predict a “hidden epidemic” as a result
of the Chernobyl accident.*' Hidden ep-
idemics tend to be more frightening than
those whose effects are easily observable.
Uncertain information invites challenge
and encourages rejection among those
who are not experts in the field. It seems
a reasonable response to assume that if
the experts cannot agree why should any-
one tolerate it.

Finally, the argument has been effec-
tively made that the selection of risks to

evaluate, the methodologies employed in
determining risk, and the selection of data
all embody values and baises. As in most
important policy arenas, it is extremely
difficult to separate fact from value in the
great risk debate. The issue of a possible
underlying ideology is another barrier to
public acceptance of information pro-
vided by experts they do not trust.

The above discussion naturally leads to
consideration of who does, and does not,
provide that risk information which elicits
attention.

Who Provides the Risk Information ©

Although there is a relative paucity of
research on the subject there is general
consensus that the media sets the agenda
for risk perception” and that media pro-
vided risk information is highly dis-
torted.* One of the obvious reasons for
this bias is that attention-getting news
sells papers. News of human tragedies,
failed technologies or management sys-
tems, or of a powerless public being
bilked by some powerful industrial or
government giant is “juicy” fare. This
phenomenon helps explain the public’s
keen interest in a policitician’s sex life and
relative indifference to his views on im-
portant policy issues.

However, the issue of media bias is
more complicated than simple over-atten-
tion to the dramatic. Rothman and Lich-
ter provide provacative data indicating
that journalists who write on scientific
matters are: (a) more likely to attend to
the writings and pubic statements of an-
tinuclear scientists; and, (b) are strongly
influenced by their political beliefs. That
is, ‘‘. .. key science journalists are far
more skeptical of nuclear energy than are
scientists” (p 51) and therefore more at-
tuned to the pronouncements of anti-nu-
clear activists such as those affiliated with
the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ralph
Nader, and Dr. Ernest Sternglass. Also,
the more liberal the journalist, both sci-
ence journalists and others, the more anti-
nuclear: ‘““The best predictor of opposi-

232 RICHARD J. BORD

tion to nuclear energy is the belief that
American society is unjust” (p 51).”° It is
likely that this bias generalizes to risks
other than nuclear energy. It is true that
many environmental problems are tied to
the operation of large, for-profit organi-
zations and are regulated by government
bureaucracies which are viewed as being
allied to the for-profit industries. It is easy
for a journalist, or anyone, concerned
with social justice to view this as another
case of the helpless individual against cor-
porate and government giants. Appar-
ently that is the definition promoted by
the media and accepted by much of the
general public. The “‘us little people ver-
sus them powerful, insensitive bureau-
crats’’ theme recurred frequently as
unsolicited comments on my LLRW sur-
vey. This also explains how nuclear tech-
nology evolved into a liberal-conservative
issue.

While the media, with its biases, is the
most prevelant source of risk information
there has been an interesting develop-
ment in the evolution of nuclear experts
who offer their services on the informa-
tion market. Risk information experts tra-
ditionally are affiliated with government,
industry, and educational bureaucracies.
Within the past several months, however,
anti-nuclear activist Marvin Resnikoff has
begun advertising as a “second opinion”
resource to state and compact officials.
His “Radioactive Waster Management
Associates”” provides an attractive and
convincing brochure which touts the
professional qualifications of he and his
staff. In addition, Resnikoff’s former or-
ganization, the ‘“‘Radioactive Waste Cam-
paign,’’ is under new leadership and is
advertising ““Living Without Landfills” to
state officials, radwaste generators, and
other interested parties. “Living Without
Landfills” provides state or compact of-
ficials with detailed information on how
to calculate “. . .total radioactivity and
radioactive hazard over the lifetime of
waste generated in a State or Compact
region.” This professionalization and im-
proved marketing strategy of anti-nuclear

activists should increase their influence
with the general public and, perhaps, with
state and local officials. In the LLRW sur-
vey mentioned previously, respondents
were asked who they trusted as sources
of information on LLRW. Anti-nuclear
activists scored very low in terms of public
confidence while any source which had
the term “expert” appended to it elicited
high votes of confidence.

Finally, information regarding risky
technologies is not provided solely by for-
mal sources such as the media or profes-
sionalized interest groups. Information,
and its meaning, is usually filtered and
negotiated through informal networks of
co-workers, friends, and relatives. Little
is presently known about the role of in-
formal information sources on the for-
mation of attitudes toward risky facilities.
It does appear that negative attitudes are
relatively easy to mobilize. Siting cam-
paigns that start on a positive note fre-
quently turn sour once the information is
more widely distributed in the commu-
nity. The source of this opposition prob-
ably lies in informal opinion leaders and
the negotiation of meaning in the context
of small, informal groups.

Improved Disposal and/or Treatment
Technology as a Solution

Improved technology proponents tend
to originate from two quite disparate
sources: environmental activists and
waste technology developers. Environ-
mental activists, particularly the Sierra
Club and East Coast anti-nuclear groups
such as the Radioactive Waste Campaign,
have publically disparaged landfill dis-
posal since the passage of the 1980 LLRW
Policy Act. Their preference is for high-
integrity, above-ground storage which
would allow constant monitoring and the
possibility of material removal should
problems develop. A number of com-
pacts, recognizing the poor reputation of
landfills, have officially opted for engi-
neered containment. Waste technology
companies have recognized that the de-

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING

velopment of high-integrity, easily mon-
itored, containment, along with volume
reduction technology, can have substan-
tial payoff and have been developing
competing versions in an effort to capture
a viable market share.

While this solution to the problem of
public intransigence has substantial sup-
port among diverse constituencies it is still
not known whether other sectors of the
public, particularly the communities tar-
geted to host risky sites, can be convinced
of its relative merits. Above-ground stor-
age, in particular, has its detractors in
terms of costs, overall safety, and worker
protection. In my Pennsylvania survey, a
substantial majority of the general public
did not view above-ground storage as sig-
nificantly safer than traditional landfills.
They did clearly prefer below-ground dis-
posal with engineered barriers. The prob-
lem is that environmental activists can,
and will, challenge any below-ground fa-
cility on the basis that it is technically im-
possible to guarantee zero migration of
radionuclides into the soil and eventually
the water. This is especially likely in re-
gions of high rain and snowfall. Given
previous arguments, it can be expected
that the local news media will focus on
controversy of this sort and this may fur-
ther erode public confidence in the via-
bility of a technical fix.

