Nuclear-powered spacecraft plan feared

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

I am weary of anti-nuclear activists seizing on every accident as an

opportunity to say "imagine how much worse this would have been if a

nuclear [reactor, waste, material] had been involved."  In the meantime,

out of irrational fears, we are losing the significant environmental and

efficiency benefits of applied applications of nuclear power.



My own personal opinion.



Susan Gawarecki



Nuclear-powered spacecraft plan feared - Opponents see 'Chernobyl in

sky' should vehicle fail 

     Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

     Tuesday, February 4, 2003 

     ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle



URL:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/04/MN239056.DTL 



     Saturday's space shuttle disaster has stirred grassroots opposition

to the Bush administration's recently announced plan to develop

nuclear-powered space rockets. 



     "If there had been a nuclear reactor on board (the Columbia space

shuttle), this debris field they're warning people not to come too close

to would be a considerably bigger mess," said physicist Edward Lyman,

head of the private Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C. 



     But many space enthusiasts say nuclear-powered spaceships offer the

only way to penetrate the deepest, darkest corners of the solar system.

Out there, billions of miles from Earth, sunlight is too weak to

energize existing forms of solar-electric cells. 



     Development of nuclear-powered spaceflight would also allow much

faster travel across the solar system, advocates say. 



     In October, NASA announced a contract with Boeing Corp.'s

Rocketdyne division in Canoga Park (Los Angees County) to develop

nuclear power for space uses and fulfill the "nuclear systems

initiative" advocated by NASA chief Sean O'Keefe. The initial Boeing

project will cost about $7 million over 3 years, while the overall

initiative is expected to consume about $2 billion in federal research

funds over a decade. 



     Nuclear-powered spaceships would constitute a "quantum leap

forward" in cosmic exploration, akin to "the difference between a

powered ship versus a sailboat, or the difference between a powered

airplane and a glider," says nuclear engineer Mike Jacox of Texas A&M

University. "A nuclear reactor power system would allow us to go to the

edges of the solar system and beyond." 



NOT THE RIGHT STUFF



     But after Saturday's space tragedy, an anti-nuclear activist group,

the Florida-based Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in

Space, urged an end to the development of nuclear space projects. 



     Had a nuclear reactor been aboard the Columbia, the result would

have been "a Chernobyl in the sky," said veteran anti-nuclear activist

Karl Grossman, the author of "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's

Nuclear Threat to Our Planet." 



     Despite anti-nuclear activists' concerns, NASA and corporate

officials stressed that safety will be a paramount concern as they

develop space nuclear power. 



     "Safety is our No. 1 priority. Nothing proceeds without complete

and utter commitment to safety," Dan Beck, a spokesperson for Boeing,

one of the firms developing space nuclear power systems, said in a phone

interview Monday. A NASA spokesperson, Don Savage, agreed, stressing

that safety "is our biggest job in that (nuclear) program." 



     Jacox, one of numerous experts who are helping NASA develop nuclear

power for space uses, rejects anti-nuclear activists' nightmare vision

of a Columbia- type nuclear disaster, in which a spaceship burns up on

re-entry to Earth's atmosphere. 



     "No one has ever proposed (deliberately) re-entering a nuclear

reactor that has any significant radiological hazard," Jacox explained.

"It's very different to have a nuclear reactor that operates in deep

space versus an accident (in low Earth orbit) involving the shuttle." 



     Jacox and his colleagues dream of a space-based nuclear reactor

that would heat gas to extremely high temperature, then expel it from a

rocket

     nozzle. 



     In the past, NASA has launched several deep-space probes that are

powered with plutonium. Space agency officials say their tests show that

in the event of a space shuttle explosion, akin to the 1986 destruction

of the shuttle Challenger, the plutonium wouldn't disperse enough to

pose a significant health threat. 



     Anti-nuclear activists aren't reassured, though. "What most people

don't know is (that the shuttle mission after Challenger) was scheduled

to be carrying a satellite powered by 46.7 pounds of plutonium. 



     "About seven-thousandths of an ounce of plutonium is enough to

constitute a lethal dose if someone inhaled it and it got stuck in their

lungs," said Lloyd Dumas, a professor of political economy at the

University of Texas at Dallas and author of "Lethal Arrogance: Human

Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies." 



EARLY ATTEMPT ABANDONED



     Ever since the dawn of the atomic age in the 1940s, many space

buffs have dreamed of crisscrossing the solar system -- perhaps even

nearby star systems - - in nuclear-propelled rockets. In the 1960s, the

United States tried to develop a nuclear rocket as part of Project Nerva

and conducted experiments at the Nevada Test Site. The government

eventually abandoned the project. 



     Dreams of nuclear-assisted spaceflight were shaken in the 1970s,

when a Soviet satellite with an on-board atomic reactor fell on Canada.

It left a radioactive debris trail that triggered scary headlines around

the world. 



     Ever since, nuclear enthusiasts have struggled to revive interest

in space nukes. 



--

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