21 October, 2009

By Robin Davis

While global warming dominates the headlines a more urgent danger threatens life on earth. Global warming could make the planet uninhabitable by the end of the century. Global cooling - the "Nuclear Winter" that would follow nuclear war - could achieve the same result in days or weeks.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union a disturbing complacency has set in. It is as if the threat imposed on us all by the hair-trigger readiness of thousands of intercontinental nuclear-armed missiles no longer exists. Perhaps this is understandable with the political and media discussion of the issue focussed almost entirely on the potential danger posed by non-state terrorism and so-called "rogue" states.

The selective finger pointing, fear mongering and drum beating only serves to distract attention from the chilling reality: the US and Russia still possess 97% of the world's nuclear weapons and neither has any genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament. It is they and the other 7 established nuclear weapon states that pose the greatest threat to humanity and all other species on the planet.

If even a tiny fraction of the world's nuclear arsenal were unleashed catastrophic climate change would follow. For example, a "small" nuclear war employing 100 bombs of the size that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki would pour millions of tons of smoke into the stratosphere. The smoke would come from the raging firestorms consuming cities, industries, neighbourhoods and people. As the smoke spread around the globe it would reduce the sunlight and destroy much of the protective ozone layer. Temperatures would drop and food production would plunge due to shortened growing seasons. Hundreds of millions of people, possibly a billion, would starve to death. [1] Think of Hiroshima. Imagine 100 times Hiroshima. (3) And this can quite accurately be described as a "small" conflict because it would be equivalent to less than half of 1% of the explosive power of US and Russian high-alert nuclear weapons. [2] That figure bears repeating: less than half of 1%.

A large conflict involving all of the Russian and US high-alert nuclear weapons would pour 50 million tons of smoke into the stratosphere, blocking the sunlight and dropping global temperatures by 4°C. [1] Think of Hiroshima. Imagine 79,000 times Hiroshima. (4)

Now consider a war involving the entire world operational nuclear arsenal. Think of Hiroshima. Imagine 177,000 times Hiroshima. (5) 150 million tons of smoke would rise into the stratosphere enveloping the planet, absorbing the sunlight, reducing global temperatures by 8°C; creating another Ice Age.

Climate change from global cooling would occur not in decades or years but in weeks or days. Survivors would have no time to adapt. [1] Until they died off from the lethal radioactive fallout they would be left with razed cities, destroyed infrastructure, horrific injuries, birth deformations, cancers, disease epidemics and mass starvation. Perhaps the tens of millions or hundreds of millions instantly vapourised or incinerated would be the lucky ones.

The potential for a catastrophic mistake is enormous, particularly in the case of a suspected submarine launched attack. Russian and US "Launch on Warning" systems" would give their presidents only 2 to 3 minutes to decide whether or not to retaliate. [6] Typical warheads have 20 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Typical nuclear missiles carry 8 or more of these independently programmed to destroy multiple targets. Think of Hiroshima. Imagine 160 times Hiroshima - from one missile.

With this spectre hovering over humanity it is difficult to understand how anyone, least of all an environmental luminary like James Lovelock, could advocate nuclear power as a solution to global warming. [7] This solution sidesteps the health, environmental and security dangers associated with building and operating at least a thousand nuclear reactors; the increased environmental and security risks associated with mining, transportation, processing and storage of vastly increased quantities of uranium and deadly radioactive waste; and the fact that high grade, low cost uranium deposits consumed even at the present rate will be exhausted in fifty years. [8]

More importantly, it overlooks the enormous danger posed by more leaders of more nuclear weapons states (that would inevitably emerge) with their fingers on more doomsday buttons. While there are nuclear reactors, there will be nuclear weapons. While "peace-loving" countries like Australia mine and export uranium they are complicit in keeping the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Here in Australia, advocates of uranium mining and export claim that this gives us a more credible voice in the world arena than we would otherwise have. They say our position as the largest source of uranium and the second largest exporter after Canada makes us more effective in preventing nuclear proliferation than we would otherwise be. In other words, by selling the stuff from which nuclear weapons are made, we are helping to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

This absurd reasoning extends to the so-called "safeguard" agreements - essentially book-keeping entries - that supposedly track every morsel of "Australian Obligated" uranium during its travels around the world, including its reprocessing and on-selling. We can rest assured that Australian uranium won't be used to make nuclear weapons - or free up other uranium for that purpose - because we say it can't and the buyer nations say it won't.

