nuclear-news

Former Los Alamos worker counters the disinformation from the nuclear lobby

Cancer, Coverups and Contamination: The Real Cost of Nuclear Energy 27th September 2015 Andreas Toupadakis Ph.D Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“When the Chernobyl accident happened some of the iodine went around the world several times. In fact, you, I, everyone – we all have a piece of Chernobyl in our body…” ~ Theoretical physicist and author Michio Kaku

Disinformation is a component of any propaganda. The highly paid technocrats and advocates of “peaceful uses of the atom” increasingly use disinformation to repress and control public protest against nuclear pollution and environmental injustice.

As a former employee of two US national nuclear labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and after having seen what I have seen, NO, I am NOT an advocate of nuclear power. Unfortunately, most so-called experts on these issues talk in front of a blackboard, but that is not what nuclear materials are; they are not theory and calculations on paper, as most academics around the world seem to think, but destructive beasts that kill people without any discrimination. Let them go and get dressed like astronauts with breathing masks, and experience nuclear accidents, and be contaminated first hand, and see after that if they will still favor nuclear energy.

I was trained as a handler of nuclear materials, and I experienced how easy it is for contamination to occur and how difficult it is to clean up. I experienced the brainwashing and deception by the nuclear system advocates. During training, we were told that nuclear radiation is just like the light from sun, but when a “little accident” did occur, my co-workers were brought to the hospital immediately for treatment and then fired from the job within one month. Technical equipment of hundreds of thousands of dollars had to be trashed due to contamination. I witnessed explosions, and virtually all instances were due to human error. I worked side by side with the designers of storage cans for nuclear waste, I did research on the behavior of nuclear waste, and I have published a number of technical reports on MOX (mixed oxide), Uranium and Plutonium. I have worked for hundreds of hours in two nuclear labs and my eyes have seen a lot.

When I realized that within the Lab, environmental or nonproliferation work was but an illusion, I decided to resign. My conscience simply does not allow me to work for the development or maintenance of nuclear weapons, particularly in such a dangerous environment.

A few months after I resigned, I received a letter from LLNL with the title: “Beryllium Medical Surveillance Testing for Former LLNL Employees”. In that letter, I was asked to participate in voluntary blood screening for possible Chronic Beryllium Disease, a disease that causes scarring of the lung tissue after a person inhales dust or fumes of beryllium, a toxic and relatively rare element that is created through nuclear fusion reactions. I was shocked to read that the same letter was sent to 28,000 other former LLNL workers. The reason I was shocked is that one of my friends was trying to win his legal case against the lab for beryllium exposure, but the Department of Energy (which oversees the national laboratories) had refused to accept his medical results, which were positive.

What happened as a result? A court decision was finally made. But that is the overarching ethos of the nuclear industry: contaminate people because of profit, refuse to admit it, and then contest it in court until there is no other choice but to finally admit it.

What Are The Financial Costs of Nuclear Energy? ……….http://wakeup-world.com/2015/09/27/cancer-coverups-and-contamination-the-real-cost-of-nuclear-energy/

September 28, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties