The Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), a premier nuclear weapons research facility, is unique among America’s national labs in that it is in an urban area. It is in Livermore, California, cheek-by-jowl to homes built across the street. Moreover, Livermore itself is part of San Francisco’s East Bay region. Seven million people, including this writer, live within a 50-mile radius of the city. Airplanes heading in and out of San Francisco International, Oakland International, and Minetta International (San Jose) fly over it daily.

Scientists at the lab perform experiments with plutonium, highly-enriched uranium, and tritium (radioactive hydrogen) in an earthquake zone. There are three major seismic faults in the region: the Calaveras, the Hayward, on which thousands of homes and businesses sit — this fault bisects the Cal Berkeley football stadium — and the famous San Andreas Fault, which is west of the San Francisco Bay, but still capable of causing tremendous damage to the East Bay region if it quakes in the “right” place.

LLNL is the rectangular area between S. Vasco Rd. and Greenville Rd (upper right of this image).¹

Closer to home, the Las Positas fault zone is less than 200 feet from the Livermore Lab site boundary. The Greenville fault caused a quake in 1980 that created a 120-meter discontinuous crack in the earth near Livermore Lab’s Hazardous and Radioactive Waste Storage yard. A laser slipped off its supports during the quake, triggering an internal tritium leak². Up until that time, the Greenville fault was not listed as an active fault, which goes to show that a future catastrophe could come from a heretofore unrecognized source.

Likelihood of intense shaking³

Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)⁴, a local organization that has been monitoring the lab’s activities for more than 20 years, says this:

“The Department of Energy has done a very inadequate job of the addressing the earthquake risks. They’ve postulated a ground motion that is less than what earthquake experts believe is possible. So we’re in a situation where if an earthquake cooperates with the Department of Energy’s analysis and doesn’t go outside the boundaries the Department of Energy has looked at, then the results will likely be no catastrophic accident. However, Nature being Nature and doing what she will and not necessarily paying any attention to the Department of Energy’s calculations, if there’s a ground motion that’s greater than or different than what the Department of Energy has calculated, there is the possibility for a very serious accident and a large release of radioactive material.” ⁵

Probability of Big Quake⁶

LLNL’s neighbors are adamantly against the lab’s proposal to build a BSL-3 high-security biotechnology facility on the property. BSL stands for biohazard safety level. There are four biohazard safety levels: 1-4. The number refers to the types of procedures, precautions, and equipment that laboratory personnel must use when working on organisms at the lab. By extension, the number also refers to the types of bioagents that can be present in the lab. BSL-3 is a high-containment level, where scientists work with potentially life-threatening microorganisms such as live anthrax and bubonic plague. BSL-4 facilities harbor microorganisms that cause diseases for which there is no known cure, such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses.⁷ So one can readily see why a community would not be eager to have a BSL-3 or BSL-4 facility in its midst.

In addition to the obvious concerns about accidental or deliberate discharge of dangerous microorganisms into the community, people against the BSL-3 lab at Lawrence Livermore cite additional threats posed to world peace by experimenting with potentially deadly organisms in a facility that also conducts classified nuclear weapons research.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention⁸ (BWC), to which the United States is a party, permits biological research that is prophylactic or defensive in nature, e.g., research to develop vaccines and antidotes. The trouble is, to develop these vaccines and antidotes, one must first to discover how the bioagents work. That knowledge opens up the realm of illegal offensive research.

Moreover, research is more likely to be deemed suspicious when it is done under the auspices of a military agency such as the Department of Defense, or an agency with heavy military connections, such as the Department of Energy or the Department of Homeland Security, than when it is done by an agency such as the Department of Health and Human Services or the Environmental Protection Agency. Openness to inspection is a confidence-building measure that supports the BWC. But inspections are not likely to be allowed if the biological research is on the same premises as classified nuclear weapons research. The suspicion such research, and the refusal to permit inspection, creates in other countries could lead to the proliferation of bioweapons, and thus threaten not only US national security but the security of the entire human race.