History tells a different story. Of about 60 countries that have nuclear power or research reactors more than 20 have used their "peaceful" facilities for covert nuclear weapons research or production or both. India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and North Korea have all developed nuclear weapons under cover of "peaceful" nuclear programs. Other countries have made considerable progress before ending their programs. (South Africa is the only state to eliminate its nuclear weapons.) [8]

Egypt, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan, and the former Yugoslavia, all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), have violated their agreements by conducting forbidden weapons-related activities or not meeting their reporting requirements to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). [8]

North Korea has withdrawn from the treaty; India, Pakistan and Israel were never members. The "declared" nuclear weapons states - the US, Russia, the UK, France and China - have all violated their NTP obligations and shown by their actions that they have no intention of abandoning their nuclear superiority. [8]

The belligerence and blatant double standards demonstrated by the "big five," who also hold the five permanent seats and veto power on the UN Security Council, provides motivation and "justification" for other states - some repeatedly threatened with attack, including nuclear attack ("all options are on the table") - to develop a nuclear "deterrent" of their own. "Peaceful" nuclear programs are the obvious way for them to develop the necessary expertise and facilities and to acquire the technology and essential raw material: uranium.

Five years ago Australia's uranium exports had already produced about 80 tonnes of plutonium - enough for 8,000 nuclear bombs. The Beverly Four Mile mine in South Australia recently approved by the current government has the capacity to produce enough plutonium for 4,500 more. [9]

It seems the straight-faced hypocrisy of successive Australian governments is boundless: joining in the vilification of the latest designated nuclear "rogue" states, worrying over nuclear terrorism and mouthing non-proliferation platitudes on the one hand while allowing exports of the raw material for nuclear proliferation on the other. If Australia were sincere it would leave its uranium in the ground.

In December, representatives from about 170 countries will meet in Copenhagen to negotiate an international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. Hopefully, amidst the media circus and political theatre they will commit to the carbon emission reductions necessary to prevent catastrophic global warming.

Hopefully, too, the world will awake from its nuclear slumber in time to prevent the other climate change nightmare: global cooling.

[1] http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php
[2] http://www.nucleardarkness.org/globalnucleararsenal/
usrussianhighalert/
(3) Hiroshima yield 15,000 tons x 100 = 1.5 million tons
(4) [2] Yield 960 million tons/15,000 tons
(5) [2] yield 2,225 million tons/15,000 tons
[6] http://www.nucleardarkness.org/highalert/launchonwarning/
[7] http://www.jameslovelock.org/page11.html
[8] Climate Change: Nukes No Solution
http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/nuclear-climate/
[9] Arena Magazine, August/September 2009

CounterPunch

September 10, 2009

By JOSHUA FRANK

Sitting inside an old nuclear reactor, gazing up at a wall that holds over 2,000 cylinder rods that once produced plutonium for our nation’s atom bombs. That’s how I spent my Labor Day weekend.

Located just outside of Richland, in Eastern Washington State, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation spans 586 square miles on high desert plains. The mighty Columbia River marks the site’s eastern boundary where its waters once served as the depository for a few of the reactors’ contaminated effluent. Belly-high barbwire fencing, with phallic smoke stacks positioned next to its aging boxy structures, surrounds Hanford’s dry austere landscape.  The aura of this rough terrain, taken from the Wanapum tribe only 66 years ago, is evocative to say the least.

