Ace Hoffman's Nuclear Failures Reports: September 2007

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

AREVA: America's Energy Experts? Hardly!

September 25th ,2007

Dear Readers,

Who is AREVA? If you believe the advertisement run incessantly on CNN the past few years, they are "America's Energy Experts."

This, at the same time that the United States Congress had to rename "French Fries" as "Freedom Fries" in their own cafeteria, lest this classic American Junk Food be thought of as French.

AREVA IS French! They are a state-run company which builds and operates nuclear technology for France, which hides the costs from the people they supposedly serve, and which helped kill thousands of people a few years ago when France's nuclear power plants were forced to shut down because of a continent-wide drought, causing widespread power blackouts.

AREVA is the force behind France's notorious nuclear waste "reprocessing" facility at La Hague through their wholly-owned (thus, state-owned) subsidiary, COGEMA. How notorious is that "reprocessing" facility? Very: It is responsible for fission-product pollution of the North Sea and the surrounding area.

"Reprocessing" means chemically melting down the old reactors, which are now highly "poisoned" (yes, that's a technical term) with fission products. After melting the reactor cores, the unfissioned Uranium and Plutonium are separated out, and the most deadly fission products -- tritium (H-3), carbon-14, krypton-85 and iodine-129, for example -- are poured into the sea. This has been going on for decades and the North Sea -- and everywhere else on the planet -- is being polluted in an unrecoverable manner. What isn't poured is stored -- and leaked into the air, soil and groundwater.

AREVA should not be, and is not, America's energy experts! But they sure want to be! AREVA is currently trying to build a nuke-fuel reprocessing facility in America, which is why they run the ads on CNN.

CNN claims to be America's most trusted news source. But why, then, do they let this foreign owned-and-operated company -- more accurately called a criminal organization -- run deceptive ads on their network?

For the money? Not solely for the money, but that's surely a part of it. These ads compete with the "Head-On" ads for handing the most dollars to the network. This author believes the obnoxious Head-On ads are designed to get people to stop leaving CNN on in the background. They are so obnoxious -- intentionally so, as anyone can see -- that no one can listen to them repeatedly. Why would CNN allow such a thing? Well, why would CNN allow the AREVA ads? Why would CNN hire Glenn Beck, who belongs, at best, on FOX?

Why would CNN hire the sister of the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and have her report on nuclear topics (which they did in fact do, although after the 9-11 failures of that regulatory commission, Richard "Rich Rad" Meserve resigned, and after complaints by this author, Jeanne Meserve has tended to be assigned to other topics.)?

Controlling YOUR MIND is not easy. It must be done in small steps, because otherwise, you'll notice -- and when Americans notice that they are being Mind-Controlled, they rebel (other countries' citizens seem to just gripe and bear it).

CNN has nearly-perfect control of the news these days. Nobody reads the paper. The Dan Rather-gate episode knocked CBS down ten notches. ABC and NBC, each once almost as strong as CBS was, are now both weaklings compared to CNN. And that leaves FOX, which is the laughing stock of the "leftists" and gives CNN something they can be called "liberal" in comparison to.

CNN is, indeed, America's most trusted news service. Which isn't saying much.

The Internet is jammed with junk emails, so messages like THIS never get through.

To simply say "it's all a plot" would be trite. It IS all a plot, but most of the plotters don't know what their little portion of the pie really is. Undoubtedly, a lot of honest reporters work for CNN. But can America afford big lies told often just to support a few good reporters? The people at AREVA are NOT "America's Energy Experts." They are the disaster that is France today and if we let them, they will be America's disaster tomorrow. George Bush, despite his rhetoric against France, wants AREVA to build the GNEP project. It's officially called the Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Project but in reality, it's a 100-billion dollar windfall for France if it goes through -- which, if Americans don't wake up, it will do, and soon.

Nuclear energy is dangerous, dirty, inefficient, easily replaced with renewables, secretive, undemocratic, and VERY PROFITABLE for those who don't have to pay with cancer, leukemia, heart problems, birth defects, and other ailments. And since no one can say for sure if YOUR CANCER was caused by AREVA or someone else's radiation in the environment -- or by radioactive polonium-210 in your cigarettes, or, possibly, by some non-radioactive source, it's EASY for AREVA to get away with murder.

But it's still murder.

AREVA: America's newest silent killer. Brought to you by CNN.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

Quotes:

From: http://www.citizen.org/documents/BurnieFrenchReprocessing.pdf

May, 2007

"For AREVA securing business with the United States is central to their future."

"With the launch of GNEP in 2006, a decade long effort by the French (and Japanese) plutonium industry to remove U.S. opposition was achieved."

"As French government and others studies have shown reprocessing does not solve the nuclear waste problem -- it amplifies it."

"AREVA has performed a coup d'etat on U.S. nuclear policy."

From: http://archive.greenpeace.org/pressreleases/nucreprocess/2000jun26.html

26 June 2000

"Greenpeace installed a webcam at the end of the discharge pipe of France's nuclear reprocessing facility at La Hague, where over one million litres of liquid radioactive waste per day is dumped into the ocean. "

From:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/05/17/369559/index.htm

(FORTUNE Magazine)

May 17, 2004

"In true Gaullist fashion, the government launched a reactor-building program with little consultation. "

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Is it a lack of clear thinking or pure greed that explains nuke-power proponents?

September 22nd, 2007

Dear Readers,

Below are two articles about nuclear power. The
first article is a pro-nuke puff-piece of the
highest order (and odor). After three paragraphs
of unrelated attacks to set his tone, Tom Still
begins his assault in earnest. But even when he
gets down to business, his arguments are
"reductio ad absurdum." For example, in his
opinion, were it not for "a political dilemma
perpetuated by decades of fear-mongering" there
would be a perfectly sound solution to the
nuclear waste problem, because (in his opinion)
Yucca Mountain is "infinitely better" than
on-site dry cask storage. When choosing between
two evils, one of them cannot possibly be
"infinitely" better than the other! My response,
which was posted at the WTN web site, appears below the article.

In the second article shown below (bottom),
Republican Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. is
recommending what California has had for decades,
but which California Republicans are trying to
overturn. (Other Utah Republicans oppose
Huntsman, as well.) Huntsman does not want
nuclear power plants in Utah "until technology is
developed to reprocess safely the plant's
radioactive waste on site." That is saying "NO"
to transportation of highly-radioactive waste,
and to the generation of that waste, because,
even after nearly 70 years of research, such
technology DOES NOT EXIST. (The Roy Process, IF
it could be developed, would reduce the nuclear
waste stream, but would not eliminate it.)

Huntsman claims he would not oppose nuclear power
if the waste problem were solved, and a few other
problems, but I suspect he is one of the millions
of people around the country -- and around the
world -- who smell a rat. After all, if it isn't
one "kiss of death" which makes nuclear power
illogical, it's another. If you ignore the waste
problem, there is still the terrorism
problem. If you ignore the terrorism problem AND
the waste problem, there is still the rotten
economics. If you ignore the economics, the
terrorism, and the waste problems, you'll still
have to grapple with the childhood
leukemias. And the adult leukemias, and the
cancers, and the birth defects, and the heart
disease -- and if you manage to ignore all of
that, you've still got clean alternatives that
only need a government push to succeed -- instead
of the periodic Putsch provided by nuclear's
proponents, such as by Republican Chuck Devore of
Irvine, who suddenly embarked on a campaign to
build new nuclear power plants in California,
before he had the facts. And facts, provided by
such groups as the Committee to Bridge the Gap, have not swayed him.

California's Republican lawmakers, spearheaded by
Devore, are planning a ballot initiative so that
California voters can abolish our current ban on
new nukes until the waste problem is
solved. Their plan is in full swing, starting
with flooding the state with pro-nuke Op-Eds and
articles in major papers, such as one written
recently by Christine Todd Whitman, former head
of the Environmental Protection Agency,
proclaiming nuclear power to be both "safe" and
"emission-free." This is, of course, the same
Christine Todd Whitman who proclaimed, while she
was head of the EPA, that the air around 9-11's
"Ground Zero" in New York was not toxic in any
way -- although now, some 70% of the ground-zero
clean-up workers are suffering from lung
problems. (And by the way, it wasn't nearly as
toxic as a REAL "Ground Zero" will be after a
nuclear attack.) She is not to be trusted.

