ABC (2/22/21) had one of many reports that celebrated the Mars landing without noting that the rover was powered by plutonium—or the risks NASA had taken in launching that payload into space.
With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, frequently unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and nowhere in media was the NASA projection that there were 1-in-960 odds of an accidental release of the plutonium on the mission.
“A ‘1-in-960 chance’ of a deadly plutonium release is a real concern,” says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
Further, NASA’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission acknowledges that solar energy could have been an “alternative” power source for Perseverance. Photovoltaic panels have been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers.
One in 100 rockets undergo major malfunctions on launch, mostly by blowing up. NASA in its SEIS (viewable online) described the potential impact of an accidental release of plutonium during Perseverance’s July 30, 2020, launch on the area around Cape Canaveral under the heading “Impacts of Radiological Releases on the Environment:
In addition to the potential human health consequences of launch accidents that could result in a release of plutonium dioxide, environmental impacts could also include contamination of natural vegetation, wetlands, agricultural land, cultural, archaeological and historic sites, urban areas, inland water and the ocean, as well as impacts on wildlife.
It adds:
In addition to the potential direct costs of radiological surveys, monitoring and potential cleanup following an accident, there are potential secondary societal costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities due to launch area accidents. Those costs may include: temporary or longer term relocation of residents; temporary or longer term loss of employment; destruction or quarantine of agricultural products, including citrus crops; land use restrictions; restrictions or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.
NASA was compelled to disclose the estimated odds of an accident, consequences of a plutonium release and alternatives to using nuclear power under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Meanwhile, the US is now producing large amounts of plutonium-238, the plutonium isotope used for space missions. The US stopped producing plutonium-238 in 1988 and began obtaining it from Russia, a trade that was halted in recent years. A series of NASA space shots using plutonium-238 are planned for coming years.
Plutonium-238 is 280 times more radioactive than plutonium-239, the isotope used in atomic bombs and as a “trigger” in hydrogen bombs. There are 10.6 pounds of plutonium-238 on Perseverance.
We dodged a plutonium bullet on the Perseverance mission. The Atlas V rocket carrying it was launched without blowing up. And the rocket didn’t fall back from orbit, with Perseverance disintegrating on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and dispersing its plutonium.
But with NASA planning more space missions involving nuclear power, including developing nuclear-powered rockets for trips to Mars and launching rockets carrying nuclear reactors for placement on the Moon and Mars, space-based nuclear Russian roulette is at hand.
The acknowledgement that “an accident resulting in the release of plutonium dioxide from the MMRTG [Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator] occurs with a probability of 1 in 960” is made repeatedly in the SEIS.
The amount of electricity produced by Perseverance’s plutonium generator is minuscule—some 100 watts, similar to a light bulb.
The solar-powered Mars rover Opportunity, designed for a 90-day mission, kept working for 14 years. (image: NASA)
A solar alternative to the use of plutonium on the mission is addressed at the start of the SEIS, in a “Description and Comparison of Alternatives” section. First is “Alternative 1,” the option adopted, using a plutonium-fueled generator “to continually provide heat and electric power to the rover’s battery so that the rover could operate and conduct scientific work on the planet’s surface.”
That is followed by “Alternative 2,” which states:
Under this alternative, NASA would discontinue preparations for the Proposed Action (Alternative 1) and implement a different power system for the Mars rover. The rover would use solar power to operate instead of a MMRTG.
The worst US accident involving the use of nuclear power in space came in 1964, when the US satellite Transit 5BN-3, powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generator, failed to achieve orbit and fell from the sky. It broke apart as it burned up in the atmosphere. “A worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP 9-A debris to be present at all continents and all latitudes,” according to a 1990 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Swedish National Institute for Radiation Protection; the level of plutonium-238 in the Earth’s environment tripled (LA Times, 7/25/88).
After the SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) accident, NASA became a pioneer in developing solar photovoltaic power. All US satellites now are energized by solar power, as is the International Space Station.
