Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: ‘Net reveals DOE folly

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 | 8:43 a.m.

HOW ABOUT anti-cancer pills for 100 million people?

The story in Sunday's newspaper was buried back in the A section but the import of its message screamed out loud and clear: radioactive poisoning is bad for children and other living things. As if we have to be told that more than once!

I bring this up in light of Monday's news that the government has arrested an al-Qaida terrorist whose job it was to make plans for or secure the makings of a "dirty" nuclear device and then detonate it in the United States. A "dirty" bomb is designed to kill a few people through impact and make many more fatally sick through the radioactive fallout that is released.

If you read the two stories together, it becomes abundantly clear that every American who lives within miles of the Department of Energy's proposed nuclear waste shipping routes planned for Yucca Mountain should be given the anti-cancer pills. That would be more than 100 million American men, women and children, depending upon who is counting.

According to medical sources in Nevada, we are already the thyroid cancer capital of the country. Without knowing the specific reasons for this unhealthy designation, it is not much of a stretch to conclude that the high incidence of disease is a result of the years of above-ground nuclear testing that took place not too far from Las Vegas in the '50s and '60s.

Worried that his area of the country might wrest control of that dubious distinction from Las Vegas, the deputy commissioner of emergency management for Westchester County in New York is taking no chances. Tony Sutton, whose jurisdiction is located near the Indian Point nuclear complex, said that by the end of the first day of pill distribution, 2,617 people had obtained 10,533 tablets of potassium iodide. The pill, it is claimed, could protect people from thyroid cancer in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.

Today marks the opening of a website that the public can use to see how close to their homes, schools and hospitals the government will transport some 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste headed for Yucca Mountain. The site, www.mapscience.org, will respond to an address and ZIP code by showing the user how many shipments of deadly plutonium waste will go within one, two or more miles from his or her home, a child's school or a place of work.

That's the kind of information the DOE and the nuclear power producers have tried to keep hidden from regular Americans because it brings home in living color the folly of the government's plan to move tons of radioactive waste -- from its current safe and relatively secure storage where it is being made -- through almost every city and town in the United States.

And if the president and his attorney general are right about al-Qaida's plans to detonate a "dirty" bomb in this country, what better place to get the ingredients for such a bomb than from one of the thousands of shipments that will be rolling through a city near you as soon as the DOE gets the OK.

That means to be safe from at least one form of cancer, thyroid, our government should take the lead from the Westchester County folks and make sure that every one of the 100-plus million Americans who will be put in harm's way gets a proper dosage to ward off the ill effects of a radiation event.

Once that is done, the government should then make sure every school child and factory worker along the way to Yucca Mountain gets the appropriate medicines to protect them from other forms of cancer that will attack them if the inevitable accident does happen or, worse, the certain attack by terrorists does occur.

Just in case you are wondering if you or your family and friends across the country will be included among the millions of Americans who are not yet exposed to the deadly cargo trucks, but who will be if the U.S. Senate votes for Yucca Mountain, go to the website and type in the address.

If you don't like what you see, notify your friends and family to do the same and then act. The instructions are simple and clear.

There is absolutely no reason why America should make it easier for the terrorists to blow us up. Tell that to our president and our senators -- and tell them today.

Tomorrow may be too late.