AUT: NoFlyby Newsletter No. 8

[NoFlyby Action Site <noflyby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Action Site to Stop Cassini Earth Flyby
P.O. Box 1999, Wendell Depot, MA 01380
(978)544-7862 noflyby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/

Re:    NoFlyby Newsletter No. 8
	(also available at http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/alerts/8n.htm)


1.	Sample letter to Dr. Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Director, to omit the Cassini
       Earth Flyby:

	Please copy, revise and write him a letter, too.


Dr. Daniel S. Goldin

NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Tel: (202)358-1010
Fax (202)358-2810
E-mail: dgoldin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

October 20, 1998

Dear Dr. Goldin:

I hope you will read this letter and consider the information at our
website. The NoFlyby site http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby includes an
extensive bibliography and documents showing without question that
radioactive plutonium pollution is harmful to life. So far there have been
nine known space program accidents releasing plutonium into our
environment. NASA's planned swingby of the Pu-238 ladened Cassini space
probe, less than a half a minute away from Earth's atmosphere is clearly
dangerous and irresponsible. We realize this expensive mission was
initiated before you received your position at NASA. However, the flyby,
which has the potential of the causing the most harm of any civilian space
mission in known history, is only months away.

Why? Why are knowledge and learning about our origins and other scientific
matters so important that NASA scheduled this record-speed Earth flyby to
endanger the health of billions of people, even if there is a one in a
million chances of an accident?

Please consider Dr. Earl Budin's attached report, "Why the Cassini Flyby
Must be Omitted." The report shows medical literature on the carcinogenic
nature of plutonium and information from the Interagency Nuclear Safety
Review Panel on Cassini. This group of five high level federal government
officials, including a representative to NASA, submitted this report to the
Clinton Administration in July 1997. The Safety Evaluation Report (SER) for
Cassini was unknown to the public and legislatures until Dr. Earl Budin
discovered it recently. In contrast to NASA's Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS), which claimed that the Plutonium containers could
withstand the heat of an atmospheric entry at such a high speed, the SER
notes it would not survive and that nine kilograms of Plutonium might be
released in tiny particles. Their estimate of possible fatalities is ten
times higher than that reported in the EIS, according to the SER fatalities
could be in the tens of thousands.

I agree with the fifteen members of Congress who wrote to President Clinton
before the Cassini launch, "...While we have much to learn through the
exploration of space, in this instance the grave potential danger posed by
the plutonium on the probe would seem to outweigh the potential benefit
from this mission. It is too important to squander the public's trust on
such a risky mission.

A NASA that all Americans can support instills hope for the future, not
fear of tragedy..." This is even more true considering the report that the
plutonium containers would not survive an accidental entry into our
atmosphere. Please, knowing this information, please reconsider the risks
vs. the possible benefits of this 2004 Saturn exploratory mission. Please
cancel the Earth flyby of Cassini before its June 24, 1999 final swingby of
Venus and the probe races toward Earth. Everyone who ventures in space
claims how lovely and unique our planet is in our solar system, why even
take a one in a million chances to do such harm to the air we breathe?

Sincerely,

This letter is available also at
http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/action/goldin.htm
                ***************************************

2. 	Earl Budin's Report "Why the Cassini Flyby Must Be Omitted"

        	http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/ref/budin1.htm

                ***************************************

3.	Nuclear Powered Space Missions - Past and Future
            Extracts by Regina Hagen, edited by Dr. Martin Kalinowski
		- from IANUS Working Paper

  	      http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/ref/ianusreg.htm

                ***************************************

4.     Crazy Nuke Propaganda

An article from the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), October 18, 1998: "For Our
children, we must consider the use of nuclear energy," by Bertram Wolfe, a
past president of the American Nuclear Society and a retired vice president
of General Electric, where he ran the nuclear energy business.

Hi, passing this amazing twisting of reality to you. I always wondered
about if it was greed alone that made the nuke industry so damaging, or did
the greed and insecurity cause them to brainwash themselves. The following
article seems to favor the argument that the author is sincere and
brainwashed. Perhaps I will send a copy of this newsletter to Dan Goldin to
try to receive his response on the points of
this article. Pretty amazing!

---
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 11:27:36 -0400
From: ASlater <aslater@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Sender: owner-abolition-caucus@xxxxxxx
Subject: Fwd: NUKE-WASTE: Bert Wolfe Says...
To: abolition-caucus@xxxxxxxxxxx, ana-bananas@xxxxxxxxxxx, star@xxxxxxx

Friends,

The reprehensible "article" below by the past president of the American
Nuclear Society[pro-nuke industry leader] and retired vice-president of
General Electric needs a response from all of us. The "article" appeared in
the San Joe Mercury News who can be called at: Phone:408-920-5000,
Fax:408-288-8060

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services distributed the article.  Knight
-Ridder can be reached at:  Phone:202-383-6080, Fax:202-393-2460

Dear Friends,

This article needs a reply!  Regards, Alice Slater

Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 19:49:53 -0400
Subject: NUKE-WASTE: Bert Wolfe Says...

To: NUKE-WASTE@xxxxxxxxxxx
From: birnie@xxxxxxxxxxx (birnie@xxxxxxxxxxx)

An article from the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), October 18, 1998:

For Our children, we must consider the use of nuclear energy

by Bertram Wolfe

        Nuclear energy may be vital to the future welfare of our nation and
the world. But we nuclear technologists have failed to speak out about its
benefits, allowing the media and the public to be misled by anti-nuclear
organizations.  As a result, our children and grandchildren face
unnecessary, perhaps disastrous hardships. Peaceful nuclear energy began in
1954 with President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program.  As nuclear
weapons technology was spreading unchecked, "Atoms for Peace" was intended
to induce nations to abandon weapons development in return for the transfer
of peaceful nuclear technology. Despite nuclear tests in India and Pakistan
this year, President Eisenhower must be looking down with pride,
considering how limited the spread of nuclear weapons has been in the past
40 years, and how rare their use.

        The key element in American development of nuclear energy has been
public safety.  Some 20 years ago, a Russian delegation visited General
Electric's nuclear enterprise, where I worked. They felt the added costs of
United States nuclear plants - because of safety features - were
unnecessary. Chernobyl proved them wrong. Such a reactor could not have
been built or operated in the United States.

        Even the difficult Three Mile Island nuclear accident was, in a
sense, a success for American policy.  No one at the plant was hurt, and
people outside the plant's fence got less radiation than if they had spent
a two-week vacation in Denver - where naturally occurring nuclear radiation
is higher than in most of the U.S.  Worldwide, not one person has been
harmed by operation of nuclear plants built to United States standards.

        In fact, nuclear power is saving lives by reducing fossil fuel use.
In the United States alone, it is estimated that tens of thousands of
premature deaths occur yearly because people are breathing small particles
emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.

        A second advantage of nuclear energy is the small amount of waste
it produces, easily contained compared with waste produced by fossil fuels.
A hundred thousand times less solid waste than a coal plant, one can afford
a very high cost per cubic foot to manage the wastes safely.

        Disposal of nuclear waste is routinely protested, yet it has caused
no harm. Technical evaluations have shown the centralized low-level waste
repository proposed for Ward Valley, approved by the state of California,
technical but political, initiated by anti-nuclear groups who tell the
public there is no way to get rid of the wastes.

        Fossil fuels, despite drawbacks, have improved living conditions.
Nuclear energy can further improve the world's welfare while reducing
problems and risks.  It is the only available, widely practical means for
substantially mitigating the threat of global warming, a projected side
effect of burning fossil fuels.

        Nuclear power can provide an essentially unlimited supply of energy
to meet increasing world needs and replace the fossil fuels we are
depleting. It can let us avoid international hostilities over scarce
supplies. It might one day let us bring our troops home from Saudi Arabia.

       But power plants are not the only application of nuclear technology.
A million lifesaving nuclear medical procedures are performed each month in
reused to diagnose various disorders.  Irradiation eliminates dangerous
bacteria from food supplies.  Industries use radiation to detect defective
equipment and to make smoke detectors.

        Still, the no-nukes crowd has succeeded in making the public
frightened of any kind of nuclear radiation.  Decades of research show
clearly that low levels of radiation, up to a hundred times natural
background radiation, are not to be feared.

        Indeed, low levels of radiation, like low levels of sunlight, may
be healthy - although high levels of either can cause cancers. People in
Denver, and Japanese who received low levels of radiation from World War II
atom bombs, are living longer than comparable groups exposed to less
radiation.  University of Pittsburgh Professor Bernard Cohen, who studied
hundreds of thousands of people, concluded that those living in areas with
the highest concentrations of radioactive radon live longer than people
elsewhere.  After completing his study in 1995, he turned off his home's
ventilation system - which was intended to reduce radon concentrations.

        The nuclear paranoia can have devastating effects.  At Chernobyl,
fewer than 40 deaths were caused directly by nuclear radiation.  But the
International Atomic Energy Agency estimates more than 100,000 deaths in
Europe resulted from abortions by women who were afraid of the effects of
the spreading radiation from the accident.  It was an unnecessary
catastrophe: Actually, the radiation in Europe from Chernobyl was less than
normal background.

        The United States Energy Information Agency projects that if
current patterns prevail, the nuclear plants that today provide 20 percent
of America's electricity will be shut down as their licenses expire.
Bureaucratic licensing procedures and court cases mean building a nuclear
plant here takes a dozen or more years and exorbitant costs.  There are no
plans for new ones.

        A member of the Nuclear Commission of South Korea, which is
expanding its nuclear energy capacity, predicts that soon Uncle Sam - the
nuclear "godfather" - will have to rely on his "grandchildren" for nuclear
energy technology.  If so, we will lose our key influence on international
safety and non-proliferation issues.

        As a nuclear pioneer I am proud of the development of peaceful
nuclear power in the United States.  It is reliable, practical, safe and
clean, and our leadership has resulted in reactor safety and nuclear
weapons limitations worldwide.

        But I am anguished that we nuclear technologists, and the media,
are failing the American public.  We have let the anti-nuclear,
anti-energy, anti-industrial groups frighten the public and dominate the
debate, impeding nuclear energy progress in the United States.  As a
result, our children and grandchildren may suffer devastating environmental
effects and world energy shortages.

        It is not too late to reclaim the debate and to change our
direction on nuclear energy.  We owe it to future generations.

                ***************************************

Please see the Plutonium NoFlyby Statement signed by over 100 Organizations

		http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/alerts/sign-on.htm

                ***************************************

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