With NASA intending to launch a plutonium-fueled rover from Florida on Saturday—and admitting that a launch pad accident releasing the deadly plutonium fuel could reach as far as 62 miles away—the issue being raised by the area’s tourism officials is whether the launch will attract tourists.
“Can Curiosity Draw the Crowds?” was the recent Florida Today headline. http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20111113/NEWS02/311120041/Can-Curiosity-draw-crowds- A sub-head: “Tourism Officials Hope Mars Launch Will Lure Observers to the Space Coast.”
It quotes Rob Varley, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, as saying: “The timing of this is perfect. We don’t always fill up on Thanksgiving weekend, but I think this will help. I think people will hear there is a launch and say, ‘Let’s go there, watch the launch, eat dinner, whatever.”
The piece added that the launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station “carries a little extra significance due to the plutonium fuel aboard the spacecraft.” But, it noted, “Extensive emergency preparations were required before the mission received approval to launch, and multiple layers of protections have been built into the craft.”
Don’t worry. Be happy.
At least Florida Today mentioned plutonium in the article. The Washington Post in an extensive piece – “NASA Mars Mission To Test Planet for Ability to Sustain Life” – did not mention the words plutonium or nuclear at all. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-mars-mission-to-test-planet-for-ability-to-sustain-life/2011/11/12/gIQAdnapZN_story.html '
Neither did The New York Times in a front page story this week – “On Mars Rover, Tools to Plumb a Methane Mystery.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/science/space/aboard-mars-curiosity-rover-tools-to-plumb-a-methane-mystery.html?_r=1&ref=science
Better not to know about those 10.6 pounds of toxic plutonium.
Some folks in Florida have, however, gotten the word. And, mobilized by Pax Christi Tampa Bay and other groups, they were protesting over the weekend carrying placards that declared: “No Nukes In Space” and “Danger: Launching of NASA Mars Probe With 10 Lbs. Plutonium. Don’t Do Disney.” That referred to Disney theme parks in Orlando.
NASA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Science Laboratory says a launch accident discharging plutonium has a 1-in-420 chance of happening and could “release material into the regional area defined…to be within…62 miles of the launch pad,”
Historically, one in 100 rockets destruct at launch.
If this Atlas rocket carrying the plutonium-fueled rover, which NASA calls Curiosity, does make it up but then falls back to Earth—that would set up an even a greater disaster.
There’s a model for that up in the sky right now: Russia’s Phobos-Grunt space probe launched on November 9 to go to a moon of Mars. But it never broke out of the Earth’s gravitational field. Its rocket system failed to fire it onward from low Earth orbit. Now it’s expected to fall back to Earth in January, disintegrating in a fiery re-entry when it hits the Earth’s atmosphere.
If that is what happens to Curiosity and its 10.6 pounds of plutonium fuel is released, NASA’s EIS acknowledges that the plutonium could spread widely over the Earth.
In its EIS, NASA designates this as an accident during: “Phase 4 (Orbital/Escape): Accidents which occur after attaining parking orbit could result in orbital decay reentries from minutes to years after the accident affecting Earth surfaces between approximately 28-degrees north latitude and 28-degrees south latitude.”
Between 28 degrees north and 28-degrees south latitudes covers much of South America, Africa and Australia. NASA gives odds of 1-in-830 for the “probability of a release” of plutonium in such an accident.
An especially uncritical piece of reporting this week on the Curiosity venture was on “FLORIDA SPACErePORT” http://spacereport.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-21-2011.html
It provided an assurance that the isotope of plutonium used in space devices, Plutonium-238, “is not used in weapons and cannot explode like a bomb. It does not emit the type of penetrating radioactivity that can cause serious health problems. It emits alpha radiation, a type that is easily shielded. It cannot penetrate the skin, clothing, even a sheet of paper. It is only dangerous to humans if pulverized into a fine dust that subsequently is inhaled or ingested.”
Yes, and that is exactly what could happen in an explosion on launch and, even more likely, in a fiery re-entry of a space device with Plutonium-238 into the atmosphere.
Putting Plutonium-238 on space devices which can disintegrate over our heads and cause plutonium to rain down in fine particles—plutonium which people can breathe in—maximizes the lethality of plutonium.
A millionth of a gram of plutonium is a fatal dose. Plutonium-238, furthermore, is 270 times more radioactive than the common isotope of plutonium, Plutonium-239, used as fuel in atomic bombs.
