Free Pyramid Quest by Robert M. Schoch Page B

mounted in the ceiling.
    The Great Pyramid even produced its own electrical power for lighting throughout the structure and electrical machinery in the Queen’s Chamber. Radioactive water spilling down the Well Shaft turned a turbine in the Subterranean Chamber, which, the engineers argue, bears a striking resemblance to the support structure for a water-driven turbine electric generator.
    Wear and tear on various parts of the Great Pyramid indicate that it produced power for a few hundred years, then it was purposely decommissioned and the internal machinery removed. Since there is no archaeological evidence of power stations or electrical grids in the ancient world, and since no one has yet stumbled across a stash of ancient Egyptian nuclear fuel, all the plutonium produced by the Great Pyramid in its centuries of operation must have been transported elsewhere, most likely to Mars, in the authors’ view. And what better site for an interplanetary nuclear power plant than Giza? It lies near the equator, which simplified orbital landings and takeoffs. The Nile Delta’s beneficent climate, predictable water supply, and fertile soil made it an ideal location for interplanetary travelers to assemble the human workers the nuclear project required. Miller, Sloan, and Wilson never specifically address the details of how the plutonium was transported to Mars. Presumably, the Martians who actually organized the construction and operation of the Great Pyramid had their own interplanetary means of travel.
    Quite apart from the science fiction flavor of this idea, it suffers from a major problem: lack of evidence. Like Dunn’s theory, the Giza nuke plant hypothesis rests on the supposition that the Great Pyramid once contained a vast array of equipment later removed without the least trace. That is hard to believe. What makes it even harder to believe is the absence of the evidence one would most expect in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant: radioactivity. The authors repeatedly cite Hanford, Washington, the primary production site for American nuclear weapons material during the Cold War, as an example of the kind of nuclear operation they have in mind. Nuclear production operations were shut down in Hanford in part because plutonium production had made it one of the most fiercely polluted places on earth. It will remain a dangerous hot spot for millennia. The half-life for plutonium-239—that is, the period it takes for the element to lose 50 percent of its radioactivity—is 24,000 years, and for uranium-238 about 4.5 billion years. Such long half-lives mean that even now, thousands of years after the Giza nuke plant shut down, the structure would be so radioactive that various phenomena should hold true. For one thing, the monument would glow at night inside. I have spent numerous hours in the Great Pyramid at night, and I can attest that it doesn’t glow with radioactivity. For another, the expected high level of radioactivity might damage film and electronic equipment, but I have encountered no signs of such damage either in my own equipment or that of my colleagues who have spent much time in the Great Pyramid. Finally, the guards who spend years of their lives inside the pyramid should reveal an unusual cluster of cancers and radiation sickness. To my knowledge, no such incidents among the guards have ever been reported.
    Miller, Sloan, and Wilson’s fanciful idea is just that: a fancy, with no substantial evidence to support it.

THE DEATH STAR
    Dunn’s model of the Great Pyramid as an electrical power plant and Miller, Sloan, and Wilson’s notion of the structure as a producer of nuclear fuel for interplanetary trade assume that the intention underlying Khufu’s monument is benevolent. In his two books, The Giza Death Star (2001) and The Giza Death Star Deployed (2003), physicist Joseph P. Farrell offers an altogether different take on the beneficence of the Great Pyramid. Like the other writers, he sees the