PERSONAL STORIES « nuclear-news

An emigrant’s memory of Chernobyl

Chernobyl’s dark history: Australian returns home 33 years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, News 7 Steve Pennells 15 September 2019

Chernobyl – just the word is enough to evoke visions of a nuclear holocaust.

But for thousands of Australians, the nightmare was all too real. They are the children of Chernobyl – scarred by their experiences – and now, more than 30 years on, determined to confront the past.

Inna Mitelman grew up in Belarus, in the shadow of Chernobyl. 33 years later, she’s happily settled in Melbourne with two children of her own. Her parents, Irina and Ilia, live close by.

“I remember it as a very beautiful place to grow up,” Inna tells Sunday Night’s Steve Pennells. “The people were lovely. I had a very beautiful childhood, I can tell you that much.”

For Inna, it was an idyllic existence, with her best friend Natasha living in the apartment right next door.

“We were pretty much inseparable,” Inna explains. “Our parents were very close friends, they were like family. We used to come into each other’s houses without knocking. My house was her house, her house was my house.”

Chernobyl was 100 kilometres away – but on the 26th of April 1986, that was much too close.

The explosion in Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant would be the worst nuclear accident in history. A safety test gone wrong ruptured the reactor core and caused a fire that released vast clouds of radioactive contamination. But the Soviet authorities supressed the true scale of the disaster – and only after 36 hours was the order given to evacuate the nearby city of Pripyat, home to the power plant workers and their families.

Inna Mitelman was only 11 years old when the refugees from Pripyat arrived on her doorstep, but the memory is still vivid.

“The first thing I remember is seeing new kids in our yard in the morning when we walked out to go to school,” Inna recalls. “There were wrapped up in blankets.”

As the fire continued to rage in the reactor, badly injured power plant workers and fireman were brought to the Pripyat hospital.

Today, the hospital at Pripyat stands abandoned, like the rest of this once-thriving city. But 33 years ago, the reactor was spewing out 400 times more radioactive material than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined.

Sergii Mirnyi soon learnt the truth. He was the commander of a radiation reconnaissance unit. It was his job to seek out the worst of the hot zones……..

“I’ve got thyroid nodules which were discovered when I was pregnant with my second child,” Inna reveals. “The surgeon said I’ve got [a] 50 per cent chance of developing thyroid cancer, so let’s just get it out now.”

Now, Inna wants to return to her homeland, to understand a tragic event from her past that still haunts her.

“I’m terrified,” Inna admits. “There’s a reason why we haven’t been back. But you need to do this to confront it and deal with it and move on. Because the worst thing that ever happened to me [was] probably my best friend dying when I was 11, and I think having to deal with that freaks me out as well.”

“We first found out that something was wrong with her when she became cross-eyed. They found a brain tumour, they operated, but she died the next morning.”

“This was my best friend. This was the person that I grew up with. Her death, it destroyed me.”

Natasha’s family moved out after the death of their daughter. But Inna is determined to find them.

Inside the exclusion zone

2,500 square kilometres of contaminated territory – including Pripyat – are now abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Pripyat was a brand new city, right next to the nuclear power plant. It was a jewel in the Soviet crown, with a thriving population of 50,000 people. It was emptied in the course of a single day, with residents forced to leave with only what they could carry…….

For many new mothers here in Belarus, there’s a profound fear that the effects of Chernobyl might be passed on to a second generation.

At the local Children’s Hospital, chief doctor Irina Kalmanovich has been treating Chernobyl survivors for more than 30 years. She has no doubt she is still seeing children suffering from the disaster – and unlike other doctors in this repressive regime, she’s willing to risk saying it.

“It’s my opinion. It can be [a] result of Chernobyl because we have many patients even in our hospital, children with tumour, different parts of body, we have tumour of brain, leukaemia, so we have many patients.”……. https://7news.com.au/sunday-night/chernobyls-dark-history-australian-returns-home-33-years-after-the-worlds-worst-nuclear-disaster-c-454567

September 16, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Belarus, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

The village of Iitate – nuclear tragedy, and Fukushima’s black snow

Fukushima tragedy: The day of black snow https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/23925/fukushima-tragedy-the-day-of-black-snow/ by Sean Lee 30 August 2019 Toru Anzai is a former resident of Iitate, a small village in Fukushima, Japan, and dearly missed the bamboo shoots that grew in his hometown. During autumn, the bamboo shoots would blanket the mountains that overlooked the residents’ homes in the village. The residents would climb the mountains, gather the plants, and prepare them for dinner. But ever since that tragic day, no one climbed the mountains, and the wild plants vanished from their dinner tables. For Anzai, the bamboo shoots became sad reminders of what used to be.

Anzai remembers the day as the “black snow” day. He heard the explosions on 12 March, 2011. Black smoke rose from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the smell of burning iron pervaded the village. It started to rain. The rain turned into snow. The snow was black.

The black snow filled Anzai with an ominous dread, and soon, his fears became reality.

After the black snow shrouded the village, Anzai described in an interview how he started to feel throbbing pain on his skin. It was almost like being sunburned after sunbathing for too long. Both of his legs darkened then peeled in white patches. The only remedy to the peeling was applying medicinal ointment.

Soon after, his entire body began to suffer. The headaches came, followed by shoulder pains. Then the hair loss occurred. Three months after the disaster, he left behind his home and evacuated to survive. Unfortunately, the tragedy did not end there.

Three years later, Anzai started having strokes and heart attacks. A stent was placed in his blood vessel; the tube held open his narrowed blood vessel and kept the blood flowing to his heart. With treatment, his pain somewhat subsided, but whenever Anzai visited Iitate, the pain throughout his entire body relapsed. While these symptoms have not been conclusively connected to the radiation exposure, Anzai believed that they were the realities of the black snow day.

Anzai’s temporary housing was very narrow and consisted of a living room and a bedroom. He had moved into this subsidised housing complex eight years ago. He was one of the first of the 126 families. Often, evacuees gathered around the common area and shared fond memories of their hometowns with each other. Whatever solace could be found, the evacuees found it in each other.

Since allegedly completing the decontamination operation in Iitate, the Japanese government have been urging people to return to their village. In fact, Fukushima prefectural government had ended housing subsidies this past March, and by the end of the month, most people had left the complex. Only around ten families were still looking for a new place to live.