A fall from orbit of a plutonium-fueled satellite in 1964 caused fine particles of Plutonium-238 to fall out all over the Earth. The late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident involving a SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard the satellite to an increase in global lung cancer. With that accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites and the International Space Station are solar powered. The SNAP-9A accident is cited in the NASA EIS for the Curiosity shot as being among the three accidents that have occurred among the 26 U.S. space missions which have used plutonium.
Still, insisted Martin LaMonica this week, senior writer for CNET’s Green Tech blog, “Nuclear ‘Space Battery’ Bests Solar in Curiosity Mars Mission,” as the piece was headlined.
Sure, rovers sent to Mars up to now have used solar power for locomotion. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57329365-76/nuclear-space-battery-bests-solar-in-curiosity-mars-mission/ But LaMonica quoted Stephen Johnson, director of the Idaho National Laboratory’s Space Nuclear Systems and Technology Division, as saying: “You can operate with solar panels on Mars. You just can’t operate everywhere.”
So to go “everywhere” we are to endanger life on Earth? To try to see about life on Mars we would threaten life on Earth?
The NASA EIS says the cost of decontamination of areas on Earth affected by plutonium discharged in an accident from Curiosity would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.”
The mission itself has a cost of $2.5 billion.
And the odds for disaster are low, acknowledges NASA in its EIS. The EIS says “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released is 1-in-220. How many people would get on an airplane or take a drive in a car if they knew there was a 1-in-220 chance of not making it.
Further, if Curiosity does make it up and out, it will be just one trigger pull in a game of spaceborne Russian roulette—if NASA gets its way. For not only is NASA seeking to do more space missions using plutonium but it is developing rockets powered by nuclear energy.
Demanding that this all be stopped is Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space www.space4peace.org “The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet,” he says. “Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Update on Planned Launch of Plutonium-Fueled "Curiosity" Rover
NASA intends in coming days to launch a rover to be deployed on Mars fueled with 10.6pounds of plutonium. If there is an explosion on launch in Florida and plutonium is released, an area as far as 62 miles from the launch pad could be impacted, NASA acknowledges. If the rocket lofting the rover doesn’t break away from the Earth’s gravitational field to keep going into space but falls back to Earth, re-entry into the atmosphere would cause both the rocket and rover to disintegrate potentially releasing plutonium over a huge area.
An example of a space device meant to go to Mars but likely to fall back to Earth is unfolding now. A Russian space probe, named Phobos-Grunt, launched on November 9, reached low Earth orbit, but then an engine system failed to fire to power it on to Phobos, one of two moons of Mars. The Russian space agency is trying to get the craft’s onboard computer, which it believes is the source of the problem, to function properly. But prospects are dim. Reuters in an article on the situation quotes a Russian space expert, Vladimir Uvarov, as saying: “In my opinion Phobos-Grunt is lost.” Unless a fix is made, the probe will come crashing back to Earth, probably in January.
There is concern about the 12 tons of chemical fuel onboard the Phobos-Grunt impacting the Earth. A similar problem with the Mars rover, which NASA calls Curiosity, in falling back to Earth with its 10.6 pounds of plutonium would present a far, far more serious danger.
NASA intends to launch the plutonium-powered rover on what it has named its Mars Science Laboratory Mission during a window from November 25 to December 15.
In its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the mission, NASA addresses the possibility of an accident similar to what the Phobos-Grunt is facing in what NASA designates as “Phase 4” of the launch. Plutonium could be released in such an accident “affecting Earth surfaces” along a wide belt around the middle of the Earth.
NASA’s language for this: “Phase 4 (Orbital/Escape): Accidents which occur after attaining parking orbit could result in orbital decay reentries from minutes to years after the accident affecting Earth surfaces between approximately 28-degrees north latitude and 28-degrees south latitude.” NASA gives odds of 1-in-830 for the “probability of a release” of plutonium in such an accident. Between 28 degrees north and 28-degrees south covers much of South America, Africa and Australia.
The EIS says the cost of decontamination of areas affected by the plutonium would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.” The Curiosity mission itself has a cost of $2.5 billion.
The EIS says “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released is 1-in-220. It puts the odds at 1-in-420 of plutonium being released in a launch accident. This could “release material into the regional area defined…to be within…62 miles of the launch pad,” says the EIS. The most densely populated part of that area is Orlando.
