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                                                  C.N.R. Report 1978-1 
A Small Affidavit with Big Implications 

by 

John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. 

June 5, 1978 


"Crime does not pay at your level." 

Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, Inc. 


P.O.B. 11207, San Francisco, California 94101 



This brief affidavit was written on behalf of some members of 
the non-violent Trojan Decommissioning Alliance who were arrested 
in November, 1977, for trying to shut down the Trojan nuclear 
power plant by blocking access to it. They were charged with 
criminal trespass. 

The defendants, with the aid of the Community Law Project in 
Portland, tried to invoke Oregon's "choice of evils" law (whose 
text is provided on page 4). However, the judge did not permit 
them to do so, and on June 30, 1978, they were found guilty. 

The logic of the attached affidavit may be widely useful, 
nevertheless, in helping to show the PUBLIC that acceptance of 
nuclear power (and certain other polluting activities) is also 
the acceptance of premeditated random murder as a legitimate 
policy of modern "civilization". 

The moral depravity of such a policy, and the duty to try reversing 
it, should be self-evident to all who agree that people have 
at least the inalienable right to life, to freedom from premeditated 
physical abuse. An effective tool to prevent murder-by-pollution 
might well be insistence that the Nuremberg principles be applied 
in our own country, both to those who commit the crime and to those 
who try to prevent the crime. (Please see page 4). 



AFFIDAVIT OF DR. JOHN W. GOFMAN 

STATE OF OREGON ) 

COLUMBIA COUNTY ) ss. 

DR. JOHN W. GOFMAN, being duly sworn , deposes and says: 

I am professor emeritus of medical physics in the University of 
California, Berkeley. I became a full professor there in 1954, and retained 
that status until taking the emeritus status. I have served as Associate 
Director of the Lawrence Livermore (Radiation) Laboratory from 1963 through 
1969, I organized the Biomedical Program and Department there, with the 
mission of studying the effects on man and the remainder of the biosphere 
from all types of nuclear energy activities. I served as the Chairman of 
that Department during its initial two years. 

I hold the Ph.D. degree in Nuclear Physical Chemistry from the 
University of California at Berkeley, awarded for my dissertation on the 
discovery of U232, U233, Pa232, and Pa233, and for the discovery of the 
fissionability of U233 with slow and fast neutrons. It is this last 
discovery that makes U233  available for use in nuclear power plants and 
for use in nuclear weapons. 

I .also hold the M.D. degree from the University of California in 
San Francisco, California, I interned there in Internal Medicine. 

I have taught in the field of biological effects of radiation and 
the application of artifical radioisotopes in medicine and biology, as 
well as having taught graduate courses in biological effects of radiation 
in cancer production as well as courses in the mechanism of cancer 
production. 

I served as physician to the Aerojet General Nucleonics Corporation, 
a company manufacturing nuclear reactors and fuel elements, a position for 
which I was selected because of my background in nuclear energy and its 
medical effects. 

A detailed biography is attached as Exhibit 1. 

As a result of my education and research in relevant areas, I feel 
qualified to make the statements which follow in this affidavit. 

If called upon to testify in the trial of the Trojan Decommissioning 
Alliance defendants, I would testify as follows: 


page 2 


I have carefully examined the performance of the regulatory processes 
in nuclear energy and conclude that these processes do not work and do not 
provide any protection to the public from injury by nuclear energy. 

It is my opinion that the operation of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant 
or any other nuclear power plant creates an immediate hazard to members of 
the public as a direct result of its creation of artifical radionuclides, 
such nuclides creating the hazard of cancer, leukemia, and genetic injury 
to the public. 

It is a fallacy to think that an accident is required to create the 
hazard. The hazard is created the moment the radionuclides are generated 
in the nuclear power plant. This is so for the following reasons, my 
reasons being extensively supported in the research papers appended as 
Exhibits 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,and 7 . 

Reason 1: 
There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation with 
respect to cancer, leukemia, or genetic mutation injury. 

Reason 2: 
All authoritative bodies have held that we must operate 
on the basis that there will be such injuries in proportion 
to accumulated dose of radiation down to the lowest doses. 

Reason 3: 
It is not credible that the entire nuclear fuel cycle can 
ever contain the radionuclides perfectly, with or without 
accidents. Indeed such nuclides are released during so-called 
normal operation. Therefore, it follows that injury to 
humans is guaranteed the moment the plant starts to operate 
and to create the radionuclides. 

Reason 4: 
The workers in the nuclear power plants receive a dose that 
will provoke genetic injury, and because of intermarriage 
with non-workers, this will result in the genetic degredation 
of the population-at-large, one of the most serious of all 
types of human injury. Since the workers start receiving 
this dose the moment the plant operates, the injury is, in 
effect, established the moment the plant starts to operate. 

