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Reflecting on Cape Cod’s Cold War nuclear history

MY VIEW: Reflecting on Cape Cod’s Cold War nuclear history , Cape Cod Times,   By Abby Pokraka, 18 July 20,  Soaking in the beauty of the Cape while watching the sunset over Old Silver Beach, it is hard to think about this place as anything but a quiet, picturesque summer escape. But nestled among the hydrangeas and cranberry bogs, more than 50 nuclear weapons once sat ready, their operators waiting for the end of the world. As we mark the 75th year of the nuclear age, it’s worth reflecting on Cape Cod’s nuclear history in a world still rife with nuclear dangers……

 
It’s unclear how many ordinary residents knew that some of the most destructive devices ever created were sitting just a few miles from their favorite beach spots   My father could feel the aircraft and bombing practice inside his home, growing up just miles from the base, an ever-present reminder of a Cold War that could one day turn hot. But he never knew about the nuclear weapons, and is sure many others didn’t either. ………

Sadly, this lack of nuclear knowledge is not solely a Cape Cod problem. Nationwide, nuclear education is lacking. Most people do not know the United States government conducted 1,032 nuclear tests that sickened and killed thousands of people around the world. It is not general knowledge that the United States and Russia still possess more than 90% of the world’s remaining nuclear weapons — about 6,000 each.

Seventy-five years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s easy to feel far removed from the nuclear threat. The bombs have gone from our sandy shores and the threat of nuclear war seems distant and antiquated. That is not the case.

So, as you eat ice cream, photograph cotton candy sunsets, and talk about how different the world is because of the pandemic, it’s worth brushing up on your nuclear history and learning how nuclear weapons continue to affect our daily lives. Thankfully, when it comes to reducing nuclear threats, Massachusetts legislators have led the way for decades. Today, our delegation continues to champion policies that protect their constituents — and the world — from nuclear catastrophe.

Abby Pokraka, an alumna of Falmouth High School, is program coordinator for the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.   https://www.capecodtimes.com/opinion/20200718/my-view-reflecting-on-cape-cods-cold-war-nuclear-history

July 20, 2020 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Kentucky man indicted after illegally dumping nuclear waste at landfill.

Kentucky man indicted after illegally dumping nuclear waste at landfill, officials say, Courier Journal, 
Associated Press  19 Jul 29, LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted a Kentucky man with illegally dumping low-level nuclear waste at an Estill County landfill.The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that Cory David Hoskins was indicted Thursday on multiple charges earlier this week, including violating safety regulations and mail fraud due to checks as part of the alleged crimes.

In 2016, Hoskins and his company TENORM were each fined $2.65 million by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services after officials said Advanced TENORM was responsible for dumping of out-of-state radioactive waste in landfills in Estill and Greenup counties.

Officials say the waste was a byproduct of fracking and had been transported from Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania in 2015…….. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2020/07/18/kentucky-man-indicted-illegally-dumping-nuclear-waste-landfill/5465037002/

July 20, 2020 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

America’s nuclear attack on itself ? The fallout from nuclear testing


Above – Trinity nuclear test site crater 1945 

It’s Been 75 Years, and America Still Won’t Admit a Nuclear Disaster.   Remember when we blew radioactive ash over New Mexico? Now the Trump administration is talking about testing bombs again. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/opinion/75-anniversary-trinity-nuclear-testing.html,  By Joshua Wheeler, Mr. Wheeler is the author of “Acid West.” July 15, 2020   When America detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at 0529 hours on July 16, 1945, it was an attack on American soil.

The blast melted the sand of southern New Mexico and infused it with the bomb’s plutonium core — 80 percent of which failed to fission — scattering radioactive material across the desert. The first atomic bomb was both a feat of engineering and, by today’s standards, a crude dirty bomb.

