STOP CASSINI Newsletter #248 -- December 27th, 1999

Copyright (c) 1999

STOP CASSINI Newsletters Index
To: Subscribers, government officials, members of the press
From: Russell David Hoffman (approaching a precipice)
Re: Inherent design flaws in GE Boiling Water Reactors: STOP CASSINI #248
Date: December 27th, 1999

This issue's subjects:
*** (1) Jack Shannon on nuclear dangers from GE plants
*** (2) From the mailbag:  Hawking a genius, no doubt
*** (3) Risk from micrometeoriod impacts a significant hazard in space
*** (4) Pentagon confident Russian Y2K failures won't kill millions of Americans
*** (5) Tell Clinton how you feel -- Official government contact points
*** (6) Newsletter subscription information
*** (7) Newsletter Authorship notes and additional URLs

***********************************************************************
*** (1) Jack Shannon on nuclear dangers from GE plants:
***********************************************************************

----- INCOMING EMAIL FROM JACK SHANNON -----

From: Jacksha1@aol.com
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 18:06:00 EST
Subject: Re: [Fwd: EA/CNY-CAN press release re: RG&E's Right of First
        Refusal]
To: can@shaysnet.com, katie@equinox.shaysnet.com, jonb@sover.net,
        hilljoy@sover.net, necnp@sover.net, rbassilakis@snet.net,
        jriccio@citizen.org, gmapeach@sover.net, krabin@envadvocates.org,
        jenny@vpirg.org, kimberly@nukebusters.org, nirsnet@nirs.org,
        nonukes@rootmedia.org, NonukesHW@aol.com, stmshvl@together.net,
        mjd@necnp.org, pgunter@nirs.org, ben@vpirg.org,
        fishunlimited@hamptons.com, Elie@highlands.com, rstanchf@ross.org,
        balanced@shaysnet.com, safelegc@ulster.net, hkatzman@sprintmail.com,
        envirovideo@earthlink.com, ramona444@yahoo.com,
        pbeisheim@stonehill.edu, aurora@onepine.com, melissae@ulster.net,
        sdpenn@syr.edu, jcvani@javanet.com, wharris1@twcny.rr.com,
        LillyRile@aol.com, Rqmak@aol.com, sjm@edrpc.com, RECARLE@aol.com,
        Odiejoe@aol.com, scott@noradiation.org, mjac@concentric.net,
        nhw@hamptons.com, ldowning@apw.cnyric.org, nirs@nirsnet.org,
        rstater@pipeline.com, rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com,
        president@whitehouse.gov, vicepresident@whitehouse.gov

During July of this year I made a presentation to the Town board of the Town
of Oswego concerning the GE Boiling Water Reactors and the dangers associated
with such reactors.

The reactors have inherent design flaws i.e., control rods coming up into the
core from the bottom, but most disturbing to me is the fact that all of the
GE reactors in the US have cracked "shrouds." A serious matter which no one
seems to care about.

Additionally all US Nuclear Power Plants are now running out of room to store
their depleted fuel elements and are beginning to store up to twice the
amount of  fuel elements without the benefit of new analysis or issuing new
Safety Analysis Reports.

I suspect this is illegal as well as stupid. I am also aware of the manner in
which the NRC has allowed the utilities to perform the existing safety
analysis reports. All commercial power plants use, for their storage
facilities, a Diffussion Theory program known as PDQ -7. This program is at
least thirty years old. Unless the utilities are using a Monte Carlo program
such as "KENO" or it's equivalent the calculations are seriously out of date
and totally unreliable. The calculations have, furthermore, never been tested
against any experiment simply because no experiments have ever been performed
for a geometry pattern or loading densities similar to expended core fuel.
The only way to test any kind of  computer program, be it PDQ-5, PDQ-7, KENO,
etc., is to normalize the computer program to a known experiment. The NRC has
never done this, nor do they intend to do it.

The NRC is of the opinion that they need only to add boron plates or
homogeneous boron to a storage system and everything is OK, well the NRC is
wrong.

The NRC has yet to present an accident analysis that includes a loss of boron
accident or an earthquake analysis which causes the entire storage system to
fall into a big "mess."

