Weeknd Edition, June 12-13, 2010  

Reviving Nukes in Space

Obama and the Nuclear Rocket

by KARL GROSSMAN

The Obama administration is seeking to renew the use of nuclear power in space. It is calling for revived production by the U.S. of plutonium-238 for use in space devices—despite solar energy having become a substitute for plutonium power in space.

And the Obama administration appears to also want to revive the decades-old and long-discredited scheme of nuclear-powered rockets—despite strides made in new ways of propelling spacecraft. Last month, Japan launched what it called its “space yacht” which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun. “Because of the frictionless environment, such a craft should be able to speed up until it is traveling many times faster than a conventional rocket-powered craft,” wrote Agence France-Presse about this spacecraft launched May 21.

But the Obama administration would return to using nuclear power in space—despite its enormous dangers.

A cheerleader for this is the space industry publication Space News. “Going Nuclear” was the headline of itseditorial on March 1praising the administration for its space nuclear thrust. Space New declared that “for the second year in a row, the Obama administration is asking Congress for at least $30 million to begin a multiyear effort to restart domestic production of plutonium-238, the essential ingredient in long-lasting spacecraft batteries.”

The Space News editorial also noted that “President Obama’s NASA budget [for 2011] also includes support for nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion research under a $650 million Exploration Technology and Demonstration funding line projected to triple by 2013.”

Space News declared: “Nuclear propulsion research experienced a brief revival seven years ago when then-NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe established Project Prometheus to design reactor-powered spacecraft. Mr. O’Keefe’s successor, Mike Griffin, wasted little time pulling the plug on NASA’s nuclear ambitions.”

Being referred to by Space News as “spacecraft batteries” are what are called radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTGs, power systems using plutonium-238 to provide on board electricity on various space devices including, originally, on satellites.

But this came to an end when in 1964 a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) RTG on board failed to achieve orbit and fell to the Earth, disintegrating upon hitting the atmosphere.  The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely. A study by a group of European health and radiation protection agencies subsequently reported that “a worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.” Long linking the SNAP-9A accident to an increase of lung cancer in people on Earth was Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who was involved in isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project.

The SNAP-9A accident caused NASA to turn to using solar photovoltaic panels on satellites. All U.S. satellites are now solar-powered.

But NASA persisted in using RTGs on space probes—claiming there was no choice. This was a false claim. Although NASA, for instance, insisted—including in sworn court depositions —that it had no alternative but to use RTGs on its Galileo mission to Jupiter launched in 1989, documents I subsequently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from NASA included a study done by its Jet Propulsion Laboratory stating that solar photovoltaic panels could have substituted for plutonium-fueled RTGs.

And right now, the Juno space probe—which will getting its on board electricity only from solar photovoltaic panels—is being readied by NASA for a launch next year to Jupiter. It’s to make 32 orbits around Jupiter and perform a variety of scientific missions.

Meanwhile, in recent years facilities in the U.S. to produce plutonium-238—hotspots for worker contamination and environmental pollution—have been closed and the U.S. has been obtaining the radionuclide from Russia. Under the Obama 2011 budget, U.S. production would be restarted. Last year, Congress refused to go along with this Obama request.

As for rocket propulsion with atomic energy, building such rockets was a major U.S. undertaking 50 and 60 years ago, under a program called NERVA (for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) followed by Projects Pluto, Rover and Poodle. Billions of dollars were spent and ground-testing done, but no nuclear rocket ever got off the ground. There were concerns over a nuclear rocket blowing up on launch or crashing back to Earth. The effort ended in 1972 but was revived in the 1980s under President Reagan’s Star Wars program. The “Timberwind” nuclear-powered rocket was developed then to loft heavy Star Wars equipment into space and also for trips to Mars. Most recently, Project Prometheus to build nuclear-powered rockets was begun by NASA in 2003, but ended in 2006, the cancellation referred to in the Space News editorial.

Obama’s choice to head NASA, Charles Bolden, favors nuclear-powered rockets—but he acknowledges public resistance. In a recent presentation before the Council on Foreign Relations, he opened the door to having a nuclear-powered rocket launched conventionally and moving in space with nuclear power.

Bolden, a former astronaut and U.S. Marine Corps major general, spoke in the May 24th address, of work by another ex-astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, on a nuclear-propelled rocket. “Chang-Diaz is developing what’s called a VASIMIR rocket,” said Bolden. “It’s an ion engine, very gentle impulse that just pushes you forever, constantly accelerating. And this, theoretically, is something that would enable us to go from Earth to Mars in a matter of some time significantly less than it takes us now.”

But, he said, “most people…in the United States are never going to agree to allow nuclear rockets to launch things from Earth.”  Yet “once you get into space, you know, if we can convince people that we can contain it and not put masses of people in jeopardy, nuclear propulsion for in-space propulsion” would enable a faster trip to Mars. He said, “You don’t want to have to take eight months to go from Earth orbit to Mars.”

Having nuclear power systems only activated once up in space was a system followed by the Soviet Union—because of it having suffered many launch pad explosions. Still, the scheme wasn’t accident-free. The worst Soviet space nuclear device accident involved its Cosmos 954 reconnaissance satellite. Its on board nuclear reactor was only activated after launch when the reactor was in orbit. But then there was a malfunction causing Cosmos 954 to tumble out of control and hurtle back to Earth, breaking up and spreading hotly radioactive debris over 124,000 square miles of the Northwest Territories of Canada.

President Obama, in a speech on “Space Exploration in the 2lst Century” given April 15 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, didn’t mention nuclear-powered rockets (not even those that would only be activated after launch). He did announce that “we will invest more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced heavy lift rocket—a vehicle to efficiently send into orbit the crew capsules, propulsion systems and large quantities of supplies needed to reach deep space. In developing this new vehicle, we will not only look at revising or modifying older models; we want to look at new designs, new materials, new technologies that will transform not just where we can go but what we can do when we get there. And we will finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.”

“At the same time, after decades of neglect, we will increase investment—right away—in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster,” he said.

“How do we supply spacecraft with energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These

are questions that we can answer and will answer. And these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on Earth.”

“And by 2025,” Obama said, “we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start—we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars.”

“I want to repeat this,” Obama asserted. “Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies.”

With Obama on the platform was U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida—who he introduced at the start of his speech. Nelson in 1986 was a passenger on the space shuttle (before the 1986 Challenger disaster ended the shuttle passenger program) and he is a member of Senate Science and Transportation Committee. Although Obama was not specific on the kind of spacecraft he envisioned for trips to Mars, later that day on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” on MSNBC, Nelson was—and it was Chang-Diaz’s nuclear rocket. “One of my crewmates,” said Nelson, speaking of former astronaut Chang-Diaz who was with him on the 1986 shuttle flight, “is developing a plasma rocket that would take us to Mars in 39 days.”

The object of Administrator Bolden and Senator Nelson’s technical affections, Chang-Diaz, a Costa Rican-native, the first naturalized U.S. citizen to become a U.S. astronaut, founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company after retiring from NASA in 2005. He is its president and CEO. In an interview with Seed.com last year, he said the engine for his VASIMIR (for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) could work with solar power. The engine uses plasma gas heated by electric current to extremely high temperatures.

But larger versions are needed for space travel and they require nuclear power, said Chang-Diaz. “What we really need is nuclear power to generate electricity in space. If we don’t develop it, we might as well quit, because we’re not going to go very far. Nuclear power is central to any robust and realistic human exploration of space. People don’t really talk about this at NASA. Everybody is still avoiding facing this because of widespread anti-nuclear sentiment.”

“People have fears of nuclear power in space,” continued Chang-Diaz, “but it’s a fear that isn’t really based on any organized and clear assessment of the true risks and costs.”

Comments Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space: “Despite claims that ‘new’ and innovative technologies are under development at NASA, the story remains much the same—push nuclear power applications for future space missions. Obama is proving to be a major proponent of expansion of nuclear power—both here on Earth and in space. His ‘trip to an asteroid and missions to Mars’ plan appears to be about reviving the role of nuclear power in space. The nuclear industry must be cheering.”

KARL GROSSMAN, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has focused on investigative reporting on energy and environmental issues for more than 40 years. He is the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up (www.envirovideo.com) and the author of numerous books.  

Published in Extra!, January-February 2008

Money Is the Real Green Power: The Hoax of Eco-Friendly Nuclear Energy

by Karl Grossman

Nuclear advocates in government and the nuclear industry are engaged in a massive, heavily financed drive to revive atomic power in the United States-with most of the mainstream media either not questioning or actually assisting in the promotion.

"With a very few notable exceptions, such as the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. media have turned the same sort of blind, uncritical eye on the nuclear industry’s claims that led an earlier generation of Americans to believe atomic energy would be too cheap to meter," comments Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "The nuclear industry’s public relations effort has improved over the past 50 years, while the natural skepticism of reporters toward corporate claims seems to have disappeared."

The New York Times continues to be, as it was a half-century ago when nuclear technology was first advanced, a media leader in pushing the technology, which collapsed in the U.S. with the 1979 Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accidents. The Times has showered readers with a variety of pieces advocating a nuclear revival, all marbled with omissions and untruths. A lead editorial headlined "The Greening of Nuclear Power" (5/13/06) opened:

Not so many years ago, nuclear energy was a hobgoblin to environmentalists, who feared the potential for catastrophic accidents and long-term radiation contamination. . . . But this is a new era, dominated by fears of tight energy supplies and global warming. Suddenly nuclear power is looking better.

Nukes add to greenhouse

Parroting a central atomic industry theme these days, the Times editors declared, "Nuclear energy can replace fossil-fuel power plants for generating electricity, reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute heavily to global warming." As a TV commercial frequently aired by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry trade group, states: "Nuclear power plants don't emit greenhouses gases, so they protect our environment."

What is left unmentioned by the NEI, the Times and other mainstream media making this claim is that the overall nuclear cycle--which includes uranium mining and milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste--has significant greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

As Michel Lee, chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, wrote in an (unpublished) letter to the Times, the

dirty secret is that nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming. Nuclear power is actually a chain of highly energy-intensive industrial processes. These include uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and fabrication of nuclear fuel; construction and deconstruction of the massive nuclear facility structures; and the disposition of high-level nuclear waste.

She included information on independent studies that document in detail the extent to which the entire nuclear cycle generates greenhouse emissions.

Separately, Lee wrote to a Times journalist stating that the "fiction" that nuclear power does not contribute to global warming has been a prime feature of the nuclear industry's and Bush administration's PR campaign that unfortunately . . . has been swallowed by a number of New York Times reporters, op-ed columnists and editors."

Greens for hire

In "The Greening of Nuclear Power," the Times, like other mainstream media touting a nuclear restart, also spoke of environmentalists changing their stance on nuclear power. "Two new leaders have emerged to encourage the building of new nuclear reactors," according to the editorial. They happen to be Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush's first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and Patrick Moore, "a co-founder of Greenpeace." The Times heralded this as "the latest sign that nuclear power is getting a more welcome reception from some environmentalists."

However, "both Whitman and Moore . . . are being paid to do so by the Nuclear Energy Institute," noted the Center for Media and Democracy's Diane Farsetta (PRWatch.org, 3/14/07). In her piece "Moore Spin: Or, How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups," Farsetta also reported:

A Nexis news database search on March 1, 2007 identified 302 news items about nuclear power that cite Moore since April 2006. Only 37 of those pieces-12 percent of the total-mention his financial relationship with NEI.

Whitman and Moore were hired as part of NEI's "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition" in 2006, which is "fully funded" by the institute, Farsetta noted. As for Moore and Greenpeace, his "association . . . ended in 1986, and he has now spent more time working as a PR consultant to the logging, mining, biotech, nuclear and other industries . . . than he did as an environmental activist."

According to Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation (Brattleboro Reformer, 2/24/07), "Moore sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign, but he did not actually found the organization." Wasserman went on to cite an actual founder of the organization, Bob Hunter, describing Moore as "the Judas of the ecology movement."

Scarce high-grade fuel

Insisting that "there is good reason to give nuclear power a fresh look," "The Greening of Nuclear Power " further claimed, "It can diversify our sources of energy with a fuel-uranium--that is both abundant and inexpensive."