After riding the fireball over seven miles into the sky, as much as 230 tons of radioactive sand mixed with ash and caught the breeze of a cool summer morning. It floated 15 miles northwest to the Gallegos Ranch, where it fell and bleached the cattle. The dirty ash floated 20 miles northeast to the M.C. Ratliff Ranch, where that family would spend days cleaning it off their roof, off their crops and out of their water cistern. Thirty-five miles southeast at the Herreras’ home in Tularosa, the radioactive soot stained the white linens drying on the clotheslines.
The fallout from that detonation — code-named Trinity — floated over a thousand square miles and exposed thousands of families to radiation levels that “approached 10,000 times what is currently allowed,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the hours after the explosion, 185 Army personnel chased the fallout to monitor its extent. They chased it so far that their communications radios stopped working. Some who were stationed a few miles north of Trinity looked anxiously at their whirring Geiger counters and decided to bury their now-irradiated breakfast steaks.
Those soldiers had been given respirators, but at least one forgot his and was forced to take the officially sanctioned precaution of breathing through a slice of bread. Others were sent out with Filter Queens, a popular vacuum cleaner, in a futile attempt to suck up the fallout as though it was nothing more than household dust.
In short, the Army was woefully unprepared and even willfully negligent about the fallout of its first atomic bomb. It warned no residents. It ordered no evacuations. It maintained that the area around Trinity was absolutely safe, even when it knew it was not. So Americans went on living in the fallout, working in the fallout, eating from the dirty American soil.
Downwind of the blast, the local infant mortality rate, after declining in previous years, spiked. It increased by as much as 52 percent in 1945, with the highest increase occurring in August through October, the months immediately after Trinity. Recent research suggests that when America detonated the world’s first atomic bomb, its first victims were American babies.
Though there is no conclusive data about the rise in cancer rates after Trinity — largely because of a lack of government funding for such studies — stories collected by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium reveal generations ravaged by nearly every imaginable cancer.

An Army doctor later wrote about Trinity: “A few people were probably overexposed, but they couldn’t prove it and we couldn’t prove it. So we just assumed we got away with it.”

It has been 75 years and the American government still refuses to admit that the detonation of the “gadget,” as the Trinity bomb was called, was a nuclear disaster.

Aboveground nuclear testing was halted in 1963. Underground testing, which is comparably safer but still terrifying, was stopped in 1992. But today the Trump administration is floating the idea of resuming such testing — despite the fact that America is, after more than 1,000 tests, already the most nuclear-bombed country in the world.

“We maintain and will maintain the ability to conduct nuclear tests if we see any reason to do so, whatever that reason may be,” President Trump’s nuclear negotiator said last month.
Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 saying he wanted to be “unpredictable” with nuclear weapons. He went on to antagonize North Korea in 2017 by tweeting, “My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal.” According to Axios he suggested “multiple times” the use of “nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States.” He withdrew from many arms agreements, including the Iran nuclear deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. And he raised the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration by more than 50 percent.
What’s next? An explosive nuclear test can be orchestrated in as little as six months. And with a president whose lust for nuclear weapons is as evident as his lust for showmanship, that should terrify all of us. Resumed explosive testing, even underground, will undoubtedly encourage other nations to follow suit.

Any explosive nuclear test is an escalation toward global annihilation.

Congress is now so concerned that Democrats in the House have proposed a bill that would prohibit Energy Department funds from being used for nuclear weapons testing, while the Senate has moved to make any nuclear testing require a joint resolution. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said, “The decision to conduct an explosive nuclear test should not be made without congressional approval and should never be made by a president hoping to gain political points.”

But the decision to resume explosive nuclear tests should never be made at all. We can and do perform successful tests in virtual-reality chambers using advanced supercomputers. Explosives tests of any kind carry magnitudes more risk, and the consequence of that risk has historically fallen on the most vulnerable Americans.

It should come as no surprise that the downwinders of Trinity were largely impoverished agricultural families, mostly Hispanic and Native. New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the nation, is the only one with a cradle-to-grave nuclear industry, where weapons are designed, uranium mined, and waste stored. After a recent study from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission raised no concerns, the federal government looks poised to finalize Holtec International’s bid to store nuclear waste between the New Mexico towns of Hobbs and Carlsbad, despite vehement objections from the governor and many residents of the area. And any resumed nuclear testing would add more radioactive waste to the controversial storage site already in existence near Carlsbad.

This is further evidence of what’s been called radioactive colonialism, where minority and impoverished communities are forced to suffer the costs of the nuclear industry.