Absently gazing into the dark, clouded sky, Anzai spoke bitterly. “I was kicked out of my hometown for doing nothing wrong. It was heartbreaking. Now, Iitate is polluted, and some of my neighbours have died. When the government asked me to evacuate last minute, I left. Now, they want me to go back. Back to all of the radioactive contamination. I’m so angry, but I don’t know what to do. We have repeatedly petitioned the government, but they’re not willing to listen. Our government has abandoned us.”

Prior to the nuclear incident, there were about 6,300 residents in Iitate. Eight years later, only a little over 300 evacuees have returned at the government’s persistent urging. Most of the returning residents were elderly, aged 60 or older. Even counting the non-natives who had recently relocated to the village, the total figure hovered around only 900 residents.

Iitate’s old and new residents are exposed to radioactive substances on a daily basis. The Japanese government claimed to have completed the decontamination work, but a full decontamination is impossible due to the village’s terrain. More than 70% of Iitate is forest, and unlike in the farmlands, the removal of contaminants that have fallen among the mountainous forest is nearly impossible.

Each year, Greenpeace Germany conducts extensive research on Fukushima villages including Iitate. The findings confirm that the radiation exposure in these villages exceeds the established international safety standards. Anzai believes that the Japanese government is behind the forced homecoming of the Iitate residents.

“The government hopes to publicise good news: the nuclear accident has been dealt with, and the residents have returned home. People who had no choice but to leave are now being pressured to return and put their lives on the line,” lamented Anzai.

The Japanese government hopes to release more than one million tonnes of highly radioactive water into the Fukushima coast. If the contaminated water becomes flushed into the ocean, the contamination will only add to the harm already inflicted by the Fukushima accident. Furthermore, the ocean currents will shift the radioactive materials through the surrounding waters including the Pacific Ocean.

The industrial pollution and toxins have already caused much distress to our oceans. Discharging the Fukushima’s radioactive water will only worsen the situation, and we cannot, and should never, let this happen.

August 31, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima continuing, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference | Leave a comment

Absolutely no need for Russia and the US to be adversaries and enemies

I visited Russia’s nuclear city and don’t want to relive the Cold War

Commentary: One era of nuclear brinksmanship was enough for CNET’s Stephen Shankland, who visited the Russian nuclear weapons center of Sarov just after the first Cold War ended. CNET, BY STEPHEN SHANKLAND
AUGUST 18, 2019 I spent more than five years as a reporter in Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, home to a major national laboratory, and the 18,000-person town where I grew up. I covered everything from President Bill Clinton visiting the lab to mostly harmless radioactive cat poop triggering radiation alarms at the county landfill. But the story that made the biggest impression on me took place thousands of miles away, in Russia.

In May 1995, I was part of a seven-person civilian delegation that traveled to Los Alamos sister city Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow. It’s the home of the institute where Russia developed its first atomic bomb. Our visit was timed to coincide with a 50th anniversary celebration of the end of the Great Patriotic War, aka World War II, which for the Russians ended when the Germans capitulated in May 1945.

It was a sobering visit — the economic devastation; the Soviet-era microphones bugging away in our hotel; the angry and impoverished veterans; and the daunting quantities of vodka, champagne and cognac that accompanied us during a weeklong series of banquets. I spoke with Viktor Adamsky, one of the designers of the biggest nuclear bomb of all time, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which was more powerful than all the bombs dropped in World War II.

I’m remembering it now because I’ve recently interviewed Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and a key leader of the US-Russian lab collaboration that led to my trip.

Back when US-Russian relations were thawing

During the time of my trip, relations between Russia and the US were warming, but now they’re cooling once again. That troubles Hecker — even though he spent much of his career designing the nuclear weapons the US aimed at the then-USSR.

It troubles me, as well. I grew up during the Cold War, and I’m not eager to introduce my children to concepts like nuclear winter and megadeath. And even as treaties between the US and Russia fizzle out and the two countries rev up another arms race, worries are piling up about the nuclear weapons capabilities of Iran and North Korea, too.

But Hecker stresses the similarities between the US and Russia — “They’re so much like us,” he says……

Each city benefited from its government’s largesse during the Cold War. “When I first came here, I thought it was a paradise. Such food!” one Sarov man told me. Meanwhile, Los Alamos received a federal funding boost for its schools and its police and fire departments. Each city suffered when government funding dropped with the end of the Cold War. Both cities teem with elite researchers who play important military roles and are curious about what makes the universe tick. Both cities have nuclear weapons museums showing off the hulking casings of early bombs…….

Hecker has a lot more of those connections. He’s friends with plenty of Russians and sees their cultural values as very similar to ours. And he’s keeping his communication links alive even though the US-Russia lab-to-lab collaboration project he helped begin is now all but dead. He’ll take his 57th trip to Russia in November.

The two countries can move past sticking points like NATO’s eastward expansion and Russia’s military action in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Hecker says. Today’s nationalistic fervor might make it hard to defrost the relationship, but seeing the world from the other side’s perspective will help, he says.

“There is absolutely no need for Russia and the US to be adversaries and enemies,” Hecker tells me. “Absolutely none.” https://www.cnet.com/news/i-visited-russia-nuclear-city-sarov-dont-want-to-relive-cold-war/

August 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Belarus’ forgotten children – victims of Chernobyl’s nuclear radiation

Kevin Barry in Chernobyl: ‘Misha is an example of what happens when a country is on its knees’ Irish Examiner, August 05, 2019

In 2000 the Irish Examiner sent Kevin Barry, now longlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel Night Boat to Tangier, to Chernobyl. Here we reproduce what he reported

Misha photographed by Eugene Kolzov at the No 1 orphanage in Minsk.Misha, aged seven, is the victim of not one but many sicknesses. His physical disorders, as can be plainly seen, are many and various.

But Misha is the victim of another ailment too, a kind of compassion deficiency.

Chernobyl isn’t fashionable these days, it’s been around so long now. April 26, 1986 seems a long time in the way-distant past. After the initial blurt of paranoia and charitable outreach, the fickle gaze of public interest quickly flicked from the incident at Reactor No 4 to fresher horrors.

