What Is Radiation Poisoning?

What Is Radiation Poisoning? Here’s What to Know About the Disease Seen on HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’

And what’s the deal with those iodine pills?, Health, By Christina Oehler June 03, 2019 “…….

In the three years following the Chernobyl explosion, about 530,000 recovery operation workers (think firefighters and other first-responders) were enlisted to help clean up the accident. These workers were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation— an average of 120 millisievert (mSv), or more than 1,000 times more powerful than a chest X-ray, according to the World Health Organization. Those who responded earliest are believed to have been exposed to levels even higher than that.

What is acute radiation syndrome?

According to the CDC, acute radiation syndrome occurs when a person is exposed to a very high level of radiation in a short period of time. The first symptoms of ARS include nausea, vomiting, headache, and diarrhea, which can occur within minutes to days after exposure.

After the initial symptoms subside, an ARS victim will usually feel fine for a period of time before relapsing. The person’s symptoms will vary depending on the level of radiation they received, but some of the symptoms include loss of appetite, fatigue, fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and possibly even seizures and coma.

Skin damage is another side effect of ARS, which becomes apparent in the third episode of the show. Swelling, itching and redness of the skin can occur. In more extreme cases, people can also experience permanent hair loss, damaged oil- and sweat-producing glands, skin discoloration, scarring and ulceration, or tissue death.

The higher the exposure, the more likely the person will die from ARS. Death from ARS typically occurs as a result of bone-marrow decay, which causes infections and internal bleeding.

What are the long-term effects of radiation exposure?

Valery Legasov, the chemist who worked to help resolve the Chernobyl explosion, is a main character in the HBO mini-series. He reiterates throughout the show that radiation exposure—even at moderate or low levels—can have long-term effects on a person’s health.

According to the EPA, exposure to radiation in moderate doses (like the nearby town of Pripyat would have had) can raise a person’s risk of getting cancer—in particular, thyroid cancer. Additionally, children and fetuses are at increased risk for radiation-related health problems. Exposure at moderate levels can cause cells to divide rapidly, which can result in developmental and birth defects in these sensitive groups.

What do iodine pills do?

Throughout the show, multiple characters recommend iodine pills as a treatment for ARS. Iodine helps the thyroid block harmful radioactive iodine from being absorbed, which ultimately could lead to cancer.

According to the CDC, the thyroid is the most sensitive organ to radioactive iodine, so preventing its absorption in the body can help reduce the risks of developing cancer. While plenty of foods (like table salt) contain healthy levels of iodine for a normal diet, they do not have the level of potassium iodine needed in the case of a nuclear fallout.

Iodine pills should not be taken unless recommended by health officials, in the case of a radiation accident. They also won’t protect against any of the other immediate health effects of radiation poisoning besides thyroid damage.

Ultimately, the levels of radiation needed to cause ARS would only happen in the case of a radiation crisis. While you can take solace in the fact that the levels of radiation from Chernobyl have decreased significantly over the past 30 years—and the fact that disasters involving nuclear power reactors are rare—you can learn more about what to do in case of a radiological emergency here. https://www.health.com/mind-body/radiation-poisoning-chernobyl

June 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Temporary dome over radioactive trash on Runit Island – now leaking waste to the Pacific

Fears Grow That ‘Nuclear Coffin’ Is Leaking Waste Into The Pacific https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/05/27/fears-grow-that-nuclear-coffin-is-leaking-waste-into-the-pacific/#653322537073, Trevor Nace

The tropical blue skies over the southern Pacific Ocean were enveloped by towering mushroom clouds lingering over the Marshall Islands in 1954 as the United States continued its testing of nuclear weapons.

The United States conducted 67 nuclear weapon tests from 1946 to 1958 on the pristine Marshall Islands. The most powerful test was the “Bravo” hydrogen bomb in 1954, which was about 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The extensive nuclear bomb testing blanketed the islands in radioactive ash, covering it in the fine, white, powder-like substance. Children, unaware of what the radioactive ash was, played in the “snow” and ate it according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Today, there are growing concerns that the temporary containment of the nuclear waste resulting from those tests is leaking into the Pacific Ocean and could be cracked wide open from the next storm that rolls by. Specifically, the site is believed to be leaking one of the most toxic substances in the world, the radioactive isotope plutonium-239, a byproduct of nuclear bombs that decays with a half-life of 24,100 years.

In 1977 the United States worked to clean up the radioactive waste left strewn across the Marshall Islands. In total, an estimated 73,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil was collected across the Marshall Islands. The US used a crater from an especially large nuclear bomb test on Runit Island to stash away the radioactive soil. The 328-foot crater from a May 1958 test was designated the dumping ground.

As this was considered a temporary solution, the crater bottom was not lined with impervious material, which would have prevented radioactive waste from entering the below aquifers and Pacific Ocean. After the material was piled into the crater, an 18-inch thick concrete dome was positioned on top of it as a temporary containment. Plans for permanent radioactive waste storage were never finalized and thus the temporary solution has sat as-is for nearly 40 years.

Shortly afterward, in 1983 the Marshall Islands agreed on their severity from the United States and with it, the islands released the United States of any responsibility for past nuclear testing.

Rising sea level, soil shifting, and storms have all caused new concern over the integrity of the “nuclear coffin” and its ability to contain radioactive waste. The dome is reportedly cracking and the local government fears the next big storm may split the concrete dome apart. In addition, groundwater models suggest that seawater is almost certainly accessing the crater. However, it is unclear how much nuclear waste is seeping from the unlined crater bottom into the Pacific Ocean and groundwater aquifers.

Despite recent awareness around the issue, the Marshallese government does not have the money or expertise to properly clean up and isolate the nuclear waste. Thus, the Marshallese are left helpless as their tropical islands continue to leak deadly radioactive waste across its coral reefs.

Trevor Nace is a PhD geologist, founder of Science Trends, Forbes contributor, and explorer. Follow his journey @trevornace.

May 28, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, Reference, wastes | 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

New research into plutonium workers’ internal radiation exposure.

Job-exposure matrix sheds light on plutonium workers’ radiation exposure https://physicsworld.com/a/job-exposure-matrix-sheds-light-on-plutonium-workers-radiation-exposure/

22 May 2019 Tami Freeman Researchers in the UK have developed a new method for evaluating plutonium workers’ historical internal radiation exposure. They focused their study on workers employed at the start of plutonium operations at the Sellafield (formerly Windscale) nuclear reprocessing facility (J. Radiol. Prot. 10.1088/1361-6498/ab1168).

Internal exposure to plutonium, which decays via alpha particle emission, is a recognised health hazard. But with little specific information available, potential risks from plutonium exposure have largely been assessed through knowledge of radiation exposure risks in general, much of which comes from external exposure to photon radiation such as gamma and X-rays. However, due to its high linear energy transfer rate, alpha particle radiation exhibits significantly enhanced biological effects at the cellular level, creating a specific need to investigate the associated exposure risks.

To obtain more direct estimates of potential internal exposure risks, epidemiological studies of plutonium workers need to be conducted,” explains lead author Tony Riddell, from Public Health England’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards. “These studies require individual plutonium exposure estimates that are as accurate and unbiased as possible.”

The Sellafield workforce includes one of the world’s largest cohorts of plutonium workers. Through the support of the workforce, this group has been comprehensively monitored for internal exposure to plutonium, primarily through inhalation.

However, for 630 workers employed there at the start of plutonium operations, from 1952 to 1963, the historical urinalysis results available do not provide sufficiently accurate and unbiased exposure assessments. These results were based on a threshold level of urinary plutonium excretion, which was suitable for operational protection purposes at the time, but tended to overestimate exposure, leading to underestimation of any risks if used in epidemiological analyses.

“This means these early workers are excluded from epidemiological studies of exposure risks, which significantly reduces the power of these studies,” says Riddell. “Early workers are important for assessing potential exposure risks because they usually received some of the highest plutonium exposures and, due to the passage of time, health outcomes for these workers will now be largely known.”

To solve this problem, Riddell and colleagues employed an approach called a job-exposure matrix (JEM). The JEM approach uses exposure data from other sources to estimate the average exposure that a typical worker (in the same work group) would have received in a given period. Substituting the missing data with these JEM estimates allowed the researchers to build a more reliable picture of the early workers’ radiation exposure.

“To overcome the problem of missing or deficient exposure data, we used more reliable data from other relevant workers (‘exposure analogues’) along with statistical, mathematical and empirical analyses to estimate the average exposures for a typical worker at Windscale/Sellafield for all combinations of specific occupation and year required to build the JEM,” explains principal investigator Frank De Vocht from the University of Bristol.

The authors note that the exposure analogues approach developed in this study provides a generic methodological advance that is potentially transferable to other internally exposed workers, and which may permit other epidemiological cohorts to include significant groups of workers who otherwise might have been excluded due to the lack of reliable exposure information.

“It’s likely that replacing the missing or unreliable exposure data with JEM-derived values in future epidemiological studies could have considerable impact on the risk estimates which can be produced,” adds De Vocht.