“NASA is planning a mission that could endanger not only its future but the state of Florida and beyond,” declares John Stewart of Pax Christi Tampa Bay, a leader in Florida in challenging the launch. “The absurd—and maddening—aspect of this risk is that it is unnecessary,” says Stewart, a teacher. “The locomotion for NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover, launched in 1996, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, both launched in 2003, was solar powered, with the latter two rovers performing well beyond what their engineers expected. Curiosity’s locomotion could also be solar-powered. NASA admits this in its EIS, but decided to put us all at risk because plutonium-powered batteries last longer and they want to have the ‘flexibility to select the most scientifically interesting location on the surface’ of Mars.”
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org), which has been opposing NASA’s nuclear missions for two decades, says “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining its dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry. Both entities view space as a new market for the deadly plutonium fuel. The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet. Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
There have been accidents in the use of nuclear power in space. Of the 26 U.S. space missions listed in the EIS which have used plutonium, three underwent accidents, the EIS admits. The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, it notes, the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to earth, disintegrating as it fell. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely over the Earth. The late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident to an increase in global lung cancer. With the SNAP-9A accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites and the International Space Station are solar powered.
But NASA kept using plutonium as a power source on space probes maintaining that solar energy could not be utilized beyond the orbit of Mars. But this August NASA reversed itself with the launch of its solar-powered Juno space probe to Jupiter.
In its description of the Juno mission, NASA states that even when the probe gets to Jupiter, “nearly 500 million miles from the Sun,” its panels will be providing electricity.
The plutonium-fueled Curiosity mission could herald an expanded NASA space nuclear power program—not just for space probes but for nuclear propelled rockets.
During the 1950s and 60s, NASA, working with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, built such rockets under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and then under Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions in 1950s-1960s dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns about a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch or crashing back to Earth.
Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, President Obama’s appointee to head NASA, is a big booster of nuclear-propulsion for rockets. He has been pushing a design developed by a fellow ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who has founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
With NASA turning over many space activities to private industry with the end of its shuttle program, another major private company involved is SpaceX. The website of the journal Nature reported last year that SpaceX wants the U.S. government to “return to developing nuclear-powered rockets pursued during the 1960s”—and specifically NERVA. “We have to do nuclear,” stated Tom Markusic, director of the company’s rocket development facility.
Meanwhile, there have not only been advances in solar energy as a power source in space as demonstrated by the Juno space probe mission but also in propelling spacecraft. Last year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched what it termed a “space yacht” called Ikaros which gets propulsion from the pressure on its large sails of ionizing particles emitted by the Sun. The sails also feature “thin-film solar cells to generate electricity and creating,” said Yuichi Tsuda of the agency, “a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure."
NASA has also been pushing for establishment of a production facility for plutonium for space use to be situated at Idaho National Laboratory.
Plutonium has long been described as the most lethal radioactive substance. And the plutonium isotope used in the space nuclear program, and on the Curiosity rover, is significantly more radioactive than the type of plutonium used as fuel in nuclear weapons or built up as a waste product in nuclear power plants. It is Plutonium-238 as distinct from Plutonium-239. Plutonium-238 has a far shorter half-life–87.8 years compared to Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,500 years. An isotope’s half-life is the period in which half of its radioactivity is expended.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, explains that Plutonium-238 “is about 270 times more radioactive than Plutonium-239 per unit of weight.” Thus in radioactivity, the 10.6 pounds of Plutonium-238 that is to be used on Curiosity is the equivalent of 2,862 pounds of Plutonium-239. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 15 pounds of Plutonium-239.
The far shorter half-life of Plutonium-238 compared to Plutonium-239 results in it being extremely hot. This heat is translated in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator into electricity.
The pathway of greatest health concern for plutonium is breathing in a particle leding to lung cancer. A millionth of a gram of plutonium can be a fatal dose. The EIS for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission speaks of particles that would be “transported to and remain in the trachea, bronchi, or deep lung regions.” The particles “would continuously irradiate lung tissue.”
A key issue in terms of effects is whether the plutonium remains as the marble-sized pellets fabricated for space use or dispersed as fine particles that can be inhaled.
The EIS also describes “secondary social costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities” including: “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 which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restriction or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
Pax Christi is asking people to call, email or write NASA and, says Stewart, state “that until they can launch spacecraft without nuclear materials aboard, they should not launch at all.” Also, it is calling for people to contact the White House “and tell President Obama that Curiosity should stay safely on the ground until it can be launched without threatening us and future generations.”
