Regarding science and scientists: Ted Taylor, one of the more prolific nuclear bomb designers in the US who later turned to anti-nuclear activism, did say that he would understand it if the general public lined up every scientist in the world and had them shot.

Note that he said he would understand, not that he would agree.

The real problem is that our science and technology have proceeded very rapidly, but our social behavior hasn't changed a whole lot since caveman days. We've still got plenty of wannabe god-king-emperors running around, working off the old ancestral alpha-male chimpanzee theme.

By the midpoint of this century, we are expecting to see 150 million environmental refugees. By contrast, the worst areas in the world today, Iraq and Sudan, have together created perhaps 3 million refugees? Where are these people going to go?

If we can't agree to cooperate and solve the global warming and warfare problems, you can expect the 21st century to make the 20th century look like an incredibly peaceful era. Science has a role to play - not in developing nuclear or biological weapons, but in developing clean, renewable energy sources.

Unfortunately, far more is spent by the US government these days on nuclear and biological warfare than on renewable energy development.

The entire toll of the global nuclear race of the past 60 years is still not fully accounted, as this article shows. The weapons production facilities scattered around the country are still slow-motion disasters. The problems in the Soviet Union are just as bad as the problems in the US - but the US is still pushing ahead with a new nuclear weapons production plan. See:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901863.html

People didn't understand the dangers of radioactivity back in the 50s, due to their lack of knowledge of biochemistry and molecular biology. They didn't realize that the radioactive side-products of fission like strontium-90 would stay in the body permanently (strontium-90 acts like calcium and is incorporated into bone, leading to leukemia and other disorders).

Thus, these definitions of 'rem exposure' are pretty problematic. If you walk over the Trinity bomb site, you get a low exposure. If you eat some dirt there, on the other hand, you could be setting youself up for a long-term cancer effect. The nuclear industry really hates to talk about these issues!

On the good news side, the idiotic "Divine Strike" plan for the Nevada desert was cancelled. This would have been an attempt to recreate a nuclear-scale explosion using conventional explosives 'for research purposes' which would have spread contaminated dirt and dust all over the region:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2007/jun/27/062710103.html

Not only are atomic bombs and war making, in general, deadly for humans . . . it is destructive of the planet.

The Truman bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima lives on in our conscience -- but it also began a "heating" of the planet.

That's not to argue against the burning of fossil fuels as the cause of Global Warming, but certainly exploding atomic weapons all over the planet hasn't helped it.

The sociopaths who give us war -- and the PNAC continues to lead them -- not only want to keep the occupation of Iraq going, they want to invade Iran --

AND . . . they want nuclear weapons in outer space.
Militarizing the skies will benefit no one --

The readings in Baghdad are almost 2,000 times normal from the microscopic specks of depleted uranium we have scattered around that country during the conflict in Iraq.

It's only about a 1,000 times normal in most places of Iraq. My-my, we sure have learned a lot about radiation hazards; wonder why we still use DU ammo every single day over there, and in Afganistan?

Well, we have it and it is fine ammo, may as well use it;___ who really cares?

There is another swell article on today's Common Dreams about the dangers posed for all of us by using DU for weapons, ___ if anyone does care.

One could rewrite the Universal Soldier song to reflect scientists--"they really are to blame." Without them, Hitler would stand alone(and the idea that Hitler was going to get the bomb first supposedly motivated the US plans--but who was making the bomb on the Nazi side-plumbers? No, scientists.).
They really are to blame.

Insanity rules the Earth.

Scientists also advanced medicine and our understanding of the natural world, kelmer. They have saved you and yours many times over and have given us this ability to voice our opinions online. Scientists are people who use a logical and proven method for understanding the world. Non-scientists use and commission that knowledge for good or evil.

Einstein said: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones". He understood that his discovery would be used for evil and spent the rest of his life trying to prevent it. He also said: "The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."

Demonizing scientists is demonizing the understanding of nature, of God's art.

