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October 17, 1993 Ron Jones Editor, The Desert Sage 119 North Helen Drive Fullerton CA 92635-3520 Dear Ron, Hey, wait a minute... This is about Ward Valley. I don't at all don't the sincerity of former conservation chair Pat Acheson in wanting to maintain every bit of desert in pristine condition. But her arguments in the July 1993 issue of Sage are all wrong. The Ward Valley site for a low-level radioactive waste storage facility (LLW) has been chosen with great care. The approval process has complied with every requirement, State and Federal; and has met every environmental concern(except that it should now simply go away!) The process began more than 10 years ago, with authorization signed into law by then Governor Jerry Brown. If Sage readers are to write letters about Ward Valley, they should come out in favor of its speedy completion. In California the use of radioactive materials is strictly controlled, by license from the Department of Health Services. As indicated in the enclosure, there are now more than 2200 licensed sites. If Ward Valley were simply to go away, we would still have those sites all over the state and an equal number of storage locations for spent material. It is a much more sensible procedure to put it all in one location. Contrary to the mind set of many opponents of Ward Valley, radioactivity was not invented by a few mean-spirited industrialists or military people. It is a natural phenomenon set in our universe by the sane Hand that put granite in Yosemite National Park. To exploit radioactivity in applications useful to man is no less appropriate than similar human endeavors. These include utilizing the tides to generate electric power (as at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), or confining the explosion of gasoline in a mechanical contrivance that provides transportation (and which makes possible just about every DPS outing), or harnessing sunlight for purposes other than His original intention that it "merely" warm the Earth and make life possible. Radioactivity is indeed dangerous, and can be lethal. So is every one of the phenomena mentioned above, if misapplied. Just as they are safely handled for man's use, so can radioactivity. That illustration labeled "Radioactive Life" in Pat's article is sure scary--as it was intended to be. But it is nonsense, take one example, Plutonium 239 "500,000 years". Where did she get that?? Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years, which means that one-half of an initial quantity changes spontaneously into something else in that time interval. But Pu-239 changes into another radioactive species, Uranium-235. That has a half-life of 704 million years! U-235 occurs naturally in Uranium ores, which is also where the natural radioactive element Radon comes from. |
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