environment « nuclear-news

Depleted uranium – the cancer-causing weapon still taking its toll in Iraq

Cancer as Weapon: Poppy Bush’s Radioactive War on Iraq Counter Punch, by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR , DECEMBER 7, 2018, At the close of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was denounced as a ferocious villain for ordering his retreating troops to destroy Kuwaiti oil fields, clotting the air with poisonous clouds of black smoke and saturating the ground with swamps of crude. It was justly called an environmental war crime.

But months of bombing of Iraq by US and British planes and cruise missiles has left behind an even more deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the US hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

It took less than a decade for the health consequences from this radioactive bombing campaign to begin to coming into focus. And they are dire, indeed. Iraqi physicians call it “the white death”-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent. The situation is compounded by Iraq’s forced isolations and the sadistic sanctions regime, recently described by UN secretary general Kofi Annan as “a humanitarian crisis”, that makes detection and treatment of the cancers all the more difficult.

“We have proof of traces of DU in samples taken for analysis and that is really bad for those who assert that cancer cases have grown for other reasons,” said Dr. Umid Mubarak, Iraq’s health minister.

Mubarak contends that the US’s fear of facing the health and environmental consequences of its DU bombing campaign is partly behind its failure to follow through on its commitments under a deal allowing Iraq to sell some of its vast oil reserves in return for food and medical supplies.

“The desert dust carries death,” said Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, an oncologist and member England’s Royal Society of Physicians. “Our studies indicate that more than forty percent of the population around Basra will get cancer. We are living through another Hiroshima.”

Most of the leukemia and cancer victims aren’t soldiers. They are civilians. And many of them are children. The US-dominated Iraqi Sanctions Committee in New York has denied Iraq’s repeated requests for cancer treatment equipment and drugs, even painkillers such as morphine. As a result, the overflowing hospitals in towns such as Basra are left to treat the cancer-stricken with aspirin.

This is part of a larger horror inflicted on Iraq that sees as many as 180 children dying every day, according to mortality figures compiled by UNICEF, from a catalogue of diseases from the 19th century: cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, e. coli, mumps, measles, influenza.

Iraqis and Kuwaitis aren’t the only ones showing signs of uranium contamination and sickness. Gulf War veterans, plagued by a variety of illnesses, have been found to have traces of uranium in their blood, feces, urine and semen.

Depleted uranium is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace elements left behind when the fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a radioactive nuisance, piling up at plutonium processing plants across the country. By the late 1980s there was nearly a billion tons of the material.

Then weapons designers at the Pentagon came up with a use for the tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. The material was free and there was plenty at hand. Also uranium is a heavy metal, denser than lead. This makes it perfect for use in armor-penetrating weapons, designed to destroy tanks, armored-personnel carriers and bunkers.

When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal dust is inhaled, sticks to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begins to wreck havoc on the body: tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems, leukemias.

In 1943, the doomsday men associated with the Manhattan Project speculated that uranium and other radioactive materials could be spread across wide swaths of land to contain opposing armies. Gen. Leslie Grove, head of the project, asserted that uranium weapons could be expected to cause “permanent lung damage.” In the late, 1950s Al Gore’s father, the senator from Tennessee, proposed dousing the demilitarized zone in Korea with uranium as a cheap failsafe against an attack from the North Koreans.

After the Gulf War, Pentagon war planners were so delighted with the performance of their radioactive weapons that ordered a new arsenal and under Bill Clinton’s orders fired them at Serb positions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia. More than a 100 of the DU bombs have been used in the Balkans over the last six years.

Already medical teams in the region have detected cancer clusters near the bomb sites. The leukemia rate in Sarajevo, pummeled by American bombs in 1996, has tripled in the last five years. But it’s not just the Serbs who are ill and dying. NATO and UN peacekeepers in the region are also coming down with cancer. As of January 23, eight Italian soldiers who served in the region have died of leukemia.

The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. First, the Defense Department shrugged off concerns about Depleted Uranium as wild conspiracy theories by peace activists, environmentalists and Iraqi propagandists. When the US’s NATO allies demanded that the US disclose the chemical and metallic properties of its munitions, the Pentagon refused. It has also refused to order testing of US soldiers stationed in the Gulf and the Balkans.

If the US has kept silent, the Brits haven’t. A 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority predicted that if less than 10 percent of the particles released by depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq and Kuwait were inhaled it could result in as many as “300,000 probable deaths.”

The British estimate assumed that the only radioactive ingredient in the bombs dropped on Iraq was depleted uranium. It wasn’t. A new study of the materials inside these weapons describes them as a “nuclear cocktail,” containing a mix of radioactive elements, including plutonium and the highly radioactive isotope uranium-236. These elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than depleted uranium.

