carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (07/18/86)
Now let's consider physicist Bernard L. Cohen, whose statement that "every time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a nuclear plant, many hundreds of people are condemned to premature death" is uncritically quoted by nuclear advocates on the net. Let's begin with a sample of Cohen's own views (*The Resourceful Earth*, p. 566): ...in the past ten years science has come under irrational attack from the forces of ignorance, and is losing public support. This process has essentially destroyed the key ingredient needed to provide our bright future -- nuclear power, and is already zeroing in on other targets vital to our future. Our government's science and technology policy is now guided by uninformed and emotion-driven public opinion rather than by sound scientific advice. Unfortunately, this public opinion is controlled by the media, a group of scientific illiterates drunk with power, heavily influenced by irrelevant political ideologies, and so misguided as to believe that they are more capable than the scientific community of making scientific decisions." Now let us see how Paul and Anne Ehrlich review his contribution to *The Resourceful Earth*, an article on "The Hazards of Nuclear Power": Bernard Cohen's chapter is not much better [than Beckmann's]. He promotes his principal theme -- that coal-burning is vastly more hazardous than nuclear electricity generation -- with unremarkable opinion-poll findings (98 percent of "scientists" who make their livings from nuclear power are in favor of it); with vigorous attacks on straw-men (a nuclear reactor cannot explode like an atomic bomb!); with misleadingly selective and often erroneous citation of "facts" from the literature of energy risks; and with fallacious propositions of his own invention. [Examples follow.] ... ...If Cohen had accurately represented his references on this point, his conclusion would have been that the health risks from routine operation of nuclear power, measured as loss of life expectancy in the present generation, may well exceed the corresponding risks from coal-produced air pollution. Cohen's treatment of the longer-range hazards of coal and nuclear energy is of even lower quality. He offers a multiply fallacious argument to the effect that uranium mining *reduces* cancer deaths in the long run, an argument that was considered and dismissed in the National Academy studies Cohen cites. On the other side, he peddles some numerical estimates of long-term, trace-metal hazards that are without validation in the professional literature. His only reference on this point is an unpublished manuscript written by himself. On the basis of the "estimates" Cohen reaches this ringing conclusion: "Every time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a nuclear plant, many hundreds of people are condemned to premature death." Given *The Resourceful Earth*'s inveighing against the ignorance and irresponsibility of the *Global 2000* authors -- as opposed to its own unmatched authority and expertise -- there is special irony in the volume's last "substantive" chapter ending on this wholly unsupported and highly irresponsible assertion. And that chapter is followed by a vicious preachment from Cohen about how human problems will not be solved because the "forces of ignorance" oppose the solutions. It is an appeal for laypeople to trust "experts" like Cohen. Cohen replied with an indignant letter to the *Bulletin* (Sept. 1985). The Ehrlichs responded: We are not surprised that Bernard Cohen found our comments on his chapter "highly insulting," but we remain unsympathetic. Authors who present propaganda in the guise of objective analysis must expect insulting reviews from time to time. The opinion poll of which Cohen is so proud was intended to show that the media have exaggerated the hazards of radiation, thereby contributing to a degree of public opposition to nuclear power that Cohen considers irrational. Cohen now protests that the poll was "*not* about nuclear power" and implies that university-employed analysts of radiation protection -- most of whose work relates to nuclear energy and most of whose jobs would not exist in the absence of a nuclear-energy industry -- are appropriate judges of the public's degree of rationality on these matters. The journals that refused to publish Cohen's poll apparently found it no more illuminating than we did. Responsible analyses of the numbers of deaths attributable to coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation -- some of which Cohen cited but apparently did not understand -- indicate that the range of possibilities for both sources extends from one or two deaths per plant-year to several tens of deaths per plant-year, depending on mining practices, power-plant location, pollution-control technology, and highly uncertain assumptions about dose-response relations and effects (of both sources) extending millennia into the future. In his chapter, Cohen presented figures for nuclear energy from the extreme low end of the range of values found in the literature (indeed, *outside* the range that would be considered respectable if studies now regarded as obsolete were excluded); and his figures for coal were near the extreme high end of the range found in the literature. The reader received no clue of the enormous and overlapping uncertainties associated with the nuclear and coal figures -- only a wholly irresponsible assertion (quoted in our review) about the "many hundreds of people condemned to premature death" each time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a nuclear plant. As for the hazards of trace metals released in coal burning, Cohen's reference on this point in his chapter was an unpublished manuscript by himself. He now reveals that he has published his analysis in two journals.... [T]he refereeing system of professional journals is so badly overloaded that substantial numbers of erroneous and even wholly incompetent papers get through. The magnitude of this problem is such that capable scientists would be in danger of accomplishing nothing else if they tried to correct all the nonsense that comes to their attention. This is a sad state of affairs, but it requires that much of the nonsense simply be ignored unless and until it reaches forums where it seems likely to be taken seriously by the unwary. We -- and we trust others -- will continue to feel free to come down hard on "analyses" like Cohen's where they seem most dangerous, without claiming (or feeling obliged to try) to catch every lapse at its first appearance. [Paul and Anne Ehrlich] Richard Carnes
