Category Archives: Commentary

Japanese Nuclear Reactor Disaster

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I did an Internet search to learn the status of the containment structures of the damaged reactors, and the most recent posting I could find was April 6. Most of the articles were posted in March. I’m guessing major news media outlets are losing interest because a “China Syndrome” meltdown (although the exit point from Japan would be somewhere in or near Uruguay) hasn’t occurred. So what is the impact of the disaster if the containment structures hold? There is no doubt the disaster will further add to the fear of nuclear power generation. Japan is hydrocarbon deficient, and had been generating a third of their power needs with nuclear plants. They have stepped up their importation of liquid natural gas via tankers to fill the immediate needs, but that will undoubtedly add expense to an economy that doesn’t need additional expenses.

Do I continue to advocate that nuclear power generation should be a part of our future? You bet I do, and I write that despite Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. My favorite source of information about energy generation is Dr. Petr Beckman, who published the book “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear” in 1976. The primary point of the book, which is still very valid today, is that there is no safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility that it will do the wrong kind of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel.” Nuclear energy is “…far safer than any other form of energy.”

I’m baffled at how casually we accept risks from activities that don’t have the word “nuclear” in their title, even when we have no control over these risks. Anyone who advocates that no risk is acceptable should cut themselves off the power grid. About 1000 people die per year in the U.S. from electrocution. If you overlook the risk of electrocution, what about the risk from mining and burning coal to generate power? There have been 819 deaths in the United States and 52,785 in China from coal mining since 1990. That doesn’t consider the risks to people from the emissions and wastes generated from burning coal. As Dr. Beckman said, there is no method of making energy that is completely “safe.” He advocated that producing plentiful energy is required to preserve economic freedom and prosperity. China, India, Korea, and Russia are not delaying construction of new nuclear reactors, but the United States and some European countries are responding to the Japanese crises by rethinking plans for nuclear facilities. France generates 75% of its energy with nuclear power, and I haven’t found that they intend to shut down their plants.

One consequence of the reactor crises is an increase in “atomic tourism.” Attendance was up by 12 percent on a recent weekend at the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas and by 20 percent at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque. A spokesman there was quoted as saying, “Folks definitely want information about nuclear reactors and nuclear radiation.” People pay $250 a person to tour Chernobyl and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat in the Ukraine. I didn’t find any indications that visits are up at the Nagasaki and Hiroshima museums. However nuclear engineer Joseph Gonyeau said that visits to his excellent and extensive web site was up by 119 percent in March. There are updates on that site about the Japanese disaster from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan’s Nuclear and industrial Safety Agency, and the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The bottom line is that we should do everything possible to learn from this disaster to improve safety. We should not cripple our economic prosperity in decades to come by being the only country that decides not to use nuclear energy to produce electricity.

Now Enjoy “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” as Kindle e-Book

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RockyFlatsFacts.com is pleased to announce that “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats: Urban Myths Debunked” is now available in an e-book (electronic book) version from the Amazon.com Kindle Store. The e-book version includes dozens of new color and b&w photos to enhance your reading experience, especially for those readers who have never visited the inside of a DOE nuclear facility. Once purchased the e-book can be promptly downloaded and enjoyed on your Kindle Reader. [Please note that Amazon’s hand-held Kindle Reader displays e-book images in black & white (4-bit grayscale), so e-book photos will currently display in grayscale on this device. Free PC and Mac reader apps (see below) will however display color images/photos. There are pictures of gloveboxes, plutonium, burning plutonium, damage from the 1969 fire, decontamination workers, and a couple dozen others.

Don’t have a hand-held Kindle Reader? No problem: a totally free Kindle e-book reader application is available for download here for both Windows PC and Mac platforms. Kindle reader app for your Apple iPad is also available here, as are reader apps for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones and mobile devices. With the free app download you also receive a few free e-books: Aesop’s Fables, Pride & Prejudice, and Treasure Island.

I had help with the pictures and e-book. The person who provided the know-how is my friend and colleague, Keith Motyl, and he can be reached at kpmotyl@comcast.net if you are interested in the process of e-book publishing.

