USA citizens exposed to experimental ionising radiation
Contaminated Nation. Inhuman Radiation Experiments, CounterPunch, by JOHN LaFORGE, 12 Aprl 13 “………Experiments Spread Cancer Risks Far and Wide In large scale experiments as late as 1985, the Energy Department deliberately produced reactor meltdowns which spewed radiation across Idaho and beyond.[x] The Air Force conducted at least eight deliberate meltdowns in the Utah desert, dispersing 14 times the radiation released by the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.[xi]
The military even dumped radiation from planes and spread it across wide areas around and downwind of Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Dugway, Utah. This “systematic radiation warfare 
program,” conducted between 1944 and 1961, was kept secret for 40 years.[xii]
“Radiation bombs” thrown from USAF planes intentionally spread radiation “unknown distances” endangering the young and old alike. One such experiment doused Utah with 60 times more radiation than escaped the Three Mile Island accident, according to Sen. John Glen, D-Ohio who released a report on the program 20 years ago.[xiii]
The Pentagon’s 235 above-ground nuclear bomb tests, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are not officially listed as radiation experiments. Yet between 250,000 and 500,000 U.S. military personnel were contaminated during their compulsory participation in the bomb tests and the post-war occupation of Japan. [xiv]
Documents uncovered by the Advisory Committee show that the military knew there were serious radioactive fallout risks from its Nevada Test Site bomb blasts. The generals decided not to use a safer site in Florida, where fallout would have blown out to sea. “The officials determined it was probably not safe, but went ahead anyway,” said Pat Fitzgerald a scientist on the committee staff.[xv]
Dr. Gioacchino Failla, a Columbia University scientist who worked for the AEC, said at the time, “We should take some risk… we are faced with a war in which atomic weapons will undoubtedly be used, and we have to have some information about these things.”[xvi]
With the National Cancer Institute’s 1997 finding that all 160,000 million US citizens (in the country at the time of the bomb tests) were contaminated with fallout, it’s clear we did face war with atomic weapons — our own. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/inhuman-radiation-experiments/
A criminal betrayal of Australian servicemen – British atomic bomb tests “down under”
With the enthusiastic connivance of the Australian Government (more precisely, prime minister Robert Menzies, who bypassed his cabinet), the British detonated about a dozen nukes in our backyard. More than 8000 servicemen were involved in the tests and the measures for their safety were perfunctory at best and criminal at worst.
‘Death ash’ rains on betrayed men, Courier Mail Terry Sweetman , The Sunday Mail (Qld) February 24, 2013
ONE of the great ironies of history is that the Japanese fishing boat that took 23 men into the fiery breath of America’s first hydrogen bomb was called the Lucky Dragon No 5.
That was on March 1, 1954, which is ancient history to most Australians, but there is a tragic echo right here and right now.
Lucky Dragon was fishing off Bikini Atoll, outside the declared danger zone, when the Castle Bravo thermonuclear device was detonated.
Oops. The blast was about twice as powerful as the boffins had calculated and the Lucky Dragon was showered with radioactive dust, which the Japanese poetically called death ash.
Soon the fishermen began to suffer nausea, pain and skin inflammation and, in September, radio operator Kuboyama Aikichi died.
It was a shocking incident but more shocking was the initial cover-up and official disinformation. Continue reading
The messy history of the Hanford Reservation radioactive mess
.At The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, A Steady Drip Of Toxic Trouble by Eric Nusbaum Feb 24, 2013 Eric Nusbaum tours the largest environmental cleanup operation the United States government has ever undertaken.”,,,,,,,,Late in 2010, crews with the contractor Washington Closure Hanford were set to begin demolition on what had once been the most radioactive structure on the site: Building 324. Located less than half a mile from both the city of Richland and the Columbia River, Building 324 housed a pair of “hot cells,” which are three-story enclosures that scientists use to perform remotely-operated tests of highly unstable materials. One of those cells, B-Cell, was so radioactive in the 1990s that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that “an unprotected person standing inside could have received a fatal dose in less than two seconds.” By 2010, the building’s worst radioactive material had been removed. But when Washington Closure Hanford tested the ground under the site, it found radiation levels significantly higher than surrounding soil, which itself was already contaminated. Needless to say, demolition on Building 324 has not resumed. The site is “currently being deactivated,” says the Hanford website.
