🚀 go-pugleaf

Russell Harrison (stain@earthling.net) (stain@earthling.net) wrote: <<33FFD814.501A@earthling.net>> in concordia.general on Sat, 23 Aug 1997 23:43:33 -0700
: Forwarded from QPIRG - Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
: [This came to me today. Pass the following along to everyone you know. We
: have to oppose this while we can. The story is also in the 1997 Project
: Censored annual review of least covered stories in the media.]
: 
: "Despite enormous danger, huge expense, and a clear alternative-solar
: power the US government is pushing ahead with the deployment of nuclear
: technology in space. In October 1997, NASA plans to launch the Cassini
: probe to Saturn. Carrying 72.3 pounds of plutonium-238 fuel -- the

A clear solar power alternative? If NASA wishes to *ever* launch a 
mission such as Cassini, it must launch the way it is configured, 
otherwise, it will never be launched because the US Congress does not 
provide enough money to do squat, and the Space Station at the same time.

The "solar power alternative" is still developmental, and if used, would 
be prohibitively expensive as of right now. And it would delay the 
program long enough to be cancelled. This is a program that should have 
been launched and been on its way years ago.

RTGs are not nuclear reactors, they will not meltdown. True you can crack 
the containment vessels, and spew out the plutonium, but the amount in 
the probe is miniscule compared to the amount already lost at sea in 
various nuclear subs, that is already leaking.

: largest amount of plutonium ever used in space, the probe will sit atop a
: Lockheed Martin-built Titan IV rocket. This same kind of rocket has 
: undergone a series of mishaps including a 1993 explosion in California 
: soon after takeoff which destroyed a $1 billion spy satellite system 
: and sent its fragments falling into the Pacific Ocean.  Space News, the 
: space industry trade newspaper, reported that "the high risk and cost 
: of the Cassini mission to Saturn troubled NASA Administrator Daniel 
: Goldin so much that he would cancel the program if it were not so 
: important to planetary science." 

High Risk - it is a single mission, does not have a backup craft to go 
with it. (ie Voyagers 1 and 2). NASA put all its eggs in one basket.
Reinterpreting the meaning doesn't help anyone, except fascists.
High Cost - this is the last high cost mission, and can do some science 
that it would take years to launch as low cost missions, and they've 
spend oodles on it already. Plus, it is a highly ground crew intensive 
mission, like Gallileo (which also has RTGs, and which was also protested 
by anti-nuclear activists, some of whom were stupid enough to think that 
the RTG is a fission reactor)

: But it is not science alone that is driving the project or causing
: scientists, politicians, and the military to discount the risks. NASA 
: Chief Scientist Frances Cordova acknowledges that the Titan IV "does 
: not have a 100 percent success rate" and admits that using it for 
: Cassini "is truly putting all your eggs in one basket, your 18 
: instruments on one firecracker." She says, "We can't fail with that 
: mission. It would be very, very, damaging for the agency."

No rocket has had a 100% success rate.

Putting your eggs into one basket:
	Mars Observer (Observer program, cancelled, supposed to be a low 
cost follow-up program, using weather sats. High cost because only one 
was produced, and using weather sats was a bad idea, leading to the loss 
of the sole example)
	Galileo - followup program, designed in the 70's, not low cost
	Cassini - in the same vein as Galileo
	Compton's Gamma Ray Observatory (Great Observatories program, 
program was cut back due to expense and the HST fiasco)
	Hubble Space Telescope (Great Observatories program)

	Mariner MarkII - program was cancelled before a single mission.
Cassini was revamped to make it cheaper, and uses alot of the Mariner 
MarkII hardware. Program was designed to be a "lowcost" follow-up 
mission, and to be less intensive and a further Observer follow-up

: To say nothing of the Earth and the life on it if something goes wrong. 
: Plutonium has long been described by scientists as the most toxic
: substance known. It is "so toxic," says Dr.  Helen Caldicott, founder of
: Physicians for Social Responsibility, "that less than one millionth of a
: gram is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could
: hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." (emphasis
: added). 

Yes, and we have much more than that floating around in the environment 
already. It need be uniformly distributed, which it will never be.
Most likely scenario will be a small region of ocean that is contaminated.

Remember they did open air nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll, using 
plutonium cored hydrogen bombs. Not all the plutonium was used up in the 
explosion.