A petition to the White House—“Cancel the Launch of the Mars Rover Curiosity by
NASA Which is Powered by Dangerous Plutonium-238”—has also been put up on the Internet for people to sign. It is at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/cancel-launch-mars-rover-curiosity-nasa-which-powered-dangerous-plutonium-238/8HzzWHk9
The opponents have created a Facebook page warning people not to visit Disney theme parks in Orlando during the launch window. “Don’t Do Disney brought to you by NASA,” the Facebook page is titled.
Demonstrations in Florida are also planned.
The grunt in the name of the Phobos-Grunt space probe is the word for soil in Russian. The probe was to bring soil back to Earth from Phobos. Reuters has reported that “Phobos-Grunt is also carrying bacteria, plant seeds and tiny animals known as water bears, part of a U.S. study to see if they could survive beyond the Earth’s protective bubble.”
An example of a space device meant to go to Mars but likely to fall back to Earth is unfolding now. A Russian space probe, named Phobos-Grunt, launched on November 9, reached low Earth orbit, but then an engine system failed to fire to power it on to Phobos, one of two moons of Mars. The Russian space agency is trying to get the craft’s onboard computer, which it believes is the source of the problem, to function properly. But prospects are dim. Reuters in an article on the situation quotes a Russian space expert, Vladimir Uvarov, as saying: “In my opinion Phobos-Grunt is lost.” Unless a fix is made, the probe will come crashing back to Earth, probably in January.
There is concern about the 12 tons of chemical fuel onboard the Phobos-Grunt impacting the Earth. A similar problem with the Mars rover, which NASA calls Curiosity, in falling back to Earth with its 10.6 pounds of plutonium would present a far, far more serious danger.
NASA intends to launch the plutonium-powered rover on what it has named its Mars Science Laboratory Mission during a window from November 25 to December 15.
In its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the mission, NASA addresses the possibility of an accident similar to what the Phobos-Grunt is facing in what NASA designates as “Phase 4” of the launch. Plutonium could be released in such an accident “affecting Earth surfaces” along a wide belt around the middle of the Earth.
NASA’s language for this: “Phase 4 (Orbital/Escape): Accidents which occur after attaining parking orbit could result in orbital decay reentries from minutes to years after the accident affecting Earth surfaces between approximately 28-degrees north latitude and 28-degrees south latitude.” NASA gives odds of 1-in-830 for the “probability of a release” of plutonium in such an accident. Between 28 degrees north and 28-degrees south covers much of South America, Africa and Australia.
The EIS says the cost of decontamination of areas affected by the plutonium would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.” The Curiosity mission itself has a cost of $2.5 billion.
The EIS says “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released is 1-in-220. It puts the odds at 1-in-420 of plutonium being released in a launch accident. This could “release material into the regional area defined…to be within…62 miles of the launch pad,” says the EIS. The most densely populated part of that area is Orlando.
“NASA is planning a mission that could endanger not only its future but the state of Florida and beyond,” declares John Stewart of Pax Christi Tampa Bay, a leader in Florida in challenging the launch. “The absurd—and maddening—aspect of this risk is that it is unnecessary,” says Stewart, a teacher. “The locomotion for NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover, launched in 1996, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, both launched in 2003, was solar powered, with the latter two rovers performing well beyond what their engineers expected. Curiosity’s locomotion could also be solar-powered. NASA admits this in its EIS, but decided to put us all at risk because plutonium-powered batteries last longer and they want to have the ‘flexibility to select the most scientifically interesting location on the surface’ of Mars.”
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org), which has been opposing NASA’s nuclear missions for two decades, says “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining its dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry. Both entities view space as a new market for the deadly plutonium fuel. The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet. Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
There have been accidents in the use of nuclear power in space. Of the 26 U.S. space missions listed in the EIS which have used plutonium, three underwent accidents, the EIS admits. The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, it notes, the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to earth, disintegrating as it fell. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely over the Earth. The late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident to an increase in global lung cancer. With the SNAP-9A accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites and the International Space Station are solar powered.
But NASA kept using plutonium as a power source on space probes maintaining that solar energy could not be utilized beyond the orbit of Mars. But this August NASA reversed itself with the launch of its solar-powered Juno space probe to Jupiter.