Misha, then, has been shuffled way back in the compassion pack. He has fallen behind the other ravaged children who sombrely people the planet’s trouble spots, in places like Mozambique and Ethiopia.

He’s competing with Rwanda and Chechnya. And it’s beginning to tell Misha’s illness is a direct consequence of the Chernobyl explosion.

The radioactive danger in Belarus is not so much in the air now as in the food chain. Professor Yuri Bandashevsky, a dissident scientist, told the Irish Examiner this week that the mutations caused by radiation in children like Misha have by now entered the gene pool and thus the effects of the ‘86 explosion can stretch to infinity.

After criticising the state’s alleged misspending of research money for Chernobyl, Professor Bandashevsky recently found himself banged up in jail for five months, bound at the feet.

Which isn’t the sort of thing that bodes well for the likes of Misha. Some aid continues to filter through. This week, a convoy run by the Chernobyl Children’s Project has been on a drive through Belarus, dispensing almost £2 million in food and medicines.

One of the institutions the orphanage supports is Novinki, a children’s asylum on the outskirts of Minsk. Such is its Dickensian squalor, its actual existence was long denied by the state. This is where you’ll find little Misha.

Project leader Adi Roche says she has known the child since he was a baby, but has been stunned at his deterioration since she last visited in December.

After finding him emaciated and dying this week, the project has placed a Dublin nurse and a local Chernobyl nurse on 24-hour care alert with Misha, an attempt to make whatever is left of his life as painless as possible

“We don’t know how long Misha will live, or if he will live, but we are morally obliged to do everything in our power to attempt saving his life,” said Ms Roche last night.

“‘He is not the only child in Belarus suffering as horrifically as this. he’s just one of many.” she added. “‘These children are the victims of 14 years of neglect by the international community.”’

Many children in Belarus consigned to mental asylums have no mentaI handicap. “All orphaned children with any kind of disability are put into mental asylums if they live beyond the age of four,” she said.

Meanwhile, staffed by1,000 workers, the Chernobyl plant continues operate a couple of kilometres inside the Ukraine border.

The authorities say it will close this year. The concrete sarcophagus built to contain contamination from the reactor has 200 holes and counting.

Orphans of the nuclear age

Kevin Barry, in Chernobyl, finds a land and its people scarred by a disaster from which they may never recover.

Chernobyl at this time of year is beautiful, the borderlands of the Ukraine and Belarus a pastoral and idyllic place. Vast swardes of rich woodland are full of babbling brooks and twittering songbirds, every way you turn, there’s a postcard vista to please even the most jaded eyes.

The locals, however, are edgy. The President of Belarus, Alaksandr Lukashenko — aka ‘Batska’ (‘The Father’) — has decreed that the farmlands here–abouts are now safe to plant and he’s threatening to fly overhead and make sure the workers are toiling.

If not, he says, there will be trouble. Big trouble.

The notion of Batska in an airplane is enough to prompt sleepless nights for those who remain in the Purple Zone, the area most contaminated by the accident in 1986 at Smelter No 4 of the nuclear plant that lies inside the Ukranian border.

In a tragedy of happenstance, because there was a stiff northerly gusting that day, Belarus took the brunt of the damage and because radioactivity is most lethal when it attacks developing human systems, children have borne most of the pain.

But for these children, the most serious ailment is not the thyroid cancer or the leukaemia or the heart trouble or the kidney failure or the various disorders of colon and spleen prompted by Chernobyl.

The greatest danger is the compassion-fatigue. 1986 seems a long time ago now and the incident at Smelter No 4 is no longer swaddled in the necessary event-glamour or crisis-chatter.

When the evening news is an atrocity exhibition, when daily there are hellish dispatches from Mozambique, Ethiopia and Chechnya, the Belarussians fall ever further back in the line.

The foreign correspondents have long since moved on elsewhere. The story of a child developing thyroid cancer over a period of years doesn’t conform neatly with the sound-byte culture.

By this stage, the Belarussians have had enough. A condition of mass denial exists in the country and a native of the village Solchechy in the Purple Zone says that up to around 1993, everybody fretted and freaked out but then they decided, well, to hell with it.

“The mess got to be too much,” she says.

We don’t think about it now. Life is life and we try to get on with it.

This is easier said than done in Belarus. The country’s economy is shot — agriculture was its mainstay and since Chernobyl, the income from farming has been negligible. Almost 30% of the country’s annual turnover goes to the clean-up operation.

Belarus remains the most Soviet of states. There are thickly-piled layers bureaucracy and this tangle of demented protocol regulations and petty restrictions is amorphic, constantly shape-shifting.

The natives have had to develop a stoic acceptance of a hard frustrating life…….. https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/kevin-barry-in-chernobyl-misha-is-an-example-of-what-happens-when-a-country-is-on-its-knees-941735.html

August 6, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Belarus, children, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference | Leave a comment

Samantha Smith – a 10 year old who acted to reduce nuclear weapons

Your voice matters in reducing nuclear weapons https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/07/31/your-voice-matters-in-reducing-nuclear-weapons.html

By William Lambers, July 31, 2019 Growing up in Massachusetts, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies, I was one of many little kids worried about nuclear war. In Maine, 10-year old Samantha Smith was also deeply concerned. Her mother encouraged her to write to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1982.Samantha did, in a hand written letter, telling Andropov: “I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not?…..God made the world for us to share and take care of. Not to fight over or have one group of people own it all. Please lets do what he wanted and have everybody be happy too.”

Samantha mailed her letter, probably not expecting a reply. But months later she got the surprise of her life.

Samantha’s letter was printed in the Soviet newspaper Pravda. Then she got a personal reply from Andropov, inviting her to the Soviet Union. Samantha was on TV too, talking about what she wanted most of all: peace.

Samantha toured the Soviet Union in July of 1983, meeting Russian kids, and became an ambassador for peace and nuclear disarmament. She believed people of rival nations could get along and did not want war. Samantha also visited Japan to reinforce its desire to eliminate the nuclear weapons, which they had suffered in the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Samantha tragically lost her life in a plane crash in 1985. I remember hearing about the shocking news. Samantha’s spirit has never been forgotten.

This is so important because there is a complacency that has set in when it comes to nuclear weapons. Current leaders are dragging their feet in reducing the nuclear threat. There are still about 14,000 nuclear weapons in the world according to the Arms Control Association. The U.S. and Russia have about 90 per cent of the nukes.