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, employment, Reference, UK | 1 Comment

Illness and death legacy of employment in America’s nuclear weapons business

Government workers were kept in the dark about their toxic workplace
As US modernizes its nuclear weapons, NCR looks at the legacy of one Cold War-era plant, National Catholic Reporter, May 20, 2019 by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy

Editor’s note: As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

In a three-part series about the Kansas City Plant on Bannister Road and its successor 8 miles south, NCR reviews hundreds of pages of government reports and environmental summaries, and interviews more than two dozen sources, including five plant workers and their families, three former federal employees who worked nearby, nuclear industry and government officials, health experts, business sources, state environmental regulators and a former city councilman.

This is Part 1.

“………… Debbie blames Bob’s painful and untimely passing on his worksite. For 27 years, he worked as an engineer at the Kansas City nuclear bomb components plant, a proud and dedicated employee of what is now Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies LLC. Sworn to secrecy, Bob never discussed his work assignments with his wife. And she never asked. She is now convinced that whatever he did out there probably killed him.

During the decades of the Cold War, the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies employed hundreds of thousands of Americans in more than 350 secretive, hazardous worksites across the country, according to federal records. Scientists, engineers, machinists and laborers were hired to design, test and construct a stockpile of 70,000 nuclear warheads. Inadequately protected from carcinogens and toxins and often exposed without their knowledge, many nuclear workers became ill and died. They devolved into early dementia, endured high rates of miscarriages, suffered nerve disorders, and succumbed to a host of debilitating respiratory illnesses and cancers.

How many Americans died producing nuclear weapons is not a statistic the government tracks. “Irradiated,” a 2015 investigative series by McClatchy DC, the Washington bureau of the media chain that owns The Kansas City Star, put the total at 33,480, four times the number of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its interpretation of the McClatchy DC data, the Columbia Journalism Review notes 33,480 is the number of American nuclear workers compensated by a government program who have died. “The government has acknowledged 15,000 of those deaths were due to work-related illnesses,” the magazine writes. “The rest only had illnesses linked to their nuclear work and may have died of old age or unrelated causes.”

Wayne Knox, a former industrial hygienist for DOE, thinks the death toll is “much, much higher” than 33,480.

The tally represents a price paid in American lives for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Cities and communities that hosted weapons plants saw other costs: sick workers and their families who felt betrayed by the industry’s indifference, and persistent environmental contamination.

As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Continue reading →

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, health, Reference, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

How the USA military co-opts nature conservation, and promotes the extinction of species

“Get Your Endangered Species Off My Bombing Range!” Counter Punch by JOAN ROELOFS MAY 17, 2019, “The Department of Defense’s ability to conduct realistic live-fire training, weapons system testing, and essential operations is vital to preparing a more lethal and resilient force for combat. . . . Starting in the late 1990s, the Department became increasingly concerned about “encroachment” pressures adversely affecting the military’s use of training and testing lands. Specifically, military installations saw two main threats to their ability to test, train, and operate: nearby incompatible land uses and environmental restrictions to protect imperiled species and their habitats.”

Such problems are to be resolved by the DoD Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program.

The program employs “buffer partnerships” that include the DoD, private conservation groups, universities, and state and local governments. Also involved, often as additional funders, are other federal departments: Homeland Security, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce; and agencies, for example, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). REPI regards these as “win-win partnerships,” as they share the cost of land or acquire easements to preserve compatible uses and natural habitats, without interfering with bombing or other essential training exercises. In addition to the helpful funding, the military can muster impressive influence over local development authorities, town councils, and adjacent landowners…….

At Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the “Maneuver School of Excellence,” (as well as the notorious School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), live-fire and other training was threatened by threatened species and their habitats. Now the base and its partners are restoring habitat and offering contiguous land for buyers who would use the land for recreation. Among the partners are the Georgia Land Trust, The Conservation Fund, the Alabama Land Trust, and the Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Nationwide, TNC is likely the conservation organization with the greatest amount of funding from the DoD. The TNC grants for Fort Benning alone included (but were not limited to) one for $11,115,000, and another for $55,517,470. Both were described as: “Assist State and local governments to mitigate or prevent incompatible civilian land use/activity that is likely to impair the continued operational utility of a Department of Defense (DoD) military installation.”

Washington State, very receptive to military activities, despite the Hanford nuclear disaster area, has several REPI projects. One of them, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, on Puget Sound, is to eliminate the “threat” to live-fire exercises and other missions coming from imperiled species and incompatible development. The extensive area beyond its 91,000 acres became a designated “Sentinel Landscape,” a partnership headed by Departments of Agriculture, Defense, and Interior to “align resources” to protect military testing “while benefiting ALL partners and landowners.” ……

The Defense Department has several other programs designed to prevent interference with live ammunition, bombing ranges, and other military activities. One is the Legacy Resource Management Program, which seeks civilian partners to help protect endangered species and “to promote stewardship of our nation’s. . . cultural heritage.” Already “The Department of Defense manages thousands of National Register of Historic Places-listed properties. . .” Also working with REPI is the DoD’s Office of Economic Adjustment; its Joint Land Use Studies Program helps local communities to avoid interfering with military operations by their civilian activities.

The military has a poor reputation as regards the environment—we think about the Marshall Islands, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, poisoned aquifers, toxic waste burns, underwater sonar, and much more. It has paid attention to the criticisms. It still engages in its former ways, including the world record of oil consumption and extensive toxic emissions, but now there is a soft cop.

The DoD now emphasizes its need for natural landscapes for realistic training, its wish to avoid displacing or accidently bombing locals, and its help in protecting endangered species. However it does not want any environmental restrictions to poke into its activities. The military wants more land, airspace, and ocean clearance, and will make concessions. It uses the carrot, and the commanding influence of military power. The REPI Program supplies funds and also leverages contributions from state and local governments and conservation organizations, which are henceforth partners…..

there are serious concerns about the REPI project, and similar ones that partner with civilian governments and nongovernmental environmental organizations. First of all, by publicizing its protection of red-cockaded woodpeckers, gopher tortoises and others, their habitats, working farmlands, forests, and wetlands, the DoD emits a dust cloud over the intense environmental destruction of land, sea, and air resulting from military operations and their preparations. Militarization is worldwide and beyond, into space. In addition to the contribution of the US, other nations’ militaries are increasing in size, activities, and lethality. Many have been armed by us, or against the threat of us; some in response to other perceived threats. ……

Toxic wastes are produced (and not sequestered) at many US domestic bases; our military has granted us the bulk of superfund sites. As Joshua Frankhas stated:

US military sites, which total more than 50 million acres, are among the most insidious and dangerous Pentagon legacies. They are strewn with toxic bomb fragments, unexploded munitions, buried hazardous waste, fuel dumps, open pits filled with debris, burn piles and yes, rocket fuel…….

Another major concern about REPI and other military “partnerships” with civilian institutions and terrain is that it erodes the boundaries, however weak these days, between civil and military. Might the US be turning into a banana republic or a military dictatorship? Penetration is not new; the US Army Corps of Engineers have been developing and maintaining recreational lakes and flood control projects for a long time. However, the military is slowly expanding into every nook and cranny of civilian life. ….. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/17/get-your-endangered-species-off-my-bombing-range/

May 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Low level radiation exposure and increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease

Moderate dose of radiation increase risk of hypertension https://www.asianage.com/life/health/060519/moderate-dose-of-radiation-increase-risk-of-hypertension.html

ANI May 6, 2019, Prolonged exposure to low-dose radiation could increase the risk of hypertension. Washington: A study has revealed that prolonged exposure to low-dose radiation could increase the risk of hypertension, a known cause of stroke and heart ailments. The study published in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association was conducted on workers at a nuclear plant in Russia.

“It is necessary to inform the public that not only high doses of radiation but low to moderate doses also increase the risk of hypertension and other circulatory system diseases, which today contribute significantly to death and disability. As a result, all radiological protection principles and dose limits should be strictly followed for workers and the general public,” added Tamara Azizova, lead author of the study. Uncontrolled hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, can lead to heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other serious health problems. Earlier studies linked exposure to high doses of radiation to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and death from those diseases.

This study is the first to find an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years.

The study included more than 22,000 workers. The workers were hired between 1948 and 1982, with an average length of time on the job of 18 years. Half had worked there for more than 10 years. All of the workers had comprehensive health check-ups and screening tests at least once a year with advanced evaluations every five years.

The researchers evaluated the workers’ health records up to 2013. More than 8,400 workers (38 per cent of the group) were diagnosed with hypertension, as defined in this study as a systolic blood pressure reading of 140 mm Hg, and a diastolic reading 90 mm Hg. Hypertension incidence was found to be significantly associated with the cumulative dose.

To put it in perspective, the hypertension incidence among the workers in the study was higher than that among Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II but lower than the risk estimated for clean-up workers following the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The differences may be explained by variations in exposure among the three groups, according to the researchers.

