nuclear-news

“We turned off all the lights,” George Albernaz testified at a 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, “and … pretend that we were broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel-toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip.”

Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean, bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim the bullet-riddled drum.

Back inside the ship, Albernaz marked in his diary what the sailors dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. He knew he wasn’t supposed to keep such a record, but it was important to Albernaz that people know he had spoken the truth, even when the truth sounded crazy.

For up to 15 years after World War II, the crew of Albernaz’s ship, the USS Calhoun County, dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the Atlantic Ocean, often without heeding the simplest health precautions, according to Navy documents and Tampa Bay Times interviews with more than 50 former crewmen……….

The opening of the Atomic Age brought a vexing problem — how to dispose of radioactive waste.

The Atomic Energy Commission, which then managed most aspects of U.S. atomic energy policy, settled on a cheap, convenient fix: ocean dumping. The Calhoun County soon became the only Navy ship on the East Coast dumping radioactive waste.

The containers looked like ordinary 55-gallon steel drums. Nobody on the ship was quite sure what was in them.

They arrived by the hundreds by train and truck at the ship’s home port at Sandy Hook Bay, N.J. or the ship picked them up at Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island. Less often, waste was picked up at other ports, including Boston. The hottest waste came from Floyd Bennett. At times, the barrels were marked with color-coded dots or a painted X. The “red dot” barrels were said to be the most dangerous.

Not that it mattered. Few if any of the crewmen, according to interviews, received any special training on handling the waste. They said they handled the “red dot” barrels the same as all the rest.

Much of the waste, which was packed in concrete, came from Brookhaven National Laboratory, a government research facility on Long Island that had a reactor and generated radioactive material.

Several shipments emitted 17 rems per hour of radioactivity even after the waste was encased in concrete,Calhoun County‘s deck logs show. That is the equivalent of about 1,700 typical chest X-rays……….

No documents appear to exist showing what exactly the Navy dumped. Deck logs list dumping coordinates, tonnage handled and drum radiation levels — but often, even that information is missing. And from 1946 to 1953, the Calhoun County‘s officers were not recording any dumps in deck logs at all……….

No special shielding was ever used on the Calhoun County. In fact, some of the ship’s crew slept in quarters immediately under the barrels on the main deck. The deck plating was less than an inch thick. Atop that was wooden planking. Radiation still seeped below.

Albernaz told the VA in 2007 he recalled a trip when an AEC worker came through the crew quarters with a Geiger counter.

“It would go off like a machine-gun and he would say to us, ‘Okay. Get your pillow, blanket and mattress. We’re moving you to the tank deck,’ ” Albernaz said.

But the tank deck was under barrels, too. “So actually, there was really no place on that ship that was safe,” Albernaz said……..

It wasn’t long before Albernaz began keeping a different kind of diary. He titled this new log “Nuclear Waste Dumping Diary.”

Jan. 20 1957: “371 tons atomic waste.”

Feb. 7, 1957: “368 tons atom waste.”

Nov. 13, 1957: “299 (tons) poison gas (and) A.W.”

One of Albernaz’s last entries was on June 12, 1958: “200 tons. Spec. weapons,” or special weapons. That was the day, Albernaz later told his wife, that he helped dispose of an atomic bomb.

The Calhoun County sailed out of Norfolk, Va. with two giant crates. The ship’s log noted it dumped “confidential material” at 2:31 a.m.

Albernaz’s wife said he told her about that trip. He said the crew was told the crates contained two atomic bombs. Other sailors interviewed said the occasional dumping of disassembled atomic bombs occurred several times in its history………

Civilian workers at Brookhaven, the lab that packaged much of the waste dumped by the Calhoun County, found it difficult to prove their on-the-job exposure to radiation in the Cold War led to cancers some of them suffered. Records were too incomplete. Some workers were never monitored.

So in 2010, the federal government decided they would no longer have to prove their specific radiation exposure to get financial compensation and medical care. If they worked at the lab at least 250 days from 1947 to 1979 and were diagnosed with one of 22 radiation-related cancers, they qualified.

Congress protects military personnel in much the same way. But none of the men who served on theCalhoun County are eligible for automatic VA benefits for radiation illnesses because they did not participate in underwater or atmospheric atomic tests and related activities, the government says.

Thus, the crewmen do not meet their country’s definition of “Atomic Veteran.” http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/the-atomic-sailors/2157927