To: nirsnet <nirsnet@nirs.org>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Failure in our "biz" is measured by one single event -- a catastrophe.
Cc: Carol Wolman <cwolman@mcn.org>, Bob Nichols <bobnichols@cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <3D7AD3EA.9010303@nirs.org>
References: <3D7AACFF.00002A.01196@bob>

Mr. Mariotte,

Your letter shown below does not set the record straight.  This movement has failed to do what is necessary to prevent a catastrophic tragedy way beyond anything we experienced on 9-11, and nothing you've said disproves that.  Davis-Besse was nearly that horrific failure of our movement we've all been dreading.  San Onofre has had a lot of close calls too, just in the past few years, and probably every other plant has too. Numerous plants have circular cracks, and every crack in every plant can probably propagate faster than the NRC or anyone else in the Nuclear Mafia can imagine.

Just like our Space Shuttles.  Just like the GE BWRs in Japan.  Just like Davis-Besse.  Just like your mother's old bones, and mine too.

In the meantime, you have a full-time job watching all this at NIRS.  So why did you start off your current email by knocking others who are spending their own time and money, utterly unpaid, trying to make this movement a success?  You accuse Bob and I of having spare time -- that's incredibly ARROGANT.  Asking for sympathy for how hard you work, while denigrating others specifically for working hard is unfair and unreasonable.

What NIRS thinks is important to everyone in the movement, and your "I understand it pretty damn well" comment just shows your contempt for other's opinions.  This correspondence has unmasked you as a fraud, as arrogant, misguided, and misleading.  It is of course unfortunate that doing so was necessary, but it was worth my having spent time on it.  Now I know.  Now others can know, if they care to read the details (I will have posted every letter that I've seen so far on the issue, within the next few days.)

Everything about you has been exposed except your motive for starting this exchange by accusing me in the first place.  I suspect that it has something to do with NIRS' decision to attend the Nuclear Renaissance conference with Public Citizen and Chairman Meserve, but until you reveal the details of your decision (as I requested in my previous email), it will remain impossible to know.

You attacked me for writing "debilitating pessimism", but all I've ever done is presented the facts as starkly as they deserve, as best I can.  That's realism, not pessimism.  Things are bad, and that's the reality.

True, we should acknowledge our victories, and I'll be the first to admit that all activists today stand on the shoulders of giants (as I expressed in earlier letters).  But we shouldn't rewrite history to invent victories that didn't happen.  The plan of 1000 reactors was preposterous; even if every reactor that was actually sited, had ground broken, a license applied for, or whatever, was built, it wouldn't have been a quarter of that.

Talented and dedicated activists undoubtedly stopped some reactors.  But only one operating nuclear power plant (Rancho Seco) has ever been closed by public referendum in the whole world.  Over 100 reactors were NOT stopped in America alone, where "freedom" rings, and the truth is told (sometimes), and anyone can grow up to be President.  Those reactors are this movement's problem, today.  Not Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is a sideshow designed to convince people that the waste problem is being solved, so that the nuke industry can claim that dry cask storage is "temporary", so they can keep the plants open without even bothering to build more spent fuel pools (which are much safer than dry casks, but still far more dangerous than society can allow).

Economics is what's been killing the nuclear industry, along with, of course, a general public malaise against it (the American people aren't stupid, after all, just heavily misinformed by highly trained professionals).  Unfortunately, economics alone isn't killing nuclear power fast enough, because the nuclear industry doesn't pay their full costs for anything from fuel coming in, to waste disposal of all their horrific output.

In June, 2001, a few months before the 9-11 tragedy, an NRC spokesperson asserted to me that a nuclear power plant could survive a 747 crashing into it, after I had claimed it could not.  Immediately after 9-11, the nuclear industry, including the NRC, blatantly lied and said that our reactors could survive such an attack.  After a few weeks they were FORCED to sing a different tune, but they continue to IGNORE the vulnerabilities of the spent fuel pools and the dry storage casks.

We are not about to succeed, despite all you say.  Davis-Besse obviously didn't humble YOU at all, nor did 9-11.

We only succeed if we prevent EVERY POSSIBLE CATASTROPHE.  If you think the actions of this movement have ensured the safety of America from nuclear catastrophe, you are deluded.

