Doobrahye Ootrah.

The Patriarch of Russia, Alexey II, spoke here yesterday afternoon about the importance of combining learning in science and engineering with education in the humanities.

I would like to humbly add to that wise man's counsel with some thoughts.

We have come to a time in my country and yours, indeed in the world as a whole, that education in the humanities – especially in understanding and applying ethics and moral principles – is critical, vital, indeed should be required in science and engineering.

First, I am a professor of journalism and let me say that education in the humanities – in history and culture and values – is also critical for journalists.

And some journalists are, unfortunately, remiss in this central area for their work, too. At my college of the State University in New York, in classes I and others teach for future journalists, we try to educate them in this regard. The problems of ethics and journalism must be the subject of another day. But I do want to make it clear, I am not picking on another profession.

I have written several books and done much investigating into nuclear technology – including the role of nuclear engineers and scientists.

My subject today at this conference on "Problems and Practice of Engineering Education" is, in specific, "Nuclear Engineering, Ethics and Public Health."

Several weeks after the 1986 catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Morris Rosen, a nuclear engineer from the United States – formerly with our government – who moved on to become long-time director of nuclear safety at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Number 2 man at this agency – said, and I have his statement in my hand:

"There is very little doubt that nuclear power is a rather benign industrial enterprise and we may have to expect catastrophic accidents from time to time."

To this day, the nuclear engineers and scientists of the International Atomic Energy Agency – created by the United States to somehow promote and regulate nuclear power at the same time – have sought to minimize, indeed deny, the terrible public health impacts of Chernobyl.

They maintain that but 31 people died, that the main health effect has been psychological.

Chernobyl was not an anomaly, a unique event.

I have in my hand an official analysis by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission projecting the impacts – in "early fatalities," "early injuries," "cancer deaths" and property damage – in the event of a meltdown with breach of containment at every nuclear plant in America.

This analysis, "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences," estimates for the Indian Point 2 and 3 nuclear plants – just north of New York City:

· 46,000 "early fatalities" from 2, 50,000 from 3.

· 141,000 "early injuries" from 2, 167,000 from 3.

· 13,000 "cancer deaths" from 2, 14,000 from 3.

· And property damage, $274 billion from 2, $314 billion from 3.

And these are not just numbers. These represent people's lives.

Before our Three Mile Island accident in 1979, American nuclear engineer Norman Rasmussen, professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said getting injured or killed in a nuclear plant accident was "like getting hit on the head by a meteor while crossing a street."

Some meteor. Some street.

Later, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, under pressure of a U.S. Congressional committee, admitted in this statement that the "likelihood of a severe core melt accident" in "a population of 100 reactors operating over a period of 20 years" was 45% – and that this might be off by 5 or 10%. So the chances, it said, are about 50-50.

Nuclear technology – and engineering and science in general – are not value-free. At the end of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program which first invented the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, its scientific director, told Edward Teller, who was pushing on to develop the hydrogen bomb, "We physicists have sinned."

Today, good engineering and science have revolutionized safe, clean, sustainable, non-nuclear energy technologies. Generating energy from the wind is now far cheaper than nuclear power. Huge strides have been made in solar energy, geothermal power, there is appropriate hydropower, tidal power, wave power, the production of hydrogen fuel by using solar energy to separate hydrogen and oxygen in water – and on and on.

Still, in my country, what has been called the "nuclear establishment," drives on. Nuclear engineers and scientists working for the government and industry in the U.S. push the technology that gives them money and power – and forget about good science.

Forget about ethics. Forget about morality. Forget about honest, independent epidemiology. Forget about life.

In medicine, all over the world the first principle for all doctors under the Hippocratic Oath is "do no harm."

This is not the case, I submit, for many nuclear engineers and scientists.

In my country, with many nuclear engineers and scientists involved, there is a push to "revive" nuclear power.

There has not been a nuclear plant sold in America since our Three Mile Island accident.

Fifty new nuclear plants would be built.

