"atomic power plants kill people in large numbers"

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1289


Harvey Wasserman: The genius doctor who diagnosed nuke power's deadly disease


The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger.

One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.

At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.

-snip-

Yet his career suffered from an inconvenient truth: when he discovered that atomic power plants kill people in large numbers, he refused to shut up about it.

-snip-

When their POISONED POWER detailed the killing potential of atomic energy, Gofman and Tamplin were attacked mercilessly by an industry with immense investments to protect. The experience showed that no matter how impeccable their credentials, and no matter how thorough their research, any scientists whose findings might indicate problems with atomic power would be automatically "discredited" by industry flacks to who did no comparable research.

-snip-

"When we're talking about a mass of a hundred tons or so of material, melting 5,000 degrees Farenheit, with water around, with hydrogen being generated and burning explosively, melting through concrete into soil, when someone tells me that we're sure it isn't going to go far away, I say that I've heard various forms of insanity, but hardly this form.

-snip-

After fifty years of proven failure, the nuke power industry is demanding still more taxpayer handouts to create still more of this waste.

The great and good Dr. John W. Gofman warned us all against this insanity. His words and spirit remain at the core of what must be done to save this planet.
--------------------------

the nuke barons are murderers


not only that:
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In addition to being a world-class nuclear chemist, Dr. John William Gofman was one of history's most important heart specialists. His pioneer research helped define our modern understanding about cholesterol, distinguishing "good" fatty acids from bad. Gofman's astonishing medical discoveries remain at the core of today's common wisdom about diet and heart disease.
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in Washington State. My mother for several years, my father for his entire career ...1949 to retirement, with GE. Mom has had 4 separate kinds of cancer. Colon cancer, surgically cured, lymphoma, in remission with chemotherapy, kidney cancer, surgically cured, and skin cancer. My father had cancer of the esophagus, had surgery and got a post surgery infection. He now has no esophagus and tube feeds. (He can eat recreational-ly, and spit it out.) My brother had cancer in a lymph node in his cheek when he was 11 he died of leukemia when he was 57 years old, 4 years ago. It was very difficult for my sister and I to convince them to apply for compensation, in the DOWN-WINDER studies.

My parents were paid a lot of money for their exposures, nearly a half a million dollars.

I was in utero when they did some of the big iodine releases in the 1949 and 1950. So far at 57, I have no cancer. (I also have no heath insurance, so I stay away from Doctors)


I will never believe in safe nuclear power. I think Hanford still makes weapons grade plutonium. Lots of new construction going on in the Tri Cities, Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. They must be very busy out at Hanford. My nephew works there and so does my brother-in-law. I worry about all the workers there.

I worked out there for a couple weeks when I was 22 and it is like the TWILIGHT ZONE. SCARY!

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein,


K and R

He was gung-ho when he got the job (he was just off the Alaska Pipeline) but when he quit 2 yrs later he'd seen enough. He's been very anti-nuke anything ever since.

What the hell? I get 5 times the radiation watching the moon at night as I do from all nuclear bomb testing worldwide for a week.

I have to say that you're full of it. Don't believe me? Go get your own Geiger counter and check it for yourself. I did so too many times on perimeter patrols, where we routinely check and see that we're not emitting too much, or over the legal limit.

And that's off of a little ol' ten megawatt research reactor. The bigger ones put off even more, which is one reason why big power plants have large swathes of empty ground around them.

In addition there is more and more evidence of the danger and damage caused by low level, continous exposure. All sorts of fun cancers and health problems.

Furthermore there is the problem of fallout, that fine hot dust that is released from plants, drifts in the atmosphere, settles in the ground, only to be taken up by plants, farm animals, etc up the food chain. Wisconsin is still suffering problems in their dairy cattle due to the nuclear testing fallout of the fifties. The fallout from nuclear plants is the same problem, just on a longer scale. Rather than leaving our children the joys of nuclear milk, instead we're leaving it for our great grand children and their children. Real responsibility for future generations there eh?:eyes:

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That's about 1 xray a year.

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The nuclear industry can't survive without US taxpayer subsidy --

Additionally, one reactor can threaten a wide area if there is a problem -- think CHERNOBYL --
and evacuation of even suburban areas now involves large populations -- and cars.