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (07/20/86)
>Once again, please refer to "The Toxicity of Plutonium" and >"High-Level Radioactive Waste from Light-Water Reactors", both by >Bernard L. Cohen. They have various scenarios concerning purposeful >dispersal of both plutonium and radioactive wastes via various >dispersion methods, air, water, etc. The results indicate that the >threat is not that much more than from other common terrorist >materials. Continuing our survey of the scientific output of Bernard Cohen: The February 1979 *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* carried a critique by Professor Cohen of two articles which had appeared in a previous issue, one by Karl Z. Morgan on "Cancer and low level ionizing radiation" and one by J. Rotblat on "The risks for radiation workers" (Sept. 1978 *Bulletin*). Morgan is a professor in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Georgia Tech, a founder of the science of health physics, and was for about 30 years the director of the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has been chairman of the International Commission on Radiological Protection and the National Council on Radiation Protection. Here are excerpts from Morgan's response to Cohen's comments on his article: Bernard L. Cohen's comment is replete with errors and misrepresentation of fact. [Long discussion follows.] ... Finally, Cohen has marked me as one of "those dedicated to the destruction of nuclear energy." With this I do not agree. For the past 35 years I, as a health physicist, have devoted most of my professional life to the study of risks from exposure to ionizing radiation and of ways in which this risk can be made acceptably small in comparison to the expected benefits. I believe it is those Don Quixotes who choose every opportunity to underestimate the radiation risk and to discredit those who carry out epidemiology studies of populations exposed to radiation risks who are the strongest supporters of the anti-nuke movements.... Joseph Rotblat is emeritus professor of physics at the University of London, past president of the British Institute of Radiology and the British Hospital Physicists' Association, and was for many years the editor-in-chief of *Physics in Medicine and Biology*. Excerpts from his response to Cohen: My impression at reading Bernard L. Cohen's criticism of my article ... is that he did not bother to read my article carefully before putting pen to paper. Many of the points he raised are either answered in my article or are irrelevant.... ...Cohen's last point [is] that the cost of saving the lives of a few radiation workers is unjustified since it is so much higher than the cost of reducing other hazards. I think this shows his lack of understanding of the way society works. Society does not attach the same price tag to every activity. Often enormous sums are spent to combat a rare disease, while more prevalent diseases are neglected. I believe that this emphasizes the instinctive abhorrence of society to express the value of human life in terms of dollars or pounds sterling. Every human life is invaluable, and the fact that certain hazards, like crossing the street or smoking cigarettes, claim numerous lives is no justification for allowing another hazard to continue, if something can be done about it, even if it would result in a much smaller number of victims. All this brings to mind Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." The point of this exercise is not to prove that Cohen is wrong but to show that many of Cohen's claims are, to put it politely, controversial among his physicist colleagues and other scientists who are knowledgeable in the topics he discusses. Richard Carnes
mvs@meccts.UUCP (Michael V. Stein) (07/20/86)
In article <530@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: >Now let's consider physicist Bernard L. Cohen, whose statement that >"every time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a nuclear plant, >many hundreds of people are condemned to premature death" is >uncritically quoted by nuclear advocates on the net. Mr. Carnes, name one person who quoted that text. After naming that person, prove that they simply accepted it on faith. (Maybe my machine misses some news articles, but I never saw that quote used by anyone.) >Now let us see how Paul and Anne Ehrlich review his contribution to >*The Resourceful Earth*, an article on "The Hazards of Nuclear >Power": First let us take a closer look at Dr. Cohen. He recieved his doctoral degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1950, worked for eight years at Oak Ridge National Labs where he was in charge of cyclotron research and is now professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh. He was also past chairman of the American Physical Society, division of nuclear physics. Dr. Cohen has written numerous papers in the area of nuclear physics. I have already gone over the "unique qualifications" of Mr. Ehrlich in a different article and it is distasteful enough that I don't want to go into it again. > ...If Cohen had accurately represented his references on this point, > his conclusion would have been that the health risks from routine > operation of nuclear power, measured as loss of life expectancy in > the present generation, may well exceed the corresponding risks from > coal-produced air pollution. Fortunately you of course only left the conclusion here so it is impossible to directly prove or disprove Mr. Ehrlich's statements. But let us examine some of the more important research on the topic. The most authoritative report on coal usage that I know of, is "The Direct Use of Coal" written by the OTA of the U.S. government. (I believe that this work also includes the latest research from Brookhaven Naval Labs.) The calculations used for this report are quite meticulous and, for example, included correlations for every square kilometer of the U.S. Based on their research, this report estimated 48000 deaths from coal burning during the year 1975. (With higher coal burning now higher, the deaths of course are of course higher.) If you want to argue that the people killed by coal emissions are mainly older people or those with lung problems, and thus society isn't hurt as much by those people dieing, then please be explicit about your position. Considering other obvious long term disadvantages of coal, such as the possible links to acid rain, the environmental disadvantages from strip mining, the numerous deaths from coal mining, the almost impossible problem of coal waste disposal, and