One of the "Fathers" of Plutonium - Dr Gofman Speaks out on Radiation dangers

[truedelphi]

I met Dr Gofman perhaps ten years ago at a meeting of the Health Council of Marin County California. He had come to the meeting to discuss his work on the risk associated with X rays, and also the risk of nuclear reactors.

We chatted after the meeting, and although he was at that point in time already well into his eighties, his intellect and his high energy level impressed me.

He died several years ago, at a quite advanced age.

The following are a few paragraphs taken from a book titled: "Nuclear Witnesses, Insiders Speak Out, by Leslie J. Freeman, W.W. Norton & Company, 1981
<on edit the first paragraph is a colleague of Gofman who is being quoted.>
"Someone from the AEC came to my house last weekend," he said. "He lives near me. And he said, `We need you to help destroy Gofman and Tamplin.' And I told him you'd sent me a copy of your paper, Dr. Gofman, and I didn't necessarily agree with every number you'd put in, but I didn't have any major difficulties with it either.

"It looked like sound science. And--you won't believe this--but do you know what he said to me? He said, `I don't care whether Gofman and Tamplin are right or not, scientifically. It's necessary to destroy them. The reason is,' he said, `by the time those people get the cancer and the leukemia, you'll be retired and I'll be retired, so what the hell difference does it make right now? We need our nuclear power program, and unless we destroy Gofman and Tamplin, the nuclear power program is in real hazard from what they say.'. . . . . . in 1972 the National Academy of Sciences published a report called the BEIR Report--Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation--a long, thick report, in which they walked around the problem as best they could, and finally concluded that we were too high between four and ten times. But if you read the fine print, they were admitting that we might just be right.<22>

"The other thing to know is, it creates a mountain of radioactivity, and I mean a mountain: astronomical quantities of strontium-90 and cesium-137 and plutonium--toxic substances that will last--strontium-90 and cesium for 300 to 600 years, plutonium for 250,000 to 500,000 years--and still be deadly toxic. And the whole thing about nuclear power is this simple: can you or can't you keep it all contained? If you can't, then you're creating a human disaster."

End of book material

You can read more from this book at
http://ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html

[truedelphi]

1. Another interesting quote from Dr Gofman:

"Licensing a nuclear power plant is in my view, licensing random premeditated murder. First of all, when you license a plant,
you know what you're doing--so it's premeditated.

"You can't say, "I didn't know." Second, the evidence on radiation-producing cancer is beyond doubt. I've worked fifteen years on it , and so have many others. It is not a question any more:
radiation produces cancer, and the evidence is good all the way down to the lowest doses."

[snappyturtle]

2. Thanks truedelphi....I hope many will read this page. K&R nt

[truedelphi]

21. And thank you.

Apparently Gofman is so well respected that for the first time in this lifetime, one of my articles ended up on DU's first page.

I wish I could call him and tell him about it. He would be pleased.

[kristopher]

3. "A society that depends on nuclear energy is just like a house of cards"

A tsunami triggered by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake not only destroyed towns and ports in northeastern Honshu, but also demonstrated various problems involving Japan's post-war energy policy.

The nuclear power policy that the government had disguised as rock-solid has actually proved so vulnerable. Prosperity built around such a policy is fragile. This has illustrated a wide perception gap between people on the seriousness of the crisis.

Even though people are calling for solidarity and collective efforts to overcome the disaster, nobody apparently has the impression that the groundwork has been laid for the restoration of Japan.

<snip>

The crisis has clarified that a society that depends heavily on electricity generated largely by nuclear power plants -- which Japan as a post-war economic and technological superpower has achieved -- is just like a house of cards. Japanese leaders as well as members of the general public should be aware of this.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20110409p2a00m0na001000c.html


This is from today's Mainichi Shimbun. The discussion is just starting about where Japan goes from here; we should all be watching closely.

Thank you for the interesting reference.

[The Wielding Truth]

18. K&R and I want the US to wake up! Fear can stifle the acceptance of reality.

[franzia99]

24. One especially sad thing is they didn't even bother complying with safety regulations and the

regulators knew and didn't do anything about it, according to this article.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/japan-s-nuclear-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-safety-reports-accidents.html

[JohnyCanuck]

4. The UN Would Never Lie to George Monbiot

By JOE GIAMBRONE

Quite the nauseating display on DemocracyNow the other day. Renowned doctor and scientist Dr. Helen Caldicott, with more than 3 decades intense study on this issue to her credit, attempted to school the pro-nuclear British journalist on the gross ignorance and misinformation that guides his rationale. So, now Dr. Caldicott is a conspiracy theorist, fair game for snide rebukes and silly faces.

SNIP

That U.N./IAEA report however relied on a specific 350 studies and used criteria to ignore increases in the cancer rate statistics post 1986. Their approach uses a minimum threshold of radiation exposure as an apriori condition to exclude everyone that -- in their opinion -- didn't receive enough of a radiation dose to be made sick (whether they actually were made sick or not). This U.N./IAEA "study" set the parameters such that they would only look at a specific demographic and exclude the rest of the population despite its ongoing exposure to lower levels of radiation and free floating radionucleide particles in the dust, crops and water.