There are similar stories to tell about buildings all over the site, messy stories about government bureaucracy and highly radioactive equipment and the troublesome permanence of nuclear waste. The process of producing plutonium at Hanford required the constant transport of highly unstable materials from one facility to another to another, which made containing the mess basically impossible. Continue reading
Little New Zealand stood up to nuclear bully USA
Flashback: When David stood up to Goliath stuff.co New Zealand, 9 Feb 13, The Dominion Post, TOM HUNT ”,,,,,It may have soured our relationship with Washington and provided a dramatic end to a paradisiacal trip to Tokelau, but it certainly set Lange up as New Zealand’s David versus America’s Goliath.
February 4, 1985 was the day the New Zealand Government backed overwhelming public anti-nuclear sentiment and effectively became officially nuclear free – even if legislation was still two years away.
”I felt so proud,” long-standing anti-nuclear protester Barney Richards said this week.
”We stood up against the most powerful nation in the world. And we had a major victory.”
He remembers a reporter travelling all the way from Britain ”to see for himself the little country that snubbed its nose to the world”. Continue reading
Atoms for Peace, Problems Forever
leaves America today with what amounts to over five dozen nominally temporary repositories for high-level radioactive waste – and no defined plan to change that situation anytime soon.
Seventy Years of Nuclear Fission, Thousands of Centuries of Nuclear Waste ,25 January 2013 By Gregg Levine, Truthout “……The Manhattan Project’s goal was a bomb, but soon after the end of the war, scientists, politicians, the military and private industry looked for ways to harness the power of the atom for civilian use, or, perhaps more to the point, for commercial profit. Fifteen years to the day after CP-1 achieved criticality, President Dwight Eisenhower threw a ceremonial switch to start the reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, which was billed as the first full-scale nuclear power plant built expressly for civilian electrical generation.
Shippingport was, in reality, little more than a submarine engine on blocks, but the nuclear industry and its acolytes will say that it was the beginning of billions of kilowatts of power, promoted (without a hint of irony) as “clean, safe and too cheap to meter.” It was also, however, the beginning of what is now a weightier legacy: 72,000 tons of nuclear waste.
Atoms for Peace, Problems Forever
News of Fermi’s initial success was communicated by physicist Arthur Compton to the head of the National Defense Research Committee, James Conant, with artistically coded flair:
Compton: The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.
Conant: How were the natives?
Compton: Very friendly.
But soon after that initial success, CP-1 was disassembled and reassembled a short drive away, in Red Gate Woods. The optimism of the physicists notwithstanding, it was thought best to continue the experiments with better radiation shielding – and slightly removed from the center of a heavily populated campus. The move was perhaps the first necessitated by the uneasy relationship between fissile material and the health and safety of those around it, but if it was understood as a broader cautionary tale, no one let that get in the way of “progress.” Continue reading
Narrow escape – nuclear satellite mishap in 1982
Thirty Years Ago, Everyone Thought A Nuclear Satellite Was Going To Fall From Space And Spread Destruction http://www.businessinsider.com/flashback-how-a-tumbling-nuclear-russian-satellite-held-the-world-in-fear-for-a-month-2013-1#ixzz2J0sLfzPZ Dina Spector | Jan. 24, 2013 Thirty years ago, the world was held hostage by a nuclear-powered Soviet spy satellite tumbling out of control in an orbit close to Earth.
The spiraling spacecraft, named Cosmos 1402, was launched into low-Earth orbit on Aug. 20, 1982.
What made Cosmos particularly scary is that it carried a nuclear reactor with about 100 pounds of enriched uranium. The reactor was used to power a radar system for tracking ships.
