August 30th, 2016
By Karl Grossman.
The Freedom of Information Act, I tell my journalism students, was the best thing to come along for journalists since the typewriter. For nearly 40 years in my “Investigative Reporting” course at SUNY Old Westbury I teach the history and use of what is acronymed FOIA.
In fact, not just journalists but anybody can utilize FOIA. It’s a window on what government does — a breakthrough in what these days is called transparency. But mainly journalists use it, and what a treasure for democracy.
“Democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation will permit,” said President Lyndon Johnson when he signed FOIA into law on, appropriately, the Fourth of July, 1966.
Considered the “father” of FOIA is Congressman John Moss of California. In his 12-year struggle, he faced enormous resistance from fellow officials.
With its provisions allowing the public to obtain information from the federal government (with nine exemptions), FOIA went into effect in 1967. Most states — including New York — followed it with similar laws. In New York, a Freedom of Information Law, acronymed FOIL, was enacted in 1974. Because counties, cities, towns, villages and school districts are all created by the state, they are covered by FOIL. To oversee FOIL in New York, there’s a Committee on Open Government. Since 1976 its executive director has been Robert J. Freeman. He is wonderful! An attorney, he’s always available with advice and opinions when there’s trouble in getting information under FOIL.
And there often is. The passage of a law is, time and again, simply not enough. There are officials and government entities that won’t comply. And with FOIL, this includes a number in Suffolk.
The organization Reclaim New York has just brought a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Suffolk against the Southampton School District and Islip and Babylon Towns for refusal to comply with FOIL. Reclaim New York, as its website states, “is a non-partisan organization dedicated to advancing a statewide, grassroots conversation about the future of New York, its economy and its people.” Major focuses are “government reform and accountability.” Based in Manhattan, it has been doing a lot on Long Island including working its New York Transparency Project here.
The organization filed FOIL requests this year and last with every town, village and school district and both counties on Long Island for copies of records of expenditures to vendors for fiscal year 2014. The object: to get the records so residents could see where their tax money had gone. Not exactly a radical request. Most—but not all—of the entities complied.
Towns in Suffolk that denied providing the information under FOIL were Islip and Babylon, according to a run-down on Reclaim New York’s website. One Suffolk village, Islandia, refused. As for Suffolk school districts, those which denied giving the information — or ignored repeated FOIL requests — were Bridgehampton, Eastport-South Manor, Quogue, Sayville and Southampton. The Suffolk County Economic Development Corporation ignored it, too. More were on the list when Reclaim New York initially published it, but with the attention, they then complied. What’s left are “the worst,” says a spokesperson for the group.
Riverhead and Southold Towns, in contrast, provided the requested information under FOIL as did the Village of Greenport and the school districts in both towns: Oysterponds, Riverhead, Greenport, Fishers Island, Little Flower, Mattituck-Cutchogue, Shoreham-Wading River and Southold.
The Southampton School District has become quite a FOIL violator — why it is so deserving of a lawsuit. In April, The Southampton Press sought under FOIL the findings of an investigation into allegations against Scott Farina before he resigned as superintendent of schools with a $300,000 pay-out. The district said this would be an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” And, yes, there is an exemption under both FOIA and FOIL when personal privacy is involved. But here a law firm conducted — with taxpayers in the Southampton School District paying its bill — an investigation into the allegations and $300,000 in tax dollars was given to Farina, a public employee, upon his resignation.
Surely, the public’s right-to-know is preeminent here. Freeman has offered an opinion that there is no FOIL prohibition against the Southampton School District releasing the information. The Press is pursuing this issue.
With FOIA and FOIL, you many times have to fight to get information. I not only teach about each, but as a journalist use them. An especially big FOIA battle came after I learned that a 1986 mission of the Challenger space shuttle had it lofting a plutonium-fueled space probe.
Under FOIA, I sought all government information on the consequences if the Challenger underwent an accident and deadly plutonium was spread on that May launch. The U.S. Department of Energy denied my request claiming the information was technical and also I would be paid for reporting about it as a journalist — both baloney claims under FOIA. I appealed.