North-east of Alamogordo and White Sands Monument you can see round clearings that were to be for other tests above ground. The project was moved to Nevada where residents suffered terrible radiation effects from above ground testing.

Savanna River Project, Rocky Flats, Hanford, WA, Lawrence Livermore, Carlsbad, NM,… all these places are sites of extreme concern to public safety and there are so many more!

I say Carlsbad, NM because Governor Bill Richardson lobbied against using Carlsbad as a dump before he was Bill Clinton's DOE guy. The DOE promised us that Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) would only dispose of gloves and other items of low radiation. But, we now have high level waste being shipped across the country to be stored in the salt bed where salt will collapse around it and isolate it "forever". Richardson flipped when he worked for Clinton.

The biggest danger to us in the present, is that high level waste is being shipped across the country!

C'mon folks (and author), let's have a little sanity here. This is such OLD information, I cannot believe Than has the balls to reiterate what is now common knowledge. Cripes, why not mention that man's first attempts to create fire burnt several people?

First off, this was all uncharted territory and truely bleeding-edge science/engineering. "Standards" for radiation exposure at the time were at best embryonic, and were based on work that the Curies did with radium. Trinity released radiation and EM that was previously almost unknown. It actually took until the 1950s using results from above-ground tests that led to the first set of national standards.

Simply put, when Trinity (and many subsequent tests) was detonated, Manhattan Project scientists had no idea what sort of a Pandora's Box they had opened.

But We KNOW NOW and there Are STILL ATOMIC ADVOCATES! Manifest Insanity, indeed.

Hi MNBILL: Shipping nuclear waste is a major concern, it is very dangerous. But I believe not shipping it, and instead use it in weapons is the biggest danger we face.

And this is old news Shane? Sanity?

It's a damn good reminder for everyone and it brings up discussions like this. Perhaps these type of discussions will awaken some in power who could initiate some fixes for the real and present dangers.

Atomic waste will eventually be the cause of all life on this planet ending. And it could end pretty soon if we don't take strong measures to fix the problems, like the one NMBILL just mentioned.

No one, not even scientists, have an understanding of the dangers or radiation. 60 years of an infantile atomic science with very few open eyed scientists has yielded only a few incidental observations, most of which have been kept from the public. No govenment wants nuclear incidents and their effects to be investigated because the knowledge that would be acquired would force responsibilities on them that they refuse to accept.

More than half of the future children of soldiers returning from the Iraq wars will have birth defects or complications from the radiation that out troops are spewing around Iraq in the form of DU munitions. The number of Iraqis that we are wounding is in the millions if not tens of millions.

Currently the stats of horrible birth defects for the children born to the two Gulf War vets, is over two thirds. They are born with missing arms,legs, fused fingers, no eyes or mouths, no sex organs, etc. It is horrible. Two thirds of the vets from the first war are now "permanently" disabled from inhaling DU dust. Our government calls it a Gulf War Syndrome.___ Sure, right.

Any and everyone in Iraq, almost everyone who has been there for a few hours, will eventually die from radiation posioning, it may take up to thirty years, but they are all dead and they do not know it.

Cindy Sheehan is planning to go there, I wish she wouldn't.

As an (ex due to disability: oxygen 24/7) RN with 24 years of experience, I saw something most peculiar, along these lines.

I live about 3 miles east of Loris, South Carolina, USA, in Horry County. I used to work at Loris Community Hospital.

Later on, I went to work at The Mullins Hospital, in Mullins, South Carolina, in Marion County, which later on merged with Marion Hospital, and became Marion County Medical Center.

I noted something vague, but most peculiar.

Once in a rare while, we'd have a colonoscopy, at LCH. More often than not, we had gastroscopies for stomach ulcers, instead.

Now, I was working one county over, about 30 to 35 miles west of where I live, and I was suddenly seeing LOTS of colonoscopies.

And the colonoscopies were producing a notable amount of POLYPS (pre-cancer), and a visible amount of a diagnosis of cancer, as well.

And we did far fewer gastroscopies for stomach ulcers.