This, too, was bogus. The uranium from which fuel used in nuclear power plants is made--so-called "high-grade" ore containing substantial amounts of fissionable uranium-235--is, in fact, not "abundant." As Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation told BBC News (11/29/05), "another dirty little secret" of nuclear power is that "startlingly, there's only a few decades left of the proven high-grade uranium ore it needs for fuel." This has been the projection for years.

Indeed, this limit on "high-grade" uranium ore is why the industry projects that, in the long-term, nuclear power will need to be based on breeder reactors running on manmade plutonium. But use of plutonium-fueled reactors has been stymied because they can explode like atomic bombs-they contain tons of plutonium fuel, while the first bomb using plutonium, dropped on Nagasaki, contained 15 pounds. Because it takes only a few pounds of plutonium to make an atomic bomb, they also constitute an enormous proliferation risk.

Blaming Jane Fonda

"The Jane Fonda Effect" (9/16/07), a Times Magazine column by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, blamed nuclear power's stall on the 1979 film The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda, which opened days before the Three Mile Island partial meltdown. "Stoked by The China Syndrome, it caused widespread panic," wrote Dubner and Levitt, even though, they maintained, "the accident did not produce any deaths, injuries or significant damage."

In fact, the utility that owned Three Mile Island has for years been quietly paying people whose family members died, contracted cancer or were otherwise impacted by the accident. While settlements range up to $1 million, the utility company continues to insist this does not acknowledge fault. The toll of Three Mile Island is chronicled in my television documentary Three Mile Island Revisited (EnviroVideo, 1993) and Wasserman's book Killing Our Own (which includes a devastating chapter, "People Died at Three Mile Island"), among other works.

But Dubner and Levitt continue undeterred, declaring, "The big news is that nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States." They acknowledge the Chernobyl accident, stating that it "killed at least a few dozen people directly." They admit that it "exposed millions more to radiation," but keep silent about the consequences of this in terms of illness and death. This atomic version of Holocaust denial flies in the face of voluminous research on the disaster that puts the number of dead in the hundreds of thousands.

At least 500,000 people--perhaps more--have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims of Chernobyl in Ukraine, said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine (Guardian, 3/25/06). Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, calculates a death toll of 300,000. In the book Chernobyl: 20 Years On, which he co-edited, Yablokov writes, "In 20 years it has become clear that not tens, hundreds of thousands, but millions of people in the Northern Hemisphere have suffered and will suffer from the Chernobyl catastrophe."

The New York Times Magazine also published "Atomic Balm?" (7/16/06), by Jon Gertner; the subhead read, "For the first time in decades, increasing the role of nuclear power in the United States may be starting to make political, environmental and even economic sense." Gertner used the term nuclear "renaissance," and again forwarded the claim that "the supply [of uranium] is abundant."

Gertner told of how the "lifespan" for nuclear plants was set at 40 years because this was considered "how long a large nuclear plant could safely operate." This has" proved a conservative estimate," he states--without providing a factual basis. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been "granting 20-year extensions" to the 103 U.S. nuclear plants so they "can run for a total of 60 years." (Consider the safety and reliability of 60-year-old cars speeding down highways.)

"Even with such licensing renewals, though, it's doubtful the current fleet of plants will run for, say, 80 years," he continued, and "that means the industry, in a way, is in a race against time. It needs to build new plants because the absence of nuclear power would probably pose tremendous challenges for the United States."

The New York Times also allows its nuclear advocacy to slip into its news stories. In an article (11/27/07) about the French nuclear power company Areva signing a deal with a Chinese atomic corporation, Times reporter John Tagliabue wrote of Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon's "long path from dirty hands to clean energy." The ""dirty hands referred to a youthful interest in archaeology; that nuclear power is "clean energy" appears to require no explanation.

Another story, datelined Fort Collins, Colorado (11/19/07), reported on two energy projects proposed for what the paper calls "a deeply green city." Describing the plans as "exposing the hard place that communities like this across the country are likely to confront,"  Times reporter Kirk Johnson wrote:
"Both projects would do exactly what the city proclaims it wants, helping to produce zero-carbon energy. But one involves crowd-pleasing, feel-            good solar power, and the other is a uranium mine, which has a base of support here about as big as a pinkie. Environmentalism and local politics have collided with a broader ethical and moral debate about the good of the planet, and whether some places could or should be called upon to sacrifice for their high-minded goals."

Other revivalists

Other media promoting a nuclear revival-their words prominently featured on NEI's website-include USA Today (3/5/06): "The facts are straightforward: Nuclear power . . . creates virtually none of the pollution that causes climate change and delivers electricity cheaper than other forms of generation do." And the Augusta Chronicle (8/21/06): "Nuclear power--for decades perceived as an environmental scourge--is emerging as the cleanest and most cost-efficient source of energy available, a fact conceded even by environmentalists." And Investors Business Daily (12/1/06): "We can worry about imaginary threats of nuclear energy or the real dangers of fossil fuel pollution."

Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News also joined the chorus of support (5/2/07): "Look, America should embrace nuclear power, even if it's [just] to get off the foreign oil bandwagon." This is also common nuclear disinformation, that nuclear power is needed to displace foreign oil. The only energy produced by nuclear power is electricity--and only 3 percent of electricity in the U.S. is generated with oil.

There are a few exceptions in the mainstream media, notably the other Times, the Los Angeles Times. "The dream that nuclear power would turn atomic fission into a force for good rather than destruction unraveled with the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986," the paper stated (7/23/07) in an editorial headlined: "No to Nukes: It's Tempting to Turn to Nuclear Plants to Combat Climate Change, but Alternatives Are Safer and Cheaper." Those who claim nuclear power "must be part of any solution" to global warming or climate change make a weak case, said the L.A. Times, citing

the enormous cost of building nuclear plants, the reluctance of investors to fund them, community opposition and an endless controversy over what to do with the waste. . . . What's more, there are cleaner, cheaper, faster alternatives that come with none of the risks.

Staggering numbers

As to the risks, the mainstream media's handling--or non-handling--of the U.S. government's most comprehensive study on the consequences of a nuclear plant accident is instructive. Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2 (known as CRAC-2) was done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s. Bill Smirnow, an anti-nuclear activist, has tried for years to interest media in reporting on it--sending out information about it continually.

The study estimates the impacts from a meltdown at each nuclear plant in the U.S. in categories of "peak early fatalities," "peak early injuries," "peak cancer deaths" and "costs [in] billions." ("Peak" refers to the highest calculated value--not a worst case scenario, as worse assumptions could have been chosen.) For the Indian Point 3 plant north of New York City, for example, the projection is that a meltdown would cause 50,000 "peak early fatalities," 141,000 "peak early injuries," 13,000 "peak cancer deaths," and $314 billion in property damage--and that's based on the dollar's value in 1980, so the cost today would be nearly $1 trillion. For the Salem 2 nuclear plant in New Jersey, the study projects 100,000 "peak early fatalities," 70,000 "peak early injuries," 40,000 "peak cancer deaths," and $155 billion in property damage. The study provides similarly staggering numbers across the country.

"I've sent the CRAC-2 material out for years to media and have never heard a thing," Smirnow told Extra!:

Not anyone in the media ever even asked me a question. There's no excuse for this media inattention to such an important subject, and it shows how they're falling flat on their faces in not performing their purported mission of educating and informing the public. Whatever their reason or reasons for not informing their readers and listeners, the effect is one of helping the nuclear power industry and hurting the public. If the public was informed, this new big pro-nuke push would never happen.

Also in the way of sins of omission is the media silence on "routine emissions"--the amount of radioactivity the U.S. government allows to be routinely released by nuclear plants. "It doesn't take an accident for a nuclear power plant to release radioactivity into our air, water and soil," says Kay Drey of Beyond Nuclear at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. "All it takes is the plant's everyday routine operation, and federal regulations permit these radioactive releases. Rarely, if ever, is this reported by media"  The radioactive substances regularly emitted include tritium, krypton and xenon. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets a "permissible" level for these "routine emissions," but, as Drey states, "permissible does not mean safe."

Hidden subsidies

Another lonely voice amid the media nuclear cheerleaders is the Las Vegas Sun, which recently has been especially outraged by $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry to build new nuclear plants included in the 2007 Energy Bill. The Sun demanded (8/1/07): "Pull the Plug Already."

In reporting on the economics of nuclear power, mainstream media virtually never mention the many government subsidies for it, while continuing to claim that it's "cost-effective" (Augusta Chronicle, 8/21/06). One such giveaway is the Price-Anderson Act, which shields the nuclear industry from liability for catastrophic accidents. Price-Anderson, supposed to be temporary when first enacted in 1957, has been extended repeatedly and now limits liability in the event of an accident to $10 billion, despite CRAC-2's projections of consequences far worse than that.

Writing on CommonDreams.org (9/11/07), Ralph Nader explored the economic issue. "Taxpayers alert!" he declared:

The atomic power corporations are beating on the doors in Washington to make you guarantee their financing for more giant nuclear plants. They are pouring money and applying political muscle to Congress for up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to persuade an uninterested Wall Street that Uncle Sam will pay for any defaults on industry construction loans. . . . The atomic power industry does not give up. Not as long as Uncle Sam can be dragooned to be its subsidizing, immunizing partner. Ever since the first of 100 plants opened in 1957, corporate socialism has fed this insatiable atomic goliath with many types of subsidies.

Ignored alternatives

Yet another claim by mainstream media in pushing for a nuclear revival is the success of the French nuclear program. 60 Minutes (4/8/07) did it in a segment called "Vive Les Nukes." (See FAIR Action Alert, 4/18/07.) Correspondent Steve Kroft started with the nuclear-power-doesn't-contribute-to-global-warming myth:

With power demands rising and concerns over global warming increasing, what the world needs now is an efficient means of producing carbon-free energy. And one of the few available options is nuclear, a technology whose time seemed to come and go, and may now be coming again. . . . With zero greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. government, public utilities and even some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear power, and one of the first places they're looking to is France, where its been a resounding success.

Though she was totally ignored, Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear told 60 Minutes of radioactive contamination in the marine life off Normandy where the French reprocessing center sits, leukemia clusters in people living along that coast, and massive demonstrations in French cities earlier in the year protesting construction of new nuclear power plants.

The Union of Concerned Scientists was upset by 60 Minutes downplaying of alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar. UCSs Alden Meyer wrote to 60 Minutes:

In fact, wind power could supply more energy to the U.S. grid than nuclear does today, and when combined with a mix of energy efficiency and other renewable energy sources, could provide a continuous energy supply that would help us make dramatic reductions in global warming.

Dismissal of renewable energy forms is another major facet of mainstream medias drive for a nuclear power revival. As the St. Petersburg Times put it (12/08/06), "While renewable sources of energy such as solar power are still in the developmental stage, nuclear is the new green." Renewables Are Ready was the title of a 1999 book written by two UCS staffers. Today, they are more than ready. "Wind is the cheapest form of new generation now being built," wrote Greenpeace advisor Wasserman (Free Press, 4/10/07). He pointed to an array of wind, solar, bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal and increased conservation and efficiency.

Wasserman has also written about another element ignored by most mainstream media (Free Press, 7/9/07): "The switch to renewables defunds global terrorism. Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Shutting them down ends the fear of apocalyptic disaster by both terror and error. He stressed, again, that safe, clean energy is here and we could replace everything with available technology that could easily supply all our needs while allowing a sustainable planet to survive and thrive."

The one green thing

What are the causes of the media nuclear dysfunction? The obvious problem is media ownership. General Electric, for one, is both a leading nuclear plant manufacturer and a media mogul, owning NBC and other outlets. (For years, CBS was owned by Westinghouse; Westinghouse and GE are the Coke and Pepsi of nuclear power.) There have been board and financial interlocks between the media and nuclear industries. There is the long-held pro-nuclear faith at media such as the New York Times. (See sidebar.)

There is also the giant public relations operation--both corporate, led by the NEI, and government, involving the Department of Energy and its national nuclear laboratories. "You have the NEI and the nuclear industry propagandizing on nuclear power, and journalists taking down what the industry is saying and not looking at the veracity of their claims," Greenpeace USA nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio told Extra!.

