Ed Kyle wrote:
Heads up Florida! He has a point about how distruptive
a launch failure could be in terms of evacuations, etc.

"http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN45120405.htm"

- Ed Kyle

Grossman takes quotes from the New Horizons EIS and deliberately uses
them out of context to create an unrealistic picture in order to
generate fear. The 1-in-300 number is for the overall mission up to
the point of the probe reaching earth escape velocity. The 100 cancer
fatalities is for an "extremely unlikely" accident in which all the
safety systems are assumed to fail and up to 2% of the RTG plutonium
inventory is released. The EIS gives the probabilities for this type
of accident at from 1 in 1.4 million to 1 in 18 million. The 1 in 1.4
million scenario is for the fully intact launch vehicle to fly into the
ground on top of the spacecraft.

Grossman later quotes a Dr. Sternglass who paints a picture of an
explosion raining plutonium down on people below. Note Sternglass does
not specify an explosion of what. To the uninformed, it sounds like
the explosion is that of the RTG itself. The EIS states the RTG is
expected to remain intact in overpressure from an explosion of the
Atlas 1st and 2nd stages. If there is any accidental release of
plutonium, it would come from impact of the RTG with the ground. The
solid 3rd stage for this flight contains an additional flight
termination system to break up the upper dome and the propellant to
prevent an intact 3rd stage from impacting with the RTG.

The EIS also describes an average individual risk as population risk
divided by the number of persons exposed. This number for potentially
exposed population near the launch site is estimated as 1 in 2 billion.
The EIS includes a table of individual risks for various causes in the
US, e.g., the risk of death from a lightning strike is 1 in 6 million.

There is a valid concern about nuclear safety. The EIS describes the
measures taken to reduce the consequences of an accident. The risk is
several orders of magnitudes lower than the risks we face from natural
and technological causes. Consider if the risks from a non-nuclear
space mission was the same as that of the New Horizons mission. Would
Grossman and his ilk be fostering similar hysteria? Or is it just
because New Horizons uses "nuclear power" that he spends so much effort
in creating unreasoning fear?