Typically, the Pentagon has tried to dump the blame on the Department of Energy’s sloppy handling of its weapons production plants. This is how Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley described the situation in chop-logic worthy of the pen of Joseph Heller.: “The source of the contamination as best we can understand it now was the plants themselves that produced the Depleted uranium during the 20 some year time frame when the DU was produced.”

Indeed, the problems at DoE nuclear sites and the contamination of its workers and contractors have been well-known since the 1980s. A 1991 Energy Department memo reports: “during the process of making fuel for nuclear reactors and elements for nuclear weapons, the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant… created depleted uranium potentially containing neptunium and plutonium”

But such excuses in the absence of any action to address the situation are growing very thin indeed. Doug Rokke, the health physicist for the US Army who oversaw the partial clean up of depleted uranium bomb fragments in Kuwait, is now sick. His body registers 5,000 times the level of radiation considered “safe”. He knows where to place the blame. “There can be no reasonable doubt about this,” Rokke told Australian journalist John Pilger. “As a result of heavy metal and radiological poison of DU, people in southern Iraq are experiencing respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers. Members of my own team have died or are dying from cancer.”

Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thousand of acres of land in the Balkans, Kuwait and southern Iraq have been contaminated forever. If George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Bill Clinton are still casting about for a legacy, there’s a grim one that will stay around for an eternity.

This article is adapted from Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/07/cancer-as-weapon-of-mass-destruction-poppy-bushs-radioactive-war-on-iraq/

December 10, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, health, Iraq, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Taiwan Votes to Maintain Import Ban on Fukushima Food Imports

While Fukushima suffered a blow, trade ties between Japan and Taiwan avoided any major impact. The Diplomat , By Thisanka Siripala, December 03, 2018 On Friday, Japan and Taiwan signed off on five bilateral trade pacts just days after Taiwan voted in a referendum to uphold an import ban on agricultural products from areas surrounding the Fukushima nuclear fallout.

Last week, 7.8 million voters in Taiwan approved renewing a legally binding food ban that was originally imposed after the nuclear disaster in 2011. The ongoing agricultural ban covers five Japanese prefectures including Fukushima and nearby Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Chiba over an extended two year period. Although the setback was expected to put a strain on bilateral relations, outright animosity has been diverted for now………..

Taiwan isn’t the only government to regulate Fukushima imports behind the backdrop of radiation concerns. China, South Korea, Singapore, and Macau are among the neighbors imposing partial seafood and farm produce restrictions to varying degrees. …….. https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/taiwan-votes-to-maintain-import-ban-on-fukushima-food-imports/

December 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, politics international, Taiwan | Leave a comment

Radiation Free Lakeland investigates radioactive beach, while Cumbrian media doesn’t bother to

Radiation Free Lakeland 2nd Dec 2018 Is it OK to have Radiocaesium and Transuranics in a Childrens Play Area on the Beach? Last thursday Radiation Free Lakeland were invited to Cleator Moor Civic Hall for the West Cumbria Site Stakeholder meeting (Environment and Health). We have deliberately shunned these meetings thinking that they are PR exercises for the industry.

The meetings are billed as a way of holding the industry and regulators to account but our experience on thursday confirmed our suspicions. We were invited to the meeting to make a presentation on our citizen science project

with nuclear science students in the US.

We had been sending samples to the US from the whole of the Cumbrian coast for over a year. The US undergraduate student’s findings shocked us. A full third of the samples taken were contaminated with material that can only have come from decades of Sellafield’s reprocessing.

At the meeting we listened from 1pm to 4pm to the industry and the regulators congratulate themselves endlessly for “reducing emissions” (continuing piling on the crapola in word and deed) and then we got a chance to make the 15 minute presentation at 4pm. There was no press in the room. We had told them we would be there but apparently they never bother going, instead they prefer to wait for Sellafield’s press release. The chair of the meeting was clearly biased in favour of the industry and even went so far at the end of the meeting to say that “if
only you came and listened and understood more the gap between us (!) would be bridged”. I took that to mean that if we were only browbeaten enough we would learn to love Nukiller Big Brother and not hold them to account
with our pesky questions.