Shouldn’t we all be worried about them today, too? There is still the risk of nuclear war, accidental launch or nuclear terrorism. How long do we want to live with this danger?

Billions of dollars are poured into nuclear weapons each year. Wouldn’t we rather spend this money on fighting hunger, poverty, disease and climate change?

The Move the Nuclear Weapons Money Campaign wants to end nuke spending and use it toward the benefit of humanity. The danger of nuclear weapons is shared by every person, every country. Everyone can take part in this goal of nuclear disarmament, much like Samantha encouraged.

I see examples of this idealism today when working with the CTBTO youth group, whose passion is to achieve the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This treaty would end nuclear testing forever, helping pave the road for elimination of all nukes.

Samantha taught us your voice matters and you can make a difference in ridding the world of nuclear weapons and achieving peace for all.

William Lambers is the author of Nuclear Weapons, the Road to Peace, and Ending World Hunger.

August 1, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Breast cancer: a personal story – connection with nuclear radiation is never explored.

contributed by Kitty 6 July 19 My Boobs Were Busy Breastfeeding My Newborn. Then They Turned On Me.”

The lady worked in South Korea. There are 22 beatup old Nuclear Reactors in South Korea, spewing Tritium and other radionuclides into the small country. Not to mention Fukushima. These factors are never considered, when they write articles like about cancer like this. It is anethema to the Nuclear Security State. The story is tragic. The lady’s ongoing tragedy is not fully explored. A toddler, chemo-therapy while pregnant, advanced inflammatory breast cancer. The story is white-wahsed according to the ongoing ignoraing of Nuclear pollution and cancer, in nuclear countries.

Excerpts from
My Boobs Were Busy Breastfeeding My Newborn. Then They Turned On Me.

m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d1cd4f3e4b0f312567db790

“i was relieved to be able to dismiss my lumps, since I had a very active 2-year-old who I was trying to potty train, an intense full-time job, and was living abroad in Seoul, South Korea, with no family or close friends around other than my husband.”

LATER

Two days later I received a call. The biopsy results were in. It was a metastatic adenocarcinoma. “We think it originated from your breast,” the radiologist said.

“Excuse me,” I asked. “Did you just tell me that I have cancer?” He asked me to come in for a mammogram, but provided no other information. I went into a tailspin. ”

“After receiving my mammogram, the scans came up immediately. I could clearly see a mass in my right breast. This was not a clogged duct. It was breast cancer. How did this happen to me? I wondered. I thought I had done all the right things!”(blaming herself)

AS IF DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS MAKES ANY DIFFERENCE NOW THAT 1 IN 8 WOMEN DEVELOP BREAST CANCER

The holistic doctor said the cancer was from having a root canal as a child or, maybe the guilt of having been adopted.
The allopathic doctors, blamed her lactation while pregnant, for the cancer and not catching it. Always blame the victims. Never look at the most carcinogenic substances in the universe that are so abundance in HYPER-NUCLEARIZED industrial states like South Korea, Japan, Russia, France The USA , where there are dozens of radionuclide leaking, reactors in each country.

July 6, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, PERSONAL STORIES, South Korea | 1 Comment

Chernobyl military survivor reveals secrets

Secrets of Chernobyl spill out more than three decades after the nuclear disaster, By SERGEI L. LOIKO sergei.l.loiko@gmail.com, JUN 30, 2019| CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE [good photographs on original]

Seated in a jeep and clutching a screeching Geiger counter, Lt. Col. Viktor Chershnev led a convoy of 30 military trucks through the center of sleeping Kiev.

The measuring device was sounding off loudly on that night 33 years ago, not because of the convoy’s cargo — 30 antiaircraft missiles, three of them tipped with nuclear warheads — but because of where and when the post-midnight parade had kicked off: at the Chernobyl air defense missile base just three days after the explosion of a reactor at the adjacent Chernobyl nuclear power plant that had sent enough radioactivity spewing into the air that it at one point had the potential of poisoning much of Eastern Europe.

Chershnev knew that the missiles, the trucks and his crew were badly contaminated and that they should not have been ordered to drive through a city of more than 2 million people. But there was no bypass road at the time — and orders were orders. What Chershnev didn’t know in the early hours of the morning of April 30, 1986, was that a radioactive cloud had already caught up with them and blanketed the city on the eve of its annual May Day festivities.

The reaction to HBO’s recent “Chernobyl” miniseries has been almost as far-reaching as the initial tragedy and has spurred a daily line of buses packed with foreign tourists at the gate of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which extends for 20 miles around the plant. But Chernobyl still boasts secrets more than three decades later, including the story of Chershnev and his charges — a saga of dysfunction and disregard for human life that lays bare conditions in the waning years of the Soviet Union.

When the red alert sounded, Chershnev, then the deputy commander and chief engineer of the Kiev Air Defense Brigade, was responsible for the readiness of weaponry and equipment at the Chernobyl antiaircraft battalion’s base in a massive in-ground bunker with 10-inch-thick, rusty metal doors.

These days, the site also features a 10-yard-long missile launcher’s towing trolley, half-buried in silver moss, the former walls of a second smaller bunker surrounded by dense pines and a vast carcass of barracks with missing floorboards, dilapidated walls and a mural of a Soviet soldier cheerfully calling upon comrades to defend the motherland.

Seventy officers and men — ill-informed, unprotected and exposed to deadly radiation — were housed at the site along with the missiles back in 1986, under orders to arduously protect and save the weapons and structures rather than themselves.

The site included the nuclear plant and the Chernobyl over-the-horizon early warning radar station, a 500-meter-long, 150-meter tall installation designed to detect strategic missiles launched from the United States. The now-rusty structure still towers over the area and is a major tourist attraction, a frightening monument to the Cold War that even the complex‘s normally fearless marauders have not attempted to cut into pieces to sell as scrap metal outside the zone, a routine business in these parts.

In the aftermath of the 1986 explosion — as the government evacuated more than 50,000 residents from the town of Pripyat, including the families of nuclear plant workers, plus more than 75,000 residents of nearby villages — the men of the Chernobyl air defense unit stayed put until they received fresh orders.

