Nuclear propulsion - political suicide

> An excellent review of space nuclear accidents is presented in this article from the sumnmer 1997 issue of
> Earth Island journal.
>
> http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID!0&journalID=47

I wouldn't exactly call an article that has the gall to write:

'plutonium "is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an
invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly
distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every
person on Earth."'

That's pure scaremongering. There are far more toxic chemicals than
that; and there's no obvious way to give each and every person
one-millionth of a gram is there? Oh wait a second- if we burn it
up in the atmosphere everyone gets some?

But according to the same article:

'In 1964, a US SNAP-9A satellite carrying 2.1 pounds of plutonium
failed to reach orbit. According to a 1989 report by European
nuclear agencies, the payload "vaporized," and plutonium was
"dispersed widely" over the planet.'

Uh huh. That's why we're all dead. No, still breathing. Oh but wait:

Gofman suggests that this one incident is responsible for the
worldwide rise in lung cancer.

Uh huh2. And none of this is due to say, smoking, the leading cause
of lung cancer, and the fact that worldwide smoking has risen in
the same time period?

Look, I'm not claiming that radiation is mothers milk, but the true
effects of the 'facts' presented here are grossly exagerated.

For a rather more informed description of plutonium toxicity check out:

http://www.fortfreedom.org/p22.htm

Apparently he thinks there would be 1 person dead per 2.5kg of
plutonium released. 1 microgram of plutonium ingested gives about a
1 in a million chance of dying. This all sounds rather more plausible.

His offer to inhale/ingest some plutonium BTW was kinda cool. You
can only speculate as to why none of his opponents took him up on it.

Reminds me of the guy who used to go around eating DDT to show how
safe it was. Last time I heard he we still eating it... decades
after the ban.