This is the same Chris Rowe that Bill Bowling, co-founder of the Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education, says ripped off two of his photos of the lab without permission, photos that have vanished from the site of Rowe’s enabler, editor Ron Kaye. I wonder if Kaye’s former employer, the Los Angeles Daily News allowed stolen photographs to be used on its website by a guest “reporter” who claims to have interviewed 20 phantom scientists and then writes for them all in a bumbling first-person screed that ends up saying, in all seriousness: But what can be more telling of the safety of the SRE than having Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles at its controls in 1963. “Mayor Sam” was given the “Honorary Title” of Nuclear Reactor Operator”

Now the undeterred Weitzberg spins more conspiratorial paranoia including this: I hear about SRE at every meeting I attend, I see it on TV, and read it in the press. Someone is orchestrating all of this media coverage…”

Oh please. Do you think we’re taking orders from Havana or the Kremlin? Statements like this, and denying that there ever was a meltdown, destroy any credibility Weitzberg may have had before daring to venture into the realm of fact which is what we deal with on this website.

Weitzberg also says: Perhaps, some may eventually regret that the $41.5 million for the radiation survey was a waste of resources that might have been better spent on site cleanup.

This indicates a serious lack of knowledge about site remediation – how is it possible to do a clean-up without first performing a survey of what it is that needs to be cleaned up? Radiation at Rocketdyne doesn’t come with nicely plotted signs saying “I’m hot! Dig here!”

Most boorish is turning this argument into a Möbius strip of magniloquence by again trying to fly this by us: You didn’t like Chris’ SRE message and you didn’t like mine, so you attacked the messengers.

I won’t continue on this endless loop, so I refer Weitzberg (who apparently isn’t even one of the mysterious twenty phantom scientists the now-silent Rowe touted as experts on the supposed non-meltdown) back to my first response to his comments above.

I am speaking out to inform and educate those individuals who do not know the realities of the effects of low levels of radiation, near background. These include the writer who was born a decade after the SRE accident and moved to Thousand Oaks as a young child, but who somehow believes that her thyroid cancer is from the accident, and the woman who is concerned that she has to disclose the presence of radioactive fallout from the SRE accident when she tries to sell her house.

I hear about SRE at every meeting I attend, I see it on TV, and read it in the press. Someone is orchestrating all of this media coverage, and it is a distraction from focusing on the residual contamination on the site, and its cleanup. I am skeptical that all people would welcome a finding that there is little residual radioactivity on the site, or that there is no evidence of residual fallout from the SRE accident. Some may actually feel the loss of a club with which to beat Boeing and DOE. Perhaps, some may eventually regret that the $41.5 million for the radiation survey was a waste of resources that might have been better spent on site cleanup. Only time will tell.

As for me, I will continue to speak out and inform about the effects of low levels of radiation. If you are interested and open minded you can be convinced that the areas in the US with higher levels of background have lower levels of cancer mortality, and that there are places in the world with backgrounds up to 60 times that here in the LA area, yet with no evident negative health effects over many generations.

Don’t accuse me of misstating facts or making mistakes while working on the hill; I check my facts and did not make any mistakes while working for AI. Don’t try to scare me with acronyms like S8ER and S8DR. Years ago, I read and understood the fuel failure reports because that is what I do for a living.

You didn’t like Chris’ SRE message and you didn’t like mine, so you attacked the messengers. You have no reason to distrust me just because you have your own preconceived notions about the SRE, I have no hidden agenda. Speaking only for myself, I think we would all be better off if you got off of the SRE kick and devoted your energies to what is left on the site.

In the process, if it turns out that this was just a small, unimportant incident and that we have all been exaggerating and fearful for no reason….so be it. Eventually, the truth will out!

However, in the meantime, what is it that you want? What is your goal in pointing out repetitively and scientifically that there has been a big exaggeration in the size of the partial meltdown, or that there was any dispersion of radioactive substances at all? Are you also doubting 30,000 or more rocket tests and up to 500,000 gallons of TCE being used (and dumped) too?

Personally, lacking a scientific background, your information goes right over my head. There is no way that I, and probably others like me, can even understand what you are talking about, much less being able to know if you are either right or wrong.

But, I certainly do understand that you are apparently determined to throw a dark and negative cloud over the official and ongoing attempts to discover and mitigate any possible radioactive substances and/or toxic contaminants that may be on the site. If you are correct, and the incident was minimal, then FINE, we will all certainly discover that in due time. Trust me,we can all handle the good news! Again, in the meantime, what is really your point?