It took a year of fighting but I won and received the grim information just before the Challenger exploded on launch in January. Its next mission was to be the nuclear one — and not just seven brave astronauts, but many more people would have died if the disaster happened on it. I detailed this FOIA fight in my book “The Wrong Stuff.”
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March 19th, 2016
by Karl Grossman.
Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, established by the Nazi American Bund, had streets named after Hitler and Goebbels. Photo: NYPD/NYC Dept. of Records
“They chose Long Island because they thought it would be sympathetic to their ideas,” explained Professor Steven Klipstein in his presentation last week at the opening of an exhibit titled “Goose Stepping on Long Island: Camp Siegfried.”
He was speaking about Nazis in the 1930s who developed parade grounds in Yaphank, in the middle of Suffolk County, and an “accompanying community,” German Gardens.
Thousands of Nazis came by train and car to march in Nazi uniforms at rallies and to listen to fiery, hate-filled speeches. The speeches were given from a platform built to resemble the platform in Nuremberg, Germany from which Hitler spoke. And, in German Gardens, they lived on streets named after Hitler and his henchmen.
In introducing Professor Klipstein, Steven Schrier, executive director of the Suffolk Center on the Holocaust, Diversity and Human Understanding , which is sponsoring the exhibit at the Suffolk County Community College Eastern Campus, said: “This is not something that happened elsewhere. It happened here, too.”
The photos of activities at Camp Siegfried and the narrative that comes together with it are chilling. As Professor Klipstein, who teaches Holocaust Studies at Suffolk Community, commented, “I shake my head with incredulity about these people being so close.”
“Long Island,” he noted, “has a very checkered history.” As explanatory information about the exhibit from the Center states: “Long Island of the 1930s was not exactly a bastion of racial and religious acceptance. There was an active Ku Klux Klan in Suffolk County and the American Eugenics Society, a group that was trying to create a perfect Aryan race in the United States, was headquartered in Cold Spring Harbor.” (It was at the site of the present Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.)
“With the coming of war the [Nazi] Bund faded and Camp Siegfried was closed down,” it continued. The “self-appointed leader of the Nazi American Bund,” Fritz Kuhn, central to the Yaphank operation, had been convicted in 1939 of tax evasion and embezzling — from the Bund — and jailed. And after his release from Sing Sing on New York State criminal charges, he was re-arrested by the U.S. government in 1943 as an enemy agent. With the war’s end, the German-born Kuhn was deported to West Germany where he died in 1951. This ringmaster of Yaphank activities had intended to become “the American fuhrer” after succeeding with his fellow Nazis in “transforming America into a Nazi state,” said Professor Klipstein.
Professor Klipstein, assistant director of the Center, also detailed the activities in these times of major American figures, notably auto magnate Henry Ford and aviator Charles Lindberg, both given awards by the Nazi regime in Germany, hate radio preacher Charles Coughlin and U.S Senator Burton Wheeler.
And he told of, in contrast, strong anti-Nazi actions by New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and then Manhattan DA Thomas Dewey—whose work led to Kuhn’s imprisonment—and by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and here in Suffolk, the extensive efforts of a prosecutor, Lindsay Henry, which had much to do with the end of Camp Siegfried.
The Nazis in the U.S. endeavored “to keep America out of World War II,” to spread their propaganda and to have the U.S. become Nazi itself, but “there was opposition. They were not popular,” he said. Still, large numbers of Nazis flocked to Yaphank over a three-year period.
Professor Klipstein also spoke about today and a “revival of anti-Semitism through the world. It is very disturbing.”
The exhibit runs through March 31 at the Lyceum Gallery of the Montaukett Learning Resources Center at the Eastern Campus of Suffolk Community College south of Riverhead—15 miles from where the Nazis used to march in Yaphank.
It is on loan from the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Archives at Queensborough Community College.
“Camp Siegfried reminds us that not everyone shares the values of equality and freedom,” said the Center. “It reminds us of a questionable period of history on Long Island where the bankrupt, racist philosophies of the Third Reich were supported by many Americans.”
