Te zot
voor woorden: CounterPunch (CP) komt met een artikel waarin bekend
wordt gemaakt dat de Mars Perseverance Rover, het nieuwste karretje op Mars,
plutonium heeft als energievoorziening…… De NASA stelt dat de
kans dat het fout gaat met deze energievoorziening, de meest
dodelijke van alle radioactieve stoffen, als een kans is van 1 op 960……. Gezien kansberekeningen voor rampen geeft dit cijfer aan dat de kans
groot is dat het misgaat en dan moet vooral niet vergeten worden dat
de NASA er het grootste belang bij heeft deze kansberekening naar het publiek toe zo hoog mogelijk
te houden (om onrust te voorkomen), anders gezegd: de kans dat er iet mis kan gaan moet nog
een heel stuk onder dat getal van 960 worden gezocht……

Karl
Grossman, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel stelt dat
de gokkers in Las Vegas heel blij zouden zijn, als hun kans om
iets te winnen 1 op 960 zou zijn. Bij loterijen is de kans
berekening op winst een oneindig aantal groter dan 1 op 960 en toch
zijn er mensen die deze winnen aldus Grossman, echter dat is m.i. een
manke vergelijking, immers de loterijen zijn er juist op gericht dat
de hoofdprijs wordt gewonnen, terwijl de NASA het karretje niet naar
Mars heeft gestuurd om te verongelukken tijdens het transport of tijdens werkzaamheden op die planeet…..

Naast
het feit dat het in feite schandalig is dat we vanaf de aarde
levensgevaarlijke zaken naar andere planeten transporteren of het heelal in sturen,
moet er juist rekening worden gehouden met wat er mis kan gaan op aarde, zo kan een lancering uitlopen op een catastrofe als de raket
ontploft na lancering……. Als dit misgaat zonder radioactieve stoffen
aan boord is e.e.a. nog te overzien, echter zou de raket zijn
ontploft die de huidige Mars Rover vervoerde, was de zaak wel
bijzonder gevaarlijk en ingewikkeld geworden, ga maar na wat
plutonium alleen al aanricht als een mens daarmee onbeschermd in
aanraking komt……. Het voorgaande geldt uiteraard ook voor de
natuur waar dergelijke levensgevaarlijke radioactieve stoffen terecht zouden zijn
gekomen……

In het artikel van CP worden een paar gevallen in herinnering gebracht waar het inderdaad fout ging met door kernenergie aangedreven satellieten enz. 

Het is
dan ook zaak dat men stopt met dergelijke gevaarlijke experimenten,
als men niet anders kan dan atoomenergie inzetten voor een
ruimteproject, zou daar ten allen tijde een verbod over uit moeten
worden gesproken, zoek maar naar alternatieven als zonne-energie en
als die niet toereikend zijn, wacht dan maar een paar jaar tot de
technologie zover is ontwikkeld dat men zonder kernenergie hetzelfde
kan bereiken!!!

February
23, 2021

Plutonium
in Space: What Are the Odds of a Catastrophe?

by Karl
Grossman

Photograph
Source: NASA – Public Domain

With all the media hoopla last week
about the Perseverance rover, going almost totally unreported was
that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of
all radioactive substances—and nowhere in media that NASA
projected 1-in-960 odds of the plutonium being released in an
accident on the mission.

“A ‘1-in-960 chance’ of a
deadly plutonium release is a real concern—gamblers in Las Vegas
would be happy with those odds,” says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of
the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (GNAWNPS).

Indeed, big-money lotteries have
odds far higher than 1-in-960 and routinely people win those
lotteries.

Further, NASA’s Supplementary
Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission
acknowledges that an “alternative” power source for Perseverance
could have been solar energy. Solar energy using photovoltaic panels
has been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers.

For an accident releasing plutonium
on the Perseverance launch—and 1 in 100 rockets undergo major
malfunctions on launch mostly by blowing up—NASA in its SEIS
described these impacts for the area around the Cape Kennedy under a
heading “Impacts of Radiological Releases on the Environment.”

