News & Public Affairs

Saturday NASA launch: Potential radioactive risks to an unknowing population listen

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Tags: NASA, Curiosity, plutonium, radioactivity

NASA plans to launch the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity as early as Saturday. The mission will place a rover on the surface to search for signs of environmental and chemical conditions that may have supported microbial life. However, in the search for life on other planets, there may also be some risk to life right here on earth.

Curiosity will include 10.6 pounds of Plutonium 238, a relatively “hot” synthesized isotope used for propulsion and heating purposes. [Karl Grossman](http://...

Investigative reporter Karl Grossman warns about possible danger from upcoming Curiosity launch at Cape Canaveral

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Tags: Karl Grossman, NASA, Curiosity, plutonium

Our next guest is investigative reporter Karl Grossman He's written “The Wrong Stuff: Plutonium in Florida’s Skies,” an exposé of NASA’s dangerous plans to launch the Curiosity space probe from Cape Canaveral with 10.56 pounds of deadly radioactive plutonium-238 dioxide aboard. Grossman says an accident on the launch pad could spread plutonium across Florida; an accident after liftoff could spread plutonium around the globe. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, President Emeritus of Physicians ...

Did radioactive iodine in Florida's atmosphere originate at troubled Japan nuclear plant? listen

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Tags: Japan, earthquake, tsunami, nuclear power, radiation, Japan earthquake, Fukushima, plutonium, iodine

Power company officials say plutonium has been detected in the soil outside of the stricken Japanese nuclear complex.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says in a statement that the plutonium was discovered today in five locations around the plant, which has been leaking radiation for nearly two weeks. They say the amounts were very small and were not a risk to public health. But the U.S. EPA says “[internal exposure to plutonium is an extremely serious health hazard](http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00...