"You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place"
Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction
The
landing of the NASA Mars rover, Curiosity,
was big news on August 6, 2012, but in the media fanfare there was
scant discussion of the implications of it being powered by 4.8 kilograms of
plutonium-238. When it was launched last November, NASA was not keen to inform
the public about the risks involved, what the nation needs to do to maintain
the supply, or the disturbing history of failed launches of and crash landings
of other rockets and satellites loaded with nuclear materials.
In
fact, NASA is in a public relations bind right now because the continued
exploration of deep space requires nuclear-fueled probes, but supplies of
plutonium-238 are soon to be depleted, as reported by NPR last year when the Mars rover was
launched. The only way to get more is to lobby for a new program of plutonium
production, but NASA knows the American public has little appetite for the
expense, nor for revisiting the dark times of the Cold War when plutonium
production left a legacy of damaged health of nuclear workers and environmental
pollution at numerous sites. Furthermore, the public is conscious of the odds
of launch failures and disasters, and so it is not a good thing to remind them
that the rocket on the launch pad has a payload of plutonium that could melt
and fall back to earth if the launch fails. Thus NASA’s strategy is to mention
the plutonium shortage as little as possible, and not lobby for funding too loudly.
Instead, NASA, and other space agencies, play up the romance of boldly going to
new frontiers and the importance of new endeavors. It is unthinkable that the space
program could be halted just because of the public’s reluctance to produce the
required plutonium.
One
can suggest at this point the unthinkable, that the space program is just not
worth it if it involves the costs and dangers of making and handling plutonium.
Space will always be there. What’s the hurry? Let’s wait until we figure out a
safe way to do it, or not do it at all. The physicist Michio Kaku has said NASA's renewed
interest in not only nuclear powered probes, but the more dangerous nuclear
propulsion "… is not only dangerous but politically unwise. The only thing
that can kill the U.S. space program is a nuclear disaster. The American people
will not tolerate a Chernobyl in the sky."
The
drawback to arguing against space exploration is that whoever makes it is
immediately on the defensive, accused of being against progress, or the type
who would shoot down a child’s dream to be an astronaut. Here in Japan, my
children are exposed to a steady stream of news features and documentaries
about JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Japanese astronauts on NASA
missions. The JAXA headquarters in nearby Tsukuba holds tours and events for
children every summer. There is a popular manga and anime series called Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyoudai) about two young men living their childhood dream of
joining a NASA mission. My children are all hooked. This is how space agencies,
and the associated military, chemical and nuclear industries behind them, cynically
play the public relations game. It is all packaged as benevolent scientific
progress for mankind, and it takes advantage of the child’s desire to transcend
the ordinary and engage in imaginative play. Through these education programs
and works of fiction, children all know the amusing factoids about food in
tubes and what happens to farts on the space shuttle, but no one teaches them
about the Radioisotope Heater Unit and what is required to make one.
One
can stand up to this onslaught and suggest that progress might lie in learning
how to clean up our planet and live on it within its ability to sustain us, but
the brilliance of this propaganda system is that whoever does so will be seen
as a cynic who just wants to deprive children of their dreams. It’s less
cynical than building those dreams on concealed truths, but this point will
also go unmentioned along with some facts about what is needed to produce a few
kilograms of plutonium-238 for a single space mission.
Plutonium
can exist in several isotopes, all of which vary in the length of their
half-lives, the intensity of the life-damaging radiation they emit, and in
their applications. The number of protons in an atom’s nucleus defines the
atom, but the number of neutrons can vary to make different isotopes of the
same atom. Plutonium-244 (the number being the total number of neutrons and
protons in the nucleus of the isotope) is found in trace amounts in nature, but
almost all plutonium now on earth was created by human activity over the last
seventy years. In this sense, it is said to be something that no life form has
evolved with. Since it damages chromosomes, there is a good argument to be made
that it should never be created or used, no matter how well we imagine that its
contact with living things can be managed safely.