This intensity of Nazi hate is expressed in a poster from the period in the exhibit. “Heil! Heil!” it is headed. “All Germans and Aryans of Pure Nordic Blood,” it says. “We have the Jews on the Run! Let Us Keep Up the Good Work! This is only the Beginning to an End! The CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps would make good Concentration Camps for the Jews!”
Schrier, in addition to being executive director of the Center, founded by Suffolk Community College, is a political science professor at the college. He said at the opening last Wednesday how the Center seeks to “teach about what has gone on before” in working for a society where people “are respectful of one another.”
Coincidentally, last week there was an uproar over Donald Trump evoking fascist symbolism by asking supporters at a campaign rally to raise their right arm and pledge to vote for him.
“It’s a fascist gesture,” former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman stated. “As a Jew who survived the Holocaust, to see an audience of thousands of people raising their hands in what looks like the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute is about as offensive, obnoxious and disgusting as anything I thought I would ever witness in the United States of America.” The Republican presidential frontrunner, when Challenged on this by Water Mill resident Matt Lauer on the Today show, insisted, “Honestly, until this phone call, I didn’t realize it was a problem.”
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December 14th, 2015
By Karl Grossman.
Wondering why the price of gasoline has plummeted to around $2 a gallon?
It is largely an attempt to quash one of the most odious of energy processes—fracking—by a most odious of energy organizations, OPEC.
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking has in recent years caused a revolution in petroleum extraction. Using a new technique to split underground shale formations, it has vastly expanded gas and oil output in the United States. But it is a messy and polluting process.
Massive amounts of water and 600 chemicals are shot into the ground under high pressure to release the gas and oil. But gas from fracking wells leaks into underground water tables causing serious contamination and also the phenomenon of what comes out of a water faucet bursting into flames when touched with a lit match.
The 2010 Oscar-nominated film “Gasland”: and subsequent “Gasland Part II,” both written and directed by Josh Fox, document this fiery aspect of fracking, along with the many instances of water pollution and impacts on people’s health caused by the contamination of water.
Another major problem involves fracking setting off earthquakes.
A new fracking technique—horizontal fracking—was first developed with federal government support in the U.S. in the 1980s. It has enabled the U.S. to again become a global giant in petroleum production.
The International Energy Agency has projected that in 2015, because of fracking, the U.S. would displace Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer.
Fracking, however, is a relatively expensive process—about ten times more costly than the $5 to $6 per barrel cost of drilling oil from conventional wells in Saudi Arabia.
By letting the price of oil drop, OPEC, in which Saudi Arabia is the key partner, has been applying financial pressure on the fracking industry.
Oil in much of 2015 went down to $60 a barrel making fracking a problematic undertaking economically. And consequently there have been reductions in and cancellations of numerous fracking operations.
Still, the fracking industry cut costs in seeking to survive.
And that has resulted in even greater OPEC pressure—the drop in price of a barrel of oil to less than $40—as low as $37—in recent weeks. Thus $2 a gallon gasoline in the U.S.
Manipulation of the petroleum market is not new. John D. Rockefeller with his Standard Oil Trust mastered it between the end of the 19th and start of the 20th Century. Rockefeller and his trust succeeded in controlling virtually all the oil industry in the U.S. and also dominated the international market. The Standard Oil Trust fixed prices, set production quotas and ruthlessly forced out competitors.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1911, in the wake of muckraker Ida Tarbell’s investigative articles and book on the Standard Oil Trust, utilized the Sherman Antitrust Act to break the trust up into 34 pieces. ”For the safety of the Republic,” the court declared, “we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended.”
With discoveries of oil in the Middle East in the 1930s and with Standard Oil offshoots deeply involved, the Arabian American Oil Company—Aramco—was created in Saudi Arabia in 1944. In the 1970s, the Saudi government began acquiring more and more of a stake in Aramco, taking over full control in 1980 of what is now called Saudi Aramco.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries—OPEC—was formed in 1960 to “coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry.”