There was a significant difference in the patient clientele between one county versus the other not more than 30 miles away from each other.

I mentioned this to one of our two surgeons. He said that yes, they knew this area had an unusually high incidence of colon cancer, and that no one knew why. His end statement was that there was no telling what had been put in the ground as long even as 100 years ago, that might be unknown, and highly toxic to us.

You know, I always thought the water there tasted different, strange, and I never could put my finger on it.

Science is what it is, it is not netural. It serves to sustain science and like many other things wants a dominant role in how we see the world. As if the best way to see things is by science. It is not. The reason it is not is because every person has a blueprint to see the world and this diversity is lost in scientific values. For everything science touches there is already a plan that exists, and science can not improve these things.

The other aspect of science that is particularly distubing is the lack of ehtics and out-right lies that we hear about 20 or 50 years after we are subjected to experiments without our knowledge or consent.

We didn't know is a lame excuse.

And what scientists do not know and will never know, because of a fragmented approach, is that science creates more problems that is solves.

I resent being told that science doesn't do unethical destructive things, it is other people.

If Hiroshima was a warning, Nagasaki was a war crime.

Shane thinks it's old news. Maybe he should ask his friends to see how many know this. I think he'll be quite surprised by the result. (Or maybe he hangs out with a better class of people than me?)

YO SHANE!!! WHAT'S THE HALF-LIFE OF NEWS???

Americans prefer their news bland and celebrity-filled. Murder of a wife? Missing child?!? I'm tuning in. CIA fomented coup? Who cares?

Depleted uranium will be a war crime. That being said, using WP ammo near civilian populations already is and that hasn't stopped the US one bit.

Peace to you and yours.

I really like the 2:10 p.m. post of ezeflyer. If we truly want to be voices of reason we need to sober up and deal in distinctions; otherwise, we'll be simplistic labellers like the neocons and hawks. In their benighted view, all Al Qaeda's are just the same just as all Communists were supposed to be the same.

So, what's the answer to our need for a new source of energy? What's that George??? You want NUCLEAR???

You mean like the bombs, nuclear???
"No, it's like nuclear, the latest addition to the list of 'renewable alternative energy sources.'"

Hey, but what about that earthquake in Japan?

Here's what the newspapers in Japan published...initially downplaying the danger as we've come to recognize happens ALL THE TIME (remember how safe 9/11 clean-up was???)

Japan Times:
Flames and black smoke were seen pouring from the No. 3 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, which shut down automatically during the quake.
Japan Today:
TEPCO announced later in the day that water containing radioactive material leaked from one of three reactors that had suspended operations for regular checks and some of the water was released into the nearby Sea of Japan. But the level of the radioactive material in the water was below the legal standard, the utility company said.

But AP tells a more complete and frightening story that is headlined: Dozens of problems at quake-hit plant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070717/ap_on_re_as/japan_quake

What's that George??? You don't worry about earthquakes since they're only in California??
###

Science and scientists were persecuted, imprisoned and killed by the theocracy during the Dark Ages. Science demonizers here and in the Republican theocracy would lead us along that path once more.

Dozens of nuclear facilities are near large earthquake fault lines in the United States. Some sit right on fault lines. The largest earthquake in our history was in 1812, an 8.0 in Missouri. The last large quake in Alaska a few year ago raised the earth on one side of the fault over twenty feet.

Shane, I disagree, if you asked anyone if exposure to radiation was safe, even back then few would have knowingly risked it.

You do not need absolute knowledge to know better than to spread that much radiation on unsuspecting people. The scientists had more knowledge of the radiation involved and took steps to protect themselves.

This PROMPT NOTICE of radiation exposure is proof that it was known at the time that this level of radiation was in fact dangerous. Secrecy was placed above all else just like our current administration.

Evelyn Smith wrote: "Currently the stats of horrible birth defects for the children born to the two Gulf War vets, is over two thirds. They are born with missing arms,legs, fused fingers, no eyes or mouths, no sex organs, etc."

If true, one more shocking fact about the wars. CItation please?