Various
isotopes of plutonium can be created by bombarding other radioisotopes with
neutrons. For example, the fissile isotope plutonium-239 used in nuclear
weapons is made by bombarding uranium-238. In this way, plutonium for weapons is
inextricably linked to the “peaceful” uses of the atom because nuclear fuel in in
light water reactors (enriched uranium) used for generating electricity is
bombarded with neutrons, leaving behind nuclear waste containing plutonium that
can be used to make bombs. The isotope required for space missions is plutonium-238,
which emits higher radioactive energy and has a shorter half-life than
plutonium-239. Nuclear waste contains
only small amounts of plutonium-238, so it can’t be obtained directly from this
source. However, spent nuclear fuel contains neptunium-237, and this can be
separated from the spent fuel and irradiated to create plutonium-238. A 100-kg sample of spent fuel can yield 700 grams of
neptunium-237.
Once you understand what is
involved in obtaining a small quantity of plutonium-238, you understand why
space agencies are so reluctant to talk about it, even though they need to play
politics to get more funding. Production involves numerous problems such as
cost, safety, security, and the ongoing problem of cleaning up contaminated
environments and storing the plutonium waste already in existence. Space Daily reported in 2003, “Historically
DoE has a bad track record when it comes to protecting workers and local water
systems from radioactive contaminants… During
the Cassini RTG fabrication process at Los Alamos 244 cases of worker
contamination were reported to the DoE.”
A nation that wants to send a
probe deep into space where the sun don’t shine on solar panels (i.e. Jupiter, Uranus
and beyond) needs the entire infrastructure of a large nuclear industry.
Spacecraft require a small amount of plutonium-238, which requires the
production of enriched uranium, which requires a fleet of civilian nuclear
reactors that will provide the nuclear waste from which to make the plutonium-238.
The nuclear waste has to be moved around to various facilities, with tight
security and all the associated risks. And of course, only a few self-anointed
countries are allowed to engage in this production process. The Soviets used polonium 210 (the same isotope that was used to murder the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006) on many satellites and the Lunokhod series of moon rovers, one of which exploded on the launch pad in 1969. A country needs to be a major nuclear power to be in the space exploration business, so if you’re a
child in Iran, which the major nuclear powers won’t allow to produce enriched
uranium, or just a country without the resources for (or the wisdom not to
spend resources on) space exploration, the dream of being an astronaut has been
denied to you.
So what are the risks?
There
is a lot of controversy over the risks involved in sending payloads of
plutonium into space. NASA says that the fuel is packed into
ceramic and graphite-coated pellets that have been tested to resist impact and
melting in the event of an explosion on launch or a fall from orbit. Critics point
out that the risk is not easily understood because the small amount of plutonium-238
involved is very radioactive compared to other isotopes of plutonium.
Not
all radioisotopes release, by mass, equal amounts of radiation. Plutonium-239
has a long half-life of 24,110 years, but 277 times less energy that plutonium-238,
which has a half-life of 87.7 years. Wired
Magazine, that
consistent cheerleader of all technological progress, commented about this isotope being aboard rockets:
The plutonium (which is, not to worry,
non-weapons-grade Pu-238) undergoes nuclear decay, providing heat to warm MSL’s
electronics and keep it churning out data even at night.
It may not be weapons-grade, but the writer is gullible to NASA PR saying that it is safe,
and he fails to notice the glaring omission in this quote:
They [NASA] point out that NASA has reliably used
nuclear generators for 26 missions over the last 50 years.
Yes, reliably in 26, but unreliably in
the two mishaps mentioned below that NASA neglected to point out to the Wired journalist. This would amount to 28
missions, with a record of 1 failure for every 14 successes. NASA’s recent
estimates of failure probability give much more favorable odds than the actual
record, especially if you include the Challenger
and Columbia disasters which,
fortunately, did not carry radioactive payloads (as far as we know).
If
you think of a rocket exploding high in the atmosphere and scattering 4.8
kilograms of material throughout the vast expanse of the earth’s atmosphere,
that may seem insignificant. But, in fact, it is a massive release of
radioactive energy, and some experts say the impact has been significant.
Not all radioisotopes are created
equal.
Plutonium-238 is 277 times as
radioactive as plutonium-239, so…
plutonium-238
on the Mars rover Curiosity
|
4.8 kilograms
|
plutonium-239
used in the bombing of Nagasaki
|
6.4 kilograms
|
amount
of plutonium-238 that has the same radioactive energy as the plutonium-239
used in the Nagasaki bomb
|
6.4 ÷
277 = 0.0231 kilograms
|
energy
equivalence of 4.8 kilograms of plutonium-238
|
4.8 x
277 = 1,329 kilograms of plutonium-239
|
Curiosity radioactivity payload equals how
many Nagasaki bombs?
|
1,329 ÷
6.4 = 208
|
In
spite of the invention of ways to contain plutonium within ceramic pellets and
graphite, NASA’s own Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Science Laboratory
Mission finds there is still a chance of environmental release of plutonium in
various accident scenarios. It might be foolish to spend much time on a
discussion of the probabilities of various scenarios because the methodologies
and assumptions involved render the undertaking an absurd game. Nonetheless,
NASA concludes “… there is an overall probability of 4 in 1,000 that the MSL
mission would result in an accident with a release of PuO2
[plutonium dioxide] into the environment.” About a less likely scenario it
states, “The risk assessment also indicates that in at least one very unlikely
ground impact configuration, FSII with a total probability of release of 9.2 x
10-5 (or 1 in 11,000), a mean area of 86 km2 could be
contaminated above 0.2 microcuries/m2… Land areas contaminated at
levels above 0.2 microcuries/m2 (or 7,440 becquerels/m2 ) would potentially
need further action, such as monitoring and cleanup.” For mixed use urban
areas, this cost is estimated to be $562 million per km2. These
estimates include no guess about how far above 0.2 the levels could go. But
note that when a radiological disaster does occur, this level of 0.2, or 7,440
becquerels/m2 is suddenly deemed too low to require action. By the
standards set for Chernobyl, places with less than 37,000 becquerels/m2
were considered weakly contaminated. Recommended evacuation (that included permission to leave in the old system of
Soviet restrictions on movement) began at 555,000 becquerels/m2.
Compulsory, compensated evacuation began at 1,480,000 becquerels/m2.
The Japanese authorities have been similarly complacent since the Fukushima
disaster.
In
addition, the NASA report mentions, but finds incalculable, the costs of
relocation, loss of employment, damage to fishing and agriculture, and health
care. Finally, the report concludes with an interesting rationalization for the
risks imposed on the public. “The individual risk estimates are small compared
to other risks… in [the year] 2000 the average individual risk of accidental death was
about 1 in 3,000 per year, while the average individual risk of death due to
any disease, including cancer, was about 1 in 130.”
Consider
how this logic appears when a drug dealer in your neighborhood turns his house
into a methamphetamine lab and contaminates the area. He is likely to
rationalize the imposition of risk, which you were not able to have a say in,
as only a negligible increase in the risks you already face in your life. It
would be better if official agencies of government did not sink to this level
of reasoning.
As
mentioned above, earlier NASA missions loaded with plutonium failed. The worst
one occurred in 1964 with the SNAP-9A Radioisotopic Thermo Generator (RTG). 950
grams of plutonium-238 was widely dispersed over the earth when the satellite containing
the RTG fell back to earth. Comparative data on this event can be found in the FEIS of the Mars Science Laboratory
Mission.
Table compiled from
data provided by NASA’s FEIS for the Mars Science
Laboratory Mission and Isotopic evidence of plutonium
release into the environment from the Fukushima DNPP accident
Global
releases of plutonium (Curies)
|
||
Pu
239
|
Pu
-238
|
|
weapons
tests
|
444,000
|
9,000
|
SNAP-9A
accident*
|
*
|
17,000
(25% fell on Northern Hemisphere,
75% on Southern)
|
Chernobyl
accident**
|
Plutonium-239, 241: 2,351
|
400
|
Plutonium-240: 194,594
|
||
plutonium
reprocessing (1952-1992)
discharged
into oceans
|
100,000
|
3,400
|
TOTAL
|
740,945
|
29,800
|
Total fallout from all isotopes
|
740,945 + 29,800 = 770,745
|
|
Percentage of total fallout from SNAP-9A accident
|
770,745
÷ 29,800 = 4%
|
|
NASA
states the following equivalence:
Plutonium-238
is 17.12 Curies/gram, Plutonium-239 is 0.0620 Curies/gram
* NASA
considered the inventory of plutonium-239 on SNAP-9A too small to include.
** NASA
did not consider the releases of plutonium-239, 240 and 241 from Chernobyl to
be worth mentioning or looking up, but the author calculated them from the data
in becquerels given in Zhang et. al.
According to this source, the plutonium releases from the Fukushima disaster
are estimated to be five orders of magnitude less than the Chernobyl disaster,
making them too small to include here. The conversion factor is 1 Curie = 3.7 x
1010 becquerels.
Plutonium released from Chernobyl
(converted to Curies in the table above):
plutonium
239 and 240
|
8.7 x
1013 becquerels
|
plutonium
241
|
7.2 x
1015 becquerels
|
This
single mishap of the SNAP-9A unit, involving less than a kilogram of plutonium, accounts for 4% of
the plutonium-derived radioactivity released into the environment since the
start of the nuclear age. Another part of NASA’s website,
not the FEIS, explains these failures with great understatement and typical
omission of inconvenient facts. The failure of the satellite in 1964, involving
the SNAP-9A Radioisotope Thermal Generator (RTG) is described this way:
Status: Mission was aborted because of launch vehicle failure. RTG
burned up on re-entry as designed.
On the other hand, the loss of the
Apollo 13 lunar module in 1970 was described differently. People familiar with
the story of this failed mission know that the astronauts survived by staying
in the lunar module as long as possible, but it was discarded from the main
capsule just before re-entry. The lunar module crashed into the South Pacific
along with its payload of plutonium-238 in the SNAP-27 RTG. In this case, NASA
describes the loss this way:
Status: Mission aborted on the way to the moon. RTG re-entered
earth's atmosphere and landed in South Pacific Ocean. No radiation was
released.
In the latter case, NASA specifies that
no radiation was released, but in the former case there is no mention of
whether radiation was released. In fact, the failure of the SNAP-9A was one
of many “lessons learned” in the history of nuclear technology. NASA admitted
that a large volume of plutonium was released into the earth’s atmosphere, and they
subsequently developed solar energy technology, as well as the ceramic and
graphite casings for plutonium pellets which, presumably, meant that the
plutonium aboard the Apollo 13 lunar module went to the bottom of the sea
encased in its protective shells to safely decay through several half-lives of
87.7 years. The same presumption of safety holds for numerous other payloads of
plutonium that have been launched into space since 1970. The Cassini space probe, for example,
launched in 1997, carries 36.2 kilograms of plutonium-238.
The health effects of the 1964
accident, and the potential effects of future accidents, have become controversial. According to a
study titled Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear-Powered Satellites, the 2.1 pounds [950 grams] of Plutonium-238 in the SNAP-9A
dispersed widely over the Earth. “A worldwide soil sampling program carried out
in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.”
(cited in Grossman,
K.)
Dr. John Gofman, a scientist on the Manhattan
Project who later broke ranks with the nuclear establishment, claimed the 1964
accident, on its own and added to the effects of fallout from weapons testing,
contributed to a rise in global lung cancer cases. Yet his findings were
contested by Snipes et. al.
Gofman claimed that most of the lung cancer cases would occur in smokers
because they clear particles from their lungs much more slowly than
non-smokers. These critics claimed that an assessment of the risk of plutonium
would have to be based on healthy individuals. Nonetheless, Gofman still found
there is a substantial risk for non-smokers, well-known because of American
government studies of non-smoking dogs and rats sacrificed for research (Bair & Thompson).
The risk is more acute for the “plutonium workers” who have to handle and
transport the nuclear material produced for the civilian and military nuclear complex. When it comes to the general population, proponents on
either side of the controversy could never agree on how much plutonium people have
ingested and what the effects could be. Regardless, one can make a value judgment and question the wisdom of introducing
into the world a known toxic primordial nuclide that has not been present during the evolution of
life.
Other great moments in space
exploration
The
1978 crash of the Soviet satellite Cosmos 954 spread uranium-235 debris over
77,000 square miles of Northern Canada. There was a media uproar at the time
(like there never was about the American SNAP-9A accident), and debates in
parliament about the assault on Canadian sovereignty, but the incident was
quickly resolved and brushed out of public awareness. There was a joint
Canadian and American cleanup, Operation
Morning Light, that lasted one year, and the discovery of some highly
radioactive debris, but also official assurances that the accident would have
no health effects, that all the dangerous material had “harmlessly” disintegrated,
melted, vaporized, neutralized or dispersed in such dilute amounts as to not be
a concern. During the cleanup, only an estimated 0.1% of the radioactive fuel
was recovered, and the fragments of the satellite that were found gave off a
deadly 1.1 sieverts per hour. The rest of the radioactive fragments are still
out there over the Great White North, at the bottom of Great Slave Lake, or the
remainder of the uranium dispersed high in the atmosphere to have its
controversial and unknown effects on human health. This is how it was described
six years later in the journal Health Physics:
It was estimated that about one-quarter of the
reactor core descended over Canada's Northwest Territories in the form of sub-millimeter
particles. The other three-quarters apparently remained as fine dust in the
upper atmosphere. Each particle contained megabecquerel quantities of the
fission products 95Zr, 95Nb, 103Ru, 106Ru, 141Ce and 144Ce, as well as traces
of other fission and activation products. Laboratory tests indicated that these
radionuclides would not dissolve significantly in drinking water supplies or in
dilute acids. Contamination of air, drinking water, soil and food supplies was
not detected. The dose equivalent to the GI tract for an individual who might
have inhaled or ingested a particle could have been as high as 140 mSv.
Gary
Bennett, an American expert on nuclear power and propulsion, described how the
Cosmos accident disrupted the consensus on nuclear power in space that existed
in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). In a paper
tellingly entitled Reaching the Outer Planets –
with or without the UN, he states that the agreement at the time “...represented
not only a consensus of international technical experts but also a succinct
statement of the US position.” But then for the Canadian delegation, and other
concerned countries, the Cosmos accident had changed everything. If such a crash
had occurred over a populated area, the effects could have been horrendous. By
1981, Bennett says, “…several delegations, led by the Canadian contingent, had
introduced working papers proposing new or different technical principles.”
Bennett laments, “To a number of people on the US side, it appeared almost as
if the Canadian delegation had decided to punish the US rather than the Soviet
Union for the accidental reentry of the Soviet Cosmos 954 reactor.”
Bennett
notes that differences within different US departments and agencies led to the
State department signing on to principles that banned nuclear power
in space. They essentially prohibited the nuclear devices now in use on Curiosity and Cassini. He blames this sorry state on the lack of technical
expertise on UN committees and the lack of resolve of US negotiators. The
result occurred because “… beliefs and wishes and ideology seem to count for
more than technical reality.” This is the blind spot of career scientists in
institutions such as NASA. Whenever the outcome is unsatisfactory, it is the
other side that has been emotional and ideological, while their own
self-interests and emotions are not acknowledged - they are believed to be a neutral “technical
reality.” There is no acknowledgement here that the UN principles were a value
judgment that simply said no to the risks involved in putting nuclear materials
in space.
However, we know that the US went ahead with
its program and continued to launch nuclear devices into space. Bennett is
disappointed that the US chose a passive aggressive approach by voting for the
UN principles while intending to ignore them because they were deemed to be
non-binding. “In short, the US may have voted for the principles, but it does
not intend to abide by them.” He quotes from a Clinton administration
memorandum (not cited):
… the proposed position does not
confer US approval of any specific provisions of the Principles, but only
declares that US policy and practice is consistent with their overall objective
and intent, which is the safe use of NPS in outer space.
Nuclear Propulsion Rockets
It
is risky enough that we launch small amounts of plutonium into space in order
to give a little heat and electricity to long-lasting probes and Mars rovers,
but a truly awesome risk is posed by the temptation of using nuclear reactors
to launch the rocket itself, or propel a spacecraft to Mars at high speed. This
was seriously attempted in the 1960s in Project Orion (for more detail see the
BBC documentary To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion), but it was scrapped because of
the hazards and the frightening radiological accidents that happened beyond
public awareness, and the because it would accelerate the arms race with the
Soviets. However, the fact that this dream was abandoned once is no guarantee
that it won’t be taken up again. In fact, the renewal of nuclear propulsion was
behind George
Bush’s attempt to dream big, aping Kennedy’s initiative to put Americans on
the moon, in announcing that he wanted a manned mission to Mars. Furthermore,
nuclear devices in space have not only peaceful purposes. They would be an
essential part of any space-based defense system, and this is further reason
why other states are suspicious of American plans and why the United Nations,
through COPUOS, has tried to downplay the dangers of a space-based arms race.
The
history of nuclear propulsion research is still not fully known because many of
the files are still classified. In the book Area
51, journalist
Annie Jacobsen focuses less on the speculation about freaky aliens at the secret
Nevada Test Site and more on what is known about the real events that happened
there. These are frightening enough without having any UFOs in the picture. The Kiwi test, which actually
occurred in Area 25, was a test to see how badly the environment would be
affected by a failure of a nuclear propelled rocket. Engineers designed a small-scale
deliberate failure, then watched what happened when they blew up the small
reactor core in the rocket. Here is how it is described in
Jacobsen’s book (pages 309-310):
On January 12, 1965, a nuclear
rocket engine, code-named Kiwi, was allowed to overheat. High-speed cameras recorded the event. The temperature rose to "over 4,000 degrees C until it burst, sending fuel hurtling skyward, glowing every color of the rainbow," Dewar wrote. Deadly radioactive fuel chunks as large as 148 pounds shot up into the sky. One ninety-eight-pound piece of radioactive fuel landed more than a quarter mile away.
Once the explosion subsided, a radioactive cloud rose up from the desert floor and "stabilized at 2,600 feet" where it was met by an EG&G aircraft "equipped with samplers mounted on its wings." The cloud hung in the sky and began to drift east then west. "IT blew over Los Angeles and out to sea," Dewar explained. The full data on the EG&G radiation measurement remains classified.
The test, made public as a "safety-test," caused an international incident. The Soviet Union said it violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which of course it did.
Once the explosion subsided, a radioactive cloud rose up from the desert floor and "stabilized at 2,600 feet" where it was met by an EG&G aircraft "equipped with samplers mounted on its wings." The cloud hung in the sky and began to drift east then west. "IT blew over Los Angeles and out to sea," Dewar explained. The full data on the EG&G radiation measurement remains classified.
The test, made public as a "safety-test," caused an international incident. The Soviet Union said it violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which of course it did.
The
one other occasion when witnesses to a nuclear explosion described fuel going
skyward in “every color of the rainbow” is the explosion of the Chernobyl
reactor (see The True Battle of Chernobyl,
0:01:20-0:02:10). The Kiwi test, like the unplanned Rocketdyne meltdown near Los Angeles in 1959, suggests
that Three Mile Island is on record as the most serious American nuclear
accident only because it is the accident that the public has information about.
The
controversy of nuclear power in space is not something that can be resolved by
pursuing the correct data on risk assessment, or looking for a way to quantify
the harm done by the global population’s inhalation of plutonium particles.
These numbers are unknowable. What is clear is that further space exploration
will not happen by known methods without the continued processing of plutonium
and launching of it into space. For those whose careers are invested in space
exploration, and the millions of dreamers and enthusiasts of space travel, it
is unthinkable that space exploration could just stop because we are afraid to
live with the risks of plutonium processing.
I
suspect, however, that most of the 7 billion people on earth don’t even think
about space exploration, and wouldn’t care much about it if they did. For
others who are informed and primarily concerned about taking care of the planet
we inhabit, space exploration has little to offer, especially if it worsens
ecological problems. I haven't discussed here the additional harm done by CO2 emissions of rocket launches and rocket fuel chemicals. Certainly, we obtain valuable data from satellites about
the minute details of what we are doing to the ecosystem, but they really only
confirm simple truths that we already know.
Supporters
of space exploration tell us constantly of the necessity of breaking new
frontiers, of constantly going beyond, but most of the talk is vague and the
logic is circular. We need to keep going farther to develop STEM (education in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics), and we need STEM in order to
keep going boldly to the next frontier.
People
like Peter Diamandis typify the views of what has come to be called the techno-optimists
– wealthy high-tech entrepreneurs who get juiced up annually on mutual
self-adoration and wonderment at the TED conference. He effuses, with the
redundant adjective in the title, Curiosity’s
Successful, Glorious Triumph on Mars:
What the success of Curiosity
highlights is the importance of our being bold and audacious. It takes big
risks to drive breakthroughs. Financial risks, technical risks, and when it
comes to funding billion dollar programs - political risks….
He
fails to mention the risks taken by the low-level workers who actually handle
the plutonium and get contaminated in the process. When you are at the lofty
heights of the technological elite who get to stare off into the distance of
humanity’s glorious future, the gritty details of how humanity gets there are
of no import. The techno-optimists are the conquistadors of the modern age.
They are optimists in the same way the Hernan Cortes had a positive view about
the conquest of Mexico. It goes without
mentioning that most of humanity will be used, abused or ignored in the great
march of progress. Yet at
least the Spanish conquistadors had the sense to covet places that could sustain life, something
which we can’t say about people who want to go to lifeless planets.
Diamandis goes on to say:
Diamandis goes on to say:
I spend much of my time as Executive
Chairman of Singularity
University and as CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. At SU we teach attending graduate
students and executives about exponentially growing technology. More
importantly, we speak about the importance of taking risk to truly create
breakthroughs and the importance of failing early and failing often - the
Silicon Valley formulation for innovation.
What
is not mentioned here is that humanity actually has not been afraid to take
risks, and we seem to be adept at failing spectacularly. In truth, we are quite
reckless. While the ecosystem we depend on collapses, Diamandis and his kind
have their heads in the clouds envisioning a melding of human minds with
robots. Our energy problem is not that fossil fuel supplies will soon be
depleted but that catastrophic
climate change will occur first. There is nothing more urgent than facing
the escalating disasters caused by climate change and the unresolved problem of
nuclear waste storage. Outer space can wait. If it seems too sad to tell our
children to put this dream on hold, that’s unfortunate, but the unavoidably
mature thing for adults to do. Instead of asking our children if they want to
be astronauts when they grow up, it is time for the human race to ask itself
what it wants to be when it grows up.
References and Other Resources
Abram,
Susan. “Rocketdyne
radiation is still abundant.” Contra
Costa Times. March 5, 2012. http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_20108641/rocketdyne-radiation-is-still-abundant
Bair, W.J., Thompson, R.C. “Plutonium: Biomedical Research.” Science. Vol. 22. February 1974: 715 722. DOI:10.1126/science.183.4126.715 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/183/4126/715.short
Bennett, Gary L. “Reaching the Outer Planets – with or without the UN.” Aerospace America. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. July, 1996. http://www.fas.org/nuke/space/aeroamer.pdf
Collins, Michael, Trossman Bien, Joan. “50 Years After America’s Worst Nuclear Meltdown.” Pacific Standard. August 24, 2009. http://www.psmag.com/science-environment/50-years-after-nuclear-meltdown-3510/
Davidson, Keay. “NASA's nuclear-fueled oddsmaking: Assurances can't calm fears of a 'Chernobyl in the sky.'” San Francisco Chronicle. April 28, 2003. http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/NASA-s-nuclear-fueled-oddsmaking-Assurances-2619688.php
Diamandis, Peter. Curiosity’s Successful, Glorious Triumph on Mars. August 9, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/x-prize-foundation/curiositys-successful-glo_b_1748678.html
Gagnon, Bruce. “Nuclear Power in Space and the Impact on Earth’s Ecosystem.” Space Daily. January 27, 2003. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03b.html
Gofman, John D., “The Plutonium Controversy.” The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). July 19, 1976 vol. 236, No. 3 pp. 284-288. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=346814
Greenfield-Boyce, Nell. “The Plutonium Problem: Who Pays For Space Fuel?” National Public Radio (NPR). November 8, 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/141931325/the-plutonium-problem-who-pays-for-space-fuel
Jacobsen, Annie. Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. Back Bay Books, 2012. The passage cited here quotes Dewar, James, To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket, University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
Johnson, Thomas (Dir.). The Battle of Chernobyl. Icarus Films. 2006.
Mann, Adam. “Nuclear Battery Will Warm Giant Rover on Frigid Mars Treks.” Wired Magazine. November 22, 2011. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/nuclear-mars-rover/
McKibben, Bill. “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” Rolling Stone. July 19, 2012. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719.
NASA. “Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. Volume 1 Executive Summary and Chapters 1 through 8.” NASA. 2006. http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/11/05/MSL-FEIS_Vol1.pdf
Newman, Lee S., Mroz, Margaret M., Ruttenber, James A. “Lung Fibrosis in Plutonium Workers.” Radiation Research 164, pp. 123-135. 2005. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/oerp/pdfs/2001-133g25-1.pdf
Nuclear Energy Agency, and Jan-Olof Snihs. Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear Powered Satellites. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1990. Cited in Grossman, K. Nukes in Space in the Wake of the Columbia Tragedy. http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/03/0224176.html
David F.S. Portree. "The Last Days of the Nuclear Shuttle." Wired Magazine. September 20, 2012. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/nuclear-flight-system-definition-studies-1971/
Snipes, M.B. et. al. Review of John Gofman’s Papers on Lung Cancer Hazard from Inhaled Plutonium. Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research. September 1975. http://dspace.lrri.org:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/65/LF51%20Review%20of%20John%20Gofman's%20Papers%20on%20Lung%20Cancer%20Hazard%20F.PDF?sequence=1
Sykes, Christopher (Dir.). To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion. BBC. 2003.
Tracy BL, Prantl FA, Quinn JM. “Health impact of radioactive debris from the satellite Cosmos.” 954. Health Physics. 1984 Aug;47(2):225-33. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6480350
Zheng et. al. “Isotopic evidence of plutonium release into the environment from the Fukushima DNPP accident.” Scientific Reports 2, Article number: 304 doi:10.1038/srep00304. March 8, 2012. http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120308/srep00304/fig_tab/srep00304_T2.html
No comments:
Post a Comment