Henry Herrera, whose family’s drying linens were stained by the fallout on that July morning in 1945, told me: “We were lab rats. That ought to make us hero patriots or something. Which we are. But nobody gives a damn.” Mr. Herrera, his brother and his two sisters all had cancer.

If Congress truly wants to awaken Americans to the dangers of nuclear testing, it should start by finally telling the truth about the disaster at Trinity. Bills to acknowledge and compensate Mr. Herrera and other Trinity downwinders have lingered in legislative purgatory for over a decade. Passing them would help establish what should be obvious: The shameful legacy of nuclear weapons testing is something we should never attempt to revive.

Joshua Wheeler is the author of the essay collection “Acid West.” He teaches in the creative writing program at Louisiana State University.

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July 18, 2020 Posted by | environment, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Global heating is turning cities into death traps

July 18, 2020 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Massive wildfire in rural central California

Massive wildfire in rural central California,  https://www.sbs.com.au/news/massive-wildfire-in-rural-central-california  17 Jul 20 More than 900 firefighters aided by helicopters and air tankers battled a wildfire in a rural area of central California.

July 18, 2020 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Peace cranes flyimg in Vermont , in support of U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Peace cranes on Church Street aim to abolish nukes,  https://www.wcax.com/2020/07/17/peace-cranes-hanging-on-church-street-to-abolish-nuclear-weapons/   WCAX News Team Jul. 17, 2020 BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Cranes are a symbol of peace in many cultures, and 1,000 origami peace cranes from Japan are now displayed in front of Burlington City Hall in observance of next month’s 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.The story behind the peace cranes is of a little girl, Sadako Sasaki, who developed cancer from atomic radiation because of the Hiroshima bombing. Sasaki started getting sick around age 11.

Robin Lloyd, an activist for abolishing nuclear weapons, believes Sasaki’s story will not only reach the hearts of Vermonters but also teaches an important lesson.

“The cranes date from a little girl who got leukemia from the Hiroshima bombing,” Lloyd said. “Then her health started to fail and her friends said, ‘If you can fold 1,000 cranes, then your wish will come true.‘”

Sasaki died before she reached 1,000 cranes, but her story lives on. Organizers at Thursday’s event in Burlington say they want to use the peace cranes to gain support for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Joseph Gainza, a longtime Vermont peace activist, says that Vermont has supported nuclear weapons abolition in the past.

”The House of Representatives overwhelmingly — and the Vermont Senate unanimously — voted on a resolution calling on the United States to enter into the nuclear weapons abolition treaty,” Gainza said.

Today, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons continues to gain support, according to Maho Takahashi, an activist in Burlington.   ”With that treaty, once 50 countries ratify it, it will enter into force,” Gainza said.

The peace cranes will be flying for the next week. Each crane has a lesson that visitors are encouraged to take and learn from. 

July 18, 2020 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

California Coastal Commission unanimously approves storage plan at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station 

California Coastal Commission unanimously approves storage plan at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station  CBS8, 17 Jul 20,  The Commission voted 10-0 to approve the program to allow storage of spent nuclear fuel on-site.    SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — The California Coastal Commission voted 10-0 in a special meeting today to approve an inspection and maintenance program allowing Southern California Edison to store spent nuclear fuel in a storage site at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The program outlines actions SCE will take to inspect the canisters that contain spent nuclear fuel, as well as how potential issues with the canisters will be remedied.

Robotic devices will be used to inspect the canisters and site conditions will be simulated on a test canister, which will be observed for potential degradation. Two spent fuel storage canisters will be inspected every five years starting in 2024, and the test canister will be inspected every two to three years.

Canister flaws will be repaired by the application of a nickel-based metallic spray, and the presence of flaws may result in increased canister inspection frequency and an increase in the number of canisters inspected.

The inspection and maintenance program was also reviewed by the engineering consulting firm LPI, which provided recommendations that included the increase in canister inspections should flaws arise.

Nearly 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel are stored at the plant, which stopped producing electricity in 2012.