What's really happening is simple: There are so
many other worries in the world today, that the
pro-nukers see it as a good time to slip in their
evil agenda while most "activists" are too busy
-- and too poor -- to fight it. And, having
successfully kept from the public eye the
near-meltdown at Davis-Besse in 2002, and the
near-Genpatsu-Shinsai (nuclear meltdown brought
on by an Earthquake) in Japan during the summer
of 2007, they feel the time is right for
proclaiming once again that "nuclear is the new
green." And it doesn't hurt that tens of
thousands of nuclear workers are retiring each
year, freeing them up to write books, articles,
and nasty flames on the Internet.

And then there's people like Patrick Moore and
Stewart Brand, formerly environmentally-friendly,
who are now shills for the nuclear
industry. Their dance cards are full, and
undoubtedly their wallets, too. Both are now
paid speakers for the Nuclear Energy Institute,
which is awash with blood and money.

Tomorrow Ken Burns' seven-episode series on World
War II, called The War, will begin on public
broadcasting networks around the country. (I
hope that Mr. Burns would do a fair documentary
on the nuclear debate!) In an interview on
MS-NBC, Mr. Burns stated that the impetus for
producing his new documentary was 2-fold: First,
that he had heard (as had I) that American WWII
veterans -- "The Greatest Generation" are dying
at the rate of 1,000 PER DAY (my own father, a
American soldier in that war, died last
year). Second, Ken Burns heard about a study
indicating what he felt were "too many" of
America's graduating high school seniors think we
fought World War II WITH the Germans AGAINST the Russians!

The greatest of evils come directly from such
grotesque misconceptions. Dogma and historic
fiction are powerful controllers of human
behavior. The payback for decades of
under-funding education in America is at
hand. Mass-ignorance is no less dangerous than
mass-hysteria. If the nuclear proponents win, millions will die.

Sincerely,

Ace

================================================
Tom Still Doesn't Get It:
================================================

(Note: Regarding the WTN's boilerplate "no mass
duplication or distribution" comment, there is no
copyright violation when one is presenting
DANGEROUS political commentary by SUBVERSIVE
PROPAGANDISTS like Tom Still for dissection and
discussion. Also, if strictly observed, the WTN
command violates the Fair Use doctrine. -- Ace)

-----------------------------------------------------
Pro-nuke article by Tom Still:
-----------------------------------------------------

Republicans aren't alone in ignoring or distorting science for political gain

By Tom Still • 09/19/07 • © WTN Media. For
personal use only. No mass duplication or distribution.

Madison, Wis. - It has been six years since
President Bush imitated Pope Urban VII and all
but crippled federal support for human embryonic
stem cell research, a 21st century version of the
Vatican's gagging of Galileo for claiming the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Bush was wrong about stem cell science then and
he's wrong now - and the nation may someday pay a
price for ceding the high ground in this
ground-breaking field to medical researchers around the world.

Just as Galileo wasn't the first scientist to
come under scrutiny or be muzzled, however,
neither is Bush the only politician at home or
abroad guilty of shunning science and technology
that conflicts with personal beliefs. In fact,
entire political movements have been built on little more than that.

Going anti-nuclear

Consider the political left's stubborn refusal to
re-examine nuclear energy as a potential antidote
to global warming. Yes, the slow but steady
conversion to biofuels, wind energy, and solar
energy will combat climate change and replace
waning supplies of some carbon-based fuels. But
it will be years before many of those renewable
technologies are commercially scaled, even if
federal research funding grows at a Manhattan project pace.

Nuclear energy technology - now in its safe and
efficient "third generation" - is available
today, leaves no carbon footprint and could help
reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil. Here's the
answer to your next question: Storing nuclear
waste is not a scientific problem, but a
political dilemma perpetuated by decades of
fear-mongering. The repository at Yucca Mountain
would be infinitely safer than leaving nuclear
waste in above-ground casks, which is the status quo.

When Bjorn Lomborg wrote "The Skeptical
Environmentalist" in 2001, he turned the
environmental community on its head by noting
that many apocalyptic predictions had proven
false. Opponents of animal testing, crop
biotechnology, and forest-management practices
have been cornered by the facts on many
occasions, yet their political friends continue
to shout down the science as if it really doesn't matter.

Again, none of this is new. The left still
lionizes Rachel Carson's 1962 book, "Silent
Spring," as one of the literary anthems of
environmentalism. But the underpinnings of
Carson's book were refuted almost instantly by
scientists such as UW-Madison's Dr. Ira L.
Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology
who questioned her hypothesis that the pesticide
DDT was linked to cancer in humans.

Carson claimed (incorrectly) that few carcinogens
exist naturally, and that manmade substances such
as pesticides are "elixirs of death" - even in
tiny quantities - because humans have evolved "no
protection" against them. To Carson, there was "no `safe' dose."

In a scientific review of "Silent Spring,"
Baldwin acknowledged that some pesticides could
be harmful, especially if misused, but added that
dosage matters a great deal. He also noted that
"mankind has been engaged in the process of
upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of
civilization." Society must measure costs versus
benefits, Baldwin wrote, as scientists, doctors,
and farmers combine to fight "an unrelenting war"
against insects, parasites, and disease.

Historical lens

Time has confirmed that Baldwin, not Carson, was
right. Recent studies indicate most human
carcinogens are natural, and the dosage of any
carcinogen is far more important than whether
it's natural or manmade. Meanwhile, how many
people have suffered and died from malaria
because even the emergency use of DDT was banned?

As former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona
testified earlier this year when asked about the
Bush administration's sneering at science,
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political
appointees' ideological, theological, or
political agenda is often ignored, marginalized, or simply buried."

That's a statement that could apply to liberals
and conservatives today as in the time of Galileo.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Re: The Rogue Army of the Pacific (comment by Major Jack Shannon)

Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:00:08 EDT Subject: Re: The Rogue Army of the Pacific

Ace: Send this to any one you wish. I'm tired of howling at the moon.

The exemption that the Navy claims is actually no exemption at all. The exemption the Navy claims comes from Executive Order 12344, written by none other than Ronald Reagan [the hero of the right wing nut cakes].

The Executive Order, 12344 (XO for short) is nothing more than a document written to show where the Naval Reactor program fits into the DOE organizational chart, and who should head the program [Namely a Navy Admiral]. Not a single word mentions exemption of any kind. The Navy ( specifically the Naval Reactor organization - NR) took the organizational exemption and inserted a reference to XO 12344, to all DOE orders that apply to all other DOE organizations, and exempted NR from having to comply with those orders.

I doubt that a single member of the House or the Senate has ever read a DOE order or XO 12344 for that matter. The net effect is to guarantee that NR has no oversight at all. The NR Program needed these exemptions since even a cursory investigation would have forced a shutdown of the entire program. NR runs land based power plants [2 at the last count] without the benefit of containment vessels, emergency core cooling systems, pressure suppression systems, or separate operating rooms for the reactor operators [ the operators die at the same moment that the plants have a loss of coolant accident - so who is left to explain what went wrong].

All Nuclear Powered Surface Ships and Submarines enter and leave all American and Foreign Ports under Nuclear Power Generated steam [i.e. the Nuclear Reactors are operating].

All Nuclear Powered Surface Ships and Submarines are refueled [old core taken out - new core put in] within a baseball throw of most cities located in or near a shipyard, Cities such as Norfolk Virginia, Pearl Harbor, etc..

With the lack of even rudimentary safety measures the Nuclear Navy is run under no oversight, and no legal protection for those Nuclear Power experts who work for Naval Reactors. No one will dare raise a voice [except the undersigned], and NR keeps on rolling along just like old man river.