Saudi Arabia is the key partner in the 12-nation OPEC cartel because it has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves at more than 260 billion barrels.
OPEC sets production targets for its member countries and its method for lowering the price of petroleum is by keeping production high.
So the price of a barrel of oil is less than half of what it was as recently as midway last year.
As Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, has explained:“At the root of the price collapse was the development in the U.S. of technologies for extracting tight oil, mostly from shale deposits, by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. This reversed the decline in U.S. oil production.”
“After the oil embargo of the 1970s,” Greenspan said, “OPEC wrested oil pricing power from the U.S.” But now, there’s been a “shale technology breakthrough.”
“As a result, the gap between global production and consumption has widened, precipitating a rise in U.S. and world inventories, and a fall in prices. Saudi Arabia, confronted with an oil supply glut but not wishing to lose market share, abandoned its leadership role as global swing producer and refused to cut production to support prices.”
Says Jamie Webster, an oil market analyst at HIS Energy in Washington, D.C.: “The faster you bring the price down, the quicker you will have a response from U.S. [fracking] production—that is the expectation and the hope. I cannot recall a time when several [OPEC] members were actively pushing the price down in both word and deed.”
There are other factors, too.
The descending price of oil has severely impacted on Russia causing some analysts to see collusion between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to hurt the Putin regime in Russia—and some have extended this to seeing such a conspiracy also being aimed at major oil producers Iran and Venezuela, too.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself has raised this prospect declaring: “We all see the lowering of the oil price. There’s lots of talk about what’s causing it. Could it be the agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to punish Iran and affect the economies of Russia and Venezuela? It could.” Martin Katusa, chief energy investment strategist at Casey Research in Vermont, says, “It’s a three-way oil war between OPEC, Russia and North American shale.”
Is a Saudi Arabian assault on the clean-energy movement a factor, too?
“Now energy experts are seeing evidence that the oil bust is helping Saudi Arabia achieve another long-term goal: undermining global efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels,” wrote Joby Warrick who has written on energy and environmental issues for The Washington Post.
Indeed, with the sharp decrease in the price of gasoline, sales of SUVs and other low-efficiency vehicles has been rising. There’s the big question of whether oil—from fracking or conventional drilling in the Middle East—can compete with with renewable energy technologies.
A report done for the National Bank of Abu Dhabi by the University of Cambridge and Price Waterhouse Coopers, titled “Financing the Future of Energy,” declared: “The energy system of the past will not be the same as the energy system of the future. It is clear that renewables will be an established and significant part of the future energy mix, in the region and globally.”
Solar photovoltaic power and wind energy have “already a track record of successful deployment,” the report noted. “Prices have fallen dramatically in the past few years: solar PV falling by 80 per cent in six years, and on-shore wind by 40 per cent. The speed of this shift towards grid parity with fossil fuels means that, in many instances, perceptions of the role of renewables in the energy mix have not caught up with reality.”
The report noted the bid of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority to build a 200 megawatt solar photovoltaic facility in Dubai “set a new world benchmark for utility scale solar PV costs, showing that photovoltaic technologies are competitive today with oil at US$10/barrel.”
How far down will the price of oil go?
“Oil producers prepare for prices to halve to $20 a barrel,” was the headline in The Guardian this month.
The article in the British publication by Larry Elliot, its economics editor, stated: “The fall from a recent peak of $115 a barrel in August 2014 has left all OPEC members in fina ncial difficult, but Saudi Arabia has refused to relent on the strategy of using a low crude price to knock out U.S. shale producers. Hopes that OPEC would announce production curbs to push up prices were dashed when the cartel met in Vienna last Friday, triggering the latest downward lurch in the cost of oil.”
At this rate will it be a bit over $1 a gallon for gasoline soon? And how long will low oil prices last as OPEC tries to smite the frackers? The history of oil industry market manipulation says not that long.
As the secretary-general of OPEC, Abdulla al-Badri, said this year, with prices “around $45-$55 [a barrel], I think maybe they [have] reached the bottom and we [will] see some rebound very soon.” Indeed, he ventured that oil prices might skyrocket back up as they had plummeted down, to “more than $200” a barrel, although he wouldn’t give a time frame.