At noon on this particular Saturday a group of us climbed onto a bus in Richland to tour Hanford’s notorious B Reactor, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in August of 2008. Constructed by DuPont in just 11 months back in the early 1940s, B was the first full-scale plutonium production plant in the world. This summer the Department of Energy, along with the help of the Fluor Corporation, provided regular public tours of the reactor, hoping that one day the facility will be turned into a national museum of sorts.

By all accounts the B Reactor is historic. For starters, it’s the most polluted nuclear site on the planet. “It was the perfect marriage of science and engineering,” one of our guides expressed almost tearfully. “The brave men that built this left us a history we should not ever forget.”

I certainly agree we ought not disregard the B Reactor’s true legacy. Beyond the lofty rhetoric of scientific achievements and marvelous engineering feats lives a story our government would rather not recall. It’s a tale of death and environmental destruction, the remnants of which are with us to this day.

Perhaps most significantly, the plutonium produced in B was used as fuel for the “Fat Man” bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 at the behest of President Truman. While educational video rolled, explaining this fact to reactor tourists, the scenes that followed were not of the devastation the bomb had on these innocent Japanese. Over 80,000 men, women and children eventually died as a result of that brutal bombing. Bodies were broiled with radiation, maimed and so badly charred that friends and family were only left with unrecognizable skeletal fragments to remember their loved ones by. Yet, not one photograph of this was on display in any of the documentary footage shown on the big television screens at B. Instead we were simply told that “six days later the war ended.” Hallelujah and pass the kool-aid.

Of course it was not Truman’s nuclear bombings that ended the war and crushed the morale of the Japanese. In 1944 the War Department set up the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which focused its efforts on interviewing the civilian and military leaders in Japan shortly after they surrendered. As the report noted:

President Truman and others most certainly knew this prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. American intel had infiltrated and broken Japanese code and the Japanese military knew they were being intercepted by our military forces. Over in Moscow, as early as June 1945, the Japanese ambassador there was already working on a peace agreement with the Allies. Discussions of a Japanese surrender were noted a full year before Truman dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima.

Hanford's 3-B Reactor. Photo by Chelsea Mosher.

But history from our government’s point of view rarely reveals the truth behind its military exploits, or in this case its mass murder. If one were to only watch the video screens and listen to the guides on the B Reactor tour, they would walk away with a distorted and glorified perception of our deleterious nuclear era.

Aside from the Japanese death toll, back home the environmental impact of Hanford is also not represented in the glossy flyers handed out to visitors after the tour comes to an end. The Columbia River, which maintains the country's most productive salmon fishery and provides irrigation water for tens of thousands of Northwest farmers, was for over two decades polluted with radioactive runoff from B.

It went something like this: In order to cool off the uranium slugs that were used to produce plutonium, water, after being treated, was pumped from the Columbia River and flowed through the aluminum tubes that held the uranium in order to reduce the slugs’ high temperatures. Around 75,000 gallons of water rushed in at regular river temperatures every minute and was then released back into the Columbia at around 200 degrees Celsius.  Early studies showed that young salmon were most susceptible to the effluent’s radiation, and by the late 1950s, salmon runs in the mid-Columbia began to rapidly decline in number.

As historian Michelle Gerber writes in On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site, “In 1959, Hanford biologists reported that the number of chinook salmon spawning in the vicinity was only about 19 percent of 1958.” Gerber adds that nearby towns along the Columbia were also affected, “In mid-1947, river water at Pasco and sanitary (city) water at Kennewick first showed detectable levels of gross beta-emitting radiation ... Values in the river water at Richland were even higher, reaching up to four times that at Pasco by late 1948.”

Reactor slugs. Photo by Chelsea Mosher.

Studies to this day are seeking to unravel the extent to which the Columbia River is being contaminated by several of Hanford’s slow-leaking radioactive tanks, which are at the heart of the largest environmental cleanup this country has ever undertaken. Interestingly enough, Michelle Gerber, now an in-house historian for Fluor Hanford, was trailing along behind our tour group, jotting down notes and chiming in on occasion. It’s too bad her knowledge of the environmental consequences of Hanford were not shared with all visitors that day.  Perhaps Fluor now pays her to perform other mundane tasks.