Furthermore, attempts at technological
fixes will be very expensive. It appears
that many decision-makers have decided
that the costs can be passed on to the
consumer with relatively little effect.*
However, this may be a dangerous atti-
tude in the sense that once the public is
made aware that they are again being
asked to pick up the tab for for a tech-
nology that was once touted as producing
electricity at a rate “too cheap to mea-
sure’’, their opposition may escalate.
While decision makers may not think the
per capita cost is excessive, the public will
have to be convinced.

Finally, there is a growing recognition
that beyond the issue of the scientific and
technical integrity of a given technology

233

is the question of management: can it be
operated safely on a routine basis over
long periods of time. The Bhopal, India
disaster provoked the following com-
ment:

‘What truly grips us in these accounts
is not so much the numbers as the spec-
tacle of suddenly vanishing compe-
tence, of men utterly routed by tech-
nology, of fail-safe systems failing with
a logic as inexorable as it once was. . .
indeed, right up until that very moment-
unforseeable. And the spectacle haunts
us because it seems to carry allegor-
ical import, like the whispering omen
of a hovering future.’’”’

News of mismanaged high tech is in-
creasingly common. For example, it is
well known that managemet decisions
were somewhat responible for the space
shuttle disaster, TMI, Chernobyl, and
cases of failed waste sites. Male respond-
ents especially, in my LLRW survey and
a survey dealing with a volume-reduction
facility, spontaneously mentioned the
high probability of human error as a rea-
son for their opposition to siting. They
view Murphy’s Laws as alive and well in
high tech industries.

Negotiation for Incentives and
Assurances as a Solution

First, it must be made clear that incen-
tives and assurances are distinct entities
and vary considerably in their degree of
attractiveness to various communities and
people within communities. Incentives,
or concrete material rewards, are gener-
ally viewed in the context of restoring eq-
uity. It is reasoned that a risky facility is
a common good distributing benefits
widely but concentrating costs locally.
The key to public cooperation is viewed
as some sort of concession which raises
the reward value of the facility and thus
makes the costs less onerous. Material re-
wards appeal to pecuniary motives, are
more attractive to financially strapped
communities, and are subject to being la-
beled as crass payoffs by the opposition.

234 RICHARD J. BORD

They do not address issues of fear and
distrust.

Assurances, on the other hand, are typ-
ically in the form of options which provide
the community with some means to pro-
tect itself and to check on the data pro-
vided by experts and site operators.
Assurances provide some measure of
power sharing and do directly deal with
issues of fear and distrust. Their major
shortcoming is that whatever assurances
are offered can always be defined as in-
sufficient by those dedicated to stopping
siting.

Again, in my 1985 survey on Pennsyl-
vanians’ attitudes toward various policy
issues connected with LLRW siting, re-
spondents were asked to evaluate mate-
rial incentives and assurances. The
incentives included guaranteed property
values, local tax relief, a surcharge on the
waste to be returned to the community,
and local hiring and buying agreements
by the site operator. The assurances in-
cluded community control over who op-
erates the site, the provision of resources
to hire independent experts as checks on
industry and government experts, the
provision of resources to train locals to
monitor the site and local power to shut
down the site should malfunctions occur.
Each of these options were presented in
two formats. First, the respondent was
asked how important they thought it was
to provide a community with the partic-
ular option. Then, they were asked if they
thought that the provision of that option
would encourage community coopera-
tion. In addition to the general public,
these same questions were put to a small
sample (38) of state level heads of envi-
ronmental, civic, and public health asso-
ciations.

The results of these surveys indicated
that the public thought that affected com-
munities should receive both incentives
and assurances but a solid majority ex-
pressed little confidence in material in-
centives, except guaranteed property
values, as means to promote cooperation.
Large majorities (80% and above) chose

the options providing control to the com-
munity. This is simply a reaffirmation of
the primacy of health and safety concerns.

However, in responding to the same
items, major decision makers demon-
strated the opposite tendency. They tend
to overchoose the material incentive op-
tions. During interviews they often ex-
pressed the opinion that “money talks.”
The exception to this generalization was
those leaders of environmental activist or-
ganizations. Their responses paralleled
those of the general public. That is, op-
tions granting local control were viewed
as much more crucial than simple material
incentives. This gap in perception be-
tween the public and decision makers
highlights the different basis from which
each is making their judgments. For the
public, personal protection is paramount.
For most decision makers, siting is par-
amount. Since incentives are easier to ma-
nipulate than shared power options they
are likely to be favored by decision mak-
ers.

If shared power is to be taken seriously
then what form can it assume given the
existing legal and institutional infrastruc-
ture? Providing grants to communities to
hire independent experts and to pursue
site monitoring are manageable options
and are presently being written into siting
legislation in various states. No means
presently exists to allow communities to
control site operations. While grants to
hire independent experts and to monitor
the site are welcome assurances they may
not be enough. For example, the com-
munity could hire independent experts
who they know will challenge government
and industry data.

A related issue is who does the com-
munity trust to represent them to the sit-
ing agency. Communities are never
homogeneous on issues such as this. Some
members will favor siting, some will be
on the fence, and many will be opposed.
To be viewed as a legitimate exercise, the
negotiation process will have to include
community members who enjoy trust and
credibility. In the same study referenced

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING 235

above, respondents were asked who they
trusted to represent the community. Sur-
prisingly, local and county officials elic-
ited very low votes of confidence. Higher
confidence was expresed in locals elected
to a committee, referenda, or general
town meetings. Of course each of these
options could be used to effectively stifle
the siting process.

Somewhat complex incentive and as-
surance packages are currently part of all
serious attempts to site nuclear facilities.
The Texas low-level radioactive waste
campaign is a good example.” Their de-
gree of success will have to be evaluated
post hoc.

Note that most of the issues discussed
above focus on changing individuals. Lit-
tle systematic attention has been given to
crucial political aspects characterizing this
problem. The reason for this relative lack
of attention may lie in the fact that so-
lutions aimed at individuals are consistent
with our democratic beliefs and our faith
that reasoning will win out. Attention to
political issues are certain to mobilize
deeply held passions.

Political Dimensions of the
Siting Problem

Three issues will be discussed in this
section:

1. the decline of the notion of ““common
interest;”’

2. the political rewards for being “‘anti;”’

3. and, the multiple publics and overlap-
ping jurisdictions involved in our frac-
tionated waste policies.