The King has no clothes, in this case the King[s] are the President, the Senate, the House, all Navy Officers, All Marine Corps Officers, all Army Officers, all Coast Guard Officers, the DOE, the NRC, the National Resource Defense Council, River keepers, all Judges within the Northern District of the Second Circuit Court, basically everyone in Washington with any power knows about the outrageous behavior of the Nuclear Navy. I think it's fair to say that we live in a land of cowards and blind men. I keep getting notices that one or more of the sirens at Indian Point have been found to be not working, or a guard has fallen asleep, etc. ad nauseam. Who cares when the Navy is running around the Oceans with hundreds of the most unsafe Nuclear Power Plants in the World and no one raises a bleep? A Navy that refuels ships within spitting distance of grade schools, high schools City Halls, etc..

I have heard the arguments that Navy Nuclear Plants run at only about 10% of commercial plants. So what. The comment is irrelevant because any Nuclear Power, including Navy plants, during an accident scenario can easily raise to 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times or even 1,000,000 times rated power and the consequences are the same. Commercial or Navy. Catastrophe beyond description. And deaths and injuries beyond repair.

No one in the industry can contradict me because all Nuclear Engineers/Nuclear Physicists [even those who work for NR] are familiar with the equations for a power excursion. Ignoring the fact does not make the fact disappear.

A FACT IS A FACT!!!! WAKE UP AMERICA.

Major John P. Shannon Nuclear Physicist/Nuclear Engineer Retired

The Rogue Army of the Pacific

September 17th, 2007

Dear Readers,

Last week a blue whale washed up on a SoCal beach. 140 tons. Turns out its back was broken -- multiple bones were broken and it had a huge bruise on its back.

No ship is taking credit for the "kill," but we have a lot of Navy ships around here. They are fast and silent and their sailors tell no tales (except tall ones).

Today is the last day to submit a statement regarding the U.S. Navy's newest proposal for their continued poisoning of the Pacific Ocean. Below is the statement I submitted.

Yours,

Ace

How to submit a statement:

Statements can be emailed to: deis_hrc@govsupport.us

They can also be posted online to: http://www.govsupport.us/navynepahawaii/publicComments.aspx

Re: Hawaii Range Complex Environmental Impact Statement:

September 17th, 2007

To Whom It May Concern, US Government:

I just have NO IDEA who might have written the statement shown below, but I wish to submit it as my opposition statement to the proposed poisoning of nearly one quarter million square miles (unfenced) of the Pacific Ocean by the United States Navy.

Sincerely Yours,

Russell "Ace" Hoffman, Carlsbad, California

September 13th, 2007

Death is upon us. A rogue army is maneuvering to destroy our planet. Its name is Navy.

U.S. Navy.

Step by step by step over the past decade, the military has asked for -- and received --enormous exemptions from caring for humanity. Environmental laws everyone else must obey -- laws which save lives -- mean nothing to them. No longer are they required to obey their civilian leaders. No longer are they required to atone for sins they commit. No longer are they culpable for YOUR death.

You, who they WERE charged to protect.

You, who WERE to be their masters.

You, who FUNDS them.

Citizens of the United States: Rise up! Rise up against your oppressors! Rise up against the randomization of death! Rise up against the destruction of YOUR HOMELAND!

Rise up against the U.S. Navy!

A decade ago, the United States military was granted an exemption from environmental laws. The U.S. Navy is the most egregious -- and dirty -- of all militaries in history. They kill their own sailors, with radiation, with chemicals used in warfare, with chemicals used to keep their ships "ship-shape."

My friends are dying. Your friends are dying. You and I are dying because we cannot -- no, because we WILL NOT -- rein in these cutthroats.

The Navy's most recent crime involves directly poisoning nearly a quarter of a million square miles of "open ocean" -- where our fish grow, where our whales and dolphins frolic, where earth's balancing life develops. No fence will keep the poisons in the designated area.

They will use radiation weapons, Directed Energy Laser Weapons, pressure (concussive and / or vacuum (over- / under-pressure) killing devices, and nearly 150 other kinds of "toys."

These are the same guys who brought you Bikini, Eniwetok, and Rongelap. All radiation-poisoned islands.

The same guys who pollute Vieques, Puerto Rico with Depleted Uranium -- as well as Okinawa and various sites on the U.S. mainland. And Iraq. And Kosovo. And Afghanistan. And tomorrow? Iran.

The same guys who lie about how many of their own -- their submarine sailors -- are dying of brain tumors as their payment for service aboard nuclear submarines.

Hail the U.S. Navy! Professional killers! Professional planet-destroyers! Professional liars! Professionals in every way.

Damn the torpedos. Damn the missiles. Damn the truth. Damn the citizens they claim to protect. Damn us all.

Damn the U.S. Navy: Killers of U. S. citizens. Killers of the planet. Killers of us all.

(Written by a patriotic citizen.)

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Make no mistake about it: That lost nuke was NO MISTAKE

September 15th, 2007

Dear Readers,

Do you want a nuclear war with Iran?

Those half-dozen nukes that were accidentally "lost" last month,
which turned up at Barksdale AFB, the staging area for aerial attacks
on the Middle East, could not possibly have been lost. They were
moved ON ORDERS FROM THE TOP.

And one of them appears to be missing.

What can you do with just one "small" nuke (maximum size 150
kilotons, and possibly as small as 5 kilotons)?

Start a war, that's what you can do! You can set it off in America,
claim it was Al Qaeda, claim they were supplied by Iran, and then
blow Tehran off the map.

I hear cheering.

Stop that, you fools! The people of Tehran are NOT our enemy. The
people of Iran are NOT our enemy. If / WHEN that missing nuke is
blown up and 10,000 Americans are killed, it will NOT be their fault.

We went into one war on false premises (at least one). We cannot
afford a nuclear retaliation. The seeds we sow will come back time and again.

AMERICA IS THE ROGUE NATION NOW.

George Bush and Dick Cheney are evil incarnate. We, the people,
cannot afford to wait for them to push the button that starts World
War Three. We MUST remove the Evil Empire from office. We cannot
afford to wait for their "term" to run out -- provision has ALREADY
BEEN MADE to prevent it from running out, anyway!

Check out the URL below, where National Security Presidential
Directive 51 (aka Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20) gives
FULL AUTHORITY for the White House to stay in office, prevent
elections, and rule us with an iron fist:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html

Oh sure, we can all just sleep, waiting to see what
happens. Thinking it's out of our control. We can each,
individually, be too afraid to speak out.

But that will just get us killed by radioactive poisons unleased
throughout the world. Few people noticed the reddened skies after
"Shock and Awe" blew Uranium dust globally. Few noticed that Iraq
was attacked without provocation after flimsy excuses failed to
convince the public. Few noticed that George Bush claimed in his
most recent speech that "36 nations" were working together in Iraq
right now, 35 alongside us, when, in truth, even our staunchest ally,
Britain, has called it quits and plans to withdraw all their troops soon.

Bush lies, millions die.

Next on the agenda is a nuclear explosion on U.S. soil. Clause "B"
of NSPD 51 states in no uncertain terms that such an event will be
sufficient cause to stop ANY election of a new president. Read it yourself:

-----------------------------------------------
"Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location,
that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or
disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure,
environment, economy, or government functions;
-----------------------------------------------

For example, a nuke.

Patriotic citizens around the country are waking up. But are there
enough of us? Or has our decades-old lack of proper education
brought us to a state of mass apathy about what made America great --
which was the personal involvement of the people -- people who cared
about truth, justice, and the American Way?

Don't expect that nuke to be set off today or tomorrow, or even next
month. It will probably be a year from now, long after everyone's
forgotten about it. The war will start swiftly after that. George
Bush will announce that the response has already begun -- that the
missiles have started to land on Iran.

And the repercussions will be: A poisoned planet, martial law. The
end of democracy and the Grand Experiment. Millions dead, hundreds
of millions suffering. Trillions of dollars in "infrastructure"
here, and in Iran, destroyed. Freedom gone. The Internet --
gone. Your rights -- gone.

There is only one way to stop this, and that's to recognize the plot
before it's accomplished. A great patriot released the news about
those errant nukes. Will more patriots do what is necessary to stop
the totalitarian regime from seizing ALL remaining power?

Stay tuned to your CIA-approved news station (CNN is just as much a
tool of the CIA as FOX is) and you WON'T FIND OUT.