There are not enough people holding the nuclear industry to account. That much is clear. The plan revealed from Sellafield is that they intend to reduce the beach monitoring and retrieval of radioactive particles even further to a nominal “reassurance” monitoring.
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/is-it-ok-to-have-radiocaesium-and-transuranics-in-a-childrens-play-area-on-the-beach/

December 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, media, UK | Leave a comment

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – its plight pretty much ignored by government

Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe As the UN sits down for its annual climate conference this week, many experts believe we have passed the point of no return, Guardian, by Robin McKie, 2 Dec 18 “…………Great Barrier Reef Coral reefs cover a mere 0.1% of the world’s ocean floor but they support about 25% of all marine species. They also provide nature with some of its most beautiful vistas. For good measure, coral reefs protect shorelines from storms, support the livelihoods of 500 million people and help generate almost £25bn of income. Permitting their destruction would put the planet in trouble – which is precisely what humanity is doing.

Rising sea temperatures are already causing irreparable bleaching of reefs, while rising sea levels threaten to engulf reefs at a faster rate than they can grow upwards. Few scientists believe coral reefs – which are made of simple invertebrates related to sea anemones – can survive for more than a few decades.

Yet those who have sounded clear warnings about our reefs have received little reward. Professor Terry Hughes, a coral expert at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, recently studied the impact of El Niño warmings in 2016 and 2017 on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef and its largest living entity – and wept when he saw the damage.

“The 2016 event killed 30% of corals, the one a year later killed another 20%. Very close to half the corals have died in the past three years,” he said recently.

For his pains, Hughes has faced demands from tourist firms for his funding to be halted because he was ruining their business. “The Australian government is still promoting new developments of coal mines and fracking for gas,” Hughes said, after being named joint recipient of the John Maddox prize, given to those who champion science in the face of hostility and legal threats. “If we want to save the Great Barrier Reef, these outdated ambitions need to be abandoned. Yet Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising, not falling. It’s a national disgrace.”

This grim picture is summed up by the ethnographer Irus Braverman in her book Coral Whisperers: “The Barrier Reef has changed for ever. The largest living structure in the world has become the largest dying structure in the world.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/02/world-verge-climate-catastophe

December 3, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, climate change, oceans | 1 Comment

Chernobyl – tourism in a radioactive land

Guardian 28th Nov 2018 , Grab your Geiger counter: a trip to Chernobyl’s first rave. The nuclear
disaster site is being marketed as a tourist destination with novelty gas
masks, radioactive ice cream and – now – a multimedia art show with the
military. It is a two-hour drive from the centre of Kiev, following the
banks of the Dnieper river into the woods. It is minus six degrees outside.
Wild dogs scavenge at the side of the road. Our bus comes to a stop and
military men in uniform tell us to disembark and ready our passports.
We’re at the main check point of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. From here,
signs warn us, everything is contaminated.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/nov/28/chernobyl-art-party-nuclear-pripyat-ukraine-artefact-valery-korshunov

December 1, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment | Leave a comment

In a warming world, nuclear power is extremely vulnerable to water shortages and problems

For nuclear plants, that warning is particularly grave. Reactors require 720 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce……Solar plants, by contrast, use approximately 20 gallons per megawatt-hour, mostly for cleaning equipment

Trump Administration’s Climate Report Raises New Questions About Nuclear Energy’s Future
The thirstiest source of electricity is already struggling, and greater risk of droughts will only add to those woes. Huffington Post.By Alexander C. Kaufman, 28 Nov 18,

Call it the nuclear power industry’s thirst trap.

The United States’ aging fleet of nuclear reactors ― responsible for one-fifth of the country’s electricity and most of its low-carbon power ― has never been more necessary as policymakers scramble to shrink planet-warming emissions. Yet the plants are struggling to stay afloat, with six stations shut down in the last five years and an additional 16 reactors scheduled to close over the next decade. So far, new coal- and gas-burning facilities are replacing them.

The nuclear industry blames high maintenance costs, competition from cheaper alternatives and hostile regulators concerned about radiation disasters like the 2012 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. But the country’s most water-intensive source of electricity faces what could be an even bigger problem as climate change increases the risk of drought and taxes already crumbling water infrastructure.

That finding, highlighted in the landmark climate change report that the Trump administration released with apparent reluctance last Friday, illustrates the complex and at times paradoxical realities of anthropogenic, or human-caused, warming. It also stokes an already hot debate over the role nuclear energy should play in fighting global warming, a month after United Nations scientists warned that carbon dioxide emissions must be halved in the next 12 years to avoid cataclysmic climate change leading to at least $54 trillion in damage.

The report ― the second installment of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated update on the causes and effects of anthropogenic warming from 13 federal agencies ― devoted its entire third chapter to water contamination and depletion. Aging, deteriorating infrastructure means “water systems face considerable risk even without anticipated future climate changes,” the report states. But warming-linked droughts and drastic changes in seasonal precipitation “will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact water supply.”