Decline of the Notion of
“Common Interest”

The perception of events from an in-
dividualistic perspective mitigates against
definitions of common interest. “Sup-
port—even identification-of the common
interest becomes elusive under conditions
of extreme normative dissensus.”””” While
“doing your own thing” is in some re-

spects an admirable philosophy of indi-
vidualism it tends to collide with the social
realities of teenage pregnancies, the
spread of lethal diseases, highway shoot-
ings, insider trading on the stock ex-
change, and homeless hazardous waste.

This fragmentation of the common in-
terest favors the political activities of sec-
tarian voluntary associations. Groups
favoring extreme positions and simple so-
lutions will tend to dominate when gov-
ernment is too weak or divided to provide
legitimate leadership. The absence of a
notion of common interest favors con-
frontation and conflict over compro-
mise.*” From this perspective it should
come as no surprise that risky waste siting
has foundered on the shoals of interest
group, local, and sometimes state intran-
sigence. Furthermore, since there is no
developed notion of common interest
there is no incentive for a politician, or
an aspiring politician, to take up the ban-
ner of safe siting ““somewhere.”’

The Political Rewards for
Being “‘Anti’’

All the above arguments foster the con-
clusion that political hay is to be made by
being anti-siting: not anti-siting in gen-
eral, but certainly in particular. If the
public does not trust the technology, the
waste industry and its regulators, or state
and local government to adequately rep-
resent their interests on this issue then the
only popular role for a politician is to fa-
vor safe siting in principle but to quash
any siting attempt that might impact on
his or her consituency. Since the issue
tends to be defined in terms of the little
person versus the powerful bureaucracy,
the politician is in somewhat the same po-
sition as the journalist. To side with the
waste industry or government is to ally
with evil against good. Like journalists,
politicians can be expected to publically
place more credence on the pronounce-
ments of those who appear to represent
the “‘little people,” that is, environmental
and anti-nuclear activists. In private, of

236

course, the politician has the unenviable
task of negotiating around a number of
state and federal agencies and trying to
reconcile official views with interest group
and local citizen perspectives. Decisive
pro-siting political leadership is a highly
improbable outcome.

The Problem of Multiple Publics and
Overlapping Jurisdictions

Unpopular political issues become
footballs. They get tossed around in the
hope that someone will be able to solve
the problem. In the process of being
tossed around they pick up more and
more players who want to get into the
game. Eventually, the resulting chaos
practically insures the game will never get
played. Although there are numerous ex-
amples, one will suffice to make the point.
The economically strapped town of
Edgemont, South Dakota viewed a
LLRW disposal site as a source of jobs
and revenue. The town had been a ura-
nium mining and milling town and its fa-
miliarity with radioactive materials
translated into less fear. Almost 70 per-
cent of the county and 80 percent of Ed-
gemont’s citizens voted in favor of the
proposed disposal facility in June, 1984.
However, anti-nuclear activists forced the
issue to a Statewide referendum in which
a majority of the State’s voters favored
statewide approval before South Dakota
could enter into a nuclear waste compact
with another state and approval by a ma-
jority of voters before any private indus-
try could be licensed to open a disposal
site.*’ The result was no site.

When the Federal Government threw
the LLRW problem to the states in 1979
they hoped that they had taken the initial
steps toward a solution of a political crisis.
However, the requirements of interstate
cooperation, intrastate approval, the
meeting of both federal and state regu-
latory guidelines, the burden of obtaining
local cooperation, and pressure from var-
ious interest groups has made the entire
process something of a nightmare. This

RICHARD J. BORD

multi-group involvement highlights the
limitations of all the proposed solutions.
A siting project can be scuttled at a num-
ber of junctures by a host of different ac-
tors, not the least of which is the court
system which has been very sensitive to
citizen and interest group arguments on
environmental issues.

Discussion and Conclusions

We are now in a better position to un-
derstand the limitations of currently pro-
posed solutions to siting problems.

More technically adequate risk com-
munication has little chance of success-
fully competing with the daily “‘scare
fare’ which greets us Over our morning
newspaper or television news program. It
is unlikely to command attention, to be
given adequate coverage by the media, or
to be trusted as objective. In focused set-
tings, such as a local community facing
siting, it may be possible to get some peo-
ple to carefully digest this kind of infor-
mation. However, they will certainly be
a minority and will be very constrained
by social pressures from neighbors and
counterarguments from visiting “‘anti’s’’.
Should the entire community be con-
vinced that siting is safe then opposition
can still emerge at the regional or state
level.

Since the source of opposition to siting
is fear and distrust there are no compel-
ling reasons why equity solutions should
promote acceptance. Compensation and
incentives simply do not address these is-
sues. It may be difficult to find a large
enough ‘‘carrot” to overcome public fear
and distrust. The search for a high-level
radioactive waste site is now facing this
problem.

A more thorough involvement of the
affected public in the siting proces could
have some effect /F it is acknowledged
that the goal of that participation is to put
some real power in the hands of the locals.
Control is clearly what locals see as a pre-
requisite to any serious consideration of
siting. However, it may be practically and

REACTOR AND NUCLEAR WASTE SITING 237

legally impossible to give them the degree
of control necessary to establish trust.
Furthermore, even if a local involvement
Or an incentive program is successful the
project can be halted by other levels of
government. This is exactly how a pro-
posed Monitored Retreivable Storage fa-
cility was recently stopped in Tennessee.
“The siting process was stopped by ex-
tensive state-wide opposition resulting in
legal challenge by the state and vetoes by
the governor and state legislature.’

Improved siting technology certainly
has a chance of winning some converts.
However, like risk estimates in general,
debates can go on interminably over
whether the new technology is truly more
safe or safe enough. Containers fail, mon-
itors malfunction, operators doze off and
come in hungover, water infiltrates,
storms threaten, terrorists could blow it
up, and government regulators never
have large enough budgets to do a thor-
ough job of regulating. The success of im-
proved technology depends on
establishing trust. That will be difficult to
accomplish.

All the above paints a grim picture for
hazardous facility siting and may lead the
reader to the conclusion that all that is
left is to pack up and go home. However,
the waste issue must be solved. I will end
by briefly discussing what I think those
concerned with siting will try to do, what
will actually happen, and what could hap-
pen.