“Three days after the explosion, on April 29, I arrived at the base with 30 heavy trucks and we loaded on them 30 missiles from the storage hangars,” recalls Chershnev, who headed the evacuation effort. “Twenty-seven of them were conventional, but the other three were tactical rockets with nuclear warheads. We were to take them to a facility outside Boryspil, near Kiev.

“After that, we were ordered to go back and salvage the remaining equipment that could be dismantled.”

The men traveled — without protective gear — for 14 hours at speeds lower than 20 mph as radiation from the explosion leaked into the air.

Chershnev admits he knew the dangers but says he was a career officer and could not disobey orders………….

When Chershnev got back from that trip, he repeated the ritual of burning his uniform.

“No one in the world knows that we existed and what we went through,” he said. “And all for nothing. All so stupid and futile. We didn’t save anyone. We didn’t clean up anything.

“All those I personally know and have kept track of all these years are either badly sick like myself or dead by now. My driver who accompanied me on all the convoys was discharged and died at 28. My fellow deputy brigade commander, … who was also dealing with contaminated equipment, died [in 1995] of cancer. Warrant Officer Petro Pozyura went blind. And so on and so forth. I have a heart ailment and every year spend a couple of weeks in hospital.”

The cardiologist who has been treating Chershnev for the last few years once asked him to retrieve his Chernobyl-era medical records from the military. But Chershnev was told that the records no longer exist.

“Here I am on a pension with a monthly Chernobyl health compensation of about $11 a month,” he concluded bitterly. “It is not even enough to buy a bottle of decent vodka, let alone medicines.”

The official death toll related to the explosion is listed as 39, but out of the officially registered 3.2 million people who were exposed to radiation in Ukraine alone, 1.3 million have died in the last 33 years, said Vladimir Kobchik, a former Chernobyl cleanup worker who is now a leader of a group that aims to protect the rights of fellow survivors.

“For the last four years, the government of Ukraine has been allocating $70 million annually for the needs of the affected. That is $37 per person per year! Not a penny more! How many of those remaining 1.9 million people affected by Chernobyl are sick [and] we can’t even tell? The doctors will never tell you you are sick or dying because of radiation.”……… https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-ukraine-chernobyl-secrets-20190630-story.html

July 1, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Shelby Surdyk, Alaska’s nuclear disarmament youth campaigner

From NYC to Sitka, this Alaskan is taking on nuclear disarmament https://www.ktoo.org/2019/06/13/alaskans-chip-away-at-nuclear-disarmament/

By Sheli DeLaney, KRNN, June 13, 2019 On Wednesday’s Juneau Afternoon, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weaponswas a topic of discussion as host Sheli DeLaney sat down with nuclear disarmament advocate Shelby Surdyk.Nuclear disarmament became Surdyk’s cause when she was in high school in Skagway and met a new teacher who had previously taught at the U.S. military base on Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands. The central Pacific Ocean nation was the site of U.S. nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

The teacher educated students about the history and impact that nuclear weapons testing had on the Marshallese people, and their story left a lasting impression on Surdyk.

“I think that once you become connected to people whose lives have been touched by nuclear weapons testing, it’s a path you can’t turn back from,” she said.

Today, Surdyk is the project manager for HOPE: Alaska’s Youth Congress for the Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a five-day conference for high school students to be held in Sitka in April 2020. The idea for the youth congress was introduced by Veterans for Peace, an organization that opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons as part of their philosophy.

Surdyk recently attended the 2019 NPT PrepCom, a conference held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City this spring. She will be speaking about her experience over a brown-bag lunch hosted by Veterans for Peace this Friday at noon at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

June 15, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

30 years later, a Soviet general still suffers from effects of radiation at Chernobyl nuclear disaster

YEARS OF HELL General, 85, portrayed in Sky Original’s Chernobyl still suffers crippling radiation disease more than 30 years after disaster https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9239830/sky-original-chernobyl-general-tarakanov-radiation/ By Jacob Dirnhuber 6 Jun 2019,

A SOVIET General portrayed in Sky Original’s hit Chernobyl show has revealed he still suffers from radiation sickness more than 30 years after the disaster.

Nikolai Tarakanov, 85, told how the deadly radiation left his gums bleeding for weeks after the meltdown – and is forced to take a gruelling regimen of drugs to just stay alive.

He claimed Soviet doctor Evgeny Chazov was right when he warned troops: “You’re going to suffer till the end of your life. Chernobyl won’t let you go.”

He told a documentary: “You made a tiny cut, while shaving, and it didn’t heal for two weeks after that.”

“I had bleeding gums and bloody diarrhoea.”

Tarakanov oversaw the removal of radioactive material from the site – and paid tribute to the “perfect” casting in the show.

He added: “300,000 cubic meters of soil around the plant was extracted, put in trucks and taken to the burial sites.

June 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, PERSONAL STORIES, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Hibakusha: Nagasaki activist, 79, looks to entrust nuclear movement to next generation

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190522/p2a/00m/0na/013000c

May 22, 2019 (Mainichi Japan) NAGASAKI — On May 9, there was a sit-in hibakusha gathering in front of the Peace Statue at Nagasaki Peace Park. The meeting takes place on the ninth of every month, marking the Aug. 9, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. This month’s congregation marked the 444th time for such an event.

Koichi Kawano, 79, took to the microphone to speak about the stand-off between the United States and Iran. “This is a crisis,” he said to the around 100 people in attendance, continuing, “Our hearts are one when wishing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Born in North Pyongan Province on the Korean Peninsula, now part of North Korea, Kawano was brought back to his parents’ hometown Nagasaki as a child. Aged 5 in August 1945, he was around 3.1 kilometers away from the atomic bomb’s hypocenter. Now a resident of the nearby town of Nagayo, he has been an activist for the end of nuclear weaponry in roles including his long tenure as chairman of the Hibakusha Liaison Council of the Nagasaki Prefectural Peace Movement Center.

“While enduring untold misery, we have won our rights with our own strength,” he says, looking back on the messages their hibakusha meetings have sent against the government’s constitutional amendment policies and security legislation designed to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense in a limited manner.