The most ignoble death of all is the death of those who could have
spoken out, but didn't. Will that be YOUR fate, or will you tell
someone? Will you die quietly, or will you go down fighting? Will
you send your sons and daughters off to push buttons against Iran, or
will you demand the fight for peace?

Arrest George Bush and Dick Cheney TODAY! Don't wait: Waiting now,
in our last moment when we might be able to do something, is the
ultimate crime against humanity. Now you have a chance to do
something. Tomorrow will be too late.

Signed,

Ace Hoffman

A patriot, a citizen, a humanitarian, and a sworn enemy of George
Bush's totalitarian regime.

How to make America grind to a halt -- just raise the postal rates!

June 6th, 2007 (resent September 15th, 2007)

Dear Readers,

Years ago, when the post office started using ZIP CODES, they had a slogan, which went as follows:

"Mail moves the country, and zip codes move the mail."

A few weeks ago, the United States Post Office raised its rates -- again. But this one was different. They snuck in dozens of subtle changes which will greatly increase the cost of communication, especially for the small user -- for whom the post office was created.

If you've tried to mail a CD-ROM or DVD, you've probably noticed the rate went up. You are now charged because the mail piece is not bendable. If your package is not very rectangular, you are charged because it is squarish. If your package is more than a 1/4'' thick (and they won't squeeze bubble-pack through the slot for you) you are charged for that, as well. And you may well also be forced to declare the letter a "small package" and pay even more. And after 3 1/2 ounces, it's a small package, period.

So for example, what used to cost $0.53 to mail (which was already a rip-off) now costs at least $0.97 to $1.35, depending on which postal clerk you get. (They seem to be as unsure of the changes as the public is unaware of them.)

And it gets worse. Have you seen what's happened to Registered Mail and Certified Mail rates? They've gone through the roof! Increases of around 100% suddenly occurred in both cases!

And these are just some of the changes. The "forever stamp" is a economic boondoggle, and the Postmaster General sounded like Alberto Gonzales trying to explain the firings of the U.S. Attorneys when asked about it.

The same day I discovered that most of my small software company's domestic mailing packaging was going to cost about double to mail, I received a CD-ROM from the post office itself, so I can set up a "post office at home."

It cost the post office $0.17 to mail me that CD-ROM!

SEVENTEEN CENTS!!!

Are you getting the picture? Small businesses are PURPOSEFULLY being crushed. And the individual is being robbed. This is the very kind of HIGHWAY ROBBERY government was invented to STOP, not INSTITUTIONALIZE!

When I got home from the post office, Postmaster General John Potter was on CSPAN, speaking before the National Press Club. He made it clear that the post office considers the individual to be nothing but a destination for corporate junk mail.

He also made it clear that to him, the "small business user" is a company that sends at least 20,000 pieces of mail at a time!

Are you a non-profit organization which does not want to use bulk mail, because of the inconvenience, or the cost of set-up, or the fact that you only have a few dozen subscribers to your newsletter? The post office doesn't want to serve you. Are you an individual, mailing letters of complaint to the government or to a corporation for a wrong you've been done? Expect it to cost you vastly more than it used to. Do you want to write to your Congressperson? Take out a bank loan.

But if you are a large postal user, the postmaster general has promised not just to keep your costs down, but to keep their increase in rates (for the bulk user) ZERO by increasing efficiency throughout the post office.

That means, by charging an arm and a leg for the individual and small user.

But it gets even worse. The post office is also in the business of selling off parts of its business to other businesses because, well, they see it as good business. But it isn't good business for the post office's customers -- you and me.

Take registered mail, for example. Why did they raise the rates to $9.50, an exorbitant rip-off? Well, my guess is that they've lost a lot of that business, over the years, to Fed-Ex and other overnighters, because those company's two-day and three-day services are quite competitive and very safe. But they're not bonded, with federal liability for stealing or losing your mail, so really, how can those services compete with a service that has to deliver to everyone everyday anyway, for mailing important documents? The answer is: The post office HELPS Fed-Ex, UPS, and all the other carriers STEAL THE MOST EFFICIENT AND LUCRATIVE BUSINESS from the post office!

That leaves the post office holding the (registered mail) bag.

When postal rates are up for review, big business can send hundreds of lawyers to "prove" to the post office toadies that it costs vastly less to mail in bulk, and therefore, bulk mailers should only pay that "fair share." Never mind that the whole institution was built on the backs of the individual's penny-postcards. And the individual has NO opportunity to send even ONE lawyer in, to explain that BY LAW, it's NOT just the raw, calculated efficiency of mailing any specific piece that should determine the postal rate. You bet junk mail should pay for first class mail. Especially right now, when new robotic eyes and sorters are making it EASIER AND EASIER to sort what was previously impossible to sort except by hand.

The post office undoubtedly knows that new technology will make it quite irrelevant if the writing is upside down on a square envelope. Computer vision and robotic arms can straighten it out effortlessly and cheaply.

But right now, the equipment they have isn't so good at that (because they didn't insist on better equipment from the equipment manufacturers) and so the rate structures are being set to reflect that, even though it's the post office's problem, and not the consumer's fault. CD-ROMs, for example, will NEVER efficiently pack into a rectangular envelope!

But it's even worse.

The post office is actively trying to get rid of its service as a tool of subversives.

The post office was created as a TOOL OF SUBVERSIVES, so they could communicate without the fear of "big brother" (he wasn't called that, back then) watching them. That's why BIG BROTHER is STILL NOT ALLOWED to open your first class mail. But the Postmaster General considers the ideal situation to be where a bar code on every letter will tell where it came from, who it's going to, what service it's traveling by, when it entered the system, and so on. Total control, supposedly so they'll get IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK about lost or delayed mail.

But that way, they'll also know who your friends are.

Welcome to the biggest rip-off in history. The Post Office operates under fundamental principles set out by the founding fathers. With this latest postal increase, many of those principles are being trampled right before our eyes -- THIS generation will be the one when they'll say "the Internet destroyed the post office."

But it won't really be the Internet's fault at all. It will be Porter's. He should be fired, and the notification should be sent via email so it gets there quickly and cheaply!

Ace Hoffman Carlsbad, CA

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

California Republicans unanimously soil their reputations (such as they were)

September 10th, 2007

Dear Readers,

Note: Due to suspected email delivery problems and to correct the
date of the original statute, this newsletter is being resent.

------------------------------------------------------
News Item: Last Sunday (September 9th, 2007) California State
Assembly Republicans voted unanimously to support allowing the
building of new nuclear power plants in California, intending to
overturn a 31-year-old law (Chapters 194 and 196, California Statutes
of 1976) which prohibits such construction until a solution is found
for the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste.
------------------------------------------------------

No solution has been found because the problem is
intractable. Nothing built of atoms (and everything in the universe
is made of atoms!) can withstand the bombardment of radioactive decay
-- it's a physical law of nature. Hence, no containment can EVER be
built which will guarantee the safe sequestering of nuclear
waste. And yet, we keep making more nuclear waste, AS IF a solution
is just around the corner. Instead, the coroner is just around the
corner. Cancer is on the rise. Specialists who have researched the
problem know why, but the nuclear industry won't let the public at
large know why.

When a meltdown or any serious nuclear accident actually occurs,
which one of these California Republicans is going to stand up in
front of a microphone and recommend to pregnant women in California
that they may want to choose to have an abortion, in order to prevent
the birth of a horribly deformed baby who otherwise will only suffer
terribly and then soon die? Especially those woman who are in their
first trimester -- those fetuses are especially likely to be
harmed. While surely neither God nor any caring human being prefers
abortions, just as surely, no one wants the unnecessary, man-made
suffering of the innocent.

At least the Russians had the courage (gumption?) to "suggest" that
woman around Chernobyl should consider abortions. Now, more than 20
years after Chernobyl, over 1000 square miles of prime agricultural
real estate around the plant is still uninhabitable, with no change
expected any time soon -- if ever. And in Kiev, there is now a
museum of deformities caused by Chernobyl. Spontaneous abortions of
babies without limbs or with arms coming out of their
foreheads. What California Republican has visited that museum?