Concerns remain over the plant’s proximity to the ocean and the potential for the site to be affected by rising sea levels, tsunami inundation, seismic hazards.
By 2035, the commission may look to relocate the canisters to another site, although no such location is available, according to a commission report. ……. https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/san-onfre-nuclear-power-plant-storage-approval/509-b0c102a6-86b7-45c3-a5d7-b5013cfc19c4

July 18, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste is piling up in California: leadership is needed

California needs leadership on nuclear waste,   https://calmatters.org/commentary/my-turn/2020/07/california-needs-leadership-on-nuclear-waste/   IN SUMMARY

Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders from the Legislature must demand action on nuclear waste and fill gaps in oversight.  By Bart Ziegler,  CalMatters, 17 Jul 20,

Bart Ziegler is president of the Samuel Lawrence Foundation, a nonprofit based in Del Mar, bart@samuellawrencefoundation.org.

From San Onofre to Humboldt Bay, nuclear waste is piling up in California.

This most-toxic waste – tons and tons of it – is deadly for 200,000 years.  Stranded next to a rising ocean at aging and decommissioned plants, the waste has no permanent home.

California is overdue in showing leadership.

Just as California has broken ranks with the federal government on regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders from the Legislature must demand action on nuclear waste and fill gaps in oversight.

With federal regulators all but cornering nuclear policy, the industry all too often is left to regulate itself. Meanwhile, private contractors slop at ratepayer-funded decommissioning troughs while running loose with safety.

Enough is enough, California!

In north San Diego County, conditions at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station scream for state intervention, as Rep. Mike Levin, a Democrat from San Juan Capistrano, concluded in a task force report issued recently.

First, some background.

Decommissioning started this year at the San Onofre plant, which quit making electricity in 2012.  The plant’s majority owner, Southern California Edison, has opened its $4 billion decommissioning purse to Holtec International as lead contractor in charge of transferring 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel from cooling pools to a storage system of Holtec’s design.

That’s where things get dicey.

Edison’s contractors are cramming the spent fuel assemblies into thin-walled, steel canisters. Workers hoist the canisters from wet storage with a behemoth, track-driven gantry crane and crawl them to a concrete, dry-storage vault. That’s where the 73 canisters will stay. Indefinitely.

Public hand-wringing intensified after a near-accident in 2018 involving a fully-loaded canister and the release of reports showing the canisters are prone to gouging during transfer. That can lead to corrosion and failure, especially in a marine environment. To make matters worse, the canisters cannot be repaired, monitored, inspected or transported once entombed in the vault.

What can California do? For starters, leaders can immediately improve oversight of nuclear waste storage.

Nuclear plant owners admit to not having developed procedures to replace fully-loaded canisters.  That’s why, as part of decommissioning California’s coastal nuclear plants at San Onofre, Diablo Canyon and Humboldt Bay, the state Coastal Commission must demand the construction of handling facilities – known as “hot cells” – where canisters can be repaired or replaced.

State lawmakers should order construction of a hot cell at the decommissioned Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station, just 40 miles south of their offices in Sacramento.

In San Diego County, near the border with Orange County, 8.2 million people live within 50 miles of the old San Onofre plant. On July 16, the California Coastal Commission is set to act on a staff recommendation to approve Edison’s application to dismantle the plant’s cooling pools. That approval would be disastrous. For now at least, the spent fuel cooling pools provide our last option for dealing with a damaged canister.

Coastal Commissioners are appointed by the same Legislature that should prepare for a crisis instead of responding to one. You don’t wait for a fire to create a fire department. Preparation is cheaper and faster than responding to a crisis. Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that preparation is not always our strongest suit.

As recommended in the Report of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Task Force, a state model would improve agency coordination on waste storage permit applications and increase engagement with federal agencies to advance solutions for containing and handling deadly nuclear waste. The solutions should be tied to strict, economic enforcement.

Coastal commissioners, lawmakers, regulators and anyone else with a stake in California –  that’s nearly 40 million of us –  should read the report and demand action on nuclear waste.

July 18, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Slow progress of Michigan bill opposing high-level nuclear waste dump

Michigan bill opposing high-level nuclear waste dump languishes in Senate committee Iosco County News Herald, By Jim Bloch For MediaNews Group,Jul 16, 2020

    • The Michigan House of Representative passed a concurrent resolution on Feb. 5 opposing the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump near the shores of Lake Huron in the municipality of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada.