Following the atomic bombing, the Japanese experienced a single, high-dose exposure of radiation, the Chernobyl workers were exposed to radiation for a short time period (days and months), while the Russian workers were chronically exposed to low doses of radiation over many years.

While the development of cancer is commonly associated with radiation exposure, “We believe that an estimate of the detrimental health consequences of radiation exposure should also include non-cancer health outcomes. We now have evidence suggesting that radiation exposure may also lead to increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, as well,” said Azizova.

May 7, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, health, Reference | Leave a comment

Listing the companies that make nuclear weapons

These 28 companies are building nuclear weapons http://www.icanw.org/action/these-28-companies-are-building-nuclear-weapons/?mc_cid=435c8bc6ec&mc_eid=e79c019cc0, May 2, 2019

ICAN and its partner organisation Pax have released a report with full profiles of 28 companies connected to the production of nuclear weapons.

Here are the 28 companies on ICAN’s Red Flag list. Download the full report here.

Aecom (United States)
Aecom is involved in work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, it is involved in research, design, development and production of nuclear weapons including the life extension program of the B61 nuclear bomb10 and of the W80-1 nuclear warhead for air-launched cruise missiles. Aecom has held this US $45.5 million (€ 40.1 million) per year contract since 2007.
Aerojet Rocketdyne (United States)
Aerojet Rocketdyne is involved in maintaining the propulsion systems for Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles for the US, under a US $28.9 million (€ 25.5 million) contract initially awarded in 2013. It also produces propulsion systems for the Trident II (D5) missiles for the US and UK. Aerojet Rocketdyne is also a subcontractor on the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent for the US arsenal. In 2018, Aerojet Rocketdyne secured an additional five-year contract for US $20 million (€ 17.6 million) for solid boost technology that will be applied to the next generation of weapons systems.
Airbus (Netherlands)
Airbus is a Netherlands based company involved in the ongoing maintenance and development of several nuclear armed missiles for the French nuclear arsenal through ArianeGroup, a joint venture with the French company Safran. Airbus is also part of the joint venture MBDA that supplies medium-range air to surface missiles, also for the French arsenal.
BAE Systems (United Kingdom)
BAE Systems has a maximum value US$ 368.7 million (€ 328 million) contract originally from October 2014 that will run until 2021 that is paid by the US and UK governments for key components for Trident II (D5) missiles. BAE also has a US$ 951.4 million (€ 830.8 million) contract from the US Air Force for Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system, which will run until 2022. BAE is also involved in the French arsenal directly, through MBDA Systems, developing the mediumrange air-to-surface missile ASMPA and its successor, ASN4G. In July 2017, BAE got a new US$ 45.2 million (€ 39.6 million) modification to an existing contract for development work on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile replacement programme.
Bechtel (United States)
Bechtel is a family run company involved in nuclear weapon development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Y-12 Complex, and the Pantex Plant. Bechtel currently has approximately US $ 1,174 million (€ 1,035 million) in outstanding contracts at these facilities. Bechtel is also involved in one of the new nuclear weapons under design in the US, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, though their exact contract amount is unclear.
Bharat Dynamics Limited (India)
Bhrat Dynamics Limited produces key components for the Prithvi-II and Agni- V nuclear capable missiles for the Indian arsenal.
Boeing (United States)
Boeing is building new nuclear weapons for the US. These include a 2017 contract for US$ 349.2 million (€ 297 million) for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent to replace the Minuteman III ICBMs. Boeing is also involved in the Long-Range Standoff weapon development and has been awarded several contracts since 2017 for this new nuclear weapon, valued at US $ 344.5 million (€ 304 million). Boeing holds several contracts related to the the US long-range nuclear Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). Boeing currently has contracts valued at over US$ 703.3 million (€ 620 million) for key components for the Minuteman system. One of these contracts includes the development of ‘kill switches’ to cause the missile to self-destruct after launch. Boeing received a new US$ 26.7 million (€ 23.0 million) contract from the US and UK for Trident II (D5) work in October 2018.25 This is in addition to existing outstanding contracts for work related to the system valued at over US$ 88.9 million (€ 79.0 million). Boeing is also producing the tail-kit assembly for the new B61 bombs. More than half of all these bombs are currently deployed by the US in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey). The US$ 185 million (€ 163 million) in contracts will mean the new B61-12 bombs are ready for use by May 2019. It is yet unclear when the new bombs will be delivered to their European locations, other companies are currently modifying the storage facilities in the host countries.
BWX Technologies (United States)
BWX Technologies has a new US$ 76 million (€ 70.8 million) contract for Trident II (D5) components for the US and UK navies. BWXT also got a US$ 505 million (€ 427.5 million) contract to prepare for additional US nuclear materials production for nuclear weapons, this will initially be Tritium production, but there are also plans to produce additional nuclear materials in the near term. BWXT is also involved in the partnership that oversees the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including the life extension program of the B61 nuclear bomb and of the W80-1 nuclear warhead for air-launched cruise missiles. The partnership receives US$ 45.5 million (€ 37.6 million) a year for this work.
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (United States)
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory has a US$ 370.2 (€350.5 million) contract, paid by the US and the UK, for work on the Trident II (D5) system. In 2018, Draper got another US & UK funded to US$ 109.5 million (€ 95.9 million) contract for additional work on the Trident system, including hypersonic guidance and support for hypersonic flight experiments, to be concluded by September 2019.
Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée (France)
Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée is included for the first time as more information on the specifically designed key components for the French nuclear arsenal has become available. CNIM designs and manufactures the submarine launching systems designed for the nuclear-armed M51 missiles.
Fluor (United States)
Fluor is involved at several US nuclear weapons enterprise facilities. Through a joint venture, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) it has an US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract for efforts related to key components for the W88 Alt 370 program, the nuclear warhead deployed on the Trident II (D5).
General Dynamics (United States)
General Dynamics has a number of contracts related key components for the UK & US Trident II (D5) systems. An initial US$ 30.6 million (€ 28.2 million) contract awarded in 2015 has been modified repeatedly (including five times between November 2017 and December 2018) bringing the total contract value to over US$ 174.4 million (€ 155.6 million). Another General Dynamics subsidiary, General Dynamics Electric Boat received a maximum dollar value of US$ 46.5 (€ 43.4 million) contract in September 2017 for integration work for United Kingdom Strategic Weapon Support System kit manufacturing for the Columbia class ballistic missile submarines. In 2018 this contract was modified significantly, first in April for US$ 126.2 million (€ 102.4 million), and again for US$ 480.6 million (€ 414 million) in September 2018.
Honeywell International (United States)
Honeywell International manages and operates the National Security Campus (NSC) (formerly Kansas City Plant), the facility responsible for producing an estimated 85% of the non-nuclear components for US nuclear weapons under a five year US$ 900 million (€ 817.4 million) contract awarded in July 2015. It is also a co-owner of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) which has a US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract for efforts related to key components for the W88 Alt 370 program, the nuclear warhead deployed on the Trident II (D5). Honeywell is also associated with other US nuclear weapons enterprise facilities, including an outstanding US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract for the Nevada National Security Site and a US$ 2.6 billion (€ 2.5 billion) contract for the Sandia National Laboratory. Both facilities are responsible for warhead production, testing, and design. Also, Honeywell received new contracts in 2018 valued at US$ 19.0 million (€ 16.2 million) for the PIGA guidance instrument for the Minuteman III.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (United States)
Huntington Ingalls Industries took over the management and operations for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2018 with a five-year contracted with an estimated value of US$ 2.5 billion (€ 2.2 billion) annually. Huntington Ingalls Industries will be providing “personnel, systems, tools and corporate reachback in the areas of pit production, plutonium manufacturing, production scale-up and nuclear operations and manufacturing”. Huntington Ingalls Industries is also part of a US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract at the Nevada National Security Site, and the US$ 8 billion (€ 7.1 billion) contract at the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina.
Jacobs Engineering (United Kingdom)
Jacobs Engineering is part of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, which currently has a 25-year £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion) contract for maintenance of the UK Trident arsenal. Jacobs was also part of the group that took over management and operations of the Nevada National Security Site in 2017 under a 10-year US$ 5 billion (€ 4.6 billion) contract.
Larsen and Toubro (India)
are involved in producing key components for the Indian nuclear arsenal. These include the launcher system for the nuclear-capable Prithvi II missile. It is also involved in the Dhanush, the ship-based variant of the Prithvi-II.
Leidos (United States)
Leidos is a minority partner of Consolidated Nuclear Services LLC (CNS), which took over the management and operation of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas under the same US$ 446 million (€ 326.5 million) contract in 2014. These facilities are involved in producing Tritium for US nuclear weapons as well as the M76/MK4A, W76-2, W80-1 and, W88 warhead modifications.
Leonardo (Italy)
Leonardo is an Italian company (formerly known as Finmeccanica) involved in the French nuclear arsenal through MBDA-Systems. In contracts from 2016, MBDA began design and development of the mid-life upgrade of the ASMPA to keep it in the French arsenal through 2035. In the 2019 French Ministry of Defence Budget, three deliveries of upgraded ASMPAs are planned after 2019. MBDA is also involved in work on the successor system (ASN4G) which is meant to be operational after 2035.
Lockheed Martin (United States)
Lockheed Martin has outstanding Trident II (D5) contracts valued at approximately US$ 6,550.1 million (€5,730.4 million). Of these US$ 918.9 million (€ 801.9) were awarded in between March 2018 and January 2019. Lockheed also has at least US$ 495 million (€ 413.6 million) in outstanding contracts related to the Minuteman III ICBM. It is also involved in a US$ 900 million (€ 764.2 million) research and design contract for the new US the Air Force Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile. Lockheed Martin’s nuclear weapon associated activities aren’t limited to US missile production alone. It is also part of the 25-year £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion) contract for the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment.
Moog (United States)
Moog has developed launch vehicle and strategic missile controls for the Minuteman III and Trident (D5) missiles. Moog is also part of the Boeing team that won a US$ 349.2 million (€ 297.0 million) contract in 2017 for technology maturation and risk reduction activities for the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.
Northrop Grumman (United States)
Northrop Grumman is currently handing over responsibilities to BAE Systems as the prime contractor for the Minuteman III ICBM system. This process began in 2013, but there have been repeated ‘bridge’ contracts valued at over US$ 165.0 million (€ 128.3 million), most recently in September 2018. Now the handover process is expected to be complete in April 2019. Although Northrop Grumman is no longer the prime ICBM contractor, it still has additional US ICBM related contracts including those it took over when it acquired Orbital ATK. These additional contracts were mostly awarded in 2015, with a total value of approximately US$ 1,852.9 million (€ 1,642.9 million). Northrop Grumman, via ATK Launch Systems was also awarded another Minuteman related contract for US$ 86.4 million (€ 74.5 million) in September 2018. Northrop Grumman is also involved in the Trident II (D5) systems for the US and the UK, with outstanding contracts valued at approximately US$ 531.3 million (€ 493.2 million). Many of these Trident II (D5) related production activities are meant to conclude in 2020. Northrop Grumman is also connected to the nuclear weapons facilities at the Pantex and Y-12 through at US$ 446 million (€ 326.5 million) contract to the Consolidated Nuclear Services (CNS) joint venture.
Raytheon (United States)
Raytheon has an outstanding US$ 33.4 million (€ 24.8 million) contract for work related to the Minuteman III ICBMs. Raytheon is also involved in new nuclear weapons development for the US. It is part of the Boeing team working on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and in August 2017, Raytheon received a five-year contract for US$ 900 million (€ 764.2 million) for the new Long-Range Standoff weapon.
Safran (France)
Safran is a French company and two of their subsidiaries (Snecma and Sagem) are developing key components for the M51 missiles for the French nuclear weapons arsenal. Safran is also part of the joint venture with Dutch company Airbus, responsible for ongoing production and maintenance of the missile system overall. This joint venture is also contracted to carry out the 2019 budgeted tasks of the French Ministry of Defence for three deliveries of upgraded ASMPAs after 2019.
Serco (United Kingdom)
Serco is a UK company involved in management and operations of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) under 25-year contract (1999 to 2024) valued at £ 25.4 billion (€29.6 billion).
Textron (United States)
Textron has an outstanding US$ 17.2 million (€ 12.5 million) contract to convert up to six Minuteman III MK 12A re-entry vehicles to the Mod 5F configuration.
Thales (France)
According to the French Ministry of Defence, Thales is one of MBDA’s subcontractors supplying medium-range air-to-surface missile ASMPA to the French air force.
United Technologies Corporation (United States)
United Technologies Corporation acquired Rockwell Collins in November 2018 and renamed it Collins Aerospace Systems. This company has an outstanding US$ 76 million (€ 67 million) contract for the Airborne Launch Control System Replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM missiles.
Walchandnagar Industries Limited (India)
Walchandnagar Industries Limited produces launching systems for the Indian Agni series of nuclear armed missiles.