To compare, it takes as little as 35 pounds of uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Once the satellite completed its mission, the plan was to boost the 1,000-pound reactor section, including the fuel core, into higher orbit, where it would linger at a safe distance from Earth for many hundreds of years.
But that failed. Continue reading
VIDEO USA’s Atomic Energy Commission’s pointless efforts at “peaceful bombs”
in the least productive but most destructive test, the scientists wanted “to see how big of a hole a nuclear bomb could make.” Motherboard:
“It proved to be a really big hole.”
That test, Project Sedan, spewed radioactive fallout across four states, contaminating “more Americans than any other nuclear test.”
VIDEO The U.S. Once Wanted To Use Nuclear Bombs as a Construction Tool : http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/01/the-u-s-once-wanted-to-use-nuclear-bombs-as-a-construction-tool/#ixzz2IFsWdcSf Smithsonian. January 16, 2013 In 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission wanted to see how big of a hole they could make with a nuclear bomb. ……..Enter, Project Sedan. the U.S.’s Atomic Energy Commission, Project Plowshare, says Motherboard, was a project in which the nation’s scientists were supposed to find something useful to do with all the nuclear expertise they had acquired throughout World War II and its aftermath. From 1961 through 1973, Project Plowshare saw 27 nuclear detonations. Many of these were at a test site in Nevada, says Motherboard, but some were a bit more experimental. In 1973, Project Rio Blanco, an operation under the banner of Project Plowshare, Continue reading
Ionising radiation a cancer danger in CT scanning
Concerns about exposure to ionising radiation inducing cancer NPS, 15 Jan 13, People are exposed to ionising radiation through medical imaging with X-rays, CT and nuclear medicine scans, including positron-emission tomography (PET).5 While MRI has the advantage of not using ionising radiation4 most of the new MBS items for MRI requested by GPs will require X-ray as a first investigation.2
As there are no completed, large-scale epidemiological studies of cancer risk associated with CT, risk has been approximated using organ doses (or the distribution of dose in the organ) and application of organ-specific cancer incidence and mortality data derived from studies of atomic-bomb survivors on the peripheries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.6 Risk estimates adjusted to take into account the greater use of CT since 2006 indicate that 1.5–2% of all cancers in the US may be due to radiation from CT.6 Estimating cancer risk from CT remains a contentious issue, and large-scale epidemiological studies are needed for a direct assessment of this risk.6
Imaging is justified if the potential benefits outweigh the risks7…….
Project COW – USA’s bright idea to bomb the moon
A nuclear flash point, Deccan Herald, Jan, 1, 2013: BOMBING THE MOON
Recent reports suggest that during the heydays of the Cold War, the
United States planned to bomb the moon so that the nuclear flash would
intimidate rival powers. Continue reading
Verdi man recalls ‘Operation Crossroads’ nuclear tests of
1946 and ‘unsinkable’ USS Nevada, Guy Clifton: RGJ.com, 23 Dec 12“…..Larson was a
19-year-old sailor assigned to the carrier USS Independence. In July
1946, he was part of the crew that sailed the Independence to Bikini
Atoll in the south Pacific, where it and other aged naval vessels —
including the USS Nevada — were targets in Operations Crossroads, a
series of tests conducted by the U.S. to investigate the effect of
nuclear weapons on naval ships. Continue reading
“Green Run” – deliberate radiation experiments on USA citizens
COMMENTARY: 1949 nuclear experiment is an ugly legacy of Hanford
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/29097307-57/green-hanford-run-nuclear-iodine.html.csp
BY SUSAN CUNDIFF AND PATRICIA HOOVER The Register-Guard December 2, 2012
Many of us in the timber-rich Northwest are familiar with such terms
as “pulling the green chain” and fresh-cut “green” wood. But how many
know the term “Green Run?” Never heard of it? That’s because it was a
secret.