The resolution was sponsored by Gary Howell, the republican representative of the 82nd District, which comprises Lapeer County.

It urges “the United States Congress to take every legal action possible to prevent the construction of any underground high-level nuclear waste repository in the Great Lakes basin,” and urges “the Canadian government to prohibit a high-level nuclear waste repository anywhere in the Great Lakes basin.”

One of the cosponsors of the resolution was Gary Eisen, the St. Clair Township Republican who represents the 81st District, which swoops around the southern half of St. Clair County and includes Marysville, St. Clair, Marine City and Algonac, as well as surrounding townships.

“It’s sitting in the Senate now in Dan Lauwers’s committee,” Eisen said in June, noting that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on a lot of the legislature’s work. “Everything’s ten times harder now.”

The resolution is in the Committee on Energy and Technology, which Lauwers chairs. His 25th Senate District includes St. Clair County………..

“Placing a deep geological repository near the Great Lakes is a high-risk venture with the potential of causing irreparable harm to millions of lives,” said the resolution. “Underground waste repositories have leaked in the past, costing billions of dollars to repair. Germany, for instance, is spending billions of dollars to dig up low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste that was stored in a salt mine due to leakage and other environmental concerns. In 2014, chemical reactions in a steel barrel full of radioactive waste caused an explosion and fire at a low- and intermediate-level underground waste site in Carlsbad, New Mexico causing a cloud of radioactivity to be released at the surface. Not only did this put the health and safety of the public at risk, it cost taxpayers $2 billion to clean up and repair. As demonstrated, low- and intermediate-level facilities have failed, and this high-level nuclear proposal provides no guarantee, whatsoever, to keep radioactive waste from our environment.”

If the Michigan Senate approves the resolution, it will be sent to Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Premier of Ontario, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Speaker of the U.S. House, the President of the U.S. Senate, the members of the Michigan congressional delegation, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

On Jan. 17, Michigan’s U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, along with Congressman Dan Kildee and Congressman John Moolenaar, introduced a bipartisan resolution opposing Canada’s placement of a permanent nuclear waste storage in South Bruce.

If the Michigan Senate approves the resolution, it will be sent to Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Premier of Ontario, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Speaker of the U.S. House, the President of the U.S. Senate, the members of the Michigan congressional delegation, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

On Jan. 17, Michigan’s U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, along with Congressman Dan Kildee and Congressman John Moolenaar, introduced a bipartisan resolution opposing Canada’s placement of a permanent nuclear waste storage in South Bruce.  http://www.iosconews.com/news/state/article_c5a6ae58-996b-5665-b599-cfa8fde7c6ae.html

July 18, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

State of Texas allows reduction in price of importing nuclear waste

State allows reduction in price of importing nuclear waste to Texas   https://news4sanantonio.com/news/trouble-shooters/state-allows-drastic-reduction-in-price-of-importing-nuclear-waste-to-texas  by APRIL MOLINA, Friday, July 17th 2020  SAN ANTONIO — The state has agreed to allow a private company in West Texas to drop the price charged for incoming nuclear waste.

Waste Control Services (WCS) has been disposing of the nation’s low level nuclear waste in Andrews County at a cost of $100 dollars per cubic foot for Class A waste and $1000 dollars per cubic foot for Class B and C waste.

There is an additional surcharge of 40 cents per unit of radioactivity, but The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently approved the request by WCS to drop the price to 5 cents per unit.

A spokesman for WCS explained the market is dynamic so when the price drops, they need to be able to continue to compete.

Public Citizen Texas Office Director, Adrian Shelley worries that by allowing WCS to import nuclear waste at a fraction of the cost, it could result in massive liability for the state.

“If WCS collects less money to import waste in Texas, then there will be less money available should an accident occur and ultimately we’re concerned Texas taxpayers will be on the hook should an accident occur,” Shelley said.

The company doesn’t expect less revenue, rather they anticipate more income as a result of the price drop.

WCS reports Andrews County gets 5% of their revenue and the state gets 25%.

