KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (03/17/86)
I have borrowed the March 15th copy of THE NATION. This is a left wing pulp magazine. In a front page headline it says "PLUTONIUM COVERUP" The article under it is equally hysterical. "...no bigger than the baseball once thought to represent the size of an A-bomb's core ... stumbled upon NASA's plans to launch the next vehicle with a payload containing 46.7 pounds of plutonium-238, the most toxic subsance in this universe. ... so far, the agencies involved have been stalling, if not stonewalling. ... Galileo explosion could release about 57,000 curies of plutonium radiation - theoretically enough to give 5 billion people lung or bone cancer ..." I can hardly believe they publish such stuff. Of course they have the right to publish whatever rubish comes into their heads. But they ought to feel some sort of responsibility to get their facts straight, even if it means asking someone who took science in high school. Galileo was not to have been on the next shuttle flight, as they state. Discovering the plutonium was hardly a milestone of investigative journalism as they imply, it has been publically known sisnce the first proposals for Galileo. And most importantly, it would not harm anyone if it was destroyed. That amount of plutonium cannot possibly cause 5 billion cancers, even if you were careful to put all of it in people's lungs and none at all into the ocean. I do not know if it is really 57,000 curies, but if it is, that would come to 11 microcuries per person. The air in most houses is more radioactive than that. I don't know what they hope to gain from this yellow journalism. How do they say we should power Galileo? Jupiter is too far for solar cells, not to mention the fact that Galileo will often be in Jupiter's shadow. Batteries wouldn't last long enough. All I can assume is they don't want any sort of probe sent to Jupiter. They would prefer that people remain in ignorance about conditions there. Ignorance is at least consistent with their attitude about almost everything else. Several Soviet satellites containing far more plutonium have burned up in the atmosphere or have crashed into the ground, spewing plutonium into the environment. They don't have anything to say about that. Which isn't surprising, since they never have anything negative to say about the Soviets. Not that these reentries have caused any harm to anyone as far as I know. Despite many TONS of plutonium having been spread through the atmosphere during the nuclear tests of the 1950s and 1960s, most of it over land, the major source of radiation exposure to the average citizen is tobacco smoke, with natural radon a close second, and cosmic rays a distant third. Manmade plutonium isn't even in the running. ...Keith