And then there's lots of money. FAIR recently exposed (Action Alert, 8/22/07) how National Public Radio, which broadcasts many pro-nuclear pieces, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from nuclear operator Sempra Energy and Constellation Energy, which belongs to Nustart Energy, a 10-company consortium pushing for new nuclear power plant construction.

The only thing green about nuclear power is the nuclear establishment's dollars.

Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury. Books he has written about nuclear technology include Cover Up: What You ARE NOT Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He has hosted many television programs on nuclear technology on EnviroVideo.com


Extra! January/February 2008

The NYTs Nuclear Promised Land

By Karl Grossman

Sidebar to "Money is the Real Green Power" (Extra! 1-2/08)

The New York Times is not alone in promoting a revival of nuclear power. But as the U.S. paper of record, it sets the media tone. Its pro-nuclear editorial culture began decades ago when the Manhattan Project and its corporate contractors (notably General Electric and Westinghouse, which became the major manufacturers of nuclear power plants) sought to perpetuate what was established during World War II, by making other things atomic.

Because of the Times' importance, Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves personally arranged for its reporter, William Laurence, to join the project. Laurence was responsible for the first piece of nuclear media disinformation; he wrote a press statement to cover up the first test of an atomic device, claiming there had been an ammunition dump explosion. Laurence later, as the only "journalist" that had been at the 1945 Trinity test, wrote that it was like being "present at the moment of creation when the Lord said 'let there be light.'"

After atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the Times both ran and distributed free to the nation's other newspapers a 10-part series written by Laurence glorifying the Manhattan Project, notes News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb by Beverly Keever (Common Courage Press). Radioactivity was all but unmentioned in the series.

And the Times science reporter continued for years to wax poetic about atomic technology. "From the dawn of the atomic-bomb age, Laurence and the Times almost single-handedly shaped the news of this epoch and helped birth the acceptance of the most destructive force ever created," writes Keever, professor of journalism at the University of Hawaii. Laurence would describe nuclear power as "making the dream of the Earth as a Promised Land come true."
                
                                                                ***

COVER STORY

E The Environmental Magazine, November-December 2001 

The Nuclear Phoenix

The Bush Administration is Pushing Ahead with a Full-Scale Revival of Atomic Power

by Karl Grossman

The last time anyone ordered a new nuclear power plant in the United States was in 1978, but if you think that means nukes are dead forever, guess again. The Bush Administration and the nuclear industry are making an intense push to rehabilitate nuclear power in the U.S. “It’s like reviving Frankenstein -- this is the sequel,” says Robert Alvarez, executive director of the Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR) Foundation and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation.

Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) uses another word when describing the Administration’s work. Says D’Arrigo: “It’s the push to relapse.”

Ever since the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl shattered public trust in atomic power, advocates in government and industry have been laying the groundwork for a nuclear energy comeback. An unbridled drive has started under George W. Bush in what “may be the most ardently pro-nuclear power Presidency in U.S. history,” says Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based NIRS. The Bush Administration’s stance is aggressive, and it minimizes the dangers of nuclear power. As Bush’s Secretary of Treasury, Paul O’Neill, told The Wall Street Journal, “If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear power really is good.” 

In Bed with the Industry

The Bush Administration struck a close working relationship with the nuclear industry well before taking office. The administration’s energy “transition” advisors included Joseph Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which describes itself as “the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry”; J. Bennett Johnston, who as a U.S. Senator was a leading pro-nuclear power figure in Congress and who now runs a consulting firm that assists the nuclear industry; Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, former head of the American Nuclear Energy Council (forerunner of NEI) and a reported “Bush buddy” going back to their days together at Yale; and representatives of four nuclear utilities. There were no advisors representing renewable energy or environmental organizations.

Two weeks after being sworn in, Bush set up a “National Energy Policy Development Group” and appointed as its chairman Vice President Dick Cheney. Its members included O’Neill and other top administration officials. Ten weeks after it was organized, the group issued a report declaring its support for “the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy.” The plan would substantially increase the use of nuclear power both by building new nuclear power plants -- many to be constructed on existing nuclear plant sites -- and extending the 40-year licenses of currently operating plants each by another 20 years.

“Many U.S. nuclear plant sites were designed to host four to six reactors, and most operate only two or three; many sites across the country could host additional plants,” says the energy policy group’s report. “Building new generators on existing sites avoids many complex issues associated with building plants on new sites.” It could also greatly amplify the impacts of an accident, notes Paul Gunter, head of NIRS’ Reactor Watchdog Project. If one nuclear plant in a cluster of facilities undergoes a catastrophic accident, there is the potential, says Gunter, for a “cascading loss amplifying the release of radiation.”

According to the policy report, “the licensing of as many as 90 percent of the currently operating nuclear plants may be renewed.” There are 103 nuclear plants now in the U.S. They are, on average, 19 years old. Of the longevity of nuclear plants, “No one foresaw them running for more than 40 years,” says Alvarez of STAR, who was also senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1993 to 1999. The effects of intense radioactive bombardment, especially on metals, have been seen as limiting the operating life of nuclear plants. And then there’s the standard deterioration that occurs when any machine gets old. “These reactors are just like old machines, but they are ultra-hazardous,” says Alvarez. By pushing their operating span to 60 years, he says, “disaster is being invited.”

New Nukes?

The Bush Administration’s policy also supports “advanced” nuclear power plants -- supposedly new-and-improved nukes. “Advanced reactor technology promises to improve nuclear safety,” it says. One example the report provides is “the gas-cooled, pebble bed reactor, which has inherent safety features.” In fact, says Gunter, the pebble bed reactor is not new; it’s just “old wine in a new bottle.” It’s a hybrid of the gas-cooled, high-temperature design that “has appeared and been rejected in England, Germany and the U.S.” And far from being “inherently safe,” a reactor of similar design, a THTR300 in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, spewed out substantial amounts of radioactivity in a 1986 accident, leading to its permanent closure.

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says that the pebble bed reactor uses blocks of graphite to slow neutron action, although “graphite is a form of carbon, which can ignite in a reactor fire. It was the graphite that kept burning at Chernobyl for 10 days, releasing much of the radiation.”

Also, the pebble bed would produce 10 times more high-level waste per amount of electricity generated as compared to existing plants, says Lochbaum, who worked in the nuclear power industry for 17 years and became a whistleblower before coming to UCS. Further, Exelon, the builder of the pebble bed reactor, wants five such units operated from a single control room, which is a dubious proposition, says Lochbaum. He also notes that the pebble bed systems’ designers “reduced costs by eliminating a key safety feature -- the reactor containment building.”

The Bush National Energy Policy, with its reliance on more nuclear power and greater fossil fuel generation, comes at a time when safe, clean, renewable energy sources have arrived. The need is for broad-scale implementation. Wind power, solar energy, hydrogen fuel technologies including fuel cells, among other renewable energy sources, are more than ready after years of dramatic advances. Coupled with energy efficiency, they can be tapped and widely used.

A coalition of renewable, safe-energy advocates -- including the Safe Energy Communication Council, Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment and NIRS -- says of the National Energy Policy: “The Bush/Cheney Administration is recklessly promoting the building of new nuclear plants to address an energy crisis that in large part is being manufactured by the energy corporations that will benefit from building new power plants….We believe that instead of promoting dangerous and dirty forms of energy, the United States should be a world leader in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Let us not sell our children’s future.”

But the Bush Administration is not to be turned around. As Cheney, in one speech, said of nuclear power: “If we are serious about environmental protection, then we must seriously question the wisdom of backing away from what is, as a matter of record, a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source.”

Or, as he declared in another speech, “We’re now at about 20 percent of our electricity being generated by nuclear. We’d like to increase that….If you’re really concerned about global warming and carbon dioxide emissions, then we need to…aggressively pursue the use of nuclear power, which we can do safely and sanely, but for 20 some years [it] has been a big no-no-politically.”

Not surprisingly, the nuclear power industry stands solidly alongside President Bush. Says NEI President Colvin, “The administration’s support for nuclear power as a proven energy technology that protects our air quality is a tremendously positive development for our nation….The industry looks forward to working with the White House and Congress to make this long-term vision a reality.”

Pushing Ahead

To fast track its vision of our radioactive future, the Bush Administration advocates a “one-step” licensing process for nuclear plants. It was part of an Energy Policy Act bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress in 1992 and signed into law by the former President George Bush. “One-step” licensing allows the NRC to hold a single hearing for a “combined construction and operating license.” No longer can nuclear plant projects be slowed down or stopped at a separate operating license proceeding, at which evidence of construction defects can be revealed. As the New York Times described the passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, “Nuclear power lobbyists called the bill their biggest victory in Congress since the Three Mile Island accident.”

That Energy Policy Act was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress. As NIRS reported in its Nuclear Monitor in 1992: “As the bill wound its way through the Senate and House, the nuclear industry won nearly every vote that mattered, proving that Congress remains captive to industry lobbying and political contributions over public opinion.”

That remains the situation today. Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program documents how the NEI regularly showers Congress -- including members of both major parties -- with political contributions. And when the nuclear industry gives, members of Congress act, notes Public Citizen, which charts the record of politicians on key nuclear issues. Likewise, nuclear industry money pours into Presidential campaigns.

The Republican Bush-Cheney posture on nuclear power is hard-line, but that doesn’t mean the Democratic alternative was (or is) much different. The NEI’s website includes a page of “Endorsements of Nuclear Energy,” and among those quoted are Al Gore: “Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world’s energy supply,” he reportedly said in a speech at the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev in 1998. And Gore’s former running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, is quoted as saying at a Senate hearing in 1998: “I am a supporter of nuclear energy. I believe it can be part of the solution to solving the world’s energy, environment and global warming problems.” 

Basically, there is a difference in degrees and rhetoric between the politicians from the major parties, says Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. And “the Clinton Administration is by no means blameless” in the push to revive the moribund nuclear industry, she says, especially because of its support for development of “advanced” nuclear plants.

The Bush National Energy Policy says that because of “one-step” licensing, which it terms the “reformed licensing process,” getting new nuclear plants built and operating will now be streamlined. And, to make sure public involvement is minimal in the process, the NRC is now seeking to undo the public’s right to formal trial-type hearings on nuclear plant licensing. It plans to “deformalize” the hearings by eliminating due process procedures. Documents would be restricted to what the NRC staff and company deem relevant. Instead of cross-examining witnesses, interested parties will have to submit written questions as suggestions for the NRC’s presiding officers to ask at their discretion at a hearing. Says Mariotte, “The administration should learn from Seattle, Prague and Quebec that when people are shut out of public policy pro-cesses, the streets are their only alternative.”

Redefining Safety

Also to help in a nuclear power comeback is the effort to alter the standards for radiation exposure. As more has been learned about radioactivity, the realization has come that there is no “safe” level. This is called the “linear no-threshold theory,” and it has been adopted by the NRC and other U.S. government agencies. 

Now nuclear advocates in government and industry want to alter the standards premised on a contention that low doses of radiation are not so bad after all. They are “engaged in an all-out assault on radiation protection standards,” says D’Arrigo. There is even interest in a long-rejected notion called “hormesis,” which claims that a little radiation is good for people and helps exercise the immune system. The instrument for this change is a new Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which is to make recommendations to the federal government. “The only way to convince the public that additional radiation is acceptable is to put together a skewed panel,” says D’Arrigo. The new BEIR panel, she says, is thus stacked with high-level radiation advocates.

Nuclear waste is another obstacle the nuclear proponents in government and industry are seeking to get around. “If we don’t deal with the waste problem,” acknowledged Cheney in a speech, “then my guess is we won’t get the investment in new facilities in the nuclear arena…. It’s within our grasp as a government ... to move forward, to get the issue addressed and get it off the table so that utilities are prepared to invest in nuclear.”

How is this being done? For high-level nuclear waste, there are drives to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada (100 miles northwest of Las Vegas) as a repository and also to use Utah’s Skull Valley Goshute Reservation and possibly other Native American reservations.