All 104 reactors need to be shut down.  Dry Cask Storage needs to be abandoned.  Spent fuel pools need to be protected.  Obviously, these are only the first of many steps, but the FIRST step today is shutting the reactors down forever.

Sincerely,

Russell D. Hoffman
Witness

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At 09:36 PM 9/7/02 , nirsnet <nirsnet@nirs.org> wrote:
All,

Well, this is all fascinating, and obviously some people have more time than I do to write long e-mails...

However, I'll do one more and then forever hold my peace...

First, Russell was quite right pointing out my mistake on the percentage of electricity generation by nukes 20 years ago versus today. For some reason, I had it in my head than 1992 was 20 years ago...:) sorry! Several large reactors came on line in the late 1980s and increased the percentage of nuke-generated electricity substantially.

I really only have two larger points. The first is that I believe in optimism. I don't understand how people expect to win something if they believe they already have lost. I believe people respond to victories, that we should acknowledge victories (and acknowledge defeats), and that we should use victories to attain more victories.

Second, I think the attitude that it seems Russell and Bob have denigrates the tremendous accomplishments made by thousands of dedicated activists over the past 20 years, and longer, and vastly overstates the significance of the Senate's Yucca Mountain vote.

To reiterate, there are NO nuclear plants under construction anywhere in North America or western Europe--the places that invented nuclear power. Russia's nuclear program, despite its PR activity, is at a near-standstill. Yes, we hear a lot of hype about new nuclear plants, in the U.S., in Europe, in Africa, in Russia/Eastern Europe--the fact is, these reactors aren't being built, and I believe never will be built. The opposition is too strong. Only in Asia is there a real nuclear construction program right now, and there is growing oppositiont there as well. Sure, there will be many times the nuclear industry will attempt to build something, or say it will build something, but I'm confident we can stop them nearly everywhere.

In March 1990, Ed Davis, then head of the now-defunct American Nuclear Energy Council (the predecessor of Nuclear Energy Institute) told the Washington Post about the proposed Homer, Louisiana uranium enrichment plant, "If we can't build that plant there, we can't build anything anywhere." Well, we stopped them. And we've already kicked Louisiana Energy Services (LES) out of 2 of the 3 counties they've proposed this year to start anew, and I'll bet we'll get the third one within 6 weeks...Even in these relatively impoverished areas, next to existing and partially-built nuclear facilities in the deep South, I'm finding incredible opposition to anything nuclear--I've been talking to elected officials, state govt people, and everyday people concerned about their lives, and it is clear that the entity with the uphill battle is not us, it's LES. And that's just for a uranium enrichment plant, a new reactor would be far more controversial.

That said, yes, there are more than 100 reactors still operating in the U.S. (far less than the 1,000 President Richard Nixon promised for the year 2000, but still more than 100 too many), and 440+ worldwide. And the criticism that we haven't been able to close many of them is correct. Not that we haven't tried, and continue to try, and if you look at the record beginning in 1992, you will note that in the U.S. only reactor has started up (Watts Bar, construction began in 1972, if I recall correctly) and several have closed permanently (Trojan, Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee, Zion 1-2). We nearly closed Oyster Creek; took us $50,000 and two years, but we didn't quite do it. Still, after having paid only $10 million for it, Amergen now wants to sell it--seems it wasn't a good investment after all....

It is extremely hard to close operating reactors; it takes a confluence of safety issues, economic issues and waste issues to successfully do that, along with a lot of money, time and expertise. The nat'l environmental groups that work on nuclear power full-time can be counted on the fingers of one hand; the total staff working on nuclear power issues full-time can be counted on the fingers of three hands.

NIRS is the largest group of them all; our annual budget is approximately the same as the gross pay of my counterpart at NEI. No matter how compelling you may think the arguments are for closing reactors (and I, of course, agree with them), they have not proven so compelling to elected officials, certainly not the NRC--which exists to serve the nuclear industry, nor most of the public.

Still, we keep trying, just as we are trying to stop Yucca and the Skull Valley Project, as we are trying to stop MOX, as we are trying to stop deregulation of radioactive materials, as we try to stop the new LES project, and on and on.....We're the largest group in the country and we have 7 full-time staff, we're spread a little thin....