Nearly every sector of the economy is susceptible to water system changes. And utilities are particularly at risk. In the fourth chapter, the report’s roughly 300 authors conclude, “Most U.S. power plants … rely on a steady supply of water for cooling, and operations are expected to be affected by changes in water availability and temperature increases.”

For nuclear plants, that warning is particularly grave. Reactors require 720 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce, according to data from the National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia cited in 2012 by the magazine New Scientist. That compares with the roughly 500 gallons coal requires and 190 gallons natural gas needs to produce the same amount of electricity. Solar plants, by contrast, use approximately 20 gallons per megawatt-hour, mostly for cleaning equipment, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

Nuclear plants are already vulnerable to drought. Federal regulations require plants to shut down if water in the river or lake that feeds its cooling drops below a certain level. By the end of the 2012 North American heat wave, nuclear generation fell to its lowest point in a decade, with plants operating at only 93 percent of capacity.

The availability of water is one problem, particularly for the majority of U.S. nuclear plants located far from the coasts and dependent on freshwater. Another is the temperature of the water that’s available.

Nearly half the nuclear plants in the U.S. use once-through cooling systems, meaning they draw water from a local source, cool their reactors, then discharge the warmed water into another part of the river, lake, aquifer or ocean. Environmental regulations bar plants from releasing used water back into nature above certain temperatures. In recent years, regulators in states like New York and California rejected plant operators’ requests to pull more water from local rivers, essentially mandating the installation of costly closed-loop systems that cool and reuse cooling water.

In 2012, Connecticut’s lone nuclear power plant shut down one of its two units because the seawater used to cool the plant was too warm. The heat wave that struck Europe this summer forced utilities to scale back electricity production at nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. In France the utility EDF shut down four reactors in one day.

“Already they’re having trouble competing against natural gas and renewable energy,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Add onto that high water temperatures, high air temperatures and drought. It’s just another challenge.”

…….. the heart of the biggest question looming over the nuclear industry: Is it, given the radioactive waste it produces, clean energy?

……… For the Sierra Club, the environmental giant making a huge push to get cities and states to go all renewable, nuclear power is “a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity” and “no solution to climate change.”

“There’s no reason to keep throwing good money after bad on nuclear energy,” Lauren Lantry, a Sierra Club spokeswoman, said by email. “It’s clear that every dollar spent on nuclear is one less dollar spent on truly safe, affordable, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, energy efficiency, battery storage, and smart grid technology.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/nuclear-energy-climate-change-report_us_5bfdb9cae4b0a46950dce58f

November 29, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA, water | Leave a comment

Toxic radiation would have been spread by Californian fire at nuclear site

There has been great concern about extensive and extremely toxic and radioactive waste at the SSFL for years.

According to Daniel Hirsch, who recently retired as director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, SSFL is “one of the most contaminated sites in the country

There are multiple human health impacts that have been known to stem from the site well before the Woolsey Fire began.

A study prepared by Professor Hal Morgenstern for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry studied the community surrounding SSFL and found a greater than 60 percent increase in incidence of key cancers associated with proximity to the site.

“DTSC is a classically captured regulatory agency, captured by the polluters it is supposed to regulate,”

California Wildfire Likely Spread Nuclear Contamination From Toxic Site https://truthout.org/articles/california-wildfire-likely-spread-nuclear-contamination-from-toxic-site/, Dahr Jamail,, November 26, 2018The incredibly destructive Woolsey Fire in southern California has burned nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, killed three people, destroyed more than 400 structures, and at the time of this writing, was finally nearly completely contained.

The fire may also have released large amounts of radiation and toxins into the air after burning through a former rocket engine testing site where a partial nuclear meltdown took place nearly six decades ago.

“The Woolsey Fire has most likely released and spread both radiological and chemical contamination that was in the Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s soil and vegetation via smoke and ash,” Dr. Bob Dodge, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA), told Truthout.

The fire has been widely reported to have started “near” the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site (SSFL), but according to PSR-LA, it appears to have started at the site itself.

The contaminated site — a 2,849-acre former rocket engine test site and nuclear research facility — is located just 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

A press release issued by PSR-LA on November 12 stated: Continue reading →

November 27, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Because of Brexit, the clean-up of UKs radioactive Dalgety Bay is stalled

Delay in Dalgety Bay radiation remediation work ‘due to Brexit’, Courier UK by Aileen RobertsonNovember 19 2018 A further delay in the project to contain radiation at Dalgety Bay has been blamed on Brexit.

It was hoped remediation work to contain radioactive particles at the contaminated shore would be complete by the end of next summer.