I don't think we have anything even fit to be called an evacuation plan for Indian Point in NY --

There is nothing resembling Chernobyl in this country. That reactor design was flawed in many ways, most especially in its lack of containment--something US reactors have plenty of.

Kinda odd, isn't it --

When they had Indian Point as a target -- ???

Unfortuneately, many of the fission product gasses decay to particulate and especially Cesium and Ribidium which are chemically identically to Calcium, therefore were a cow to graze on grass with Cs or Rb fallout on the grass, it would injest it, then pass it on thru its milk, leading to potential bone cancers in children (large Calcium uptakers) drinking milk during their growing years.

Commercial reactors are contained multiple times: first the fuel rods are clad in rupture-proof metal casings, then the fuel rods already clad are held in pressure vessels in water. Then the reactor building itself is in a massive atmospheric cement containment building.

The radiation given off while a reactor is neglible to the operators and therefore, using the fact that distance is a square function for shielding, that is 3 feet away from a source gives one 1/9 from a distance of one foot, would not be measurable to the public at all.

The main source of an operating PWR is "crud" buildup in the bottom of the steam generators -- small pieces of metal that get irradiated; and that of a BWR is the N present in air gaining an additional neurtron and then decaying with a high energy Gamma. This is solved by having the steam pipes have a long circuitious route from the reactor to the turbines in a BWR and for a PWR, the steam generator chemistry keeps that to a minimum and the area around the generators, there is lead shielding.

No one enters the reactor compartment while it is operating. For any reason. No one.

I find it odd that this post is giving measurements in mR rather than mREM. R is not really used for human measurements, but REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man) is to measure whole body dosage. One could have a tremendous R source and it all be Alpha radiation, in which case, a piece of paper is adequate shielding as the highly charged nature of the double plus of an alpha is absorbed by all the free electrons around the source. R is a rather odd choice, therefore. Now gamma or neutron, that is another matter. Lead and gold are the best gamma blockers, and borated water, or just regular water, for neutrons.

I did not sit throught US Navy Nuclear Power School for 2 years and sit in the maneuvering room of the USS Kamehameha as reactor operator/shutdown reactor operator/engineering watch supervisor for nuttin' or work at a PBR and a BWR for 8 years later to pass the time.

they do not really represent known physics: they represent a crude attempt to model the (external) radiation exposure of a "standard man" with a specified and completely predetermined geometry.

Radiation is one of the best understood physical agents on the human body. We have a hundred years of data to draw accurate dosage curves. Unlike your imaginary "line to infinity," rems are a well-established part of health physics.

Good to see another Nutmegger here on DU.

Check out the CT board when you get a chance. Maybe you can breathe some new life into it lol.

Gofman claimed that as much as one part in a thousand of plutonium escapes power plants as respirable dust, but it has been repeatedly shown that his numbers are on the order of 100,000 times too high. (Cohen, 1983.)

His was junk science if there has ever BEEN junk science.

nt

:eyes:

Those who are smart enough to know better but are for whatever reason fueled by an anti-nuclear agenda have scared generations of Americans and made it impossible to build new nuclear plants, thus necessitating coal plants that have killed far more than fissile atoms ever have.

So "fruitloop" is rather mild for what these people actually are: complicit in the deaths of thousands of people.

On one hand, I'm right. On the other, your experience and working knowledge of "nothing of substance" makes me wonder about what you say.

No, I'm still right.

His numbers bare no resemblence to reality or to other work in the field, so he was either waaaay off the deep end, or deliberately putting out incorrect information. Or he's so arrogant that he could never admit the large math mistake he made, lest people never pay attention to him again.

Of the three, fruitloop is the most charitable.

Birth: September 21, 1918 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Education:

* Grade and high school in Cleveland. A.B. in Chemistry from Oberlin College, 1939.
* Ph.D. in Nuclear/Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, 1943. Dissertation: Discovery of Pa-232, U-232, Pa-233, and U-233. Proof of the slow and fast neutron fissionability of U-233. Discovery of the 4n + 1 radioactive series.
* M.D. from the School of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, 1946. Internship in internal medicine at the University of California Hospital, San Francisco, 1946-1947.

Positions:

* Academic appointment in 1947 in the Division of Medical Physics, Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley. Advancement in 1954 to the full professorship, a position held to the present time, with shift to Emeritus status in December, 1973. Under recent University reorganization, the affiliation is now the Division of Biochemistry, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.
* Concurrent appointment since 1947 as either Instructor or Lecturer in Medicine in the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.