: In addition to the specter of radioactivity spread by an accident on
: launch, another, potentially more lethal, scenario is causing concern.
: Because Cassini does not have the propulsion power to get directly from
: Earth to Saturn, NASA plans a "slingshot maneuver" in which the probe will
: circle Venus twice and hurtle back at Earth. It will then buzz the Earth
: in August 1999 at 42,300 miles per hour just 312 miles above the surface.

Not really a concern. If it does disintegrate over the Earth, it will 
almost inevitably fly back out into space. 

: After whipping around Earth and using its gravity, Cassini would then have
: the velocity, says NASA, to reach Saturn. But during that Earth fly-by, if
: Cassini comes in too close, it could burn up in the 75 mile-high
: atmosphere and disperse plutonium across the planet.  Dr. Michio Kaku,
: professor of nuclear pLysics at the City University of New York, explains
: the catastrophic consequence of such a fly-by accident: 
: 
: If there is a small misfire [of Cassini's] rocket system, it will mean
: that [it] will penetrate into the Earth's atmosphere and the sheer
: friction will begin to wipe out the heat shield and it will, like a
: meteor, flame into the Earth's atmosphere ... This thing, coming into the
: Earth's atmosphere, will vaporize, release the payload and then particles
: of plutonium dioxide will begin to rain down on populated areas, if that
: is where the system is going to be hitting. [Pulverized plutonium dust]
: will rain down on people's hair, people's clothing, get into people's
: bodies. And because it is not water soluble, there is a very good chance
: that it could be inhaled and stay within the body causing cancer over a
: number of decades. 
:
: Indeed, NASA says in its First Environmental Impact Statement for the
: Cassini Mission, that if an "inadvertent reentry occurred" during the
: fly-by, approximately five billion of the seven to eight billion people on
: Earth, "could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure."
: (emphasis added).  (...) 

That isn't a very informative quote. 

: Starting in 1961, General Electric's RTGs were put into use for space
: satellites until a 1964 accident in which a SNAP-9A (Systems for Nuclear
: Auxiliary Power) fell to earth burning up in the atmosphere. According to
: a 1989 report by European nuclear agencies, the satellites 2.1 pounds of
: plutonium-238 "vaporized" and "dispersed widely." After conducting a
: worldwide sampling, scientists found "SNAP-9A debris to be present at all
: continents and all latitudes." Dr. John Gofman, professor emeritus of
: medical physics at the Unversity of California at Berkeley, an M.D. and
: Ph.D. and a codiscoverer of isotopes of plutonium and uranium as a member
: of the Manhattan Project, has long attributed an increased rate of lung
: cancer to the SNAP-9A incident." 

Gee, didn't the Soviets put up a plutonium powered fission reactor? And 
didn't this satellite crash into the Canadian Arctic? I wonder if that 
had an effect.

: We must mobilize to prevent the nuclearization of space, and the possible
: release of so toxic a substance, condemning us to a lingering, painful
: death. Unless we act directly to prevent this launch, it will occur (and
: will set the precedent for further launches of plutonium into space,
: increasing the likelihood that an accident will occur). 

No, we should use safer launch technologies. Nuclearization of space is 
not a concern. Infact that would be the only reasonable way to power oh 
say a Pluto Probe, for any medium scale mission.

Space is about the safest place to use nuclear technology.

: Note: two of the three major networks are OWNED by nuclear industry firms,
: General Electric and Westinghouse, so you won't see the above story on
: these networks, because it would (rightly) raise public fears about
: nuclear power. 

Wrongly.
It would wrongly raise fears, because this is about a space-probe and not 
your local power station.

: ACT NOW!  Contact your "representatives" and tell them you oppose the use
: of plutonium fuel on satellites, and urge the use of clean, safe
: alternatives like solar power instead. Urge them to oppose the October
: launch of the Cassini Mission, and push for action to prevent the
: nuclearization of space. 

ACT NOW! Form an armed mob, and shoot people, just like Anti-Abortionists!

Solar Power isn't a viable alternative for a mission that is launched in 
this decade that has the power requirments of Cassini, at Saturn.

: -------------------------------------------------------------------------
: research                       education                          
: action
: Q u e b e c   P u b l i c   I n t e r e s t   R e s e a r c h   G r o u p
:                         at Concordia University
: ------------------  http://alcor.concordia.ca/~qpirg/

Research? This doesn't sound like research, it sounds entirely different.