But it has been revealed the work will not even be started in 2019 after the UK Government took longer than expected to give the plans final approval.

“I think every government department is focused on Brexit, and I think that’s potentially the problem,” said Labour councillor Bobby Clelland.

David Barratt, SNP councillor for Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay, said: “It’s extremely disappointing that an entirely avoidable delay is now likely to occur and even more frustrating that this may be down to it sitting in someone’s inbox.

“I am writing to Lesley Laird as the MP for Dalgety Bay to express this frustration and to ask her to seek answers on why such a delay occurred in seeking ministerial approval.”

Radioactive particles were first discovered at the headland near Dalgety Bay Sailing Club in 1990.

The particles were found to contain radium-226 which was in paint used to make aircraft dials luminous. Studies of the coastline suggest incinerated radioactive waste was dumped prior to 1959, when the nearby airbase HMS Merlin was decommissioned.

After years of refusing to accept liability, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was named as the polluter by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency more than two decades after the radiation was found.

The MoD has drawn up an action plan, including removing some of the contaminated debris and containing the rest by building a wall and new slipway, which is with UK ministers for approval.

Stephen Ritchie from the MoD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) told South and West Fife Area Committee the delay was “very frustrating for everybody”……….. https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/fife/766779/delay-in-dalgety-bay-radiation-remediation-work-due-to-brexit/

November 19, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Rocky Flats still radioactively polluted

CNN Planet Earth: Poisoned Earth – Rocky Mountain Arsenal

The Dangers of Rocky Flats Are Forgotten but Not Gone, Westword, RON BAXENDALE II | NOVEMBER 17, 2018 “……..After nearly forty years of producing plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs, Rocky Flats was closed in 1992 after an endless series of fires, leaking storage containers and other accidents. At that time, it was said that Rocky Flats was likely to become a “national sacrifice zone” — a place so toxic it would never be fit for human habitation.

The Department of Energy projected it would take at least until 2065 (seventy years) and cost more than $40 million to marginally clean up Rocky Flats. U.S. Representative David Skaggs said that Rocky Flats would be a “problem for society that no society in history has ever had to deal with before. [H]ow do you build, maintain, and monument a site that is going to have to be clearly demarcated for generations to come beyond the scope of recorded history?”

Then in 2000, only a few years later, Kaiser-Hill was given a contract to complete the closure of Rocky Flats, agreeing to clean up the entire 6,245-acre site in less than six years on a budget of $4 billion.

Really? From “sacrifice zone” to “70-year marginal clean up” to “perfectly safe” in less than six years? How is this possible?

The cleanup of Rocky Flats was declared complete in 2006 and, even more astonishing, new homes in the Candelas development began to appear in 2012, immediately south of Rocky Flats, near the buffer zone. Now, despite continuing protest, the Deputy Secretary of the Interior has ruled that the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (the innocuous new name for the plant) is safe enough for visits by children on school field trips.

The efforts to hide the dirty secrets of Rocky Flats are nothing new, and neither is the willingness of people to ignore the truth in order to lead lives free of worry. Newbies to Colorado, many of whom have invested much to make major life changes, are the biggest naysayers, wearing blinders to avoid the unsettling truth about their new choice of residence………..

We all lived in the Broomfield area of the Front Range from the early ’60s onward, I told the woman. For more than twenty years, I said, we all drank water from the Great Western Reservoir, Broomfield’s plutonium-laden water supply, and began suffering our health problems in the mid- to late ’80s. And this is just one family, I told her. One little family out of tens of thousands of families, all of which can tell their version of the same horror story. (When the members of a family or multiple families within a community contract this much cancer, says my primary care doctor, the cause is nearly always environmental.)……….

if Rocky Flats is so safe, why did an independent sample of soils east of Rocky Flats along Indiana Street in 2012 show plutonium contamination 100 times greater than allowable background levels? Why did a 2016 study led by Metropolitan State University of Denver find that those living downwind from Rocky Flats have unusually high rates of breast, thyroid, prostate, colon and rare cancers? And why do veterinarians in the Arvada-Westminster area report that dogs that frequent the Westminster Hills Dog Park — located just east of Rocky Flats and adjacent to the contaminated Great Western Reservoir — have abnormally high rates of bone and foot cancers?

More important, if Rocky Flats is so safe, why are home buyers immediately south of ground zero presented with advisory notices only at closing and told not to plant root-bound vegetables in gardens? One would think buyers would pay serious attention to such red flags, especially those buyers with young children……..