Maybe that means new approaches are necessary; that is your perogative to develop and find resources to implement. I certainly encourage grassroots groups to do everything and anything they find appropriate.

As for NIRS, we believe our outreach is better than ever; our educational and mobilizing activity is better than ever; our action camps have trained hundreds to be ready to block nuclear waste trains and trucks; and we're going to continue those.... Your complaints are fine, and don't let us stop you from doing everything you think is right, but I don't understand the attacks on us, to be honest....There are only so many hours a week 7 people can work, and I can assure you NIRS staff is working all of them possible and has been for years.

As for the Senate vote, this was preordained, it shouldn't be regarded as a major defeat since we never had a chance to win it anyway. This was the best vote we've ever had over Yucca Mountain (the only reason we won in the past was Pres. Clinton's veto pen), and Sen. Reid of Nevada told us he had four-five more votes in his pocket if it had been just a little closer and we had a real chance to win....

Which we might have, if we hadn't had to work so hard to just get some of our "liberal" Senators to agree to vote with us, and we'd had some more time to work on the more conservative Senators. But our "friends" were difficult, making it that much harder to try to sway others....

Which leads into my own personal issues with electoral politics....We have no friends, with the possible exceptions of Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Ed Markey. 2 out of 535 are our (nearly) guaranteed votes, and I'm not sure either one of them would vote to shut down all existing reactors.

Even if 7 people working out of DC and North Carolina could make a difference in voter registration rolls--and we couldn't, we barely have time to go to the bathroom--who would we be wanting to elect?

In my view, power comes from the grassroots and people at the grassroots have to organize and mobilize and organize and mobilize. They have to go door-to-door, they have to set up phone banks of volunteers, they have to hold rallies and marches and meet with the media and get resolutions from city and county governments and do everything possible to keep the issue alive. We exist to support those activities across the country, we are not large enough to initiate them. Once the grassroots has the power, then it can consider electing candidates. This has been proven over and over again--when the people in a given district are really pissed about nuclear power, they'll vote in anti-nuke candidates, when they're not, it is not a first-tier issue, and those candidates don't get elected. But in my view, the battle against nuclear power will not be won in Washington, it will be won in the states and counties and where real people are doing real things against existing reactors. Certainly the best way to stop future reactors is to close the ones that are there now....

Ok, went on far long than I had planned...I have no problems with people thinking we need new direction, with searching for new ideas; I welcome that. Keep it up.

Michael Mariotte
NIRS



Bob Nichols wrote:
Carol,
I read your email to Russell about his response to Michael Mariotte's claim
that we are "winning" the fight against nuke power plants.
I must confess that I am perplexed by your comments. Your claims that "this
is hardly fair" and "movements go through cycles" misses the point. All
Russell did was politely point out that the anti-nuke movement is losing not
winning as Michael claims.
Michael is the leader of a major anti-nuke group active on several
continents. It seems to me that his perception of our relative position to
the nuke industry is crucial to any future success. To describe our current
position as one of "winning" is surely delusional at best.
By "not fair", Carol, do you mean you want us all to show proper respect to
Michael Mariotte of NIRS because he is currently a big dog in the anti-nuke bidness." On the contrary, Michael's perception will shape the anti nuke
future activities to a large extent.
Sorry, 20 years of failure in the public arena in the anti-nuclear "bidness"
speaks for itself. The litany of failure was just recently capped off by the
gross public vote in the Senate. We did not just sorta lose, we did not just
lose by a little bit. The vote was an overwhelming 60 to 39 against us. What
s worse, there are probably more than a few of the 39 that would have
switched their vote to the pro Yucca side if it was really close.
Face it, we have been steadily losing for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years. That
makes it just the right time to declare victory and loudly proclaim that we
are "winning," right Michael? As far as the public is concerned we always
lose so that makes the "electrical utilities" right and us wrong.
Take a deep breath, people! Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a
different outcome is the definition of insanity. This is not a polite
intellectual game, if it ever was.
Think about it, you know ezactly what is going to happen soon. One or more
of the old, embrittled plants pumping super hot pressurized boric acid is
going to blow. Several reactor core loads are due to be successfully
attacked by terrorists whenever the DOE starts moving them to "temporary
storage" next year. Bessie-Davis was simply yet another test and we failed
miserably.
At our current rate of involvement and success several of our "leaders" will
get all giddy because they get to be on the Today Show with Katie Curic for
30 seconds when all this starts happening. That will be it for the movement
s efforts. Oh sure, a few of our people will get their heads beat in and
arrested in demonstrations, but they will get over it.
The nuke industry will be out in force with blow-dried hair to explain minor problems" away in clear baritone tones for gullible Americans. These
Public Manipulation types are really good at their jobs. We are silly
amateurs by comparison. The industry makes their own biggest challenges
through simple physics. Their biggest challenges are certainly not us. Not
by a long shot.
Thank you for your time.
Bob Nichols
Oklahoma City