Please let us know how you like the newly illustrated e-book.

Soviet Covert Action

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I mentioned the funding of the international anti-nuclear movement by the Soviet Union in an earlier blog posting and mentioned that I intended to do additional research on the matter. I obtained a copy of a report titled, “Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive)” that was published by the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ninety-sixth Congress. The report describes hearings held February 6 and 19, 1980.  The hearings were in closed sessions, and several of the documents listed in the Appendices were labeled “TOP SECRET.”  The report obviously had been declassified. The content made it clear the Soviets didn’t hesitate to use any action to further their cause and harm America. (As an aside, can you believe that some of my family members were surprised at my selection vacation reading material?)

A Deputy Director of the CIA made a prepared statement in the first session followed by questioning by the Congressmen.  The testimony confirms that the World Peace Council was the largest Soviet front group used in propaganda campaigns.  It had funding of over three billion dollars in that year, and one organization it supported was its American affiliate, the U.S. Peace Council. The CIA was prevented by law from doing any surveillance of that domestic organization.  The FBI was responsible for any intelligence gathering within the United States, and the CIA had to depend on them to pass along any intelligence involving foreign activities to them.  Examples of activities organized or influenced by the World Peace Council were numerous peace protests, demonstrations against NATO, and a campaign against the neutron bomb.

The second session, titled “Soviet Forgeries and Disinformation,” began with a statement by Ladislav Bittman, who was the Deputy Director of the Disinformation Department of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service before he defected to the United States. He testified that the “satellite countries” such as Czechoslovakia operated “huge intelligence apparatus that significantly contributes to spreading Soviet influence around the world.”  His department conducted “115 active measures… (consisting mostly of) forgeries leaked either to the press or foreign governments.”  He described how Soviet intelligence used journalists to spread their propaganda and warned, “The press should be more cautious with anonymous leaks.  Anonymity is a signal that the Big Russian Bear might be involved.” He also mentioned that Congressional investigations of the CIA in the 1970s effectively paralyzed that organization.  He observed that Watergate created such a toxic atmosphere in Washington that the Soviets were able to relax their disinformation efforts.  I found it quite interesting that a Congressman asked Bittman whether he had “…ever come across a man or information relative to a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, who was…in the Soviet Union?” Bittman responded, “No, never, no.  The answer is a clear no.”

Bittman also testified that the capture of the embassy and Americans in Tehran was a boon to the Soviet forgery campaign.  The Iranians gave them access to all manner of official State Department documents, letterhead, and the rubber stamps that were used to mark various classification and other designations. Numerous forgeries are described, to include a classified U.S. Army field manual, a faked speech by President Carter intended to strain relations with the Greek Government, several documents with negative information about Egyptian President Sadat and Indonesian President Sukarno, and a report denying that chemical and bacteriological agents stored in Italy had leaked and killed numerous infants. One forgery ties to current events.  It was a bogus CIA report that outlined how members of Islamic religious organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, could be bribed and set against others. One operation, code named Neptune, included planting several boxes of forged documents in Devil’s Lake and Black Lake where a dive team was to be filmed while investigating reports that the Nazis had disposed of information.  The planted documents listed numerous West German officials, including several in West German Intelligence, with faked Nazi backgrounds.

There is a current event that is a reminder of the danger of forged documents. Retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk is being tried for war crimes in Germany, and the FBI has released a report that the Soviet Union likely fabricated a Nazi photo identification card that is key to his prosecution.  Demjanjuk was tried in Israel before being deported from the U.S. to Munich where he is currently on trial again. No known witnesses have placed Demjanjuk at the Sobibor death camp in Poland where the identification card places him as a guard.  The FBI argues the Soviets used faked documents such as the forged identification card to smear anti-communists.

The Appendices include copies of several forged documents designed to incite anger about desegregation in America.  Appendix III is the agenda for the U.S. Peace Council Founding Conference held November 9-11, 1979 in Philadelphia.  Welcoming remarks were given by Representative John Conyers.  Presenters included several U.S. State legislators, U.N. representatives from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Nicaragua, and a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to name just a few.