The worst accident involving nuclear power in space in the Soviet/Russian space program occurred in 1978, when the Cosmos 954 satellite with a nuclear reactor aboard fell from orbit and spread radioactive debris over a 373-mile swath from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake in Canada. There were 110 pounds of highly enriched uranium fuel aboard.
I first began writing widely about the use of nuclear power in space 35 years ago, when I broke the story in The Nation magazine (2/22/86) about how the next mission of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle, which blew up on January 28, 1986, was to loft the Ulysses space probe, designed to orbit around the Sun, which was fueled with 24.2 pounds of plutonium-238.
If the Challenger had blown up on that mission, scheduled for May 1986, and released Ulysses’ plutonium, it would not have been six astronauts and teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe dying, but many more people.
Pursuing the issue, I authored the books The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet and Weapons in Space. I wrote and presented the TV documentary Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens and other TV programs. And I have written many hundreds of articles.
The absence in media reporting on the nuclear dangers of the Perseverance Mars rover is not new. In The Wrong Stuff, I include a section on “The Space Con Job.”
I quote extensively from an article published in the Columbia Journalism Review (7–8/86) after the Challenger accident by William Boot, the magazine’s former editor, headlined “NASA and the Spellbound Press.” He wrote:
Dazzled by the space agency’s image of technological brilliance, space reporters spared NASA thorough scrutiny that might have improved chances of averting tragedy—through hard-hitting investigations drawing Congress’s wandering attention to the issue of shuttle safety.
He found “gullibility” in the press. “The press,” he wrote, has been “infatuated by man-in-space adventures,” and “US journalists have long had a love affair with the space program”:
Many space reporters appeared to regard themselves as participants, along with NASA, in a great cosmic quest. Transcripts of NASA press conferences reveal that it was not unusual for reporters to use the first person plural. (‘When are we going to launch?)
In The Wrong Stuff, I also wrote about an address on “Science and the Media” by New York Times space reporter John Noble Wilford in 1990 at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Wilford declared: “I am particularly intrigued by science and scientists…. My favorite subject is planetary science.” After his talk, I interviewed him, and he acknowledged that “there’s still a lot of space reporters who are groupies.” Still, he went on, “Some of the things that NASA does are so great, so marvelous, so it’s easy to forget to be critical.”
On NBC’s Today show (2/18/21), the attitude of the reporters on the morning of the Perseverance landing was as celebratory as the label of the video aired: “Jubilation at NASA Control.” Never was there a mention of nuclear power or plutonium, or the acknowledged risks of an accidental dispersal.
The Global Network’s Bruce Gagnon commented:
I am disheartened that the media shows little inclination to mention the words “plutonium” or “probabilities of accidental release” in their so-called reporting of the Mars rover arrival. You have to question who they work for.
We daily hear the excited anticipation of the nuclear industry as stories reveal the growing plans for hosts of launches of nuclear devices—more rovers on Mars, mining colonies on the moon, even nuclear reactors to power rockets bound for Mars. The nuclear industry is rolling the dice while people on Earth have their fingers crossed in the hope technology does not fail—as it often does.
Gagnon’s Maine-based international organization has been challenging the use of nuclear power and the deployment of weapons in space since its formation in 1992. The US has favored nuclear power as an energy source for space-based weapons (LA Times, 7/25/88). He added:
The media, while ignoring the Mars rover plutonium story, are also guilty of not reporting about the years of toxic contamination at the Department of Energy nuclear labs where these space nuclear devices are produced. The Idaho Nuclear Laboratory and Los Alamos Nuclear lab in New Mexico have long track records of worker and environmental contamination during this dirty space nuke fabrication process.
The public will need to do more than cross our fingers in hopes that nothing goes wrong. We need to speak out loudly so Congress, NASA and the DoE hear that we do not support the nuclearization of the heavens. Go solar or better yet—stay home and use our tax dollars to take care of the legions of people without jobs, healthcare, food or heat. Mars can wait.
Space
The fatal frontier?
Oh No! We just about died again……..
Typical anti-nuclear ranting.