What California Republican is willing to tell 30 million people in
the greater Los Angeles area that they have to leave their homes and
can never come back, if a plant near them melts down (such as San
Onofre or the new one in Irvine which the bill's sponsor, Chuck
Devore, surely wants built in HIS backyard)?

And what OTHER power plants are they planning to build for all the
offsite energy supplies that EVERY nuclear power plant MUST have
(it's a safety requirement)? Will THOSE be coal plants?

And what California Republican would DARE to take ANY test to PROVE
they actually understand how nuclear power works and what its dangers
are? Do they even know what a fuel assembly looks like?

And what California Republican believes Yucca Mountain, the nation's
proposed nuclear waste dump, will actually be built? The team that
studied Yucca Mountain was allowed to come up with a better plan if
they could think of it. They couldn't. Nevada will NEVER allow
Yucca Mountain, so Californians -- all of us, not just the
Republicans -- will be stuck with the waste. If there's another
solution to the waste problem, what California Republican can
describe it? Our four obsolete (but still operating) reactors
produce a NEW ton of high-level nuclear waste EVERY TWO
DAYS. Extremely dangerous stuff, with nowhere to put it.

What California Republican believes we have the billions of gallons
of water to spare to cool these new reactors? In reality, water is a
precious commodity here in the West, and nuclear reactors -- even
when operating properly -- poison the water with tritium (radioactive
hydrogen), radioactive krypton, radioactive cesium, radioactive
strontium, and a deadly rainbow of other radioactive elements.

What California Republican wants to give up the additional BILLIONS
of gallons of water to cool a stricken reactor? A reactor that will
have to be cooled for thousands of years.

What California Republican can assure the public that a Davis-Besse
or a Three Mile Island won't happen here? What California Republican
even knows what happened to the Davis-Besse plant in 2002, and how
close it came to a meltdown -- far closer even than Three Mile Island came?

What California Republican has read even one word by the late Dr.
John W. Gofman, whose impeccable research PROVED that so-called
low-level radiation is extremely dangerous -- far more dangerous than
is officially admitted (at least TWENTY TIMES more dangerous than the
pro-nukers falsely believe). Gofman was fired from the Atomic Energy
Commission (the forerunner of the DOE and the NRC), where he was
chief medical researcher, for his findings. Not because they were
wrong, but because they were offensive to the nuclear industry. What
California Republican knows any of this? Dr. Gofman ascribed 50% of
ALL cancers to ionizing radiation. FIFTY PERCENT! Three-quarters of
all breast cancers. "This is not a small problem" as Gofman
described it (Dr. Gofman passed away August 15th, 2007 at age 88).

What California Republican realizes that even the National Academy of
Sciences, in their BEIR VII report (Biological Effects of Ionizing
Radiation VII), concluded that there is NO MINIMUM THRESHOLD for
radiation damage? Even one nuclear breakdown can cause cancer, heart
disease, birth defects, or any of thousands of other ailments. What
California Republican knows this?

What California Republican knows that nuclear power is NEVER
democratic -- it's just the opposite: Secretive, closed-door, exclusive.

What California Republican cares about California? Cares that we are
the Golden State because we have so much sunshine, we could power all
our needs from it? Cares about REAL solutions to Global Warming, not
Al Gore's pro-nuke lies?

What California Republican has a mind of their own, rather than
walking lock-step with State Assemblyman Chuck Devore (R-Irvine)
who's knowledge about nuclear power is minimal, as shown by his own
comments at a public hearing in San Clemente last spring (2007)?

What California Republican can testify that no plane will ever be
hijacked again? The spent fuel pools, the control rooms, the backup
diesel generators, the intake coolant pipes, the discharge pipes, and
many more VITAL portions of every nuke are located OUTSIDE THE
CONTAINMENT DOMES. And what California Republican realizes that
aircraft engine turbine shafts can smash THROUGH the containment
domes anyway? And what California Republican realizes how many OTHER
ways there are to destroy a nuclear power plant? What California
Republican realizes that tomorrow's generation of nuclear power
plants are being designed WITHOUT containment domes, making them even
MORE vulnerable to terrorist attacks?

What California Republican remembers that we live in an
earthquake-prone area, and realizes how close Japan came to
"Genpatsu-Shinsai" (a nuclear meltdown spurred on by an earthquake)
just a few months ago?

What California Republican cares about his or her reputation? After
a meltdown or any serious accident (and an accident is INEVITABLE
over time) their reputations will be ruined, but that will hardly matter then.

What California Republican cares about the future of California? Nary a one.

Sincerely,

Ace

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Pick a whole number between five and six...

September 5th, 2007

Dear Readers,

Well, well, well. Bombs over America. Bombs in our backyard. Bombs
away! While MS-NBC was reporting five nuclear warheads were
accidentally flown across the country last week, CNN was reporting it
was six. Nobody seems to know for sure.

We're being told these weapons cannot detonate due to "safeguards."

Are those the same safeguards that lost them in the first place?

We're being told that even if there was an accident, the plutonium in
the bombs wouldn't go far.

Baloney.

The HE (high explosives) could scatter the plutonium far and
wide. How far? How wide?

One bomb that fell off a jet years ago over Mars Bluff, South
Carolina created a hole 50 feet across and 35 feet deep when the
conventional explosives detonated. Obviously, there was no nuclear
explosion, but there was significant contamination.

Each nuclear bomb in last week's incident -- W-80 model cruise
missiles of up to 150 kilotons each -- contains about 10 pounds of
highly radioactive material (Plutonium-239, possibly "supergrade"
(very low in Plutonium-240)). Additionally, there is highly
poisonous Hydrogen-3 ("tritium") which is injected into the center of
the bomb moments before the explosion, and beryllium is used both to
initiate the explosion (as a "neutron generator") and to reflect the
neutrons released in the initial nanoseconds of the explosion back
into the "pit." There is also Lithium-6, and Depleted Uranium
(Uranium-238) encases the "pit." The Uranium-238 acts as a shield to
protect the military personnel who handle the bomb. Then, at the
moment of explosion, it too will fission.

So even without a nuclear explosion, there could be an enormous
environmental problem.

And it's not like this has never happened before. Below is only a
PARTIAL LIST of "Broken Arrows," "Bent Spears," "Dull Swords," and
"Faded Giants" (endearing military terms for various levels of
nuclear weapons accidents, all short of a "Nucflash." You can guess
what that is -- it's the one they say can't happen (but then, why do
they have a name for it?).

March 10, 1956: A B-47 bomber with two nuclear weapons was lost over
the Mediterranean Sea. Despite an extensive search, nothing was ever
recovered.

July 28th, 1957: Off Cape May, New Jersey: Three nuclear weapons
without their fissile cores, and a "nuclear capsule" (the part that
detonates) were lost at sea and never recovered. Other reports say
only two of the nuclear weapons were jettisoned, and the other was
brought back, along with the nuclear capsule. The damaged C-124
landed at an air base near Atlantic City.

February 5th, 1958, off Tybee Island, Georgia, a 7,000 pound,
4-megaton hydrogen bomb was jettisoned after a mid-air collision
between a B-47 bomber and an F-86 fighter jet, and never
recovered. It's still lost in the mud amongst old civil war
ordinance. The Air Force insisted the bomb was not "nuclear-capable"
(was missing the nuclear capsule) but this is probably untrue. At
least two former Air Force personnel involved in the incident
testified otherwise under oath.

November 4th, 1958, a B-47 crashed carrying a nuclear weapon.

In 1959 a B-52 crashed in Kentucky with two nuclear weapons on
board. There were no explosions.

January 24th, 1961: Near Goldsboro, North Carolina a B-52 broke
apart in mid-air. This incident was probably closest to being a
"Nucflash" because apparently FIVE OF SIX SAFETY SYSTEMS FAILED!

On December 8th, 1964, a B-58 bomber skidded off the runway, and
"portions" of five nuclear weapons burned.

In 1965 an aircraft rolled off an aircraft carrier with a "live
hydrogen bomb" and sank. Fortunately, it didn't go off. This was
near Okinawa. Years later it was still leaking radioactive material.

On January 17th, 1966 a B-52 collided with a KC-135 refueling tanker
and crashed in Spain. Seven crew members of the KC-135 were burned
to death. The clean-up cost millions of dollars. More than a
thousand tons of dirt were brought back to America and dumped at the
Savannah River Site, but nevertheless, the cleanup was only partially
successful and people in Spain are still being sickened by the
radioactive materials that remain.

January 22nd, 1968: Near Thule, Greenland, four hydrogen bombs were
"scattered" over the ice (supposedly the contaminated ice was later
shipped to America). This incident sparked massive protests since
Greenland had banned such flights over their soil.

These accidents -- and many more -- and this latest incident prove
that there is no safe place for nuclear weapons. No country, no
ocean, no lake can withstand the devastation.

The last B-52 was manufactured in 1962, so the youngest the plane
that was used in this latest incident could possibly be is 45 years
old -- quite possibly older than the pilot and co-pilot together. Is
this safe?

It's time to stop this foolishness before something really terrible
happens! We're not getting ANY BETTER at handling nukes, and firing
or demoting those involved, while proper, WON'T address the root
cause one little bit, because the root cause is that humans make
mistakes. ALL humans make mistakes, and they will continue to do so.

------------------------------------------------------------------
"Nuclear weapons are designed with great care to explode only when
deliberately armed and fired. Nevertheless, there is always a
possibility that, as a result of accidental circumstances, an
explosion will take place inadvertently. Although all conceivable
precautions are taken to prevent them, such accidents might occur in
areas where weapons are assembled and stored, during the course of
loading and transportation on the ground, or when actually in the
delivery vehicle, e.g., an airplane or a missile."

-Atomic Energy Commission/Department of Defense, The Effects of
Nuclear Weapons, 1962. (quote presented by Jaya Tiwari and Cleve J. Gray).
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Had these bombs exploded, who do you think would have been
blamed? Al Qaeda? Iran? North Korea? China?

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

Thanks to Pamela Blockey-O'Brien for her assistance in preparing this
report. Numerous web sites and books were also reviewed, incuding:

http://aboutfacts.net/Weapons36.htm

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmqA7P-MPnRJzQ5v9Xi6M5zdr9IA

http://www.cdi.org/Issues/NukeAccidents/accidents.htm

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W80.html

U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History (ISBN 0-517-56740-7) by
Chuck Hansen, Orion Books, New York)

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Re: [Hanford] Digest Number 1490 -- posthumous attack on Gofman

September 4th, 2007

Dear Readers,

What Mr. Boland has written (shown below, top) contains numerous "logical fallacies." A logical fallacy is defined as follows:

A correct statement of the form "if P then Q" gets turned into "Q therefore P".

Let's get started with his first logical fallacy, which appears in his first sentence. Mr. Boland equates pro-nuclear baseless denunciations of Dr. Gofman as proving that he has been "discredited for years." Okay, perhaps I should have said, just to emphasize the point, that Dr. Gofman was not "SUCCESSFULLY" discredited, though in my opinion that's redundant. Anybody CAN say anything they want -- as Boland proves with his letter. That doesn't make it true (as Boland also proves).

That same paragraph continues with a misguided view of biological function in which no baseline is given (so we could determine what Mr. Boland means by "Low Dose Radiation"). Does he mean radiation above 100 mRem per year? Above 320 mRem? Above 400 mRem? That matters, because the standard value given by the nuclear establishment for "natural background radiation" has been creeping up for decades. At what level does Mr. Boland think just a little bit more, randomly given, is beneficial? Pro-nukers NEVER say. And what amount more becomes dangerous again? They won't say that, either.

In truth, Gofman's studies (and other's) have shown conclusively that there is no minimum threshold for ionizing radiation. Any amount can lead to cancer. As I stated, even the National Academy of Science's BEIR VII (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII) report was forced to conclude that there is no threshold. All radiation exposure incurs an elevated risk of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, heart disease, and other ailments. Boland's link contains nothing more than an eyewitness account (that is, not a scientific study with control groups, statistical analysis, peer review, etc.) about a radon mine in which visitors go specifically to breath radon-contaminated air. I'm sure even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would condemn this "cure," just as health professionals (eventually) condemned x-raying children's feet to see if their shoes fit properly. Furthermore, nowhere does Boland explain WHY he believes that "increased apoptosis" (cell death) MUST be beneficial. That shoe doesn't fit. Lastly, the supposed stimulation of "DNA repair mechanisms" (the most widely-claimed "benefit" of so-called low doses of radiation) is, again, hardly the subject of any proper scientific study, and there is not even a credible scientific theory of how it would work. Instead, whenever proper studies are done (such as those by Gofman, or a recent study of the wildlife around Chernobyl, to name two examples) the long-term effects of radiation damage ALWAYS outweigh ANY short-term gains, except in dire cases of cancer and leukemia, where LARGE radiation blasts sometimes successfully kill what would almost surely be a fatal tumor. Often this is done to people too old to bear children, and so any genetic damage will, fortunately, not be passed on.

Boland's next paragraph suggests that according to Gofman's theory, the fact that we all have K-40 (a radioactive isotope of potassium) in our bodies dooms us. This is a most incredible logical fallacy! Gofman's theory predicts no such thing, but Boland's twisting of Gofman's research strongly suggests a severe (possibly terminal) mental block on Boland's part, such that he cannot see the forest for the trees. If P then Q does not mean Q therefore P! If ANY amount of radiation CAN cause cancer, it does not imply that therefore ALL radiation inevitably causes fatal cancer.

Boland's next paragraph claims that because Gofman lived to be 88, therefore the radiation in his body is the "best evidence" that Gofman was wrong. Ignoring the unscientific nature of using a single case to prove anything, Gofman died of a heart attack. As it turns out, radiation can and does cause heart disease, too, so Gofman may well have died from his own radiation exposure. The fact that this happened beyond the age the actuarial tables say he would live, on average, does not mean his death was not premature for him. Nor does it mean that his death was not a tragedy. Gofman was still doing valuable research. I'll wager Boland has NEVER done valuable research of any kind.

Boland next claims that Gofman could not be buried in Oregon due to the K-40 in his body. I have not seen the wording of Oregon's law but I suppose that's possible, since all states have "silly laws." Of course, it would mean no one else could be buried in Oregon either, so I suspect that's not the spirit or the wording of the law.

Lastly, regarding Gofman's "notorious" support of nuclear weapons, that too is taking his comments out of context and out of perspective. Gofman did not think the United States could unilaterally eliminate ALL our nuclear weapons. He may have been right about that, too.

Below (bottom) is an essay I wrote earlier this year, specifically comparing K-40 exposure to the EPA's limit for tritium (radioactive hydrogen) in drinking water. There is little question that it will be beyond Boland's capabilities to follow along logically, since even the plain-speaking Gofman threw him for an unfathomable loop, but the rest of you might appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

At 01:54 PM 9/4/2007 +0000, John Boland wrote:

>The Hanford email list is dedicated to
>discussion of Hanford cleanup and related nuclear issues.
>Dr. John Gofman, bane of the nuclear industry
>
>Posted by: "John Boland" johnboland@earthlink.net jlbolandxx
>
>Tue Sep 4, 2007 12:35 am (PST)
>
>The single particle theory of Gofman's has been discredited for years.
>There are many in vivo responses to the effects of Low Dose Radiation
>which are beneficial to life, such as stimulating a number of responses
>from the immune systems. These include stimulating the DNA repair
>mechanisms, elevated apoptosis, and a number of others positive
>responses (see attached link to "Hormesis").
>
>http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/barbara.html )
>
>To the extent that all living beings, plant and animal, contain natural
>radioactivity such as radioactive potassium-40, the Gofman theory would
>predict there would be no life at all on earth.
>
>He is his own best evidence that he was wrong. Dying at age 88 of heart
>failure suggests that the radioactivity in his own body wasn't harmful
>at all, and may have extended it. For the author to say that Gofman was
>never discredited, indicates the author never looked. He was discredited
>internationally by his peers.
>
>Gofman could not have been buried in Oregon, as his body contains above
>the permissible levels of radioactivity - said potassium-40. His body
>qualifies as Nuclear Waste under Oregon law.
>
>There is in Gofman's work a clear position that must put the
>Anti-Nuclear movement on the horns of a terrible dilemma – he also
>notoriously supported use of nuclear weapons. The author either
>"overlooked" this position, or worse yet, suppressed it.