“Perseverance is power” has been Kawano’s guiding motto in engaging in the movement’s activities, but this spring he faced a difficult reality. Masanori Nakashima, president of the Nagasaki Prefecture A-bomb Health Handbook Friendship Society, died aged 89 on March 15. The two men were allies in peace activism. Representatives of five local hibakusha groups, including Nakashima and Kawano, announced a joint statement on peace issues and handed a written request to the prime minister on Aug. 9.

Of the five hibakusha group representatives who were alive in 2015 on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, three including Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council chair Sumiteru Taniguchi have passed away. Taniguchi died in 2017 at 88 years of age. “Even with his limp, he dragged himself to that office to hear other hibakusha speak,” Kawano reminisced, while looking ahead to an uncertain future, saying, “What will happen to these groups after we die?”

Kawano himself underwent surgery for esophageal cancer in 2017. Due to ill health he was forced to pull out of a survey of hibakusha in North Korea as a member of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs in fall 2018. Despite setbacks, his drive for peace remains unchanged. Kawano confronted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the Japanese government’s disinclination to sign and ratify the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in a face-to-face meeting in 2017, asking, “What country’s prime minister are you?”

As time marches on from the events of August 1945, Kawano is putting his faith in the next generation. “The increasingly quiet voices of the hibakusha must not be drowned out,” he says. At the monthly sit-ins in Nagasaki Peace Park, the number of high school age attendees has increased. As he welcomes the last summer of his 70s, Kawano’s resolve remains strong. “Peace activism is powered by people. I want the movement to continue, to carry on the wish never to see another generation of hibakusha in this world.”

(Japanese original by Yuki Imano, Nagasaki Bureau)

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Pike County residents protest nuclear facility after Uranium detected at school

https://myfox28columbus.com/news/local/pike-county-residents-protest-nuclear-facility-after-uranium-detected-at-school, by Rachael Penton, May 22nd 2019 PIKE COUNTY, Ohio (WSYX/WTTE)

Marilyn Ison goes to the doctor next week to find out if the nodules on her thyroid are cancerous, but on Tuesday, she protested against the Pike County nuclear waste facility outside the YMCA.

Inside the YMCA, a bi-annual Department of Energy open house is happening, where people can learn more about the project.

Ison’s mother has cancer, as do many other friends and family, but she says it’s the children she’s here for today.

“I’m scared for all the kids. I’m the voice of the kids,” Ison said. “They can’t speak for themselves (or) the kids inside that are scared. And they are, they know.”

Ison says her grand kids attend Zahn’s Corner Middle School that closed early for the year after enriched uranium was detected. She says it’s simply not fair to Pike county’s kids, so she’s protesting.

“I never feared that,” she said. “I feared a tornado but not radioactive waste in my school and home and my friend’s dying.”

Crystal Glass came out to protest with her family in matching t-shirts.

“It’s just what we want- don’t dump on us,” Glass said. “Don’t dump on our future.”

Glass grew up next to the nuclear facility and went to Zahn’s Corner, and was diagnosed with a tumor at age 14 and cancer 20 years later.

“We’ve been sick for a long time and it seems like nothing is happening.”

Now she too is worried her kids will one day suffer, and hopes the

recent publicity and Tuesday’s protest will get someone’s attention.

“I’m most concerned about the people that live around the plant,” Glass said. “At what point do they realize they’re so sick in that area? Why don’t the buy them out? They can’t afford to move.”

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman now sees nuclear power as harmful

Washington Post 17th May 2019 , Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012. Nuclear power was supposed to save the planet. The plants that used this technology could produce enormous amounts of electricity without the pollution caused by burning coal, oil or natural gas, which would help slow the catastrophic changes humans have forced on the Earth’s climate.

As a physicist who studied esoteric properties of subatomic particles, I admired the science and the technological innovation behind the industry. And by the time I started working on nuclear issues on Capitol Hill in 1999 as an aide to Democratic lawmakers, the risks from human-caused global warming seemed to outweigh the dangers of nuclear power, which hadn’t had an accident since Chernobyl, 13 years earlier.

By 2005, my views had begun to shift. I’d spent almost four years working on nuclear policy and witnessed the
influence of the industry on the political process. Now I was serving on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where I saw that nuclear power was more complicated than I knew; it was a powerful business as well as an impressive feat of science. In 2009, President Barack Obama named me the agency’s chairman.

Two years into my term, an earthquake and tsunami destroyed four nuclear reactors in Japan. I spent months reassuring the American public that nuclear energy, and the U.S. nuclear industry in particular, was safe. But by then, I was starting to doubt those claims myself. Before the accident, it was easier to accept the industry’s potential risks, because nuclear power plants had kept many coal and gas plants from spewing air pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air.

Afterward, the falling cost of renewable power changed the calculus.Despite working in the industry for more than a decade, I now believe that nuclear power’s benefits are no longer enough to risk the welfare of people living near these plants. I became so convinced that, years after departing office, I’ve now made alternative energy development my new career, leaving nuclear power behind. The current and potential costs — in lives and dollars — are just too high.https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nuclear-power-industry-now-i-think-it-should-be-banned/2019/05/16/a3b8be52-71db-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, safety, USA | Leave a comment

USA Defense Dept knew that radiation causes birth defects. Now nuclear test veterans worry

Atomic veteran wonders at radiation’s effects, PostStar, Will Doolittle will@poststar.comMay 2, 2019, GLENS FALLS — Bill Jones went to paradise for 13 months in the mid-1950s, and it wasn’t until many years later, when he and others were finally released from their vows of secrecy, that he found out what a hell it really had been…….

Two of his children have suffered from skin cancer, as he has, and one of his grandchildren had multiple birth defects, and he worries that his military service more than 60 years ago could have something to do with all that.

But he doesn’t know for sure, and the government isn’t telling, which is what really bothers him.

“This stuff accumulates in your body. It can cause birth defects. That’s what frosts me. They never told us about this,” he said.

Bill and Charlotte were sitting at the dining room table in their cozy house and talking about the atomic bomb testing the U.S. government performed in the 1950s on the Marshall Islands, a collection of atolls far out in the Pacific Ocean.