Clearly, there will be ongoing attempts
to meet the legal guidelines established in
the amended LLRW Policy Act and the
legal amenities demanded for the siting
of other risky facilities. Combinations of
all the solutions discussed above will be
employed. Some successes will certainly
occur and it is possible that a few suc-
cesses will stimulate other compacts and
states to “bite the bullet.”” No one should
be surprised, however, if many states do
not have operating sites by the prescribed
deadline. Any chance for success of a
high-level waste facility in the next two
decades will likely depend on a volunteer

state. This conflict has been referred to
as a second “‘Civil War” and a go-very-
slow approach can be expected. The fur-
ther establishment of nuclear power
plants is likely to depend on geo-political
events beyond anyone’s immediate con-
trol. The difficulties in solving the radio-
active waste issue has provided a back-
ended rationale for holding the line on
more nuclear power plants. Anti-nuclear
activists have high stakes in seeing to it
that this issue is not resolved soon. How-
ever, another international oil crisis could
change the perceived reward-cost ratio
for nuclear power.

In the meantime, waste will continue
to be generated. At present there are
strong pressures to reduce waste volumes,
not only through treatment technologies
and more efficient practices, but through
redefining what is hazardous enough to
require special treatment. In order to
solve their waste problems the medical
community may take steps to redefine
much of their waste so as to separate it
from reactor waste. Suggestions to this
effect were made at the recent American
Chemical Society meetings. If this hap-
pens then anti-nuclear activists will be
free to more vigorously attack reactor
waste. Since low-level radioactive waste
has been a combination of reactor, in-
dustrial, and medical wastes there has
been some constraints on an all-out at-
tack. No one wants to be accused of
threatening public health by hampering
nuclear medicine. It is likely that more
materials will find their way into solid
waste landfills and more will be stored on
site. The pressures for on-site storage may
eventually redefine the entire problem. In
line with what environmental activists are
proposing, much waste may eventually be
stored in expensive, above-ground facil-
ities on-site. In other words, there will be
a great deal of “muddling through” to
invent solutions to the continued waste
problem. None of the solutions are likely
to be optimal either from a safety or a
cost perspective. ;

However, it should be made clear that

238 RICHARD J. BORD

the bottom line to risky facility siting is,
and will remain, public fear and distrust
along with political timidity and favor-
seeking. Public health and safety and eco-
nomic efficiency are the major issues.
Many analyists are optimistic that the ex-
isting piecemeal approach will, in the long
run, favor improved safety while pro-
moting democratic ideals.** However, a
viable counterargument can be made that
a solution involving the long term inter-
ests of the public and industry requires
planning, negotiation, compromise, and
especially leadership from the highest lev-
els of government. National mobilization
similar to that experienced during war-
time may eventually be necessary. Given
continued lack of progress, we may be
forced to question whether our present
course is a Optimal one or whether the
long-term impact is simply more eco-
nomic and health habilities forced on our

progeny.

References Cited

1. Freudenburg, W. R. 1985 Waste not: the special
impacts of nuclear waste facilities. In: R. G.
Post, ed., Waste Isolation in the U.S., Technical
Programs and Public Participation, Proceedings
of the Symposium on Waste Management, Vol.
3, Tucson, Arizona.

2. Douglas, M. 1985. Risk Acceptability According
to the Social Sciences. Russell Sage Foundation,
New York, NY.

3. Ruckelshaus, W. D. 1983. Science, Risk, and
public policy. Science, 221: pp. 1026-1028.

4. Covello, V. T., P. Slovic, and D. von Winter-
feldt. 1987 Risk Communication: a review of
the literature. Unpublished Manuscript. p. 79.

5. Con, W. D. and N. R. Feimer. 1985 Commu-
nicating with the public on environmental risk:
integrating research and policy. The Environ-
mental Professional, 7: pp. 39-47.

6. Epstein, S. S., M. D., L. O. Brown, and C.
Pope. 1982. Hazardous Waste in America.
Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.

7. O’Riordan, T. 1983. The cognitive and political
dimensions of risk analysis. Journal of Environ-
mental Psychology, 3: pp. 345-354.

8. Douglas, Ibid.

9. Bord, R. J. 1985 Opinions of Pennsylvanians
on policy issues related to low-level radioactive
waste disposal. Institute for Research on Land
and Water Resources Report. The Pennsylvania
State University.

10. Schnaiberg, A. 1987 Economics of envi-
ronmental regulation: the impact of environ-
mental protest dynamics. Paper delivered at the
annual meetings of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, Chicago,
Ill.

11. DuPont, R. L. 1981. The nuclear power phobia.
Business Week. September 7: pp. 14-16.

12. Mitchell, R.C. 1984. Rationality and irration-
ality in the public’s perception of nuclear power.
In: W. R. Freudenberg and E. A. Rosa, eds.,
Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There
Critical Masses? Westview Press, Inc., Boulder,
Colorado.

13. Covello, et. al., Ibid.

14. Slovic, P., B. Fischhoff, and S. Lichtenstein.
1982. Facts versus fears: understanding per-
ceived risk. In: D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and
A. Tversky, eds., Judgment Under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.

15. Conn and Feimer, I[bid.

16. Douglas, Ibid., p. 34.

17. Yosie, T. F. 1987. EPA’s risk assessment cul-
ture. Environment, Science, and Technology,
21: pp. 526-531.

18. Bord, R. J., P. J. Ponzurick, and W. F. Witzig.
1985. Community response to low-level radio-
active waste: a case study of an attempt to es-
tablish a waste reduction and incineration
facility. ZEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science,
Vol. NS-32, December, pp. 4466-4471.

19. Bord, R. J., Ibid.

20. Eisenbud, M. 1984. Radioactivity and you. En-
vironment, 26: pp. 6-33.

21. Horneday, A. 1986. Straight about Chernobyl.
MS Magazine, IV: pp. 83-86.

22. Freimuth, V. S. and J. P. Van Nevel. 1981.
Reaching the public: the asbestos awareness
campaign. Journal of Communication, 31: pp.
155-167.

23. Pfund, N. and L. Hofstadter. 1981. Biomedical
innovation and the press. Journal of Commun-
ication, 31: pp. 138-154.

24. Covello, et. al., Ibid., p. 27.

25. Rothman and Lichter, [bid., p. 51.

26. The Radioactive Exchange. 1987 Low-Level
Radioactive Waste Management: Facing the New
Realities. A Briefing book Presented to Partic-
ipants of the Third Annual Decisionmakers
Forum Sponsored by the Radioactive Ex-
change, June 16-19, Traverse City, MI.

