A Department of Energy spokesman recently claimed that the air in Jackson Hole is more harmful than the emissions from a yet-to-be built radioactive and hazardous waste incinerator at the DOE's Idaho Lab. " Taking 24 breaths in Jackson Hole would equal the same dose of emissions that is allowed in one year..." from the facility, says Bob Jones of the DOE.

Promoting the idea that everyday life is more dangerous than what goes on at some of the most dangerous places in the world, is a time-honored folklore at the Department of Energy. In the 1950's when the DOE's predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, was exploding nuclear weapons in the open air at Nevada, officials referred to deadly radioactive fallout as "sunshine units." We now have learned that nuclear weapons detonations at Nevada released the radioactive equivalent of many Chernobyl nuclear accidents. If today's safety limits for food contamination were in place during the period of open-air testing, a very large portion of the nation's milk supply would have had to be taken off the market for several years.

Beverly Cook, DOE's Idaho Operations Office Manager says that plutonium is getting a bum's rap as the world's most dangerous substance. Whether you will be able to expel plutonium particles from your lungs, as Ms. Cook asserts, is of little comfort if you've breathed them in your body. Since the late 1940's, government-sponsored research shows that very small particles lodge deeply in the lungs where they remain indefinitely. According to respected scientists, as little as 80 millionths of a gram of plutonium inhaled In the lung guarantees a fatal case of lung cancer, after 85 percent of the plutonium has been exhaled. If there was an incinerator explosion, DOE estimates that about 500 grams of plutonium could be in the ventilation and filter system. This represents the equivalent of more than six million lethal lung cancer doses.

At issue here is the make-believe world of hypothetical calculations versus the often unpredictable real world where accidents happen, protective measures fail, and people get hurt. Accidents at the Idaho lab are not abstract issues. Two out of nine of the nations worst nuclear criticality accidents took place there. More recently, on July 28, 1998 a worker was killed and several others were severely injured when a high pressure carbon dioxide fire suppression system unexpectedly went off in a facility at the Idaho site. The rescue team was put at great risk by making life threatening entries to pull out fellow workers. "It's taken one life. We're lucky it didn't take more," said one of the seriously injured workers. A follow up investigation found the accident was avoidable. Several similar previous accidents took place at the DOE Idaho site, including two very serious ones, which were ignored.

While the Idaho Plutonium incinerator is still a paper fiction, Plutonium incineration was done in the past to make nuclear weapons at places such as the Rocky Flats site in Colorado. In 1989, the FBI raided Rocky Flats after criminal charges were filed by the EPA stemming from the operation of that plutonium incinerator. It's not a coincidence that Idaho incinerator project is considered in the DOE contract with BNFL to be a highly dangerous operation - requiring BNFL to be shielded from legal liabilities in the case of accidents. This puts the Idaho facility in the same legal category of potential high consequence operations as nuclear power plants. Moreover, according to official British government documents, BNFL does not support radioactive waste incineration in its home country because of real world concerns over safety and costs.

As a result of years of downplaying radiation risks, misleading the public and suppressing information unfavorable to official views, DOE's pronouncements about radiation dangers are much like the claims made by the tobacco industry about smoking. The citizens of Jackson Hole deserve and should expect openness and candor from the DOE, not platitudes that do tittle to help the agency's credibility.