“In less than a generation we have almost forgotten what happened at Rocky Flats, and why it must never happen again,” says Kristen Iversen in Full Body Burden , her landmark exposé/history of Rocky Flats. ……..https://www.westword.com/news/op-ed-rocky-flats-dangers-are-forgotten-not-gone-11001314

November 19, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

If scientists and communities can’t get the U.S. govt to clean up Santa Susana Nuclear Field Lab, perhaps Kim Kardashian can

Kim Kardashian calls for cleanup of Santa Susana Field Lab, joining residents who have long fought for it https://www.dailynews.com/2018/11/16/in-wake-of-woolsey-fire-kim-kardashian-calls-for-cleanup-of-former-rocketdyne-site-joining-residents-who-have-long-fought-for-it/ By OLGA GRIGORYANTS | ogrigoryants@scng.com | Los Angeles Daily News: November 16, 2018 A former nuclear and rocket engine testing site, which sits in the hills above San Fernando and Simi valleys, became a topic of discussion on Twitter after celebrity Kim Kardashian West called for a cleanup of the area.

Kardashian shared with her 58 million followers Thursday that she was “shocked and furious” to learn that the Woolsey fire, which threatened her Calabasas home, started at the former nuclear testing site and is “potentially radioactive.”

The celebrity’s sister, Kourtney Kardashian, echoed her concerns.

“Our family lives only 20 miles from a nuclear disaster site, Santa Susana Field Lab, and we didn’t even know it. We need Gavin Newsom to do something,” Kardashian tweeted Thursday.

But the contaminated 2,900-acre site is well known to San Fernando Valley residents.

Nearly 490,000 people signed a petition on Change.org, started by West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead whose daughter Grace has twice survived leukemia. The girl is one of 50 children within 20 miles of the site with cancer, a product, some residents say, of an era of nuclear research and rocket engine testing that left a tragic imprint in the area.

The lab appeared on the map in the 1940s, and about two decades later it became the site of a partial meltdown accident that left the area polluted with radioactive and chemical contamination. The United States Department of Energy and NASA signed an agreement in 2010, promising to remove all contamination from the site by 2017. The state’s Department of Toxic Substance Control, or DTSC, asked Boeing, which owns a portion of the area, to commit to its own cleanup.

About a year after the deadline, the companies still have not cleaned the area. Now, Bumstead and other parents worry that their families are being exposed to carcinogenic chemicals.

The Woolsey fire, which started near the former Rocketdyne site, has amplified those concerns.

“DTSC repeatedly minimizes risk from SSFL and has broken every promise it ever made about the SSFL cleanup,” Bumstead wrote in a statement. “Communities throughout the state have also been failed by DTSC. The public has no confidence in this troubled agency.”

Abbott Dutton, a spokeswoman for DTSC, wrote in an email that the agency’s experts accessed the site last Saturday to inspect damage caused by the fire.

“We confirmed that the SSFL facilities that previously handled radioactive and hazardous materials were not affected by the fire,” Dutton wrote. “Over the weekend our multi-agency team took measurements of radiation and hazardous compounds, both on the site and in the surrounding community. The results from this initial round of testing showed no radiation levels above background levels, and no elevated levels of hazardous compounds other than those normally present after a wildfire.”

But Bumstead was skeptical about the test results.

“I was outraged to learn that DTSC and other agencies are telling everyone there’s no risk, and then we find out they haven’t even received many of the test results,” she wrote in an email. “DTSC and Los Angeles County Department of Public Health should not make assurances when they don’t have the data and won’t release whatever measurements they may have taken.”

November 19, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | Leave a comment

President of French Polynesia admits that leaders lied, over 3 decades, about dangerous radioactivity from French nuclear tests

French Polynesian president acknowledges nuclear test lies https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/french-polynesian-president-acknowledges-nuclear-test-lies-1.23500250, Thomas Adamson / The Associated Press, NOVEMBER 16, 2018 PARIS —French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch has said the leaders of the French collectivity of islands in the South Pacific lied to the population for three decades over the dangers of nuclear testing.

November 17, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, OCEANIA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

High fire warning continues including area of Santa Susana (Rocketdyne) nuclear irradiated area

Red Flag Warning Extended Through Tuesday As Fires Roar In LA, Ventura Counties https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/11/09/red-flag-warning-woolsey-fire/

November 9, 2018 LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A red flag warning denoting a high risk of wildfire has been extended until Tuesday, as two fires continued to roar across Los Angeles and Ventura counties today.Gusty, strong off-shore winds fueled the flames of the Woolsey and Hill fires, burning from West Hills to Camarillo and south to PCH late into the evening.

The Hill Fire erupted at 2:04 p.m. Thursday in the area of Hill Canyon in Santa Rosa Valley; less than a half-hour later, the Woolsey Fire ignited in the area of Rocketdyne, south of the City of Simi Valley. The flames were kicked up by heavy wind gusts, reaching speeds up to 60 mph.