27. Editorial. 1985. The New Yorker. Feb. 18, Re-
ported in Covello, et. al., Ibid, p. 25.

28. Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal
Authority. 1985 Siting a Low-Level Radioactive
Waste Disposal Facility in Texas: Local Govern-
ment Participation, Mitigation, Compensation,
Incentives, and Operator Standards. Texas Ad-
visory Commission on Intergovernmental Re-
lations, Austin, Texas.

29. Short, J. F. 1984 Toward the social transfor-

mation of risk analysis. American Sociological
Review, 49: pp. 711-725.

30. Short, Ibid.

31. McCaughey, J. 1985. South Dakota town
dreams of its own nuclear waste dump. The En-
ergy Daily, 13: pp. 1 and 4.

32. Peelle, E. 1987. Innovative process and inven-
tive solutions: a case study of local public ac-

Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences,
Volume 78, Number 2, Pages 239-244, June 1988

ceptance of a proposed nuclear waste packaging
and storage facility. Symposium on Land Use
Management, Praeger Press, New York, NY.

33. Bullard, C. W. 1987 Issues in Radioactive Waste
Management. Paper Presented to the National
Advisory Committee of the Institute of Gov-
ernment and Public Affairs, University of Illi-
nois, Champaign-Urbana, June 15.

Round Table Discussion:
Policy Considerations

McGUIRE: Steven McGuire, Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. This is for Dr.
Bord. |

You expressed the opinion that im-
proving technology would not help siting.
In view of the last talk, covering state-of-
the-art technology, what comment would
you make?

BORD: As a citizen, I was very excited
about the information that was provided
in the last talk. I think that kind of dra-
matic improvement might have some ef-
fect. Now, what would happen, and it is
predictable, you would go on 60 Minutes,
and someone would try to demonstrate
that there are problems with this. There
are anti-nuclear activists who, I am sure,
would dig up something. But I think we
have to look at the whole issue of what
reasonable people can agree on. If we can
invent a technology that is powerful
enough that we can make opportunistic
politicians not look so good by opposing
it, we will be in better shape. I think that
the information provided in the last talk
gave some realm of hope in that line.

There is one other point there where
the technology does interact with insti-

239

tutional problems. The question came up
here, How does this affect the waste dis-
posal problem, because it certainly makes
the siting problem easier. There are two
features that need to be considered.

One of the things that has happened in
the last bit of time is that the waste dis-
posal problem is being treated very dif-
ferently than it was early on in the fission
program. When you believed the nuclear
power was very cheap, if you spent any
money at all in disposing the waste, you
really affected the cost of nuclear power
at the front end of the system. Now, luck-
ily, nuclear power is very expensive. You
can spend fortunes disposing of the waste,
and it will hardly affect the cost of power
at all.

That lets us begin technologically to
consider lots of things we couldn’t con-
sider before. It also lets us consider, be-
Cause uranium is so available, just
throwing the stuff away without ever re-
processing it. If you do that for the sort
of reactor that I spoke most about here,
the trick is, you take the fuel as it exists,
and if it is capable of surviving in the cen-
ter of an operating uncooled reactor with-

240 POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

out relinquishing its waste, it is as
beautifully packaged as you could possi-
bly imagine to put it somewhere else in a
hole in the ground where those conditions
are not there. So the fuel comes prepack-
aged for disposal, and it does become a
lot easier. Proving that it survives in one
condition makes it a lot more plausible
that it survives in another.

SORENSON: I like tech fixes, too. I
think the public ultimately would want a
tech fix for the nuclear power. But I be-
lieve the social and institutional process
by which the public gets involved in these
new technologies and independently
comes to accept them as safer is as im-
portant as having the safe technology it-
self. It’s like the government saying,
‘Trust me. We have this new reactor. It
won't fail” will not solve the problem, but
it’s the whole social process that must take
place as well.

BRODSKY: Allen Brodsky, George-
town University. I was impressed by Dr.
Lidsky’s presentation. I think maybe if we
can get some of these ideas across, that
would be great, but I still go back to worry
about how the media might present it
anyhow. We might find new methods that
are safer, and this is very good, but if the
kinds of myths that have been propagated
are dreamed up against the new technol-
ogy, the same thing could happen again.

I believe that the public can understand
this aspect of chance. Somebody men-
tioned today that you could not say 1 in
10,000, that it is meaningless. I would like
to question that word “‘meaningless.”’ Our
only hope is to get the public to think in
terms of chance and quantitatively about
risk. ;

We have to devise ways of doing it and
we have to get it to them, not only by
person-to-person contact, which I think is
important, but we also have to try to get
it on the media, and I think there are
possibilities of doing that, too.

BORD: In this public education/infor-
mation program I was on for about three
years, we spoke to League of Women
Voters and all kinds of civic groups

around Pennsylvania. We were very suc-
cessful in having them sit there and listen
to us and afterwards agree that it was a
wonderful presentation, they had much
better understanding of radioactive waste
issues, and they thought everyone should
hear this presentation.

I would ask them, “All right. Does that
mean that you would be more supportive
of a waste site near you?” And they said,
“No.”

MARKS: Franklin Marks from the
U.S. Public Health Service, in the Office
of Emergency Preparedness. My office
deals a lot with coordinating Public
Health Service efforts to combat disasters
of one sort or another, often helping work
on nuclear power plant problems. Two of
the agencies we have worked with often
are the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency.

Earlier in Mr. Sorenson’s talk, he was
talking to some extent about evacuations,
moving people out if necessary. We at
some times have had to pay attention to
some of the specifics of that, and you can
quickly run into some pretty thorny ques-
tions. One of them is, How to get people
out of an area you want to evacuate if you
are talking about patients in a hospital or,
secondly, patients in an old age home, or
something like that.

Then we often have people raise the
issue, What about individuals who don’t
have cars? Of course, one answer can be
mass transit, but that has to be worked
out well. Sometimes it even gets a little
comical, but it isn’t really funny. What
about all the people with cars who ob-
viously from time to time will need some
gasoline? Will the gas stations be open?
If not, you may run into a number of cars
running out of gasoline.

Of course, where do all the people go?
Presumably some miles away, but where
do they wind up staying? Is it friends, big
mass area, or what have you. Could you
address some of these issues, please?

SORENSON: Certainly I cannot ad-
dress them in a depth to which we have

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 241

knowledge on them, because there exists
a considerable amount of information on
how publics behave in evacuations. To
date, we have maybe 15 detailed empir-
ical studies of different evacuation situa-
tions that document those kinds of
problems, and we are in the process of
developing a lot more information on
some of the specific topics that you raise,
such as how are hospitals and nursing
homes being evacuated?

