"I am appalled after reading the June 1995 'Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Mission' to think that serious consideration is being given to going ahead with the use of some 72.3 pounds of plutonium-238 in that mission."

—John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley

Stop Using Plutonium in Space Missions / USA - Archived

On October 6, 1997, NASA will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a space probe carrying 72.3 pounds of deadly plutonium-238. The plutonium will power the Cassini probe's electrical instruments during its voyage to Saturn. A malfunction within the Earth's atmosphere could cause the "most toxic chemical known to science" to "shower down with a tremendous tragedy for the people of the Earth," according to City University of New York nuclear physics professor Dr. Michio Kaku. Global Response members are asked to urge President Clinton to cancel the Cassini launch and stop using plutonium in space.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, warns that plutonium "is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." Inhaled plutonium particles can cause lung cancer, leukemia, liver cancer and bone cancer; ingested particles can cause intestinal cancer; and particles on an open wound eventually can cause bone cancer.

NASA claims that there is little chance of the plutonium on board the Cassini contaminating the Earth. But there are two key periods of extreme danger in the Cassini mission:

1. The launch on a Titan IV rocket. The odds of a Titan IV rocket failure are "between one in ten and one in twenty," according to John Pike, head of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists; NASA estimates a one in 900 chance of an accident at launch. In fact, a Titan IV blew up 101 seconds after launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1993. Before the 1986 Challenger mission, odds on that rocket were calculated at one in 100,000. The question here is: why play roulette with 72.3 pounds of plutonium?
   
   
2. The "flyby" maneuver when Cassini hurtles back toward Earth from Venus, in order to use Earth's gravity to increase velocity for the long haul to Saturn. Cassini will speed toward Earth at 42,300 miles per hour, aiming to circle the globe at a distance of 312 miles. But if a miscalculation brings Cassini into Earth's 75-mile high atmosphere, the probe would disintegrate, releasing plutonium as minute particles of plutonium dioxide.
   
   

The amount of plutonium that NASA calculates might be released under these circumstances is "an astronomical quantity of a potent alpha-emitting cancer producer," writes Dr. John W. Gofman, medical physicist and former member of the Manhattan Project. "The number of cancer doses is so high as to make calculations extraneous."

It is unnecessary to put the world's population at such risk. In 1994 the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the development of new high-performance solar cells. In 1995 ESA physicist Carla Signorini told Florida Today, "If given the money to do the work, within five years [ESA] could have solar cells ready to power a space mission to Saturn."

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