by Tom Summers
Board Member, PCNSR

HERE WE GO AGAIN

     According to the plans of the US Department of Energy, it won't be long before my native state of South Carolina will be environmentally inflicted once again by this nation's continuing love affair with bomb-grade plutonium.  After the state had attempted to block the transport of such life-threatening stuff to the Savannah River Site (we used to call it the "Bomb Plant") this past year, federal authorities are now having their way.

     Although it is being purposed that these particular six metric tons of plutonium will be processed into mixed oxide fuel (which is dangerous enough), one can only shudder to think of the potential in having the toxic materials in the environs.  For instance, if microscopic amounts are inhaled, chances of cancer are exceedingly increased.  An estimation is that it takes tens of thousands of years for plutonium to break down in the environment.  No wonder that the folks around the Rocky Flats weapons site in Colorado are breathing a sigh of relief in getting the material away from them!

     This checker-board game of jumping these toxic elements from one cherished environmental space into another shows the US's lack of commitment to preserve, at all costs, the precious eco-system in which we all inhabit.

     Such governmental recklessness serves as a glaring example of that biblical critical analysis which indicates that so incorrectly has humankind been traditionally allowed to be placed at the extreme top of creation.  In contrast, are not we humans but one mere and vital link in the whole connective tissue of our fragile ecological system?