On Dec. 2, 1949, officials at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in
southeastern Washington deliberately experimented on residents in the
area by releasing raw, irradiated uranium fuel. It was the largest
known single incident of intentional radioactive contamination ever.
It’s come to be known as the Green Run; in this case “green” meant
“uncured.”
Normally, radiated fuel would be cooled for 83 to 101 days to allow
some of the short-lived radioactive materials to decay before
releasing those materials into the environment. For this test,
officials waited a mere 16 days and did not filter the exhaust.
Over a seven-hour period, 7,780 curies of iodine-131 and 20,000 curies
of xenon-133 were released. To put these numbers in perspective, the
Three Mile Island accident released between 15 and 24 curies of
radioactive iodine. Women and children were evacuated, and milk was
impounded.
During the Green Run, Air Force planes measured the deposits of
iodine-131 on ground vegetation within a 200- by 40-mile plume that
stretched from The Dalles to Spokane. Vegetation samples taken in
Kennewick, Wash., revealed nearly 1,000 times the acceptable daily
limit of iodine-131.
Citizens in the area routinely accepted unusual practices devised by
Hanford officials as natural and patriotic: urine samples were left on
porches for pick-up, schoolchildren went through whole-body counter
scans, and men in white coats palpated students’ throats around the
thyroid gland.
As thyroid disease and cancer rates rose among the populations of
Richland, Wash., The Dalles, Hermiston and the surrounding
countryside, the public began to question the safety of Hanford’s
practices. They were assured that “not one atom” had ever escaped from
Hanford and that it was as “safe as mother’s milk.” Of course, if
mother is contaminated, her breast milk is, too — as is the milk from
dairy cattle in the area, the salmon in the river, and vegetables and
fruit from the farms and ranches nearby.
With all their collected data, officials had to know the health
consequences. And still the deception continued. Press releases
recommended iodized salt and trucked-in pasteurized milk, but only as
mere suggestions. In fact, all public health records from Hanford were
sent only to Walla Walla, Wash., and never recorded at the state
Capitol, thus ensuring that health research would not contain damning
statistics.
The Green Run was only part of a much larger pattern of contamination.
From 1944 to 1957 a total of 724,779 curies of iodine-131 were
released into the atmosphere.
Why conduct an experiment such as the Green Run? Were the military and
the Atomic Energy Commission trying to develop a method for
determining production rates in the Soviet Union? Were Hanford
officials attempting to speed up their own production? Or was
something more sinister going on?
We may never know, because specific reasons for the experimentation
remain classified. It took 37 years for the public to learn anything
at all about the Green Run, and only then because grass-roots groups
forced the release of documents through the Freedom of Information
Act.
According to Michele Gerber, author of “On the Home Front,” “…the
question of whether the Green Run was a radiological warfare
experiment, designed to test harm to foodstuffs and living creatures,
is still open.”
Hanford continues to pose risks. Radioactive contaminants leak into
the water table and the river. Cleanup efforts stall.
Vitrification, the process of turning waste into glass, was supposed
to be the answer to the problem. In 2010, a whistle-blower warned that
the $12.2 billion plant under construction might be seriously flawed.
He was pushed aside for his ethical stand. Recent announceinclude the hiring of a new manager to take over the “problem-plagued
construction at the Hanford vitrification plant” (Register Guard, Nov.
25).
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Oregon’s Ron Wyden
spoke of nuclear weapons production as “the largest, most
ultra-hazardous industry of its kind in the world.” Wyden’s concerns
about Hanford continue now that he is in the Senate, and he has
traveled to Japan to learn more about the disastrous nuclear plant
site at Fukushima.
Today, Dec. 2, is a time to remember the atrocities of the Green Run
and renew our call for transparency in the secretive nuclear industry.
As we search for viable solutions to our energy needs, we must insist
on openness, truth and safety, striving together for real green
solutions.
Nuclear lunacy: USA’s secret plan to nuclear bomb the moon
Confirmed: US planned to nuke the moon RT.com 26 November, 2012, In a secret project recently discovered, theUnited States planned to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb in the 1950s as a display of the country’s strength during the Cold War space race.