In its description of the Juno mission, NASA states that even when the probe gets to Jupiter, “nearly 500 million miles from the Sun,” its panels will be providing electricity.
The plutonium-fueled Curiosity mission could herald an expanded NASA space nuclear power program—not just for space probes but for nuclear propelled rockets.
During the 1950s and 60s, NASA, working with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, built such rockets under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and then under Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions in 1950s-1960s dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns about a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch or crashing back to Earth.
Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, President Obama’s appointee to head NASA, is a big booster of nuclear-propulsion for rockets. He has been pushing a design developed by a fellow ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who has founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
With NASA turning over many space activities to private industry with the end of its shuttle program, another major private company involved is SpaceX. The website of the journal Nature reported last year that SpaceX wants the U.S. government to “return to developing nuclear-powered rockets pursued during the 1960s”—and specifically NERVA. “We have to do nuclear,” stated Tom Markusic, director of the company’s rocket development facility.
Meanwhile, there have not only been advances in solar energy as a power source in space as demonstrated by the Juno space probe mission but also in propelling spacecraft. Last year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched what it termed a “space yacht” called Ikaros which gets propulsion from the pressure on its large sails of ionizing particles emitted by the Sun. The sails also feature “thin-film solar cells to generate electricity and creating,” said Yuichi Tsuda of the agency, “a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure."
NASA has also been pushing for establishment of a production facility for plutonium for space use to be situated at Idaho National Laboratory.
Plutonium has long been described as the most lethal radioactive substance. And the plutonium isotope used in the space nuclear program, and on the Curiosity rover, is significantly more radioactive than the type of plutonium used as fuel in nuclear weapons or built up as a waste product in nuclear power plants. It is Plutonium-238 as distinct from Plutonium-239. Plutonium-238 has a far shorter half-life–87.8 years compared to Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,500 years. An isotope’s half-life is the period in which half of its radioactivity is expended.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, explains that Plutonium-238 “is about 270 times more radioactive than Plutonium-239 per unit of weight.” Thus in radioactivity, the 10.6 pounds of Plutonium-238 that is to be used on Curiosity is the equivalent of 2,862 pounds of Plutonium-239. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 15 pounds of Plutonium-239.
The far shorter half-life of Plutonium-238 compared to Plutonium-239 results in it being extremely hot. This heat is translated in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator into electricity.
The pathway of greatest health concern for plutonium is breathing in a particle leding to lung cancer. A millionth of a gram of plutonium can be a fatal dose. The EIS for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission speaks of particles that would be “transported to and remain in the trachea, bronchi, or deep lung regions.” The particles “would continuously irradiate lung tissue.”
A key issue in terms of effects is whether the plutonium remains as the marble-sized pellets fabricated for space use or dispersed as fine particles that can be inhaled.
The EIS also describes “secondary social costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities” including: “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 which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restriction or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
Pax Christi is asking people to call, email or write NASA and, says Stewart, state “that until they can launch spacecraft without nuclear materials aboard, they should not launch at all.” Also, it is calling for people to contact the White House “and tell President Obama that Curiosity should stay safely on the ground until it can be launched without threatening us and future generations.”
A petition to the White House—“Cancel the Launch of the Mars Rover Curiosity by
NASA Which is Powered by Dangerous Plutonium-238”—has also been put up on the Internet for people to sign. It is at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/cancel-launch-mars-rover-curiosity-nasa-which-powered-dangerous-plutonium-238/8HzzWHk9
The opponents have created a Facebook page warning people not to visit Disney theme parks in Orlando during the launch window. “Don’t Do Disney brought to you by NASA,” the Facebook page is titled.
Demonstrations in Florida are also planned.
The grunt in the name of the Phobos-Grunt space probe is the word for soil in Russian. The probe was to bring soil back to Earth from Phobos. Reuters has reported that “Phobos-Grunt is also carrying bacteria, plant seeds and tiny animals known as water bears, part of a U.S. study to see if they could survive beyond the Earth’s protective bubble.”
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
"Don't Do Disney..."
NASA intends in coming weeks to launch a rover to be deployed on Mars fueled with 10.6 pounds of plutonium. Opponents of the launch in Florida, concerned about an accident releasing deadly plutonium, such as the explosion of the rocket that’s to loft the rover, have created a Facebook page warning people not to visit Disney theme parks in Orlando during the November 25-to-December 15 launch window. “Don’t Do Disney brought to you by NASA,” the Facebook page is titled. Other actions are planned.
