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Re: Nuclear-powered spacecraft plan feared
Note that a nuclear reactor would only be used far away from Earth
and it would not return. There would be no need to start it up until it
was long gone from Earth.
On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Susan L Gawarecki wrote:
> 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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