Jones had enlisted with three buddies from Glens Falls, going through basic training with them before he was sent to Technical Intelligence School in Aberdeen, Maryland. It was the depth of the Cold War and a search for soldiers with security clearances swept him up for an unexplained assignment. In the fall of 1956, he disembarked on Enewetak Atoll………

The U.S. had dropped 12 bombs already that year on Enewetak, each one named after an American Indian tribe (Seminole was dropped on June 6, for example, and Mohawk on July 3). The testing wouldn’t resume until after Jones left, in April 1958, but over time (even as he kept his secrets), he would learn the radiation lingered in the air and water, planting seeds in many of the soldiers that would bloom into cancers and kill them……..

He has scars on his scalp from having growths removed, but at 84 considers himself fortunate.

Benefits are available for atomic veterans, and Jones called the Department of Justice about qualifying for them.

He was told, “As soon as I get a terminal illness, call back.”

Others, after years of keeping quiet, never seek out help they might qualify for.

“There’s not an awful lot of these atomic veterans left. There’s a lot that don’t know about the program, so they waste away, shall we say,” he said.

Fred Schafer, an officer with the National Association of Atomic and Nuclear Veterans, says the soldiers were guinea pigs.

The organization has the names of about 1,500 veterans in its database who were part of the nuclear testing program, but Schafer estimates at least 40,000 are still alive who don’t know about the organization. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers participated, but many have died.

Jones wasn’t allowed to tell Charlotte what he was doing on Enewetak. He couldn’t take photos, he could make only one phone call every two or three months, and his letters were reviewed. Anything he sent home, like a sea shell scooped up from the sand, had to be checked with a Geiger counter first.

“They were aware,” he said. “I can’t prove it, but they knew the radiation caused birth defects.”…….It wasn’t until 1996 that the Defense Department allowed atomic veterans to talk about taking part in the testing of the most destructive weapons in history. Bill and the others sent to the Marshall Islands considered it a tropical vacation at the time, but they didn’t know — and no one told them — the exposure could be deadly…….. https://poststar.com/news/local/column-atomic-veteran-wonders-at-radiation-s-effects/article_178156a0-052d-5306-9100-49cf686d954a.html

May 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

The eloquence of Greta Thunberg

https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/greta-thunberg-climate-change-eloquence/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=GretaThunberg_04252019

By Thomas Gaulkin, April 25, 2019 Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old student whose school strikes have inspired a global youth movement on climate change, has emerged as a chief orator of her generation, enthralling her Instagram peers and world political leaders alike while taking on new and more specific opponents.

That includes the members of Parliament she met with this week in London. Her speech Tuesday to a gathering of British MPs was remarkable, not only for the incongruity of a young Swedish woman giving the UK’s top politicians what for, but also for her focused targeting of the nation’s energy policies. Longer than her usual talks—at some 1,750 words it’s more than double the length of speeches she presented at Davos and the UN climate conference in the fall—the speech eschewed the finely tuned repertoire of scolding that propelled her into newscasts worldwide with persuasive and provocative headline-fodder like “I want you to panic,” “the house is on fire,” “I don’t want your hope,” and so on.

Instead, for her House of Commons speech, as with her address to the EU parliament a week earlier, Thunberg tailored her words to the climate-related failures of the adults in the room. “The UK is … very special,” she told the British MPs. “Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt, but also for its current, very creative carbon accounting.” She then detailed how the UK’s carbon emissions reductions have fallen short (by neglecting emissions from aviation and shipping in estimates, for example). Lambasting the nation’s continued support for fossil fuels, Thunberg does not mince words: “This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”

Thunberg has adjusted her rhetoric to respond to criticism from prominent figures like Theresa May (who was a no-show at a meeting between Thunberg and other UK party leaders), who think the school strikes “waste lesson time.” As for those winning metaphors like the “house on fire,” Thunberg seems confident moving beyond them (“I have said those words before,” she told the EU) to newly relevant and bigger metaphors: “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”

It’s worth reading Thunberg’s entire speech, to appreciate both her crisp eloquence on the world’s most complex environmental problem and her satisfying rejection of grown-ups who praise her actions without committing to any themselves.

“Did you hear what I just said?” she asked a few times. “Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”

April 30, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, PERSONAL STORIES, UK | Leave a comment

An Australian Maralinga nuclear test veteran reveals his grim story

Maralinga nuclear bomb test survivor reveals truth of what happened in the SA desert https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/messenger/east-hills/maralinga-nuclear-bomb-test-survivor-reveals-truth-of-what-happened-in-the-sa-desert/news-story/697b17f6d3427a78aa0262b09727c169, 24 Apr 19

The nuclear bomb tests, under British Government control, at Maralinga in far west South Australia in the 1950s were conducted at the highest level of secrecy. But they had thousands of witnesses. Most were Australian servicemen, innocently used as guinea pigs and exposed to deadly radiation. Craig Cook talks to a survivor, one of the last of a group of men who built the Maralinga camp as part of 23 Construction Squadron and watched in awe as the bombs were exploded, little knowing they were risking their lives and the futures of their children.

Tony Spruzen knew the drill at the top secret Maralinga facility in the South Australian desert in the spring of 1956.

Just like hundreds of others at the nuclear site at 11-mile camp during Operation Buffalo, he was told to turn his back and cover his eyes to protect himself from the gigantic glare of the exploding atomic bomb.

What they didn’t tell the Australian Army sapper was, at the moment of the flash of detonation, he would see the bones of his hand through his tightly shut eyelids.

“It was like a massive x-ray,” Tony, 83, from Glengowrie says. ‘Unlike anything I’d ever known before.”

A week after One Tree, on October 6, 1956, Spruzen witnessed the detonation of Buffalo 2, named Marcoo.

The bomb was only a tenth the size of One Tree but this time was detonated directly above and just under the ground.

“The bomb was in an amphitheatre of hills and we were far closer to that one, maybe only 200 yards away,” he remembers.

“We were close enough to see the trenches with dummy soldiers in them holding rifles and fake aeroplanes and tanks used to test the blast effect.

“And we could see the scientists walking around in their white suits checking out the site before and afterwards but we were just in khaki shorts and short sleeved shorts. Even the dignitaries had no protection.”

Every hour, from five hours out, an elaborate PA system across the complex announced the timing of the bomb detonation.

In the final 30 seconds, and with a rising and excited inclination, the voice on the PA dramatically counted….ten, nine, eight…down to zero.

When Marcoo exploded at 7am it only took a few seconds for a heavy shower of dust to descend on the witnesses.