Additional appointments held:

* Associate Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1963-1968. Resigned this post to gain more time for research and teaching. Remained as Research Associate at Livermore through February, 1973.
* Founder and first Director of the Biomedical Research Division of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, 1963-1964. This work was done at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission.
* Member, Advisory Board for NERVA (Nuclear Engine Rocket Vehicle Application), approximately 1963-1966. Member of the Reactor Safeguard Committees University of California, Berkeley, approximately 1955-1960.
* Group Co-Leader of the Plutonium Project (for the Manhattan Project) at the University of California, Berkeley, 1941-1943. This work included meetings at Chicago and Oak Ridge to exchange information and to help DuPont engineers prepare for the reprocessing operations at Hanford, Washington.
* Physician in Radioisotope Therapy, Donner Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, 1947-1951.
* Medical Director, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (Livermore), 1954-1957.
* Medical consultant to the Aerojet-General Nucleonics Corporation, with special emphasis on the hazards of ionizing radiation, for approximately eight years during the 1960s.
* Consultant to the Research Division of the Lederle Laboratories, American Cyanamid, 1952-1955.
* Consultant to the Research Division of Riker Laboratories, approximately 1962-1966.
* Scientific consultant to Vida Medical Systems, 197O-1974; co-invented the VIDA heart monitor, a pocket-worn computer to detect and announce the occurrence of serious cardiac arrhythmias; invented a skin cardiographic electrode subsequently used widely throughout the USA.
* Chairman of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, 1971 to the present; pro-bono work; no book-royalties or compensation of any type has ever bean accepted.

Patents:

* # 3,123,535 (Glenn T. Seaborg, John W. Gofman, Raymond W. Stoughton): The slow and fast neutron fissionability of uranium-233, with its application to production of nuclear power or nuclear weapons.
* # 2,671,251 (John W. Gofman, Robert E. Connick, Arthur C. Wahl): The sodium uranyl acetate process for the separation of plutonium in irradiated fuel from uranium and fission products.
* # 2,912,302 (Robert E. Connick, John W. Gofman, George C. Pimentel): The columbium oxide process for the separation of plutonium in irradiated fuel from uranium and fission products.

Earlier honors and awards:

* Gold-Headed Cane Award, University of California Medical School, 1946, presented to the graduating senior who most fully personifies the qualities of a "true physician."
* Modern Medicine Award, 1954, for outstanding contributions to heart disease research.
* The Lyman Duff Lectureship Award of the American Heart Association in 1965, for research in atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease; lecture published in 1966 as "Ischemic Heart Disease, Atherosclerosis, and Longevity," in Circulation 34: 679-697.
* The Stouffer Prize (shared) 1972, for outstanding contributions to research in arterioslerosis.
* American College of Cardiology, 1974; selection as one of twenty-five leading researchers in cardiology of the past quarter-century.
* University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library, 1988; announcement of the "Gofman Papers" established in the History of Science and Technology Special Collection (October 1988, Bancroftiana, No. 97: 10-11).

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/JWGcv.html

of scientists in this field? He's WRONG. I don't give a shit where he worked, his conclusions have been demonstrably proven FALSE and his work has been PANNED for decades by people who know better.

He made unforgivable errors, and you've done nothing to show otherwise. Oh, and go "deal with" the numbers you requested re coal plants.

Nobody innumerate was going to get a MD and a PhD in nuclear chemistry from Berkeley

dig up people with similar letters behind their name who have made fools of themselves? I'm sure I can find some wingnut with a PhD. Or will you accept that a string of credentials does not automatically make what one says true?

Because Gofman has, in FACT, made huge mistakes in calculations.

with their deadly, global warming inducing, lung clogging, mine collapsing, highly radioactive waste.

What a load of utter bullshit. I'm proud to be yet another naysayer.

With no problems whatsoever (at least to the scope Gofman's talking about)

We're planning on building a new one near Peace River.

coal-fired power plants and/or the ashes removed from them?

More radiation is released by coal-fired plants than has ever been released by Nuclear plants. People would be subject to less radiation, not more, if we closed down all coal-fired plants and replaced them with new technology nuclear plants.