If you are trying to educate us all….thank you. But, if you are attempting to give Boeing more material with which to try to get off the proverbial hook, forget it. Boeing is more than capable of doing their own minimizing and denying….they really don’t need any help from either you or anyone else. And, they probably do not need anyone to act either as a consultant, or to sing in their chorus.

If the SSFL site turns out to be clean, we will all rejoice and apologize to Boeing for giving them a bad time. All, of course, except those who are too sick or have already died, believing that it was because they lived near the Field Lab. They may be the only ones who may be unwilling to accept the good news.

What about the dumping, burning and burying, Abe? How do you explain that? I’ve got 30,000 photographs that need explaining if nothing got out. Was it magic? Was it gremlins? What was it?

Lochbaum’s fission product pathway to the environment was that elemental iodine-131 and cesium-137 escaped from the fuel and was transported through the sodium coolant in helium gas bubbles, thus reaching the cover gas. This fantasy is wrong on several accounts. The iodine is known to form UI3 in metal fuel and also CsI. Based on EBR-II fuel failure experiments, it is demonstrated that any I or Cs released from the fuel will be retained in the sodium coolant. This behavior is confirmed for SRE by the fact that I and Cs were not found in the cover gas samples. The best estimate of the amount of I and Cs released during the 1959 accident is probably zero.

In addition, the estimate of cancers deaths from Lochbaum’s assumed release uses the cumulative effects of very low doses to very large numbers of individual living very far from SSFL. It is not necessary to try to understand all of the mumbo jumbo in Beyea’s report to get the idea that the health effects of the postulated releases and assumed dispersions are grossly overestimated. It is also well recognized that the cumulative population doses are inappropriate to estimate potential cancer deaths, and that BEIR VII also states that “that the occurrence of radiation-induced cancers at low doses will be small.”

As far as the oft-repeated sound bite that the SRE accident was the worst meltdown in US history and was 260 times worse than TMI, I refer you to an excerpt from a world War II OSS description of Hitler’s psychological profile, “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

P.S. We are supposed to be talking aobut the SRE accident, not everything that ever happened on the hill.

Anyway, it’s just one incident as you say, and there were uranium fires, sodium fires, accidents during the burns, and other nuclear accidents both at SRE as well as the other facilities such as AE6 and SNAP8DR and SNAP8ER, not to mention all the chemical contamination that includes nearly a million gallons of TCE in the groundwater. There is so much to do, it’s tough to keep up, and closing our eyes and ears isn’t gonna fix a thing.

If there are workers in existence who possess valuable information about SSFL, using Ms. Rowe as a mouthpiece will only compromise credibility and dilute the intended message. If you have knowledge or memories of The Hill, please share with an objective party. The Federal EPA is currently conducting interviews with workers whose input can be of assistance in the historical site assessment; helpful in cleanup, and even in issues relative to federal worker compensation programs. If you are concerned about your identity, you can request a private interview.

TheAeroSpace.org

The world is made up for the most part of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to the truth.

An “attack” is something that is initiated; what I wrote in Meltdown Denier was a response. As were the Chris Rowe-related comments here and on other websites that were written by folks who have suffered, or have had family suffer, or both, possibly from reckless and reprehensible activities on The Hill including the 1959 meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment.

This news website backs up everything we write, so it is with a jaundiced eye that we read unsupported statements like “Claims of 260 to 1800 people getting cancer within 62 miles of SSFL are bogus, based only on a couple of flawed reports that contain numerous errors and unfounded assumptions.” Just what are those errors and unfounded assumptions? Substantiate, please.

Weitzberg goes beyond attacking the use of the word “meltdown” to describe what happened on those fateful days at the SRE fifty years ago. Even the words “partial meltdown” are “an exaggeration” according to Abe. But not according to the SRE-owner itself, the Department of Energy, which wrote in its April DOE newsletter:

“July 2009 will mark 50 years since the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) meltdown, and we are planning a meeting in the near future about the accident. We know the SRE meltdown continues to be an issue of interest and concern among our stakeholders, and we want to begin to address, to the extent possible, issues of most interest to Santa Susana stakeholders.”

So even the Department of Energy confirms the meltdown, yet we are supposed to believe the words of 20 phantom scientists who waited 50 years to speak up, in the form of provocateur Chris Rowe? And CBG and UCS are stirring the pot? Now that is truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.