Mostly the NRC is loaded with a bunch of incompetent nuclear "scientists" or
those who will sell out for their salary.

The entire Nuclear Industry is now drifting into chaos with the politicians
assuring the public that the intellectual level of the scientists in the
programs [both NRC/DOE] is the same as it was during the days of the
Manhattan project. Well, I hate to wake anyone up, but such is not the case.

The US will have an accident, sooner or later, that will exceed Chernobyl by
orders of magnitude simply because the people in charge no longer know
anything, and those of us who do can't get our organizations together to stop
these incompetent fools refuse to act as a cohesive unit..

We have Green Peace, Save the Whales, the Sierra Club, GAP, etc., etc., etc.,
all working on a common problem as though they were all different problems. I
hate to tell you folks that the PROBLEM is the corporations running the
government and they don't care about the whales, the eagles, freedom, justice
or anything else except the bucks and if we don't get together and take on
one problem at a time we will lose.

Consider what would have happened if the Military in W.W.II decided to take
out all of the Japanese held Islands all at once, none of the Islands would
have been taken and we would have nothing but a bunch of dead Soldiers,
Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. That is what is going to happen to us if we
don't get our acts together and fight the war the way it should be fought.

So lets get together ladies and gentlemen or it will be all over for us
sooner or later.

Respectively Submitted,

John P. Shannon, Major USMCR (Retired)
518-587-3245
Former Nuclear Reactor Physicist/Engineer and Manager of Health and Safety
for the Naval Reactors Program before I wrote a report critical of the Naval
Reactors largest Land Based Reactor site. Not only are the Naval Reactors
Nuclear Power Plants a disaster, but everything else in the Naval Reactors
Program is a disaster, including their training and operations.

----- END OF INCOMING EMAIL FROM JACK SHANNON -----

To email our president and demand a World Atomic Safety Holiday for Y2K, write to him immediately at:

president@whitehouse.gov

His fax number appears at the end of this newsletter.  Faxes are good choices. Include a picture and brief resume, a hand-written note, pictures of your family, etc. -- make sure he knows there's a real human being, a real family out there, a real citizen who's tired of the nuclear lies. -- rdh


*************************************************************************
*** (2) From the mailbag:  Hawking a genius, no doubt:
*************************************************************************

----- INCOMING EMAIL TO THE STOP CASSINI EDITOR: -----

From: ADoucette@Atl.carreker.com
To: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Subject: RE: Never a dull moment: STOP CASSINI #246: December 26th, 1999
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 17:11:45 -0500

Russell,
I didn't see the Larry King interview, (I wish I had, Stephen is such an
inspiration!),
but I would say your choice of the word "denounce" may have been a bit
strong. Denounce has such negative connotations. You did not repeat all of
what he said, but what you did relay is not something that you even
particularly disagree with. ie, He does not BELIEVE that anything
particularly serious will go wrong due to Y2K bugs. I don't BELIEVE that
anything serious will go wrong. But I am right with you in being upset that
our government is not doing what it should IN CASE somethings go wrong. As
you have pointed out repeatedly, the cost and inconvenience of powering down
Nuclear reactors, plants and taking missles off alert is minor, the
potential downside risk of not doing so is tremendous. It simply makes no
sense not to. Since I work in the computer industry and have been helping
banks get ready for Y2K for most of the past two years, I guess I'm fairly
confident that most US systems will get through it ok. I'm more concerned
that things will go poorly elsewhere, Africa, old USSR, and some bizare
coincidence somewhere on the globe. But all in all I'm hopeful as your are
that we will be able to wake up and have our coffee the next morning and not
have it or us glow in the dark.
I don't know if Stephen addressed the issues of taking more precautions then
we are and if he did and thought we ought not to take these actions then I
would agree with your word choice though.
I've been telling everyone I can about it, but obviously, without mass media
support there appears no way to get politicians to listen, so it seems were
down to luck and prayer.
Good luck to you and yours.
Peace
Arthur

----- END OF INCOMING EMAIL -----

----- MY RESPONSE: -----

Hi!

Thanks very much for your email [shown above].  What I was "denouncing" was that less than a week before Y2K, "the smartest man in the world" (according to Larry King, and I'm apt to agree) should have been deploring the lack of reasonable preparation, the failure to shut down the nukes, etc. etc. -- while all the time maintaining that nonetheless, there is a good chance things won't go wrong anyway, and all that preparation will be useful for everyday disasters anyway.  I unfortunately only heard part of the show (all the Y2K commentary, I'm sure), but there was no way Dr. Hawking was properly using this moment in the sun (yet another moment, for him, but probably the last great one of the millennium) to say the world has failed to prepare properly, that the dangers are being dismissed as impossible simply because they are (we hope) unlikely, etc. etc.  He just wasn't helping; he was placating the masses and presumably (since I don't see how else one can do it (placate the masses) with a "clean" conscience) crossing his fingers and closing his eyes.  It's certainly not what I would have done, given an hour (or even two minutes) on Larry King!

If I didn't already assume LK is a tool of corporate (and CIA) oppression, I would be amazed that he wouldn't be doing the whole week on Y2K disaster preparedness and prevention -- nothing else.  But no, not Larry King, who can't ask a really hard question, but loves to ask improper ones (in the span of a few minutes for example, he asked Hawking, among other intrusions, "Are you happy?  "What do you do for fun?" and "Is there any chance you'll be cured of that awful disease?").  Hawking declined most of them and answered those he wanted to with utter and chilling candor.

By the way I started my professional computer career working in a bank in 1980; back then we were well aware of (and working around) the "Y2K" bug.  Most of my money right now is, in fact, in my bank.  Besides, it's only money.  My main worry is San Onofre and 432 other commercial nuclear power plants and probably around 1000 others, research, closed, and military.

Also, please note that even the smartest person in the world is almost certain to make mistakes now and then.  It will be too bad if this mistake costs the world an ounce of prevention it might otherwise have taken.

Lastly, while I'm on the subject of influencing the populace, I'd like to mention why I totally abhor the "fear of panic" as an excuse for lying to the public, or placating them at all at this time, less than a week before Y2K.  It is this:  The American public has proven, time and again, that it can survive dire, dangerous, and threatening situations.  We survived Civil War, Revolution, two World Wars, the divisiveness of racism, chauvinism, the Vietnam debacle, corrupt Presidents (followed by more corrupt Presidents), and a thousand other things.  Panic comes from not knowing the truth.

What comes from lies is panic.  What comes from the truth of our dangerous situation would undoubtedly be a demand that the dangers be reduced and reasonable policy decisions begin to be made, such as for solar, hydro, geothermal, tide, wave, wind and other renewable and non-damaging power sources.

It is that sea change in policy that the nuclear industry, and the NRC, fear, and that fear causes all the lies.

So I don't wish for panic, but I do wish for America to understand exactly what the situation is.  I'm sure at that point some myopic nuclear industry folks and nuclear regulators in government will feel like people are panicking all around them, but they actually won't be.  The demand is urgent, but the root cause is reasonable.

When someone yells "FIRE GET OUT NOW!" in a crowded theater, it is not panic, and there is actually a fire going on and people actually need to get out right away.  And the people, doing so as quickly as possible (tomorrow is not soon enough; Friday may well be too late) is also not "panic" but merely quick and reasonable thinking.  So too here, I do not believe it is "panic" they fear.  I believe it is merely quick and reasonable thinking.

Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad CA

----- END OF MY RESPONSE

----- SECOND INCOMING EMAIL: -----

From: ADoucette@Atl.carreker.com
To: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Subject: RE: Never a dull moment: STOP CASSINI #246: December 26th, 1999
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 19:31:21 -0500