All of our nuke plants are old technology. We haven't built any new ones for years. Gofman's analysis is junk science.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

"According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton. This figure can be used to calculate the average expected radioactivity release from coal combustion. For 1982 the total release of radioactivity from 154 typical coal plants in the United States was, therefore, 2,630,230 millicuries.

Thus, by combining U.S. coal combustion from 1937 (440 million tons) through 1987 (661 million tons) with an estimated total in the year 2040 (2516 million tons), the total expected U.S. radioactivity release to the environment by 2040 can be determined. That total comes from the expected combustion of 111,716 million tons of coal with the release of 477,027,320 millicuries in the United States. Global releases of radioactivity from the predicted combustion of 637,409 million tons of coal would be 2,721,736,430 millicuries.

For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants."

Here's the NRC link on H3.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/faqs.html

dupe

That is, 2,721,736 divided by 103

It is not at all clear from your link where that Tritium goes and how people might come into contact with it, because it lacks dosage figures. Curies are not as helpful in such a debate as rems.

one hundred year global averages as a basis for comparison is just silly, because there was no substantial nuclear industry until about forty-five years ago. Third: if you want the release data for gaseous vs liquid effluent releases, they are available via the link I already provided.

It is hardly the fault of the nuclear industry that it is younger, and there is no reason not to use the averages of the coal industry for as long as we have access to them.

And thanks for the attempted science lesson, but when it comes to human EXPOSURE; when it comes to human health, rems are far, far more helpful than raw numbers of curies. When you're talking about bodies and the effect of radiation on them, you're talking dosages in rems. Deal with it.

And no, I don't see the different numbers I'm talking about at the link you provided.

Look again.

by Nuclear plants." I addressed this bullshit claim.

JUST WANTED TO REPEAT THAT SO EVERYONE SEES IT --

For one thing, if you look at your link for 2003 Tritium releases, you'll see that it includes both normal AND ABNORMAL releases for that year. And clearly there ARE abnormal releases that drag up the numbers. The max released by one reporting plant is far above the average (which it also dragged up).

I WAS UNABLE TO FIND ANY OTHER YEAR TO RELATE IT TOO, making it statistically worthless, compared to the decades of numbers we have from coal plants to make a fair average.

Essentially, you have compared an unfair average to a fair one and touting it like it means something. Your link is useless.

For another thing, it is misleading because it unfairly equates the dangers of Tritium, a weak beta-emitter with a half life of about 12 years--to the thorium, uranium etc. gamma-emitters.

You need only look at the acceptable levels of releases for the different radioisotopes to see that they do NOT pose an equal threat.

And lastly, again, the method you've chosen does not address the actual dosage posed to people. Coal remains by far the more dangerous radiation emitter.

But truth isn't easily stuffed into subject line propaganda like you favour, so I guess you will continue to deny the danger coal poses.

Oh, yeah, there's a problem:eyes:

Once the waste, or spent fuel, whatever you want to call it is removed from the reactor it's initially stored in onsite coolwater tanks. After a year or two, the waste is moved to dry cooled aboveground storage facilities for a few years after. After that the waste is eventually sealed and moved to underground storage facilities. In Canada there are half a dozen of these facilities in extremely rural areas. The only chance of contamination to these facilities would be an outside attack of some sort.

The facts still show that nuclear power is far more safer, far more clearer, and far more effective in creating power than coal. The problem for the industry for the most part is the hysteria created by the 3 mile Island and Chernobyl disasters. The first, in the US, was old nuclear technology with spotty safety analysis. The second, in the Ukraine (formerly the USSR) was perhaps the worst mismanagement of any power source in the history of mankind using out of date technology and horrid safety measures. Most people don't understand that Chernobyl blew up when they were TESTING how to safely contain a reactor. They didn't even have proper safety protocols when they built it.

Handing it off to future generations. Now that's really responsible.

We're talking about material that is going to be dangerous not just for years or decades, but for eons, literally. Oh, and what are they putting all of this waste in(and by the by, not all nuclear waste is spent fuel. In fact the vast bulk of nuclear waste is made up of paper swipes, activated metal bric a brac, oh, and the decommisioned reactor itself). The vast majority of it is going into large steel drums, which will corrode, especially underground. Which releases the nuclear waste, which leeches into the soil and groundwater, which means that your great grandchild will have nice irradiated water to drink.