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September 2nd, 2015
By Karl Grossman.
Boeing has just been granted a patent on a design for aircraft powered by nuclear fusion, writes Karl Grossman. What a great idea! Apart from the irradiation of plane and passengers with neutrons and gamma rays, the dangers of radioactive contamination … and the fact that clean, green solar powered flight is taking off.
Consider getting on to an airplane with nuclear-powered engines.
Consider the consequences if an atomic airplane crashes.
The Boeing Company last week received approval from the US Patent and Trademark Office for an airplane engine that combines the use of lasers and nuclear power.
“Boeing’s newly-patented engine provides thrust in a very different and rather novel manner”, heralded Business Insider.
It’s a leap into mad science-and backwards to a 1950s notion of nuclear-powered aircraft.
The patent approval to America’s biggest airplane manufacturer comes as solar power and green fuels are being shown to be feasible energy sources for flight-as they are for uses on earth.
Last week an airplane using only solar power, Solar Impulse 2, landed in Hawaii after flying across the Pacific. It’s to go on flying around the world.
Also last week, in an expansion of the use of biofuels for aviation, United Airlines announced the start of flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco of jets using fuel derived from farm waste. United further said it will invest $30 million in one of the major producers of jet bio-fuels, Fulcrum BioEnergy.
Laser-triggered nuclear fusion
The Boeing scheme would have lasers in an airplane engine bombard deuterium or tritium causing a nuclear explosion with its force providing thrust.
Business Insider features a video (see below) with its article on the Boeing patent that features, Deepak Gupta, founder of PatentYogi, a YouTube channel. Gupta declares: “This is another cool invention from Boeing. Boeing has patented nuclear power aircrafts. The engines of these aircrafts include a unique propulsion system.”
As Gupta explains the process: “A stream of pellets containing nuclear material such as deuterium or tritium is fed into a hot-spot within a thruster of the aircraft. Then multiple high powered laser beams are all focused onto the hot spot. The pellet is instantly vaporized and the high temperature causes a nuclear fusion reaction.
“In effect, it causes a tiny nuclear explosion that scatters atoms and high energy neutrons in all directions. This flow of material is concentrated to exit out of the thruster thus propelling the aircraft forward with great force.”
“And this is where Boeing has done something extremely clever”, Gupta continues. “The inner walls of the thruster are coated with … Uranium-238 that undergoes a nuclear fission reaction upon being struck by high energy neutrons. This releases enormous energy in the form of heat.
(Note: this is wrong. Uranium-238 is not fissile. Under neutron irradiation it transmutes to Plutonium-239, which is fissile. The purpose of the U-238 would surely be to shield the plane and passengers from the neutrons released by the nuclear fusion.)
“A coolant is circulated along the inner walls to pick up this heat and power a turbine which in turn generates huge amounts of electric power. And guess what this electric power is used for? To power the same lasers that created the electric power.”
“Soon”, says Gupta, “tiny nuclear bombs exploding inside a plane may be business as usual.” He adds: “I would love to use these non-polluting aircraft.”
Is the Boeing scheme really the basis for non-polluting aircraft?
No way, says Jim Riccio, nuclear analyst for Greenpeace: “Since the supposed ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ is dead in the west, there are some who are stretching to find applications for nuclear power – and this is a very long stretch.”
“Imagine getting into an airplane that has minor nuclear explosions for propulsion. What about the implications of such an aircraft going down? We just saw an F-16 come down over South Carolina, its jet engine landing in someone’s backyard.”
“Meanwhile, we have breakthroughs in solar energy-to the extent of that solar plane showing solar’s potential. Solar energy is being used to accomplish things that nuclear couldn’t, as we watch solar costs plummet and nuclear go through the roof. The future is solar, not nuclear, despite Boeing’s attempt.”
Garry Morgan, long experienced in radiation issues including as a nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist in the US Army, notes that “this is not the first time atomic engines for aircraft have been tried.”