the deaths from transporting coal it is obvious we pay a serious price for coal. I have yet to see any statements that nuclear power has more serious health risks. > Cohen's treatment of the longer-range hazards of coal and nuclear > energy is of even lower quality. He offers a multiply fallacious > argument to the effect that uranium mining *reduces* cancer deaths in > the long run, an argument that was considered and dismissed in the > National Academy studies Cohen cites. As far as uranium mining reducing long run cancers, there is growing evidence for this view. One way of comparing toxic potential is to compute the volume of water in which the toxin must be diluted to bring it down to internationally accepted maximum permissible standards in drinking water. In this way you can compare the toxic potential of all toxins, whether they be radioactive, biological or chemical. K.D.B. Johnson, a British scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority calculated the toxic potential of a number of naturally occurring substances in this way. What he found was suprising, after appox 500 years nuclear wastes are less toxic then coal wastes and after about 5000 years are less toxic then the uranium ore they came from. A more obvious approach is to simply realize that uranium is poisonous and radioactive and will by itself get into the natural environment and water supply. By mining it, we are eliminating this chance and are preventing those deaths. The amount of lives saved probably isn't large. (I shall have to find Cohen's paper on that, it does sound interesting) What is far more important are the hundreds of lives saved every time a coal plant *isn't* put on line. > On the basis of the "estimates" Cohen reaches this ringing > conclusion: "Every time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a > nuclear plant, many hundreds of people are condemned to premature > death." The best research indicates that coal causes 48,000 premature deaths. If coal causes 48,000 premature deaths and nuclear power doesn't, then obviously every time a coal-burning plant is built instead of a nuclear plant, many hundreds of people are condemned to premature death. While Ehrlich may want to avoid this conclusion, I would hope that policy makers don't. >Cohen replied with an indignant letter to the *Bulletin* (Sept. >1985). The Ehrlichs responded: > > The opinion poll of which Cohen is so proud was intended to show that > the media have exaggerated the hazards of radiation, thereby > contributing to a degree of public opposition to nuclear power that > Cohen considers irrational. Cohen now protests that the poll was > "*not* about nuclear power" and implies that university-employed > analysts of radiation protection -- most of whose work relates to > nuclear energy and most of whose jobs would not exist in the absence > of a nuclear-energy industry -- are appropriate judges of the > public's degree of rationality on these matters. The journals that > refused to publish Cohen's poll apparently found it no more > illuminating than we did. Again we have the old technique that anyone associated with that great evil of radiation can not be trusted. Frankly I am pretty damn sick of this sort of baiting - as I said before, first show the reader why this entire field is lacking in scientific integrity. As I have shown before, there is hardly even a conflict of interest. As people have said, it is the simplistic thinking of some of the anti-nuke people that is worrisome. > As for the hazards of trace metals released in coal burning, Cohen's > reference on this point in his chapter was an unpublished manuscript > by himself. He now reveals that he has published his analysis in two > journals.... [T]he refereeing system of professional journals is so > badly overloaded that substantial numbers of erroneous and even > wholly incompetent papers get through. The magnitude of this problem > is such that capable scientists would be in danger of accomplishing > nothing else if they tried to correct all the nonsense that comes to > their attention. This is a sad state of affairs, but it requires > that much of the nonsense simply be ignored unless and until it > reaches forums where it seems likely to be taken seriously by the > unwary. We -- and we trust others -- will continue to feel free to > come down hard on "analyses" like Cohen's where they seem most > dangerous, without claiming (or feeling obliged to try) to catch > every lapse at its first appearance. [Paul and Anne Ehrlich] The fact that Ehrlich missed two articles in the scientific journals does not surpise me, at least. The fact that he then off-handlely dismisses the original research and the journal's internal review staff as incompetent, is not very surprising either considering the quality of the rest of Ehrlich's writing. Do I need to go on? If you want to question the integrity of a reputable scientist, let's see references to articles in the scientific non-ideologial journals. Now, the major reference to Dr. Cohen on the net has been his work in plutonium toxicity. This research you haven't addressed. Indeed, I believe that your disagreement on toxicity was based on a paper by John Gofman. I will take the case of Gofman up later. -- Michael V. Stein Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation - Technical Services UUCP ihnp4!dicome!meccts!mvs
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (07/22/86)
> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) > [quoting the Ehrlichs] > Responsible analyses of the numbers of deaths attributable to > coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation -- some of which Cohen > cited but apparently did not understand -- indicate that the range of > possibilities for both sources extends from one or two deaths per > plant-year to several tens of deaths per plant-year, depending on > mining practices, power-plant location, pollution-control technology, > and highly uncertain assumptions about dose-response relations and > effects (of both sources) extending millennia into the future. Right. Safety of burning coal or fissioning uranium is questionable, and, in reality, nobody knows the ultimate dangers of either path, though it seems on the surface that they are comparable in terms of predictable deaths. (Isn't that how you read this paragraph?) And yet, anti-nukes (in essence) use these facts to "prove" that nuclear power is too unsafe to use, and at the same time squawk when pro-nukes say that the same data shows that chemical power is too unsafe to use. Lunacy. -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw