wrote:
Ed:

Do you ever worry about the atmosperic nuke tests that dispersed a LOT
more than 25 lbs of Pu.

Yes, actually. I spent some time looking at the once-secret
fallout maps. I think there is a pretty good chance that more
people died of cancer over the years as a result of the Nevada
tests especially than would otherwise have died. How many
we will never know, because smoking cancers were so much
more prevalent.

Here is the thing about an RTG space launch. The worst case
would be a launch failure on or near the pad - an explosion
and a big nasty fire that spread everything around and burned
for awhile with an onshore seabreeze blowing the smoke back
toward Merritt Island. Maybe the RTG modules stay mostly
intact as designed, etc., but what are the locals going to do?
They are going to beat it, that's what, hurricane evacuation
style, abandoning their cars roadside when the gas stations
run out as usual, etc.. A few will die during the evacuation, as
they usally do, from accidents or fistfights or whatever.

And who is going to handle the cleanup situation to the survivor's
satisfaction? FEMA? The Air Force? The Government that
has won its citizens over with its competence recently? And
given their rumor-spreading performance during Katrina, just
how well should we expect the national media to cover this
crises? What of the Port Canaveral fisheries? What of Port
Canaveral, with its cargo and passenger ships? What of
the Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center launch sites?
How much money to clean the mess?

Remember, Lockheed Martin is flying this particular RTG
aboard an unproven Atlas 5 variant (551, never flown before)
- on a particular rocket that was damaged, by the way, during
a recent hurricane - on a machine that was designed to meet
a 2% acceptable mission loss rate criteria.

The odds are against failure, but the odds of failure are still very
real. I look at it this way. I might go watch the launch myself,
but I wouldn't take my kids.

- Ed Kyle