Exactly. The solar evangelists can’t let an opportunity to scare-monger about nuclear energy go unnoticed.
Only Nuclear power offers mankind hope of escaping the prehistoric fossil energy swamp and the catastrophe of global warming. wind and solar are at best, bad ideas born out of badly informed good intentions, and at worst frauds currently being perpetrated by the fossil fuel industries, abetted by fossilized activists who were indoctrinated in the 70’s and 80’s with a terror of nuclear power born out the cold war and by obsolete nuclear technologies
Karl Grossman has made a career out of ceaselessly writing outrageous medical and scientific falsehood… out of malignant hysteria mongering… regarding radiation. The fact is that not only was there no risk to anyone what so ever from the launch of Perseverance with its Pu 238 -powered Radio-Thermal-Generator (RTG), but that radiation itself is basically harmless to humans in other than very very rarely encountered staggeringly high doses, and then pretty much only when the exposure is at an extremely rapid rate. Karl Grossman has no qualifications in either science or medicine. I suggest you get your information not from confirmation-bias and faith-driven, politically-correct promoters of falsehood, but from intellectually honest scientists and physicians. And not from political publications devoid of qualifications to evaluate science and medicine, but instead from peer review respected journals of science and medicine. As I do.
A good source is Wade Allison’s book “Nuclear is for Life”. Wade is a particle physicist who studied enough medicine in general and epidemiology in particular to write what I would call the definitive (for the educated public) compendium of information about radiation. It presents most of the major and key studies of radiation effects of humans on which all our knowledge of such is based, done over the last century. Studies done by peer-reviewed teams of hundreds to thousands of people exposed to known doses and types of radiation, then medically followed for decades (a half century or more in some cases) and compared to matched controls. The results IN EVERY CASE are that radiation has zero ill effects on humans below a very high threshold. Tho you’d never know that reading the malignant massive falsehoods and hysteria Karl Grossman has made a career of spewing out.
More general sources about nuclear power (tho not dealing with RTGs powering robotic space missions) include George Erickson’s book “Unintended Consequences”, which is available free on the web.
My qualifications to sort fact from fiction when it comes to medicine and science include training in science (a degree in biochemistry) at Harvard, an MD, and years of specific study of the effects of radiation on humans. I’ve also been all my adult life a “far leftist” and tireless fighter for social justice and public health. I endorse the near 100% accuracy of the information in the above-cited books.
Fair seriously embarrasses itself by printing such massive and deadly falsehood as that in Karl’s piece. Makes me wonder how much its editors care about facts of science and medicine, vs printing ideology-driven, faith-driven, confirmation bias-driven falsehood.
Here’s what I would argue is the piece Fair SHOULD have run on the occasion of the successful landing of Perserverance on Mars. I wrote it the day that occurred.
————
In all the reporting on the successful landing of Perseverance on Mars yesterday, there has been very very little reporting… most people commenting simply censored mention of… its plutonium 238 based “Radioactive Thermal Generator” (RTG) electric power supply, which made possible this, past major Mars landers (the two Viking landers), and deep space missions (the Gallileo Jupiter mission, the Cassini Saturn mission, the earlier Voyager missions that photographed Jupiter, Saturn, and provided our only close up photos of Uranus and Neptune and their moons, the mission to Pluto recently)
Plutonium 238 is an isotope of plutonium that has a half life of about 90 years. Its half life is in a rare “Goldilocks” region… not too short, not too long… so that it is very very radioactive and thus physically thermally HOT for many many years. This heat is converted into electricity using a sophisticated thermocouple-like device (a Peltier device), making for a source of 50 to 500 watts of power that lasts decades, with NO MOVING PARTS, ideal for decades long space missions.
Plutonium 238 is NOT the same isotope as used in nuclear reactor and atomic bombs. That’s Pu 239. Pu 238 is not of any use in either power reactors or making bombs. It is very difficult to make, and the world supply of it dropped nearly to zero when its production in the USA and USSR / Russia was abandoned (RTGs were used by the CIA and NSA in deep water spying devices, remote spying devices, etc.). FORTUNATELY, The US is now again ramping up production of Pu 238.
