ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (08/01/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, July 31, 1986 6:55PM
Volume 6, Issue 130
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Constructive criticism of Administration arms control policy
Interactive Midcourse Discrimination via Particle Beams
Reagan's "Arms Control" Proposal
KAL007
KAL007 - Should we forget?
Velikhov's Soviet Strategic View (SDI)
Ionizing radiation health hazards
Re: Radiation and Health (long)
Re: Civil Disobedience and the SDI pledge
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1986 17:19 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
I'm getting a problem from <Postmaster%slb-doll.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
who tells me that
(BHST) Unknown host/domain name in "guthery@ascvx5%slb-test.csnet"
Someone please help?
Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 09:08:12 EDT
From: campbell%maynard.UUCP@harvisr.harvard.edu
Subject: Constructive criticism of Administration arms control policy
Reply-To: campbell%maynard.UUCP@harvisr.HARVARD.EDU (Larry Campbell)
>From: cfccs at HAWAII-EMH
>
>I am new to the ARMS-D discussions, but I notice there is something missing in
>the criticisms on President Reagan's arms policies and nuclear energy as a
>whole. The criticism is not constructive!
>In what SPECIFIC ways should President Reagan change his policy on arms
>control? What will be the logical response from the Soviet Union (based on
>PAST ACTIONS, not personal opinion)? How will it affect our relationship with
>other countries, both friend and foe? How will it affect our ability to
>defend against the unknown in the future?
>Gary Holt
>CFCCSawaii-emh
>(CFCCS@HAWAII-EMH)
OK, how about these for starters:
1) Meet the Soviet Union halfway on the nuclear test ban.
The Soviet Union has UNILATERALLY renounced nuclear testing
for over a year and has publicly promised to continue the
moratorium as long as the U.S. reciprocates. During this
moratorium, the U.S. has conducted several nuclear tests,
despite widespread domestic and foreign opposition.
2) Ratify the Threshold Test Ban treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear
Explosions treaty -- both signed (by previous administrations)
but never ratified.
3) Renounce first use. The Soviet Union has long had a public
no-first-use policy. The U.S. frighteningly refuses to forswear
the first use of nuclear weapons in a war.
4) Withdraw American nuclear weapons from Europe. We threatened
nuclear holocaust when the USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba,
but can't understand why they don't want our missiles in Germany.
Note that this does *not* leave Europe defenseless -- both France
and the U.K. have substantial nuclear arsenals.
5) Adhere to the terms of the SALT treaties -- it is we, and not
the USSR, who have publicly announced intentions to violate the
treaties.
So far the Soviet Union has made two significant UNILATERAL concessions:
the test moratorium, and the no-first-use policy. The U.S. has made
none. Whom would an objective observer believe is more serious about
arms control?
--
"There are two kinds of science: physics, and stamp collecting."
Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc.
ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvard.ARPA 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell (617) 367-6846
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1986 09:19 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Interactive Midcourse Discrimination via Particle Beams
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
... I don't understand how it could be made to work
in practice. The problem is simple: the particle beam will cause
an RV to emit perhaps several tens of joules of gamma radiation.
But the debris from a one megaton explosion will be radiating 7 billion
watts of gamma radiation 1000 seconds after the explosion (and 20
trillion watts (!) 1 second after the explosion). Large nuclear
explosions in the upper atmosphere should generate enough background to
saturate the radiation detectors.
It would not be surprising to me if no one at SDIO is considering this
problem at all. So, if you don't take into account a non-benigh
environment, you can do just about anything.
That said, the radiation spectrum emitted from a tickled RV is
different from what you'd get from an explosion, in both neutrons and
gamma rays. Detectors could in principle be made to distinguish.
Shooting a gamma ray beam at the detector from an orbiting linear
accelerator would also seem to be a good countermeasure.
But why should the linac be there? Why wouldn't the defense just
destroy that too after a launch has been initiated?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1986 09:28 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Reagan's "Arms Control" Proposal
From: wolit%mhuxd.UUCP at harvard.HARVARD.EDU
... doesn't this proposal simply amount to
an offer to scrap the 1972 ABM Treaty, period, in exchange for
nothing at all?
...Thus Reagan is offering not to do what he can't do anyway, in return
for dismantling yet another of the few remaining arms control treaties
left.
True. So what else is new?
The news media have meekly parrotted the Administration's line on the
proposal, claiming that the new proposal amounts to a *STRENGTHENING*
of the ABM Treaty...
Do you have a reference on a claim that this is "strengthening"? I
haven't seen such a claim anywhere.