The huge problem with Yucca Mountain, which the government began exploring as a repository in the 1980s, is that it is on or near 32 earthquake faults and has a “history and prospects of volcanoes and a likelihood of flooding and leakage,” says D’Arrigo. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration is still seeking to “ram through” Yucca Mountain, says Mariotte. Resistance from people in Nevada and their elected representatives is so far blocking the scheme.

In 1997, tribal leaders of the Goshute Reservation “leased land to a private group of electrical utilities for the temporary storage of 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel,” according to the Goshute’s website. But some members of the tribe are fighting the deal in court, demanding to know who got what for what. Utah government officials are also challenging the arrangement. Governor Mike Leavitt says, “We intend to leave no stone unturned to make sure this waste does not come to Utah. The state’s authority and responsibility to protect its citizens and the environment is clear.”

But clear to advocates in government and the nuclear industry is that working with ostensibly sovereign American Indian reservations is a way to unload atomic garbage. Critics describe it as a new form of environmental racism -- “nuclear racism” -- seeking to take advantage of the poverty of Native Americans.

The drive to “recycle” low-level nuclear waste has been percolating for years. In 1980, the NRC first proposed that irradiated metal scrap could be converted, stressing that “radioactive waste burial costs could be avoided, [and] the resulting use of smelted scrap could be made into any number of consumer or capital equipment products such as automobiles, appliances, furniture, utensils, personal items and coins.” Some thought the push for radioactive quarters and hot Pontiacs was too crazy to be true.

But now the scheme is coming down the pike full-speed with the DOE, Department of Transportation and the NRC moving to facilitate the “recycling of contaminated metal and other radioactive wastes,” as the DOE recently announced. Says D’Arrigo: “Bush wants more nuclear power, and we are being told we’ll have to do our part by accepting atomic waste in our daily use items.”

Those behind the nuclear push are moving to extend a key piece of U.S. law that facilitated the nuclear power industry in the first place: the Price-Anderson Act. This law drastically limits the amount of money people can collect as a result of a nuclear power plant disaster. It was originally enacted in 1957 after nervous utilities and insurance companies balked at building nuclear power plants. “The potential for catastrophe is apparently many times as great as anything previously known in industry,” said Herbert W. Yount, vice president of Liberty Mutual Insurance, before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, from which Price-Anderson emerged. The committee was part of the earliest promotion for a nuclear establishment of government and corporations that had grown out of the World War II-era Manhattan Project. With the war over, nuclear scientists, government bureaucrats and corporate contractors involved in the Manhattan Project—like Westinghouse and GE—sought to perpetuate their nuclear activities through electricity generation. 

In what was supposed to be a temporary measure to boost the nuclear power industry, the Price-Anderson Act passed, limiting liability in the event of a nuclear plant accident to $560 million, with the federal government paying the first $500 million. It was supposed to last for only 10 years, but Price-Anderson has been repeatedly extended. Now the Bush Administration and the atomic industry are seeking to use it as a financial umbrella for the push to revive nuclear power.

“The renewal of Price-Anderson is only to build new reactors,” says Mariotte.“That’s the issue. Existing nuclear plants are covered by the present law.”

The Bush Administration and nuclear industry are proposing that the current liability limit of $9 billion be extended for another 10 years. The initial $560 million cap rose to, in recent years, $9 billion. Still, notes Alvarez, this is all just a fraction of what the NRC itself has concluded would be the financial consequences of a nuclear plant accident. Those figures are contained in a 1982 report prepared for the NRC by the DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories entitled Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences for U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. It calculates (in 1980s dollars) costs as a result of a nuclear plant disaster as high as $314 billion at the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant north of New York City and $174 billion for the Millstone 3 nuclear plant in Connecticut. The report projects “early fatalities” with figures as high as 100,000 dead for the Salem 1 nuclear plant in New Jersey and 72,000 dead for the Peach Bottom 2 nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

What are the chances of such a disaster occurring? In 1985, the NRC was asked by a House oversight committee chaired by Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) to determine the probability of a “severe core melt accident” for reactors now operating and those expected to operate during the next 20 years. The NRC concluded: “The crude cumulative probability of such an accident would be 45 percent.”

To that danger now has to be added the possibility of a World Trade Center-style airborne terrorist attack on American nuclear plants. Tom Clements, who heads the Nuclear Control Institute, says existing plants are vulnerable to such an attack, “which would be many times worse than what we’ve seen in New York because it could result in radiation and fallout over a vast area.” And so the nightmare of our affair with nuclear power continues.

KARL GROSSMAN, a George Polk Award-winning journalist, teaches investigative and environmental reporting at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury.

                                                                    ***

                    Of Toxic Racism and Environmental Justice

                                          by Karl Grossman
                      (E Magazine, Vol III, Number 3, May/June 1992)


     It was a seminal event: The First National People of Color Environmental
Leadership summit held in Washington, DC in October 1991.  More than 600
African, Latino, Asian, and Native Americans from every state, and people from
other nations, too, struck out at "environmental racism" and launched a new
movement -- for "environmental justice."

     From the conference, sponsored by the Commission for Radical Justice (CRJ),
came a "call to action," charging that people of color face a disproportionately
greater level of environmental pollution, and setting forth a platform for this
new movement which "raises the life and death struggles of indigenous and
grassroots communities of color to an unprecedented multinational integrated
level."

     "We, the people of color, gathered together," declared a 17-point statement
adopted at the five-day gathering, "to build a national and international
movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our
lands and communities...to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages
and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to
insure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would
contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to
secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for
over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our
communities and land and the genocides of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these
principles."
 
     When this is realized and people of all classes and colors come together
to fight pollution, says CRJ, the struggle for the environment will be far more
winnable.  And that is what the summit and the new energies it produced could
be pivotal in bringing about.
 
     "History was certainly made at the summit," says the Rev. Benjamin Chavis,
Jr., CRJ's executive director and a conference co-chair.  At it, the notion was
"shattered that a multi-racial movement is impossible in the U.S. because of the
prevalence of racism which attempts to pit some people-of-color communities
against (others)."  He spoke of a "spiritual bond" he felt through the summit
that "helped to engender mutual respect and unity."  "This country needs a
multi-racial movement for a change," said Chavis.

     Chavis was the first person to use the term "environmental racism" with the
1987 issuance of a CRJ report entitled: Toxic Wastes and Race in the United
States -- A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of
Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites.  CRJ was founded in 1963 in response to
the assassination of Black activist Medgar Evers, the Birmingham, Alabama church
bombings and other tensions that gripped America as the modern civil rights
movement began.  As the civil rights arm of a major U.S. Protestant denomination
(the United Church of Christ), it has focused on many issues, but its
environmental involvement began in 1982 when residents of predominately black
Warren County in North Carolina asked for help in their fight against the
state's siting there of a PCB dump.  Civil disobedience followed.  More than 500
were arrested, including Chavis.

     "We began to ask why North Carolina chose a predominately black community
to dump PCB's," recounted Chavis.  He began considering the connection between
that siting, the Savannah River nuclear facility (long a source of radioactive
leaks, also sited in a largely black area in South Carolina), and the "largest
landfill in the nation," located in Emelle, Alabama, a community that is 80
percent black.  "Evidence of a systematic pattern," said Chavis, "led us to do
a national study."

     CRJ correlated the location of thousands of what the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) deemed "commercial hazardous waste facilities" (places
for treating, storing, or disposing of hazardous wastes) and "uncontrolled toxic
waste sites" (closed and abandoned sites) and determined what was suspected:
These places were often located in communities where non-whites are
concentrated.

     "We found it had to do with race," said Chavis.  Warren County's blacks
were largely poor, but Emelle, Alabama, he noted, is home to many middle-class
blacks.  Race, not income, is the prime determinant in siting polluting
facilities.  Their report also concluded:

       For commercial facilities....

       * Communities with the greatest number of commercial hazardous waste
       facilities had the highest composition of ethnic residents.

       * Although socio-economic status played an important role in the
       location of such facilities, race proved still more significant.  This
       represented a consistent national pattern.

       * Three of the five largest commercial hazardous waste landfills in the
       U.S. were located in predominantly black or Hispanic communities.

       For uncontrolled toxic waste sites:

       * Three of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities
       with one or more such sites.

       * Blacks were heavily over-represented in metropolitan areas with the
       largest number of these sites.

       * Los Angeles, California had more Hispanics living in communities with
       these sites than any other U.S. metropolitan area.

       * Approximately half of all Asian/Pacific Islanders and American Indians
       lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites.

As Chavis prepared to present his report at the National Press Club, "I was
trying to figure out how I could adequately describe what was going on," he
recalled.  "It came to me --- environmental racism."

     Chavis defines environmental racism as "racial discrimination in
environmental policymaking and the enforcement of regulations and laws, the
deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities,
the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and
pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of color from
leadership in the environmental movement."

     On the latter point, former New Mexico governor Toney Anaya, an
Hispanic-American and co-chair of the summit, says: "Environmental groups are
typically male-Anglo-dominated." And at the gathering, minorities made it clear
that "We're going to be part of this process, too."  The aim was "empowerment."

     Getting that message at the meeting were Sierra Club executive director
Michael Fisher, and John Adams, director of the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC).  Most such large, national environmental groups have had scant
minorities in staff and leadership positions compared to their U.S. population
numbers, and have paid inadequate attention to the relationship(s) between
racism and the environment.  "We know we've been conspicuously missing from
battles of environmental justice," said Fischer.  "We're here to reach across
the table and build a bridge of partnership...or we risk becoming irrelevant."
Adams stated that the conference marked "a major turning point in the
environmental movement...I can tell you, it'll change NRDC."

     The tales of environmental racism, as told by people of color all across
America, are horrific.  Increasingly, they are now fighting back.  Indeed, a CRJ
paper issued at the summit stated: "There exists a prevalent perception among
the general public that people of color have not expressed concern for the
environment and have not been active in addressing environmental issues.  This
is a gross misconception...rooted in the narrow definition of environmental
issues advanced by traditional environmentalists and the media.  People of color
have taken on environmental issues as community, labor, economic,
self-determination, and civil and political rights issues."


THERE ARE NO GARDENS IN ATGELD Gardens.  Residents of this 10,000-person project
in Southeast Chicago say they wouldn't dare eat anything grown there -- it is
surrounded with the most toxic facilities in all of Chicago and, no surprise,
has one of the highest cancer rates in the U.S.  Hazel Johnson, mother of seven,
tells of "lots of cancer, respiratory problems, birth deformities, babies born
with brain tumors.  My daughter was five months pregnant.  The doctors found the
baby had no behind, no head.  It had to be aborted."  Mrs. Johnson is sure that
problems are the result of a surrounding hazardous waste incinerator that gives
off PCB's; seven landfills, several chemical plants; a paint factory; lagoons
filled with contaminants; and a sludge-drying facility which smells like "bodies
decomposing."  Such facilities are concentrated here because it is largely
inhabited by Blacks and Hispanics, says Mrs. Johnson, who's been fighting back
as head of People for Community Recovery.  Working closely with Greenpeace, its
tactics have included civil disobedience.

     The African-American community of West Harlem in New York City has a sewage
plant which regularly malfunctions as it processes 180 million gallons of sewage
daily; two huge bus depots; a marine transfer station where garbage is collected
for placement on barges; a six-lane highway; a commuter rail line where last
year a young boy was killed; a highway that serves as a major route for
hazardous waste through the city; and a crematorium.  "The stereotype of what
environmentalism means is wildlife and open space preservation," says Peggy
Shepard, a leader of West Harlem Environmental Action.  "But urban environmental
problems have existed for years."  Harlem has gotten these "exploitative"
facilities because of its residents' color, she charges.  Her group fights back
through litigation and political organizing, and seeks assistance from "larger
environmental groups.  But when you don't have an integrated staff,
organizational priorities aren't necessarily the priorities of communities of
color," she says.  "There has not been sufficient movement on urban
environmental problems: incinerators, sewage treatment plants, polluting
factories, devastating occupational exposure."

      More than 100 oil refineries and petrochemical plants line an 80-mile
strip along the lower Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge,
Louisana.  They have so poisoned the land, air, and water that the area Blacks
who predominate it call it "Cancer Alley," noted Pat Bryant, executive director
of the Gulf Coast Tenant's Association (GTCA), at the summit.  A quarter of
America's petrochemicals are produced in a corridor which is essentially a
"national sacrifice area," he said.  The placement of toxic facilities in Black
areas of the south goes back "hundreds of years," says Darryl Malek-Wiley,
GTCA's research director.  The "industrial age" has given such sitings new and
more terrible forms.  GTCA provides environmental courses and assists people
fighting environmental hazards in their communities.  In 1989, it organized the
"Great Louisana Toxics March," and is presently organizing to block siting of
a new plastics plant.

     Richard Moore is co-director of the Southwest Organization Project and was
on the summit's national planning committee.  In his largely Hispanic
neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, there is a a landfill, a pig farm, a
dog food plant, a sewage treatment plant, and industrial facilities for Texaco,
Chevron, and GE.  "We have many people with cancer and leukemia in this
neighborhood," he says, "sick children, many with blue baby syndrome.  We
shouldn't have to live in these conditions, amid these poisonous chemicals."

     Says Moore: "We don't have the complexion for protection."  His
organization is multi-ethnic, and covers all of New Mexico.  It stresses
door-to-door activity to build "strong organizations," and helps people exercise
political muscle by doing non-partisan voter registration.  "We not only
register people, we turn them out to vote.  We also hold candidate
accountability sessions, demonstrations, marches, petition drives, community
meetings, and meetings with public officials. You name it, we've done it, and
it's borne fruit."  The group co-founded the Southwest Network for Environmental
and Economic Justice, which encompasses seven states.

     Native Americans get dumped on, too.  Those concentrated in northeast
Oklahoma are heavily impacted by a Seyquoyah Fuel Corporation facility that
produces nuclear plant fuel.  Seyquoyah has a long record of accidentally
releasing radioactive waste.  And, with U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
approval, it deliberately channels out 8 million gallons annually of its
radioactive waste as a liquid fertilizer it calls "raffinate."  The company
sells the fertilizer, and also uses it on 10,000 surrounding acres where cattle
graze and where hay and corn are grown for feed.  Lance Hughes, director of
Native Americans for a Clean Environment (NACE) in Talequah, Oklahoma, tells of
the "unusual cancers" and birth defects from "genetic mutation" in the area.
"It's pretty sad --- babies born without eyes, with brain cancers."  Wildlife
is also born deformed: "We found a nine-legged frog, a two-headed fish and a
four-legged chicken," says Hughes.  "The name of the game has been changed, but
I would call it the same --- genocide."  NACE has been fighting back with
litigation, education, and political action.

     There are tens of thousands of Asian women employed in Silicon Valley,
California.  Immigrant Asian women are sought for this work because of a
stereotypical view that they will be submissive, "won't rock the boat," says
Young Shin, director of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), based in
Oakland.  Meanwhile, the women --- mainly from Hong Kong, China, Korea, and
Vietnam --- are desperate for work.  "They work in an environment using highly
toxic chemicals," said Ms. Shin.  She tells of one woman who, after years in an
electronics plant, came home one night, "collapsed and was paralyzed.  She's
been bedridden ever since."  A connection to working conditions is suspected.

     AIWA also assists the many Asian garment workers in the San Francisco area.
They labor in 1990's versions of turn-of-the-century "sweatshops," said Ms.
Shin.  "The lighting is poor, eyesight suffers, many women have back problems."
Here, too, employers seeking a "vunerable" segment of the population target
Asian women to labor under such conditions.  "It's environmental racism," says
Ms. Shin.  For nine years, her group has educated Asian women about the poisons
in their work places and helped them to "exercise their rights."


"IT'S NOT A POVERTY THING.  IT'S NOT a class thing," said Dr. Robert D. Bullard,
a leading thinker on race and the environment, at the summit.  "It's racism,
pure and simple."
 
     Bullard, a professor of sociology at the University of California,
Riverside, is the author of the 1990 book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and
Environmental Quality, which corroborates the CRJ report. 

     He began researching environmental racism in 1978, while assisting his
wife, an attorney, in a lawsuit to challenge the planned siting of a municipal
landfill in Northwood Manor, a Black "solid middle class" Houston, Texas
neighborhood.  He quickly discovered that, since the 1920's, all five of
Houston's landfills and six of its eight incinerators were sited in Black
neighborhoods. 

     In a 1987 article in the Mid-American Review of Sociology, Bullard said:
"Many industrial firms, especially (companies) that have a long history of
pollution violations, have come to view the Black community as pushovers,
lacking community organization and environmental consciousness."  Further,
"Black and lower-income neighborhoods often occupy the 'wrong side of the
tracks,' and subsequently receive different treatment when it comes to
enforcement of environmental regulations."  But, "Black communities, especially
in the South, are just beginning to integrate environmental issues into
traditional civil rights agendas...Black organizations (are broadening) their
definitions of civil rights to include air and water quality, hazardous wastes,
and other environmental issues."

     Bullard's Dumping in Dixie concludes: "Limited housing and residential
options, combined with discriminatory facility practices, have contributed to
the imposition of all types of toxins on Black communities...Industries have
generally followed the path of least resistance, which has been in economically
poor and politically powerless Black communities."  And because of housing bias,
"increased income has not enabled many Blacks to escape the threat of unwanted
land use."

     Bullard also tells of how Blacks in Houston, and Dallas; Alsen, Louisana;
Institute, West Virgina; and Emelle, Alabama "have taken on corporate giants who
would turn their area into toxic wastelands."  He is enthused by the emergence
of "literally hundreds of environmental justice groups made up of people of
color."


ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM HAS BEEN going on a long time, says Charles Lee, CRJ's
research director and an Asian American.  Lee tells the story of the "worst
recorded occupational disaster in U.S. history," at Gauley Bridge, West
Virginia.  "During the 1930's, hundreds of African-American workers from the
South were brought in by the New Kanawha Power Company, a subsidiary of Union
Carbide, to dig the Hawk's Nest tunnel.  Over two years, 500 workers died and
1,500 were disabled from silicosis, a disease similar to Black Lung.  Men
literally dropped dead on their feet breathing air so thick with microscopic
silica that they could not see more than a yard in front of them.  Those who
came out for air were beaten back with ax handles.  At subsequent congressional
hearings, New Kanawha's contractor revealed, 'I knew I was going to kill these
niggers, but I didn't know it was going to be this soon.'"

     Lee says environmental racism is best seen in such historical contexts:
"Exploitation of people of color has taken the form of genocide, chattel
slavery, indentured servitude and racial discrimination --- in employment,
housing, and practically all aspects of life.  Today we suffer from the remnants
of this sordid history, as well as from new and institutionalized forms of
racism, facilitated by the massive post-World War II expansion of the
petrochemical industry."

     Another way of committing environmental murder is nuclear technology. 

     Gregory Johnson is co-director of the Washington DC-based Blacks Against
Nukes, an educational center of environmental safety information.  Johnson
speaks of the nuclear industry's drive to co-opt and exploit African-Americans.
It routinely contributes to Black organizations and puts Blacks on its boards
while claiming nuclear power creates jobs in Black communities.  "They speak
nothing of radiation hazards and nuclear waste which, like chemical waste, is
diproportionately dumped in communities of color."  As for jobs, many are for
"nuclear jumpers"--- people who "go into plants and are paid to expose
themselves to radioactive substances.  They will be paid $100 to twist a screw.
But these jobs don't last long.  One is allowed only so much exposure to nuclear
materials."

     CRJ five years ago demanded change.  Their report firmly concludes that
"hazardous wastes in Black, Hispanic, and other racial and ethnic communities
should be made a priority issue at all levels of government.  This issue is not
currently at the forefront of the nation's attention.  Concerned citizens and
policymakers who are cognizant of this problem must make this a priority."  It
called for the U.S. president "to mandate federal agencies to consider the
impact of current policies and regulations on racial and ethnic communities";
state governments "to evaluate and make appropriate revisions in their criteria
for the siting of new hazardous waste facilities, to adequately take into
account the racial and socio-economic characteristics of potential host
communities"; the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Conference of Black
Mayors and the National League of Cities "to convene a national conference to
address these issues from a municipal perspective"; and civil rights and
political organizations to "gear up voter registration campaigns as a means to
further empower racial and ethnic communities to effectively respond to
hazardous waste issues..."

     Government has been moving at a snail's pace.  EPA director William Reilly
did not even appear at the summit --- a spokesperson said his schedule was
"prohibitive."  The EPA has "utter disrespect for what is happening in our
communities," declared Rev. Chavis, after sending Reilly a "blistering letter."

     The EPA, however, four months afterwards, in January 1992, announced it was
researching to see whether there was a concentration of toxic facilities in
minority communities --- a fact CRJ had long ago established --- as part of its
new emphasis on "environmental equity."  That came with press disclosure of an
EPA draft report which said, "Although there are clear differences between
ethnic groups for disease and death rates, there are virtually no data to
document the environmental contributions to these diseases."  George Colling of
the Sierra Club commented, "No new data is needed, just a political will and
commitment in the face of intensive lobbying by companies that are making
money."

     Indeed, Robert Wolcott, the EPA official heading the committee, asked, "How
many times does a tree have to fall before you admit you heard it."

     SOME MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL groups are moving to clean up their racial and
ethnic acts, jointly setting up an "Environmental Consortium for Minority
Outreach" in Washington, DC.  Says Frederick P. Sutherland, executive director
of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund: "We're very sensitive to this issue, and
we're moving heaven and Earth to bring minorities into staff and leadership
positions."

     In 1990, coalitions of minority activists --- led by Moore and Chavis ---
sent letters to national environmental organizations protesting the lack of
minority representation on their staffs.

     Some notable groups, Greenpeace, the National Toxics Campaign (NTC) and
Earth Island Institute (EII), have stressed minority involvement and
environmental racism all along.  John O'Conner, NTC's founder and executive
director, says: "For the environmental movement to be successful...it must
include all races, ethnic groups, rich and poor, Black and White, and young and
old.  Once our movement to clean up the nation is truly a reflection of all
people in the country, we will succeed."

     For two years, EII's president has been Carl Anthony, a Black architect
long interested in environmental issues.  He is a professor at the College of
Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley where he teaches a
course in Race, Poverty, and the Environment.

     Most environmental groups have had an "elitist perspective," says Anthony.
But now he sees change because of a "grassroots constituency which is
challenging them.  EII is very interested in issues at two ends of the spectrum:
global warming, ozone, global resource depletion; and the negative environmental
impacts on communities of poor people and people of color.  To bring these two
concerns together," says Anthony, "we have to develop a new kind of leadership
in communities of color, to address the needs of our communities...in making a
transition to more sustainable urban patterns."

     Anthony, present at the summit, described as "really incredible" its
diversity.  "I think it has set the stage for the 1990's," he said.  "It has set
out the challenges and opportunities for communities of color and the nation as
a whole."

     George T. Frampton, Jr., president of The Wilderness Society, a major
environmental group which is attempting to become more inclusive, says: "One
inescapable truth about the degradation of our environment has received very
little attention: those least able to get out of harms's way are people of
color.  A monochromatic movement cannot ultimately mobilize the broad-based
political support required for the radical environmental policies that our
society so urgently needs."


THERE ARE SOME IN WHITE AMERICA who would deny environmental racism exists.  The
Houston Post editorialized: "Environmental Racism? Crying Wolf Will Hurt Real
Discrimination Charges."  The newspaper claimed that "if examined closely, it
appears that toxic dumps follow cheap land.  White people also have been
victims...Just look at Brio, Love Canal, and Times Beach."  As for the
conference, "These folks are crying wolf.  That's too bad --- because pretty
soon, legitimate charges of racism may be at risk of going unheeded, simply
because so many people claim racism around every corner.  It often isn't there."

     Leading up to the summit were other important events tackling environmental
racism.  At the National Minority Health Conference in 1990, in Atlanta, the
Washington, DC-based Panos Institute issued a report, We Speak for Ourselves:
Social Justice, Race, and Environment.  "Organizing for environmental justice
among people of color," said the report, "has grown from a small group of
activists in the 1970's to a movement involving thousands of people in
neighborhoods throughout the U.S.  Although these groups might not be identified
as 'environmental,' they have nevertheless made environmental issues a priority
in their work..."

