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Plutonium Blurb
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 |
#2
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Plutonium Blurb
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 Hmm. Lessee: "Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury..." Yeah. -- "The only thing that galls me about someone burning the American flag is how unoriginal it is. I mean if you're going to pull the Freedom-of-speech card, don't be a hack, come up with something interesting. Fashion Old Glory into a wisecracking puppet and blister the system with a scathing ventriloquism act, or better yet, drape the flag over your head and desecrate it with a large caliber bullet hole." Dennis Miller |
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Plutonium Blurb
Ed:
Do you ever worry about the atmosperic nuke tests that dispersed a LOT more than 25 lbs of Pu. Probably not because this really isnt an issue but is simply fodder for the ignorant. |
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Plutonium Blurb
"Ed Kyle" wrote in message oups.com... 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/03OpOPN4512040 5.htm" Yep, they've decided to power their future spacecraft with nuclear fuel. Ya know, the Space Solar Power program was meant to also be a generic source for powering spacecraft, stations and habitats of all kinds. SSP was meant to provide the most basic infrastructure needed to colonize and explore space. They've chosen the easy route, the one that won't build a long term infrastructure. This is the same mistake made by the Apollo program. A one shot deal, no meaningful infrastructure. - Ed Kyle |
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#6
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Plutonium Blurb
Ed Kyle wrote:
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. If that happens, then the anti-nuke crowd needs to be arrested en masse and put up on charges of inciting to riot. -- "The only thing that galls me about someone burning the American flag is how unoriginal it is. I mean if you're going to pull the Freedom-of-speech card, don't be a hack, come up with something interesting. Fashion Old Glory into a wisecracking puppet and blister the system with a scathing ventriloquism act, or better yet, drape the flag over your head and desecrate it with a large caliber bullet hole." Dennis Miller |
#7
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Plutonium Blurb
wrote in message
oups.com... Ed: Do you ever worry about the atmosperic nuke tests that dispersed a LOT more than 25 lbs of Pu. Probably not because this really isnt an issue but is simply fodder for the ignorant. One of my grandfathers blamed his cancer on nuke tests. At one time, people in Nevada used to go out and watch nuclear explosions. They even announced it on the local radio. |
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Plutonium Blurb
Ed Kyle schrieb: Heads up Florida! He has a point about how distruptive a launch failure could be in terms of evacuations, etc. I think nowadays, where people have some real problems to worry about, it is much harder to get them to panic over a non-issue like that. But maybe in the long term it would be a good idea to launch controversial missions from a remote location like kwajalein. It would certainly make protesting much harder, and since in case of a launch accident the payload would almost certainly land in the water, you could just recover and reuse the RTG. The funny thing about this is that launching a cold nuclear reactor would actually be even safer than launching a hot RTG. But the anti-nuclear crowd would go totally berserk if somebody were to launch a reactor into space. Just shows how irrational these folks are. The alternatives to using RTGs are using cold-launched nuclear reactors or completely stopping exploration of the outer solar system. Since the first option would be even more controversial than RTGs, we would just have to stop missions to the outer solar system. But I guess that would be OK for the anti-nuclear crowd. They would probably prefer it if the money that goes to NASA would go to the UN to "heal the world". The best thing is to just ignore them. |
#9
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Plutonium Blurb
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? |
#10
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Plutonium Blurb
Ed Kyle wrote: 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. Unfortunate, and based on the unreasoning fear of anything "nuclear". In the Titan 4B / Cassini launch, the greater immediate hazard from an on pad or early launch explosion would have been from the nitrogen tetroxide rather than the plutonium. 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? I expect the media to spread unreasoning fear. Particularly if they get Mr Grossman on an interview. They will cause more immediate damage than the any actual hazard from plutonium. 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? How these are affected will depend on the nature of the accident. The greatest fear comes from the most unlikely scenarios, e.g., the intact stack lands on top of Port Canaveral. As Grossman cites from the EIS, the potential decontamination cost estimate is up to 1.3 billion per square mile. This is for mixed-use urban areas. Rangeland decontamination estimates is 241 million per square mile. 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. As I am sure you are aware, the damage was to the SRB that was already attached to the Atlas V. The SRB was replaced. The 2% loss rate is not from launch pad explosions and early launch failures but for the entire mission up to spacecraft separation. Even with launch pad explosions and early launch failures, the vast majority of accident scenarios is for the RTG to survive intact. 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 |
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