It wasn’t just the Columbia River that Hanford’s reactors filled with radioactive toxins, so too was the air in the region. Smoke stacks, built 200 feet high, were meant to release the reactor’s toxic debris when winds were strongest as to not contaminate the facility workers below. However, when production of plutonium reached its peak during the Cold War, plant operators were forced to ignore the wind patterns and released toxic debris into the air throughout the day. Only two years into operation, radioactivity levels at two testing sites, as well as the nearby cities of Richland, Pasco, Kennewick and Benton City, all exceeded acceptable levels of radioactive contamination.

At certain periods, such as the December, 1949 “Green Run”, where raw uranium fuel slugs were being processed, winter storm events hit the region, causing heavy deposits of radioiodine (I-131) and Xenon (Xe-133) to literally rain down on local communities.  Samples taken during the “Green Run” incident were one thousand times the government’s recommended level. Towns as far as away as 70 miles, such as Walla Walla, Washington, even registered high readings.

The product produced inside the B Reactor helped to kill countless people and the poisoning of the land, air and water from this one facility alone outshines the catastrophe of Three Mile Island. Yet none of our guides on the tour shared any of this with us that day.

It is a travesty too. If we do not learn from our history, no matter how awful and unsavory it may be, we are apt to repeat it.

CounterPunch
Echoes of Amchitka

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Amchitka Island sits at the midway point on the great arc of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, less than 900 miles across the Bering Sea from the coast of Russia. Amchitka, a spongy landscape of maritime tundra, is one of the most southerly of the Aleutians. The island's relatively temperate climate has made it one of the Arctic's most valuable bird sanctuaries, a critical staging ground for more than 100 migratory species, as well as home to walruses, sea otters and sea lions. Off the coast of Amchitka is a thriving fishery of salmon, pollock, haddock and halibut.

All of these values were recognized early on. In 1913, Amchitka was designated as a national wildlife refuge by President William Howard Taft. But these ecological wonders were swept aside in the early '60s when the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) went on the lookout for a new place to blow up H-bombs. Thirty years ago, Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including the most powerful nuclear explosion ever detonated by the United States.

The aftershocks of those blasts are still being felt. Despite claims by the AEC and the Pentagon that the test sites would safely contain the radiation released by the blasts for thousands of years, independent research by Greenpeace and newly released documents from the Department of Energy (DOE) show that the Amchitka tests began to leak almost immediately. Highly radioactive elements and gasses, such as tritium, americium-241 and plutonium, poured out of the collapsed test shafts, leached into the groundwater and worked their way into ponds, creeks and the Bering Sea.

At the same time, thousands of Amchitka laborers and Aleuts living on nearby islands were put in harm's way. Dozens have died of radiation-linked cancers. The response of the federal government to these disturbing findings has been almost as troublesome as the circumstances surrounding the tests themselves: a consistent pattern of indifference, denial and cover-up continues even today.

There were several factors behind the selection of Amchitka as a test site. One most certainly was the proximity to the Soviet Union. These explosions were meant to send a message. Indeed, the tests were designed to calibrate the performance of the Spartan anti-ballistic missile, built to take out the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Publicly, however, the rationale offered by the AEC and the Defense Department was simply that Amchitka was a remote, and therefore safe, testing ground. "The site was selectedand I underscore the pointbecause of the virtually zero likelihood of any damage," claimed James Schlesinger, then chairman of the AEC.

What Schlesinger and his cohorts overlooked was the remarkable culture of the Aleuts. Amchitka may have been remote from the continental United States, but for nearly 10,000 years it had been the home of the Aleuts. Indeed, anthropologists believe the islands around Amchitka may be the oldest continuously inhabited area in North America. The Aleuts left Amchitka in the 1880s after Russian fur traders had wiped out the sea otter population, but they continued to inhabit nearby islands and relied on the waters near Amchitka for subsistence. The Aleuts raised forceful objections to the tests, pointing to the risk of radiation leaks, earthquakes and tsunamis that might overwhelm their coastal villages. These concerns were never addressed by the federal government. In fact, the Aleuts were never consulted about the possible dangers at all.

In 1965, the Long Shot test exploded an 80 kiloton bomb. The $10 million test, the first one supervised by the Pentagon and not the AEC, was really a trial run for bigger things to come. But small as it was, there were immediate problems. Despite claims by the Pentagon that the test site would not leak, radioactive tritium and krypton-85 began to seep into freshwater lakes almost instantly. But evidence of radioactivity, collected by Defense Department scientists only three months after the test, was kept secret for five years. The bomb site continues to spill toxins into the environment. In 1993, EPA researchers detected high levels of tritium in groundwater samples taken near the test site.

The contamination from Long Shot didn't deter the Pentagon bomb-testers. In 1969, the AEC drilled a hole 4,000 feet deep into the rock of Amchitka and set off the Milrow nuclear test. The one megaton blast was 10 times as powerful as Long Shot. The AEC called it a "calibration test" designed to see if Amchitka could withstand a much larger test. The evidence should have convinced them of their dangerous folly. The blast triggered a string of small earthquakes and several massive landslides; knocked water from ponds, rivers and lakes more than 50 feet into the air; and, according to government accounts, "turned the surrounding sea to froth."

A year later, the AEC and the Pentagon announced their plans for the Cannikin nuclear test. At five megatons, Cannikin was to be the biggest underground nuclear explosion ever conducted by the United States. The blast would be 385 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Cannikin became a rallying point for native groups, anti-war and anti-nuke activists, and the nascent environmental movement. Indeed, it was opposition to Cannikin by Canadian and American greens, who tried to disrupt the test by taking boats near the island, that sparked the birth of Greenpeace.

A lawsuit was filed in federal court, charging that the test violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the newly enacted National Environmental Policy Act. In a 4 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court refused to halt the test. What the Court didn't know, however, was that six federal agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, and the fledgling EPA, had lodged serious objections to the Cannikin test, ranging from environmental and health concerns to legal and diplomatic problems. Nixon issued an executive order to keep the comments from being released. These documents, known as the Cannikin Papers, came to symbolize the continuing pattern of secrecy and cover-up that typified the nation's nuclear testing program. Even so, five hours after the ruling was handed down on Nov. 6, 1971, the AEC and the Pentagon pulled the switch, detonating the Cannikin bomb.

In an effort to calm growing public opposition, AEC chief Schlesinger dismissed environmental protesters and the Aleuts as doomsayers, taking his family with him to watch the test. "It's fun for the kids and my wife is delighted to get away from the house for awhile," he quipped.

With the Schlesingers looking on, the Cannikin bomb, a 300-foot-long device implanted in a mile-deep hole under Cannikin lake, exploded with the force of an earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter Scale. The shock of the blast scooped a mile-wide, 60-foot-deep subsidence crater in the ground over the test site and triggered massive rockfalls.

The immediate ecological damage from the blast was staggering. Nearly 1,000 sea otters, a species once hunted to near extinction, were killedtheir skulls crushed by the shockwaves of the explosion. Other marine mammals died when their eyes were blown out of their sockets or when their lungs ruptured. Thousands of birds also perished, their spines snapped and their legs pushed through their bodies. (Neither the Pentagon nor the Fish and Wildlife Service has ever studied the long-term ecological consequences of the Amchitka explosions.) Most worrisome was that a large volume of water from White Alice Creek vanished after the blast. The disappearance of the creek was more than a sign of Cannikin's horrific power. It was also an indication that the project had gone terribly wrong; the blast ruptured the crust of the earth, sucking the creek into a brand new aquifer, a radioactive one.