In the 1950s the US military developed nuclear-powered aircraft but ran into the huge problem of requiring heavy shielding to protect pilots and crew from radioactivity, noted Morgan. He is now director of community radiation and health monitoring for the Bellafonte Efficiency & Sustainability Team – Mothers Against Tennessee River Radiation, initiatives of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.
In the military’s Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft project of the 50s, ground tests were conducted of atomic airplane engines. A B-36 bomber was renamed an NB-36-NB for Nuclear Bomber – and made numerous test flights with an onboard reactor operating although not used to power engines.
A few small problems – like passenger irradiation with neutrons and gamma rays
Regarding the Boeing scheme, the result of the Uranium-238 being struck by neutrons would be to transmute some of it into Plutonium-239, said Morgan. Plutonium has long been described as the most toxic radioactive substance, and Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,100 years, thus once created it takes some 240,000 years for its radioactivity to decline to 0.1%.
“I don’t understand how they are going to overcome the emissions problems and how the shielding issue [of passenger irradiation with neutrons and gamma rays] would be handled”, said Morgan. As to a crash of an airplane with atomic engines, “It would be a real mess. You’d have lethal material spread all over the place.”
The patent lists Boeing, based in Chicago, as ‘applicant’ and the ‘inventors’ of the proposed engine as: Frank O. Chandler, director of Advanced Vehicle Subsystems and Technologies at Boeing’s The Phantom Works; Boeing engineer James S. Herzberg; and Robert J. Budica, who has been Boeing’s director of strategic technologies.
“As of now”, says Business Insider, “the engine lives only in patent documents. The technology is so-out-there that it’s unclear if anyone will ever use it.”
In a 1960 book, Nuclear Flight: The United States Air Force Program for Atomic Jets, Missiles, and Rockets, edited by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth F. Glantz, then Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Development, Lt. General Roscoe C. Wilson, spoke of nuclear bombers with “unlimited range” being on “missions of several days duration.”
Nukespeak by Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell and Rory O’Connor, published in 1983 with a new e-book edition in 2011, relates: “Atomic-powered airplanes would make long-distance bombing easier, since the planes were expected to be able to circle the globe without refueling.”
As late as 1959, it notes, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were assuring Congress of the military potential of nuclear-powered aircraft and urging that they be built. But nixing the program in 1961 – after more than $1 billion in 1950s dollars had been spent – was then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who told Congress that an atomic airplane would
” … expel some fraction of radioactive fission products into the atmosphere, creating an important public relations problem if not an actual physical hazard.”
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November 22nd, 2014
By Karl Grossman.
The recent crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and explosion on launch three days earlier of an Antares rocket further underline the dangers of inserting nuclear material in the always perilous space flight equation—as the U.S. and Russia still plan.
“SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly,” Virgin Galactic tweeted after the spacecraft, on which $500 million has been spent for development, exploded on October 31 after being released by its mother ship. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-space-crash-virgin-factbox-idUSKBN0IK2GO20141031
One pilot was killed, another seriously injured. Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic founder, hoped to begin flying passengers on SpaceShipTwo this spring. Some 800 people, including actor Leonard DiCaprio and physicist Steven Hawking, have signed up for $250,000-a person tickets to take a suborbital ride. SpaceShipTwo debris was spread over the Mojave Desert in California. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2816452/Bransons-Virgin-Galactic-quest-space-tourism.html
Three days before, on Wallops Island, Virginia, an Antares rocket operated by Orbital Sciences Corp. blew up seconds after launch. It was carrying 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station. The cost of the rocket alone was put at $200 million. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2810128/Ready-liftoff-Nighttime-rocket-launch-International-Space-Station-visible-East-Coast.html NASA, in a statement, said that the rocket “suffered a catastrophic anomaly.” http://www.nasa.gov/content/frequently-asked-questions-on-antares-launch-anomaly/ The word anomaly, defined as something that deviates from what is standard, normal or expected, has for years been a space program euphemism for a disastrous accident.
