This irrational fear of anything nuclear is getting to me.

I grew up in Alamogordo, NM 60 miles from the first atomic bomb test at
Trinity. The radiation was supposed to kill everybody and/or mothers were
supposed to birth two headed babies. I still have a little vial of
radioactive green glass created when the intense heat of the Trinity test
melted desert sand. I picked it up at ground zero in 1952. Nothing
happened to anyone except the area today is noted for healthy people and its
population of centenarians.

The era of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing saw more than 3000 explosions
some as large as 50 megatons. That's way more nuclear explosions than was
expected in a hypothetical WWIII. It's as if the USSR and the US agreed to
bomb themselves instead of each other. We all carry radioactive caesium 60,
strontium 90 and a little plutonium in our bodies as a result. Where are
the mutated monsters or the piles of corpses? Why has the cancer death rate
actually decreased since the mid 1940's? Where was 'nuclear winter'?

Radiation is a natural part of the environment. Granite rock is
radioactive. So is a cathode ray tube (CRT) that we all spent a lifetime in
front of. I live a mile above sea level in Colorado where cosmic radiation
is intense. Colorado is the healthiest state. We all, especialy we pilots,
spend out entire lives bathed in radioactivity but where are the cases of
radiation poisoning?

The Chernobyl reactor disaster is the worst possible scenario for a civil
power reactor. It was supposed to have killed 250,000 in Europe. Nobody
can find them. Death rates haven't changed. The best guess now is that
less than 30 were killed and those were workers at the plant or rescuers
without protective gear.

I thought it was hilarious when DHS stopped a freighter from Central America
because it set off their radiation detectors - it was full of banana's.
Banana trees concentrate naturally occurring radioactive potassium in the
fruit. Anybody plan to quit eating bananas?

Like almost anything, if you get too much of it, it will hurt you. Current
safety measures are quite enough - in fact they are probably mega-overkill.

What IS an ongoing disaster is the burning of coal and oil because we are
afraid of nuclear power. Since the nuclear age began millions have
verifiably been killed by the production, transport and burnig of fossil
fuels. We may also have ruined our planet.

Bill Daniels