Reading the article on the reactor shutdown after the quake in Japan, one bit was that accidents are fairly common and it related one where a "corroded" pipe burst, scalding to death a number of employees. One of the things not brought out often by the pro-nukes people is the fact that metals, after long exposure to hard radiation, start to transmute. They may become weakened and fail. Pipes, valves, turbines, radiators, failsafe mechanisms.

Remember that many plants have been constructed by the lowest bidders, and that graft and bribes often signs off on inspections. (does any of that sound familiar?)

Sorry, but NO NUKES IS GOOD NUKES!

When Clinton declassified the DOD papers and brought all the information to one agency it made the information about nuclear experiments available under the freedom of information act. He did this at great risks I would add.

The issue that innocent people were in harms way is one thing but it does not stop there. Atomic veterans were selected to view the tests and wore detection badges to measure the amount of radiation exposure they recieved.

Confirmation Landmark? Go to Google and ask for depleted uranium. Read all of the reports, some will deny that DU is a health hazard. Most are written by doctors and scientists who state otherwise. The government is attempting to cover the truth. Of course that is nothing new. Also this website is an excellent source of info but DU.

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/DU/KYagasakiOnDU.pdf

A charge held against Sadam was that he had "bombed his own people." It is good to know that Truman committed this crime in a far, far worse way. Why was one vilified and the other murdered?

In 1945, Nuclear scientists wrote a report for our government, that detailed how depleted uranium could be used in weapons and how to also use it for dirty bombs. Our government has been aware of the dangers of nuclear waste since 1945. To the best of my knowledge, Bush SR. was the first to authorize it's use.

you know, I wonder if it may be more productive for us and everyone to stop thinking and saying whose fault it is and just clean the mess up. It's our mess now.

Check this out... Koyaanisqatsi, Life out of balance; Powaqqatsi, Life in transition; Naqoyqatsi, Life as war.

http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/

I wonder about those who come here and demonize science. As one commenter pointed out, demonizing those trying to understand nature is what created the Dark Ages. And as Hobbes could have told you, life without science would be "nasty, brutish, and short." People on the left who criticize science give the left a bad name just as much as Religious Right wackos give a bad name to the right by making similar criticisms.

Science provides humans with the power of knowledge. Each of us can use that power for human welfare or for selfish goals at the expense of human welfare. Many have pointed out that the development of that power has progressed at a far faster rate than the wisdom to use that power and that may be our undoing. And progressives are generally aware that corporations accelerate the rate of increasing power and do so for selfish goals, while discouraging the development of wisdom to use that power for human welfare and that, among other reasons, is why dismantling the corporation-based social order should be the focus.

Ike says, "The real problem is that our science and technology have proceeded very rapidly, but our social behavior hasn't changed a whole lot since caveman days. We've still got plenty of wannabe god-king-emperors running around, working off the old ancestral alpha-male chimpanzee theme." This hits the crux of the issue! Spiritual teachings, the RIGHT side of the brain has been (along with women and teachings of the indigenous which come from very strong intuitive bases of tradition) cordoned off. Mankind has been playing with half a cerebral pack and thus remained EMOTIONALLY stunted at a primal dog-eat-dog level. To introduce such heinous weapons into hands so primitive and disregarding of life (for all the BULLSHIT about "right to life") is antithetical to any sane society.
Evelyn Smith: Thank you for tirelessly teaching people about the "gift that keeps on giving," as per depleted uranium and its contaminating elemental cousins.
BIRDY: I agree, science is so fraught with arrogance (like men who get lost and refuse to stop for directions) that they often fail to see their own blindspots while purporting to speak for absolute truths.
Linda Sutton: thanks for the Japan quake posting. Guess they'll start selling caviar and sushi that glows...

Kivals: I agree with much of what you say in support of science, but it has also done its part to marginalize certain sensibilities that could add immeasurably to the human experience. Also, in this epoch where greed trumps everything else for far too many, certain tools become weapons in the wrong (so many!) hands!