“These two recent space ‘anomalies’ remind us that technology frequently goes wrong,” said Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. www.space4peace.org “When you consider adding nuclear power into the mix it becomes an explosive combination.
We’ve long been sounding the alarm that nuclear power in space is not something the public nor the planet can afford to take a chance on.”
But “adding nuclear power into the mix” is exactly what the U.S. and Russia are planning. Both countries have been using nuclear power on space missions for decades—and accidents involving their nuclear-powered space devices have happened with substantial amounts of radioactive particles released on Earth.
Now, a major expansion in space nuclear power activity is planned with the development by both nations of nuclear-powered rockets for trips to Mars.
One big U.S. site for this is NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “NASA Researchers Studying Advanced Nuclear Rocket Technologies,” announced NASA last year. At the center, it said, “The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion team is tackling a three-year project to demonstrate the viability of nuclear propulsion technologies.” In them, a “nuclear rocket uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust. Nuclear rocket engines generate higher thrust and are more than twice as efficient as conventional chemical engines.” http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/ntrees.html
“A first-generation nuclear cryogenic propulsion system could propel human explorers to Mars more efficiently than conventional spacecraft, reducing crew’s exposure to harmful space radiation and other effects of long-term space missions,” NASA went on. “It could also transport heavy cargo and science payloads.”
And out at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the DUFF project—for Demonstrating Using Flattop Fissions—is moving ahead to develop a “robust fission reactor prototype that could be used as a power system for space travel,” according to Technews World. The laboratory’s Advanced Nuclear Technology Division is running the joint Department of Energy-NASA project. “Nuclear Power Could Blast Humans Into Deep Space,” was the headline of Technewsworld’s 2012 article about it. It quoted Dr. Michael Gruntman, professor of aerospace engineering and systems architecture at the University of Southern California, saying,“If we want solar system exploration, we must utilize nuclear technology.” The article declared: “Without the risk, there will be no reward.” http://www.technewsworld.com/story/76699.html
And in Texas, near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the Ad Astra Rocket Company of former U.S. astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz is busy working on what it calls the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket or VASMIR. Chang-Diaz began Ad Astra after retiring from NASA in 2005. He’s its president and CEO. The VASMIR system could utilize solar power, related Space News last year, but “using a VASMIR engine to make a superfast Mars run would require incorporating a nuclear reactor that cranks out megawatts of power, Chang-Diaz said, adding that developing this type of powerful reactor should be high on the nation’s to-do list.” http://www.space.com/23613-advanced-space-propulsion-vasimr-engine.html Chang-Diaz told Voice of America that by using a nuclear reactor for power “we could do a mission to Mars that would take about 39 days, one-way.” http://www.voanews.com/content/former-astronaut-develops-powerful-rocket-123960664/173696.htmlhttp://www.voanews.com/content/former-astronaut-develops-powerful-rocket-123960664/173696.html NASA Director Charles Bolden, also a former astronaut as well as a Marine Corps major general, has been a booster of Ad Asra’s project.
Ad Astra and the Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion project have said their designs would include nuclear systems only starting up when “out of the atmosphere” to prevent, in the event of an accident, “spreading radiation back to Earth.”
However, this isn’t a fail-safe plan. The Soviet Union followed this practice on the satellites powered by nuclear reactors that it launched between the 1960s and 1980s. This included the Cosmos 954. Its on board reactor was only allowed to go critical after it was in orbit, but it subsequently came crashing back to Earth in 1978, breaking up and spreading radioactive debris on the Northwest Territories of Canada.
As to Russia now, “A ground-breaking Russian nuclear space travel propulsion system will be ready by 2017 and will power a ship capable of long-haul interplanetary missions by 2025, giving Russia a head start in the outer-space race,” the Russian news agency RT reported in 2012. http://rt.com/news/space-nuclear-engine-propulsion-120/ “Nuclear power has generally been considered a valid alternative to fossil fuels to power space craft, as it is the only energy source capable of producing the enormous thrust needed for interplanetary travel….The revolutionary propulsion system falls in line with recently announced plans for Russia to conquer space…Entitled Space Development Strategies up to 2030, Russia aims to send probes to Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, as well as establish a series of bases on the moon.”