Nuclear isn't the answer friend, anymore than coal is. It is time to go beyond that binary thinking and instead start using options like wind and solar. These two technologies are indeed perfectly capable of supplying all of our electrical needs, especially wind. Anything else is not just foolish, but downright dangerous.

Ok, you're saying that this waste is being "handed off" for future generations to "deal with." In my view, its already been dealt with, buried deep in the earth with no chance of leakage and strict safety measures. No one is going to have to "deal with it". It's already been dealt with. How long will we keep adding to the amount stored? Probably another 20-40 years until new technologies come about. Sadly, I don't think they're gonna be wind based or solar. Where you gonna put a couple hundred thousand windmills to power say, New York? And who wants to fill their vacant land up with them? Same goes for solar panels, ya, its great to pay to put 2-3 up on your home but do you realize the cost to install them in the millions and eliminate our current power plants? Not to mention they're not as viable in northern regions.

So, I'm faced with 2 options.

Dump tens of thousands of tons of pollutants int the air every year via coal and oil plants or bury a fraction of tons in the ground never to be seen again.

You seem to be operating on a premise whose technological base is a couple of decades old. I can put up a single windmill in my back forty and provide power for one hundred of my neighbors. A 1991 DOE report found that there is enough harvestable wind energy in Texas, Kansas and North Dakota alone to power the entire US electrical system through the year 2030, factoring in growth(and this was with '91 tech remember).

Germany is going heavily into wind, and wind is the fastest growing energy source in the world. With some modification of our electrical grids, we could indeed supply all of our electrical needs with wind and solar. The one thing is that this will have to be a much more decentralized form of energy production, a notion that threatens traditional electrical providers. What good is it to have a nuke plant, or coal plant, if your customers all have thin film solar tiles on their roofs?

It is imperative that we have to step outside the current paradigm and get our power in new ways. Wind and solar are the answer, but we have to get beyond our current centralized, corporate controlled model.

As far as wastes being buried deep enough, gee, are they buried beneath the water table? No, I didn't think so. That is where the problem arises friend, sooner or later that shit will get into the water table and lots of people in the future will be fucked. As far as your "no chance" statement goes, it is laughable. I know how that waste is packaged, I've packed some of it myself, and it is all in containers that will, with time, degrade. There's no such thing as forever, but damn, nuclear waste half lives come damn close, while in comparison, the containers don't.

In case you didn't see post #18, Germany is preparing to import huge amounts of coal from South Africa for their 26 new coal-fired plants they're building, to replace nuclear reactors they are phasing out.

Or would you suggest the German government didn't do their research either?

This guy lived to be 88? How can that be if what he says is true?

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Manhattan Project work at the same time, worked for the AEC and Lawrence Livermore, then started a full research career in cardiology during which he was tenured in the UC system ...

;)

;)

through my copy of that book and checked the arithmetic myself about fifteen years ago

that no one has been able to prove.

Second, as it isn't in front of me, you'll have to remind me if that's the one where he miscalculates the surface area of the human bronchi and then furthermore ridiculously overstates the amount of time dust stays in them in order to (using the unprovable linear hypothesis) assume rates of cancer that, even if he were correct (about linear risk), would be orders of magnitude too high.

Of course there are many reasons for doubting the linear hypothesis, so in truth his sloppy math doesn't really change matters.

Otherwise it's just fear-mongering speculation. Then again, that's all your side really has, isn't it?

Or his ethics.

You keep telling yourself that, whilst people CONTINUE to die. Oh, where is my math wrong btw?

After WWII, scientists and government officials wanted to continue using nuclear energy for 'peace' processes. Building nuclear power plants was thought to be a good idea. It turned out it wasn't because power plants were not cost effective. It cost too much to build and maintain them, thereby negating any cost saving advantage.

Instead of promoting a 60 year old idea that doesn't work, we need new ideas that don't potentially wipe out huge swaths of humanity in case of a 'ooops'.

The reality is that in the end, nuclear is far more clearer, far safer than the other current major power supply options. Many advocate wind based, which I dont mind much, the problem is visual... many people dont want thousands of giant windmills in their backyard.

I first read about this "pebble bed" technology more than a decade ago.