-------Original Message-------
From: Russell D. Hoffman
Date: Saturday, September 07, 2002 18:31:39
To: carol wolman
Cc: nirsnet
Subject: Sometimes what they do to defeat you is covert, sometimes it's
overt.
September 7th, 2002

Dear Carol,

Thank you for your comments (shown below).

The purpose of my response was to set the record straight after Michael Mariotte had made the outrageous claim that "we are winning", which is blatantly untrue (or, as you put it, "it's true that we've lost ground compared to 20 years ago").

I had chosen to compare the movement to 20 years ago rather arbitrarily; a strong case can (and should) be laid out that this movement is in worse shape than it ever has been at ANY previous time. 30 years ago, 40, 50... or 10, or 5, or even a year ago today, just before the 9-11 tragedy, which could have been a lot worse if any of the hijacked airliners had been smashed into a nuclear power plant, its spent fuel pool, or its dry storage casks.

The "installation of Bush" (as you describe it, and I'm inclined to agree) may have scared a few people into joining our movement, but the cost has been horrific: Besides Bush himself, who is very pro-nuclear, there's Cheney as Veep, the former head of Haliburton (a company that the nuclear industry hires to spy on activists and disrupt our activities, among other things). After Cheney was "installed", his pro-nuclear, secretly-developed energy plan was shoved down our throats, followed by the gutting (no matter what Michael Mariotte may call it) of our Freedom of Information Act, followed by The Patriot Act and other new laws making it potentially a crime in some states to even aim a camera at a nuclear power plant, let alone, to discuss such things as, "25 simple ways a small group of terrorists could melt down a nuclear power plant, kill hundreds of thousands of people, cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars, and lay waste to thousands of square miles of prime real estate, in under 20 minutes and for less than $20,000.00, with home-made materials and only a few weeks of training".

I do not subscribe to the theory that if they beat us down hard enough, we will finally revolt. Oh true, we might, but more likely, we'll be too weak, from cancer, leukemia, and other diseases, to fight by then. Our children are dying. Our brothers and sisters are dying. We are dying. Yet still we let the nuclear juggernaut continue, and grow, and thrive. Spent Fuel Pools full? No problem, just add Dry Casks. Terrorists could crash a plane into the casks? No problem -- the FAA is taking care of that danger! (That's the OFFICIAL NRC response, by the way -- airplanes crashing into spent fuel pools or dry casks are not considered a feasible accident scenario RIGHT NOW, September 7th, 2002, because the FAA has ensured safety in the air.)

Regarding your idea that the movement goes in "cycles", if there is to be a cycle in our favor, it will be because we made it happen; it won't just happen all by itself. In the past 12 months, considering 9-11, Davis-Besse, and the GE BWRs in Tokyo (which were recently reported to be embrittled and their paperwork falsified), I'd say there's enough new evidence that we should have made enormous progress this year. Instead, we're sliding backwards, and the proof of it is that the nuclear industry believes itself to be ready for a full revival, with new reactor designs, easier licensing, and more things encompassed in each license, so they don't need public hearings say, to add dry cask storage, and so on. The Nuclear Mafia is downright gleeful right now. Perhaps NIRS and Public Citizen will see it at the Nuclear Renaissance meeting they'll be attending over the next few days, and report to us about it. Perhaps the nuclear industry will keep their ear-to-ear grins in check for these groups and the media at this meeting, but I doubt it, unless of course, an accident or terrifying close call happens between now and the start of the meeting in a few days. Do you pray for such a "warning"? I don't.

