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From: mvs@meccts.UUCP (Michael V. Stein)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Re: Nuclear power: Bernard Cohen, nuclear expert
Message-ID: <458@meccts.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jul-86 16:30:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: meccts.458
Posted: Sun Jul 20 16:30:55 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jul-86 06:37:28 EDT
References: <530@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: mvs@meccts.UUCP (Michael V. Stein)
Distribution: net
Organization: MECC Technical Services
Lines: 157
Keywords: coal vs. nuclear
Xref: watmath net.politics:17514 net.sci:1313

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

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