Belly-bumped

I didn't realize that doing my civic duty here in Nye County was so dangerous. On May 1, I went to a Nye County commissioner meeting at the Bob Ruud Community Center and asked a question. I wanted to know why no one is able to find any information about Commissioner Peter Liakopoulos, who claims he had an extensive political career prior to coming to Nye County.

The citizens thought this was a great question, but all the people who are paid from our tax dollars came to his defense by saying that I was out of order and this was a disruptive question which is a personal attack on an elected official.

Peter Liakopoulos came down off the stage and got into my face and actually belly-bumped me.

I am 55 years old senior citizen, who is legally handicapped and needs a cane to walk, so when a person who is much larger than me comes charging at me in a threatening manner, I became afraid for my safety.

The Nye County sheriff's department was called and they told me that I was banned from the meeting and could not go back inside.

I am sure glad that I didn't tell Commissioner Liakopoulos that I felt his yes vote for the Focus Group was terrible, because they might have hung me right there at the meeting.

SAM JONES

Food for thought

The media has recently carried stories about the number of pets that died because they ate food laced with melamine, an ingredient from China which apparently makes the food seem to be rich in protein. Although I've not heard of any people getting sick from melamine, the news does illustrate that the quality of our food is susceptible to tampering.

In the mid-80s my wife and I drove from our home in El Paso, Texas to San Diego, traveling the southern route which roughly borders Mexico. I remember when we entered the vast farming area of southern California we remarked that the workers in the fields probably came from Mexico and we wondered what they did when nature called because we didn't notice any facilities that were provided for such an event so we assumed they just added to the soil and continued their work. Just about that time a plane flew low over the field spraying the crops and the workers. I presume it was some type of pesticide or weed killer.

It reminded us of one of our many drives into Mexico from El Paso when we saw workers with back-mounted sprayers walking back and forth between rows getting drenched while spraying the crops, even getting spray on families who waited on the edge of the field.

Do we now import purer products from such countries as China and Mexico? We certainly can't be sure because the best our government can do is test a small fraction of what is imported. We simply lack the means to do more.

Organic products have gained in popularity because producers must meet strict requirements before they can call their products organic. As a senior citizen I can remember when all food was organic; we simply called it food.

We now have foods that are the result of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It's why we now have tomatoes that are bright red, tough skinned, can withstand rough handling, have a long shelf life and in my opinion, are essentially tasteless.

I personally prefer food that is grown in America by Americans. Although that doesn't absolutely insure it's purity, I trust its safety more than something shipped from some other country that has been grown under unknown conditions.

LEONARD J. COENEN

Radioactive Russian roulette

Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, described as "an unabashed advocate for the safety of the Yucca Mountain project," was quoted in your article as saying "I will ride the first shipment myself from the power plant to Yucca Mountain."

I would warn him not to ride on the shipment as a publicity stunt, for these shipments would be like mobile X-ray machines that cannot be turned off.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows a chest X-ray per hour of gamma radiation to be emitted at a distance of six feet. NRC even allows 20 chest X-rays worth of gamma radiation to be emitted at the surface of the shipping container.

If the container is externally contaminated with radioactivity - and the state of Nevada has documented 50 such mishaps in the U.S., while France has suffered many hundreds of such mishaps - then the doses would be even worse to drivers, gas station attendants, toll booth workers and innocent bystanders at rest areas and along the roads and rails.

The National Academy of Science reported last year that no dose of radiation, no matter how small, is free from health risks. It's been known for over 50 years that a single X-ray to a fetus in its mother's womb doubles that baby's risks for contracting cancer.

Such risks refer to "incident-free" shipments. Severe accidents or terrorist attacks upon high-level radioactive waste shipments bound for Yucca Mountain - and there would be thousands to tens of thousands of such shipments - could release catastrophic amounts of harmful radioactivity downwind.

The trucks and trains bound for Yucca would carry 40 to 240 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, so release of even a fraction of such cargoes would be a disaster. That's why we call these shipments potential "mobile Chernobyls," and "dirty bombs on wheels." Their transport through 45 states and the District of Columbia to Yucca Mountain would represent radioactive Russian roulette on the roads and rails.

KEVIN KAMPS

Nuclear waste specialist, Nuclear Information and Resource Service