This year OSnet Daily, in an article headlined “Russia advances development of nuclear powered Spacecraft,” reported that in 2013 work on the Russian nuclear rocket moved “to the design stage.” http://osnetdaily.com/2014/01/russia-advances-development-of-nuclear-powered-spacecraft/
As for space probes, many U.S. and Russian probes have until recently gotten their on board electrical power from systems fueled with plutonium— hotly radioactive from the start.
Also, the U.S. has begun to power Mars rovers with plutonium. After using solar power on Mars rovers, in 2012 NASA launched a Mars rover it named Curiosity fueled with 10.6 pounds of plutonium. NASA plans to launch a Mars rover nearly identical to Curiosity, which it is calling Mars 2020, in 2020.
As devastating in terms of financial damage were last week’s explosions of the Virgin Galactic SpaceshipTwo and Antares rocket, an accident involving a nuclear-powered vehicle or device could be far more costly.
The NASA Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Curiosity (then called Mars Science Laboratory) mission states, for example, that the cost of decontamination of areas affected by dispersed plutonium would be $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.” http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/11/05/MSL-FEIS_Vol1.pdf
Odds of an accident were acknowledged as being low. The EIS said a launch accident discharging plutonium had a 1-in-420 chance of happening and could “release material into the regional area defined…within…62 miles of the launch pad” on Cape Canaveral, Florida. The EIS said that “overall” on the mission, the likelihood of plutonium being released was 1-in-220. If there were an accident resulting in plutonium fallout that occurred before the rocket carrying Curiosity broke through Earth’s gravitational field, people could be affected in a broad swath of Earth “anywhere between 28-degrees north and 28-degrees south latitude” on Earth, said the EIS.
Gagnon said at the time: “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining its dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry…The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the lives of all the people on the planet. Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
Curiosity made it up, and to Mars.
But in NASA’s history of nuclear power shots, happening since the 1950s, there have been accidents. The worst among the 26 U.S. space nuclear missions listed in the Curiosity EIS occurred in 1964 and involved the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to Earth, disintegrating as it fell. Its plutonium fuel dispersed widely That accident spurred NASA to develop solar energy for satellites and now all satellites are solar-powered as is the International Space Station.
And in recent times, solar power has been increasingly shown to be practical even to generate on board electricity for missions far out in space. On its way to Jupiter now is NASA’s Juno space probe, chemically-propelled and with solar photovoltaic panels generating all its on board electricity. When Juno reaches Jupiter in 2016 it will be nearly 500 million miles from the Sun, but the high-efficiency solar cells will still be generating power http://www.cnet.com/news/juno-spacecraft-poised-for-five-year-voyage-to-jupiter/
In August, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe, similarly solar-powered, rendezvoused with a comet in deep space, 400 million miles from Earth. http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/rosetta-probe-makes-historic-comet-rendezvous-140806.htmb
Advances, too, have been made in propelling spacecraft in the vacuum of space. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2010 launched what it termed a “space yacht” it called Ikaros which successfully got its propulsion power from the pressure on its large sails of ionizing particles emitted by the Sun. http://www.space.com/25800-ikaros-solar-sail.html
Among other ways of propelling spacecraft, discussed at a Starship Congress last year in Texas was a system using orbiting lasers to direct beams on to a spacecraft. The magazine New Scientist said “beam sails are regarded as the most promising tech for a starship.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407913620655
A scientist long-involved in laser space power research is Geoff Landis of the Photovoltaics and Space Environment Branch at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland who, in a 2002 NASA publication, “The Edge of Sunshine,” wrote: “In the long term, solar arrays will not have to rely on the Sun. We’re investigating the concept of using lasers to beam photons to solar arrays. If you make a powerful enough laser and can aim the beam, there’s really isn’t any edge to sunshine—with a big enough lens, we could beam light to a space-probe halfway to alpha-Centauri!” http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/08jan_sunshine/
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