We have a study going on now, funded
by FEMA, with Oak Ridge and the Uni-
versity of Tennessee, to address those
kinds of issues. By and large, the record
of information to date indicates evacua-
tions occur with surprisingly few great lo-
gistic problems, in situations in which
warning information gets out to the public
in sufficient time for them to take action.
People adapt to the amount of time they
have available to respond to the hazards.

Evacuations prevent a considerable
number of deaths and injuries every year
from a variety of hazards. So you are
faced with a litany of problems. Yet, when
you look at the actual record, you find
that somehow people are pretty good at
taking care of themselves in emergencies,
adapting and helping each other to over-
come those kinds of problems that you
raised.

BRODSKY: I do think people need to
understand. People get turned off at the
end of all these things when the an-
nouncement to the public is, ‘““There is no
danger.” You cannot say that anymore,
because people have heard about the no-
threshold concept. They have heard peo-
ple like Art Upton get up in public and
say, “Any level of radiation is danger-
ous.” What people have to realize is that
the question is not, ‘Is radiation danger-
ous” The question is, ““How much radia-
tion is how dangerous?”

McCALLUM: I think it is interesting,
and I would like to move us back to the
positive side of this. I liked Mr. Soren-
son’s comments about needing the sort of
social machinery to look at evaluating
new technologies and dealing with that

and, ultimately, achieving the benefits of
them. I also wonder if Dr. Lidsky could
talk a little bit about research policy and
the kinds of things that ought to be con-
sidered in the area of research policy to
try to move in some of these directions
and some of the potential problems, in
terms of either economic or political or
other kinds of disincentives to evaluating
and trying new technologies that might
throw some roadblocks in the way.

LIDSKY: That is an immense area of
discussion you have opened up, of course.
It involves the politics of large commercial
organizations interracting with the gov-
ernment, politics that are implicit in peo-
ple making policies that are wide-ranging,
long-lived, and possibly not being as pro-
ductive as they thought, and all those
other issues that I think it is almost hope-
less to open up here.

Large research programs develop in
their wake. Large research organizations
are very hard to turn around quickly, for
all sorts of reasons. The nuclear industry
in this country, for example, is not going
to save itself. The idea is to find some
trick. In some ways, I took Mr. Soren-
son’s comment very much to heart also,
because it does not just do to have the
technological fix available, especially
after I have been advocating that you
match your technological fix to what so-
ciety needs. You also have to do some
degree of institutional karate, and it hap-
pens differently, in different ways.

It turns out, in this particular case, the
particular reactor I was looking at—and
here again, each particular case is sul ge-
neris. You have to tailor it. I did not men-
tion—although not for reasons of hiding
it but because I spoke too quickly—that
in building a reactor with Level 1 prop-
erties, it must be small. If you make it
big, it can heat itself up. It took a long
time for people to perceive that this was
okay. If we believed that big ones were
cheaper than small ones, and if we be-
lieved in economies of scale, then there
was no sense in building a small one.

If you also believed, as everyone did

242 POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

for a long period of time, that existing
reactors were safe enough, then having a
reactor that was so much safer was just a
marginal inconsequential benefit. It is
only recently that people perceive small
size being a good thing as far as utilities
are concerned—it means they are
smaller, they are cheaper and easier to
manage; it is easier to build one and test
it. But other perceptions come along also.

The institutional karate that is used in
this particular case comes about because
a reactor of small size, if it is going to
meet large power needs, is going to have
to be built in very large quantities. People
who are interested in building small things
in large quantities jump at something like
this. I discussed this reactor in Japan, and
they have difficult siting problems. They
have used up their whole sea coast. They
have to move everything else inland, in
smaller quantities and closer to cities.
They need to have demonstrable safety.
They are also very used to building things
in large quantity, for their own use and
for export use. It turns out, my research
now is going to be supported by Japan for
the next two years. That is a specific an-
swer, but it is meant, again, to illustrate
a general point.

When it comes to technologies, there
is no Overriding way to do this, because
you are trying to match some very difficult
constraints that come from different an-
gles. The trick is to find out if you can.
It is not always true that you can do it.

BURLEY: Gordon Burley, Environ-
mental Protection Agency. I would like
to pursue that same question of alterna-
tive technologies just a little bit further.
I started work modeling of severe reactor
accidents in 1967 when I was with the old
Atomic Energy Commission. We also at
that time recognized that there were safer
reactors. The German pebble reactor was
one. I think you did not mention the mol-
ten salt reactor All of these were killed
effectively by fiat early on, and some
other technologies, evolving technolo-
gies, the liquid metal fast breeder reactor,
was also killed at about the same time.

We have to put this in the context of
the time. We did not have any real anti-
nuclear sentiment in the country at that
point. The decisions that were made by
the Atomic Energy Commission effec-
tively held. So we went with the light
water reactors, which has been indicated
are 15 seconds away from disaster. The
thing is that we are heading into an era
now where the fossil resources are begin-
ning to diminish. We are going to have to
go to alternative energy sources. The
question is, how does one introduce a
change of policy at this point into the
thinking process so that there is adequate
funding. One is talking about lead times
of 15 and 20 years on evolving technology.
These decisions cannot be made 15 years
from now when we are down the road.

The question is, What should be done
at this point to start moulding public opin-
ion to either accept the light water reac-
tors with all their warts or try to get some
funding for these alternative technologies
which might provide a safer environment.

LIDSKY: Here again, you have come
right to the heart of the institutional issue.
This country does not have a long-lasting
well-thought-out energy policy. Electric-
ity is made by a number of utilities which
work in more or less autonomous fashion.
Some are very large and very well run.
Some are very large and very poorly run.
And there is a whole gamut of utilities.
That is one of the differences between this
country and almost every other, except
Germany, by the way, which has a system
very much like ours and has a very suc-
cessful nuclear program going. They do
not have quite the choice we have, and
they have somewhat different incentives.

Unless you want centralized govern-
ment planning—and what you have just
done is given me an example of a case
where centralized government planning
did not work. In fact, if the AEC had had
its way, we would have many more of the
sort of reactors we are finding we wish we
did not have right now. So the natural
antipathy to centralized planning of that
sort in a place where you have a choice

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION 243

is very valid. The thing you have to do is
find a way to make things attractive to the
system we have, to the utilities we have.

