A critique of the article on radioactive waste in the July, 2002, issue

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

National Geographic Society Forum

PO Box 98199

Washington, DC 20090-8199


To the Editor:


Your masthead states that the Society is "chartered ... as a scientific and education organization" and your web page states that the society "has been organized to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge."  How the article titled "Half Life: the Lethal Legacy of America's Nuclear Waste" (July, 2002) conforms to this charter and organizational purpose has escaped me completely.


The article is not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, and does not even qualify as adequate reporting or journalism.  About all that can be said in its defense is that it has the usual National Geographic complement of striking color pictures.  The article is blatant and clever propaganda, with an occasional nod to an actual fact.  It is riddled with the cheap shots at the U. S. government and the distortions  that the anti-nuclear movement in the United States is so adept at. "One environmentalist" is quoted as saying "the government will just lie to you."  The environmentalists' quotations in the article are ample evidence that "the government" has hardly cornered the market in deliberate lies.


A few examples of the questionable "science" and "information" presented in the article follow.    


Is the statement "Plutonium or cesium or strontium or other '-ium' elements created in a nuclear reactor emit dangerous radiation that can literally knock electrons off the atoms in our cells, disrupting or destroying cellular function..." an example of "science" or "knowledge?"  Has the author ever heard of non-radioactive (stable) cesium and strontium?  Is he so unfamiliar with the periodic table that he never heard of sodium, potassium, germanium, helium,  titanium, or aluminum?  Has he stopped having dental x-rays because x-rays, like the gamma rays emitted from radiocesium, are "dangerous radiation that can literally knock electrons off the atoms in our cells..."?


Does the author's deliberate harassment of an Air Force weapons shipment qualify as "diffusing geographic knowledge" or any other kind of knowledge? 


Is the statement "it took the DOE more than four months to respond to an important question: how much nuclear waste exists in the U. S.?" intended as praise or criticism?  How long should it have taken?  A week?  A month? A year?  How does the author know?


What does the phrase "the lethal punch of radiation depends on such obscurities as rem, curies, alpha particles, and the like" mean to convey?  How about the "lethal punch" of x-ray, bone scans, diagnostic radioiodine treatment, and PET scans?  What is "obscure" about rem, curies, and alpha particles, which are defined in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary?


The description on page 13 of the casks used to transport spent nuclear fuel (belittled as "transportation containers") focuses on wooden impact limiters and fails to mention the foot- thick steel and lead, or steel and depleted uranium, walls of the cask itself.  The cask construction, not the impact limiters, enables the cask to withstand the test regimen.  Casks are tested without impact limiters.


The testing regiment for transportation casks is described, but crucial details are glossed over or omitted.  The article says: "The NRC specifies that casks be tested by burning them in fuel for half an hour at ...1,475 degrees F." but fails to say that the test specifies a fully engulfing fire at that temperature for half an hour --  a fire that fully engulfs a cylindrical cask 16 feet long and about 3 feet in diameter 


The article, apparently deliberately, confuses plutonium contamination of the DOE defense sites with material bound for the Yucca Mountain repository, 90% of which, by weight,  is  commercial spent nuclear fuel, not plutonium.


This is a small sample of the distortions with which the article is replete.  Even worse than the distortions is the timing of the article.  I suspect that the timing and the placement, in a reputable (or as I must now conclude, once reputable) magazine, are designed to influence the upcoming Senate vote on Yucca Mountain.  If either the author or the magazine were so desperately concerned about radioactive waste, where have they been for the last quarter century, during the ongoing investigation of mined geologic storage of spent nuclear fuel?   


By the time this letter is printed (if it is printed)  the Senate will have voted, and the National Geographic Society will have either succeeded in helping to kill the Yucca Mountain project or failed in this attempt to kill it.  Suppose you succeed.  What then?  Any suggestions about radioactive waste disposition?  Or are you resorting to the hoary "environmentalist" platitude that "it's the utilities' problem, not ours."


National Geographic, you should be ashamed.  You are a Federally chartered non-profit organization, with a historic commitment to presenting information and increasing knowledge. Your reputation is ill served by this article.  


Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.

    7336 Lew Wallace Drive NE

    Albuquerque, NM 87109

    (505) 856-5011

email:ruthweiner@aol.com