     At that gathering, sponsored by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry and others, and attended by 300 community leaders, physicians,
and government officials, Dr. Aubrey F. Manley, deputy assistant secretary of
the Department of Health and Human Services, said, "Poor and minority people
should not have to bear the responsibility for a mess they haven't made." 

     In 1990, CRJ organized a workshop on race and environment for the
Congressional Black Caucus whose members, incidentally, area rated by the League
of Conservation Voters as having among the best pro-environmental voting
records.

     Also in 1990, Jesse Jackson, along with NTC's John O'Conner and Earth Day
organizer Dennis Hayes, made a week-long tour of environmental racism hotspots,
ending in "Cancer Alley."  "There is a relationship between environment and
empowerment," declared Jackson on that tour.  "Corporations must not be allowed
to use job blackmail to poison poor people, be they black, brown, yellow, red,
or white.  We demand that all corporate poisoners stop the poisoning of our
communities.  We can have safe jobs without pollution if we organize."

     AIWA's Young Shin declared during the summit that the "racist policies of
industry" must be changed in order to "achieve environmental justice.  We need
the support of a progressive, all-inclusive environmental movement."

     That course has now been set.


(KARL GROSSMAN is a journalism professor at the State University of New York,
Old Westbury.)

                                                       

Nuclear Renaissance or Nuclear Nightmare? Thought the Nuclear Power Industry was Dead? Guess again. The Bush Administration is Breathing New Life into Commercial Nukes. by Karl Grossman, Special to CorpWatch October 23rd, 2002

Tennessee Valley Authority   RELATED ARTICLE Protecting Nukes from Liability by Karl Grossman   Last month, nuclear industry executives and U.S. government officials got together in Washington, D.C. for a conference called "The Nuclear Renaissance"-- a gathering boosting a comeback of commercial nuclear power in the U.S. "Renaissance" has replaced "revival" as the word being used by nuclear proponents in the U.S. and around the world to describe their desired recovery of the nuclear industry. There has not been an order of a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident shattered public trust in nuclear technology. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster damaged confidence in atomic energy worldwide. But the nuclear industry and its allies in government are back for a "renaissance." In March 2003 there will be a Nuclear Renaissance Forum in Chicago sponsored by the nuclear plant manufacturers Framatome and Westinghouse. A few days before last months Washington meeting, the World Nuclear Association Annual Symposium in London featured a session on "Nuclear Renaissance." Russia and the US have teamed up to launch a new 'Atoms for Peace and Prosperity' Program. -- Dr. Andrei Gagarinski, Kurchatov Institute, Russia At the session, Dr. Andrei Gagarinski, director of international affairs at Russias Kurchatov Institute, said his atomic research facility had teamed with the U.S. Department of Energy-owned Sandia National Laboratories to put together "a new Atoms for Peace and Prosperity Program." The program was considered at President George Bushs summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in May, according to Gagarinski. In the U.K. in August, Robin Jeffrey, chairman of British Energy, called for a "nuclear renaissance" telling the British Nuclear Engineering Society that "working in partnership [we can] create a financial and commercial framework for a programme of new build." Nuclear Globalization Meanwhile, as it prepares for its hoped-for "renaissance," the nuclear industry has globalized: British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. has purchased Westinghouse (the worlds largest reactor manufacturer) and ABB/Combustion Engineering (itself the product of an earlier merger of the Swedish ABB and the U.S. corporation Combustion Engineering).   Siemens, the largest reactor builder in Germany, and Framatome, with a monopoly on construction of French reactors, announced their intent to merge most aspects of their nuclear businesses.   General Electric (the world's second largest reactor manufacturer after Westinghouse) joined with Mitsubishi to build new atomic plants in Japan.   Minatom, the giant Russian state-owned nuclear entity, is moving to build new nuclear plants in Russia and internationally. A handful of giant multinational energy corporations are positioning themselves to become "the robber barons of the 2lst Century," says Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service/World Information Service on Energy-Amsterdam (NIRS-WISE Amsterdam). Mariotte added that "perhaps no industry is embracing globalization quite so fervently," in a field "where the stakes are highest, where the threats to all life are most at risk." Paul Gunter, head of the organizations Reactor Watchdog Project, who attended the "Nuclear Renaissance" conference in Washington, said rather than a renaissance, what is involved is "a relapse into the failed nuclear energy policy" of the past. George W. Bush: Nuclear President "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really is good." -- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill The "renaissance" also now comes with what Mariotte says "may be the most ardently pro-nuclear power presidency in U.S. history." The Bush administrations stance on nuclear power is aggressive and minimizes the dangers of atomic technology. As Bushs Secretary of Treasury Paul ONeill has told The Wall Street Journal, "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really is good." The administration struck a close working relationship with the nuclear industry well before taking office. Its energy "transition" advisors included: Joseph Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the lead nuclear industry-funded trade group.   J. Bennett Johnston who as a senator was a leading pro-nuclear power figure in Congress and now runs a consulting firm that assists the nuclear industry.   Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute and former head of the American Nuclear Energy Council, forerunner of the NEI, and a friend of Bush going back to their days at Yale Representatives of four U.S. utilities involved with nuclear power. Two weeks after being sworn in, Bush set up a "National Energy Policy Development Group" and appointed Vice President Dick Cheney as its chairman. Its members included ONeill and Andrew Lundquist, who also coordinated the energy "transition" team was named executive director. "The National Energy Policy Development Group supports the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our National Energy Policy," declared the group's report, issued ten weeks later. "America," said Bush in unveiling the plan, should "expand a clean and unlimited source of energy: nuclear power." This National Energy Policy whose recommendations were discussed at length at the Nuclear Renaissance conference - would substantially increase the use of nuclear power in the U.S. both by building new nuclear power plants many on existing nuclear plant sites, and extending the 40-year licenses of currently operating plants by another 20 years each. Nukes: Exception to the War on Terrorism? Some observers might think the September 11th terrorist attacks -- and the reported plans by Al Qaeda to strike at U.S. nuclear plants -- might hold up plans for a "nuclear renaissance." But Richard A. Meserve, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), struck positive notes at the Nuclear Renaissance conference at which he was a keynote speaker. The NRC was created in 1975 to impartially regulate nuclear power replacing the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which Congress deemed to be in conflict of interest being set up to both promote and regulate nuclear power. "First, the physical protection at nuclear power plants was strong before September 11th. I am aware of no other industry that has had to satisfy the tough requirements that the NRC has had in place for a quarter of a century," stated Meserve. "Secondly, there have been no specific credible threats of a terrorist attack on nuclear power plants since September 11th," he added. "Third" Meserve concluded, "in light of the events of September 11th, the NRC has recognized the need to reexamine past security strategies to ensure that we have the right protections in place for the long term." "The agency could not have presented the situation farther from the truth," noted Gunter of the Reactor Watchdog Project. "Before September 11th, the industry and NRC were mired in an endless dialogue on security deficiencies and the rising cost of safeguarding nuclear power plants" he said. And federal security exercises conducted since 1991 led to "failing grades" half the time, according to Gunter. Gunter said that after the September 11th attacks, the NRC closed down its formal security exercise program. "The vulnerability of attacks from the air and the water were never evaluated," he explained. "Contrary to Dr. Meserves remarks, nuclear power plants remain both structurally and programmatically vulnerable to sophisticated and premeditated acts of terrorism," according to the head of the watchdog group. Corporate Welfare Also making a presentation at the "Nuclear Renaissance" conference was Westinghouse Vice President for New Plants Ernie H. Kennedy who described "the post-TMI phase" for the nuclear industry as a "collapse of new plant orders, cancellation of existing orders" and "sharply increasing O&M [operation and maintenance] costs." But, he said, the nuclear industry in the 1990s had been busy "getting the house in order" and "preparing for the renaissance 2000s." Now, said Mr. Kennedy, there is "slow but sustained improvement in public acceptance" and "improved political support." Gail H. Marcus, Bush administration appointee as principal deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy, who is also president of the pro-industry American Nuclear Society, began her presentation by quoting from report of the National Energy Policy Development Group. She said new nuclear power plants would be built under a "cost-shared" arrangement between the federal government and utilities. This will be combined, she said, with the Department of Energys "Early Site Permit" or expedited nuclear plant process on three projects soon to be advanced. The "cost-shared" and "Early Site Permit" arrangements will be initially used in construction by: Dominion Energy for new nuclear plant at the current North Anna nuclear plant site in Virginia   Entergy for a new nuclear plant at the Grand Gulf nuclear plant site in Mississippi   Excelon for a new nuclear plant at the Clinton nuclear plant site in Illinois. Marcus said the new plants were expected to come on line by 2005 and some, or all, of the "advanced" nuclear plant would be deployed by 2010. The Lone Dissenter The sponsors of The Nuclear Renaissance Conference -- Framatome, Canadian reactor manufacturer AECL Technologies, Winston & Strawn, a Washington law firm that represents clients involved with nuclear power, and EXCEL, a provider of services for U.S. and international commercial nuclear power facilities -- allowed one anti-nuclear advocate to make a presentation. "The real question is: How should the nuclear industry be held responsible for the health and environmental disasters that it has created?" -- Winonah Hauter, Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Public Citizen Winonah Hauter, director of the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program at Ralph Naders Public Citizen, spoke as part of a panel discussion titled "How Should the Environmental Benefits of Nuclear Assets Be Valued?" "The answer to the question about valuing the benefits of nuclear assets is simple. There are none," Hauter stated. Then she fired off questions of her own. "The real questions that should have been asked at this conference is: How should the nuclear industry be held responsible for and required to bear the full cost of the health and environmental disasters that it has created? Why are our government agencies lapdogs for the industry? How has the industry bought public policy?" As to the claim of nuclear proponents at the conference that atomic plants assist in offsetting global warming, Hauter pointed out that the nuclear fuel cycle creates a vast amount of greenhouse gases. "An elaborate energy-intensive process of uranium mining, milling and enrichment must take place before the fuel rods can even be fabricated. All of these processes use massive quantities of fossil fuels. The manufacture and construction of reactors require more fossil fuels. And [as to] the back end of the fuel cycleif the industry is successful in dumping waste on the unwilling citizens of Nevadait will take more fossil fuel to move thousands of shipments." "And even if nuclear energy didnt use fossil fuel," she went on "the regular radiation releases from plants would way offset any benefit." Hauter challenged the industry public relations campaign promoting nuclear energy as a "clean" alternative to fossil fuels. "Nuclear power plants are not cost-effective, which means they can only be built if nuclear corporations are allowed special dispensation from the government. Let me put that more clearly: the industry has to feed at the trough of taxpayer money to survive. So the industry is looking for new ways to justify its existence." Activists Crash the Party The Nuclear Renaissance Conference received uninvited guests, too. Activists from Greenpeace crashed the conference with a 200-pound ice sculpture depicting a nuclear plant melting. Carved into the ice statue were the words No New Nukes. "Greeenpeace is putting plans for any nuclear renaissance on ice" said Jim Riccio, nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace. "Despite benefiting from millions of dollars of government subsidies, nuclear power plants are still too expensive to build, too dangerous to operate and too vulnerable to potential terrorist attacks." The activists also distributed a broadside at the conference called The No New Nukes Times. A New York Times-like front page featured stories with headlines such as, "Once Touted As Too Cheap To Meter Now Too Costly to Matter" and "Dr. Strangelove Hands Plutonium Over to Homer Simpson." Conference attendee Gunter of NIRS/WISE Amsterdam commented that in order to bring about a "renaissance" the nuclear industry faces a number of obstacles. Chief among them he cited "increased public mistrust and growing opposition to a proliferation of new nukes." "The meltdown of the industry plans hatched in the early 1970s to build a thousand reactors by the year 2000 was in large part the result of a public unwilling to swallow the lies of nuclear industrialists and their political cronies," said Gunter. "New construction on the enormous scale the industry must contemplate will provide the anti-nuclear movement with the opportunity to raise concerns over the vulnerability and costs of security, the proliferation of an already unmanageable nuclear waste problem and the inherent risk of an accident associated with the most expensive and dangerous process conceivable for boiling water to make electricity" according to the head of the watchdog group. Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, is the author of books on nuclear technology including Cover Up: What You ARE NOT Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power and host of numerous television programs on atomic energy available from EnviroVideo.