------------------------------
Date: 31 Jul 86 14:09:18 EDT
From: Hank.Walker@unh.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: KAL007
I believe that this has been gone over in the past. We can all cite sources
that support our position. For example, Viktor Belenko's article in
Reader's Digest paints a very different picture than the one provided by R.
W. Johnson. One such point is that tracers have far too short a range to
have been seen by the 747 pilot. Some of the conspiracy articles published
have been retracted. Of course conspiracy theorists would say "they" forced
the retractions. I suppose that KAL007 theories will be with us as long as
Kennedy assassination theories. Given the high level of noise and small
quantity of hard facts, I don't think it will prove fruitful to have a long
discussion in this digest.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 11:47:11 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: KAL007 - Should we forget?
> From: Jerry Mungle <JMUNGLE@ADA20.ISI.EDU>
> To: GA.CJJ@FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDU
> A question: is the portion of government you are accusing of hiding the
> Ke 007 information the DoD? Or is it the executive branch, or congress?
All branches - Executive (obviously), Congress (for failing to have
a proper public investigation), the Court (for refusing to allow a
suit based on the espionage hypothesis), and much of the media
(which seems to consider discovery of the truth contrary to the
National Interest). Moving right along to the next hypothetical
question, supposing KAL007 *were* a spy flight, would it now be in
the national interest to discover it? If KAL007 was probing, so
what? Isn't that what the CIA is supposed to? So long as they've
stopped doing it, who needs an inquiry? Of course, I disagree
vehemently, but does anyone have anything against discovering the
truth? Can such argument be made?
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 13:50:50 pdt
From: Dave Benson <benson%wsu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Velikhov's Soviet Strategic View (SDI)
|Mr. Benson, before citing Academician Ye. P. Velikhov, writes:
|
| It is noteworthy that the Department of Defense 1985 report,
| "Soviet Strategic Defense Program", identifies Velikhov as having
| played an important role in the delevopment of the Soviet
| anti-ballisitc missle defense program.
I did not write this.
Leon Goure, in "The Soviet Strategic View", STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol.XIV,
Spring 1986, p.73ff, wrote the sentence in question. (in which I note I
misspelled "development" in transcribing it.)
I have no idea why Mr. Goure found it noteworthy. I simply exerpted
portions of the article for ARMS-D since it indicates the publicly
stated view of a well-placed Soviet citizen. Sorry that "noteworthy"
was misleading.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 19:21:39 pdt
From: Dave Benson <benson%wsu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Ionizing radiation health hazards (113 lines)
Someday I might actually be able to finish my library research into
the health effects of ionizing radiation... Anyone who wants to get
started on their own might well begin with
F. W. Whicker and V. Schultz
Radioecology: Nuclear Energy and the Environment (2 volumes)
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1982
If transuranic elements are the issue, the fundamental paper is
Roy C. Thompson and Bruce W. Wachholz
"Biological Effect of Transuranic elements in the
Enviornment: Human Effects and Risk Estimates," in
Transuranic Elements in the Environment, W.C.Hanson(ed.)
U.S. DOE Report DOE/TIC-22800.
This report is typeset, so easy on the eye. It is available in microform
in most government repository libraries, you know, universities and the
big downtown library...
There is indeed a debate about the effects of low level ionizing
radiation. Some researchers used to claim that below a threshold,
the damage caused to tissue by ionizing radiation was completely
repaired. More recent work (see Whicker and Schultz, op. cit.)
suggests that no level of ionizing radiation is safe. Any level
may result in cancer.
Since all the research (before Chernobyl) on low level radiation
was done on lab animals,
all the existing data used to form estimates of the health hazards
of ionizing radiation may not actually apply to humans. (See Thompson
and Wachholz, op. cit.). Thus for an extra degree of safety, the
so-called linear hypothesis of no safe threshhold for ionizing
radiation is typically used these days, irrespective of what some
ancient encyclopedia has to say on the matter.
The effect of small samples on statistical prediction is well-known.
If the sample is small, the statistical methods typically give the
answer -- no observable effect. Given the amount of bootstrapping
from uncertain models of the effects of ionizing radiation on tissue
to estimating the excess cancer deaths due to SNAP-8, Hanford radioactive
iodine release, etc., the fact that the model predicts only a few
excess cancer deaths DOES NOT MEAN that only a few have or will occur.
