Shut Down : Nuclear Power on Trial : Experts Testify in Federal Court

This true story is taken from the actual transcript of a federal court case from 1978 in which the plaintiff, Jeannine Honicker, whose daughter was under treatment for leukemia, sued the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shut down all 290 licensed nuclear facilities until federal regulations could be revised to comport with the guarantees of personal security citizens expect under the U.S. Constitution. Witnesses for the plaintiff include Dr. John W. Gofman, former AEC scientist and co-discoverer of plutonium, neptunium and other elements; Dr. Chauncey Kepford, an intervenor at Three Mile Island; and Dr. Ernest Sternglass, who performed some of the original epidemiological studies on health effects from Hiroshima, U.S. atomic tests, and atomic power plants. In the course of the trial and appeals, the NRC acknowledged its licensees would kill no fewer than 1.7 million U.S. citizens in order to produce electricity that could be produced less expensively and with far fewer health effects from other sources, at a time when the country was oversupplied by electricity by 300% at peak hours. The case went four times to the US Supreme Court and was eventually suppressed by order of that court, in 1984. Its record was expunged.