[NukeNet] How Many People Have Nuke Reactors Killed Via "Normal" Emissions?

[Bill Smirnow]

     In 1969 there were  much fewer commercial nuclear power reactors than
there are now which obviously means that the amount of Americans that could
be killed by "normal" reactor emissions [no accidents, just business as
usual] is much grerater. The large increase in human population has to be
taken into account, too.

     Does anyone out there know just how we can ascertain how many people
Gofman's 1969  32,000/year can be extrapolated to now? This can prove
crucial in exposing the hideous serial killer that every nuclear reactor
inherently is.



   > Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive
reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.


The Genius Doctor Who Diagnosed Nuke Power's Deadly Disease
    By Harvey Wasserman
    The Free Press
    Friday 07 September 2007

    The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan
guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the
warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom
ever larger.
    One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear
pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal"
radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year.
    At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic
Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically
reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when
he refused.
    Since then, reactor backers have ceaselessly and erroneously attacked
Gofman and his findings. But they could hardly have picked a more brilliant,
committed opponent. Gofman was both relentless and uncorrupted. His findings
should have doomed from the start an industry he called "insane."
    In addition to being a world-class nuclear chemist, Dr. John William
Gofman was one of history's most important heart specialists. His pioneer
research helped define our modern understanding about cholesterol,
distinguishing "good" fatty acids from bad. Gofman's astonishing medical
discoveries remain at the core of today's common wisdom about diet and heart
disease.
    For that work alone, Gofman was a towering figure. Throughout his life,
he was friend and peer to Nobel Laureates such as Linus Pauling and George
Wald.
    But Gofman was also a nuclear chemist. As part of the Manhattan Project
that built the first atomic bombs, his pioneer work helped lead to the
discoveries of plutonium and certain isotopes of uranium.
    Yet his career suffered from an inconvenient truth: when he discovered
that atomic power plants kill people in large numbers, he refused to shut up
about it.
    As a full professor at the University of California, Gofman's combined
medical and nuclear credentials made him an obvious choice to manage health
research for the Atomic Energy Commission, which both regulated and promoted
the young nuclear power industry. When public questions were raised about
the health impacts of radioactive reactor emissions, Gofman was dispatched
to prove the industry safe.
    But his findings showed that reactors are serious killers. So even
Gofman's towering resume could not protect him from the wrath of an industry
determined to build all the power plants it could. He and co-researcher
Arthur Tamplin were driven from their jobs.
    When their POISONED POWER detailed the killing potential of atomic
energy, Gofman and Tamplin were attacked mercilessly by an industry with
immense investments to protect. The experience showed that no matter how
impeccable their credentials, and no matter how thorough their research, any
scientists whose findings might indicate problems with atomic power would be
automatically "discredited" by industry flacks to who did no comparable
research.
    Even at his passing, the tired attacks on Gofman's findings have
resurfaced.
    But his research remains the gold standard on the health impacts of
radiation. And as a gentle but firm advocate, mentor and friend, his
integrity was matched only by his willingness to step outside traditional
boundaries for what he believed.
    One of Gofman's most powerful and influential moments came in 1974, when
he agreed to defend a civil disobedient named Sam Lovejoy in the small town
of Montague, Massachusetts. A member of a communal organic farm, Lovejoy had
manually knocked over a 500-foot weather tower erected as a precursor to the
building of a large twin reactor complex.
    Gofman agreed to testify in Lovejoy's defense, arguing that building two
nuke reactors constituted a lethal threat to the health and safety of the
community. In a monumental moment for the rise of the anti-nuclear movement,
Lovejoy was acquitted.
    Gofman's pivotal pronouncements appear in the award-winning LOVEJOY'S
NUCLEAR WAR (gmpfilms.com), which has been shown all over the world. As a
pivotal struggle over a "bailout in advance" for new reactor construction
rages in Congress, Gofman's words resonate with a renewed critical
importance:
  "The decision to build nuclear power plants may very well be, for the
first time, a decision that can result in the desecration of the Earth with
respect for life for all future generations."
  "Why do we want to put every city and hamlet of the United States at risk
by building a thousand of these plants? We can get the power from sunshine,
very easily and economically."
  "When we're talking about a mass of a hundred tons or so of material,
melting 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, with water around, with hydrogen being
generated and burning explosively, melting through concrete into soil, when
someone tells me that we're sure it isn't going to go far away, I say that
I've heard various forms of insanity, but hardly this form."
  "Even if this hazard of a meltdown were securely answered, it doesn't
alter for one second my opposition to nuclear power, because I'm concerned
about the fact that whether it melts down or doesn't melt down, you've
created an astronomical amount of radioactive garbage which you must contain
and isolate better than 99.99 percent perfectly, in peace and war, with
human error and human malice, guerilla activity, psychotics, malfunction of
equipment ... do you believe that there's anything you'd like to guarantee
will be done 99.99 percent perfectly for a hundred thousand years?"
    After fifty years of proven failure, the nuke power industry is
demanding still more taxpayer handouts to create still more of this waste.
    The great and good Dr. John W. Gofman warned us all against this
insanity. His words and spirit remain at the core of what must be done to
save this planet.

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    Harvey Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear
Information & Resource Service, and Senior Editor of www.solartopia.org and
www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. For a fuller account
of the amazing life of Dr. John Gofman, see www.beyondnuclear.org.