In the months following the explosion, blood and urine samples were taken from Aleuts living in the village of Adak on a nearby island. The samples were shown to have abnormally high levels of tritium and cesium-137, both known carcinogens. Despite these alarming findings, the feds never went back to Adak to conduct follow-up medical studies. The Aleuts, who continue their seafaring lifestyle, are particularly vulnerable to radiation-contaminated fish and marine mammals, and radiation that might spread through the Bering Sea, plants and iceflows.

But the Aleuts weren't the only ones exposed to Cannikin's radioactive wrath. More than 1,500 workers who helped build the test sites, operate the bomb tests and clean up afterward were also put at risk. The AEC never conducted medical studies on any of these laborers. When the Alaska District Council of Laborers of the AFL-CIO, began looking into the matter in the early '90s, the DOE claimed that none of the workers had been exposed to radiation. They later were forced to admit that exposure records and dosimeter badges had been lost.

In 1996, two Greenpeace researchers, Pam Miller and Norm Buske, returned to Amchitka. Buske, a physicist, collected water and plant samples from various sites on the island. Despite claims by the DOE that the radiation would be contained, the samples taken by Buske revealed the presence of plutonium and americium-241 in freshwater plants at the edge of the Bering Sea. In other words, Cannikin continues to leak. Both of these radioactive elements are extremely toxic and have half-lives of hundreds of years.

In part because of the report issued by Miller and Buske, a new sense of urgency was lent to the claims of laborers who said they had become sick after working at the Amchitka nuclear site. In 1998, the union commissioned a study by Rosalie Bertell, a former consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which replaced the AEC). Bertell found that hundreds of Amchitka workers were exposed to ionizing radiation at five times the level then recognized as hazardous. However, the research is complicated by the fact that many of the records from the Amchitka blast remain classified and others were simply tossed away. "The loss of worker exposure records, or the failure to keep such records, was inexcusable," Bertell says.

One of the driving forces behind the effort to seek justice for the Amchitka workers and the Aleuts is Beverley Aleck. Her husband Nick helped drill the mile-deep pit for the Cannikin test; four years later, he died of myelogenous leukemia, a type of cancer associated with radiation exposure. Aleck, an Aleut, has waged a multi-year battle with the DOE to open the records and to begin a health monitoring program for the Amchitka workers. For more than four decades promised health surveys of the Amchitka workers have languished without funding.

Will the victims of the Amchitka blasts ever get justice? Don't count on it. For starters, the Aleuts and Amchitka workers are specifically excluded by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from receiving medical assistance, death benefits or financial compensation. There is a move to amend this legal loophole, but even that wouldn't mean the workers and Aleuts would be treated fairly. The DOE has tried repeatedly to stiff arm other cases by either dismissing the link between radiation exposure and cancer or, when that fails, invoking a "sovereignty" doctrine, which claims the agency is immune from civil lawsuits.

Dr. Paul Seligman, former deputy assistant secretary of the DOE's Office of Health Studies, writes it off as the price of the Cold War. "These were hazardous operations," Seligman says. "The hazards were well understood, but the priorities at the time were weapons production and the defense of the nation."

At a time when the mainstream press and Republican politicians are howling over lax security at nuclear weapons sites and Chinese espionage, a more dangerous betrayal of trust is the withholding of test data from the American public. China may use the Los Alamos secrets to upgrade its tiny nuclear arsenal, but the Amchitka explosions already have imperiled a thriving marine ecosystem and caused dozens of lethal cancers.

The continuing cover-up and manipulation of information by the DOE not only denies justice to the victims of Amchitka, but indicates that those living near other DOE sites may be at great risk. "DOE management of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is of the old school in which bad news is hidden," says Pamela Miller, now executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. "This conflicts with sound risk management and makes the entire system inherently risky. The overwhelming threat is of an unanticipated catastrophe."

Jeffrey St. Clair