It states: “In addition to the
potential human health consequences of launch accidents that could
result in a release of plutonium dioxide, environmental impacts could
also include contamination of natural vegetation, wetlands,
agricultural land, cultural, archaeological and historic sites, urban
areas, inland water, and the ocean, as well was impacts on wildlife.”

It adds: “In addition to the
potential direct costs of radiological surveys, monitoring, and
potential cleanup following an accident, there are potential
secondary societal costs associated with the decontamination and
mitigation activities due to launch area accidents. Those costs may
include: temporary or longer term relocation of residents; temporary
or longer term loss of employment; destruction or quarantine of
agricultural products, including citrus crops; land use restrictions;
restrictions or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects
and medical care.”

NASA was compelled to make
disclosures about the odds of an accident releasing plutonium,
alternatives to using nuclear power on the Perseverance and
consequences of a plutonium release under the National Environmental
Policy Act.

Its SEIS can be viewed online at
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/files/mep/Mars2020_Final_EIS.pdf

Meanwhile, the U.S. is now
producing large amounts of Plutonium-238, the plutonium isotope used
for space missions. The U.S. stopped producing Plutonium-238 in 1988,
and it began obtaining it from Russia, in recent years no longer
happening. A series of NASA space shots using Plutonium-238 are
planned for coming years.

Plutonium-238 is 280
times more radioactive than Plutonium-239, the plutonium isotope
used in atomic bombs and as a “trigger” in hydrogen bombs.

There are 10.6 pounds of
Plutonium-238 on Perseverance.

We might have dodged a plutonium
bullet on the Perseverance mission. The Atlas V rocket carrying it
was launched without blowing up. And the rocket didn’t fall back
from orbit with Perseverance and its Plutonium-238 disintegrating on
re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and plutonium dispersed.

But with NASA planning more space
missions involving nuclear power including developing nuclear-powered
rockets for trips to Mars and launching rockets carrying nuclear
reactors for placement on the Moon and Mars, space-based nuclear
Russian roulette is at hand.

The acknowledgement that “an
accident resulting in the release of plutonium dioxide from the MMRTG
[Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator] occurs with a
probability of 1 in 960” is made repeatedly in the SEIS.

The amount of electricity produced
by the MMRTG on Perseverance is miniscule—some 100 watts, similar
to a light bulb.

A solar alternative to the use of
plutonium on the mission is addressed at the start of the SEIS in a
“Description and Comparison of Alternatives” section.

First is “Alternative 1” which
proposes that the rover use a plutonium-fueled MMRTG “to
continually provide heat and electric power to the rover’s battery
so that the rover could operate and conduct scientific work on the
planet’s surface.”

That is followed by “Alternative
2” which states: “Under this alternative, NASA would discontinue
preparations for the Proposed Action (Alternative 1) and implement a
different power system for the Mars rover. The rover would use solar
power to operate instead of a MMRTG.”

The worst U.S. accident involving
the use of nuclear power in space came in 1964 when the U.S.
satellite Transit 5BN-3, powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium-fueled
radioisotope thermoelectric generator, failed to achieve orbit and
fell from the sky. It broke apart as it burned up in the atmosphere.
That accident was long linked to a spike in global lung cancer rates
where the plutonium was spread by Dr. John Gofman, an M.D. and Ph.
D., a professor of medical physics at the University of California at
Berkeley. NASA, after the SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary
Power) accident became a pioneer in developing solar photovoltaic
power. All U.S. satellites now are energized by solar power, as is
the International Space Station.

The worst accident involving
nuclear power in space in the Soviet/Russian space program occurred
in 1978 when the Cosmos 954 satellite with a nuclear reactor aboard
fell from orbit and spread radioactive debris over a 373-mile swath
from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake in Canada. There were 110 pounds
of highly-enriched uranium fuel on Cosmos 954.

