View topic - Nuclear WMD "WHAT IF's"... :: Free Dominion - Principled Conservative - Party and Canadian Politics

Posted: 01/ 21/ 04 10:09 pm Post subject: Nuclear WMD "WHAT IF's"...

WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE
RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT
WND probe documents unthinkable plans of terror groups, pariah nations
Posted: January 19, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Fear of a nuclear attack on American soil is back – and with good reason – as WND documents conclusively in its newest issue of Whistleblower magazine, titled "RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT."

The signs are everywhere:

* Congressional hearings on "dirty bombs" and "suitcase nukes."

* Reports of stolen "radioactive warheads" and Osama bin Laden purchasing Soviet-era nuclear weapons on the black market.

* Recent deployments of "Nuclear Incident Response Teams" to scour Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities for nuclear terror weapons.

* The Department of Homeland Security's distribution of radiation detectors to police in Chicago, Detroit, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle – as well as to Bureau of Customs and Border Protection agents nationwide – to screen for terrorist activity, whether a dirty bomb, suitcase nuke, or other source of radiation.

* Vice President Dick Cheney's chilling assessment that nuclear terror is "the major threat" facing America: Calling a WMD attack on the U.S. "one of the most important problems we face today," Cheney added: "To contemplate the possibility of them unleashing that kind of capability – of that kind of weapon, if you will, in the midst of one of our cities – that's a scary proposition."

And that's just the terror threat. Across the oceans loom other gorgon's-heads of the nuclear monster – perhaps even more threatening.

Where once the nuclear club was very elite – comprising the U.S., U.S.S.R., China, France and just a few others – today, laments International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the number of nations now believed by the IAEA to be able to create nuclear weapons "is estimated at 35 or 40."

And among the furthest along, unfortunately, are the world's most notorious terror-sponsor and pariah states – Iran, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan among them. All of this far-flung reality comes crashing home with stunning precision in "RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT."

"There is an air of unreality in many people's minds when it comes to nuclear weapons," said WND and Whistleblower Editor Joseph Farah. "After all, a nuclear weapon hasn't been deployed in war since World War II, when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Add to that the failure so far of coalition forces to find any nuclear weapons in Iraq. Such factors, combined with the inherent difficulty in facing up to a subject so horrific, and you can understand people's tendency to bury their heads with respect to the looming nuclear threat of 2004."

This special Whistleblower edition is more than a wake-up call. It's a crash course in the current, growing – and very real – nuclear threat facing America.

"This issue of Whistleblower will provide a strong dose of reality by presenting the known facts about the nuclear genie, and about the furious quest for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction by the world's madmen," said Farah.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Even though the last edition of Whistleblower, titled "KILLER CULTURE," is dated "December 2003," this issue, "RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT," is dated "February 2004." There is no issue dated "January 2004." The purpose of this change in how we date our issues is simply to ensure Whistleblower's timely delivery. All subscribers will, of course, still receive 12 issues of Whistleblower.

Contents include:

* "The major threat," by Joseph Farah, who clearly lays out an overview of the threats Americans face in 2004.

* "The terror ahead" – an authoritative, in-depth and spine-straightening look at the world's nuclear scene, aptly subtitled "A nuclear attack? Be very afraid" – by Gabriel Schoenfeld.

* "35 or 40 countries can make nuclear arms," in which the U.N.'s chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei confides that the situation is way out of control.

* "Nukes in the Mideast" by Joseph Farah, where the Middle East expert shows why, despite recent apparent concessions by Libya, Iran and others, the nuclear threat is greater than ever.

* "The Libya ruse," an eye-opening page-turner in which Joseph Farah unmasks the developing campaign to pressure Israel to give up nuclear weapons.

* "Nuclear weapons production in Iran," Kenneth R. Timmerman's mind-boggling look at how the Iranians have bamboozled international arms inspectors for the past 18 years while building up stunning nuclear capability.

* "Nuclear terrorism – how real?" David Kupelian's in-depth primer on "suitcase nukes," "dirty bombs" and other terror tools, the real prospects of their use on U.S. soil, and what can and must be done to defend America.

Suitcase nuke

* "Dozens of 'dirty-bomb' warheads missing," documenting the recent discovery that dozens of Cold-War-era radioactive Soviet warheads have been lost, stolen or purchased.

* "Does al-Qaida have 20 suitcase nukes?" in which an FBI terror consultant confirms our worst fears, claiming Osama bin Laden purchased the weapons – each with an explosive potential equivalent to the Hiroshima A-bomb – from ex-KGB agents for $30 million.

"In a few short years," warns Farah, "today's terror-sponsoring nations may not need to send terrorists with backpack nukes to wreak devastation on the West because they will be capable of hitting New York or Los Angeles with warheads mounted on ICBMs.

"The Cold War is long over. It's a new world with new enemies for America – and they have, or are soon going to have, nuclear weapons. If we're going to defend America, we need to start by facing up to the return of the nuclear threat."

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36654

~~~~~~~~~~

TRUST ME....you don't even WANT to survive an all-out nuclear war....!!!

Shocked

Posted: 02/ 15/ 04 12:35 am Post subject:

Nuclear weapons

The Islamist plague has recently brought WMD technology into sharp public focus.

Regimes with the skills and will to use these weapons are closer that you might think. See Saddam's Bombmaker for reportage from inside the early Iraqi program.

http://xy3.com/hamza

Some background information on nuclear weapons technology follows..

Fission weapons

Nuclear weapons exploit two principle physical, or more specifically nuclear, properties of certain substances: fission and fusion.

Fission is possible in a number of heavy elements, but in weapons it is principally confined to what is termed slow neutron fission in just two particular isotopes: 235U and 239Pu. These are termed fissile, and are the source of energy in atomic weapons. An explosive chain reaction can be started with relatively slight energy input (so-called slow neutrons) in such material.

An actual 239Pu ingot, alloyed with gallium for improved physical properties

Isotopes are 'varieties' of an element which differ only in their number of neutrons. For example, hydrogen exists as 1H 2H and 3H -- different isotopes of the same chemical element, with no, one, and two neutrons respectively. All the chemical properties, and most of the physical properties, are the same between isotopes. Nuclear properties may differ significantly, however.

The fission, or 'splitting' of an atom, releases a very large amount of energy per unit volume -- but a single atom is very small indeed. The key to an uncontrolled or explosive release of this energy in a mass of fissile material large enough to constitute a weapon is the establishment of a chain reaction with a short time period and high growth rate. This is surprisingly easy to do.

Fission of 235U (uranium) or 239Pu (plutonium) starts in most weapons with an incident source of neutrons. These strike atoms of the fissile material, which (in most cases) fissions, and each atom in so doing releases, on average, somewhat more than 2 neutrons. These then strike other atoms in the mass of material, and so on.

If the mass is too small, or has too large a surface area, too many neutrons escape and a chain reaction is not possible; such a mass is termed subcritical. If the neutrons generated exactly equal the number consumed in subsequent fissions, the mass is said to be critical. If the mass is in excess of this, it is termed supercritical.

Fission (atomic) weapons are simply based on assembling a supercritical mass of fissile material quickly enough to counter disassembly forces.

The majority of the energy release is nearly instantaneous, the mean time from neutron release to fission can be of the order of 10 nanoseconds, and the chain reaction builds exponentially. The result is that greater than 99% of the very considerable energy released in an atomic explosion is generated in the last few (typically 4-5) generations of fission -- less than a tenth of a microsecond.*

http://simplethinking.com/home/nuclear_weapons.htm#*Special techniques

This tremendous energy release in a small space over fantastically short periods of time creates some unusual phenomena -- physical conditions that have no equal on earth, no matter how much TNT is stacked up.

Plutonium (239Pu) is the principal fissile material used in today's nuclear weapons. The actual amount of this fissile material required for a nuclear weapon is shockingly small.

Below is a scale model of the amount of 239Pu required in a weapon with the force that destroyed the city of Nagasaki in 1945:

In the Fat Man (Nagasaki) weapon design an excess of Pu was provided. Most of the remaining bulk of the weapon was comprised of two concentric shells of high explosives. Each of these was carefully fashioned from two types of explosives with differing burn rates. These, when detonated symmetrically on the outermost layer, caused an implosion or inward-moving explosion.

The two explosive types were shaped to create a roughly spherical convergent shockwave which, when it reached the Pu 'pit' in the center of the device, caused it to collapse.

The Pu pit became denser, underwent a phase change, and became supercritical.

A small neutron source, the initiator, placed in the very center of this Pu pit, provided an initial burst of neutrons -- final generations of which, less than a microsecond later, saw the destruction of an entire city and more than 30,000 people..

Nearly all the design information for weapons such as these is now in the public domain; in fact, considering the fact that fission weapons exploit such a simple and fundamental physical (nuclear) property, it is no surprise that this is so. It is more surprising that so much stayed secret for so long, at least from the general public.

A neutron reflector, often made of beryllium, is placed outside the central pit to reflect neutrons back into the pit. A tamper, often made of depleted uranium or 238U helps control premature disassembly. Modern fission devices use a technique called 'boosting' (referred to in the next section), to control and enhance the yield of the device.

Today's nuclear threat lies mostly in preventing this fissile special nuclear material (often referred to as SNM) from falling into the wrong hands: once there, it is a very short step to construct a working weapon.

What we do now to keep these devices out of the hands of groups like Al-Queda is vital to civilized peoples.

A schematic of a hypothetical 'boosted' fission weapon
(showing unnecessary 235U)

The gadget device used in the Trinity test: the world's first nuclear weapon test.
Note spherical geometry and the HE detonator arrangement. New Mexico, 21KT, 1945.

Typical fission weapon, shortly after detonation at the Nevada test site, with roughly the same yield as the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. Reddish vapor surrounding the plasma toroid includes intensely radioactive fission fragments and ionized nitrogen oxides from the atmosphere.

Fusion weapons

Fission weapons discussed above are ultimately limited in their destructive capability by the sheer size a subcritical mass can assume -- and be imploded quickly enough by high explosives to form a supercritical assembly. The largest known pure fission weapon tested had a 500 kiloton yield. This is some thirty-eight times the release which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Not satisfied that this was powerful enough, designers developed thermonuclear (fusion) weapons.

Fusion exploits the energy released in the fusing of two atoms to form a new element; e.g. deuterium atoms fusing to form helium, 2H + 2H = 4He2 , as occurs on the sun. For atoms to fuse, very high temperatures and pressures are required. Only fusion of the lightest element, hydrogen, has proven practical. And only the heavy isotopes of hydrogen, 2H (deuterium) and 3H (tritium), have a low enough threshold for fusion to have been used in weapons successfully thus far.

The first method tried (boosting) involved simply placing 3H in a void within the center of a fission weapon, where tremendous temperatures and high pressures were attendant to the fission explosion. This worked; contributing energy to the overall explosion, and boosting the efficiency of the Pu fissioning as well (fusion reactions also release neutrons, but with much higher energy).

Because 3H is a gas at room temperature, it can be easily 'bled' into the central cavity from a storage bottle prior to an explosion, and impact the final yield of the device. This is still used today, and allows for what is termed 'dial-a-yield' capability on many stockpiled weapons.

Multistage thermonuclear weapons -- the main component of today's strategic nuclear forces -- are more complex. These employ a 'primary' fission weapon to serve merely as a trigger. As mentioned above, the fission weapon is characterized by a tremendous energy release in a small space over a short period of time. As a result, a very large fraction of the initial energy release is in the form of thermal X-rays.

These X-rays are channeled to a 'secondary' fusion package. The X-rays travel into a cavity within a

cylindrical radiation container.

The radiation pressure from these X-rays either directly, or through an intermediate material often cited as a polystyrene foam, ablates a cylindrical enclosure containing thermonuclear fuel (shown in blue at left); this can be Li2H (lithium deuteride).

Running along the central axis of this fuel is a rod of fissile material, termed a 'sparkplug'.

The contracting fuel package becomes denser, the sparkplug begins to fission, neutrons from this transmute the Li2H into 3H that can readily fuse with 2H (the fusion reaction 3H + 2H has a very high cross-section, or probability, in typical secondary designs), heat increases greatly, and fusion continues through the fuel mass.

A final 'tertiary' stage can be added to this in the form of an exterior blanket of 238U, wrapping the outer surface of the radiation case or the fuel package. 238U is not fissionable by the slower neutrons which dominate the fission weapon environment, but fusion releases copious high energy neutrons and this can fast fission the ordinary uranium.

This is a cheap (and radiologically very dirty) way to greatly increase yield. The largest weapon ever detonated -- the Soviet Union's 'super bomb', was some 60 MT in yield, and used this technique. Again, to control the yield precisely, 3H may be bled from a separate tank into the core of the primary, as shown in the hypothetical diagram on the left of a modern thermonuclear weapon.

This primary/secondary/tertiary or multistage arrangement can be increased -- unlike the fission weapon -- to provide insane governments with any arbitrarily large yield.

Rare photo of the actual shrimp device used in Castle Bravo. Note the cylindrical geometry, and the emergent spherical fission trigger on the right. Light pipes leading to ceiling are visible near the fission trigger and at two points along the secondary for transmitting early diagnostic information to remote collection points, before they themselves are destroyed.

Note also the incongruous 'danger, no smoking' sign at lower left. 15MT, 1954.

Fusion, or thermonuclear weapons, are not simple to design nor are they likely targets of construction for would-be terrorists today.

Many aspects of the relevant radiation transport, X-ray opacities, and ultra-high T and D equations-of-state (EOS) for relevant materials are still classified to this day (though increasing dissemination of weapons-adaptable information from the inertially-confined fusion (ICF) area may change this in time). Keeping such information classified makes good sense.

Typical appearance of a thermonuclear weapon detonation -- from many miles away.
(Castle Romeo, 7MT, 1954)

*Special techniques were required to record the fleeting moments of a weapon's initial detonation. One such method was the Rapatronic camera, developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton. The images it created are bizarre. Check out our collection of Rapatronic photographs.

~~~~~~

Hey, no sweat....the likelihood of YOU ever coming close to one of these devices or items used in these tests is exceedingly REMOTE,

UNLESS...

Posted: 02/ 15/ 04 12:48 am Post subject:

http://simplethinking.com/home/rapatronic_photographs.htm

Unidentified shot from Operation Tumbler-Snapper (1952; kiloton range). Roughly 1 ms after detonation. Visible along the bottom of the fireball's surface are what have been referred to as 'rope tricks'. Absorption of thermal energy by the tower's guy wires result in such spike-like extensions. Further discussion of this phenomenon is available here.

Posted: 02/ 19/ 04 11:36 pm Post subject:

MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS LINKS:

http://www.clw.org/control/ctbchron.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq4-1.htm

http://www.projectshad.org/news/secrets-at-sea.htm

http://www.hk94.com/weblog/index.php?p=51&c=1

http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/photos&films/testfilms.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-1.htm

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/gallery.htm

http://www.downwinders.org/

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,275007585,00.html

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NGP/ChernDwinder.html

Posted: 03/ 19/ 04 2:29 pm Post subject:

Addressing the Unthinkable, U.S. Revives Study of Fallout

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: March 19, 2004

To cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war: fallout analysis.

The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options for striking back. Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one.
Advertisement

In a secretive effort that began five years ago but whose outlines are just now becoming known, the government's network of weapons laboratories is hiring new experts, calling in old-timers, dusting off data and holding drills to sharpen its ability to do what is euphemistically known as nuclear attribution or post-event forensics.

It is also building robots that would go into an affected area and take radioactive samples, as well as field stations that would dilute dangerous material for safe shipment to national laboratories.

"Certainly, there's a frightening aspect in all of this," said Charles B. Richardson, the project leader for nuclear identification research at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. "But we're putting all these things together with the hope that they'll never have to be used."

Most experts say the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack is low but no longer unthinkable, given the spread of material and know-how around the globe.

Dr. Jay C. Davis, a nuclear scientist who in 1999 helped found the Pentagon's part of the governmentwide effort, said the precautions would "pay huge dividends after the event, both in terms of the ability to identify the bad actor and in terms of establishing public trust."

In a nuclear crisis, Dr. Davis added, the identification effort would be vital in "dealing with the desire for instant gratification through vengeance."

Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on the program last fall, Dr. Davis said. The National Security Council coordinates the work among a dozen or so federal agencies.

The basic science relies on faint clues — tiny bits of radioactive fallout, often invisible to the eye, that under intense scrutiny can reveal distinctive signatures. Such wisps of evidence can help identify an exploded bomb's type and characteristics, including its country of origin.

Solving the nuclear whodunit could take much more information, including hard-won law enforcement clues and good intelligence on foreign nuclear arms and terrorist groups. For that reason, several federal agencies are involved in the program, among them the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The program addresses true nuclear weapons as well as so-called dirty bombs, ordinary explosives that spew radioactive debris.

"It's a very hard job," said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who led a panel that evaluated the identification work.

Mr. Happer said he was worried that a rush for retribution after a nuclear attack might cut short the time needed for careful analysis. "If we lose a city," he said, "we might not wait around that long."

The effort to fingerprint domestic nuclear blasts is part of a larger federal project to strengthen the nation's overall defenses against unconventional terrorist threats. Mostly, the goal is prevention. For instance, the government recently sent teams of scientists with hidden radiation detectors to check major American cities for signs that terrorists might be preparing to detonate radiological bombs.

In contrast, the identification program seeks to increase the government's knowledge and options should prevention fail. "We're trying to resurrect some of our capability," said Reid Worlton, a retired nuclear scientist from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico who has been called in to aid the fallout endeavor. "It sort of died. They're not doing radiochemistry on nuclear tests anymore, so it's hard to keep these people around."

The effort draws on work that began at the dawn of the atomic era. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project built an array of devices to monitor nuclear blasts in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later. The experience helped scientists learn what to look for.

The first hunt zeroed in on the Soviet Union. In the late 1940's, military weather planes used paper filters to gather dust particles around the periphery of Russia, and scientists in the United States who analyzed the data at first sounded dozens of false alarms, said Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence expert in Washington.

Then, on Sept. 3, 1949, a weather plane flying from Japan to Alaska picked up a slew of atomic particles. "That was the real thing," Mr. Richelson said. Twenty days later, President Harry S. Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first nuclear device.

The ranks of fallout investigators swelled during the cold war as foreign nations conducted hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests. By all accounts, the sleuths made many important discoveries about the nature and design of foreign nuclear arms.

In time, the ranks dwindled as more and more nations decided to move their test explosions underground, eliminating fallout. The last nuclear blast to pummel the earth's atmosphere was in 1980, and the last known underground test, conducted by Pakistan, was in 1998.

As the terrorist threat rose in the 1990's, the government began to consider the quandary that would arise if a nuclear weapon exploded on American soil. In 1999, Dr. Davis, then head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon, began an effort to address the identification problem by financing research at the nation's weapons laboratories, many of them run by the Energy Department.

The first money came in late 2000, Dr. Davis said, and the attacks of September 2001 "made it clear that a very organized event on a large scale was credible." That perception, he said, helped the effort expand.

The secretive work won rare public praise in a June 2002 report ("Making the Nation Safer") from the National Research Council of the National Academies, the country's leading scientific advisory group. Having the ability to find out who launched a domestic nuclear strike, the report said, could deter attackers and bolster threats of retaliation. The report urged that the program go into operation "as quickly as practical" and that the government publicly declare its existence.

Since then, weapons laboratories and other federal agencies have worked hard on the problem. "They're making progress but they've got a ways to go," said Mr. Worlton, the retired Los Alamos scientist.

In a drill this year, dozens of federal experts in fallout analysis met at the Sandia laboratories in Albuquerque to study a simulated terrorist nuclear blast. Mr. Worlton said they were broken into teams and given radiological data from two old American nuclear tests, whose identities remained hidden, and were instructed to try to name them. Some teams succeeded, he said.

Mr. Richardson of Sandia said the laboratory was developing a land robot that could roll up to 10 miles to sample fallout and return it to human operators for analysis. It could also radio back some results if it became stuck. Mr. Richardson said the robots, now in development, are to be ready in a couple of years.

Experts say a new aircraft for atmospheric sampling of nuclear fallout is also in development. The Air Force currently has one, the WC-135W Constant Phoenix, for such work. It was first deployed in 1965.

Weapons experts say getting samples fast is important because some radioactive debris can decay rapidly. If captured quickly, they can shed light on a weapon's design.

One way of trying to identify a bomb's origin positively, several experts say, is to match debris signatures with libraries of classified data about nuclear arms around the world, including old fallout signatures and more direct intelligence about bomb types, characteristics and construction materials.

"If you're talking about a stolen device, you might try to do that," Mr. Richardson said. "But if it's improvised, that's less likely to work. It might not look like things you've seen before."

A further complication is that even knowing who made a bomb may say little about who detonated it. In a 1991 Tom Clancy novel, "The Sum of All Fears," Islamic terrorists find and rebuild an Israeli nuclear weapon and set it off at the Super Bowl.

Federal experts say complex threat scenarios (for instance, an American warhead being stolen and detonated in an American city) mean that many types of intelligence might be needed for successful identification. Over all, it is unclear how much money the government is spending on the effort.

Private experts offered suggestions for improvement. Dr. Happer of Princeton, who heads a university board that helps oversee campus research, said the program might be cooperating too little with nuclear allies. "It's to our advantage," he said, "for all of us to share."

Dr. Davis, the former head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, made several policy recommendations last April in an article for The Journal of Homeland Security. He said the F.B.I. should lead the program, presidentially appointed overseers should guide it, goals should be set for how long analyses should take and legal issues of prosecution should be examined.

In an interview, Dr. Davis said his suggestions had made little headway, partly because of the topic's grisly nature. "This is an ugly subject because your best effort is going to be barely adequate," he said. "That's not the kind of phrase people like to hear."

Mr. Richardson of Sandia said that the attribution effort had made good technical progress and had already some ability to identify an attacker.

"We're hoping for deterrence," he said. "We don't want anybody to think they can get away with it."

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=nuclear+test%2C+granville+hall%2C+george+eastman

www.dailyinterlake.com/ NewsEngine/SelectStory_AD.tpl?command=search&db=news.db&eqskudata=62-774142-30

Posted: 03/ 21/ 04 9:26 pm Post subject:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the
result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If
you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in
every battle." --Sun Tzu (6th century B.C. Chinese general) in
"The Art of War"

The United States is at war. Since 1993, the year of the first
Islamist attack on the World Trade Center, our homeland has been
a frontline in the war with Jihadistan, a borderless alliance of
Islamist groups with global reach, who are relentlessly targeting
the U.S. as surrogates for Islamic nation states. While orthodox
Muslims (those conforming to the teachings of the "pre-Medina"
Quran) do not support acts of terrorism or mass murder, very
large sects within the Islamic world are indoctrinated with the
"post-Mecca" Quran and Hadith (Mohammed's teachings). These are
the writings that call for "Jihad" or "Holy War" against all "the
enemies of God." Hence, "Jihadistan," or "nation of holy war."

In the war to deter Jihadistan terror, there are two
recurrent themes in President George W. Bush's leadership as
Commander-in-Chief (his primary Constitutional role). First, he
has emphasized that we must know our enemy and endeavor to keep
the warfront on their turf. Second, President Bush has rightly
insisted that we must know ourselves -- that we must not lose
our resolve to conduct this war in defense of our nation and our
national interests.

On the first count, we have, thus far, succeeded. While Leftist
politicos and their Leftmedia minions are loath to give credit
where credit is due, it is nothing short of remarkable that, since
9/11, our Armed Forces, and the multitude of agencies supporting
them, have prevented any further catastrophic attacks on U.S. soil.

On the second count, however, our nation's resolve is at great risk
of being undermined by President Bush's political opponent, Leftist
agitator John Kerry, who should think twice about starting every
stump-speech by questioning our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Doing so only serves to endanger our forces in those regions --
and the security of our homeland -- by undermining U.S. resolve.

Like his mentor Ted Kennedy, Kerry has suggested that the rationale
for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom was
cooked up by the administration and the CIA -- that there are
no WMD and, consequently, no looming threats against the United
States. But Kerry and Kennedy et al. are wrong -- dead wrong --
and their use of our military campaign against Jihadistan as
political campaign fodder is not only unconscionable -- it is,
potentially, calamitous.

In his 2002 State of the Union speech, George Bush exercised little
ambiguity in putting the "Axis of Evil" on notice: "North Korea
is a regime arming with...weapons of mass destruction.... Iran
aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror.... Iraq
continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support
terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to...develop nuclear
weapons for over a decade. ... States like these, and their
terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten
the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction,
these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. ...[T]he price of
indifference would be catastrophic."

Notably, President Bush added, "We will work closely with
our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the
materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons
of mass destruction." Now fast-forward two years to the nuclear
WMD web linking Pakistan, Libya, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, a
network of terror that has been incrementally exposed in the last
60 days. How is it that revelations about the status of nuclear
WMD development programs in these nations has suddenly surfaced?

Subsequent analysis by The Federalist's leads us to conclude that
the CIA (much-maligned by Kerry and Kennedy, who suggest the agency
failed to provide accurate estimates of Iraq's undiscovered WMD)
succeeded in a high-stakes "takeover" of the nuclear black market
prior to 2002. It's an operation that is largely responsible
for exposing the aforementioned Islamic web of nuclear WMD
development -- and a success that will likely remain unheralded
beyond this column.

As we noted last week, the most recent WMD revelation was the
International Atomic Energy Agency's "discovery" of advanced
uranium-enrichment equipment (gaseous centrifuge technology)
at an air force base outside Tehran. That equipment was found
to have traces of uranium refined to 90% of isotope 235, which
has applications only in limited space reactors such as those
in nuclear submarines -- and nuclear bombs. (We're quite certain
Iran is not preparing to launch a nuclear submarine.)

Did Iran construct this particular component of advanced nuclear
refinement technology? It's doubtful. While Iran has its
own successful nuclear WMD program, the source of the recently
discovered equipment was very likely North Korea, by way of Iraq.
Two years ago in Federalist No. 02-42, we reported that the
enriched uranium at the core of North Korea's nuclear WMD program
was the product of gas centrifuge technology. Our sources tell
us there is substantial evidence that North Korea transferred
that technology to Iraq in the last decade.

Iraq, after all, had plenty of time, compliments of the French
and French-fortified hand-wringers in the UN, to spirit the bulk
of its biological and nuclear WMD into Iran and Syria prior to
the coalition invasion last March. (You'll recall that when the
coalition's Desert Storm invasion of Iraq was imminent in 1991,
Saddam transferred his frontline squadrons of fighters to Iran.)

Of course, some still have their head in the sand, insisting
that Iraq had no active nuclear WMD programs in recent years.
(Ironically, that is precisely where some elements of his WMD
programs likely remain concealed -- in the sand.) For example, as
we noted in Federalist No. 03-28, the CIA recovered gas-centrifuge
components from Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, who
had buried the hardware in his back yard prior to the coalition's
invasion of Iraq last year.

Who, then, is the common denominator of these various nuclear WMD
programs, and what does he have to do with the CIA? He is Abdul
Qadeer Khan who was, until his role in trading nuclear technology
was recently exposed, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, and the
father of the "Islamic bomb." Khan collected most of his nuclear
know-how from Western Europe and China over the last 20 years.

It is the considered opinion of our analysts that all these recent
WMD revelations are the direct result of a covert operation to
cultivate operatives in the nuclear black marketplace, particularly
Khan, and ultimately control a substantial part of that market
in an effort to track sellers and buyers.

While it is not yet clear what the exact nature of the relationship
between Khan and the CIA was, suffice it to say that our analysts
believe he was either working for the CIA in the latter years of
his proliferation endeavors -- or his actions as the nuclear WMD
black-market kingpin were transparent to the CIA -- for at least
the past four years, and possibly for the last decade.

Contrary to President Bush's assertion that the U.S. would "work
closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state
sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and
deliver weapons of mass destruction," we believe the CIA either
conned Khan, or used him as the con in a covert operation to
provide "materials, technology, and expertise" in an effort to
determine which state-sponsors of terrorism were buying nuclear
WMD components, and the current stage of their nuclear WMD
program development.

It's an old ruse: If you want to know who the distributors and
customers are, and how far they have advanced their programs
and networks, set up your own shop, undercut the competition,
and they'll line up at your door. We believe that is precisely
what the CIA did, using Khan wittingly or unwittingly, in setting
up one of the most brilliant -- and high-stakes -- con games ever.

Khan apparently operated with the full knowledge of Pakistani
President (and former general) Pervez Musharraf, who granted Khan
a full pardon after his activities were exposed last month. Khan
outsourced a significant amount of production work to Malaysia,
centering on one B.S.A. Tahir, a prominent businessman with
Malaysia's Scomi Precision Engineering. Last month, speaking at
the National Defense University, President Bush identified Tahir as
the "chief financial officer and money launderer" of A.Q. Khan's
black market ring. Indeed, it was Scomi precision-manufactured
centrifuge parts that were seized in the Mediterranean aboard
the BCC China late last year, en route to Libya.

Regarding North Korea's role, NSA Condoleezza Rice notes that
details of Khan's con were having a profound impact upon the United
States' ability to confront and negotiate with Pyongyang. "Now the
North Koreans should also recognize that, with the unraveling of
these proliferation networks, the A.Q. Khan network, what the
Libyans are now freely admitting and talking about, that their
admissions and what they say is not the only source of information
about what's going on in North Korea," said Dr. Rice. "And it's
probably a good time for the North Koreans to come clean."

Like any good sting operation, when it was determined by the
CIA that all the information that could be gleaned from the Khan
con had been collected -- prior to the transfer of any nuclear
weapons to terrorist surrogates -- the CIA, through international
channels, exposed the operation and put all Khan's clients on
immediate notice that the extent of their nuclear WMD programs
is a matter of record with the CIA.

Of course, all Khan's Islamic customers know that in the heart
of the Middle East right now, within easy striking distance of
any of them, is a substantial U.S. and coalition military force.
In light of this fact, what can we make of Libya's sudden surrender
of all its nuclear components a few weeks ago?

Mere coincidence? We think not.

George W. Bush has proven himself an outstanding
Commander-in-Chief, and the CIA, should it ever acknowledge this
operation, will certainly redeem itself in regard to its successful
endeavor to track nuclear WMD. That notwithstanding, perhaps the
greatest immediate threat to U.S. national security and sovereignty
is not al-Qa'ida and company; rather, it is those among us whose
phony political rhetoric is weakening our national resolve.

Quote of the week...