Indeed, NASA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission says a launch accident discharging plutonium has a 1-in-420 chance of happening and could “release material into the regional area defined…to be within…62 miles of the launch pad,” That’s an area including Orlando.
The EIS says “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released is just 1-in-220. This could affect a major portion of Earth in an accident which vaporizes and disperses plutonium from the rover, called Curiosity, as the Atlas 5 rocket carrying it up gains altitude.
The EIS says an accident releasing plutonium in the troposphere, the atmosphere five to nine miles high, is “assumed to potentially affect persons living within a latitude band from approximately 23-degrees north to 30-degrees north.” That’s a swath through the Caribbean, across North Africa and the Middle East, then parts of India and China, Hawaii and other Pacific islands, Mexico, and south Texas.
If there’s an accident resulting in plutonium fallout which occurs above that and before the rocket breaks through Earth’s gravitational field, people could be affected “anywhere between 28-degrees north and 28-degrees south latitude,” says the EIS. That’s a band around the mid-section of the Earth which includes much of South America, Africa and Australia.
The EIS says the cost of decontamination of areas affected by the plutonium would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.”
The mission itself has a cost of $2.5 billion.
“NASA is planning a mission that could endanger not only its future but the state of Florida and beyond,” declares John Stewart of Pax Christi Tampa Bay, a leader in Florida in challenging the launch. “The absurd—and maddening—aspect of this risk is that it is unnecessary,” says Stewart, a teacher. “The locomotion for NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover, launched in 1996, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, both launched in 2003, was solar powered, with the latter two rovers performing well beyond what their engineers expected. Curiosity’s locomotion could also be solar-powered. NASA admits this in its EIS, but decided to put us all at risk because plutonium-powered batteries last longer and they want to have the ‘flexibility to select the most scientifically interesting location on the surface’ of Mars.”
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, which has been opposing NASA’s nuclear missions for two decades, says “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining its dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry. Both entities view space as a new market for the deadly plutonium fuel. The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet. Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
Since the 1950s, NASA has used nuclear power in space—and there have been accidents. Of the 26 U.S. space missions listed in the EIS that have used plutonium, three underwent accidents, the EIS admits. The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, it notes, the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to earth, disintegrating as it fell. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely over the Earth.
The late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident to an increase in global lung cancer. With the SNAP-9A accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites and the International Space Station are solar powered.
But NASA insisted on using plutonium as a power source on space probes—claiming that solar energy cannot be utilized beyond the orbit of Mars. But this August it reversed itself with the launch of the solar-powered Juno space probe to Jupiter.
In its description of the Juno mission, NASA states that even when the probe gets to Jupiter, “nearly 500 million miles from the Sun,” its panels will be providing electricity.
The choice of solar power by NASA on Juno was less than voluntary, however. The Associated Press has described Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno mission for the Southwest Research Institute, a NASA contractor, as maintaining “the choice of solar was a practical one…No plutonium-powered generators were available to him and his San Antonio-based team nearly a decade ago so they opted for solar panels rather than develop a new nuclear source.”
The plutonium-fueled Curiosity mission could herald an expanded NASA space nuclear power program—not just for space probes but involving nuclear-propelled rockets.
During the 1950s and 60s, NASA, working with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, built such rockets under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and then Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions in 1950s-1960s dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns about a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch and crashing back to Earth.
Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, President Obama’s appointee to head NASA, is a big booster of nuclear-propulsion for rockets. He has been pushing a design developed by a fellow ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who has founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
With NASA turning over many space activities to private industry with the end of its shuttle program, another major private company involved is SpaceX. The website of the journal Nature reported last year that SpaceX wants the U.S. government to “return to developing nuclear-powered rockets pursued during the 1960s”—and specifically NERVA. “We have to do nuclear,” stated Tom Markusic, director of the company’s rocket development facility.
Meanwhile, not only have great advances been made in using solar energy as a power source in space—as demonstrated by the Juno space probe mission—but also in propelling spacecraft and quickly in the vacuum of space. Last year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched what it termed a “space yacht” called Ikaros which gets propulsion from the pressure on its large sails of ionizing particles emitted by the Sun. The sails also feature “thin-film solar cells to generate electricity and creating,” said Yuichi Tsuda of the agency, “a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure."
The Curiosity rover and the Atlas V rocket on which it is to ride were positioned for launch last week at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A Florida Today website account—as has been typical in coverage by the mainstream media of NASA’s nuclear program—in reporting this omitted the words plutonium and nuclear and made no reference to the danger s acknowledged in the EIS of the nuclear aspect of the mission.
Plutonium has long been described as the most lethal radioactive substance. And the plutonium isotope used in the space nuclear program, and on the Curiosity rover, is far more radioactive than the type of plutonium used as fuel in nuclear weapons or built up as a waste product in nuclear power plants.
It is Plutonium-238 as distinct from Plutonium-239. Plutonium-238 has a far shorter half-life–87.8 years compared to Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,500 years. An isotope’s half-life is the period in which half of its radioactivity is expended.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, explains that Plutonium-238 “is about 270 times more radioactive than Plutonium-239 per unit of weight.” Thus in radioactivity, the 10.6 pounds of Plutonium-238 that is to be used on Curiosity is the equivalent of 2,862 pounds of Plutonium-239. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 15 pounds of Plutonium-239.
The far shorter half-life of Plutonium-238 compared to Plutonium-239 results in it being extremely hot. This heat is translated in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator into electricity.
The pathway of greatest health concern for plutonium is breathing in a particle. A millionth of a gram of plutonium can be a fatal dose. The EIS for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission speaks of particles that would be “transported to and remain in the trachea, bronchi, or deep lung regions.” The particles “would continuously irradiate lung tissue.”
It also describes “secondary social costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities” including: “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 which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restriction or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
Pax Christi is asking people to call, email or write NASA and, says Stewart, state “that until they can launch spacecraft without nuclear materials aboard, they should not launch at all.” Also, it is calling for people to contact the White House “and tell President Obama that Curiosity should stay safely on the ground until it can be launched without threatening us and future generations.”
A petition to the White House—“Cancel the Launch of the Mars Rover Curiosity by NASA Which is Powered by Dangerous Plutonium-238”—has also been put up on the Internet for people to sign. It is at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/cancel-launch-mars-rover-curiosity-nasa-which-powered-dangerous-plutonium-238/8HzzWHk9
Indeed, NASA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission says a launch accident discharging plutonium has a 1-in-420 chance of happening and could “release material into the regional area defined…to be within…62 miles of the launch pad,” That’s an area including Orlando.
The EIS says “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released is just 1-in-220. This could affect a major portion of Earth in an accident which vaporizes and disperses plutonium from the rover, called Curiosity, as the Atlas 5 rocket carrying it up gains altitude.
The EIS says an accident releasing plutonium in the troposphere, the atmosphere five to nine miles high, is “assumed to potentially affect persons living within a latitude band from approximately 23-degrees north to 30-degrees north.” That’s a swath through the Caribbean, across North Africa and the Middle East, then parts of India and China, Hawaii and other Pacific islands, Mexico, and south Texas.
If there’s an accident resulting in plutonium fallout which occurs above that and before the rocket breaks through Earth’s gravitational field, people could be affected “anywhere between 28-degrees north and 28-degrees south latitude,” says the EIS. That’s a band around the mid-section of the Earth which includes much of South America, Africa and Australia.
The EIS says the cost of decontamination of areas affected by the plutonium would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.”
The mission itself has a cost of $2.5 billion.
“NASA is planning a mission that could endanger not only its future but the state of Florida and beyond,” declares John Stewart of Pax Christi Tampa Bay, a leader in Florida in challenging the launch. “The absurd—and maddening—aspect of this risk is that it is unnecessary,” says Stewart, a teacher. “The locomotion for NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover, launched in 1996, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, both launched in 2003, was solar powered, with the latter two rovers performing well beyond what their engineers expected. Curiosity’s locomotion could also be solar-powered. NASA admits this in its EIS, but decided to put us all at risk because plutonium-powered batteries last longer and they want to have the ‘flexibility to select the most scientifically interesting location on the surface’ of Mars.”
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, which has been opposing NASA’s nuclear missions for two decades, says “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining its dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry. Both entities view space as a new market for the deadly plutonium fuel. The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet. Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
Since the 1950s, NASA has used nuclear power in space—and there have been accidents. Of the 26 U.S. space missions listed in the EIS that have used plutonium, three underwent accidents, the EIS admits. The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, it notes, the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to earth, disintegrating as it fell. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely over the Earth.