The operating years of existing reactors would be extended from 40 to 60 years – inviting catastrophe from machines never viewed as running that long.

Some nuclear waste would be smelted down and incorporated into consumer items like car bodies, pots and spoons and forks. High level waste would be sent to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a place on or near 32 earthquake faults.

The huge terrorist threat against nuclear plants is not being realistically dealt with. One of the jets piloted by terrorists that flew into the World Trade Center minutes before flew over the Indian Point nuclear plants.

But U.S. government agencies and corporations – and engineers and scientists with a vested interest in nuclear technology – continue pushing.

Here in Russia, where your Ministry of Atomic Energy wants to build 10 new reactors and make your wonderful country a garbage dump for large amounts of the world's nuclear waste, there is a comparable situation.

The brave Lydia Popova, who broke from your Ministry of Atomic Energy, has written about the ministry and "its commitment…to serve the interests of the [nuclear] industry and a select group of nuclear specialists at the expense of the people."

What's to be done?

Education – sound, solid education imbuing moral values and broader understanding pioneered here at Tomsk Polytechnic University – for scientists and engineers must occur. Widely and intensely. At the least.

Education and democracy, of course, go hand in hand.

The kind of critical issues I've spoke about today are too important to be left to nuclear engineers and scientists – many who would prefer to work in secret.

We need transparency. We need openness. We need full public participation and democratic involvement.

We need to make sure life is put first.

As the environmental plan for Russia advanced by the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, led by your great scientist and my friend, biologist Alexey Yablokov, states: the "environment must be healthy for both long-time successful existence of the living nature and assurance of human health."

Or as another great Russian scientist of conscience, nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, has said: "The [long-term] effect of radioactive carbon does not reduce the moral responsibility for future lives. Only an extreme deficiency of imagination can distinguish the suffering of contemporaries [from] that of posterity."

In respect to the Holy Father's comments on integrating religion and education, we have in America a principle of separation of church and state. But as an American Jew, there's nothing wrong, I believe, in considering a passage from the Bible – important to Russian Orthodox and Christians of all kinds, and Jews, who, I mention in all humility, wrote the book.

In Deuteronomy it is written:

"I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore, choose life, that you and your descendants may live."

People from around the world, lawyers and plumbers, professors and bus drivers, musicians and engineers and scientists, must choose life – and learn about why.

Spaceeba.

***

Karl Grossman is professor of journalism at the State University of New York who for more than 35 years has pioneered the combining of investigative reporting and environmental journalism in a variety of media. He coordinates the Media & Communications Program at the State University of New York's College at Old Westbury. A special concentration is nuclear technology. Among the six books he has authored are: Power Crazy; The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet; and Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power.

He has given speeches on nuclear technology and other energy and environmental issues around the world. He gave presentations at the Center for Russian Environmental Policy's International Conference on "Toward a Sustainable Russia: Environmental Policy" in Voronezh in 1998, at the Second All-Russia Congress on Protection of Nature in Saratov in 1999, and in 2000 at the conference on "Health of the Environment" at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He has long been active in television and is program director and vice president of EnviroVideo, a New York-based TV company that produces environmental documentaries and interview and news programs. He narrated and wrote EnviroVideo's award-winning documentaries The Push To Revive Nuclear Power; Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens and Three Mile Island Revisited. He is now in the process of putting together an EnviroVideo (www.envirovideo.com) documentary on the great strides in safe, clean, renewable energy technologies and how they are ready to be implemented. His EnviroVideo TV programs are aired across the U.S. on cable TV and via communications satellite by Free Speech TV.

His magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in numerous publications. He is vice-chairman of the board of the leading worldwide organization challenging nuclear technology, Nuclear Information and Resource Service-WISE. He is secretary of the board of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. He is a charter member of the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace of the International Association of University Presidents and the United Nations. He can be reached by E-mail at kgrossman@hamptons.com. His home address is: Box 1680, Sag Harbor, New York, USA, 11963. His telephone number is 631.725.2858.