No, Evelyn, I do not believe it will be more productive to say we are all in this mess now. This mess is ongoing. Every day the nuclear industry pushes to try to get "clean, affordable, energy" as they call it, telling us the same lies they told back in the 70s when anti-nuclear activists had to fight them off. Oh, they got some of their plants built. They get millions of dollars in subsidies to build these monstrosities, got congress to give them freedom from liability in the event of a disaster, and then, in the event of a disaster, they will rob the treasury again to "clean up the mess we are all in." Yet, when they sell the power from these plants--that part is to be privatized and monies made go to stockholders. Hmmm? What's wrong with this picture? Same old "conservative" mantra--socialize the costs and liabilities, privatize any profits or gains. No! Damn it! They've done this with chemical dump sites and other toxic wastes. They've made their big bucks and then deserted areas for the taxpayer to come in and clean up the mess--if it gets cleaned up. These are the people who preach "responsibility" if a woman on welfare gets $300 a month to feed a child. We need to call these people the criminals that they are. If you risk killing and deforming people for the next 50,000 years, and risk contaminating a goodly part of the earth for that amount of time in order to build a giant water kettle--and that is all a nuclear power plant is--then you are a liar to call it cheap, renewable energy. They have no where to store the waste they are creating now--they store it in huge drums on site. No one wants this crap buried near their water tables--and guess what, no matter what water table it is near, eventually it makes in into the ocean. There is nothing cheap about the Russian roulette they are playing. "We" are not in this together. It is them against us--it is a bloated, dangerous, tax-consuming entity that doesn't care how many people they kill in the long run as long as they have "limited liability" and profits now. The insurance companies won't even insure these things--for a reason!!!!

Good post holymoly.

Siouxrose is correct. But we need to separate the corporate "scientists" who sell out, lie and produce harmful substances for profit from the scientists who do research for the common good.

Sometimes scientists discover dangerous things like nuclear fission and dynamite. Einstein and Nobel did so, and spent the rest of their lives trying to prevent their use in war.

Correction above- Northwest of Alamogordo!

I agree with Evelyn, the worst atrocity about this whole war is we are silently using dirty bombs and that effects everybody… for hundreds of billions of years. Longer than humans will be here, we need some plate tectonics to clean the place up.

THAT IS A CRIME IN ITSELF!

We have lost 11,000 U.S. soldiers that have fought in the first Gulf War, and 256,000 have files claims of Gulf War Syndrome. Think of that, since 1991 11,000 out of 696,841 deployed to Iraq in 91 have died for strange reasons. Seattle Post (ref)

Scientists did warn the military of the danger of radiation during the Manhattan Project, but the military used soldiers to test the effects of exposure. Much the same as MKULTRA experimented with mind control.

My dad served on the Manhattan Project, and never seemed to suffer any effects. The VA checked him for radiation a few years ago and found nothing abnormal; he is in O.K. health and is 82 years old. I have worked on land contaminated by radiation, inhaling blowing dust where fallout has landed. I don't see it as sure death, I believe a lot has to do with the person and the nature of exposure.

DU is a particle that settles in the lungs and is absorbed by your system, it different than exposure to radiation in that it's a particle and not a ray, when you leave it goes with you. I condemn it's use and I fear for anyone exposed to it. What Evelyn says I believe, everyone exposed to the elements in Iraq from now till the end of time will have DU in their system. In time the wind will spread it for miles!

Where I disagree is, I believe the more you accumulate (the longer you are there) the more likely you are to develop symptoms.

---

gwmRNpozSC July 17th, 2007 4:01 pm -You know, I always thought the water there tasted different, strange, and I never could put my finger on it. -

The radioactive element Tritium will dissolve with water like food dye, and in Georgia the Savanna River Project has leaked radioactive elements into the surrounding aquifer. I you are poisoned they say you experience a metallic taste in your mouth.

No telling what's in the water! It could be any number of chemicals or radioactivity. That's what scares me is I don't trust the government to test the water and tell me the truth.