ReplyForward

May 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Reference, weapons and war | 1 Comment

High blood pressure risk from prolonged exposure to low-dose ionising radiation

Prolonged exposure to low-dose radiation may increase the risk of hypertension, a known cause of heart disease and stroke https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190503080554.htm

Date:

May 3, 2019

Source:

American Heart Association

Summary:

A long-term study of Russian nuclear plant workers suggests that prolonged low-dose radiation exposure increases the risk of hypertension. This study is the first to associate an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years. The higher the cumulative dose of radiation, the greater the risk, the study showed.

Prolonged exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation increased the risk of hypertension, according to a study of workers at a nuclear plant in Russia published in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

Uncontrolled hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, can to lead to heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other serious health problems.

Earlier studies linked exposure to high doses of radiation to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and death from those diseases. This study is the first to find an increased risk of hypertension to low doses of ionizing radiation among a large group of workers who were chronically exposed over many years.

The study included more than 22,000 workers at the first large-scale nuclear enterprise in Russia known as the Mayak Production Association. The workers were hired between 1948 and 1982, with an average length of time on the job of 18 years. Half had worked there for more than 10 years. All of the workers had comprehensive health check-ups and screening tests at least once a year with advanced evaluations every five years.

The researchers evaluated the workers’ health records up to 2013. More than 8,400 workers (38 percent of the group) were diagnosed with hypertension, as defined in this study as a systolic blood pressure reading of ?140 mm Hg, and a diastolic reading ? 90 mm Hg. Hypertension incidence was found to be significantly associated with the cumulative dose.

To put it in perspective, the hypertension incidence among the workers in the study was higher than that among Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, but lower than the risk estimated for clean-up workers following the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The differences may be explained by variations in exposure among the three groups, according to the researchers. Following the atomic bombing, the Japanese experienced a single, high-dose exposure of radiation, the Chernobyl workers were exposed to radiation for a short time period (days and months), while the Mayak workers were chronically exposed to low doses of radiation over many years.

While the development of cancer is commonly associated with radiation exposure, “we believe that an estimate of the detrimental health consequences of radiation exposure should also include non-cancer health outcomes. We now have evidence suggesting that radiation exposure may also lead to increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, as well,” said Tamara Azizova, M.D., lead author of the study at the Southern Urals Biophysics Institute in Russia.

Azizova pointed out that in recent years, the number of people exposed to radiation in everyday life, such as during diagnostic procedures, has increased. “It is necessary to inform the public that not only high doses of radiation, but low to moderate doses also increase the risk of hypertension and other circulatory system diseases, which today contribute significantly to death and disability. As a result, all radiological protection principles and dose limits should be strictly followed for workers and the general public.”

How radiation exposure may increase the risk of hypertension is still a question, according to Azizova. “So far, the mechanisms remain unclear, not only for certain cohorts but also for the general population. One of the main tasks for the coming decade is to study the mechanisms of hypertension and heart and brain atherosclerosis occurring in people who are — and who were exposed — to radiation.”

The authors note that their study is a retrospective one, and while many health conditions and behaviors were documented in the medical records of the workers (such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index), other factors, such as stress and nutrition, were unavailable for researchers to be taken into account in this study.

Story Source:

Materials provided by American Heart Association.

Journal Reference:

Tamara Azizova, Ksenia Briks, Maria Bannikova, Evgeniya Grigoryeva. Hypertension Incidence Risk in a Cohort of Russian Workers Exposed to Radiation at the Mayak Production Association Over Prolonged Periods. Hypertension, 2019; DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.118.11719

May 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, health, Reference | Leave a comment

There is no such thing as a zero or near-zero-emission nuclear power plant”

There is no such thing as a zero or near-zero-emission nuclear power plant” https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/04/18/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-zero-or-near-zero-emission-nuclear-power-plant/

Stanford professor Mark Z Jacobson has said new nuclear plants may cost up to 7.4 times more than wind and solar facilities, with construction times longer by up to 15 years. Such a delay, he said, may see an huge amount of extra carbon emissions from fossil fuel power sources. His verdict comes as China this month set new guaranteed tariffs for nuclear power.

APRIL 18, 2019 EMILIANO BELLINI Claiming nuclear power plants emit zero or near-zero CO² is a false assumption refuted by objective data, according to the Evaluation of Nuclear Power as a Proposed Solution to Global Warming, Air Pollution and Energy Security paper written by Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, Mark Zachary Jacobson.

In the study Jacobson – who is also director of the Californian university’s Atmosphere/Energy program – highlights the risk of overestimating nuclear’s ability to reduce global warming and air pollution, as well as its claims about ensuring energy security.

The professor said construction times for new nuclear plants range from 10 to 19 years. “An examination of some recent nuclear plant developments confirms that this range is not only reasonable but an underestimate in at least one case,” he wrote. The paper cites the Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland, the Hinkley Point nuclear plan in the UK and Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors in Georgia, among others, as examples of projects for which planning began in the past decade and whose entry into commercial operation is still far from complete.