The thought that the United States could be pursuing illegal bioweapons, in the name of needing to know what the terrorists might do, is not idle speculation. Dr. Robert Gould, M.D., a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility⁹, has expressed concern that the US government wants to genetically modify anthrax. “This is a threat of developing offensive capabilities,” he said, “because you’re modifying an organism to be resistant to antibiotics and therefore increasing its capability to be a weapon.”¹⁰ The lab already works with dead anthrax in its BSL-2 facility.

For the time being, the Department of Energy’s plans for a BSL-3 lab at Lawrence Livermore have been halted. On October 16, 2006, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of environmentalists in a three-year-old lawsuit filed by Tri-Valley CAREs and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. The court held that the Energy Department’s environmental impact study was inadequate because it omitted any study of security risks and terrorist threats to the facility on the basis that such an analysis was not required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The 9th Circuit remanded the environmental review back to the Department of Energy for further analysis on terrorist risks.¹¹

In a press release announcing the decision, Tri-Valley CAREs staff attorney Loulena Miles said, “Now the agency can not merely cry national security and avoid hard questions concerning environmental impacts and terrorist risks.”¹²

But the victory may be only temporary. The decision was marked “Not for Publication” and a footnote states, “This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.¹³ It, therefore, cannot be used as precedent in other lawsuits.

Secondly, in its six-page decision, the Court stated that, “[r]eview of agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. section 706(2), is ‘highly deferential.’ Although Tri-Valley raised some substantial questions about the validity of DOE’s substantive conclusions, this Court may not substitute its judgment for the reviewing agency’s. NEPA is a procedural statute that does not mandate particular results, but simply provides the necessary process to ensure that federal agencies take a hard look at the environmental consequences of their actions.”¹⁴

DOE, undaunted by this temporary setback in Livermore, is pushing its plans to build a BSL-4 lab in the nearby city of Tracy, on the northern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, some of the best farmland on earth.

References
¹ Map Image: Livermore, CA. Google Earth.
² Phone interview with Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs for R.I.S.E. Program: Livermore: More Nuclear Bombs. The final program is available here
³ Image: Likelihood of intense shaking. Source: Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country: Your Handbook for the San Francisco Bay Region / U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 15, 2005
⁴ Tri-Valley CAREs
⁵ Phone interview with Marylia Kelley
⁶ Image: Probability of Big Quake. Source: Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country: Your Handbook for the San Francisco Bay Region / U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 15, 2005
⁷ Marylia Kelley & Jay Coghlan, “Mixing bugs and bombs.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2003, p 26.
⁸ The text of the BWC is here
⁹ Physicians for Social Responsibility
¹⁰ Kellia Ramares, “As Bush threatens Iraq with Nukes, U.S. ramps up its own biowarfare research.” Originally published in Online Journal, January, 2003. Now available here
¹¹ Press Release: “Community Groups Hail Victory, Court Grants Demand For Environmental Review Before Bio-Warfare Agent Research Facility Opens At Livermore Lab,” October 16, 2006.
¹² Ibid., p 1.
¹³ Tri-Valley CAREs, et al. v. Department of Energy, et al., p 1. link
¹⁴ Ibid., p 4.

For almost 40 years, beginning in the late 1940s, large quantities of uranium were mined on their land. Many Navajo still suffer related physical ailments. They are none too eager to open up their land to an industry they have been ravaged by, however safe and efficient they are told it will be. Unfortunately, they may have no choice. HRI has been working in conjunction with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to get a license to mine the land since the late 1990s, and it looks like they’re about to make a move.

The Navajo Nation covers a big piece of land, about 27,000 square miles, and stretches over parts of three states: Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. It is estimated to contain one of the largest uranium ore deposits in the world. That’s why, back in 1948, when the demand for uranium was high, the Navajo Nation seemed like a good place to get it. In addition to large deposits, the uranium in Navajo country is found in sandstone, making it ideal for the less invasive in situ method of extraction. Even this method is likely to create problems, however, according to the WISE Uranium Project. Among them: “the risk of spreading of leaching liquid outside of the uranium deposit, involving subsequent groundwater contamination; the unpredictable impact of the leaching liquid on the rock of the deposit; the impossibility of restoring natural groundwater conditions after completion of the leaching operations.” The report goes on to say “in-situ leaching releases considerable amounts of radon, and produces certain amounts of waste slurries and waste water during recovery of the uranium from the liquid.” No wonder the Navajo are worried. The land HRI plans to mine supplies the only source of drinking water for some 15,000 residents, many living below poverty level.