Hello all: i have a theory about USSR. USSR wasn't evil, the evil empire was the USA, along with allies. USSR just developed weapons of mass destruction and an extreme program of defense as a response-reaction to the U.S.A. and allies. Just like Chavez who bought war-planes from Russia as a response-reaction-deffense from U.S imperialism. It shows you real well, that the bad guys in this movie is USA and its imperialist dog allies

Everything you wrote there is right on Holy Moly.

What I meant by not spending a lot of time delving into the past and blaming those that started it, is we should instead instead start cleaning it up and work to end the use of atomic power. There are over five hundred million tons of atomic waste to store forever, and every day we add to the tonnage. It woud be more productive to clean it up, we already know who started it and whose fault it is.

A far as scientists go, they have done some wonderful things and some horrible things. They have initiated some things that could end all life on Earth. One thing I've always noted is, the American Indians didn't have a lot of high tech scientists and this country was in a lot better shape before we got here.

In response to those who think there is a demonization of science in my posts here. First, let me say that it is only demonization or persecution if untrue. I don't even like those words. Science is not netural. There is as much science propaganda as political or religious and not much of it is the truth. The nuclear industry is just the most glaring example of the cesspool of corruption that exists within the scientific community. That being said, not all science is corrupt. I now a few scientists and I like them inspite of what they do.

Really, all I ask it that you question: Is it the truth or lie. The lies are so prolific, that we have all been living with lies. That is a great harm to society.

Birdy: this is why they wear white coats (robes) and speak in mumbo jumbo (Latin mass)--or Greek and some Latin medical terms. It is to give them special "status" above the laity. But if you delve into a lot of their theories, they are just religious nuts like half of the world, trying to protect their turf. I happened to think that the HIV = AIDS theory is a load of hooey. Don't get me wrong, people have immune system problems, but a virus?--one hasn't been isolated in the sense that other viruses have been isolated. In fact, one Episcopal priest who never took drugs (BIG CLUE #1) and yet, 19 years after testing repeatedly HIV positive (BIG CLUE #2) was never sick a day in his life. NOVA presented this case on its AIDS special. The priest said he didn't take medicine because he trusted in God--the scientists said they were testing him to find out what "miraculous element was in his blood that kept him from developing the disease." Now, who is the more "religious" in this scenario? HELLO, take their drugs and you get really, really sick--like Magic Johnson did--but he threw out the AZT and HELLO, got better. People have to do their own research and believe the "high priests" of their choice. It's your body; your life, you should be able to decide. But you should have the truth and not selective truth. When they tell you you are HIV positive, they should also have to read the instruction insert that goes something like this: "if you test positive on this test, it doesn't mean you have HIV and if you test negative, it doesn't mean you don't have it." With logic like that, you can't get here from there. If people understood the theory behind HIV = AIDS, they would NEVER commit suicide upon being told they were HIV positive. See the Harper's Report: Out of Control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science by Celia Farber, March 2006--a pretty good recap of the HIV=AIDS theory. That editor took hell for telling the other side. Of course, like 9-11, those in power have a vested interest in trying to debunk. I say again, put all the cards on the table, and let each person decide.

skeptical - You might try out your USSR not being evil at the time of the development of nuclear weapons theory on the millions of people killed in their camps, or the 10s of millions that were kept behind a wall for 40 odd years. The soviet union would have developed the bomb first, had they the scientific knowledge. I remember what Oppenheimer said that he thought when the bomb was successfully detonated. He said he thought of a line from the the Bhava Ghita " I am death, the destroyer of worlds".
The nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle. We should be thinking of ways to make nuclear power safer, and byproducts less harmfull.

Sigma, there is no way possible to make those man made poisons safer.

There is not enough uranium on the planet to keep the 2,000 nuke pants operating for another thiry or so years. Why spend bilions of dollars bulding, maintaining and operating plants, which will have to be repaced in the future anyway? We have to SAFELY store that deadly waste forever, and it is abslutely not possible to accomplish that. There are millions of tons of it stored already and a great deal of it has been just buried, out of sight, out of mind, much has just been tossed into the oceans. God help us all___ please!!