With new nuclear projects taking so long – and utility scale solar or wind schemes requiring 2-5 years to begin commercial operations – nuclear effectively emits a hundred years’ worth of 64-102g of CO²per kilowatt-hour of plant capacity just from grid emissions during the wait for projects to come online or be refurbished, compared to wind or solar farms.

Jacobson added, a further 2-4 years of plant downtime will have to be factored in to take account of the refurbishment required to ensure nuclear facilities run for their expected 40-year lifetime. “Overall, emissions from new nuclear are 78-178g [of] CO²/kWh, not close to zero,” he wrote. “Even existing plants emit, due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant.”

The professor also highlighted the well-known risks associated with nuclear power such as weapons proliferation, reactor meltdown, radioactive waste, mining-related cancers and land despoilment.

China and its nuclear plans

According to Jacobson, the lengthy delays to realizing China’s nuclear plant investment have effectively been responsible for a 1.3% rise in carbon emissions in the nation between 2016 and 2017, rather than the 3.4% fall claimed by the authorities.

According to the Stanford paper, the capital cost of new nuclear ranges from $6,500-12,250/kW, whereas a new wind turbine ranges from $1,150-1,550/kW. “Dividing the high (and low) capital cost of nuclear per kW by the low (and high) capital cost of wind per kW and multiplying the result by 14 GW gives a range of 58.7-149 GW nameplate capacity of wind that could have been installed and running prior to 2017,” the report stated.

Despite the big difference in costs, China’s National Development and Reform Commission set new guaranteed minimum on-grid electricity tariffs for third-generation nuclear power stations this month. According to Reuters, the Taishan project in Guangdong province was set at RMB0.435 ($0.0649) per kWh, while prices for the Sanmen project in Zhejiang province and the Haiyang plant in Shandong province were set at RMB0.4203 and RMB0.4151 per kWh, respectively.

In a statement provided to pv magazine at the time, Mycle Schneider – a French consultant specializing in nuclear energy – said the new fixed tariffs are in the same range as previous nuclear subsidies. “That is rather surprising as these units were significantly more expensive than the previous reactors and they are years behind schedule and massively over budget,” he said. “[It is] hard to believe that they will be making any money. 435 Yuan [RMB] per megawatt-hour – around 65 U.S. dollars or 58 euro – is about half of the strike price agreed for Hinkley Point C.”

Schneider added PV and wind costs have come down so much China is investing much more in renewables than nuclear. “The bottom line is that it is likely that China will restart nuclear building at some point – the last commercial unit started building in December 2016 – but that the pace will be significantly lower than anticipated, leaving the biggest chunk of new electricity generating capacity to renewables, just like anywhere else but on a bigger scale,” he added. As of July 1, China had 41 operating reactors with a total net capacity of 38 GW.

In the 2018 edition of the Nuclear Industry Status Report, Schneider revealed nuclear power capacity grew globally by only 1% in 2017 while solar and wind capacity rose 35% and 17%, respectively. The report also recognized solar and wind were the cheapest grid-connected sources of energy. Investments in new nuclear plants, on the other hand, were driven by public support and by nuclear weapon states, according to the paper.

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, Reference | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons accidents and losses 1950s – 2000s

“Broken Arrows” – The World’s Lost Nuclear Weapons https://interestingengineering.com/broken-arrows-the-worlds-lost-nuclear-weapons

Since the early 1950s, the United States and Russia have had numerous accidents with their nuclear bombs, and a number have even gone missing. By Marcia Wendorf, April, 06th 2019 “Broken Arrow” is the name given to nuclear weapon accidents, whether they be by accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. The U.S. admits to having 32 broken arrows worldwide, with six nuclear weapons having been lost and never recovered.

In the simplest terms, the way a nuclear weapon works is that a chemical high explosive compresses nuclear material until a critical mass is reached and fission is achieved. During fission, the nuclei of certain heavy atoms split into smaller, lighter nuclei, and release excess energy in the process. In some elements, such as certain isotopes of uranium and plutonium, the fission process releases excess neutrons which trigger a chain reaction if they’re absorbed by nearby atoms.

Thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs) utilize a different process, that of fusion. When exposed to extremely high temperatures and pressures, some lightweight nuclei can fuse together to form heavier nuclei, releasing energy in the process. Those high temperatures and pressures are achieved by fission, so the trigger for a thermonuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon.

The 1950s

The first broken arrow occurred on February 14, 1950, when a U.S. Convair B-36 en route from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska to Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas, crashed in northern British Columbia after jettisoning a Mark 4 nuclear bomb into the Pacific Ocean. The bomb was never found, and it contained a substantial amount of natural uranium plus 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of high explosives. According to the U.S. Air Force, the bomb didn’t contain the plutonium core necessary for a nuclear detonation. This was the first loss of a nuclear weapon in history.

On April 11, 1950, a B-29 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon, four spare detonators, and a crew of 13 crashed into a mountain near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bomb’s high explosives detonated and the nuclear capsule was damaged but it was recovered. All thirteen crew members onboard the aircraft died.

On August 5, 1950 at Fairfield-Suisun AFB, California, a B-29 bomber carrying a Mark 4 nuclear bomb experienced problems with two of its propellers and crashed while attempting an emergency landing. In the ensuing fire, the bomb’s high explosives detonated and killed 19 crew members and rescue personnel.

On November 10, 1950, near Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, Canada, which is about 300 miles northeast of Montreal, a U.S. B-50 aircraft jettisoned a Mark 4 nuclear bombover the St. Lawrence River. The weapon’s high explosive detonated on impact, but the core was lacking a necessary component and did not detonate. The explosion did scatter almost 100 pounds (45 kg) of uranium. The airplane went on to land safely.

On March 10, 1956, a a B-47 aircraft, carrying three crewmen and two nuclear cores from MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida, was en-route to Ben Guerir Air Base, Morocco, and had completed its first aerial refueling without incident. It failed to make contact with the tanker for a second refueling somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea, and it was reported missing. The kind of weapons the plane was carrying remains undisclosed, but the type of nuclear bombs commonly carried by B-47s was the Mark 15, which would have had a combined yield of 3.4 megatons. No trace of the plane or the two nuclear cores has ever been found.

On July 27, 1956, a U.S. B-47 bomber was on a training exercise when it crashed into a nuclear weapons storage facility at the Lakenheath Air Base in Suffolk, England. The entire crew of the aircraft was killed. Known as an “igloo”, the storage facility contained three Mark 6 nuclear bombs, one of whose detonators had been sheared off in the accident. Investigators concluded that it was a miracle that the bomb hadn’t exploded.

On May 22, 1957, a plane was transporting a nuclear bomb to Kirtland Air Force Base when suddenly, the bomb fell through the bomb bay doors and crashed into a field near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bomb’s high explosives detonated, creating a crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide, however, the nuclear capsule was found intact. The only casualty was a cow who had been grazing close to the crash site.

On July 28, 1957, a U.S. Air Force C-124 aircraft from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware was carrying three nuclear bombs over the Atlantic Ocean. The plane experienced a loss of power, and the crew jettisoned two nuclear bombs into the ocean, and they have never been recovered.

On October 11, 1957, a plane carrying a nuclear bomb crashed on takeoff at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. The plane burned for four hours, and the high explosives detonated, however, the nuclear capsule and its carrying case were found intact and only slightly damaged.

On February 5, 1958, near Savannah, Georgia, during a practice exercise, an F-86 fighter plane collided with a B-47 bomber that was carrying a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb. The F-86 crashed after the pilot ejected from the plane. The crew of the B-47 requested permission to jettison the bomb in order to reduce weight and prevent the bomb from exploding during an emergency landing. The bomb was jettisoned at 7,200 feet (2,200 m) over the Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island. Subsequent searches failed to locate the weapon.

It is not known if the bomb had its plutonium trigger, but if it did, the blast effects of a detonation would have been a fireball having a radius of 1.2 miles (2 km) and thermal radiation causing third-degree burns for 12 miles.

On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-47E-LM Stratojet took off from Savannah, Georgia, and was scheduled to fly to the U.K. The aircraft was carrying nuclear weapons in case a war with the Soviet Union broke out. Captain Earl Koehler noticed a fault light in the cockpit, indicating that the bomb harness locking pin had not engaged. He sent Captain Bruce Kulka to the bomb bay area to fix the problem.

As Kulka reached around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin, and the Mark 6 bomb dropped onto the bomb bay doors. The bomb’s weight forced the doors open, and the bomb dropped 15,000 ft (4,600 m) to the ground. Two sisters, six-year-old Helen and nine-year-old Frances Gregg, along with their nine-year-old cousin Ella Davies, were playing 200 yards (180 m) from a playhouse their father had built for them.

The bomb struck the playhouse, its high explosives detonated and it created a crater 70 feet (21 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep. Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core had been stored elsewhere on the plane. All three children were hurt, as were their father, mother and brother. The family sued the Air Force and received US $54,000. Today, the crater is still visible although overgrown by vegetation.