If they are working in a capitalistic sys-
tem, as most utilities are, then you find a
way that makes it attractive for them to
put the power they need on line, cheaper
and easier than any other way. That is
going to be some entity making reactors
of this sort, which can be done now by a
single entity because they are small and
selling them.

Absent that, what we will do is what I
said we will do. Each utility will respond
individually in a way that makes most
sense for them, and that is to put on gas
plants and then coal plants. Though I sit
in the middle of a nuclear engineering de-
partment, I cannot really claim that is
going to be a great tragedy for this coun-
try. Even as we think about that, and the
difficulty I have in developing nuclear re-
actors that will win, you can build coal
plants now that are many times better
than existing ones, many times better than
we dreamed they could be, in terms of
clean emissions, efficient use, small size,
and lots of other things. It is not a panic
issue in this country, and it may well be
that this time we take the time to do the
job right.

McCALLUM: Is there a way, from
your experience in dealing with waste sit-
ing problems and other general issues, to
focus the public debate on trying to see
things in the context of a larger energy
policy and to look at a variety of options
and choices. That is a fairly complicated
thing to get political force behind, but do
you see hopes or have insights into how
something like that might work?

BOND: I think that we have not failed
in communicating with the public so much
in the sense that we have not gotten them
to understand probability. I think we
failed in getting them to understand pro-
grams and international competition. It
may well be that certain geopolitical
events could occur that would tip the bal-
ance of costs and rewards and refocus
public attention on some other things.

Specifically with the problem of the
NIMBY syndrome, : do not know. I wish
I could be more optimistic about that. But
right now, I think we would have to come
up with an amazing technology to get peo-
ple to accept it, to show some enthusiasm
for it. We cannot site incinerators, we can-
not site chemical plants. We are fighting
that battle right in my home county with
solid waste in Pennsylvania right now.
The courts have given the public the
power to say no, and that is what they are
saying.

I think that in line with some of the
remarks that have been made, perhaps
eventually in order to deal with the prob-
lem, the change will have to occur in the
institutions and in the infrastructure. I
really do not want to predict how I think
that might go.

LIDSKY: There is an aspect of the
technology that has been described by our
last speaker today that has great appeal
from a social policy issue. There are schol-
ars who interpret the controversy over nu-
clear power in a public reaction against
largeness and large scale technology,
large scale organizations and the like.
There is this resentment among the
American public against things that they
perceive are out of their control. The idea

of a small reactor brings the technology

back down in scale to which the individual
may feel like they have more opportunity
to control the management of that tech-
nology.

I think at one point the idea of a neigh-
borhood nuclear power plant would have
been very facetiously received, but the
idea has inherent merits on its own.

KASPERSON: Perhaps the Chair
could add one note of optimism on the
radioactive waste siting situation. I have
been struck by the experiences of a num-
ber of countries in their programs for ra-
dioactive waste siting. Sweden is in the
process of solving their radioactive waste
siting program. They are solving it in a
country that has a strong tradition of en-
vironmental movement. It has had an ac-
tive debate over the situation of nuclear

244 POLICY CONSIDERATIONS

power. The institutional situation is that
in Sweden there is a local veto right over
any industrial plant or waste facility to be
located in the community.

Sweden has successfully sited several
radioactive waste facilities. They have
done it partly by locating the facilities at
existing nuclear sites, which may indicate
some reason for optimism. That may yet
be managed with a monitored retrievable
storage facility if we build it at Oak Ridge,
so DOE may have been at least partly on
track with that particular approach.

But also in Sweden they are not trying
to fine-tune the safety of the facility which
is rather critical to this process. The ap-
proach in Sweden is that they are going
to make the facilities so super safe that
they are going to win over the broad con-
sensus of expert and even environmental
opinion about that. They are not going to
try to hedge on the safety issue.

By the way, I wish we could convince
the American institutions to do that be-
cause the process costs in this area are so
enormous compared to the substantive
costs of putting the issues to bed that it
does not make any sense to get in long
protracted siting fights and debates if you
can overwhelm the problem by additional
investment.

Sweden has also reached something of
a societal consensus on the future of nu-
clear power. If you can do that, some of
your problems go away in the siting of
facilities.

I think that if you look at the interna-
tional experience, appreciating the fact
that cultures are different—and in Swe-
den, if you make a decision, basically
everybody feels it is their obligation to
pull together and make it work; we do not
have that luxury—there are important
clues as to how this problem can be man-
aged. I think we have gone about it
poorly, and we have made a lot of mis-
takes along the way, but I really do not
believe that it is not a manageable prob-
lem.

QUESTIONER: Under the present so-
cial and political climate of wanting the
United States’ high technology to be com-
petitive, do you feel that the new tech-
nology proposed by Dr. Lidsky would
find sympathetic avenues for significant
development?

SPEAKER: Viewing the utilities as ef-
fectively independent entities whose job
is to make money, the answer is yes, if
you can make a buck on it. The trick in
that case is to find someone to build the
first one. It may be possible to do it here,
and if it does not happen here, it will be ~
built elsewhere sooner or later. Eventu-
ally, if it is built elsewhere and found suc-
cessful, it will be imported into this
country. So the answer is that in the long
term, very definitely yes.

In the shorter range, only if one sees a
way to make a relatively clear profit on
it. Again, time scales in this country being
what the are, to make that relatively clear
profit in the relatively short period of
time. That requires a lot of things to hap-
pen just precisely right, and I am not
about to predict that that will happen.
There are ways in which it might happen.

McCALLUM: This was a very exciting
panel. I like the idea of extending this
debate to other fora and other places. The
panel this afternoon also suggests new
ideas and new things that could be in-
cluded in those discussions that could be
very exciting and very useful. There are
things we have talked about before, trying
to find ways to get more people involved
in it and looking at whether or not, in
some of the siting debates or in some of
the emergency exercising around existing
nuclear facilities might be used as focii for
attention to get discussion of some of
these broader issues when the awareness
or the attentiveness of the public has been
enervated because of special events. I
think that the conference has done what
we wanted it to do, which was to produce
some new ideas and some things that can
be applied in the future.