WCS has also been working to get approval for years to temporarily store the nation’s high level nuclear waste that would include spent nuclear fuel rods.

 

July 18, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

The effects of radiation on the “downwinders” – guinea pigs for nuclear bomb research

Now I Am Become Death’: The Legacy of the First Nuclear Bomb Test, NYT,  By Maria Cramer July 15, 2020 

“………The effects of radiation were not well understood by most scientists on the project at the time, according to historians, and the preparations that were made to keep civilians safe reflected that ignorance.

They placed crude monitors around the small towns within 40 miles of the testing site. A scientist who was seven months pregnant and her husband, who was also a scientist, were sent to a motel in one of the towns with a Geiger counter, a device used to detect radioactive emissions, to measure the radiation.  If the needle hit a certain mark, she was instructed to alert officials so that they could evacuate the town, Professor Wellerstein said.

Officials did not warn any of the residents — many of them ranchers, Navajos, Mexican settlers and their descendants who raised cattle and drank water from cisterns — about the test. Should anyone ask about the blast, officials had proposed several cover stories, including telling the public that a remote ammunitions depot had exploded, Professor Wellerstein said.

Officials did not warn any of the residents — many of them ranchers, Navajos, Mexican settlers and their descendants who raised cattle and drank water from cisterns — about the test. Should anyone ask about the blast, officials had proposed several cover stories, including telling the public that a remote ammunitions depot had exploded, Professor Wellerstein said.

“It produced more light and heat than the sun,” said Tina Cordova, a founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which has urged the government to conduct more research about the aftermath of the blast and to compensate the affected communities.

Based on census data at the time, the consortium estimates there were tens of thousands of people living within a 50-mile radius of the blast, Ms. Cordova said.

Ash fell for days afterward in the landscape and in every direction and in amazing quantities,” she said.

Warnings went unseen and ignored.

The day after the blast, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, sent a petition signed by 70 scientists to President Harry S. Truman, urging him to give Japan a chance to surrender before dropping the bombs.

“Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale,” the petition cautioned.

It was not the first plea to reconsider using a nuclear bomb to end the war.
A month before the test, a committee, which included Dr. Szilard and was headed by the German scientist James Franck, issued the Franck Report, urging the United States to first demonstrate the power of the weapons to members of the United Nations……….

The bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima are believed to have killed up to about 200,000 people, with many of those victims succumbing to radiation poisoning in the weeks that followed.

Scientists “were totally shocked when the Japanese reported radiation sickness at Nagasaki,” said Professor Wellerstein, who has written about what the United States knew about the long-term consequences of using the weapons……..
The true effects of the test on the people who lived near the test site remain unclear.

The government never conducted a full investigation into the effects of the radiation, even after the communities downwind of the blast saw an unusual spike in infant deaths in the months after the explosion, said Joseph J. Shonka, a scientist and one of the authors of a 2010 study about the effects of nuclear testing for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The Trinity downwinders have not been treated in either a fair or a just manner,” he said.

Ms. Cordova, who grew up in Tularosa, N.M., said cancer had been pervasive in the towns near the Trinity test site, where everyone can name someone who died of the disease.

“We know that the government basically walked away and has taken no responsibility for the suffering and the dying,” said Ms. Cordova, who has survived thyroid cancer and has several relatives who died of various forms of cancer.

Members of Congress from New Mexico have introduced legislation that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which compensates uranium miners and people who lived downwind from nuclear testing sites, to include the residents who lived around Trinity.

In 2014, the National Cancer Institute began interviewing people who lived in the towns near the testing site to try and document the effects of the blast. The institute said it anticipated publishing the results “within the next few months.”   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/trinity-test-anniversary.html

July 16, 2020 Posted by | health, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear bomb testing – a form of racism and colonialism

Danielle Endres: Nuclear testing as a form of colonization,   https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/15/danielle-endres-nuclear/   By Danielle Endres ·16 July 20
At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, scientists in the Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first nuclear weapon in the desert homelands of the Mescalero Apache, a place now known as Alamogordo, New Mexico. As the detonation cloud mushroomed into the sky, the Trinity test ushered in a new era, the atomic age.