Extra!

November/December 1991

Publisher Has Meltdown; Editor Is Nuked

An investigative series on the Los Alamos National Laboratory by the Santa Fe New Mexican resulted in the sacking of the daily newspaper's managing editor who edited the series, and a moratorium on nuclear technology stories by the newspaper.

The editor, David N. Mitchell told EXTRA! that due to the legal settlement reached after his dismissal, he was "constrained" from saying that he was fired because of "the publisher's concern that the series this paper did at my direction on the disposal of radioactive and chemical wastes by Los Alamos National Laboratory was unbalanced." But the sequence of events is clear.

The Santa Fe New Mexican conducted a three-month investigation of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)a huge facility created during World War II to develop the atom bomb, now owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. The findings of the investigation ran in 30 articles over six days, in a series entitled "Fouling the Nest" beginning Feb. 17, 1991. "The $2 Billion Mess" was the headline of the first account of the series, subheaded 'Daunting Task to Clean Up 48 Years of Neglect, Accidents Just Beginning.'

The series, written by Thom Coler.Kelly Richmond described contamination of the community and increased leukemia risk. The series said that more than 1,000 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) workers were exposed to radiation last year, including seven who inhaled or ingested plutonium. Follow-up editorials criticized "business-as-usual" officials and scientists.

Unfortunately for Mitchell, Robert McKinney, the New Mexican's Virginia-based publisher, has long been involved in promoting nuclear technology. McKinney chaired a congressional panel on the "Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy", and represented the U.S. at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Robert McKinney is also known for meddling in news content. A story on affordable housing problems was killed by the out-of-town publisher (Washington Post, 10/5/91), who allegedly told Mitchell there were no such problems in Santa Fe, just "people trying to live beyond their means."

Shortly after the Los Alamos nuclear series ran, an angry McKinney met with laboratory director Siegfried S. Heckler, who had already written a guest column for the paper charging that the "negative tone of this series portrayed an inaccurate view of the laboratory."

This meeting resulted in the inclusion of a 27-page supplement in the New Mexican, prepared by the laboratory, the Sunday after the series ran. "Los Alamos National Laboratory pursues its environmental, safety, health and security responsibilities with the same spirit it applies to its scientific work," it began. The same day, McKinney ran a "publisher's note" explaining that he had "devoted much of his life to 'The Peaceful Atom.'" He called nuclear power "a vast, clean and safe alternative source of energy for our country's future."

Further, a former director of the laboratory, Dr. Harold Agnew, was given another guest column to attack the series, saying he "never realized to what depth reporters would stoop to misrepresent facts in order to promote their own prejudices." He criticized the journalists for using "as references such known anti-nuclear activists as John Gofman, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with other unnamed local self-proclaimed experts. These individuals have made a career out of nuclear-bashing."

As for nuclear contamination, "any activity creates wastes," argued Agnew. "Making a dinner salad, baking a pie, burning coal, cleaning bed pans in a hospital and handling nuclear materials. Nuclear wastes are no more dangerous than many other wastes."

On May 31, the Albuquerque Journal North broke the story of Mitchell's firing. The Santa Fe Reporter (6/5/91), an alternative weekly, uncovered other changes in the wake of the Los Alamos series: "New Mexican reporters have been forbidden to cover stories about the nuclear industry, Los Alamos and even the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad," a hotly controversial proposed nuclear waste depository.

Six months after the series ran, according to the Washington Post (10/5/91), an internal Los Alamos report criticized its own safety record and "essentially confirmed much of what had been in the paper's February series."

In Crosswinds, a monthly New Mexican journal (6/91), Stephen Kress wrote that Mitchell's firing "illustrates the hazards of promoting independent reporting that runs counter to the owner's philosophy." Special projects reporter Thom Cole was shifted to desk duties; co-author Kelly Richmond resigned. At age 55, veteran journalist Mitchell is out of work. "I'm searching for employment," he told EXTRA! If Mitchell or the two investigative reporters hoped to get any formal recognition for their efforts, they're out of luck. Publisher McKinney has ordered that the series not be nominated for any journalism prizes.

                                                         SPINNING THE BOMB

                                                    Extra! November-December 2004

By Karl Grossman

          How the New York Times has for decades downplayed—indeed suppressed—the dangers of radioactivity is detailed in an exhaustive study by a professor of journalism at the University of Hawaii.

          Before becoming a teacher, Beverly Ann Deepe Keever was a reporter for Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor whose work included covering the Vietnam War. A Ph.D. in the university’s School of Communications, she begins her just-published News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb (Common Courage Press), with the birth of the nuclear age and finds that distortions and suppression of nuclear information by the Times started then.

“From the dawn of the atomic-bomb age, [William L.] Laurence and The Times almost single-handedly shaped the news of this epoch and helped birth the acceptance of the most destructive force ever created,” writes Keever.

Laurence, the science reporter for the Times, was the granddaddy of embedded reporters—plus. He was hired by the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash program to build an atomic bomb and, while working for the government, Keever relates,  remained on the Times payroll his Times weekly salary going to his wife while he also was paid by the government.

The arrangement was made by the Manhattan Project’s head, General Leslie Groves, and Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger and managing editor Edwin James. “To sell the bomb, the U.S. government needed the Times...and the Times willingly obliged.” It was “hardly the nation’s biggest newspaper then” but its readers were influential. “Government officials handpicked the Times because of the quality of its readers.”

At the Manhattan Project, Laurence participated in “the government’s cover-up of the super-secret Trinity shot.” Held a month before the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the Trinity test a nuclear device was exploded for the first time.

There was concern about public inquiry over the explosion that lit up the New Mexico night sky so Laurence prepared press releases to “disguise the detonation and resulting radiation.” The “fake news” distributed as a “cover story” was a  release Laurence wrote claiming there had been a “jumbo detonation of an ammunition magazine filled with high explosives at the 2000-square mile Alamogordo Air Base.”

He didn’t stop with this deception. After the bombs fell on Japan, the Times ran and then “on behalf of the government” distributed free “to the press nationwide” a 10-part series Laurence readied while at the Manhattan Project glorifying the making of the atomic bombs and all but ignoring the dangers of radioactivity.

Laurence’s avid pro-nuclear writings continued when he returned to the Times and, Keever finds, this became an institutional stance. The Times “became little more than a propaganda outlet for the U.S. government in its drive to cover up the dangers of immediate radiation and future radioactivity emanating from the use and testing of nuclear weapons.”

It “tolerated or aided the U.S. government’s Cold War cover-up that resulted in minimizing or denying the health and environmental effects arising from the use in Japan and later testing of the most destructive weaponry in U.S. history in Pacific Islands once called paradise….The Times aided the U.S. government in keeping in the dark thousands of U.S. servicemen, production workers and miners, even civil defense officials, Pacific Islanders and others worldwide about the dangers of radiation.”

Other Times writers who participated in the pro-nuclear spin included its military editor, Hanson Baldwin. “In editorials and articles, the Times clearly favored Operation Crossroads,” a major nuclear test in the Pacific, and when President Truman “postponed the first scheduled dates for the test, Baldwin wrote that ‘well-meaning but muddled persons, in and out of Congress, are proposing the permanent cancellation of the tests.’”

The atomic dysfunction of what became the paper of record of the U.S. continued unceasingly. The nuclear testing-caused tragedy “from 1947 to 1991 unfolding in the faraway Marshall Islands,” for instance, was “largely untold by the Times.”

“A huge outcry followed the revelation of a breach of reporting ethics by a single individual when the Times in mid-2003 exposed the plagiarism and fraud committed,” by Jayson Blair, notes Keever, “yet the issues raised” by her research “are far more pervasive and more importantly condoned and institutionalized as part of media management policies and practices. This investigation serves as a wake-up call for journalists of today and tomorrow.”  

Karl Grossman is author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power, host of TV programs on nuclear technology for EnviroVideo (www.envirovideo.com) and professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury.