It's all about the DNA:

August 7th, 2007

Dear Readers,

You are highly organized and very complicated. You are intricate, delicate, and beautiful. You are unique. One could even say that God has signed off on YOUR design: His "Certificate of Authenticity" is your unique DNA sequence. It describes you and only you, and makes you human.

Estimates vary (some are as low as 10 trillion), but according to many highly-qualified reference sources, there are about a hundred trillion (1 X 10^14) living cells in your body. Nearly all of them (except red blood cells and a few other specialized cells) have a nearly-perfect copy of your DNA in them. Each copy is so perfect, it can be distinguished from the DNA of all other humans even with the crude technologies of today.

YOU HAVE TO PROTECT YOUR DNA ALL YOUR LIFE. You have a number of tools to do this with: First, the DNA is attached to histones, which are protein structures which give it added stability. Next it is coiled tightly in on itself, not all strung out, which further protects it from damage. Next, it's inside the nucleus of the cell, and -- ideally -- only "approved" atoms or molecules get into the nucleus of a cell. The nucleus is usually near the center of the cell, so it's further protected by the body of the cell and the cell wall, which, like the wall of the nucleus, evolved to stop all DETECTABLE unwanted intruders. (Radioactive elements masquerade as non-radioactive elements until the moment of decay. Your body cannot tell them apart until it is too late.) All your cells are protected collectively by many layers of dead skin cells, as well as by hair. All this helps to protect your DNA from anything that might harm it. Even outside your body, the earth's atmosphere, its ozone layer, and its magnetic field, all help protect your DNA from the violent radiation in space.

Although skin protects everything inside it from much of the radiation outside your body, other parts of our bodies are designed specifically to BRING the outside world inside us -- to provide you with the air, water and nourishment you need to live. But ingestion and inhalation is also how many radioactive substances get inside your body, and thus, your lungs and your gut are especially vulnerable to many of radiation's effects.

Indeed, NONE of your biological protection systems work perfectly, which is why it's so important, as humans, to also use our BRAINS to protect our DNA. We choose not to eat poisons, for example, so as not to harm any of this stuff. ANY assault against your DNA should be done with "INFORMED CONSENT." OTHERWISE, YOU ARE NO BETTER OFF THAN A DOG IN A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT.

A single copy of your DNA is close to 100 billion ( 1 X 10^11) atoms long, arranged in about three billion "bases." (There are just four different kinds of bases.) About 97% of your DNA has no known function. The other 3% is arranged to form about 30,000 different genes. Genes are the genetic basis of our individual (and collective) traits. About half of the genes code for protein synthesizers (some code for more than one). Your DNA is further organized into 23 paired sequences called chromosomes.

If stretched out, a single copy of your DNA would be about six feet long. If laid end-to-end, the roughly 100 trillion copies of your DNA in your body would go around the world over four million times.

Each individual cell is, itself, a highly organized structure. Each cell is an extremely effective chemical manufacturing plant, capable of making tens of thousands of DIFFERENT protein molecules as needed. Your RNA controls this, and your RNA is a product of your DNA. A typical protein molecule can have 2300 non-hydrogen atoms (plus lots of hydrogen atoms) and is incredibly intricate in design (imagine the number of POSSIBLE designs of a molecule with so many atoms). Billions of proteins are created, modified and destroyed every second in your body.

Each cell is a part of a body-wide Internet, which communicates from one cell to another, or from one set of cells to other sets of cells, via chemical and electrical signals. Often, the complex protein molecules described above are used for this information transfer.

While your cells are dividing and replicating their DNA, the DNA is particularly vulnerable to damage. Stomach cells divide about every three days. This is one reason your gut is so susceptible to radiation damage. Nearly all of your body's cells will divide over and over during your life. It's supposed to happen flawlessly. Cell death without cell division also occurs -- it happens to about 50 to 70 billion cells per day in the average adult body -- but it is a pre-planned, carefully organized, highly controlled, and properly timed event. Unplanned cell death is just one of MANY hazards from radioactive materials.

Ionizing radiation CAN destroy ANY chemical bond, thus, it CAN damage the DNA directly. But it is much more likely that the atomic decay will create "free radicals" (atoms or molecules with unpaired electrons) which roam inside your body and wreak havoc over and over, until something (an anti-oxidant) captures the free radical.

In addition to DNA damage, each atomic decay inside your body can destroy thousands of chemical bonds. These bonds are normally 100% secure, solid, and reliable (except when your body intentionally makes or breaks them).

Radiation randomly damages your body, and its effect sometimes multiplies by numbers which appear to be gross exaggerations -- billions, trillions, etc.. But that's what causes varying degrees of cellular and / or system disfunction, including damaging the information transport systems within your body. Sometimes it kills you.

Less than a microgram (a thousandth of a milligram) of radioactive Polonium-210 (an alpha emitter with a half-life of 138 days) was all that was needed to kill British citizen (and former Russian spy) Alexander Litvinenko. Enough was spilled along the way to contaminate dozens of places and thousands of people, and to be tracked all the way from London to Moscow via several commercial airliners.

So don't underestimate how important the nuclear industry's promise of containment really is. Even a single atom of radioactive material can be a fatal amount.

Ever since the dawn of the nuclear age, the billions-of-years-old trend towards DECREASING radioactivity has ceased, and a sharp and unrestricted INCREASE has begun. This increase is in the form of minute particles which are not only invisible to the naked eye, they are UNDETECTABLE by ANY human sense organ, even in LETHAL DOSES. This makes it very easy to hide the damage whenever and wherever it occurs, especially if you believe (as pro-nukers do) that simply diluting radioactive materials renders them harmless. IT DOES NOT. It just spreads them around.

Before World War II, background radiation was estimated to be under 100 mRem per person per year.

Then, Alamogordo and the nuclear age began, and up it went. 160, 180, 200, 240, 280, 320, 360, 380 mRem. Reports calling "normal background radiation" 400 mRem per person per year have even been found recently! You can watch the creep in the public literature over the past sixty years.

The human contribution is due to atomic bomb blasts in war and in endless weapons testing, the manufacturing of nuclear weapons and the incomplete sequestering afterwards of the unused weapons stock, as well as from operating nuclear power plants, nuclear experiments gone awry, failed plutonium space launches, uranium and plutonium processing and reprocessing (now called "recycling"), planned releases, unplanned releases, illegal dumping, LEGAL DUMPING, inadequate containment, and a thousand other things. Once ANY radiation gets out into the environment, the pro-nukers and the government (a subset of pro-nukers) call it ALL "background radiation" or even "natural background radiation."

There is nothing you can do about most of your true (or "real") "natural" background radiation exposure. One major component that CAN be mitigated and should be is your Radon exposure. Sometimes as little as a fan or open window in the right place in a house, to remove contaminated basement air, suffices to get it out of your house (and into your neighbor's airspace). Radon has a relatively short half-life of about 3.8 days.

Another source of "natural" (not manmade) radiation is Potassium-40 (K-40). When citizens express concern about man-made radiation, pro-nukers often try to confuse the citizen by asking: "Aren't you worried about K-40?"

According to the Health Physics Society (the radiation-tolerant "protection" arm of the nuclear industry) the amount of K-40 in the average adult body is 17 milligrams and the average adult daily intake of radioactive potassium (K-40) is about 0.39 milligrams.

You cannot reduce your intake of potassium without serious health consequences, and a portion of your potassium intake WILL be K-40 (not much; only about 0.0117% of all potassium on earth is K-40 and it's pretty evenly distributed among the two stable natural isotopes of Potassium: K-39 (93.2581%) and K-41 (6.7302%)).

Your body doesn't need its potassium to be radioactive, but YOU can't separate it out easily or cost-effectively. Your body does not store excess potassium, so no matter how much you eat, you'll still retain about 17 milligrams of K-40.