Attendees at the first hearing were Representatives Aspin (presiding), Boland (chairman of the full committee), Ashbrook, Young, Whitehurst, and McClory.  The main presenter was John McMahon, Deputy Director for Operations, Central Intelligence Agency.  He was accompanied by five other CIA officials.  The second hearing had the same Representatives in attendance with the exception of McClory, who was absent.

Did Lincoln Really Free the Slaves?

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I researched the question after learning why the tax deadline this year is April 18. CNNexplained that the “…bonus days come thanks to Emancipation Day, a little-known Washington, D.C. holiday that celebrates the freeing of the slaves in the district. The text of the Emancipation Proclamation (which is so famous in our history that it is capitalized) shows clearly that the Lincoln did not intend to free slaves except in parts of the country that were in rebellion. The proclamation very clearly did not free any slaves in Union states or areas in rebellious states that had been supportive of the Union. I recommend reading the lengthy proclamation at the link. The proclamation did not apply to 13 parishes of Louisiana, forty-eight counties of West Virginia, and seven counties of Virginia. It is stated those “…excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”

Lincoln had previously taken the position that he would free none of the slaves, all of the slaves or some of the slaves depending on which approach would help preserve the Union. The text of the proclamation makes it clear he settled on it idea of freeing some of the slaves. However, I was surprised to read one article at findarticles.com that takes the position he was completely indifferent to the issue of slavery. Lincoln was relaxing and in a good mood after winning reelection, and one visitor mentioned “the vexatious slavery matter.” Lincoln responded with “…the story of the Kentucky Justice of the Peace whose first case was a criminal prosecution for abuse of slaves. Unable to find any precedent, he exclaimed angrily, ‘I will be damned if I don’t feel sorry for being elected when the n…..s is the first thing I will attend to’.” (The author of the article refused to use elision in reporting his use of the offensive word, “Since Lincoln supporters are in a state of constant denial.”)

The author continues with his analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation that, “No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false.” The denial continues, “The testimony of sixteen thousand books and monographs to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not a real emancipation proclamation at all, and did not liberate African-American slaves.” John F. Hume, the Missouri anti-slavery leader, was said to have told Lincoln the proclamation “…did not…whatever it may have otherwise accomplished at the time it was issued, liberate a single slave.” Henry Clay Whitney “…said the Proclamation was a mirage and that Lincoln knew it was a mirage.” Secretary of State Henry Steward said the Proclamation was an illusion in which “we show our sympathy with the slaves by emancipating the slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

What the proclamation did accomplish was change how history views the Civil War. It was said after the proclamation and continues to be said today that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves

For skeptics or those who are astonished by the information, I suggest an Internet search using the title of this posting. There are several references that provide the same information, although most are written with more understanding about the difficulty of what Lincoln needed to do as President and Commander-In-Chief. I did find it interesting that there are several mentions that Lincoln was convinced whites and blacks could never live together as equals, and his solution was resettling freed blacks in Africa and Latin America in a process he called “colonization.”

Colorado Vote on a Proposal to Close Rocky Flats

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 An extensive fire in 1969 at the Rocky Flats Plant attracted significant attention and led to information that a previous fire in 1957 and an outside storage area called the “903 pad” had released plutonium contamination. I discuss in the book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” (available on this web site, Amazon, and Createspace) that the reputation of the site never recovered from the negative publicity. However, it is apparently not well remembered that the voters of Colorado had an opportunity to express their opinion about whether the plant should remain in operation. As I wrote at the end of Chapter 11 of the book, there was a ballot issue in 1982 to end operations at the plant. The exact wording was, “Shall the constitution of the State of Colorado be amended in order to bring about cessation of nuclear weapons component production in Colorado…” The vote was defeated 584,356 to 326,550. The source of this information is an article published in the Rocky Mountain News November 4, 1982.