Sometime in 1958, a B-47 aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon inadvertently released the bomb over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Luckily, the bomb lacked the fissile nuclear core, but the conventional explosives detonated, injuring six people and damaging buildings.

At a U.S. air base at Greenham Common, England on February 28, 1958, a B-47 carrying a nuclear weapon caught fire and completely burned. While the weapon didn’t explode, in 1960, a group of scientists found high levels of radioactive contamination at the base. The U.S. government has disclosed no further information about the incident.

On November 4, 1958, at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, a plane carrying a nuclear weapon burst into flames during takeoff. The weapon’s high explosives detonated, killing a crewman, but the nuclear core remained intact. Only half a mile from the crash site was Butterfield Elementary School.

On November 26, 1958, at Chennault Air Force Base, Louisiana, a B-47 carrying one nuclear weapon caught fire while on the ground. This fire damaged the nuclear capsule and its protective case, and there was nuclear contamination of the area.

In Hardinsberg, Kentucky, on October 15, 1959, a B-52 carrying two nuclear weapons and a KC-135 refueling plane collided midair. Both planes and both bombs fell to the ground. The crash killed four crew members, and the two nuclear weapons were only slightly damaged. No radiation leakage was detected.

The 1960s

On January 24, 1961, a B-52 carrying two three- or four-megaton nuclear bombs was over Goldsboro, North Carolina when it suffered the structural failure of its right wing. The aircraft broke apart and the two nuclear weapons were released. On one bomb, three of its four arming mechanisms had activated.

In 2013, a Freedom of Information Act request confirmed that only a single switch out of four had prevented the bomb’s detonation. One of the recovery team recalled, “Until my death, I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, ‘Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ He said, ‘Not great. It’s on arm.'”

The second bomb plunged into a muddy field, and its tail was discovered 20 feet below ground. A decision was made to leave the uranium and plutonium in place, and The United States Army Corps of Engineers purchased a 400-foot (120 m) circular easement over the buried components. Had either of the bombs gone off, everyone within an 8.5 mile (13.7km) radius would have been killed.

On March 14, 1961 a B-52F-70-BW Stratofortress bomber carrying four nuclear weapons experienced a problem with its cabin temperature. After temperatures climbed to between 125 degrees F and 160 degrees, the crew descended to 12,000 feet and depressurized the plane. After all four engines flamed out, the pilot put the plane into a dive and all crew members bailed out.

The plane crashed into a barley field near Yuba City, California, and the nuclear weapons were released. The weapons’ multiple safety measures protected against a nuclear explosion or release of radioactive material. A fireman was killed and several others were injured while rushing to the accident scene.

On July 4, 1961, a K-19 “Hotel”-class Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine was off the coast of Norway. The cooling system of one of its two nuclear reactors failed, and the temperature of the nuclear core climbed to 800 degrees Celsius, threatening to melt down its fuel rods. The crew and the submarine itself were contaminated by radiation and several fatalities were reported.

On October 25, 1962, at the Duluth Sector Direction Center near Duluth, Minnesota, an intruder was shot while scaling a fence around the facility. This triggered a “sabotage alarm”, which triggered a warning at Volk Field in Wisconsin. This alarm triggered nuclear armed F-106A interceptor aircraft to be sent to the source of the original alarm – Duluth.

Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. was at DEFCON 3, and there were no practice drills, everything was the real deal. When Duluth communicated that nothing was seriously wrong, the planes were only stopped by a car that raced down the runway after them. The intruder turned out to have been a black bear.

On January 13, 1964, a U.S. B-52 carrying two nuclear bombs suffered severe turbulence, and its vertical stabilizer broke off. The crew bailed out and the plane crashed near Savage Mountain outside Barton, Maryland. The bombs were found “relatively intact in the middle of the wreckage”. Three crewmen were killed as a result of the accident.

On December 8, 1964, at Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Indiana, several Strategic Air Command (SAC) aircraft were taxiing down a runway. The jet blast from one aircraft caused the plane behind it to slide off the runway and catch fire. The five nuclear weapons onboard the plane burned, but radioactive contamination was limited to the immediate area of the crash and was subsequently removed.

On December 5, 1965, an A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft carrying a 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon, rolled off the deck of the U.S.S. Ticonderoga and fell into the Pacific Ocean. The plane, its pilot, Douglas Webster, and the weapon sank in 16,000 feet of water and were never found. It wasn’t until 15 years later that the U.S. Navy finally admitted that the accident had taken place only 80 miles from Japan’s Ryuku island chain, and this caused an uproar in Japan, which prohibits nuclear weapons from being brought into its territory.

Sometime during the mid-1960s, in the Kara Sea, the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin encountered problems with its nuclear reactors, possibly experiencing a meltdown. It was forced to dump the reactors into the sea and they have never been found.

The most well-known broken arrow occurred on January 17, 1966 near Palomares, Spain. A U.S. B-52 aircraft, carrying four nuclear weapons, collided with its refueling tanker, a KC-135, at 31,000 feet (9,450 m) and crashed over the Mediterranean Sea. Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs, three were found on land near the fishing village of Palomares. The high explosives in two of the bombs had detonated and released plutonium contamination across a 0.77-square-mile (2 km2) area. The fourth bomb, was recovered intact after a 2 ½ month-long search. During the U.S. cleanup effort, over 1,400 tons of soil were sent to a nuclear storage site.

On January 21, 1968, a fire erupted onboard a B-52 bomber operating out of Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The plane was carrying four B28FI thermonuclear bombs, and it crashed onto the sea ice in North Star Bay. The conventional explosives detonated and the nuclear capsules ruptured and dispersed their contents, resulting in radioactive contamination.

The U.S. and Denmark launched a clean-up operation, but the secondary stage of one of the nuclear weapons was never found. Workers involved in the clean-up operation have been experiencing radiation-related illnesses, and they have sought compensation.

On April 11, 1968, a Soviet diesel-powered “Golf”-class ballistic missile submarine sank 750 miles northwest of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. U.S. intelligence determined that the submarine had been carrying three nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and several nuclear-tipped torpedoes. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), partnered with industrialist Howard Hughes to build a specially-designed deep-water salvage ship, the “Glomar Explorer” to recover the lost sub. They were only partly successful when the Glomar raised approximately half of the submarine.

Also during the Spring of 1968, the U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear attack submarine, mysteriously sank about 400 miles southwest of the Azores islands. Besides the tragic loss of all 99 crew members, the Scorpion was carrying two nuclear-tipped weapons with yields of up to 250 kilotons.

The 1970s

On April 12, 1970, in the Atlantic Ocean about 300 miles northwest of Spain, a Soviet “November”-class nuclear-powered attack submarine experienced a problem with its nuclear propulsion system. A merchant ship attached a tow line and attempted to pull the submarine to safety, but the submarine sank, killing all 52 crew members on board.

Off the coast of Sicily, Italy on November 22, 1975, twelve years to the day of his assassination, the U.S. aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy collided with the cruiser USS Belknap during an exercise. The collision occurred at night and during high seas. One, or possibly both ships, contained nuclear weapons, but no nuclear contamination was detected by rescue personnel.

The 1980s

On September 19, 1980, near Damascus, Arkansas, crewman were performing maintenance on a Titan II Inter-continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). A crewman accidentally dropped a wrench into the silo, and it punctured the missile’s fuel tank. The missile leaked fuel for over eight hours before finally exploding, killing one and injuring 21 others. The blast destroyed the entire compound, but the nuclear warhead was recovered intact.

On October 3, 1986, 480 miles east of Bermuda, a Soviet “Yankee I”-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine suffered an explosion and fire in one of its missile tubes. An attempt was made to tow the submarine, but it sank on October 6, 1986 in 18,000 feet of water, taking its two nuclear reactors and approximately 34 nuclear weapons down to the bottom of the sea.

About 300 miles north of the Norwegian coast on April 7, 1989, a Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarine, the “Komsomolets”, caught fire and sank. The vessel’s two nuclear reactors and two nuclear-armed torpedoes were lost, along with 42 of the 69 crew members.

On August 10, 1985, at the Chazhma Bay repair facility, about 35 miles from the city of Vladivostok, Russia, an “Echo”-class Soviet nuclear-powered submarine suffered a reactor explosion that released a cloud of radioactivity. Fortunately, the cloud never reached Vladivostok, but ten Soviet officers were killed by the explosion.

The 1990s

Also in the White Sea, on September 27, 1991, a “Typhoon”-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine suffered a missile launch malfunction during a test. No other information is available about this incident.

In the Barents Sea on February 11, 1992 a collision occurred between a CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) “Sierra”-class nuclear-powered attack submarine and the U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine “Baton Rouge”. The Commonwealth of Independent States is comprised of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The vessels reportedly suffered only minor damage, but a dispute arose over whether the incident had happened inside or outside of Russian territorial waters.