The secret project, called “A Study of Lunar Research Flights”, as well as “Project A119” was never carried out but initially intended to intimidate the Soviet Union after their launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, which demonstrated their technological power, the Daily Mail reports.
The sight of a magnificent nuclear flash from Earth was meant to terrify the Soviet Union and boost US confidence, physicist Leonard Reiffel, 85, told the Associated Press. The nuclear device would have been launched from a missile from an unknown location. It would have
ignited upon impact with the moon, causing a massive explosion that was visible from Earth.
The detonation would have been the result of an atom bomb, since a hydrogen bomb was too heavy for a missile to carry the 238,000 miles to the moon…… In his interview with AP, which took place in the year 2000, Reiffel said the nuclear detonation could have occurred by
1959, which is when the US Air Force deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The project documents were kept secret for nearly 45 years and the US government has never formally confirmed its involvement in the study.
But in the end, the mission was abandoned due to safety concerns about the radioactive material that would contaminate space. The scientists were also worried about the bomb detonating prematurely, thereby endangering the people on Earth.
Rather than blow up the moon, the US continued the space race, sending its first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit on Jan. 31, 1958. The project was officially canceled by the Air Force in Jan. 1959, and the US instead focused on sending a man to the moon.
The background to Germany’s leadership for a nuclear power free Europe
As we know, in fact, nothing happened. Germany quickly adapted to the loss of the more-than-25% (but no much above that) of national power which nuclear electricity had provided
Germany’s Energiewende And The End Of Nuclear Power, The Market Oracle Nov 25, 2012 By:Andrew_McKillop NUCLEAR SHOCK TREATMENT For Ukraine and Japan, learning to do without nuclear power needed shock treatment: the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, and the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The combined economic cost and losses due to these “unforeseen nuclear accidents” will probably exceed $500 billion over the years and the decades. Nuclear accidents are in a class apart, for long term damage capability.Above all, certainly since Fukushima they cannot be kept away from and out of public debate.
Like all revolutions, Germany’s Energiewende or energy transition – which took an intense new lease of life and renewed public interest following the Fukushima disaster – was set in motion by many factors. Continue reading
USA had 2 projects to use nuclear bombs for fracking natural gas
U.S. tried fracking for gas using nuclear bombs — Engineer: “I think it’s awesome” — Drilling to now be allowed within half-mile of blast site? (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/fracking-natural-gas-nuclear-bombs-radioactive-engineer-awesome-drilling-be-allowed-half-mile-blast-site-video-video
November 14th, 2012
NSFW* Watch the full Nov. 14, 2012 broadcast of the Joe Rogan Experience with best selling author, television host and robotics engineer Daniel Wilson on here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbdXyC9To0
Source: IO9
Author: Esther Inglis-Arkell
Date: July 27, 2012
The Plowshare program was both a public relations ploy and a serious scientific study. It was an attempt to see if nuclear bombs could be used in peaceful constructive ways. If it had been successful, America would pretty much be humming by now.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the entire focus of the atomic program was to create the weapon to end any war, even one as all-consuming as World War II. After the war, the makers of the bomb saw its power, and their own uneasy public, and tried to think of ways to both soothe the American people, and put the bombs to good use. Some of their minds drifted to the Bible verse in Isiah 2:4, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
[…] Project Rulison and Project Gasbuggy were an attempt to free natural gas with nuclear explosions. […]
Post Independent, Sept. 29, 2012: Project Rulison […] released 10 times the amount of natural gas as compared to traditional methods. However, the natural gas was contaminated with radioactivity, rendering it unmarketable. […] Recently, there has been much debate over whether it is now safe to drill in the buffer zone. In December of 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved drilling within the three-mile buffer zone, although permission has not yet been given to drill within a half-mile of the blast site.
Death and illness rate in Chernobyl’s fallout area
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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