The late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident to an increase in global lung cancer. With the SNAP-9A accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites and the International Space Station are solar powered.
But NASA insisted on using plutonium as a power source on space probes—claiming that solar energy cannot be utilized beyond the orbit of Mars. But this August it reversed itself with the launch of the solar-powered Juno space probe to Jupiter.
In its description of the Juno mission, NASA states that even when the probe gets to Jupiter, “nearly 500 million miles from the Sun,” its panels will be providing electricity.
The choice of solar power by NASA on Juno was less than voluntary, however. The Associated Press has described Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno mission for the Southwest Research Institute, a NASA contractor, as maintaining “the choice of solar was a practical one…No plutonium-powered generators were available to him and his San Antonio-based team nearly a decade ago so they opted for solar panels rather than develop a new nuclear source.”
The plutonium-fueled Curiosity mission could herald an expanded NASA space nuclear power program—not just for space probes but involving nuclear-propelled rockets.
During the 1950s and 60s, NASA, working with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, built such rockets under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and then Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions in 1950s-1960s dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns about a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch and crashing back to Earth.
Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, President Obama’s appointee to head NASA, is a big booster of nuclear-propulsion for rockets. He has been pushing a design developed by a fellow ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, who has founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company.
With NASA turning over many space activities to private industry with the end of its shuttle program, another major private company involved is SpaceX. The website of the journal Nature reported last year that SpaceX wants the U.S. government to “return to developing nuclear-powered rockets pursued during the 1960s”—and specifically NERVA. “We have to do nuclear,” stated Tom Markusic, director of the company’s rocket development facility.
Meanwhile, not only have great advances been made in using solar energy as a power source in space—as demonstrated by the Juno space probe mission—but also in propelling spacecraft and quickly in the vacuum of space. Last year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched what it termed a “space yacht” called Ikaros which gets propulsion from the pressure on its large sails of ionizing particles emitted by the Sun. The sails also feature “thin-film solar cells to generate electricity and creating,” said Yuichi Tsuda of the agency, “a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure."
The Curiosity rover and the Atlas V rocket on which it is to ride were positioned for launch last week at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A Florida Today website account—as has been typical in coverage by the mainstream media of NASA’s nuclear program—in reporting this omitted the words plutonium and nuclear and made no reference to the danger s acknowledged in the EIS of the nuclear aspect of the mission.
Plutonium has long been described as the most lethal radioactive substance. And the plutonium isotope used in the space nuclear program, and on the Curiosity rover, is far more radioactive than the type of plutonium used as fuel in nuclear weapons or built up as a waste product in nuclear power plants.
It is Plutonium-238 as distinct from Plutonium-239. Plutonium-238 has a far shorter half-life–87.8 years compared to Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,500 years. An isotope’s half-life is the period in which half of its radioactivity is expended.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, explains that Plutonium-238 “is about 270 times more radioactive than Plutonium-239 per unit of weight.” Thus in radioactivity, the 10.6 pounds of Plutonium-238 that is to be used on Curiosity is the equivalent of 2,862 pounds of Plutonium-239. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki used 15 pounds of Plutonium-239.
The far shorter half-life of Plutonium-238 compared to Plutonium-239 results in it being extremely hot. This heat is translated in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator into electricity.
The pathway of greatest health concern for plutonium is breathing in a particle. A millionth of a gram of plutonium can be a fatal dose. The EIS for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission speaks of particles that would be “transported to and remain in the trachea, bronchi, or deep lung regions.” The particles “would continuously irradiate lung tissue.”
It also describes “secondary social costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities” including: “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 which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restriction or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
Pax Christi is asking people to call, email or write NASA and, says Stewart, state “that until they can launch spacecraft without nuclear materials aboard, they should not launch at all.” Also, it is calling for people to contact the White House “and tell President Obama that Curiosity should stay safely on the ground until it can be launched without threatening us and future generations.”
A petition to the White House—“Cancel the Launch of the Mars Rover Curiosity by NASA Which is Powered by Dangerous Plutonium-238”—has also been put up on the Internet for people to sign. It is at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/cancel-launch-mars-rover-curiosity-nasa-which-powered-dangerous-plutonium-238/8HzzWHk9
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