When HRI began their campaign to mine in Indian country they sent a request to the NRC. The NRC responded in March of 1997. Their response refers to an evaluation process that included a review of the environmental impact of the proposed mining project. The content of the review or Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is not included as part of the docket entry, nor is it accessible online. Based on the FEIS, the NRC granted HRI a license to mine uranium, in situ, in McKinley County, New Mexico (aka: Indian country).

Interestingly, the Navajo people requested a complete study of the impact of uranium mining on the same stretch of land that they own. The study was never conducted. The rationale was that since uranium mining was not then taking place, there was no need to conduct such a study. This is despite the fact that “. . . Navajos have suffered from high cancer rates and respiratory problems. One study found that cancer rates among Navajo teenagers living near mine tailings are 17 times the national average. ”

The suffering of the Navajo due to uranium mining was so extreme it prompted Harry Tome, a Dineh activist, to work tirelessly throughout the 1980s to force the U.S. government to provide relief to minors and their families, who suffered as a result of the exposure to radiation. His efforts were long and arduous, largely because there were no extensive studies to document the full effects of the mining industry on the Indian nation. Still, in 1990, with the help of Stewart Udall (former U.S. Secretary of the Interior), the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed. Remediation programs covered in that act have still not been fully implemented. When HRI wanted to start mining again, they got their special study, and pronto. They even got the NRC to approve a mining license, and all without consulting the Navajo Nation Council.

HRI, a subsidiary of Uranium Resources, Inc. (URI) estimates that the area in question, which is located near two Navajo communities, Church Rock and Crownpoint, contains close to 100 million pounds of uranium. One can only imagine the kind of money that’s worth. So, in addition to working with the NRC, the folks at HRI have been actively recruiting Navajo residents to support their mining plan by offering large sums of money.

According to a recent airing of Democracy Now, HRI has coupled offers of big pay-outs with misleading propaganda campaigns designed to convince residents who live on the reservation there are no serious health risks to minors or their families. With no formal studies to prove HRI’s claims of safety suspect, those who stand to make a great deal of money are naturally leaning toward supporting the deal. This has, apparently, created a huge rift between those who fear the ultimate cost of allowing uranium mining and those who seek immediate compensation for the use of their land. Still, despite the contention among the Navajo, the Navajo Nation Council managed to pass a law banning uranium mining. One would think that would be the end of that. It is their country, after all. Or is it?

In January 2006, HRI submitted a request to the NRC suggesting that the land HRI wishes to mine be reclassified as “not Indian country under 18 U.S.C.§ 1151(b)…”. If the NRC grants the request, the land in Church Rock (referenced in the letter as “HRI’s Church Rock”) would be under the jurisdiction of the State of New Mexico, making any laws passed by the Navajo Nation, regarding the use of the land, inapplicable. And once again uranium mining will take place in Indian country.
Check-mate.

Enrichment is a process that uses networks of machine centrifuges, which spin uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched uranium for civilian power plants and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons fuel, depending on the duration of the process.
National Public Radio

Iran said it successfully enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges. For large-scale enrichment, Iran needs tens of thousands of centrifuges.

Iran’s nuclear boss, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said Iran aims to expand the process to use 3,000 centrifuges in the last quarter of 2006, meaning Iran is preparing for a semi-industrial scale enrichment.

The centrifuge program is located at the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Plant, parts of which have been built underground to protect it from air or missile strikes.

It is not clear whether reaching the 3,000 mark means building more centrifuges. In 2005 – when Iran had suspended enrichment-related activities – Iranian officials said the country had around 2,000 centrifuges.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Uranium enrichment is the greatest technical obstacle to a country making nuclear weapons — or even fuel for reactors, which Iran says is its sole aim. It requires precision-crafted centrifuges made out of hardened steel, which must spin very fast without crashing. Once uranium has been enriched to the level needed by a reactor, it takes about as long again to enrich it to weapons grade.

Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president who now heads Tehran’s expediency council, said yesterday that Iran had begun enriching uranium in 164 centrifuges.

This is no more than a pilot plant. Iran has stated it that hopes to run 50,000 centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz. This year it announced plans to install the first 3,000.
Times Online

In the mid nineteen eighties I found my self visiting a lovely little town in Eastern Washington called Pasco. Part of the “Tri Cities” which includes Richland and Kennewick, the town of Pasco seemed idyllic. Quiet, clean, plenty of parks, inexpensive housing… I liked it.

Well, I liked it except for the 586-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation located on the outskirts of town. Yeah, that’s right — not a nuclear plant — a nuclear RESERVATION.

You see, it seems that after supplying plutonium for America’s war effort in World War Two, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation kept expanding until it had, by the time I arrived, not three, not five, but a full NINE reactors processing nuclear material and as a result had no small waste storage disposal issues.

This is where plutonium comes from.

You would think that this would send people running for the hills or at least to a safer part of the state, such as the base of Mount St. Helens, but the attitude of the town, at least during the time I was there, was mixed.

A large number of people I talked to really liked the plants. After all, it was a company town and the company was cooking, humming, irradiating, all that. Unemployment was low, company benefits were high and people seemed content with making the simple trade. Quality of life, in exchange for length of life.

I’ll give you an example, I’m sitting in the hotel bar and a sexy, attractive woman sits down next to me and puts three packs of Camel non-filters next to the ashtray. I said, ”Wow, those are a lot of cigarettes,” and she replied, “I like to see what I’m going to smoke in a night.”

I asked her if she worried about getting cancer and she looked me in the eye and said, “I work in the plant. What the fuck is the difference?” I bought her a double. And no, before you think that I brought her upstairs, I did the math, and figured that sleeping with her would be like placing my manhood in the microwave.

True story. Except for the part about me doing math. And the part about her being sexy and attractive. But back to the macro.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation represents a major clean up problem. According to the web site of Washington Senator Patty Murray there are 50 million gallons of nuclear waste material sitting in 177 underground tanks all way past their intended life span. And, just because it can, the waste has entered the water table and is moving toward the Columbia River.

Fifty MILLION gallons? That’s right. But it used to be much, much worse.

There were five radionuclides that contributed the most to radiation dose from the river pathway (dose is the amount of radiation absorbed by a person’s body). The five radionuclides were phosphorus-32, zinc-65, arsenic-76, neptunium-239 and sodium-24. The Dose Reconstruction Project estimated that these radionuclides accounted for more than 94 percent of the potential radiation dose from the river pathway. There were many other radioactive materials released into the river as well.

The nuclear fuel consisted of fuel “elements” which were less than two feet long and encased in metal. There were thousands of fuel elements in each reactor. The increase in the reactor power levels put more stress on the fuel elements. Under this stress, the metal covering could split and allow small chunks of the radioactive fuel to be flushed into the river with the cooling water. The largest chunk weighed more than a pound. There were nearly 2,000 fuel element failures during the operation of the eight original plutonium production reactors.

Washington State Department of Health

That’s right, raw chunks of fuel rods discharged into the river, from 1944 through 1971. Twenty-seven years of 200 degree water fresh from the overloaded reactor cores.

The cores were overloaded because Hanford “increased the power levels of all eight reactors to produce more plutonium for the country’s nuclear arsenal. As a result, more radioactivity was discharged into the Columbia,” according to the Hanford Health Information Network. They were essentially running the reactors with the volume cranked up to eleven. Running them at warp nine.

The radiation in the Columbia also reached the Pacific Ocean, contaminating shellfish along the Washington and Oregon coasts. The levels of zinc-65 in the oysters of Willapa Bay on the Washington coast were monitored beginning in 1959. According to a 1959 Hanford document, the levels of zinc-65 in Pacific oysters were more than 300 times higher than in Japanese or Atlantic coast oysters.

Some people have recalled that in the 1950s and 1960s, they preferred swimming near Hanford because the water felt warmer there than further downstream.
Washington State Department of Health

They are working on the problems, of course. In May of 1989 the EPA, The state, and the department of energy entered into a Tri-Party Agreement to clean the area up.

They are currently constructing a plant, due to open in 2007, that will convert the waste into glass for easier storage. Not only do I not know or understand how this works but I can’t possibly begin to fathom what one does with highly radioactive glass – sell it to the bottlers of Jolt Cola? A new kind of solar panel for places that don’t get sun? Happy meals?

Actually, there have been recent cuts in the budget to clean up this mess. Apparently the money is needed to help clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Senators Murray and Cantwell recently issued a joint statement that said among other things,

“For the past five years there has been an unprecedented attack on our nation’s ability to cleanup nuclear waste. Today we know why. The Administration has officially labeled these cleanup efforts as ‘lower-priority federal programs.’

There is no more important priority for the federal government than protecting the health and well-being of all Americans. The cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford and other sites across the country is a signal about how our nation treats the communities that have sacrificed to protect all of us.

There is nothing fiscally responsible about the Administration’s efforts to rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul attempts at Katrina recovery. If the President were serious about fiscal responsibility he would rethink a short-sighted and dangerous tax cut policy. Denying funding to a national priority like Hanford cleanup, will only lead to increased costs in the long run.” source

It was 11 AM the next day. I was in my hotel room on the fourth floor overlooking the entire area. It was a lovely day and I was shaking off the cobwebs of the night before when I heard the siren. Loud. One of those 40’s air raid ones.

My first instinct is to “Duck and Cover” but then I remember Glasnost and rule it out. Probably only a test. Then the screaming starts. Children screaming at the top of their lungs. Running. Screaming. True.

My blood ran cold. I could not believe that this is how I was going to die. Then it sort of got quieter. I could still hear the kids but now they sounded happy. I went out on the terrace and there, across the street, was an elementary school. It was recess.

Kids.

I lit up a cigarette, picked up the phone and called John Hancock about getting some term life.

TEXAS ranks 10th in number of nuclear warheads deployed, a change from 5th place (and 1,365 warheads) in 1992 and 6th place in 1985 (630 warheads). However, nuclear weapons are stored only at the Pantex Plant of the Department of Energy outside of Amarillo on a temporary basis while they await dismantlement. Though the composition is constantly in flux depending upon which warheads are scheduled, the current pool includes some 150 W69 SRAM warheads and 200 W79 8-inch artillery shells.

More From Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments 1998:

In October 1950 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) determined there was need for a second facility in addition to Burlington, and Pantex was chosen in 1951. Originally built by the Army Ordnance Corps in 1942, Pantex was used during World War II to load conventional munitions (bombs and artillery shells) with TNT. Throughout late 1950 and 1951 the plant was rehabilitated and began full operation (with assembly of Mark VI nuclear bombs) in May 1952. The operating contractor, the Proctor & Gamble Company, ran it for the U.S. Army Ordnance Command beginning in 1953. In 1956 Mason & Hanger took over and has run it ever since. With some exceptions Pantex evolved in the early years to become the assembly facility for the Livermore Laboratory, and Burlington assembled Los Alamos designed warheads.

By November 1951, with the Cold War heating up, the AEC estimated that five plants would be needed to match the future numbers of warheads that were planned to be built. A third facility was planned at Spoon River, Illinois. But by 1953 it was decided that two plants would suffice to meet production goals and plans for the other three were canceled. The Burlington Plant operated until 1975 when its functions were transferred to Pantex.

The disassembly/modification work continued at Medina until 1965, when all functions were transferred to Pantex. At the current 1,300 warhead per year retirement rate, it is estimated that some 300 to 400 weapons are present at Pantex at any one time. Warheads in the pipeline to be dismantled are also stored at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. These include 200 W79s, 1,100 W69 SRAM warheads, and 450 W56 Minuteman II warheads. The last W48 155mm (6-inch) artillery warheads, W70 Lance warheads, W68 Poseidon warheads, and B57 nuclear depth and strike bombs have been completely retired.

Over the ten year period from October 1986 through September 1996, Pantex disassembled 12,514 warheads. It has more than enough capacity to disassemble the entire stockpile at current workload levels and will complete its current work orders in the year 2000. As of the end of 1997 there are approximately 10,750 “pits” (nuclear cores of warheads that have been dismantled) in storage at Pantex.

Web-posted Thursday, November 10, 2005
House approves measure that includes Pantex funding
Amarillo Globe-News

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2006, a measure that includes $523.3 million in Pantex Plant funding. The House approved the measure by a vote of 399-17. The Senate has yet to pass the bill, but is expected to take it up before Thanksgiving.

Through the appropriations process, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Amarillo, worked to secure approximately $76 million in additional funding for Pantex above President’s Bush’s budget request, according to Thornberry’s office. The bill includes $51 million more than the president’s request for Pantex’s Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities programs, infrastructure and facilities programs that support Pantex operations, bringing the total in that budget category to $181. 2 million.

Thornberry’s office said House members approved $126.2 million in funding for Pantex’s safeguards and securities programs, $25 million more than the president’s budget request.

“The missions performed at Pantex are vital to our national security. I am thankful for the support Pantex receives through this bill,” Thornberry said in a statement.

Not many people outside of Russia have heard of Chelyabinsk. And that’s just fine with the Russian government. They’ve been trying to hide this region of 3.6 million from world scrutiny for over 50 years. But word, like Chelyabinsk’s nuclear waste, is beginning to leak out that it festers as the most polluted place on earth.

Over the last five decades Chelyabinsk’s history reads like a contemporary version of the Book of Revelations. Not one, not two, but three nuclear obscenities have brutalized this region in the name of the Cold War. Radiation levels are so high that to compare it with Chernobyl would be like comparing a 361 car pile-up with a fender-bender between two Lexus SUVs in a 5 MPH school zone. Yet so few people, including its citizens, know the true shock of Chelyabinsk’s nuclear recklessness.

Located about 1,000 miles east of Moscow in the dark shadows of the southern Ural Mountains, the region exploded during World War II as an industrial military mammoth, producing Katyusha rocket launchers and T-34 tanks. In 1948 Chelyabinsk secretly gave birth to the Soviet’s nuclear program in a massive structure called the Mayak Chemical Combine (MCC).

Faced with Cold War pressures of keeping pace with the United States’ nuclear arms program Mayak officials adopted a build-now-worry-later mindset with zero regard for human safety.

Consequently, from 1948-1951 contaminated waste from Mayak was directly dumped into the nearby Techa River which feeds into the Ob River, Russia’s fourth longest, and ultimately the Arctic Ocean. In order to maintain nuclear secrecy the residents from the 24 villages along the Techa were not warned even though they were exposed to radiation levels 20 times higher than at Chernobyl.

In 1951 when the Arctic Ocean began setting off Geiger counters the Soviet government forced Mayak to stop fouling the Techa; a move necessitated by military secrecy rather than concern for public health.

Until “proper” storage facilities could be built Mayak officials for the next two years used nearby Lake Karachay as its new dumping depot under the crazed logic it would be safer since it was an enclosed body of water. During this time officials also fitted the Techa with a series of dams — now leaking — to stem Mayak’s radioactive filth from advancing downstream.

With nowhere to drift, the radioactive material settled into the river’s banks, further fouling the water used by local villages for drinking and irrigating. Warnings about the water were issued, but without explanation, providing little reason for residential alarm.

In 1957, horror number two occurred when the cooling system in one of Mayak’s nuclear waste storage facilities kaboomed — with the force of 75 tons of TNT. A five mile wide radioactive cloud wafted across the Chelyabinsk region for 600 miles infecting 270,000 inhabitants, and contaminating food and drinking water. Only 10,000 of these people were evacuated, some not until 18 months later.

A decade later in 1967, horror number three resulted when a two-year drought caused Lake Karachay to disappear, exposing its radioactive-drenched bottom to the open air. Subsequently, an apocalyptic wind storm collected the contaminated sediment and dispersed a banshee-like cloud containing the same amount of radiation as Hiroshima across an area the size of Maryland.

Almost 400,000 people, many unlucky repeat victims from 1957, were irradiated, while only 180,000 were evacuated. Over 50 years later the lake’s sediments contain more than 100 times the amount of high-level radiation that was released at Chernobyl. The fishing, not so great.

Despite the insane magnitude of these nuclear disasters Chelyabinsk’s residents were told little. Fearing that an outbreak of irradiated citizens would betray the secrecy of its nuclear program, the Kremlin, seat of the Soviet Union, prohibited doctors in the region from pinpointing and treating the truth. Instead they duped cancer-plagued patients blaming their ills on blood problems, heart diseases, and “vegetative syndromes.”

Amazingly, not until Glasnost in the late 1980s were doctors allowed to utter the word cancer. Despite this knowledge residents to this day still naively refer to their radiation-influenced maladies as the “River Disease.”

Today, out of the region’s 3.6 citizens over 1.5 million have bonus radiation. Cancer in every form is so grotesquely rampant that the average human life expectancy in Chelyabinsk hovers around 55 years old. About a third of the children born there enter life crippled with birth defects. Miscarriages and prematurely born babies are common. And over half the population of childbearing adults are sterile. Yet, despite such howling evidence the Mayak Chemical Combine, at last count, has financially compensated two victims. After it was forced by the courts.

Denial at Mayak has a longer half-life “20,000 years” than the plutonium still stored there. Despite the shameless contradictions the evidence continues to build that perhaps Chelyabinsk isn’t a name, but perhaps an acronym:
Country Hides Environmental Legacy’s Yesteryears As Balefully Immoral Nuclear Serial Killer.

When you read “dirty bomb,” you probably think of terrorists – Jose’ Padilla, Adnan el Shukrijumah, Osama bin Laden. But the premier producer of “dirty weaponry” – weapons containing radioactive material – isn’t in Pakistan, or North Korea, or anywhere other than the pretty, mild-mannered, Midwestern town of Edina, Minnesota. A company called Alliant Technologies is at home amid the golf courses and subdivisions.

Alliant Technologies makes its living by being one of the largest private contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense. Among its many products, Alliant appears to be the only U.S. provider of weapons loaded with “depleted” uranium, or DU.

The recent war in Iraq has certainly been good to Alliant Technologies. They’ve been growing since the start, and they’re so busy they’re actually not sure they can even meet the needs of the DoD for further weapons production. They are not out of uranium, there is plenty of that. In fact, the raw materials for these munitions comes from the Deparmtent of Defense free of charge.

That’s right – the depleted uranium is free. These munitions were designed to be given away free to Soviet tanks, too. From a particular angle, a round of this stuff will "self-sharpen" and burn right through the armor plates between the turret and the tank body. Or whatever else has the misfortune to be temporarily in front of it.

The U.S. military loves DU. It’s heavy and dense – when you put it in a bullet or missile, it packs a wallop. It’s also good for making tank armor with, since DU armor plates are hard to penetrate, even if you have DU bullets.

When objects made of out depleted uranium are shattered, they release vaporized uranium into the air and onto the ground. According to the U.S. military, aerosolized DU isn’t radioactive enough to harm people or the environment. (MilaciÄ¿ S “Examination of the health status of populations from depleted-uranium-contaminated regions,” Environmental Research vol 95, issue 1).

They claim that studies of U.S. soldiers with DU exposure showed that being exposed to DU doesn’t cause long-term damage – even if it’s in shrapnel embedded in your body. "The bottom line is that there is going to be no impact on the health of people and the environment,” says Dr. Michael Kirkpatrick, the Deputy Director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate at the DoD.

But you have to wonder whether the U.S. military is protesting a little too much. Even as they insist DU is safe, army training manuals require that anyone who comes within 25 meters (about 80 feet) of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that “contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption.”

A person insisting on two conflicting things like this would likely not be telling the truth, experiencing the discomfort that psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance. Or, they could be a psychopath, who experience no such discomfort.