At least one person who followed the history of Rocky Flats closely mentioned they weren’t familiar with the vote on the amendment, and I decided I needed to look for additional verification. I was able to locate a reference on ballotpedia.org, which listed all the ballots issues for 1982. Proposition 6 was the measure that would have made it illegal to produce components for nuclear weapons at Rocky Flats. It did not specify which components were included, so production of stainless and other non-nuclear components would have been just as illegal as those made from plutonium.

The Rocky Mountain News article opens with mention that Denver and Pitkin country voters approved a “freeze on nuclear weapons,” but that was rejected in Mesa County. That vote did not have had any impact on Rocky Flats. Components for nuclear weapons manufactured there were shipped to other locations for assembly of the weapons. The proposal to end manufacturing at Rocky Flats was rejected in a statewide vote. A supporter of the initiative said it was believed confusion between the two proposals was part of the reason for the defeat. The coordinator of the Denver Freeze Campaign speculated that “…jobs, particularly with unemployment at its highest point since the Great Depression, might have influenced the verdict about Rocky Flats, which employees 4,700 in its production of triggers for the United States arsenal.” Another proponent suggested that the proposal might have lost votes because it “…may have suggested to voters a unilateral decision by the United States to cease nuclear production.”

Regardless of why the proposal was defeated, I suggested in my book that the proposal might have had a different fate if the vote had been held in the late 1980s. Negative stories about Rocky Flats in 1988 won the site the dubious honor of being the top news story for that year. Of course the raid in 1989 might also have swung a few (or many) votes.

Global Warming Reporting

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This will be the third posting about the issue of global warming. The first point I will make is that the advocates for the idea that man’s activities are causing damage to the climate are moving to change “global warming” to “climate change.” They were wrong in the 1970s when they warned that a new ice age was a certainty, and they might be wrong that the temperatures are rising.  One of them was quoted as saying the fact that temperatures haven’t continued to rise the last few years with increasing levels of carbon dioxide as predicted by the computer models was “a travesty.”  (How dare nature to not comply with the computer models!) However, if they can complete the transition of the mantra to be “climate change,” they are assured of being right. The climate has always changed, and it would be quite safe to predict it will continue to change.

A majority of American people have been convinced that a climactic disaster is looming based on what they have heard about the certainty of coast lines being flooded, increasingly ferocious hurricane seasons, and famines.  I will admit that the level of the oceans has increased.  There was once a land bridge between Russia and the United States. In fact sea levels have increased by about 7 inches in the past 100 years. Of course that isn’t sufficiently dramatic to make a point in a movie, so you should show a depiction of most of Florida and other coastal areas being swallowed by water. The predictions of horrific hurricane seasons have not materialized, and some years have been exceptionally mild. That apparently wasn’t as news worthy as the warnings. And we should stop converting corn into ethanol if we are actually worried about food shortages.

Would you predict that there has been a continuation of the shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice based on recent reports?  Check out the National Snow and Ice Data Center and look at the charts.  The amount of ice coverage is well below the 1979 to 2000 average, but the line is bouncing along near the 2006-2007 level.  I previously printed their charts for 2005 to 2009.  Ice coverage decreased from 2005 to 2007, but there was a significant increase from 2007 to 2008 and 2009. Reading through the explanations of their data you will find that “this month had the sixth-largest snow cover extent since the record started in 1966.”  There is another statement that “Reduced sea ice extent and extensive snow cover are not contradictory…”  I admit I didn’t understand their explanation.

I want to close this by referring to an entertaining lecture given by Michael Crichton titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” I recommend reading the entire lecture, but I will mention a couple of points.  He dismisses the idea that there is “consensus.”  His discussion of that is brilliant. Later in the paper he discusses the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The draft of their 1995 report concluded, “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes.”  That statement was removed and replaced in the final report with “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate.” Reread both statements and contemplate them.  The first draft said their studies hadn’t connected man’s activities to global warming.  The final report “suggests” a “discernible human influence…”

I want to emphasize that I am strongly in favor of showing good stewardship to the planet.  I favor conservation of resources and research into how to make us more energy efficient and less dependent on countries that don’t like us very much for most of the oil we burn.  I’ll stop doing blogs criticizing how the story is being reported when I believe the reporting is being done honestly.