!! spellx done
189  Atomic Risk Hard to Rate
     In Terms of Electrocution
     The Washington Post  January 10, 1970

     The most important biological discovery of the 1960s was the
awakening of everyman to the vulnerability of the environment, and
therefore of human health and survival, to the appetites of technology.
The most urgent business of the '70s must remain the building of
orderly communities among and within the nations; and then we must
learn how not to poison ourselves as a side-effect of economic
arrogance and scientific ignorance.

     Until now, the environment has been exploited as if it were a
free good; in fact, it is everybody else's property.  The reassertion
of the community's right is an inevasible test of the integrity of
free enterprise economics and democratic government.

     Wise policies for managing the environment depend on much more 
than good intentions and the ultimate dedication of civic power to the
common welfare.  They also require factual information on hazards and
benefits for an efficient and just location of costs and profits.

     Only rarely do we know the right questions to ask; one could
justify our entire investment in basic research as the only reliable
way to override our rigidified preconceptions.  And when we have 
identified major problems--for example, the health hazard of 
environmental radiation, or residual pesticides--we have rarely done the
applied research needed for reliable answers.  It is, of course, 
infinitely easier to design, build and test a machine or a food additive
for its primary function than it is to forecast how its proliferation  
might affect the human habitat.

     The first article of an environmental bill of rights must be to
shift the burden of risk for untried technologies away from a help-
less consumer public to their sponsors and profiters.  This is not a
vindictive or confiscatory proposal but a necessary ingredient of a
fair market where the cost of information about a product is high 
compared to its unit price.

     This principle has been established in law for food additives,
but for few other markets.  Besides direct regulatory law, however, we
also have possible recourse to liability for damages, compulsory 
insurance, tax incentives and sometimes simple civic conscience.

     In a recent article in Science magazine, Chauncey Starr, dean of
the UCLA School of Engineering, attempted to develop a calculus of
technological risks as an extension of conventional economic analysis.
Such studies are plagued by the "only poker game in town" syndrome:
shaky data and contrived models maybe pursued for lack of any better.
This has its place, but we had better not expect to win.

     For example Dr. Starr counts the facilities that are associated
in any way with conventional electric power to be four deaths per year
per million-kilowatt power station.  On the assumption that this death
index represents a pragmatic, social balancing of the costs and benefits
of electric power, it is used as a criterion for the risk analysis
of nuclear power plant operation.

     Power plant catastrophes which might disperse radiation are
postulated to cause human damage counted as 10 lethal cancers per 
million.  A plant need then run for 2 1/2 years to satisfy the death
index, and the limiting factor would therefore be the risk to the
capital invested in the plant.  (This would have to reach a calculated
useful life of at least 30 years.)

     It would, I hope, be unfair to take this hypothetical argument as
the reasoned posture of nuclear safety analysis, and I will respond
only in equally hypothetical terms.  Above all, these are the wrong
questions for risk analysis.  If capital investment would tolerate a
catastrophe every 30 years, my own anxieties must revert to the
effects of population exposure to radiation.

     It costs us dearly to be as unsure as we are whether the fallout
could cause five or 500 cancers.  Furthermore, the analysis totally
ignores other health effects, including fetal injury and gene mutation.
Risk analysis should be looking for possible trouble; we dare not
confide our futures to irrepressible or even tempered optimists.

     The market where risks are balanced is also very different for
the two cases.  In my use of conventional electric power, I happily
pay an extra premium for safe wiring, care of appliances, educating 
myself and my family and other ways of reducing the personal risk of
fire or electrocution below the average.

     The marginal costs of that safety effort are the measure of the
risk market, which is relatively open and fair for conventional 
electricity.  The comparable costs are perhaps not quite infinite for my
personal quest for nuclear safety, but I am not sure where I could
emigrate. 

     Is there a fair chess game in town?
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