DoE PLANS FOR EXPANDED PRODUCTION OF PLU-238 FOR FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS -- September 9th, 2000

Re: DoE PLANS FOR EXPANDED PRODUCTION OF PLU-238 FOR FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS, specifically, solicited comments based on the DRAFT Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Accomplishing Expanded Civilian Nuclear Energy Research and Development and Isotope Production Missions in the United States, Including the Role of the Fast Flux Test Facility, DOE/EIS-0310D, July, 2000

From: Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, California
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com

SENT VIA EMAIL

September 9th, 2000

Dear Ms Brown et al,

One hardly has to read the approximately 1200 pages of fiction to recognize a great lie is being perpetrated by DOE.

DOE wants radioactive material for its nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered weapons systems. The American military is the most powerful political organization in the world, yet its organizational methods are utterly unobservable. It is also the least-regulated pseudo-corporation in the galaxy, and the single most polluting entity of all times in the universe. It gets much of its nuclear material from DOE.

Now, in this Draft PEIS, the DOE wants to be given millions of dollars in order to procure and process millions of Curies of plutonium and other radioactive substances, supposedly for civilian purposes, but in reality, for new war toys including military satellites powered by Plutonium 238 -- satellites which could just as easily be powered by solar technologies or which should not be placed in orbit at all until or unless appropriate alternative energy technologies exist.

DOE wants to do much of the work at already-existing nuclear waste Superfund impossible-to-clean-up sites, namely, Hanford, Washington, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and so forth.

The DOE creates this apparent civilian "need" for plutonium RTGs (Radioactive Thermoelectric Generators), and other tools of the trade, by endorsing and arranging the funding of NASA projects which are civilian in appearance, and perhaps leading-edge in some of their other technologies, but which are positively 20th-Century (i.e. old) in their use of nuclear energy solutions, relying on dangerous and closed-market technologies of no use to the average citizen, which furthermore, are utterly wasteful of the very resource they use, since the plutonium is not recoverable after the mission, and which are old technology when compared to what is available even now on the open market -- clean solar energy systems would work perfectly well for most of the proposed missions, and in other cases, smaller missions could fulfill all the science data requirements of all the proposed civilian space missions. There is no need for the nuclear components at all. Not one watt of energy or degree of heat needs to be generated by the use of nuclear components for any vital interest, civilian or military, of any country, including the United States.

And yet NASA/DOE continues to demand more nuclear components. Why?

Because DOE loves plutonium. So does the military. They cannot conceive of the millions of scattered deaths their poisons create, literally in their wake.

A few months before Cassini was launched, in 1997, DOE announced that future missions would use a five-times better thermoelectric generator, known as an RPS, instead of the RTGs used on Cassini. Five times better isn't nearly good enough, but nonetheless, had DOE merely implemented this new unit for Cassini's launch, that would have given them about 50 pounds of "free" plutonium -- several year's worth at the proposed rates of use by NASA!

So clearly, DOE is not properly respectful of plutonium even simply as a precious resource, one which is deadly if improperly handled at any step. This policy fact is clearly demonstrated in the physical form of the RTGs themselves. NSAA's flimsy containment system isn't even designed to be100% secure, and NASA's expected release rates from accidents, as published for example in the Cassini space probe's EIS, prove that the RTGs are carefully designed to release their contents in a reentry accident of some sort, as a fine powder at a high altitude.

The perfect spectrum of sizes for lodging in a person's lungs, to be exact.

And the perfect spectrum of sizes to be widely dispersed by the winds before reaching the ground, so that whoever dies does not die in a herd, but by themselves, from one little speck that found its way into that person's lungs.

Cancer, leukemia, and birth defects. These are the things DOE wishes a permit to create. And the reason is for military power supplies for "Cold War" spy satellites. As far as this writer can tell, NASA''s recent Cassini probe was part of a cover operation for the military.

Cassini is right now on its way towards Jupiter and Saturn. But just because the flyby of Earth and the launch have both occurred doesn't mean we are safe from that awful bird -- far from it. And does DOE recall NASA's failure to calculate an orbital insertion -- a very similar maneuver to a flyby -- just one month after Cassini flew by Earth?