                                                                          ***

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Extra!, February 2004 Gaga for Galileo Press corps cheerleads for space probe till the end By Karl Grossman CNN's Frank Buckley (9/21/03) could hardly contain himself. "Dr. Johnson, we admire the heck out of you!" Buckley exclaimed on-air as he finished interviewing Dr. Torrance Johnson, project scientist for NASA's Galileo space probe mission, minutes after it plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter after an eight-year voyage through the solar system. Buckley's excitement was characteristic of the media treatment of Galileo's finale: a chorus of cheerleading. "The Battered but Undefeatable Space Explorer," was the front-page headline of the Christian Science Monitor (9/23/03). "Goodbye to Gallant Galileo," editorialized the New York Times (9/24/03). Alexandra Witze of the Knight Ridder/Tribune news service (9/19/03) wrote, "If any spacecraft deserved a dignified retirement, Galileo is it." "NASA's Galileo spacecraft was purposely destroyed Sunday, ending its scientific career in a blaze of glory," stated Leonard David of space.com (MSNBC.com, 9/21/03). Plutonium blackout A Nexis survey found no reporting by any media about the dangers presented by the 49.25 pounds of radioactive plutonium-238 that fueled Galileo's nuclear electric system (manufactured by General Electric, half-owner of MSNBC). Indeed, almost no account made any mention of plutonium at all. An Associated Press dispatch (9/21/03) perfunctorily related that the space probe's electronic instruments were "powered" by plutonium. There was not a word in or on any media found in Nexis about the litigation and demonstrations against Galileo, sparked by concern that the highly toxic plutonium could be released in an accident on launch or during the two Earth "flybys" NASA had Galileo perform. Although NASA had earlier used other planets for flybys--low, fast passes over a planet to increase a space probe's velocity--NASA in 1990 had Galileo whip by the Earth 600 miles overhead, and in 1992 buzz the Earth 185 miles high. This marked the first time NASA had used Earth as a flyby target for a space probe--with or without nuclear material on board. The Earth flybys were arranged because Galileo was originally to have been launched on a space shuttle for a trip to Jupiter in 1986, preceded by a shuttle lofting another plutonium-fueled probe, Ulysses, that was to do a survey of the sun. Then came the shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986; indeed, the next mission of the ill-fated Challenger was to have lofted Ulysses with its 24.2 pounds of plutonium fuel. In the wake of the Challenger tragedy, astronauts balked at going up on a shuttle that carried in its cargo bay the liquid-fueled rocket that was to take Galileo directly from Earth to Jupiter. A less volatile--and also less powerful--solid-fueled rocket was substituted, and the Earth flybys were arranged-"slingshot" maneuvers that permitted Galileo to reach Jupiter with a weaker propulsion. It was quite a gamble: NASA documents acknowledged that only after the second flyby and "escape of the spacecraft from the Earth's gravitational pull" did the plutonium on Galileo "no longer present a potential risk to the Earth's population." If Galileo dipped into the 75-mile-high atmosphere during a flyby, it would have disintegrated--it had no heat shield--and the plutonium would vaporize as dust falling to Earth, an enormous lung cancer threat. But not only was this aspect of the Galileo mission totally ignored by media as the Galileo mission concluded, but in reporting Galileo's finale, media swallowed NASA's line about directing Galileo into Jupiter's atmosphere. Contaminated probe NASA's line was that it decided to send Galileo into Jupiter to protect Europa, a moon of Jupiter with features scientists say are similar to those of an early Earth. CNN's Buckley said to Galileo scientist Johnson (9/21/03): "You didn't want to potentially contaminate Europa? Is that right?" "Galileo to Exit in Blaze of Glory, Protecting Potential Life on Jupiter Moon," was the headline in Newsday (9/20/03), with the story, by Bryn Nelson, telling how "NASA engineers chose the crash course with Jupiter . . . negating even the slightest chance that [Europa] could be contaminated." In fact, from the start the plan was to send Galileo into Jupiter. Moreover, in another aspect of the story unreported by media in September, Galileo was the first space probe launched by NASA that was not sterilized before launch. Up until that point, the U.S. adhered to the Outer Space Treaty, which it helped initiate, and its provision that "parties to the treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination." But NASA decided not to sterilize Galileo to save money. It would only have taken some Internet checking of science publications a few years back to retrieve an article such as "The Dirty Jupiter Space Probe" by Linda Strand in Science Digest (8/92). "This is the first time that a U.S. spacecraft has been sent into an environment that is potentially habitable for terrestrial microorganisms without being sterilized. And some scientists are seriously concerned about contamination," Strand wrote. She observed that on Galileo, "beneath its sparkling exterior are billions and billions of bacteria. And in 1998 [the original date for Galileo to be sent into Jupiter] these biological agents will be put to the ultimate test as they dive with the probe headlong into the Jovian atmosphere." She reported, "For all its impressive airs, the Galileo probe is, deep in its heart, a garbage can." Among the scientists particularly concerned about the planned dive of the unsterilized Galileo into the Jovian atmosphere was astronomer Carl Sagan, founder and first president of the Planetary Society. In a paper entitled "Particles, Environments and Possible Ecologies in the Jovian Atmosphere," he and co-author E.E. Salpeter wrote: "The possible existence of indigenous Jovian organisms is also relevant to the question of sterilization of spacecraft intended for entry into the atmosphere of Jupiter." Life in "the Jovian clouds" would not parallel life on Earth but, they postulated, there could be organisms that could be impacted by "terrestrial contaminants" on Galileo. Michael Benson in a lengthy article on Galileo's end in The New Yorker (9/3/03), although not mentioning that Galileo was the first unsterilized NASA space probe, did report that NASA was sending it into Jupiter because of the microorganism problem--and that "obliteration" in the hot Jupiter atmosphere would solve the problem. Benson wrote: "Obliteration is precisely what NASA intends for the spacecraft." NASA could have left Galileo "to circle Jupiter after running out of propellant" but was concerned that "it might eventually crash into Europa" and "NASA officials decided that it was necessary to avoid the possibility of seeding Europa with alien life-forms. And so the craft has been programmed to commit suicide, guaranteeing a fiery spectacular end." "We chose," Johnson told CNN's Buckley, "one of the other options we had, which was to send it into Jupiter, where we had already put an atmospheric entry probe into Jupiter, and things burn up in the atmosphere. So that's no problem." There was no media questioning of whether, in fact, the heat of the Jovian atmosphere would really destroy all the foreign microorganisms. Correspondents in love But an unquestioning stance by media toward U.S. space activities has been the norm since the space program began in the 1950s. Insert nuclear power, a subject on which the U.S. press has historically been soft or even derelict in its reporting, and the situation gets worse. In the wake of the Challenger accident, William Boot, former editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, wrote an article in CJR headed "NASA and the Spellbound Press" (7-8/86)--which charged that the press bore some of the guilt for the disaster because of its boosterish reporting on the space program. "Dazzled by the space agency's image of technological brilliance, space reporters spared NASA the thorough scrutiny that might have improved chances of averting tragedy--through hard-hitting investigations drawing Congress's wandering attention to the issue of shuttle safety," he wrote. "U.S. journalists have long had a love affair with the space program," Boot continued. "In the pre-[Challenger] explosion days, many space reporters appeared to regard themselves as participants, along with NASA, in a great cosmic quest. Transcripts of NASA press conferences reveal that it was not unusual for reporters to use the first person plural. 'When are we going to launch?'" "Some new blood" was brought in to report on the space program after the Challenger catastrophe, wrote Boot, indicating that "the days of NASA as a journalist's sacred cow are presumably gone forever." He added: "It is sad that it took the deaths of seven astronauts to goad journalists into assuming the thoroughly skeptical role they should have been playing all along." In fact, media cheerleading of the space program has never stopped. Boot's hope of NASA no longer being a "journalists' sacred cow" never became reality. New York Times space reporter John Noble Wilford gave a lecture on "Science and the Media" to scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1990, stressing, "I am a great admirer of science, of scientists." I was in the audience and asked him about the Boot article and its points that space reporters were too cozy with and failed to challenge NASA. Wilford said: "This is one of the problems in journalism, particularly reporters who cover a specific beat. You get to know people, you get to be friendly with some and not so friendly with others. But you get to know them and you get to respect them, and maybe you trust what they say and maybe you do let your guard down and not ask the tough questions." Later, in an interview, Wilford said: "Some of the things that NASA does are so great, so marvelous, so it's easy to forget to be critical. You go in and watch pictures of the back of Neptune and stand in awe, but then you read about some of the management snafus" and wonder "how did we ever do what we did?" Wilford's account of Galileo's dive into Jupiter--"Many Miles, Many Moons: A Galileo Album" (9/16/03)--began by speaking of how "several hundred engineers and scientists will gather at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and await the end of the Galileo spacecraft. . . . They freely concede that they will be there at the end as an act of homage." The words plutonium and nuclear were not used, nor did they appear in Wilford's Times articles on the Galileo Earth flybys. Writing on the 1992 flyby (12/8/92), he reported that "Galileo's course was true, with no chance of an errant plunge into Earth's atmosphere." His 1995 piece (12/9/95), when Galileo arrived in the Jupiter system after years of problem-plagued operations, was headlined "Jupiter Rendezvous Is Marvel of Perfection." Back to the future The Columbia shuttle tragedy on February 1, 2003, like the Challenger disaster before it, resulted in official revelations of NASA's dysfunctional ways, its bureaucratic bumbling, scientific hubris and "broken safety culture," as concluded the report of the Columbia Accident Investigations Board. "We get it," NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe immediately told the press upon the issuance of the 248-page report (Washington Post, 8/28/03). And he promised changes including working for better "communications" within NASA and openness of internal criticism. Will it happen? Quite unlikely, especially if media continue to be a lapdog rather than a watchdog for NASA. Consider how NASA is right now moving to substantially expand its program of using nuclear power in space--to conduct more plutonium-fueled space probe missions like Galileo, and to bring back the scheme of building actual nuclear-propelled spacecraft. And media are paying minimal attention. Two days after the Columbia disaster, NASA unveiled its broadened space nuclear program--Project Prometheus--to cost $3 billion over five years. The nuclear dangers represented by Galileo would be multiplied. NASA, in trying to build nuclear-propelled spacecraft, would be rocketing back to the past, bringing back a program of the 1950s and '60s on which billions of dollars were spent. That attempt was finally cancelled, largely out of concern about a nuclear spacecraft falling back to Earth--a key problem still present. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered? A broad swath of nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Problems with using nuclear power in space are not theoretical. In 1964, a U.S. satellite carrying a SNAP-9A plutonium-fueled power source fell back to Earth, disintegrating and spreading plutonium worldwide. Dr. John Gofman, professor emeritus of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, has long linked that accident to an increased level of lung cancer on Earth. The nuclear industry media--not the general media--have noted a main reason why NASA's O'Keefe is gung-ho for nuclear power in space. "As a youngster," related Nuclear Energy Insight (1/03), the publication of the Nuclear Energy Institute trade group, "Sean O'Keefe didn't have to go far to learn about nuclear technology--his family's dinner table was enough. There, O'Keefe's father, a nuclear submariner, regaled his son with descriptions of the complex workings of the sub's propulsion system. Decades later, those dining room tutorials would pay dividends to O'Keefe" as he moves to expand nuclear power in another dimension--space--and "envisions the development of new propulsion systems for spacecraft powered by nuclear technology." Not mentioned, however, in the nuclear industry media--or general media--is another big element behind the new program: the lobbying of corporations like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that produce the nuclear space systems. After the Challenger disaster, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, a member of the commission that investigated that disaster, wrote in the commission's report that NASA officials must "deal in the world of reality." Very concerned himself about the odds NASA was placing on a nuclear accident on the Galileo mission, he wrote that NASA "exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy. . . . For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." Nature cannot be fooled, but the U.S. press sure can, and it's been happily letting itself be fooled when it comes to NASA--then and now. Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury, has received the Project Censored Award six times for his reporting on NASA's nuclear space program. He is the author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet and writer and narrator of a series of Nukes in Space TV documentaries available from EnviroVideo (1-800-ECO-TVGO).

Review in Science Communication, March 2006

The E-Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way

Future Wars Will Be Fought, by Doug Beason. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2005.   

I recall as a young journalist four decades ago interviewing a sculptor for a feature story and his telling me how he once contemplated suicide and then, looking at the gun he held in his hand, began to think about the work, the fine craftsmanship, the effort through the years that went into developing devices of death.

His musing interrupted and, fortuitously, ended his suicide attempt.

The E-Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought involves the efforts of recent times to produce killing machines way beyond pistols in their impacts.

Doug Beason is not just the author of the book but “a key architect” during the past twenty-six years of such weaponry. He currently works at the U.S. government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the facility that a half-century ago gave us the atomic bomb, and he served under the U.S. president’s science advisor in both the Clinton and first Bush administrations.

A “revolution in military affairs” is before us, writes Dr. Beason, “a revolution in warfare so dramatic, so disruptive, and so profound that it changes the way wars are fought….But this revolution is not built on bombs or bullets” (pp. 4-5). It involves “directed energy...weapons—lasers, high-power microwaves…and particle beams….Directed energy is making world-changing, revolutionary advances from fighting wars to battling terrorism” (p. 9).

“National leaders,” Beason relates, will soon have the ability to instantly deter threats anywhere in the world with infinite precision at the speed of light. The dynamic changes this will make to international relations will reverberate throughout American society. It will transform our way of life. (P. 10).

Now, as an old journalist, I understanding what he is talking about, having done a good deal of research into plans by the United States to arm the heavens using orbiting lasers, hypervelocity guns, and particle beams. In 2001, my book Weapons In Space was published. A major focus of Dr. Beason’s book is space weaponry. His inside account will allow even an average reader to understand the technology of this kind of weaponry.

His work also considers terrestrial conflict; he opens the book with a hypothetical attack on a U.S. embassy. In years past, the Marine guards “only had two options: to shout at the insurgents, pleading with them to stop—or to shoot them” (p. 3).

But directed energy weapons are coming to the rescue.

Suddenly the rioters feel intense heat, as if a gigantic oven had suddenly opened in front of them. Within seconds the pain is unbearable. They cannot think, they cannot reason—they can only react. They turn and flee…from the dipole antenna that directed the…waves from the world’s first nonlethal directed energy weapon, Active Denial.” (P. 3)

Dr. Beason assures us that “Active Denial is being tested today.”

The problem with Dr. Beason’s book is that it is blind to the political and historical realities that follow the introduction of new weapons systems. At his Los Alamos National Laboratory, indeed, there were those who thought fifty years ago that the U.S. would have an exclusive on the atomic bomb. That didn’t last very long.

Every time a new, yet more destructive weapon is developed, others come out with their own versions, and the process goes on and on.  Today, after expending billions of dollars (a lot of that money at Los Alamos), the United States has the technology to move into space with directed energy weapons.

For a while, the U.S. might have an advantage, but to think it will be the only nation up there with weaponry is a huge miscalculation. In response, China and Russia—and who knows what country next—will be up there, too.

Moreover, consider if space is armed and there is a shooting war with laser weapons and hypervelocity guns and particle beams (a preferred energy source for space weapons: on-board nuclear power) exchanging fire. There would be so much debris left orbiting at high speed above the planet that humanity would be precluded for millennia from getting up and out and exploring space. As Edgar Mitchell, a former astronaut who walked on the moon, has said, “Future generations will be precluded from using space at at all…Getting out to deep space would be like swimming in a piranha-full river or running through a hail of bullets" (statement at rally, Kennedy Space Center, 1989).

But the weapons designers have been, and are, myopic. The flow of funds to their government laboratories and corporate treasuries is what counts, along with inventing tools of death for invention’s sake. Morality and reality are not factors. Talk about Active Denial.

They might, like that sculptor, consider the killing devices they have in hand and the diversion of humanity’s energy and talent that’s gone into producing them and decide to forgo their part in what in modern times could be mass suicide.

                                —Karl Grossman

                                    State University of New York

College at Old Westbury

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