This is news??!! You must be joking.

Holymoly, you raise some very interesting points here. I totally agree with you about the true viability of nuclear energy, in my state we are paying 20 billion in stranded costs for nuclear energy. (hidden of course in our energy legislation - you won't see it on your utility bill) Also, the 40 years they had to store the waste but didn't.

Here is my 2 cents on HIV. As I understand it there is NO proof that HIV causes AIDS. Further, there are other disturbing aspects to the virus. Like pieces of DNA have been found in unusal places that might lead one to believe the virus has been weaponized. I'm not a microbiologist so I will stop there. The information is on the web if you are interested. This is most likely a technological disease, and not the product of viril evolution.

I think all of this is lessons learned. Before you put your trust that science will solve something as complex as the world climate you have to ask some serious questions. (First look at what is already being done to the atmosphere) If you decide to support global warming as a theory then you have to ask for accountability, and accountability begins with the truth.

Skeptical, I agree with you about the USSR. It's true that Stalin was nuts and got the thing going in the wrong direction, but those following him were straightening it out. Their problem was us.....we forced them into squandering their reserves in keeping up with our weapons. They were a new nation, had suffered a few years of drought, had lost millions of men in WW2, then had to deal with us. Communism was never a threat to America, but threatened to show up Capitalism.

The makers of the atomic bomb knew radiation was dangerous. They had unknowing soldiers view the blast from various sites, then tested the effect upon them.

About DU. Am I remembering correctly...?...seems the govt. was trying to sell it to manufacturers. I heard complaints that it would be added to baby carriages, stainless flatware, etc. They knew how dangerous it could be, and since the citizens rejected it, they added it to bullets that would "only" poison our enemies and our service people.

NMBILL said, "My dad served on the Manhattan Project, and never seemed to suffer any effects. The VA checked him for radiation a few years ago and found nothing abnormal." Let's put that together with the comments about people who recover from HIV, and... it may seem a stretch but it presents a point, the fact that scorpions survive nuclear tests in the SW desert. The potentials of the human mind-body to overcome disaster are greater than we imagine. What is it in one person that given his exposure, demonstrates no symptoms, while another's immune system crashes? Could be some of us carry some form of antibody, or our bodies are otherwise strong from not being forced to tackle too much sugar, caffeine, alcohol and food poisons/additives. Some would say it's attitude. You know there were people who walked the streets during the Bubonic plague to assist others and never became ill. On a recent trip to California I sat next to a geneticist going to a symposium and he mentioned "the defiance factor." I inquired what that was, and he explained that a certain percentage of people diagnosed (science here) with Cancer, never succumbed to symptoms, i.e. it truly WAS mind over matter for them. Lastly, the rare disorder known as "multiple personality" has led to the documentation of at least one case where the "individual" in the body suffered from asthma, but when an alternative personality took over, there were no clinical symptoms of this disorder! This is why I champion being OPEN to those things Shakespeare related through Hamlet (to Horatio), "that there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy." There is a lot we don't know, including the known knowns of Rumsfield & former companions. Or as poet Ferlinghetti championed, leave room for WONDER. (One of my favorite words.)

shz: the recycled nuclear detritus was written about in Public Citizen. It shocked me, too! Ralph Nader was hip to that... I believe it has come into effect... they even said it would be used in children's teeth braces! UGH!!!!

I hate to say it but funding for the first fusion plant (experimental) is underway. No scientist knows if it will work. Its all based on theory, and it will be a hundred times bigger than any nuclear plant.
Now lets talk about chain reactions.....

Hi there NMBILL ___ I agree, the longer one is in Iraq or anyplace nearby, the more chances they will inhale more DU. However, if a "single speck" of DU gets into a lung, cancer is assured. There is no gas mask filter that will trap miocroscopic DU dust. It is every place over there and in Afganistan. The radiation levels in Baghdad are 2,000 times normal. They are all dead men walking. Not an immediate death, a long slow death.