Right now, Cassini should be re-aimed, so that if anything goes wrong, it would be more likely to impact Jupiter rather than fly by it. And Cassini should be left in that orbital pattern.

Cassini could become a lost probe, going dead any time between now, September 9th, 2000, and when it is supposed to fall into Saturn or one of its moons about a decade from now, after all its illustrious science data is returned and it is nothing more than a flying chunk of radioactive waste (Pu 238's half life is about 87 years, Pu 239, 24,400 years). No trajectory is exact, and unmeasurable (with current technologies) gravitational combinations of forces, plus the forces from micrometeor impacts, all together mean that soon we would have no idea where Cassini might actually be. Cassini could possibly loop around one of the outer planets and be driven back towards Earth, having by the time it gets to us (unseen), possibly have experienced a decade or even a hundred years in space, during which time the containment system will probably have become brittle and useless. Cassini could be thrown back at us by the outer planets, just as Earth and Venus were used as sling-shots to get Cassini out towards Saturn in the first place.

All this risk, for what? Not to please the public! The public expressed widespread disgust with NASA for launching Cassini in the face of reason, and NASA had to put on a major publicity campaign to counteract the bad publicity it rightfully received. (Using what official or unofficial budget to counteract the actions of this and other activists, I do not know.)

All this mess, and trouble, for what? To cover-up what are probably dozens of military nuclear launches.

All the "civilian" missions are part of a military regime; they are cover-ups. The military thinks they need nuclear powered electrical energy generators (RTGs), and undoubtedly they think they need nuclear heaters as well (RHUs, Radioactive Heater Units, which each contain tens of millions of fatal doses worth of plutonium 238 and 239 (2.7 grams) and which each absolutely will incinerate in virtually any reentry accident (there are about 130 RHUs on board Cassini).

All of the civilian nuclear-powered and equipped probes which are right now being designed and built, could either just as easily be solar-probes or could be switched for missions which do not go quite so far out as to study Pluto, for example, this decade instead of next, or which carry a few less instruments so that the energy drain is reduced somewhat. However, NASA/DOE's goal in choosing specific missions is in fact, to reach just beyond the practical limit, not as a show of can-do or bravado (for what bravery is required to risk other people's lives?), but simply to force the use of nuclear, so that the system is in place for the military uses to go on unnoticed.

Putting one too many experiments on board the probe so that solar becomes difficult is one of DOE's goals when deciding which missions to fund!

Replacing missions with solar variants has been studied conclusively, even years ago, for Galileo -- and by JPL's own scientists. Specifically in the D. E. Rockey et al report of 1980, extracted from NASA by Karl Grossman, using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). There has been more than 20 years of solar development since then -- surely we could get to the next planet out past Jupiter by now (little of the solar development that has occurred in the last 20 years has been thanks to our DOE, who, having banked on nuclear power, are now making the nation morally and financially bankrupt for having let them do so).

Our DOE leaders continue choosing shortsighted nuclear "solutions". Why? There's nothing civil about it. NASA space probes are improperly insured, too -- by the Price-Anderson act, as corrupt an act as any Americans have ever revolted against or been revolted by. And note that P-A was designed to "insure" Stationary Objects -- nuclear power plants -- NOT space probes! NASA is protected by use of the Price-Anderson act from financial loss caused by Cassini or by NASA's other uses of plutonium and other radioactive substances -- protected, that is, from legal justice by the victims of NASA policy. Protected by an illegal act which NASA has no right to operate under the shield of, even if the act were legal for those stationary nuclear power plants it was originally designed to hold harmless from the financial consequences of their own actions.

I say the entire Draft PEIS is a lie. It's basic premises are lies. NASA doesn't need nuclear power for civilian probes, and the military needs to be reigned in -- they don't need nuclear power either, for probes, subs, ships, or on the tips of missiles. Humanity demands that the U.S. Military, and all militaries all around the world, be subservient to an even higher goal than winning wars against people. Humanity demands that these wars be planned for, and even be executed if need be, while conforming to the same environmental laws the rest of society lives (and dies) under.

Otherwise, we might win all the battles, but we will lose the planet, and along with it our health, our homelands, and everything else we cherish as citizens of a growing nation and as individual souls on a planet of billions of each-precious souls.