Reason 5: 
There has been gross public deception and public misunderstanding 
concerning the so-called "permissible" or "tolerance" 
dose of radiation. The pu12lic has been misled into believing 
that such doses are without medical effect, when in truth 
such "permissible " doses represent nothing other than a legalized 
permit to commit random murder upon members of the population. 

Reason 6: 
Even though the injury manifests itself after periods measured 
in years, the actual injury is done to the genetic materials, 
namely, genes and chromosomes, immediately upon radiation. Thus, 
it would be totally false to assume there is. no immediate injury 
involved. The injury is immediate, is a danger now, even though 
visibly manifest at later time. 

Reason 7: 
It is only the simplest of logic that is required to demonstrate 
that the essence of protection of one's health and life and those 
of his or her children (and their children) must necessarily 



page 3 

Reason 7(cont'd) 
reside in prevention of production of the radionuclides, 
since, once produced, these radionuclides will guarantee 
the human injury and deaths. The áonly way to prevent the 
production of the radionuclides is not to have nuclear 
power plants operate. 

Reason 8: 
It may be inappropriately assumed that the operation 
of a nuclear power plant is not an "immediate" threat 
to health and life. For the reasons outlined above, the 
threat is immediate. A simple , and highly relevant, 
analogy is provided in the occurrence of a fire. We do 
not consider it rational for one to wait to try to put 
out a fire simply because the flames have not started 
to burn our clothing or our skin. Also, we do not consider 
fire-fighters to be destroying property when they 
must hack away at furniture and other property objects 
and real estate in the effort to control the blaze. 
Properly in a fire we consider the threat immediate no 
matter how far the flames have spread at a given moment, 
and we take action on this basis. The situation is no 
different for a nuclear power plant. Prevention of the 
injury and death of members of the public from the 
operation of a nuclear power plant is a public service. 
I am aware of no instance in the civilian economy where 
we take it as a premise that injury and murder of members 
of the public is to be regarded as a benificent act. 

Reason 9: 
Since the regulatory processes do not work to protect 
the pubiic, and since the regulatory authorities continue 
to grant licenses for the random murder of members of 
the public through the licensing of nuclear power plants, 
it is abundantly clear that the public can count upon no 
protection against victimization through the regulatory 
process. 

The extended support of the reasons listed above is presented in the 
exhibits listed above .. 

Dated June 5, 1978. 

JOHN W. GOFMAN, MD., Ph.D. 

Subscribed and sworn to before me 
this 5 day of June, 1978, in San Francisco, California. 

Notary Public in San Francisco, San Francisco County, State of California 

-4


Below is the text of Oregon's "choice of evils" law: 

161.200 Choice of Evils (1) Unless inconsistent with other provisions of 
Chapter 743, Oregon Laws 1971, defining justifiable use of physical force, 
or with some other provision of law, conduct which would otherwise 
constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when: 
(a) That conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an 
imminent public or private injury; and 
(b) The threatened injury is of such gravity that, according to ordinary 
standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding
the injury clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be
prevented by the statute defining the offense in issue. 
(2) The necessity and justifiability of conduct under subsection (1) of this 
section shall not rest upon consideration pertaining only to the morality 
and advisability of the statute, either in its general application or with 
respect to its application to a particular class of cases arising thereunder. 

Below are some of the declarations of the Nuremberg Tribunal: 

---"Murder, extermination ... or other inhuman acts done against any civilian 
population" constitute a crime against humanity; 

---"Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract 
entities"; 

---a superior order "does not relieve a person from responsibility under 
international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him"; 

---"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations 
of obedience imposed by the individual state." 

(NOTE: Part 2 of the Oregon law appears to deny that disobedience is ever 
permissible on "only" moral grounds, and falls far short of incorporating the 
Nuremberg principles). 

Below are some thoughts about the Nuremberg principles: 

"The anti-nuclear movement could become the driving force in spreading the 
Nuremberg principles throughout the land---namely, that people will be held 
personally responsible for what they do to other humans. We tried the Nazis 
for crimes against humanity, even though many claimed that they were just 
following orders. We held them personally responsible for their acts...

"If the Nuremberg principles were applied in our courtrooms, it would mean 
that those who refuse to stand by 'like good Germans' while random murder by 
radiation is planned---indeed, who refuse to be accomplices in this program 
via their taxes---these defendants would be tried before juries who would have 
the right to rule that such defendants were not breaking the law, because they 
were obeying a higher law. 

"In my opinion, the anti-nuclear movement would have an impact far far 
beyond the nuclear power issue if it would insist that the Nuremberg principles 
be applied throughout the land. Until that happens, what restraint is there on 
greater and greater government-licensed abominations? Until the Nuremberg 
principles are established in this land, laws can force us to violate our deepest 
religious or ethical beliefs---making a travesty of freedom." 

---John W. Gofman, April 30, 1978, at the Barnwell rally 

printed by 
American Friends Service Committee
San Francisco