Lab animal experiments are typically done in a clean laboratory environment,
therefore probably without
all the enivronmental insults which face us every day--smog, pesticide
residues, even good old-fashioned dust. ( I live about 20 miles from
Dusty, WA.) All of this interacts in some fashion to load or perhaps
overload the tissue repair mechanisms which do exist. I assert that
the full consequences of ionizing radiation in the environment are not
well understood -- there are simply too many interactions with the
other environmental insults, these interactions being non-linear and
much more complex than any model of these processes. (Although I will
admit that my colleagues in Zoology are not in agreement with me --
but then who ever heard of two professors agreeing on anything.)
Still, we must somehow make public and private decisions about using
or not using radioactive materials. I assert we should look to the
actual experience which has occurred in the field, not to lab animals,
nor to the occasional problems which have occured to workers in
radioactive work-places.
I hope that the USSR will be capable
of conducting a epidemiological study of those affected by Chernobyl.
If so, they will do better than the US Government has done regarding
those affected or potentially affected by various atmospheric nuclear
tests conducted in the 1950s. (No conspiracy, perhaps not even incompetence,
just the problem of keeping track of people in this highly mobile society.)
So a goodly amount of field data is missing. Worse, the models used to
assess excess cancer rates are, in my opinion, LOWER BOUND models, for
the reasons just cited.
The point of all this is that one should not dismiss a book
without even looking at it, and weighing the evidence presented. If
a hard cover edition is required to make the data somehow more
plausible, the citation is
Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon
Killing our own: the disaster of America's experience
with atomic radiation
DeLacorte Press, 1982.
All this is relevant to ARMS-D:
(1) The nuclear power reactors used in this country provide a source
of Plutonium, via reprocessing at Rocky Flats., etc. This system continues
despite the fact the US has a stockpile of about 100 metric tons of
this (highly toxic) substance, as well as all the old bombs which
can also be reprocessed. Indeed one of the reasons currently being
given by Washington Congressmen for keeping the Hanford N-reactor
running (you know, the one claimed to be like the Chernobyl reactor...)
is that it continues to provide raw material for the Hanford PUREX
(Plutonium and Uranium Extraction) plant. That's your tax money
by the way...
(2) In the event of a nuclear explosion, the long term health effects
might be considerably more serious now than the already horrendous
effects from the Hiroshima bomb in 1945, effects which are moderately
well documented. These effects might be worse now because the world is
considerably more polluted than in 1945. Here is a fiction piece:
Some chemical now in wide-spread use around the world is in of itself
benign. In the growing infant this hypothetical chemical interacts
in a recoverable way with, say, the thalamus. Under ordinary
circumstances no one knows about this interaction, or experiences
any ill effects. However, the tissue is then extraordinarily
sensitive to some ionizing radiation from a chemical which the
organ concentrates, say Cesium137. Thus infant mortality becomes
much higher in the polluted world than in the days of atmospheric
nuclear use and testing.
In conclusion, I suggest that we look at any reasonable compilation of
data with respect and evaluate it, before criticising it.
"The universe is not only stranger than it seems, but it is stranger
than it seems." It is the height of hubris to assume that we actually
fully understand the world in which we live. A little humility on this
subject might be useful. Thanks, dbb
------------------------------
Date: 31-Jul-86 15:03-EST
From: sam mccracken <oth104%BOSTONU.bitnet@WISCVM.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Radiation and Health (long)
-----
!n 1980 or thereabouts, the chinese published a massive study of two areas,
in one of which the background radiation was twice as high as the other.
most of the families had lived in the areas for ten generations.
they did careful epidemiological studies for cancer, chromosome damage and
genetic disease. result: a slightly (but insignificantly) _lower_
incidence in the _high_ radiation area, where for generations people absorbed hi
for tmi. the director of the study found it persuasive, but not compelling,
evidence for the existence of a threshhold below which there is no health
impact from radiation.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 31 Jul 86 18:22:48-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Civil Disobedience and the SDI pledge
Leonard Foner writes:
> If anyone around here has a better handle on Institute policy (or lack
> thereof) as it relates to SDI, or remembers what the percentage was of
> the MIT research community that signed the SDI petitions, please let
> me know.
About 118 of 650 science and engineering professors and 700 students have
signed the refusal to do SDI research.
MIT has taken no explicit stand on SDI, but may indirectly encourage
people to get involved in the research because it brings in money. According
to Business Week, on campus SDI funding will reach $3 million this year. At
Lincoln Lab, about 1/3 of the research is SDI related ($100 million/year),
although much of this research is allocated by DOD agencies other than SDIO
and has existed since the pre-Reagan era.
-rich
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************