Russell,

While Stephen is obviously very smart, I suspect he is mainly very smart in
his field of specialty, i.e. Physics and specifically astrophysics.
Everything I have ever heard him talk on as well as his books I've seen have
been about understanding the first fractions of a microsecond after the big
bang, trying to understand the unifying forces of matter, energy and gravity
and speculation on the evolution of the Universe and its sub components. I
suspect he gets his info about Y2K dangers and such like the vast majority
of the population and that is through the media and probably in his case
friends from academia. He may be the smartest man in the world, but still
ignorant of the immensity of the potential problems and the relatively
simple steps it would take to reduce the risk. The problem is (as you are
well aware I'm sure) is the media and academia have pretty consistently
said: "yeah you should be prepared, get some cash, bit of food and water and
have copies of your financial records, but other then that, not to worry."
I find this ostrich approach much like how they dealt with Cassini, minimal
coverage of anti cassini protesters prior to the launch, most portrayed as
fringe groups and often labeled with their latest stereotype "tree huggers".
By the time Cassini came by for its near miss the press could have cared
less. I saw no coverage that even hinted at the potential danger, or even a
slight interest in exploring what would happen if NASA's hypothetical One in
a Million chance occurred. Everything I ever saw was NASA hype or NASA's
viewpoint but slightly rewritten from NASA's own PR releases. (reporters
sure seem to be a lazy bunch nowadays). It was frankly amazing to me that
shortly after the near miss by Cassini followed by the MCO navigation
fiasco, not one major news outlet connected the two. I wrote the paper and
the science editor so I know they were made aware of it, but nothing was
ever printed.
Everybody thinks we have a free press, but the reality is a few corporations
control the vast majority of what the public sees on TV or reads in the
papers. These corporations have no soul or conscience, if it's not in their
financial interest for something to be a headline it won't be.
The problem I had with your use of the word "Denounce" is that if and when
someone in the media reprints your words you know it will come out that
"Russell Hoffman denounces Stephen Hawkings" then go on to paint you as a
nut who is denouncing the worlds smartest man.

Arthur
 
----- END OF SECOND INCOMING EMAIL -----

There isn't anything more to be said, because the author is correct in every instance. -- rdh


*************************************************************************
*** (3) Risk from micrometeoriod impacts a significant hazard in space:
*************************************************************************

Assuming this risk assessment is not wildly exaggerated, it's conclusions for the ISS would apply to anything up there.  It kills (again) any possibility that sending nuclear waste into outer space will be a good way to get rid of it, despite anything Woody Smith, Internet Historian/spokesperson for NASA -- or any other corrupt spokesperson for the nuclear mafia -- might say otherwise. -- rdh

----- CLIP FROM DALE GRAY'S FRONTIER NEWSLETTER: -----

FROM: DaleMGray <DaleMGray@compuserve.com>

Frontier Status 12/24/99

By Dale M. Gray
Frontier Historical Consultants

ISS -  
Risk Assessment:  Futron, a risk-assessment consulting firm
based out of Washington, has concluded that the
International Space Station faces a 10 percent chance of
disaster in the next 10 years.  While fires, explosions and
collisions between spacecraft account for a mere 2 percent
of the risk, by far the greatest risk is of catastrophic
decompression due to micrometeorite strikes.  A surprising
result of the study is that crewmembers are at higher risk of
accidents inside the station than from accidents during the
many spacewalks needed to complete the station.  Futron,
also concluded that at least one crewmember could be lost
from accident or disease in the next 15 years.  The results of
the study are published in this week's New Scientist
Magazine (MediaNews citing New Scientist Magazine).

----- END OF CLIP FROM DALE GRAY'S FRONTIER NEWSLETTER -----


*************************************************************************
*** (4) Pentagon confident Russian Y2K failures won't kill millions of Americans:
*************************************************************************

There is no reason to trust the Pentagon to know what would constitute a reasonable risk, and what does "no chance" mean exactly, anyway?  I mean, zero is just plain wrong.  It is possible that a nuclear war can start by accident, especially if you include mental instabilities by leaders, nations or military officers as "accidents" since they DO happen now and then.  Besides, the basic Pentagon view, namely that a nuclear war is impossible by accident, isn't nearly good enough!  I don't even want one on purpose!

Furthermore, one room with 20 Russian and 20 American officers hardly sounds like enough of a safety factor to save the world!  We're talking World War Three here, not some "tiny" thing like Bhopal, Chernobyl, OKC or Vietnam!  Surely three rooms, and live Internet feeds to the whole world, and the presidents of our countries in these magical *peace* rooms, would make more sense than just one room, with just 20 officers.  What if they as a group decide that the data we are feeding them is a simulation?  I would want 20 Russian officers at EACH missile silo!  And 20 American ones at each Russian Silo!  At midnight, December 29th, 1999 GMT (or as soon as they are all in place) they could all dismantle the weapons together, all at once, live on the Internet, with millions watching, thousands of sites each live with several local television cameras plugged into the 'net.

Is that really too much to ask?  That we just all get rid of these things once and for all, so the world could enjoy the riches of vastly lowered military expenditures, and vastly less risk of global genocide? -- rdh

----- INCOMING EMAIL FROM CAROL MOORE: -----

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Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 22:51:13 -0500
From: Carol Moore <CarolMoore@kreative.net>
To: "y2k-nuclear@egroups.com" <y2k-nuclear@egroups.com>
Mailing-List: contact y2k-nuclear-owner@egroups.com
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Subject: [y2k-nuclear] Rocket Experts Fear False Alerts...

December 27, 1999

 Rocket experts fear false
 signal from Kremlin

 By Rowan Scarborough
 THE WASHINGTON TIMES
(front page)

 As the century changes on Dec. 31, a
 computer-generated false signal could send rocketeers
 on quickly paced launch procedures for Russia's 756
 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