I first began writing widely about
the use of nuclear power in space 35 years ago when I broke the story
in The Nation magazine
about how the next mission of the ill-fated shuttle Challenger was to
loft the Ulysses space probe fueled with 24.2 pounds of Plutonium-238
(to conduct orbits around the sun).

If the Challenger had blown up on
that mission, scheduled for May 1986, instead of blowing up on
January 28, 1986, and the plutonium released, it would not have been
six astronauts and teacher-in-space Chris McAuliffe dying but many
more people.

Pursuing the issue, I authored the
books The
Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet and
Weapons
in Space, and wrote
and presented the TV documentary Nukes
In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens and
other TV programs. And I have written many hundreds of articles.

The absence in media reporting on
the Perseverance Mars rover of the dangers involving the nuclear
material on it and the chances of that plutonium being dispersed is
not new.

In The
Wrong Stuff I include a
section on “The Space Con Job.”

I quote extensively from an article
published in the Columbia
Journalism Review after
the Challenger accident by William Boot, its former editor, titled
“NASA and the Spellbound Press.” He wrote: “Dazzled by the
space agency’s image of technological brilliance, space reporters
spared NASA thorough scrutiny that might have improved chances of
averting tragedy—through hard-hitting investigations drawing
Congress’s wandering attention to the issue of shuttle safety.”

He found “gullibility” in the
press. “The press,” he wrote, has been “infatuated by
man-in-space adventures.” He related that “U.S. journalists have
long had a love affair with the space program.” He said “many
space reporters appeared to regard themselves as participants, along
with NASA, in a great cosmic quest. Transcripts of NASA press
confernces reveal that it was not unusual for reporters to use the
first person plural. (‘When are we going to launch?)”

Also, in The
Wrong Stuff I wrote about
an address on “Science and the Media” by the New
York Times space reporter
John Noble Wilford in 1990 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In it
he declared: “I am particularly intrigued by science and
scientists… My favorite subject is planetary science.” After his
talk, I interviewed him and he acknowledged that “there’s still a
lot of space reporters who are groupies.” Still, he went on, “some
of the things that NASA does are so great, so marvelous, so it’s
easy to forget to be critical.”

On NBC’s Today
show, the attitude of the
reporters was as celebratory on the morning of the landing as the
label of the video aired showing “Jubilation at NASA Control.”
Never was there a mention of nuclear power or plutonium or the
acknowledged risks of an accident and dispersal of plutonium.

“I am disheartened that the media
shows little inclination to mention the words ‘plutonium’ or
‘probabilities of accidental release’ in their so-called
reporting of the Mars rover arrival. You have to question who they
work for,” says Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network.

“We daily hear the excited
anticipation of the nuclear industry as stories reveal the growing
plans for hosts of launches of nuclear devices—more rovers on Mars,
mining colonies on the moon, even nuclear reactors to power rockets
bound for Mars. The nuclear industry is rolling the dice while people
on Earth have their fingers crossed in the hope technology does not
fail—as it often does,” said Gagnon, of the Maine-based
international organization that since its formation in 1992 has been
challenging the use of nuclear power and the deployment of weapons in
space. The U.S. has favored nuclear power as an energy source for
space-based weapons.

Further, said Gagnon, “the media,
while ignoring the Mars rover plutonium story, is also guilty of not
reporting about the years of toxic contamination at the Department of
Energy nuclear labs where these space nuclear devices are produced.
The Idaho Nuclear Laboratory and Los Alamos Nuclear lab in New Mexico
have long track records of worker and environmental contamination
during this dirty space nuke fabrication process.”

Declared Gagnon: “The public will
need to do more than cross our fingers in hopes that nothing goes
wrong. We need to speak out loudly so Congress, NASA and the DoE
hear that we do not support the nuclearization of the heavens. Go
solar or better yet—stay home and use our tax dollars to take care
of the legions of people without jobs, health care, food, or heat. 
Mars can wait.”

Karl Grossman,
professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at
Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The
Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet,
and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The
U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in
space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor
to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

Het label USSF direct onder dit bericht staat voor Unites States Space Force.