The nuclear industry is thriving right now. The Bush Jr. Administration may only be in for four years (it looks like a shoe-in for eight to me), but the nuke industry doesn't care, because once a new policy is set, it is very hard to overturn. That's why they are concentrating their efforts on blocking public access to information, stopping public hearings, and making the public hearings meaningless, for example, by not taking sworn testimony, by not permitting members of the public to speak for more than two or three minutes, and by not permitting discussion about safety issues. You can talk about the impact on wildlife of the outflow of a regularly operating nuclear power plant (and good luck stopping the plant over THAT 10,000,000 gallons a minute of water, warmed 10 to 15 degrees above normal!), but you can't talk about an airplane crashing into a dry storage cask on the same property, which would cause the immediate release of hundreds of billions of Curies of radioactive material, destroying the area around it for thousands of square miles, polluting the river hundreds of miles downstream (or further), or polluting the beaches and nearby fishing areas in the ocean -- and then, over time, polluting the whole biosphere -- it would be a calamity of unspeakable proportions, yet you can't talk about it at a public hearing. The lawyer WILL shut you up!

To say we've lost ground is an understatement. We've been undermined, cut to shreds, out-financed (although NIRS says that they themselves are comfortably funded), infiltrated, and dismissed.

Many scientists I talk to (the very people upon whom the activists rely for facts) have told me in no uncertain terms that they feel that a major accident is the only thing that will wake people up to the dangers of nukes.

Well, that's TOO LATE. Our movement will have failed, if it takes THAT to wake people up.

The nuclear industry is ready for a fight, if they feel one is necessary (they don't). If they decide that it's necessary to target your area, they will flood your community with literature, your local television with commercials, and your local newspapers with articles, ads, and editorials. Sometimes what they do to defeat you is covert, sometimes it's overt.

What the nuclear industry and government fear most about a nuclear catastrophe is not thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of deaths. It's PANIC. It's public anger at the nuclear industry. It's people with bats and pitchforks demanding the plants be closed and the owners and operators be thrown in jail. It's people like you and me having an effect on the American public's emotions.

Since 9-11, the President has signed off on Yucca Mountain, and Congress has failed to sustain Nevada's veto. So for the next 10 or 15 years, or until Yucca Mountain is firmly proven to be a deadly mistake in everyone's mind, the nuke industry will pretend that the waste problem is solved, and the nukes will all remain happily churning out nuclear waste at the rate of about a ton a week per reactor.

The "status quo" will be maintained for the foreseeable future, and that's a crime: It's a growing monster which will come out to bite us sooner or later. The spent fuel pools are full, they have been re-racked and re-re-racked, and many reactors already have deadly DRY CASKS sitting near them, and more dry casks are coming around the country. EASY TARGETS FOR THE TERRORISTS.

The reactors are old, embrittled, and in danger of catastrophic meltdowns from terrorists, bumblers, or natural phenomena like earthquakes. If we (the activists) don't get the plants shut down, there will be a terrible catastrophe eventually (or maybe tomorrow), which the industry will claim only killed 30 people, or 300, or whatever, but which really will kill 30,000 people, or 300,000 people, or maybe more -- but most of the deaths will be scattered, and utterly denied, by the most culpable and corrupt industry in history.

Although some of our movement's leaders are arrogant and proud, they have failed to stop an obviously-impending disaster. None of us in this movement have anything significant to be proud of, because even having tried what we thought was our very best may not have been nearly good enough

If Davis-Besse had blown, who among us would be congratulating themselves?

Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

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At 03:00 AM 9/6/02 , "carol wolman" <cwolman@mcn.org> wrote:
This is hardly fair. While it's true we've lost a lot of ground compared to 20 years ago, movements go through cycles. Things seemed to be going well during the 90's and we became complacent. A new movement started to build with the installation of Bush as president, and momentum is building. We don't need cold water thrown. It's good to remember, though, that we have a lot of catching up to do. Peace, Carol
----- Original Message -----
The original email Coral Wolman was responding to is available online here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/2002/memory_lane.htm

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Note: When considering various figures presented to the public regarding nuclear generation capacity in America, one has to remember that a portion of the energy goes to the "nuclear fuel cycle", and never reaches the consumer.  How big a portion?  A huge amount!  In fact, if you include the energy needed to take care of the inevitable catastrophe which is coming if we don't close the nukes down, the answer is: ALL OF IT, and a lot more! -- rdh

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