In Kosovo, Depleted Uranium bullets fired at, among other things, chemical industrial sites have turned the Blue Danube black with death. In Iraq, children die at the rate of 10,000 a month, because sewage systems and water irrigation systems were bombed, and because millions of shells of Depleted Uranium were used to win the Gulf War so quickly and "efficiently".

The use of Depleted Uranium should be banned, and the use of plutonium-powered listening devices for the military, whether undersea or in orbit in outer space (both uses are common today) should likewise be forbidden.

Further, the use of nuclear-powered ships and submarines must be stopped. Failures such as the Thresher and the Scorpion, two American nuclear subs which were lost for uncertain reasons, and more recently Russia's flagship nuclear sub, the Kursk (the Thresher was a flagship sub, in its time) remind us all too well that accidents can and will continue to happen. Each nuclear reactor which has already been lost or dumped at sea (the U.S. Navy dumped the research reactor Sea Wolf into the ocean some years back) needs to be pulled out and recovered, for a more proper nuclear waste disposal. But getting them out of the ocean is only one of the steps in what will be a long and nightmarish waste-guarding operation.

Who will do it? Who will pay for it? DOE must do it, AND DOE must pay for it. They should not be given yet more money for creating more nuclear waste and spreading it around the environment, using false pretenses and fictitious needs. They can't even clean up for their past mistakes. DOE is bankrupt.

And DOE must, as well, shut down all civilian nuclear power plants, each of which has a spent fuel pool next to it which is more deadly and dangerous than the plant itself. The clean energy solutions are Wind, Wave, Tide, Solar, Geothermal, Biomass, Hydroelectric, Ocean Thermal Gradient, and so on. They are NOT nuclear, coal, or oil solution's to America's constant and never-ending energy shortage. The solutions only come from a wide mix of available sources, not from the closed-minded, ingrown thinking which ignores the facts about nuclear waste disposal problems and dispersal problems, and all the other problems that have attended the use of nuclear energy and weapons since Day 1.

Please acknowledge receipt of these comments, and I request to know the name of any government official who actually reads even so much as this one document in opposition to the DOE nightmare proposed in the Draft PEIS, let alone, familiarizes themselves with the full details of what crimes are going on in the lofty name of science and space exploration, giving both a bad name, and polluting the planet, and the Near Earth Orbit area terribly. For I believe there is not one properly credentialed or elected official anywhere in the whole U.S. Government who can answer the charges I have brought forth here.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen / Activist
Carlsbad, California
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com

Attachments (2)

Attachment 1):

Note to all readers:

Please send your own comments to DOE by September 11th, 2000. Request a confirmation of receipt. If you want to send DOE a copy of this letter, it is okay to add your name to this document if you like, but an additional comment by you would be most helpful to the cause. Please "cc" me a copy as well. Thank you in advance!

The official organization which opposes nuclear power in space censors this writer's opinions, but if you wish to contact them, their address is: GlobeNet Bruce Gagnon is their director. In this writer's opinion, Gagnon is an agent/infiltrator whose goal is to destroy the movement against nuclear power in space. He is, in effect, a black hole of information. Thanks to Jonathan Haber for reminding us of the upcoming deadline for comments on the Draft PEIS.

Attachment 2):

Related Internet URLs:

Peace Activist, Environmentalist, High Tech Guru: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/whoisrdh.htm

Founder and Editor of the Stop Cassini newsletter: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/nltrs/index.htm

Learn the madness of NASA's ongoing nuclear policies! Visit the Stop Cassini web site: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/cassini.htm

Learn about The Effects of Nuclear War here: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm

What is a half-life? (Compares Plutonium 238 to Plutonium 239) http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/nltrs/nltr0146.htm

What is the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)? Is nuclear war winnable?
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/nltrs/nltr0128.htm

Hug a tree! Read why it should matter to you what happens to the great Redwoods in California:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/misc/stories/redwoods/redwoods.htm

Why you need encryption: An interview with Phil Zimmerman:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hightech/philspgp.htm
(also available in Spanish)

###

The Animated Software Company

rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com