 Russia's deteriorating nuclear force is causing some experts
 to worry that a year-2000 computer glitch could spawn a
 false signal from early warning radars or satellites that the
 country is under attack.
Bruce Blair, a Brookings Institution analyst and leading
 authority on Russia's sprawling atomic arsenal, said the
 Strategic Rocket Force operates on a hair-trigger "launch on
 warning" doctrine.
As the century changes on Dec. 31, a
 computer-generated false signal could send rocketeers on
 quickly paced launch procedures for Russia's 756
 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
"They have about 2,000 weapons they can fire at the
 United States on a moment's notice, and the main option for
 firing them is 'launch on warning' at a time when their early
 warning network is deteriorating badly and at a time when
 they're suspicious of the West," said Mr. Blair, who as an Air
 Force officer in the 1970s manned a U.S. Minuteman missile
 silo.
Asked the odds of a false signal triggering an ICBM
 launch, Mr. Blair said, "It's clear that the likelihood of such an
 event is higher as a result of Y2K than it would otherwise. . .
 . [But] this should in all likelihood be a case of fail safe and
 not fail deadly."
The Pentagon, however, says there is no chance for a
 deadly miscalculation. The department has gone to
 extraordinary lengths diplomatically and financially to make
 sure New Year's Eve does not turn into a real-life "The Day
 After."
Its most visible guard against a calamity is the Center for
 Year 2000 Strategic Stability at Peterson Air Force Base,
 Colo. There, beginning Dec. 30, Russian and American
 officers will sit side by side at computer screens 24-hours a
 day. Their job: Monitor data from U.S. Space Command
 sensors, primarily long-range radars and satellites that detect
 the heat of a rocket blastoff.
"We really do not worry about Russia, missiles going off,
 or early-warning systems getting false reports or anything
 like that," said Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre. "We're
 confident that will not be the case."
Added Peter Verga, a Pentagon policy-maker, "If an early
 warning radar in Russia fails, we think it would be because
 the power went out, which is a local time-zone problem, and
 not because there's a fundamental problem within the
 system."
The department, which has spent $3.6 billion on
 year-2000 compliance, has invested $10 million in Russian
 weapons computers to ensure they don't misread the date
 rollover to 2000. Technicians also ridded the
 Moscow-Washington "hot line" of any potential bugs and
 installed backup telephone connections.
At Peterson, a missile launch anywhere in the world will
 be picked up by Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites
 and then tracked by radars.
Inside the Peterson center, officers will know the launch
 location and time, whether the rocket is an ICBM or space
 vehicle, the "threat fan" of potential targets and projected
 impact point.
The center has communications links to Moscow's
 warning center so Russian officers in the United States can
 verify any launch activity detected back home.
Space Command believes that by 4 p.m. (ET) Dec. 31 —
 the millennium rollover in Moscow — officials will know if
 Russia's warning system is glitch-free.
U.S. military forces are on Greenwich Mean Time and
 will enter the new century at 7 p.m. (ET).
"Once we get through the Moscow rollover, we'll have a
 very good indication of how Moscow has gotten through the
 rollover," said Maj. Perry Nouis, a spokesman for the U.S.
 Space Command. "We think it's going to be a quiet night for
 everybody. That's what our hope is."
Steven Zaloga, an expert on Russian strategic weapons
 and an aerospace consultant, said Moscow lost a large share
 of its ICBM-tracking radars with the breakaway of old Soviet
 republics. For example, Latvia recently shut down the radar
 on its soil.
Russia's other mechanism for monitoring U.S. missiles,
 the system of orbiting Oko infrared satellites, has wide gaps
 in coverage because Moscow lacks the money to replace
 them.
"Their early warning system has so many gaps and
 problems with it, one would hope they have the sense to
 appreciate that they may get some kind of false readings,"
 Mr. Zaloga said.
"Their command-and-control network is in very, very bad
 shape," he added.
"They don't have reliable missile early warning, which is
 really a critical element of command and control. The
 problem I see with the Russian government, it has a very
 unsophisticated and naive view of nuclear forces. The
 Russian military over the years has held a monopoly on
 distribution of information on nuclear forces."
Still, Mr. Zaloga concluded that the Russians exercise
 sufficient human control in Moscow to head off any rash
 decisions on New Year's Eve.
He said that in the early 1980s, shortly after the first Oko
 went into space, a satellite sent back a false-positive based on
 a heat signature from the sun appearing on the horizon.
 Fortunately, he said, a Russian officer dismissed the signal as
 bogus and did not initiate alert procedures.
"These missiles don't go off automatically," Mr. Zaloga
 said. "There is a human element in the Russian
 command-and-control system."
One thing is clear. Moscow and Washington approach the
 date switch amid worsening relations and mistrust.
Russia is particularly jittery over three developments:
 NATO expansion to its old Soviet borders; the air war on
 Serbia that showed the power and reach of American
 strategic bombers; and the U.S. intention to build a national
 defense against ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, Washington has protested Russia's brutal
 military crackdown in Chechnya and is growing concerned
 over Moscow's increasingly bellicose statements on nuclear
 weapons.
In Beijing earlier this month, Russian President Boris
 Yeltsin said President Clinton "has forgotten Russia is a great
 power that possesses a nuclear arsenal."
Last week, Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, chief of the
 country's Strategic Rocket Force, was quoted as saying,
 "Russia, for objective reasons, is forced to lower the
 threshold for using nuclear weapons. . . . "
Mr. Blair sees the acid atmosphere as possibly leading to
 nuclear miscalculation. He also sees shortfalls in Pentagon
 planning.
For example, at the Peterson year-2000 center, Russian
 officers will not see the raw data that pours into the
 top-secret national warning center at Cheyenne Mountain 12
 miles away. Instead, they will view processed signals.
The arrangement raises a dicey scenario. If Moscow's
 system says it is under attack, who do the Russians believe?
 Their own data or assurances from an American air base?
"The sole point of contact between the two militaries will
 be here at Peterson to make sure that no one in either country
 operates in a vacuum," Maj. Nouis said.
Said Mr. Blair, "As far as I can tell, we have fixed the
 Y2K problems with our nuclear forces. The Russians have
 not. They have admitted they are behind schedule. . . . This
 Y2K center is just a Band-Aid that diverts attention from the
 deeper problem of deterioration of Russian control over their
 nuclear arsenal"
Peter Pry's book, "War Scare: Russia and America on the
 Nuclear Brink," documents the poor state of the old Soviet
 arsenal. One would expect him to sound the alarm over the
 looming 2000 date change. But he's not.
"A lot of people on the left and right have really hyped the
 Y2K thing for different ulterior motives," Mr. Pry said. "I
 think it's been much exaggerated, the dangers of an electronic
 glitch, something going radically wrong with their computer
 system . . . It's hard for me to imagine a false attack
 happening."
Mr. Pry, a staffer on the House Armed Services
 Committee, said one prospect does worry him: how will the
 Russian generals react if an early-warning radar blacks out?
"That could be dangerous," he said. "Then you have the
 general staff wondering, why did it black out. 'Is this the first
 wave of attack?' "
Mr. Pry said year-2000 pessimists point to a 1995
 incident as evidence of how Russia's weakening nuclear
 control could produce a fatal mistake.
In January of that year, Russian nuclear forces went on
 alert after the launch of a Norwegian weather rocket. Some
 Russians initially misinterpreted the flight as a U.S. submarine
 ballistic missile fired as the first stage of an all-out attack.
But rather than viewing the incident as a precursor to
 year-2000, Mr. Pry said it is a better indication of Russian
 mistrust toward the West.
"There was no mechanical failure or computer failure,"
 said the ex-CIA analyst. "It was a human failure."


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----- END OF EMAIL FROM CAROL MOORE -----


(5) Tell Clinton how you feel -- Official government contact points:


To contact the top government officials:

President Bill Clinton
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20500
Phone -- (202) 456-1111  Fax -- (202) 456-2461
e-mail -- president@whitehouse.gov

Vice President Albert Gore (same address)
Phone -- (202) 456-1414  Fax -- (202) 456-2461
e-mail -- vicepresident@whitehouse.gov

Secretary William Cohen
1000 Defense
The Pentagon
Washington D.C. 20301
Phone -- (703) 695-6352  Fax -- (703) 695-1149

Secretary Bill Richardson
Department of Energy (DoE)
1000 Independence Avenue SW
Washington D.C. 20585
Phone -- (202) 586-6210  Fax -- (202) 586-4403

To learn about the absurd excuses NASA used to launch Cassini and its 72.3 pounds of plutonium in 1997, ask them for the 1995 Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini mission, and all subsequent documentation.  At the same time, be sure to ask them for ANY and ALL documentation available on future uses of plutonium in space, including MILITARY, CIVILIAN, or "OTHER" (just in case they make a new category somehow!).  To get this information, contact:

Cassini Public Information
     Jet Propulsion Laboratory
     4800 Oak Grove Drive
     Pasadena CA 91109
     (818) 354-5011 or  (818) 354-6478
 
Here's NASA's "comments" email address:  comments@www.hq.nasa.gov

Daniel Goldin  is the head of NASA.  Here's his email address:
daniel.goldin@hq.nasa.gov
 or
dgoldin@mail.hq.nasa.gov

Here's the NASA URL to find additional addresses to submit written questions to:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-002-HQ.html

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT NASA IS DOING TO YOUR HEALTH. 

NASA should never have been allowed to launch monstrosities like Cassini and Galileo, but the next breed -- such as Europa Orbiter and Pluto-Kuiper Express are not much better and the policy is being set for greatly increased rates of missions!  The danger continues!  To complain to NASA about their future nuclear space probes, here are two addresses you can use:

For Europa Orbiter:
"Europa Orbiter comments" osseuropa@hq.nasa.gov

For Pluto-Kuiper Express:
"Pluto-Kuiper Express comments" osspluto@hq.nasa.gov

Be sure to "cc" the president and VP and your senators and congresspeople, too.

Always include your full name and postal address in all correspondence to any Government official of any country, because otherwise they will throw it out unread, or hand it directly to their police force to try to identify the author.  (Thus, nothing good will come of it.)  Also, ALWAYS include a personal message of some sort, indicating YOUR OWN VIEWS, even if you include a lot of material written by other people (me, for instance).


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(7) Newsletter Authorship notes and additional URLs:

Russell D. Hoffman, Carlsbad, California, Peace Activist, Environmentalist, High Tech Guru:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/whoisrdh.htm

Hoffman's Y2K Preparedness Information:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/y2k/index.htm

Learn about The Effects of Nuclear War here:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm

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This article has been presented on the World Wide Web by:

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Mail to: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
First placed online December 29th, 1999.
Last modified December 30th, 1999.
Webwiz: Russell D. Hoffman
 Copyright (c) Russell D. Hoffman