Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site bu-cs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: "zillion fatal doses of Plutonium"
Message-ID: <221@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 22:16:55 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.221
Posted: Thu Feb 27 22:16:55 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 17:40:57 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 29


>Ayers.PA@XEROX.COM writes in reply to fears of plutonium poisoning from
>a space accident:

>If that was true, then the entire state of Nevada's population would be
>dead by now from the A-Bomb tests of the 50s and 60s. 

Perhaps, but surely you've seen the several articles on towns near the
test sites in Nevada where the incidence of leukemia and other cancers
is alarmingly high and attributed to exposures caused by the early tests.
They are certainly not all dead, but I am not sure I envy them.

There seems to be a lot of agreement among the medical community that
there is NO SUCH THING as a safe level of exposure. Why do you flail
against this 'safe' assumption so? It took us 30+ years to accept that
(and still not universally.)

I do not feel comfortable with these people gambling like this with my
future. Perhaps if they would hear us it would motivate research into
safer sources of power for space flights? I believe at this point in
time nuclear fission is the easy way out for such projects. Surely we
can just label it unacceptable and provide funding for those who can
propose plausible alternatives. Fusion, for example, would appear to
be very promising and from friends who work in this area I hear the
funding is barely adequate, I have no idea why as they seem to be making
slow but steady progress and it seems like a wonderful source of power
for all sorts of things.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University