Friday, winds were back in the teens and single-digits across the area, helping firefighters as they tried to get a better handle on the flames.

The National Weather Service said Friday dry conditions and gusty winds would continue through Saturday evening before Santa Ana winds redevelop, however, bringing continued Red Flag conditions to both counties Sunday through Tuesday, with wind gusts expected between 40-55 mph.

Officials warn residents to use caution with ignition sources.

Woolsey And Hill Fires: Evacuations, Road Closures And School Closures November 9, 2018 https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/11/09/woosley-and-hill-fires-evacuations-road-closures-school-closures-and-evacuation-centers/

November 10, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, safety, USA | Leave a comment

? Canada’s nuclear regulator wants Small Nuclear Reactors exempted from full Environmental Assessment

Federal nuclear regulator urges government to exempt smaller nuclear
reactors from full Environmental Assessment panel review, Globe and Mail 6th Nov 2018 -(subscribers only)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-federal-nuclear-regulator-urges-liberals-to-exempt-smaller-reactors/

November 10, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, politics, safety | Leave a comment

Climate scientists have underestimated the rapid warming of the oceans

Oceans Are Warming Up Much Faster Than Previously Thought https://e360.yale.edu/digest/oceans-are-warming-up-much-faster-than-previously-thought The world’s oceans have soaked up much more excess heat in recent decades than scientists previously thought — as much as 60 percent more, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. The new research suggests the global could warm even faster in the coming decades than researchers originally predicted, The Washington Post reported.The researchers, led by geoscientist Laure Resplandy of Princeton University, found that oceans absorbed 13 zettajoules — a joule, the standard unit of energy, followed by 21 zeroes — of heat energy each year between 1991 and 2016. Based on these findings, they argue, nations must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent more than previously estimated if they hope to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.“Imagine if the ocean was only 30 feet deep,” Resplandy said in a statement. “Our data show that it would have warmed by 6.5 degrees C [11.7 degrees Fahrenheit] every decade since 1991. In comparison, the estimate of the last IPCC assessment report would correspond to a warming of only 4 degrees C [7.2 degrees F] every decade.”

Scientists have long struggled to quantify ocean warming before 2007 — the year that a network of robotic sensors known as Argo were deployed into the world’s oceans to track things like temperature and salinity. For pre-2007 data, the new research examined the volume of oxygen and carbon dioxide released from the oceans as they heated up, providing scientists an indicator for ocean temperature change.

“We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted,” Resplandy told The Washington Post. “But we were wrong. The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already.”

November 6, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Radioactivity induced mutations in the animals of Chernobyl

What We Know About the Chernobyl Animal Mutations https://www.thoughtco.com/chernobyl-animal-mutations-4155348?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareurlbuttons&fbclid=IwAR0ML06KNkYYmozGbreM6e9ApQ9154nFmnYLxzZFUkK0pznLEi2X9FM-FHQ by

Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. September 10, 2018

The 1986 Chernobyl accident resulted in one of the highest unintentional releases of radioactivity in history. The graphite moderator of reactor 4 was exposed to air and ignited, shooting plumes of radioactive fallout across what is now Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Europe. While few people live near Chernobyl now, animals living in the vicinity of the accident allow us to study the effects of radiation and gauge recovery from the disaster.

Most domestic animals have moved away from the accident, and those deformed farm animals that were born did not reproduce. After the first few years following the accident, scientists focused on studies of wild animals and pets that had been left behind, in order to learn about Chernobyl’s impact.

Although the Chernobyl accident can’t be compared to effects from a nuclear bombbecause the isotopes released by the reactor differ from those produced by a nuclear weapon, both accidents and bombs cause mutations and cancer.

It’s crucial to study the effects of the disaster to help people understand the serious and long-lasting consequences of nuclear releases. Moreover, understanding the effects of Chernobyl may help humanity react to other nuclear power plant accidents.

The Relationship Between Radioisotopes and Mutations

You may wonder how, exactly, radioisotopes (a radioactive isotope) and mutations are connected. The energy from radiation can damage or break DNA molecules. If the damage is severe enough, cells can’t replicate and the organism dies. Sometimes DNA can’t be repaired, producing a mutation. Mutated DNA may result in tumors and affect an animal’s ability to reproduce. If a mutation occurs in gametes, it can result in a nonviable embryo or one with birth defects.

Additionally, some radioisotopes are both toxic and radioactive. The chemical effects of the isotopes also impact the health and reproduction of affected species.