On March 20, 1993, in the Barents Sea, the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Grayling collided with a Russian Delta III nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Both vessels reportedly only suffered minor damage.

The 2000s

On August 12, 2000, also in the Barents Sea, a CIS “Oscar II” class submarine, the “Kursk”, suffered a torpedo failure and explosion. The ship sank with all 118 men onboard. No evidence of radiation contamination was detected.

On August 29, 2007, at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52H bomber, and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The nuclear warheads were supposed to have been removed before transport, but they weren’t..

Once at Barksdale, the missiles with the nuclear warheads remained mounted to the aircraft for 36 hours and were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions for nuclear weapons. The missiles were never reported as missing, by Minot.

April 8, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, incidents, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Before we enter “a new nuclear age” – learn from the newly declassified Chernobyl health records

Fortunately, Chernobyl health records are now available to the public. They show that people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anaemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterised as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had in their bodies 8,498 bq/kg of radioactive caesium (20 bq/kg is considered safe).

For decades, researchers have puzzled over strange clusters of thyroid cancer, leukaemia and birth defects among people living in Cumbria, which, like southern Belarus, is an overlooked hotspot of radioactivity from cold war decades of nuclear bomb production and nuclear power accidents.

Currently, policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health.

*******************************************************

As researchers monitored Chernobyl radioactivity, they made a troubling discovery. Only half of the caesium-137 they detected came from Chernobyl. The rest had already been in the Cumbrian soils; deposited there during the years of nuclear testing and after the 1957 fire at the Windscale plutonium plant. The same winds and rains that brought down Chernobyl fallout had been at work quietly distributing radioactive contaminants across northern England and Scotland for decades. Fallout from bomb tests carried out during the cold war scattered a volume of radioactive gases that dwarfed Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl explosions issued 45m curies of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. Emissions from Soviet and US bomb tests amounted to 20bn curies of radioactive iodine, 500 times more. Radioactive iodine, a short lived, powerful isotope can cause thyroid disease, thyroid cancer, hormonal imbalances, problems with the GI tract and autoimmune disorders.

As engineers detonated over 2,000 nuclear bombs into the atmosphere, scientists lost track of where radioactive isotopes fell and where they came from, but they caught glimpses of how readily radioactivity travelled the globe.

Chernobyl’s disastrous cover-up is a warning for the next nuclear age

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/04/chernobyl-nuclear-power-climate-change-health-radioactivity, Kate Brown , 5 Apr 19, Before expanding nuclear power to combat climate change, we need answers to the global health effects of radioactivity In 1986, the Soviet minister of hydrometeorology, Yuri Izrael, had a regrettable decision to make. It was his job to track radioactivity blowing from the smoking Chernobyl reactor in the hours after the 26 April explosion and deal with it. Forty-eight hours after the accident, an assistant handed him a roughly drawn map. On it, an arrow shot north-east from the nuclear power plant, and broadened to become a river of air 10 miles wide that was surging across Belarus toward Russia. If the slow-moving mass of radioactive clouds reached Moscow, where a spring storm front was piling up, millions could be harmed. Izrael’s decision was easy. Make it rain.So that day, in a Moscow airport, technicians loaded artillery shells with silver iodide. Soviet air force pilots climbed into the cockpits of TU-16 bombers and made the easy one-hour flight to Chernobyl, where the reactor burned. The pilots circled, following the weather. They flew 30, 70, 100, 200km – chasing the inky black billows of radioactive waste. When they caught up with a cloud, they shot jets of silver iodide into it to emancipate the rain.In the sleepy towns of southern Belarus, villagers looked up to see planes with strange yellow and grey contrails snaking across the sky. Next day, 27 April, powerful winds kicked up, cumulus clouds billowed on the horizon, and rain poured down in a deluge. The raindrops scavenged radioactive dust floating 200 metres in the air and sent it to the ground. The pilots trailed the slow-moving gaseous bulk of nuclear waste north-east beyond Gomel, into Mogilev province. Wherever pilots shot silver iodide, rain fell, along with a toxic brew of a dozen radioactive elements.

If Operation Cyclone had not been top secret, the headline would have been spectacular: “Scientists using advanced technology save Russian cities from technological disaster!” Yet, as the old saying goes, what goes up must come down. No one told the Belarusians that the southern half of the republic had been sacrificed to protect Russian cities. In the path of the artificially induced rain lived several hundred thousand Belarusians ignorant of the contaminants around them.

The public is often led to believe that the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a depopulated 20-mile circle around the blown plant, safely contains Chernobyl radioactivity. Tourists and journalists exploring the zone rarely realise there is a second Chernobyl zone in southern Belarus. In it, people lived for 15 years in levels of contamination as high as areas within the official zone until the area was finally abandoned, in 1999.

In believing that the Chernobyl zone safely contained the accident, we fall for the proximity trap, which holds that the closer a person is to a nuclear explosion, the more radioactivity they are exposed to. But radioactive gases follow weather patterns, moving around the globe to leave shadows of contamination in shapes that resemble tongues, kidneys, or the sharp tips of arrows.

Continue reading →

April 6, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, health, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Research on gene mutations caused by nuclear radiation – Kazakhstan

Over the years, those who sought care from Dispensary No. 4 or the IRME were logged in the state’s medical registry, which tracks the health of people exposed to the Polygon tests. People are grouped by generation and by how much radiation they received, on the basis of where they lived. Although the registry does not include every person who was affected, at one point it listed more than 351,000 individuals across 3 generations. More than one-third of these have died, and many others have migrated or lost contact. But according to Muldagaliev, about 10,000 people have been continually observed since 1962. Researchers consider the registry an important and relatively unexplored resource for understanding the effects of long-term and low-dose radiation2.

Geneticists have been able to use these remaining records to investigate the generational effects of radiation…….

In 2002, Dubrova and his colleagues reported that the mutation rate in the germ lines of those who had been directly exposed was nearly twice that found in controls3. The effects continued in subsequent generations that had not been directly exposed to the blasts. Their children had a 50% higher rate of germline mutation than controls had. Dubrova thinks that if researchers can establish the pattern of mutation in the offspring of irradiated parents, then there could be a way to predict the long-term, intergenerational health risks.

The nuclear sins of the Soviet Union live on in Kazakhstan https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01034-8 Wudan Yan– 3 Apr 19, Decades after weapons testing stopped, researchers are still struggling to decipher the health impacts of radiation exposure around Semipalatinsk. The statues of Lenin are weathered and some are tagged with graffiti, but they still stand tall in the parks of Semey, a small industrial city tucked in the northeast steppe of Kazakhstan. All around the city, boxy Soviet-era cars and buses lurch past tall brick apartment buildings and cracked walkways, relics of a previous regime.Other traces of the past are harder to see. Folded into the city’s history — into the very DNA of its people — is the legacy of the cold war. The Semipalatinsk Test Site, about 150 kilometres west of Semey, was the anvil on which the Soviet Union forged its nuclear arsenal. Between 1949 and 1963, the Soviets pounded an 18,500-square-kilometre patch of land known as the Polygon with more than 110 above-ground nuclear tests. Kazakh health authorities estimate that up to 1.5 million people were exposed to fallout in the process. Underground tests continued until 1989.

Much of what’s known about the health impacts of radiation comes from studies of acute exposure — for example, the atomic blasts that levelled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan or the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine. Studies of those events provided grim lessons on the effects of high-level exposure, as well as the lingering impacts on the environment and people who were exposed. Such work, however, has found little evidence that the health effects are passed on across generations.

People living near the Polygon were exposed not only to acute bursts, but also to low doses of radiation over the course of decades (see ‘Danger on the wind’). Kazakh researchers have been collecting data on those who lived through the detonations, as well as their children and their children’s children. Continue reading →

April 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

The very dangerous history of making plutonium weapons triggers – “pits” at Rocky Flats

Dangerous history of pit production https://www.aikenstandard.com/opinion/guest-column-dangerous-history-of-pit-production/article_a22aa6b8-4ab2-11e9-83dc-7b695e05d8a7.html Dr. Rose O. Hayes

Recent comments on the proposed pit production at Savannah River Site warrant a cautionary comment. All is not wonderful news where pit production is concerned. It has a very dirty past. Awareness of that past is paramount to the protection of CSRA public health and safety.

The primary U.S. plant to smelt plutonium, purify it and shape it into “triggers” (pits) for nuclear bombs was Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Site. From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats manufactured more than 70,000 pits at a cost of nearly $4 million apiece. Each one contained enough breathable plutonium particles to kill every person on earth. Virtually all of the waste produced there remains on-site. As we have learned through the SRS waste storage struggles, there is no place for it to go and no government plan to develop a repository. What’s made at a nuclear processing plant, stays at the nuclear processing plant.

Much went wrong at Rocky Flats due to mismanagement, criminal government indifference and public complacency. It took more than 30 years for the public to become so concerned with the pollution hazards issuing from the plant before the Department of Energy (DOE) was forced to hold a public meeting in 1988 to address the problems. One example: The plant produced one boxcar a week packed with 140 drums of radioactive waste. They were parked on site. Moisture penetration of a drum could have triggered an explosion. Ground water, soil and air pollution were also major hazards. A subsequent DOE study indicated that Rocky Flats was the most dangerous site in the country.

On June 6, 1989 more than 70 FBI and EPA agents raided the plant to begin an official investigation of the contractor and DOE for environmental crimes. The plant manager acknowledged that problems were solved “when DOE wanted to pay for them.” The final FBI/EPA allegations included concealment of environmental contamination, false certification of federal environmental reports, improper storage and disposal of hazardous and radioactive waste, and illegal discharge of pollutants into creeks flowing to drinking water supplies. Another independent study found there was enough lost plutonium in the plant exhaust ducts to create the possibility of an accidental nuclear reaction. According to a later DOE report, about 62 pounds of plutonium was lost in the plant air ducts; enough for seven nuclear bombs.

A grand jury was convened to hear the case on Aug. 1, 1989. The contractor argued in court that it could not fulfill its DOE contract without also violating environmental laws. In order to remediate the damage, on Sept. 28, 1989, EPA added Rocky Flats to its Superfund cleanup list. The grand jury worked until May 1991, then voted to indict the plant contractor, five employees and three individuals working for DOE.

The Department of Justice refused to sign the indictments despite more than 400 environmental violations that occurred during the decades of pit production at the plant. All charges were dropped. A settlement guaranteed the contractor and all indicted individuals immunity. Although the contractor pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the federal hazardous waste law and the Clean Water Act, the fine was only $18.5 million, less than the corporation had collected in bonuses for meeting production quotas that year. The contractor’s annual fee to run the site was estimated at $10 million, with an additional $8.7 million paid from DOE for management and safety excellence.

The contractor was also allowed to sue for reimbursement of $7.9 million from taxpayers for fees and costs related to its case. In addition, the contractor’s plea agreement indemnified it from further claims and all future prosecution, criminal or civil. The trial records are permanently sealed. Further, the contractor argued that everything it did at Rocky Flats was at the behest of DOE and maintained the right to receive future government contracts.

Grand jury members asked to write their own report but the judge refused to read it or release it to the public. Not surprisingly, the report was leaked to the press and printed in a Denver newspaper and Harper’s magazine. In January 1993, a Congressional committee finally issued a report revealing evidence of high-level intervention by Justice Department officials for the purpose of reducing the contractor’s fines.

DOE has estimated that it will take until 2065 to clean up Rocky Flats, at a cost to American taxpayers of more than $40 billion. One DOE official testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that some weapons plants, like Rocky Flats, may never be cleaned up because we lack the technology to do so at a reasonable cost. Another investigator, testifying before the U.S. Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee, stated he did not believe it possible to reverse the harm done at Rocky Flats.

Could this history repeat itself at SRS? Without a comprehensive cradle to grave plan with built-in irrevocable government funding and independent oversight, including citizen stakeholder input, SRS could become the next Rocky Flats. How likely is the government to attach such planning and funding to an SRS pit processing campaign? Past experience at SRS includes years of having to do best guess planning under continuing resolution funding and government failures to pass a budget, decades of “temporarily” storing deadly radioactive waste due to the government’s failure to meet off-site disposition commitments, budget reductions, program cancellations (most recently, the MOX project), and more.

Plutonium pit production waste is not just radioactive. It is nuclear waste on steroids. If produced here, it will likely remain in our backyard, along with all the decades old waste at SRS. There is no place for it to go. Looming large as examples of the dangers and difficulties SRS will face in having pit production waste moved off-site are the explosion and prolonged closure at the New Mexico Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (the government’s only operating repository) and the abandonment of the Yucca Mountain project.

Is it the CSRA’s responsibility to take on this mission? Pit production, while bringing jobs to the Aiken/Augusts area, will add to the decades old SRS hazards waiting for DOE remediation. SRS is already part of the DOE nuclear complex cleanup program. That mission, 30 some years old, drags on under the burden of DOE mismanagement and variable federal funding. Estimates are it will take another 70 years to clean up the DOE nuclear complex and cost about $500 billion more. Celebration of plans to add U.S. pit production to SRS is a rush to judgement. Only the usual corporations, living large off gigantic federal awards, stand to benefit.

Dr. Rose O. Hayes is a medical anthropologist who spent her career in public health. She holds a B.S., M.S., M.A., and Ph.D. from SUNY and completed post-doctoral work in skeletal biology at The George Washington University. From 2009 to 2015, she served on the U.S. Department of Energy Site-Specific Advisory Board for the Savannah River plant, chairing its Nuclear Materials Committee.

April 1, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, history, legal, Reference, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Why Low dose radiation can be more dangerous- more cancers per person than at high doses

LeRoy Moore: Low-dose radiation can be more dangerous, http://www.dailycamera.com/letters/ci_32543151/leroy-moore-low-dose-radiation-can-be-more 31 Mar 19 Though Maddie Nagle’s beautifully written column of March 8 criticizes me, more important is that she downplays the significance of low-dose exposure to the alpha radiation of plutonium at Rocky Flats. This could harm people unaware of the danger. Carl Morgan, the “Father of Health Physics,” studied the effects of radiation for those building Manhattan Project nuclear weapons. He knew that the alpha particles released by plutonium cannot be harmful unless inhaled or taken into the body through an open wound.

Toward the end of his life he spoke to Robert Del Tredici. He said “down at the low doses you actually get more cancers per person rem than you do at the high doses … because the high levels will often kill cells outright, whereas the low levels of exposure tend to injure cells rather than kill them and it is the surviving injured cells that are the cause for concern.” The effects of a small exposure “will be much more severe than had been anticipated.”(Del Tredici, “At Work in the Fields of the Bomb,” 1987, p. 133)

Nagle also makes misleading remarks about Tom K. Hei of Columbia University. Hei and colleagues demonstrated that a single plutonium alpha particle induces mutations in mammal cells. Cells receiving very low doses are more likely to be damaged than destroyed. Replication of these damaged cells constitutes genetic harm, and more such harm per unit dose occurs at very low doses than would occur with higher dose exposures. “These data provide direct evidence that a single alpha particle traversing a nucleus will have a high probability of resulting in a mutation and highlight the need for radiation protection at low doses.” (Hei et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 94, April 1997, pp. 3765-3770.)

April 1, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries Next Entries »

1 This Month

22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate

Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT

YouTube. Register here

Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511

25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES

Thursday, June 25, 2026

7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER

26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration

Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State

PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”

To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com

Archives
- June 2026 (211)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
Categories
- 1
  - Arclight's Vision
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
  - business and costs
    - employment
    - marketing
  - climate change
  - culture and arts
  - ENERGY
    - renewable
      - decentralised
      - energy storage
  - environment
    - oceans
    - water
  - health
    - children
    - psychology – mental health
    - radiation
    - social effects
    - women
  - history
  - indigenous issues
  - Legal
    - deaths by radiation
    - legal
  - marketing of nuclear
  - media
    - investigative journalism
    - Wikileaks
  - opposition to nuclear
  - PERSONAL STORIES
  - politics
    - psychology and culture
      - Trump – personality
    - public opinion
    - USA election 2024
    - USA elections 2016
  - politics international
  - Religion and ethics
  - safety
    - incidents
  - secrets,lies and civil liberties
    - civil liberties
  - spinbuster
    - Education
  - technology
    - reprocessing
    - Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
    - space travel
  - Uranium
  - wastes
    - – plutonium
    - decommission reactor
  - weapons and war
    - Atrocities
    - depleted uranium
  - Women
- 2 WORLD
  - ANTARCTICA
  - ARCTIC
  - ASIA
    - Burma
    - China
    - India
    - Indonesia
    - Japan
    - Malaysia
    - Mongolia
    - North Korea
    - Pakistan
    - South Korea
    - Taiwan
    - Turkey
    - Vietnam
  - EUROPE
    - Belarus
    - Bulgaria
    - Denmark
    - Finland
    - France
    - Germany
    - Greece
    - Ireland
    - Italy
    - Kazakhstan
    - Kyrgyzstan
    - Russia
    - Spain
    - Sweden
    - Switzerland
    - UK
    - Ukraine
  - MIDDLE EAST
    - Afghanistan
    - Egypt
    - Gaza
    - Iran
    - Iraq
    - Israel
    - Jordan
    - Libya
    - Saudi Arabia
    - Syria
    - Turkey
    - United Arab Emirates
  - NORTH AMERICA
    - Canada
    - USA
      - election USA 2020
  - OCEANIA
    - New Zealand
    - Philippines
  - SOUTH AMERICA
    - Brazil
- ACTION
- AFRICA
  - Kenya
  - Malawi
  - Mali
  - Namibia
  - Niger
  - Nigeria
  - Somalia
  - South Africa
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
  - thorium
- Reference
  - Reference archives
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope