[Marxism] Nuclear Power and an Obituary to Dr. John Gofman

[Sukla Sen <suklasenp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1600

The Genius Doctor Who Diagnosed Nuke Power's Deadly
Disease 
    By Harvey Wasserman 
    The Free Press 

    Friday 07 September 2007 

    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. 

    Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and
erroneously attacked Gofman and his findings. But they
could hardly have picked a more brilliant, committed
opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted.
His findings should have doomed from the start an
industry he called "insane." 

    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. 

    For that work alone, Gofman was a towering figure.
Throughout his life, he was friend and peer to Nobel
Laureates such as Linus Pauling and George Wald. 

    But Gofman was also a nuclear chemist. As part of
the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic
bombs, his pioneer work helped lead to the discoveries
of plutonium and certain isotopes of uranium. 

    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. 

    As a full professor at the University of
California, Gofman's combined medical and nuclear
credentials made him an obvious choice to manage
health research for the Atomic Energy Commission,
which both regulated and promoted the young nuclear
power industry. When public questions were raised
about the health impacts of radioactive reactor
emissions, Gofman was dispatched to prove the industry
safe. 

    But his findings showed that reactors are serious
killers. So even Gofman's towering resume could not
protect him from the wrath of an industry determined
to build all the power plants it could. He and
co-researcher Arthur Tamplin were driven from their
jobs. 

    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. 

    Even at his passing, the tired attacks on Gofman's
findings have resurfaced. 

    But his research remains the gold standard on the
health impacts of radiation. And as a gentle but firm
advocate, mentor and friend, his integrity was matched
only by his willingness to step outside traditional
boundaries for what he believed. 

    One of Gofman's most powerful and influential
moments came in 1974, when he agreed to defend a civil
disobedient named Sam Lovejoy in the small town of
Montague, Massachusetts. A member of a communal
organic farm, Lovejoy had manually knocked over a
500-foot weather tower erected as a precursor to the
building of a large twin reactor complex. 

    Gofman agreed to testify in Lovejoy's defense,
arguing that building two nuke reactors constituted a
lethal threat to the health and safety of the
community. In a monumental moment for the rise of the
anti-nuclear movement, Lovejoy was acquitted. 

    Gofman's pivotal pronouncements appear in the
award-winning LOVEJOY'S NUCLEAR WAR (gmpfilms.com),
which has been shown all over the world. As a pivotal
struggle over a "bailout in advance" for new reactor
construction rages in Congress, Gofman's words
resonate with a renewed critical importance:

"The decision to build nuclear power plants may very
well be, for the first time, a decision that can
result in the desecration of the Earth with respect
for life for all future generations." 
"Why do we want to put every city and hamlet of the
United States at risk by building a thousand of these
plants? We can get the power from sunshine, very
easily and economically." 

"When we're talking about a mass of a hundred tons or
so of material, melting 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 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." 

"Even if this hazard of a meltdown were securely
answered, it doesn't alter for one second my
opposition to nuclear power, because I'm concerned
about the fact that whether it melts down or doesn't
melt down, you've created an astronomical amount of
radioactive garbage which you must contain and isolate
better than 99.99 percent perfectly, in peace and war,
with human error and human malice, guerilla activity,
psychotics, malfunction of equipment ... do you
believe that there's anything you'd like to guarantee
will be done 99.99 percent perfectly for a hundred
thousand years?"

    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. 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Harvey Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace
USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service,
and Senior Editor of www.solartopia.org and
www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
For a fuller account of the amazing life of Dr. John
Gofman, see www.beyondnuclear.org. 


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