The types of isotopes around Chernobyl change over time as elements undergo radioactive decay. Cesium-137 and iodine-131 are isotopes that accumulate in the food chain and produce most of the radiation exposure to people and animals in the affected zone.

Examples of Domestic Genetic Deformities

Ranchers noticed an increase in genetic abnormalities in farm animals immediately following the Chernobyl accident. In 1989 and 1990, the number of deformities spiked again, possibly as a result of radiation released from the sarcophagus intended to isolate the nuclear core. In 1990, around 400 deformed animals were born. Most deformities were so severe the animals only lived a few hours.

Examples of defects included facial malformations, extra appendages, abnormal coloring, and reduced size. Domestic animal mutations were most common in cattle and pigs. Also, cows exposed to fallout and fed radioactive feed produced radioactive milk.

The health and reproduction of animals near Chernobyl were diminished for at least the first six months following the accident. Since that time, plants and animals have rebounded and largely reclaimed the region. Scientists collect information about the animals by sampling radioactive dung and soil and watching animals using camera traps.

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is a mostly-off-limits area covering over 1,600 square miles around the accident. The exclusion zone is a sort of radioactive wildlife refuge. The animals are radioactive because they eat radioactive food, so they may produce fewer young and bear mutated progeny. Even so, some populations have grown. Ironically, the damaging effects of radiation inside the zone may be less than the threat posed by humans outside of it. Examples of animals seen within the zone include Przewalksi’s horses, wolves, badgers, swans, moose, elk, turtles, deer, foxes, beavers, boars, bison, mink, hares, otters, lynx, eagles, rodents, storks, bats, and owls.

Not all animals fare well in the exclusion zone. Invertebrate populations (including bees, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers, and dragonflies) in particular have diminished. This is likely because the animals lay eggs in the top layer of soil, which contains high levels of radioactivity.

Radionuclides in water have settled into the sediment in lakes. Aquatic organisms are contaminated and face ongoing genetic instability. Affected species include frogs, fish, crustaceans, and insect larvae.

While birds abound in the exclusion zone, they are examples of animals that still face problems from radiation exposure. A study of barn swallows from 1991 to 2006 indicated birds in the exclusion zone displayed more abnormalities than birds from a control sample, including deformed beaks, albinistic feathers, bent tail feathers, and deformed air sacs. Birds in the exclusion zone had less reproductive success. Chernobyl birds (and also mammals) often had smaller brains, malformed sperm, and cataracts.

The Famous Puppies of Chernobyl

Not all of the animals living around Chernobyl are entirely wild. There are around 900 stray dogs, mostly descended from those left behind when people evacuated the area. Veterinarians, radiation experts, and volunteers from a group called The Dogs of Chernobyl capture the dogs, vaccinate them against diseases, and tag them. In addition to tags, some dogs are fitted with radiation detector collars. The dogs offer a way to map radiation across the exclusion zone and study the ongoing effects of the accident. While scientists generally can’t get a close look at individual wild animals in the exclusion zone, they can monitor the dogs closely. The dogs are, of course, radioactive. Visitors to the area are advised to avoid petting the pooches to minimize radiation exposure.

References

Galván, Ismael; Bonisoli-Alquati, Andrea; Jenkinson, Shanna; Ghanem, Ghanem; Wakamatsu, Kazumasa; Mousseau, Timothy A.; Møller, Anders P. (2014-12-01). “Chronic exposure to low-dose radiation at Chernobyl favours adaptation to oxidative stress in birds”. Functional Ecology. 28 (6): 1387–1403.
Moeller, A. P.; Mousseau, T. A. (2009). “Reduced abundance of insects and spiders linked to radiation at Chernobyl 20 years after the accident”. Biology Letters. 5 (3): 356–9.
Møller, Anders Pape; Bonisoli-Alquati, Andea; Rudolfsen, Geir; Mousseau, Timothy A. (2011). Brembs, Björn, ed. “Chernobyl Birds Have Smaller Brains”. PLoS ONE. 6 (2): e16862.
Poiarkov, V.A.; Nazarov, A.N.; Kaletnik, N.N. (1995). “Post-Chernobyl radiomonitoring of Ukrainian forest ecosystems”. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. 26 (3): 259–271.
Smith, J.T. (23 February 2008). “Is Chernobyl radiation really causing negative individual and population-level effects on barn swallows?”. Biology Letters. The Royal Society Publishing. 4 (1): 63–64.
Wood, Mike; Beresford, Nick (2016). “The wildlife of Chernobyl: 30 years without man”. The Biologist. London,UK: Royal Society of Biology. 63 (2): 16–19.

November 5, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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