Large organizations like the U.S. military are able to pull this off because they have whole teams of people dedicated to propaganda, and separate teams of people dedicated to teaching the soldiers how to stay alive.

Let us suppose that DU is completely safe for healthy soldiers in the short term.

DU and Radiation

The Prime Minister Big Poppa of the Uranium Posse, Uranium-235 gets its rep as radioactive and dangerous because it spits out atomic particles at incredible rates. But naturally occurring uranium isn’t mostly U-235; mixed in is a much larger amount of U-238, which is sometimes called “depleted” uranium because it’s natural uranium with the U-235 taken out as much as is convenient. It’s a misnomer.

“Depleted” doesn’t mean “harmless.” DU is still over 60% as radioactive as U-235 [?]. A number of studies performed independently of the US government suggest that DU exposure increases the risk of cancer (source). The military is quick to dismiss the 6 out of 100,000 chance of getting lung cancer if you inhale the stuff, but that’s still twice the incidence of lung cancer of the average population. But that is per exposure.

Heavy Metal Is Bad for You

DU damage isn’t just about radiation; DU also a heavy, dense metal. Ingesting heavy metals can interfere with the body’s day-to-day chemistry, everything from basic energy production to the functioning of brain cells; just ask any parent whose child has suffered lead poisoning from old paint or water from old pipes. In the case of DU, your body can get rid of most of it. The rest goes through your kidneys. Over time DU can damage your kidneys – and that can mean either dialysis or death.

Ironically, even the studies that the DoD says show DU is “safe” in fact show that DU has negative effects on the human body, though the studies haven’t gone on long enough for all the long-term effects to appear. The studies note that there are subtle but permanent changes in the way the soldiers’ brains work, and not for the better [1]. In addition, many of these soldiers show mutations in their blood and kidney cells [2][3]. Mutations in cells don’t mean much now, but since DU effects can take up to 25 years to manifest, cancer may be the final outcome for many DU-exposed soldiers and civilians [4][5].

Problems Come Home to Roost

So what’s going on here? Is the military simply being cautious – or disingenuous? Scientists like Dr. Keith Braverstock, former member UK Medical Research Council, suggest that the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suppressed vital data about DU health risks …under pressure from the U.S. government. Dr. Doug Rokke, a Vietnam veteran and former nuclear health physicist for the U.S. army, has gone on record saying that DU is a potential health hazard. Rokke also suggests that the U.S. government has been deliberately delaying testing of persons exposed to DU to prevent information about DU dangers from being publicized. But to date the military has simply ignored or denied the claims of these experts, in a manner similar to their dismissal of the concerns of local citizens groups like AlliantAction.

Unfortunately, ignoring DU concerns may just bring the problems closer to home. DU munitions plants could easily become targets for terrorist attacks – a single bomb or a rogue airplane could easily turn a “harmless” munitions factory into a weapon of mass disruption – causing panic and long-term health effects among people living near the plants. Since the military won’t look more carefully into the dangers of DU, it may be time for more civilians who live near DU munition plants to take action. After all, the dangers of DU are not ones we want to have brought home to us.

[1] McDiarmid MA, Military Medicine, Vol 167, issue 2 Suppl, 2002
[2] McDiarmid MA "Health effects of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War veterans: a 10-year follow-up.” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health Vol 67, issue 4: 2004.
[3] Schröder H, “Chromosome aberration analysis in peripheral lymphocytes of Gulf War and Balkans War veterans” Radiation and Protective Dosimetry, Vol 103, issue 3, 2003
[4] Samson, C. “The ghost of Saddam and UN sanctions,” The Lancet, Oncology Vol 5 2004
[5] Rooney, A, “The legacy of depleted uranium,” The Lancet, Oncology Vol 4, 2003)
Other interesting reading:
[6] Horror of USA’s Depleted Uranium in Iraq Threatens World
[7] Bolton JP, “Battlefield use of depleted uranium and the health of veterans,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps Vol 148, 2002
[8] International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear WarDepleted Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects: An IPPNW Assessment

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