To: Carol Wolman <cwolman@mcn.org>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: None of that "good stuff" starts to happen until the plants are shut down.
Cc: nirsnet <nirsnet@nirs.org>, Bob Nichols <bobnichols@cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <200209080553.g885r7pW028604@smtp.mcn.org>

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At 10:13 PM 9/7/02 , <cwolman@mcn.org> wrote (clip):
"I work more in the area of nuclear weapons, which is even bleaker than nuclear energy these days."
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Carol,

Thanks for "ccing" me your comments (shown below and, clipped, above).

Considering your main area of interest, I hope you've had a chance to take a look at my reproduction of LIFE MAGAZINE's 1952 photo essay on Hiroshima, including shocking images which were banned, then published, and then forgotten.  I found them at a flea market, scanned each one in, cleaned up the images digitally as best I could, and posted them to honor and remember those who suffered.  If these sorrowful photos don't move you, please check your pulse:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/nuclear_war/nuclear_war.htm

Also, have you read my EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS article?  One way this document has been used was in Australia, where 1500 copies were distributed at a rally.  It was also published in the North Coast Press a few years ago, and more recently, a reworked version appeared in Pakistan's largest English-language newspaper, and in a letter in "Brazzil":
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm

Here's a 2002 update:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke2002.htm

And another 2002 update (with correspondence from three Pakisanis and the former general secretary of the pro-Kashmiri independence movement, JKLF_UK):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuk2002a.htm

Also please check out my Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology (aka "THE DEMON HOT ATOM"):
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm

You'll find the work of scores of anti-nuke activists from the past 50 years represented there.  (The term "Nuclear War" in the Glossary links to the Hiroshima photo essay mentioned above.)

I have always honored honorable activists, and their efforts have made a wonderful, solid, meaningful basis for my historical overview of the history of the Nuclear Mafia and its deadly toy, which I call "The Demon Hot Atom".  I would be hard-pressed to find, anywhere among the hundreds of books I reviewed and used to produce the Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology, anyone who had such rosey prognostications as Mr. Mariotte has today -- not counting, of course, those who were proven wrong by having predicted that we were, at some point in our past, at a cusp, the twilight of nuclear power.  If one looks up "Renaissance" in the dictionary, one finds "rebirth".  This is NOT a good time for the anti-nuclear movement.  Instead, it is our darkest hour (so far).

This entire discussion started when Michael Mariotte, a nationally-recognized voice, referred to one of my essays as "debilitating pessimism".  I seriously doubt that anything I've ever done or said has ever indicated that anyone should be debilitated by all this!  On the contrary, as an example, I've written several thousand essays, and posted over a thousand of them online at my web site.  Many have been redistributed around the world.  In the past two years, I've had the opportunity to talk face-to-face about the dangers of nuclear power to roughly 10,000 people in California and Illinois.  I collected over 1,000 signatures from people who want a clean energy future.  Does that sound debilitating?

My attitude is simple, stark realism.  As I have shown, Mariotte is wrong about a lot of things, and that's one more. If Davis-Besse didn't alert you to how near catastrophe we are every day here in America, I doubt that anything short of an actual catastrophe will awaken you.

While it's true that no new nuclear reactors have been ordered in decades in America, the current ones are enough to keep all the retirees of the Nuclear Navy employed.  No new reactors can be justified economically today, but that self-imposed industry-wide moratorium may come to an end at any time.

Right now, Ohio, where Davis-Besse is located, is vying to be the proud location of a new test gas-centrifuge uranium enrichment plant.  How much more misled can Ohio's civic leaders be? 

And all the old reactors keep making millions of dollars a day for their owners, while risking catastrophic failure beyond any scale previously known.  Even the horror of Hiroshima would pale compared to the horror of an attack with a nuclear weapon against a nuclear power facility.

A catastrophic nuclear accident is inevitable unless the plants are shut down, and then it's only slightly less inevitable, unless we do about a million things right, like stopping Dry Cask Storage everywhere.  By shutting the plants down, and letting the fuel start to cool, things get better.  A few months after the plant is shut down, the fuel has cooled very significantly.  A thousand years later, some of the most dangerous elements are nearly completely gone.  But none of that "good stuff" starts to happen until the plants are shut down.

20 years ago, no reactor was using dry cask storage.  Now, more than a dozen use it, and about two dozen more are planning to use it in the next few years as their spent fuel pools fill up.  Some misguided activists actually think that dry casks are safer than spent fuel pools (unless all those activists are frauds, which is not impossible).

NIRS should be setting the record straight on a lot of things.  Mariotte's original attack was out of line, and most of what he's said since has been conflicting, confusing, inaccurate, arrogant, and argumentative.

Now he has declared victory with the intent to leave the playing field, and where is he going?  To listen to the pro-nukers at the Nuclear Renaissance meeting, I presume -- unless someone else from NIRS has the "honors".  Maybe we'll see his talking head on CBS, CNN, FOX, or NBC in the next few days.  If we do, it is now clear that he will misrepresent this movement, including its checkered, obstructed, and infiltrated history, its present focus, and its dreadful future.  OUR dreadful future. 

America's dreadful future.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Activist
Carlsbad, CA

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At 10:13 PM 9/7/02 , <cwolman@mcn.org> wrote:

To: nirsnet <nirsnet@nirs.org>, Bob Nichols <bobnichols@cox.net>,
        Carol Wolman <cwolman@mcn.org>, <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: Its win or lose

Thank you, Michael, for all your good work, and for your words of wisdom.  I
work more in the area of nuclear weapons, which is even bleaker than nuclear
energy these days.  Yet I have faith that truth and the will of the species to
survive will eventually prevail.  Meanwhile, those of us who labor to bring
about the mighty change of direction that must occur need all the encouragement
we can get.  We must celebrate our victories, believe in ourselves and the
worthiness of our cause, and tell those who would minimize our efforts and
their impact to get on the right side of it.   Peace,  Carol


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