Anti nuclear liars and frauds, such as quack doctor Helen Caldicott and third rate junk scientist Michu Kaku ,\led public efforts to PREVENT exploration of space, protesting the launch of the Cassini mission to Saturn (one of the single greatest achievements of science by our species!) with a tsunami of LIES about (non-existent) dangers from radiation … to humans here… if space missions with RTGs failed during launch, fell back to earth, and their Pu 238 got dispersed. These alarms are 100% in all respects BUNK Falsehoods.
In fact, things with far more of and more dangerous radioactive isotopes… fission products from operating nuclaer reactors… have already fallen back to earth, as satellites the USSR and USA orbited with WORKING NUCLEAR REACTORS fell back to earth. But the total amount of radiation still was so minescule, distributed into the vastness of the atmosphere, that there was zero danger of even minor increased risk of cancer to anyone.
RTGs are manufactured to exacting standards. You can drop them from miles high, pepper them with high power machine gun fire… and they still will not release their Pu 238.
MORE NEEDS TO BE PUBLICLY SAID about how nuclear technology has made space exploration in general… and the current successful missions to Mars in particular… possible. The public needs to understand how centrally important and beneficial this technology is. AND how totally lacking in risk of harm it is.
—marty
Martin H. Goodman MD
More specifics regarding the huge falsehoods of selective neglect of centrally relevant data that is Karl Grossman’s technique for his hysteria-mongering and misdirection, in this article:
If you look at the radiation levels in the atmosphere and in humans resulting from the falling to earth and burning up in the atmosphere of US and Soviet nuclear reactors that were orbited in the 60’s, the doses come out to 1000 fold or less lower than the minimum dose that could possible cause even the most minute increased risk of cancer. Karl neglects to note this, for it would counter his false and hysterical, fear-mongering message. This based on what ALL of the key studies… without exception… of radiation effects on humans done over the last century (all of which I’ve gone over in the original and in analysis of them) show.
Plutonium itself is relatively harmless stuff, contrary to what science and medicine deniers like Karl would have readers believe. In one (less than entirely ethical… no informed consent was even gotten) experiment by the military during the Manhattan project days, “volunteers” were injected over a period of years with doses of plutonium 10 to 20 times greater than that which, had the dose been received rapidly, would have killed them. Put into the blood stream directly by injection slowly and gradually over a period of years, this much plutonium showed NO ill effects at all. The (admittedly grossly abused) subjects live to ripe old ages, and died of causes unrelated to radiation. Giving the lie to the commonly touted falsehood anti-nuclear hacks love to parrot about “plutonium is the most deadly poison on earth”. In fact, it’s relatively harmless. We’re talking doses 100,000 times and more greater than anything one might receive from 100 plutonium power sources blowing up on the launch pad or falling to earth and burning up in the atmosphere.
Karl’s suggestion that solar panels could be used for Curiosity or Perseverance is PURE BUNK. NASA switched to plutonium RTGs for Curiosity and Perseverance out of NECESSITY: Those missions simply could not be accomplished without plutonium RTGs.
The early Spirit and Opportunity rovers weighed about 400 lbs. Their solar panels were a frequent problem, not making power at night, and resulting in those rovers shutting down when their solar panels got covered with dust. The low total energy available limited how much science could be done with them. The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in contrast weigh about 2200 lbs, with FAR more power-requiring science equipment and mobility equipment. For those missions to succeed, a source of power that is small, compact, and producing power reliably 24 / 7 / 365 for years is essential. Only a plutonium RTG meets this requirement. Of course, Karl is silent about probes BEYOND Mars, where plutonium RTGs are absolutely essential for near all missions due to lack of sunlight power.
[The Juno Jupiter probe DID use solar panels… but it was a small mission that needed power only for hours out of many days of orbiting Jupiter, so it could store up power for days in a battery from its solar panels, to be used for short periods of time when the craft dove close to Jupiter’s clouds. This was an unusual mission, and could get away with solar panels… barely. In fact it would have made the mission more capable and reliable if they had used a plutonium RTG, but there was too little Pu 238 available at the time, and the RTG would have made the mission cost too much.]