Yes, meltdown proof

Including pebble beds. In fact more and more evidence is coming out that they are just as dangerous, if not more so, than normal reactors. <http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=273&fArticleId=267566>

Then there is always the big problem that accompanies any reactor, human error. A human error can cause problems with any reactor, including pebble beds.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x111362

Germany is committing itself to a nuclear phase-out of it's reactors. Pro-nuclear posters on the E/E board predicted that would only result in more CO2 being released. Anti-nuclear posters on the E/E responded that Germany would replace their reactors with renewable power sources.

Germany is building 26 new coal-fired plants. I wonder how many people those will kill once they start pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/thyd/ne161/ncabreza/sources.html

A typical 1000-megawatt coal-burning plant emits 100,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, 75,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5000 tons of fly ash into the environment per year while a typical 1000-megawatt oil-burning plant emits about 16,000 tons of sulphur dioxide and 20,000 tons of nitrogen oxides. These emissions account for damaging human lungs, the formation of acid precipitation that defaces monuments and buildings and kills the life in countless lakes. However, the problems don't stop here. These type of plants also emit great quantities of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide tends to trap heat on the earth's surface and thus in sufficient concentrations, could create the dreaded greenhouse effect. High enough concentrations could also increase global temperatures which could affect the distribution of rainfall and could create deserts of much of the Northern Hemisphere, causing irreversible catastrophes of unparalleled magnitude, affecting all of mankind.

technically savvy as our naysayers.

Coal-fired plants release more radiation than nuclear reactors, yet we have hundreds of coal-fired plants in this country.

Like I've pointed out several times already in this thread, countries like Germany are finding out just how hard it is to get rid of BOTH nuclear and coal. Germany, despite high levels of investment in renewables, is still building coal plants to replace it's nuclear plants. Wind turbines and solar panels haven't helped them kick the coal habit anymore than they helped them kick the nuclear habit.

Fairies and leprechauns running on tiny exercises wheels powering turbines ;)

Reagan pulled it out. How long ago was that?

So, as long as we have a few private families controlling our natural resources, we are going to have decisions made not to benefit the many, but to benefit the few.

See: "Who Killed The Electric Car?" and you'll have some idea of the resistance even from allies of those who control OIL. Is GM working for it's own profit, or for the profit of the oil companies?
What is the nature of that unholy alliance?

Progress on the electric car could be immense if we stick with it.

Who knows where we could be with energy cells -- or any other creative idea re energy?
We haven't been trying -- and even more -- we've been deceived.

Germany is decades more advanced than the US in renewable energy production, yet they are building TWENTY SIX new coal-fired plants to replace their nuclear plants.

What Reagan did to the White House is immaterial to what is going on in Germany. Germany is a perfect real-life experiment to watch because it's hard to claim that their development of renewables has been stunted by US Republican/anti-environmental groups. Their environmental groups are powerful forces in their political landscape. However, they are still not able to replace either nuclear or coal with renewables like wind, hydro or solar. If Germany had succeeded and was able to generate enough electricity to replace not just their nuclear but also their coal-fired plants, I would be jumping with joy. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to do this.

These arguments in favor of nuclear energy over coal, as the lesser of two evils, is really dishonest, IMO.

The only way that nuclear power plants can operate is to have the government cover 100% of the operating company's liability should anything go really wrong. This is not a free market, this is a huge govt. subsidy. Only by factoring out this huge subsidy can you really see the economics of nuclear power plants. The choice between dirty coal and clean nuclear is a false dichotomy, since as you point out our govts. actual financial investments for R&D in renewable resources are undermined by the oil and coal industries at every turn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction_zone

One way express elevator to the mantle.

... During World War II, while still a graduate student at Berkeley, Gofman isolated the first usable quantities of Plutonium-239, for use in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bombs that were used at the end of the war.

By 1978 (when he had to submit an affidavit in a nuclear case) he had published over 150 scientific papers on the following topics: ... (5) The relationship of human chromosomes to cancer; (6) The biological and medical effects of ionizing radiation, with particular reference to cancer, leukemia, and genetic diseases; (7) The lung-cancer hazard of plutonium; (8) Problems associated with nuclear power production.

At the time his honors and awards included the Gold-headed Cane Award as a graduating senior from UC Med. School in 1946, the Modern Medicine Award in 1954 for outstanding contributions to heart disease research, the Lyman Duff Lectureship Award of the American Heart Association in 1965 for research in atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, the Stouffer Prize (shared) in 1972 for outstanding contributions to research in arteriosclerosis, and in 1974, the American College of Cardiology selection as one of 25 leading researchers in cardiology of the previous quarter century.

