Inside
NCR Theres no earthly need for plutonium in
space
NASAs so-called Cassini space probe to Saturn is scheduled
to launch Oct. 6. On the one hand, it is part of a great human endeavor to
fathom the far reaches of space. On the other, it is potentially an act of
cosmic destruction.
The problem is the plutonium package on board to generate
electricity (see NCR , Aug. 29). An accident could cause untold harm on earth
and/or in space. This cry to stop and reconsider even at the 11th hour is
unlikely to be heard, just as previous appeals have gone unheard, because of
the money and reputations at stake, but cry we must because we owe it to
ourselves and the future of the planet not to go thus quietly into any nuclear
good night.
Writes Helen Caldicott, one of many serious scientific voices
raised in protest: One pound of plutonium, if uniformly distributed,
could induce lung cancer in every person on earth. We are talking about 72
times one pound of plutonium.
And Theodore Taylor, nuclear physicist: If accidentally
dispersed into the atmosphere, Plutonium-238 from a space reactor could render
uninhabitable an area several times the area of Germany for more than a hundred
years.
And Horst Poehler, NASA contract scientist: With so much
plutonium on board, Cassini could be the mother of all accidents. ... The
shielding on the plutonium is fingernail thin. Its a joke. Remember the
old Hollywood movies when a mad scientist would risk the world to carry out his
particular project? Well, those mad scientists have moved to NASA.
The mad scientists say all this is alarmist. But they
say it with less conviction each time. NASA originally calculated the chance of
a Cassini accidents releasing plutonium to be less than one in one
thousand. Given the dire consequences, thats not thoroughly reassuring.
And then NASA revised its estimate to one in 345. Who knows when they will find
it necessary to revise again? According to the War and Peace Foundation, three
out of 26 U.S. space missions involving nuclear materials have ended in mishap.
These calculations are all throws of the dice, and in various banal ways we
dice with death every day. Sadder is the realization that, after millions of
years of being earth-bound, we entered outer space, relatively speaking, only
yesterday. And already we flirt with contaminating it.
These are supposedly our best minds at work at places like NASA,
yet its as if they learned nothing while we turned Earth into a junk heap
in one short century.
Theres nothing more thankless than to be the shrill-voiced
prophet of doom in the marketplace or mall. It is lonely to swim against the
current of popular opinion in an age of conformity like ours. Even if we know
the space probe will lift off anyway, we must keep on shouting
Stop! As Shakespeare so grandly put it, Rightly to be great
is not to stir without great argument but greatly to find quarrel in a straw
when honors at the stake. Or when life as we know it is at the
stake.
National Catholic Reporter, October 10,
1997
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