SNIP

The IAEA exercise was a rigged study. It violated the scientific method. First you collect the data, and then you make sense of the findings. In the UN study, they first went to lengths to make sure data was restricted to only people whom they said had received certain exposure levels. That is the standard practice there.

SNIP

Of course Monbiot should know about the agreement between the WHO and the IAEA, May 28, 1959 at the 12th World Health Assembly, clause No. 12.40:

"whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement..."

The IAEA's purpose is:

"to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world."

So yes George, pure science takes a back seat to other interests as you should well know.

http://counterpunch.org/giambrone04012011.html

[truedelphi]

11. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for posting this

the agreement between the WHO and the IAEA, May 28, 1959 at the 12th World Health Assembly, clause No. 12.40:

"whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement..."



I didn't know it was so clearly spelled out. I suspected but didn't know.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. "We believe we can do anything that's needed."

Gofman:

I was once on an airplane with a strong pronuclear engineer. I said, "I've done some new work on plutonium. I think it's a lot more toxic than had been thought before. At what toxicity would you give up nuclear power?"

He said, "What are you talking about?"

"If I told you that you had to control your plutonium losses at all steps along the way--burps, spills, puffs, accidents, leaks, everything--that you can't afford to lose even a millionth of it, would that cause you to give up nuclear power?"

"Oh, I understand your point now, John," he said. "Now, you tell me--we look to biologists like you to tell us how well we need to do. If you say I've got to control it to one part in ten million, we'll do it. If you say it's got to be one in a billion or ten billion we'll do it. You tell us what we have to engineer for, and we'll do it."

I said, "My friend, you've lost touch with reality completely. I've worked in chemistry laboratories all my life, and to think you can control plutonium to one in a million is absolutely absurd. If you were a patient of mine who came in to see me, I'd refer you to a psychiatrist."

"Well, John, engineering is my field. And we believe we can do anything that's needed."

http://ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html

[enough]

6. ".....you'll be retired and I'll be retired, so what the hell difference does it make right now?"

It's amazing to see that stated so baldly. Of course we know that's the basic principal of corporate behavior, but they usually pretend otherwise.

Barry Ritholz talks about Wall Street's "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" attitude. They don't care how massive the damage from their behavior, as long as they can get their pile before it collapses.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/03/putting-an-end-to-wall-streets-ill-be-gone-youll-be-gone-bonuses/

snip>

In his book “The Accidental Investment Banker,” Jonathan Knee described this mercenary attitude with the phrase “IBGYBG.” As bankers signed off on increasingly risky deals, IBGYBG meant “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone” by the time the really messy stuff hit the fan. Call it what you will – smash and grab, take the money and run. Without partnership liability or clawback terms, IBGYBG was perfectly legal.

The simple solution to IBGYBG is legal liability.

How this works: There must be a civil liability for recklessness that caused a collapse or loss. Liability for loss accrues when a trader knew and disregarded the risk or, failing that, should have been aware of the risks they were taking.

snip>


And of course there's no liability in the nuclear power industry in the US, any more than there is for Wall Street.

[Thunderstruck]

9. Or BP...

[truedelphi]

10. Yes, one of the main premises that we need to be aware of is contained in

Your last sentence:



And of course there's no liability in the nuclear power industry in the US, any more than there is for Wall Street.

I have to comply with many meaningless statutes - right now my housing association is mandating that everyone's fences be a specific height, regardless if the fence is like ours - backing up to a major open space, and unseen on 364 days of the year by anyone but me, the spouse, and the wild animals.

But the nuke industry ignores safety measures left and right, denounces meaningful criticism, attempts to subvert the will of the people, etc, all for profit. Knowing it faces little in the way of penalties - and even if penalties were imposed, it would be the average utility user whose future bills would be higher, not the decision makers at the utility who would suffer.

[crickets]

7. Thanks for this. K&R

[truedelphi]

12. You are most welcome. Thanks for reading. n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

8. "The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity."

And what of the UN and their bonkers statement about the effects of the Chernobyl accident referred to by Wade Allison? What you have to know, is that the UN organisations on radiation and health are compromised in favour of the nuclear military complex, which was busy testing hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere at the time of the agreement and releasing all the Strontium, Caesium, Uranium and plutonium and other stuff that was to become the cause of the current and increasing cancer epidemic. The last thing they wanted was the doctors and epidemiologists stopping their fun. The IAEA and the World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement in 1959 to remove all research into the issue from the doctors of the WHO, to the atom scientists, the physicists of the IAEA: this agreement is still in force. The UN organisations do not refer to, or cite any scientific study, which shows their statements on Chernobyl to be false. There is a huge gap between the picture painted by the UN, the IAEA, the ICRP and the real world. And the real world is increasingly being studied and reports are being published in the scientific literature: but none of the authorities responsible for looking after the public take any notice of this evidence.