Bottom line: Plutonium RTGs are overwhelmingly safe, and pose zero threat of any kind to human health even in the event of a rocket blowing up on the lunch pad OR failing during launch and the rocket burning up as it falls back to earth. Plutonium RTGs are uniquely required to power some of the most brilliant, inspiring achievements of science ever accomplished by our species, such as: The Voyager missions, Galileo to Jupiter. Cassini to Saturn. The two Viking landers on Mars in the 70s, and the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers decades later. To name just some.
There is no place here for dissemination of falsehood and hysteria mongering by radiation-o-phobic, science and medicine ignorant, confirmation-bias and politically correct, faith-driven ideologues like Karl Grossman.
Such unabashed, uncritical techno utopian nuke evangelism is as absurd as the rabid anti-nuke stance.
Must be some definition of “unabashed, uncritical techno utopian nuke evangelism” that I am unaware of. Since you provide no specifics or rational opposing counter-points to Dr. Goodman’s comments … *your* comment is essentially meaningless. I imagine most will take them exactly for that.
Care to elaborate? What specifically do you object to in Dr. Goodman’s comments? I know, it’s difficult to organize ones thoughts and marshal facts and evidence … far easier to toss out some meaningless epithet.
NASA wastes tens of millions of dollars on environmental reviews and other compliance measures required by their use of MMRTGs, virtually none of which would be required for solar powered spacecraft. The reviews required for the Cassini probe alone was $65 Million. NASA has developed sophisticated solar power systems for their spacecraft. They should use them.
You neglect to mention, Paul, that neither the Cassini, Galileo, Voyager, nor the New Horizons missions would have been at all possible without plutonium RTGs… that NONE of those missions could have worked AT ALL with solar panels… making your comment (whether due to your ignorance of physics and engineering, or due to deliberate intended misdirection and deceit on your part via selective neglect of the centrally critical data I just mentioned) utterly factually false in its most important claim.
As for the environmental studies you allege were required: The EPA is infamous for its dishonesty in falsely claiming dangers where none what so ever exist. It has a truly foul, thoroughly contemptible record in this respect. A good example are the decades the EPA spent shilling for radon abatement scam and con artists, claiming to this day risk of cancer from radon in residential basements, when both the EPA’s own studies and all other credible studies show zero risk from the minuscule levels of randon found. The EPA simply is not be believed. Period. Note also that where there WAS risk and need of action (as in the water in Flint, MI) the EPA sat on its hands. Note that in Ramsar, Iran, people have lived for generations in an environment with a background radiation of 300 millisieverts / year. 2/3 of this exposure is from radon gas, breathed in. This is an IMMENSELY greater dose than any the liars and frauds at the EPA find in residences they say need “radon abatement”. Yet studies of the population of Ramsar show ZERO increase in lung cancer over matched controls in nearby areas. [Typical background radiation in most places is 3 mSv per year.] This also shows what malignant bunk is the LNT hypothesis, with its grossly fraudulent claim that there is no threshold for harm from radiation. In fact, the opposite is what all key studies of radiation effects on humans over the last century (those with large numbers of humans involved, studied for decades, and done in fashions all agree to be the highest quality research) show: Radiation is harmless in all but exceptionally massive and rapid exposures.
As for those expensive EPA reviews… if indeed what you wrote is factually correct (unlike the rest of what you wrote) … They are a fraud… and should not be required. But… to put this fraud in perspective… a few tens of millions of dollars is chump change for space missions costing a billion or more!
Karl, When I reviewed the power source of the rover I was also in shock.
A 10.6 lb plutonium radio isotope would be absolutely lethal if it were to leak.
Speaking of radioactive decay; I am very curious as to the current exposure rate of this vehicle and also the possible biological impact a radioactive leak of this type of gamma source would have on this planet as I am well aware of what it could do on ours.
Regards