But, to really understand how natural radioactive Potassium (K-40) compares to other radiation you might be (or ARE) exposed to, you need to look at more than just the weight.

Potassium-40 has a very long half-life of over a billion years (1.277 X 10^9 years). It decays mainly by beta emission (89%). According to the Health Physics Society web site, 17 milligrams of K-40 has an "activity" of 120 nanoCuries (4.4 kiloBecquerels), which is a measure of the amount of radiation given off by a substance. One Bq is one nuclear decay or other transformation per second. One Curie = 37,000 million Bq..

How often an atomic breakdown occurs is certainly one basic factor to consider in trying to determine the relative hazards of various radioactive assaults, but by itself it can give an inadequate picture of the relative damage that any particular type of atomic breakdown can do.

Potassium-40 represents about 5% of your "natural" internal radiation burden, as measured in Curies or Becquerels. But there are other ways to measure the relative damage -- for example: Rads and Grays consider energy absorbed per gram. Rems (Roentgen equivalent man) and Sieverts add in a factor for estimated biological damage. Another, slightly better, way is by using the Relative Biological Effectiveness (RBE) factor, which tries to guess the potential damage more accurately by paying attention to which specific organs are being irradiated. But RBE still isn't a very good measure, mainly because the tables of values are largely guesswork and underestimates.

ALL ejected electrons (beta particles), whether they start as "high-energy" beta particles or as so-called "low-energy" or "soft" beta particles, eventually reach that lower energy level, and the VAST MAJORITY of the damage is done at that so-called "low" energy level. This phenomenon is known as "Bragg's Curve" and is actually USEFUL in radiation therapy medicine: The phenomenon is used to aim radioactive particle beams at tumors buried inside the body. But "soft beta rays" is a term the pro-nukers made up to describe what is really a very deadly atomic bombardment by what they call "low-energy" beta particles. In fact, a 6 KeV beta particle (the average energy of a tritium atom's ejected beta particle) does about the same amount of damage to biological systems as a 500 KeV beta particle does (the average energy of a potassium atom's ejected beta particle), all other things being equal.

Shocking? Consider a magnet passed over a bunch of nails. If you pass it over them quickly, it will not pick any of them up. But when you pass the magnet over them slowly, the pull of the magnet has time to interact with the iron in the nails and can lift them against gravity.

The beta particle (an ejected electron) has a charge of "negative one." It pulls on anything that has a positive (opposite) charge and pushes on anything with a negative (similar) charge. A beta particle is a very small sub-atomic object: About 1/1840th the mass of a single proton or neutron in an atomic nucleus. When ejected from the nucleus of an atom, the beta particle has a lot of energy and is traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light. For example, a 6 KeV beta particle (typical from tritium) is ejected at about 0.15 c (15% of the speed of light). A 500 KeV beta particle (typical from potassium) is ejected at about 0.86 c (86% the speed of light).

At those high speeds, the beta particle's charge does not have time to cause disruption of other electrons (pushing) or atomic nucleuses (pulling) as it passes by them.

But, as the beta particle slows down, it has TIME to interact with things it passes near to. And THAT'S when it does most of its damage. It knocks other electrons out of their orbits and damages molecules by exciting (energizing) their atoms and rearranging them.

The tritium atom was probably part of a water molecule. If so, when it decays it leaves a vicious OH radical floating around, too. The beta particle, once it slows down, often is captured by an O2 molecule (a pair of oxygen atoms in solution), creating a "super oxide radical."

In the case of tritium, as opposed to potassium, the left-over element after the beta particle is ejected (Helium-3) is ALSO particularly nasty at first, because it has the recoil energy of the equal-and-opposite reaction to the ejected electron (beta particle). It flies back, away from whatever molecule it was in, where it was masquerading as a normal hydrogen atom until the moment of decay. Hydrogen atoms are used just about everywhere in your body, for many different tasks.

The recoiling atom, now a helium atom, weighs almost 6,000 times as much as the released beta particle. The recoiling helium atom can damage other molecules it bangs into, especially if it happens to hit a hydrogen atom. Your body (and the universe) has more hydrogen atoms than any other, so such collisions are not uncommon.

The beta particle, after it is released from one of the two neutrons in the nucleus of the tritium atom, has a negative charge. At the moment the beta particle is released, one neutron becomes a proton, and the tritium atom goes from being hydrogen to being helium -- but with just one neutron, which is one less than normal helium (99.99986% of all helium on earth has two protons and two neutrons in its nucleus).

The process of creating the helium atom has destroyed whatever it was a useful part of when it was a hydrogen atom, bonded to something and involved in one of life's processes.

The new helium atom (formerly a hydrogen atom) needs two electrons (instead of one) to fill its electron shells. It probably has one, and will quickly steal a second one from just about any other atom that happens to be nearby.

The helium atom is not radioactive and chemically is extremely inert. Your body doesn't use helium for anything (probably because its electron bonds are so strong, it doesn't combine with other elements to make useful new molecules).

Tritium has a radiological half-life of about 12.4 years, and the United States' EPA standard for tritium in drinking water allows 740 atomic breakdowns per second per liter. Your body has about 40 liters of water, so the EPA thinks that adding a burden of about 30,000 additional atomic breakdowns PER SECOND to your body -- just from tritium alone -- is PERFECTLY OKAY!

This compares with 4,400 atomic breakdowns per second for all 17 milligrams of K-40 in your body, which doesn't have nearly as many additional effects.

Is K-40 dangerous? Certainly. But it's unavoidable, and a relatively small risk.

On the other hand, the EPA limit for tritium in drinking water is unquestionably too lax. The nuclear industry is probably UNDERESTIMATING the death toll from tritium by hundreds (two orders of magnitude) if not thousands (three orders of magnitude), and they are ALL entirely preventable deaths (the pre-nuclear level for tritium was less than a thousandth of the EPA legal limit). The standards are based on the damage to healthy adult males -- the LEAST SUSCEPTIBLE of all possible groupings. FOR THE UNBORN, INFANT, OR CHILD, THESE ATOMIC BREAKDOWNS ARE MUCH MORE SERIOUS.

About 1/2 of all humans get cancer some time in their life. Either the cancer is destroyed or removed, they die of it, or they have it when they die of something else. About 1/4 to 1/3 of all people living today will die of cancer. Besides causing death, the radioactive assault causes neuromuscular damage, cardiovascular damage, fetal deformities, premature aging, etc. etc. etc..

In the case of tritium, nearly all the burden is created by easily-replaced human activities and is COMPLETELY avoidable. The tritium burden is especially harmful because of the ADDED effect of the resultant "hot" helium atom, the creation of the OH free radical, the sudden loss of the hydrogen atom, and several other effects particular to tritium, which can permeate ANY part of the human body. In other ways, other radioactive elements are WORSE than tritium: For example, Strontium collects in bones and teeth of the unborn, while Cesium collects in soft tissue, including muscle and women's ovaries and breasts. But by many measures, tritium is the worst of all.

When estimating radiation damage from different sources, one needs to be very specific. Pro-nukers don't like to get bogged down in details. They don't like to look their little devil in the eye.

The BIER VII report (Supplement two), after years of study, was forced to conclude that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation. Numerous scientists I've spoken to over the years concur. As one recently put it: "I just can't see how shooting a projectile through a biological system can be safe. It's not harmless at all!"

To excuse a tremendous and unnecessary manmade radiation burden simply because there is ANY natural and unavoidable radiation burden is, in a word, inexcusable. Your K-40 exposure does not excuse your tritium exposure. ALL radiation exposure is damaging and sometimes even a single exposure can be fatal.

Dr. John W. Gofman, one of the most eminent nuclear physicists and medical doctors of our time, put it this way: "ANY DOSE IS AN OVERDOSE."

Don't let anyone smudge your DNA -- your personal combination of "Certificate of Authenticity," operating manual, and fundamental building block. Your DNA is the nano-code within you which builds all the nano-machines which ARE you.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA (images added 2025)

URL for previous tritium essay:

Tritium Explained (why "Low Level Radiation" can be disproportionately harmful): http://animatedsoftware.com/environment/tritium/2006/EPATritiumStandard.htm

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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