“We had this large piece of litmus paper attached to our shirts,” Spruzen recalls

Spruzen, originally from Victoria and a carpenter by trade, enlisted in the Army at just 16.

Four year later he was at Maralinga as part of a detachment of 23 Construction Squadron, an acclaimed unit of the Royal Australian Engineers and exclusively raised in South Australia.

Around 40 young men were selected from the unit to build a desert tent camp with cook houses and latrines for the Commonwealth military ‘high-ups’ who were having their first look at the impact of the devastating nuclear weapon.

Around 200km from the ocean, the tent city gained the facetious name of the ‘Sea View Holiday Camp’.

“It was an adventure…we were all excited,” he recalls.

“A lot of young single guys together and we had some fun.”

The lads knew it was serious too as this was a hush-hush operation. They weren’t even allowed to take a camera along for snapshots so Spruzen has no personal photos from Maralinga.

“Then we all turned around to see this mushroom cloud climbing into the sky. The next thing was the blast. The boom was deafening…and then the wind came about thirty seconds after that blowing dust and soil and debris all over us.”

But he does have a terrible reminder of his three months spent in far western South Australia.

“Of the 40 men who went up with me I only know of three of us still around,” he says. “The rest have all died – many from cancers.”

The first Maralinga bomb, Buffalo 1, with the nickname One Tree, was detonated after being dropped from a 31m high tower.

At 15 kiloton it was the same size as Little Boy, the bomb dropped by the US air force that demolished the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, killing more than 100,000 instantly and tens of thousands slowly in the aftermath from burns and radiation poisoning.

“They said, keep an eye on that and if it changes to pink come and see us. Well it turned pink for every one of us.

“Had I have known what I know now I wouldn’t have been so close.”

Transferred to Sydney on a training course, Spruzen missed the final two detonations at Maralinga that year: on October 11, 1956, Buffalo 3 (Kite) was released by a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant bomber, the first drop of a British nuclear weapon from an aircraft; and then on October 22, and again dropped from the 31m tower, (Buffalo 4) Breakaway exploded.

There were a total of seven nuclear desert tests at Maralinga performed during Operations Buffalo and Antler.

The 1985 McClelland Royal Commission heavily criticised the detonations, declaring the weather conditions were inappropriate and led to the widespread scattering of radioactive material.

The radioactive cloud from Buffalo 1 reached more than 11,000m into the air and with a northerly wind blowing radioactivity was detected across Adelaide.

Radioactive dust clouds from other bombs were detected in Northern Territory, Queensland and across New South Wales, as far away as Sydney, 2500km from Maralinga.

Around 12,000 Australian servicemen served at British nuclear test sites in the southern hemisphere between 1952 and 1963.

In recent years, the British Government’s claim that they never used humans “for guinea pig-type experiments” in nuclear weapons trials in Australia has been revealed to be a lie.

Tony Spruzen has struggled to come to terms with being placed in danger by his own government who had full knowledge of the consequences of exposure to radiation.

“Once we all found out later what we’d been exposed to at Maralinga it makes you very angry,” he says.

“We believed them when we were told we would be safe — but we haven’t been.”

Spruzen met his wife Shirley, the daughter of an army veteran, in Adelaide where they settled after marriage in June 1960. He left the army seven months later to work in civil construction. He thought his Maralinga days were well behind him but soon after they came to haunt him.

In the first four years of marriage, the couple agonisingly suffered six miscarriages, including twins.

Alarm bells started ringing when he was sent a survey from Veterans Affairs asking about his general health and, specifically his history of cancers.

“It turned out those involved in the atomic tests had a 30 per cent higher chance than getting cancers than the general public,” he says.

“Most of those got them within the first five years and a majority of those were dead before a decade had passed.”

Spruzen, who eventually had three children with Shirley, didn’t get cancer at that time, although he has since had several melanomas removed.

But when his son was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at the age of 41, he wondered about the possibility of faulty genes, damaged by exposure to radiation, as has been documented in Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs, jumping a generation.

“My son was told by the QEH (Queen Elizabeth Hospital) there was nothing could be done for him but we went up to Queensland and after a bone marrow transfer from his sister he survived,” he adds.

“A decade on he’s working as strong as he has but I don’t think his condition was a coincidence given my history.

“There’s been nothing (compensation) for those of us who were there although they gave us a white card for our cancers and now we have a (full health) gold card.”

Ken Daly, President Royal Australian Engineers Association says it is the least the men, who literally put their bodies on the line, deserve.

“You get these young men, aged around 25-30, with a history of exposure to radiation, coming down with cancers in those numbers and you just know what has caused it,” he says.

“Many died within a few years of being exposed to the fallout and many passed on generational health problems and birth defects to their children.”

Mr Daly, who was based at Warradale Barracks for 15 years, where 23 Construction was based until being disbanded in the early 1960s, hadn’t heard of the Squadron until around five years ago.

Since then he has been central to the group gaining due recognition.

In its earliest days the Squadron, with a strength of eight officers and 160 in other ranks, built the El Alamein Army Reserve camp, part of which later became the Baxter Detention Centre, outside of Port Augusta.

It also assisted the South Australian community by providing aid during bush fires, the grasshopper plague of 1955, and significant infrastructure construction.

During the record flood of 1956, while those squad members were at Maralinga, the rest of 23 Construction were out sandbagging River Murray towns and then cleaning up after the water receded.

In 2011, the Royal Australian Engineers constructed a memorial at Warradale to all who have served in its ranks.

This year a bronzed engineer’s slouch hat, of actual size, by Western Australian sculptor and former army engineer Ron Gomboc will be incorporated into the memorial.

“The hat will be mounted on the memorial in such a way it will look like it’s suspended in mid-air,” Daly adds.

“It acknowledges the ultimate sacrifice of the more than 1250 engineers who died in World War I and the remarkable service and sacrifice of 23 Construction Squadron that has never been recognised before.”

The slouch hat, costing $6,000 and one of only six to have been cast, will be unveiled during a service at Warradale Barracks at midday on Sunday April 28.

Contact Ken Daly at dailydouble@bigpond.com for further details.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/messenger/east-hills/maralinga-nuclear-bomb-test-survivor-reveals-truth-of-what-happened-in-the-sa-desert/news-story/697b17f6d3427a78aa0262b09727c169

April 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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