Not all things are equally newsworthy for the American media monopoly. Red intelligence behind the shooting of the pope while Andropov was KGB head? They don't believe in pretrial publicity (it would violate the Watergate tradition). An electric power plant disaster killing 200, injuring 500 and forcing the evacuation of 40,000? Not newsworthy; better to continue the brainwash with more non-news about the non-deaths at TMI. To find out about the December 20 disaster you have to subscribe to an obscure pink sheet out of Colorado.
There is, however, one rule that is never broken by the members of the monopoly: If it's radioactive (other than radon), then it's news.
On January 11, a cargo plane crashed, and as a little after-thought, the newscasts mentioned that its entire crew was killed; but this only followed the real horror of the crash, namely that there was a package of radioactive material on board. Nothing happened to it, of course, for such shipments are well packed for such eventualities. And had the package been broken, nothing would have happened, either: it was americium, the isotope used in medicine and industry, which is an alpha emitter, so that its radiation is absorbed within an inch or two of air. That makes it suitable for such applications as fire alarms, which not only save human lives, but also provide a living to incompetents like Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.): On the very first day of the new Congress, he reintroduced his bill to ban these devilish devices, though their alpha radiation could not hurt him if he were permanently to wear one on top of a dunce's hat.
Quite similarly, the media moguls blew their panic horns unisono when a Soviet satellite with a nuclear power plant on board went out of control and orbit
¾not because of its real dangers, but because parts of it may not burn up completely when the satellite re-enters the atmosphere (a few days after you get this issue).Under unlikely circumstances, this aspect of Kosmos 1402 could be dangerous: if the satellite pretty well matches Kosmos 954, some debris of which crashed in the Canadian Arctic in 1978, then it carries a 100 kW plant, for as we shall see in a moment, the Soviets mean business, not little games that can be run on solar panels.
However, even if it were to come down on land (30% probability), or even a city (minuscule probability), the results would not be what the scare stories imply. The danger does not come from the 50 kg (111 lbs) of uranium fuel, but from the fission products, including strontium and iodine. But radioactivity is easily detectable, and in the unlikely event that clean-up and evacuation were needed, it is possible to do both in good time
¾less hurriedly than in the now commonplace evacuations carried out whenever a train with toxic or combustible material derails. With rare "captions, radioactive isotopes kill instantly only if a sizable chunk of them lands on your head.And yet there is genuine danger associated with this satellite; but that is a story the Brainwash-by-Radio Monopoly does not consider newsworthy.
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Vol. 10, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 10, No. 6 Date: November 23, 2004 04:35 PM Title: Nuclear wastes: law and reality
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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