As they say on the Underground trains in London: Mind the Gap. Wade Allison and the other experts I refer to need to do just this for their own sake. The one place that this gap is being closed rapidly and savagely is in the courts. I have acted as an expert witness in over 40 cases involving radiation and health. These include cases where Nuclear Test veterans are suing the UK government for exposures at the test sites that have caused cancer, they include cases involving nuclear pollution, work exposures and exposures to depleted uranium weapons fallout. And these cases are all being won. All of them. Because in court with a judge and a jury, people like Wade Allison and George Monbiot would not last 2 minutes. Because in court you rely on evidence. Not bullshitting.

Joseph Conrad wrote: "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain". I believe that these phoney experts like Wade Allison and George Monbiot are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths. I would hope that some time in the future, I can be involved as an expert in another legal case, one where Wade Allison, or George or my favourite baddy, Richard Wakeford (who actually knows better) are accused in a court of law of scientific dishonesty leading to the cancer in some poor victim who followed their advice. When they are found guilty, I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs that their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air.

In the meantime, I challenge each of them to debate this issue with me in public on television face to face, so that the people can figure out who is right. For the late Professor John Gofman, a senior figure in the US Atomic Energy Commission until he saw what was happening and resigned, famously said: "the nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity." This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race. Not from sudden nuclear war. But from the on-going and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which has continued inexorably since then through Windscale, Kyshtym, 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl, Hanford, Sellafield, La Hague, Iraq and now Fukushima, accompanied by parallel increases in cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race.

http://www.counterpunch.org/busby03282011.html

[robdogbucky]

16. "the nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity."

With the help of some governments according to some:


Re: *VIDEO: Leuren Moret /Alfred Webre- Japan nuclear war targets US Canada Mexico and Hawaii

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1430712/pg1


The above interview is one hour long. Some of her claims are really out there, but almost everything she says has some basis in fact. She is a former engineer at Lawrence Livermore Labs and was canned for being a whistleblower about how those labs have contaminated the immediate area they are located in. She has paid a high price to keep getting the word out about the industry.



"...Me, I'm waiting so patiently

Lying on the floor

I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle

Before it rains anymore..."

Jagger/Richards

[chervilant]

19. We must also acknowledge

the damages wrought by the use of depleted uranium in several acts of aggression by our nation.

Do these pathetic hedonists REALLY believe they are immune from the consequences of their relentless despoiling of our precious environment?

[truedelphi]

20. Yes, It is really a tremendous price being paid by lil children in cancer

Wards all across the globe. Depleted uranium should not be allowed, but the "new science" says it is safe.

Last year, the local "Press Democrat" devoted several days worth of first page news to articles written in part by the parents of a three year old who had been diagnosed with a very rare, radiation caused cancer.

But these cancers are no longer going to be rare - we have bombed Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya with the depleted uranium weapons.

One of the points that Leuren Moret can prove scientifically is the one that states: once a glob of matter ends up inside the atmosphere, within five days it is distributed EVENLY across the planet. So the polar bears in the Artic Circle, as well as the penguins in Antartica, will all be experiencing whatever their share of the portion of radioactivity that made it to the upper atmosphere from the Fukushima event.

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. I met Dr. Gofman

He was one of the main scientific voices that we always knew we could count on when the Abalone Alliance was fighting Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. He wsa extremely intelligent and always thoughtful but passionate about sharing with the public the implications of his work on plutonium.

We already had a good working relationship with him prior to Three Mile Island. So when the media contacts that our media outreach collective had cultivated began flooding us asking for comments after first "The China Syndrome" release and later TMI- John Gofman was always available and prepared to explain and defend his his work to all comers for us.

Dr. John Gofman played a critical role in slowing the advance of nuclear power in our nation, and he did so with solid science and personal courage and integrity.

[truedelphi]

14. My hat will always be off for Dr Gofman, but

May I tip my hat to you and all the others who opposed the building of nuke reactors here in California?

I know how the media tended to slam people like you. And how the PR people at PG & E slammed whatever and whoever they could when the media was tapering off in its criticism.


One thing that has galled me so many times over the last few weeks is these Big Nuke Industry PR people talking so proudly about how the nuke industry doesn't have "any plants even near an earthquake fault in California."

Number one that is not true. And number two, there would be several more plants, notably one sitting right on the coastline of Sonoma County - except for all the work by the "weird, pinko commies" who spent years of their lives opposing it being built.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. Thank you

It was an amazing group endeavor, many life time friendships took root then. It was incredible being part of a grassroots organization with many hundreds of active members in dozens of chapters scattered throughout California, using consensus building decision making. Seeing the talent that came together and the depth of committment shown was literally a life althering experience for many of us. It wsa more than worth any ridicule thrown at us.

[Melissa G]

17. Excellent post. Excellent thread so far.Thanks to all. n/t

[drm604]

22. Too late to rec but I'll kick.

Thank you for posting this.

[truedelphi]

23. And thank you for the sig line

And the links you provide.