Some researchers argue that the atomic age is the beginning of Anthropocene — the planetary era defined by the impact of humans on global ecological systems — because of the release of radiation into our ecosystem from nuclear weapons production and testing. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control notes “All people who were born since 1951 have received some exposure to radiation from weapons testing-related fallout.”
With this opening of the nuclear Pandora’s box, nuclear weapons remain a ubiquitous though often unseen feature of geopolitics, modern warfare, culture and society. While there are many arguments to be made about the social and environmental legacies of nuclear weapons, I focus on how the nuclear weapons production process is linked with structures of racism and colonialism.
Trinity downwinders have tracked cancers, other illnesses and deaths linked to radiation exposure in communities near the Trinity site in their call for compensation trough RECA. The Mescalero Apache Reservation is a Trinity downwinder community. The impacts on Mescalero Apache nation from the Trinity test are just one example of a larger pattern in which Black, Indigenous, people of color and poor rural communities disproportionately experience adverse consequences from nuclear weapons production and testing.
After the Trinity test, and the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it enabled, the world entered a nuclear era with a massive proliferation of nuclear weapons. There are many scholarly resources from which learn more about how the cradle to grave cycle of nuclear weapons production relates to racism and colonialism.
Historian Gabrielle Hecht’s “Being Nuclear” shows how uranium mining in African countries is linked with race and colonialism. In “The Nuclear Borderlands,” anthropologist Joseph Masco recounts the impacts of nuclear weapons production on Indigenous and Nuevomexicano communities in New Mexico. And Traci Voyles tells of devastating effects of uranium mining on the Navajo nation in “Wastelanding.”
My research focuses on nuclear colonization, a phenomenon in which the nuclear production process disproportionately damages Indigenous peoples’ land, health and sovereignty due to the disparate location of nuclear production and testing sites on or near Indigenous reservations and homelands.
Spiritual leader and anti-nuclear advocate Corbin Harney called the Western Shoshone Nation the most nuclear bombed nation in the world because of the more than 1,000 nuclear tests that happened on Western Shoshone treaty-protected homelands, a.k.a. Nevada Test Site. For more than 30 years, the federal government then seriously considered storing the nation’s high-level nuclear waste from nuclear power inside Yucca Mountain, a spiritual place in Western Shoshone homelands.
Nuclear colonialism is yet another example of environmental injustice. Marginalized people are disproportionately harmed in the production of nuclear technologies just as they are disproportionately damaged by climate change, air pollution, and toxicity.
We must fight to end our reliance on nuclear weapons, not just to protect future generations from accidental or intentional use, but also to work toward a more just and equitable world in which everyone can breathe clean air, have access to a clean water, live in a healthy environment, participate in decisions about their land and communities, and not be asked to sacrifice in the name of a “national interest” that rarely works in support of Black, Indigenous and people of color.
On this 75th anniversary of the Trinity test, let us commit to nuclear abolition from the standpoint of environmental justice and decolonization.
Danielle Endres, Salt Lake City, is a member of Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and a professor of rhetoric and communication at the University of Utah whose research focuses on the sociopolitical implications of nuclear technologies. Views in this article are her own and do not represent the University of Utah.

July 16, 2020 Posted by | indigenous issues, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

July 16 1945 – the first nuclear bomb test – the start of many more

Now I Am Become Death’: The Legacy of the First Nuclear Bomb Test

The 75th anniversary of what’s known as the Trinity explosion, the world’s first nuclear weapon test, comes as tensions over nuclear devices intensify.  NYT,  By Maria Cramer July 15, 2020   It was 1 a.m. on July 16, 1945, when J. Robert Oppenheimer met with an Army lieutenant general, Leslie Groves, in the parched landscape of Jornada del Muerto — Dead Man’s Journey — a remote desert in New Mexico.

A group of engineers and physicists was about to detonate an atomic device packed with 13 pounds of plutonium, a nuclear weapon that the government hoped would bring an end to World War II……..At 5:29 a.m. local time, the device exploded with a power equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT and set off a flash of light that would have been visible from Mars, researchers said.

It was the first nuclear test in history.