He also was Associate Director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from 1963 to 1969 and holds three patents. One is on the slow and fast neutron fissionability of Uranium-233, one is on the sodium uranyl acetate process for separation of plutonium from uranium and fission products from irradiated fuel, and one is on the columbium oxide process for the separation of plutonium from uranium and fission products from irradiated fuel ...

He was co-discoverer of Uranium 233 and the first of the three patents in his name, on the slow and fast neutron fissionability of Uranium 233, was described by former AEC chairman Glenn T. Seaborg as being worth in the neighborhood of "a quatrillion dollars" to the nuclear power industry ...

August 27 2007
Dr. John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry
My Favorite Scientists
By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN
http://www.counterpunch.org/hoffman08272007.html

Pure crap.

he decided it would be appropriate to learn something about nuclear science, and while pursuing his medical degree he simultaneously earned a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry at Berkeley, doing some work for the Manhattan Project in the course of obtaining the latter degree.

He subsequently used his medical knowledge and nuclear expertise for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Livermore lab.

This was long before the AEC was split and reorganized in the 1970s as our current Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which handles civilian reactor issues) and the Department of Energy (which handles weapons issues): the AEC's primary devotion was to the "national security" (or weapons) emphasis of the Atomic Energy Act, and the prevailing philosophy was that all human health issues were secondary to Cold War aims. The prevailing attitude towards the public may be gauged by the following excerpt from an interview with another early nuclear health scientist, Karl Z. Morgan:



So as Gofman became concerned about human health issues, the atomic establishment of his time pushed back hard. This did not prevent him from having a long and successful scientific career: afterwards, he became an expert on cardiology but retained an interest in radiation effects on health. I've read some of his material and consider it careful, interesting, and useful.

My parents worked at Hanford in Washington State. My mother for several years, my father for his entire career ...1949 to retirement, with GE. Mom has had 4 separate kinds of cancer. Colon cancer, surgically cured, lymphoma, in remission with chemotherapy, kidney cancer, surgically cured, and skin cancer. My father had cancer of the esophagus, had surgery and got a post surgery infection. He now has no esophagus and tube feeds. (He can eat recreational-ly, and spit it out.) My brother had cancer in a lymph node in his cheek when he was 11 he died of leukemia when he was 57 years old, 4 years ago. It was very difficult for my sister and I to convince them to apply for compensation, in the DOWN-WINDER studies.

My parents were paid a lot of money for their exposures, nearly a half a million dollars.

I was in utero when they did some of the big iodine releases in the 1949 and 1950. So far at 57, I have no cancer. (I also have no heath insurance, so I stay away from Doctors)


I will never believe in safe nuclear power. I think Hanford still makes weapons grade plutonium. Lots of new construction going on in the Tri Cities, Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. They must be very busy out at Hanford. My nephew works there and so does my brother-in-law. I worry about all the workers there.

I worked out there for a couple weeks when I was 22 and it is like the TWILIGHT ZONE. SCARY!

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein,

Yeah, no shit. Like:

1. 13 cases more than average over 5 years doesn't really mean a damn thing, especially when you try to tie it to TMI, the effects of which have been extensively studied.

2. They didn't even look at patterns NOT near nuclear plants. Are you bloody kidding me? "Cancer patterns for residents living beyond the 30-mi (48-km) radius from reactors would provide helpful information." Yeah, I'd say so!

3. They admit that most states studied did not keep cancer rates figures before the 1980's. Not only does this severely limit the data they have to work with, it raises questions such as: What were the rates before this? What else is in play besides nuclear plants?

"Nookuler reakters are safer than an afternoon nap."

You've attracted the skeptics trolls, now it'll take days to lure them back into their holding cells where they are normally satisfied bleating to each other and ganging up on the occasional FNG that wanders in.

REd ALERT !! Dangerous Topic !!! SkepticSquad mobilize now!
Misinform and roll out!

Here's one source for what the alternative does to people:

http://www.stopthecoalplant.org/facts/index.php

Here's TO:

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24498

Sierra Club:

http://texas.sierraclub.org/press/newsreleases/20070307.asp

It goes on and on, people.

As for me, I've wasted enough of my weekend on dishonest fear-mongerers. Just keep protesting nukes and ignoring the killers in your backyard.

Sid