DELEGATES TO THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
REPRESENTING THE LOCAL AFFILIATED SOCIETIES

Pepa Ne Ale SOCIE YP Or) WV ASEM LOM. ors 020 secre. ole see aves ects nie) andine Sow alae Sai calg a ayslerw aie ded Barbara F. Howell
PRRMEOPOrICAl SOCICLY OW aASMING (ON). <hoc kes cob ec molsspdeer ols diedadaaseeeeaed eas Edward J. Lehman
Pee AESORIC EVOL VV ASTIN LOM. sere) 5 2) dalaie cia/e sna is los aisrwin od bone ale aedee elatel hater euaiy wee Austin B. Williams
EMME ECIELY Ol WaASHINOTON: (ccc... vclns he tieciees csed ss ass meehisle cl ee aecies Jo-Anne A. Jackson
Pemeemmleical SOCICLY. OF WaSHINGtON. oot. is iene wees ee ee dale ed ewe eeeae shares Manya B. Stoetzel
MME TLC OT ARC SOCICLYR El icicles c( aloe ae Be clic oi tai e dened or keen ees Se Gilbert Grosvenor
Pee ee ESO CICEVLOL WVASHIN GLO. oe .ccyccce ite bol ore cls oe We we blete Wouin e medina Sov ee hele James V. O’Connor
Mestcansocicuy Or the District of Columbia ...... 2.0... ia eek ena eee ee Charles E. Townsend
MELB ETSI OA CAME SOCIC UY os ticle sclele cya) a isisla wird ic. sisue 4) eusie S dw rae ban we lod Sp eae and Paul H. Oehser
SME AES OCI LV EOIN VASIITIOTOR Lhe) ois ciahceo fe clit os ceca soe oreo vane dics Aiejayscc «ole blornea wee nk Conrad B. Link
Secicmeomsinencan Foresters, Washington S€CHON . 2... 6.6.5 oes eee cee wees cee ec des es Mark Rey
Pe tee en SUCICLYO la NOMECTS 5 alas sie 5.06 on wales ps Sees coh ee Oe Weegee e deems s George Abraham
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington Section................. George Abraham
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Washington Section....................00 000 Michael Chi
Picwmtintnolorical Society Ol WasninetOn . 5 5.52 on pete ence wee eet vodens Robert S. Isenstein
pumerecansociety for Microbiology, Washington Branch ..............6.00. coe w ste esndneane’ Vacant
Society of American Military Engineers, Washington Post...................00.. Charles A. Burroughs
punetican society of Civil Engineers, National Capital Section. :..........20... 0005-00 e ee Carl Gaum
Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, DC Section ...................... Cyrus R. Creveling
Pancnean society tor Metals, Washington: Chapter .....- 2.2.2... ete cae eee eee eens James R. Ward
American Association of Dental Research, Washington Section...................00.05. Eloise Ullman
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Capital Section............... Paul Keller
PuEaPaeanevictcorolopical Society, DC Chapter . .0: 25.05. 5. cc ck bees bee deme eens A. James Wagner
IPHONE DSOCICLV OL WVASMINCLORN oft e snldig is oe ine gig boas aide bial elete gy woe eles merle! Albert B. DeMilo
Beeusicalsocicty Of America, Washington Chapter. ..... 2.2... ..00055 eos eee eee Richard K. Cook
PAaeHcaneNucicar Society, Washington Section... ...5..6.. 0k ec e eee cee cee eee beet te cee Paul Theiss
lustre ot Food Technologists, Washington Section ... 07.2... 0.2.22 e epee eee es Melvin R. Johnston
American Ceramic Society, Baltimore-Washington Section.....................--. Joseph H. Simmons
PE PREM EME MAIC AME SOCIO INET oo oye > c/s ic rays ei ese SE ss Selle aos 4 8 diane swe slave pie roms ell wien Alayne A. Adams
Ase OHM EN STORY Ole SClence CLUB 7.0.5. ive is otc tit os bie be aie boinc Slave wine ccivnceaie ae Albert Gluckman
American Association of Physics Teachers, Chesapeake Section ...................... Peggy A. Dixon
Warcaesocicty (of America, National Capital Section. ... 22... 026.08. ce ee eee ee William R. Graver
American Society of Plant Physiologists, Washington Area Section............... Walter Shropshire, Jr.
Washington Operations Research/Management Science Council ....................-. Doug Samuelson
lnsrument Society of America, Washington Section... 2.2.2.6. 6 523 ceed ees be eee rene Carl Zeller
American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical

aiceectroleum: Enomeers, Washington Section ..... 2... 0... 2... bee ee See ae ees Ronald Munson
Pe GEE Hae APIA NSECOMOMICES (0 pe Bolo cce oie aie oe by wines are ode o Se Hula eet aleve we wpeiere Robert H. McCracken
Mathematics Association of America, MD-DC-VA Section. ................0.00 eee Alfred B. Willcox
IS LEIS HEE CIO INC NEIEISES Te ts are, cio decsh blew oie whdin iaeelieiw gale alee lelie vere cvete) sista Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr.
OES ENO IO CIE AIP ASSOC AINOM eR Se oles ons oem oid: ee w ae, Von es wise, wins e Mijee guar we opm eR ededm slanete Bete Bert T. King
MAS MIME CO AU pUCCUEICAICGTLOUDS 905 coe c.sisis ee oie c Sreje sb s alare, S)L eis ieiw os (e tule aunts pha ne ape Robert F. Brady
American Phytopathological Society, Potomac Division................00-:ee ee ee eee Roger H. Lawson
Society for General Systems Research, Metropolitan Washington Chapter ..... Ronald W. Manderscheid
PAM An ER ACIGES SOCICTY LOtOmMacC hapten c02):)2 5 dea <'e oe se 2 siete c.0' enere tim dike esse # oni ole Stanley Deutsch
Pane bedi PISHCHES SOCIEDY a Ee OLOMAG CDAPLEL, -1:)c)c 5.2'e <i-\a iiss + 0; \n) iv d slely oie nievsinminnttie amie Robert J. Sousa
ASSOCIatoOn LOE Science, Hechuolopy and Innovation )....:. ... i654 ..6 alesis mom cae cere abn ele Ralph I. Cole
Eastern Sociological SOclebyas neni eis iy. an) s x onis he <a dooeans = Syele ia © olttercibie gb bie sel Ronald W. Manderscheid
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Northern Virginia Section.............. Ralph I. Cole
Association for Computing Machinery, Washington Chapter.....................2-. James J. Pottmyer
WVaSHINCLON Sa tatiStiCalnSOGletyin 05 cre oe Sole feta Wa wines dinvala acgebahe ie avelsnk ohs te Miao R. Clifton Bailey

Delegates continue in office until new selections are made by the representative societies.

WANA
3 9088 01303 2198

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