Less than a month later, the United States would drop a nearly identical weapon on the city of Nagasaki in Japan.    The bomb, named Fat Man, fell three days after Americans dropped a uranium bomb, called Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Both weapons immediately killed tens of thousands of Japanese people and forced Japan’s surrender on Aug. 14, bringing an abrupt end to the war.

Since the Trinity test 75 years ago, at least eight countries have conducted more than 2,000 nuclear bomb tests, said Jenifer Mackby, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. More than half of those tests have been conducted by the United States, a legacy of the Trinity explosion, as the United States and several other countries have continued to refuse to ratify the treaty prohibiting nuclear weapon test explosions.
Many of the scientists who witnessed the blast quickly  realized the “foul and awesome” power they had set free, according to historians.

Mr. Oppenheimer said a Hindu scripture ran through his mind at the sight of the explosion: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

The goal of the test was to see if the military could harness plutonium into a weapon that would destroy whole cities, said Alex Wellerstein, a science historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., who studies the history of nuclear weapons……  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/trinity-test-anniversary.html

July 16, 2020 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

SCANA’s ex-top executive to plead guilty in a $9 billion nuclear fraud.

EXECUTIVE TO PLEAD GUILTY TO $9 BILLION NUCLEAR FRAUD,   https://www.lexingtonchronicle.com/news/executive-plead-guilty-9-billion-nuclear-fraud     Possible 5 years in prison and $1 million in fines, By Jerry Bellune,  JerryBellune@yahoo.com, 13 July 20,

An ex-SCANA executive is to plead guilty tomorrow in a $9 billion nuclear fraud.

SCANA’s top nuclear executive, Steve Byrne, is accused of conspiracy in a failed nuclear project which cost investors – including his own employees – millions in stock losses.

The joint SCANA-Santee Cooper project:
1. Saddled more than 725,000 SC Electric & Gas ratepayers with $2 billion in costs.
2. Led to a near bankruptcy of Lexington County-based SCE&G and its sale to Dominion Energy.
3. Damaged the future of nuclear power in SC.

Byrne’s guilty plea will be entered Tuesday, July 14, at the federal courthouse in Columbia.

As Chief Operating Officer of SCANA, the owners of SCE&G, Byrne has admitted to knowingly engaging with others in fraud during construction of 2 Westinghouse AP100 reactors.
Byrne may face 5 years in prison and fines of not more than $1 million although the court could fine him more.
Federal officials are believed to have offered him a deal to testify against fellow executives and their lawyers who may have participated in the conspiracy.
To assure that Byrne, a former Irmo resident, follows the terms, sentencing will occur later.

Byrne has signed a plea agreement with federal agents which stipulate what he must do.
According to court postings, a bond hearing will immediately follow before Magistrate Judge Shiva V. Hodges

The failed nuclear project and a state law that allowed SCE&G to bilk rqtepayers of $2 billion was formally opposed before the Public Service Commission by Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the SC Small Business Chamber and the Coalition to Stop the Blank Check.

Byrne agreed to be “fully truthful” about “criminal activities about which he has knowledge” and to provide documentation and testify at the trial of others.
Court documents reveal that the federal attorney believes other executives and lawyers:
1. Were involved in the conspiracy to cover-up problems at the failing nuclear project.
2. Made “false and misleading statements” about it to the PSC.
3. Took advantage of the Base Load Review Act in which SC lawmakers allowed SCE&G to pass all costs and risks to ratepayers.

State regulators inadequately reviewed the fraud due to a bias for SCE&G and against ratepayers, said Tom Clements, director Savannah River Site Watch.
“Byrne’s plea for his role in the reactor construction boondoggle will be historic as officials responsible for such failed projects rarely get caught and never confess to their crimes,” he said.
Clements was a main intervenor at the start and finish of the project.
“Byrne, who should serve prison time, must fully reveal the criminal role of others in the conspiracy that has been so disastrous for ratepayers, Clements said.

These include former CEO Kevin Marsh and former CFO Jimmy Addison,” he said.
Court documents imply that other individuals are being investigated,.
That means they and “lawyers who advised them” may face criminal charges, Clements said.

July 14, 2020 Posted by | Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Blistering debate over San Onofre’s “nuclear waste dump by the sea,”

July 14, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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