"Terrorists will kill innocent life in order to try to get the
world to cower. That's what they want to do. And they'll never
shake the will of the United States." --George W. Bush
_________________
The Shadowy Group, bringing

you the.... BEST... In

BEAVER PRODUCTS

For over 200 Years...!!!

~~~~~

Our Motto: We DO give a dam!!!

Opinions posted on Free Dominion are those of the individual posters and are not necessarily the opinion of Free Dominion or its operators. Free Dominion does not advocate violence, hate speech or an overthrow of the government.

Posted: 03/ 26/ 04 12:34 am Post subject:

Look past the headlines on bio-chemical issues

Bio-chemical weapons are atrocious by nature. Using them is worse. Be very concerned regarding their origin, proliferation, manufacturing ease, and Black Market distribution. But there's no edict demanding that war always "brings both sides to commit atrocities." Attempting to "reason" from such shaky ground confuses the issues.

Examine Chris Jones' (Inter Lake 3/19/04) errant claim that Iraq acquired bio-chemical weapons from the U.S. This lie's been widely repeated on the Internet as a reason why America "got what it deserved" on 9-11. Iraq indeed bought raw materials intended to be used against anthrax in cattle and equipment to produce those cultures. However, there's no evidence available indicating that occurred later than 1983.

Gulf War Syndrome's very real, having a multitude of lethal causes. It's not "handling" depleted uranium munitions and armor plating that poses the greatest danger. Their incineration in the course of battle causes highly toxic dust that persists long after the explosion in one's body tissues. Whether our troops were directly attacked with bio-chemical weapons in GWI does not change the deadly exposures resulting from carelessly detonating the ammo dump at Kamisiyah.

(www.cia.gov/cia/reports/gulfwar/
555/425055597.html) or

(www.arl.noaa.gov/ss/transport/kham.html)

Patriot missiles were also effective in protecting civilian populations. But, when they intercept bio-weapons, the resulting clouds still float silently down on those below...including our own combatants.

Frankly, as a veteran of Project 112/SHAD during the Vietnam Era, I was very pleased we didn't "find" WMD by being suckered into some town Saddam was willing to sacrifice in a Pyrrhic victory.

Iraq's former stockpiles have been tentatively tracked through Syria to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Imagining they've somehow magically self-destructed is suicidal.While investigating the world around you, please look past the headlines and flagrantly inflammatory opinion pieces. Otherwise, one risks grazing only the surface of critical issues degrading "the big picture" to merely half-vast.

J.B. Stone
Whitefish

http://whitefishpilot.com/index.asp?Sec=Letters&str=2019
_________________
The Shadowy Group, bringing

you the.... BEST... In

BEAVER PRODUCTS

For over 200 Years...!!!

~~~~~

Our Motto: We DO give a dam!!!

Opinions posted on Free Dominion are those of the individual posters and are not necessarily the opinion of Free Dominion or its operators. Free Dominion does not advocate violence, hate speech or an overthrow of the government.

Posted: 07/ 14/ 04 1:38 am Post subject:

FUN FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR TESTING...

Hurray

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=contamination%2C+ato ll%2C+nucl\
ear

http://www.rmiembassyus.org/nuclear/chronology.html

1946

March - The U.S. Navy evacuates 167 Bikini Islanders to Rongerik
Atoll, 125 miles to the east, to make way for the first post World War
II nuclear weapons tests.

May - As a safety measure, islanders from Enewetak, Rongelap and Wotho
atolls are relocated for the duration of Operation Crossroads. July
Operation Crossroads is launched with "Able" and "Baker" nuclear tests
at Bikini. Both are Hiroshima-size atomic tests. "Baker", an
underwater test, contaminates target fleet of World War II ships in
Bikini's lagoon.

~~~~~~

""Baker", an underwater test, contaminates target fleet of World War
II ships in Bikini's lagoon. "

Take a WILD guess as to where the Granny was at times like this...

~~~~~~~~~

1947

1948

March - On the verge of starvation, the Bikinians are taken off
Rongerik Atoll and moved to Kwajalein, where they stay for six months
while a new home is found for them. April Operation Sandstone begins
at Enewetak and includes three atomic tests. The Bikini community
moves to southern Kill, a single island with no protected lagoon or
anchorage.

1951

April - Operation Greenhouse starts at Enewetak. Four atomic tests are
conducted.

1952

November - Operation Ivy opens at Enewetak and includes the first test
of a hydrogen device. The Mike test vaporizes one island and is
estimated at 10.4 megatons, or some 750 times larger than the
Hiroshima bomb.

1954

January - Preparations commence at Bikini Atoll for Operation Castle,
to test a series of megaton range weapons, including America's first
deliverable hydrogen bomb.

February 28 - 6 p.m. On the eve of the Bravo test, weather reports
indicate that atmospheric "conditions were getting less favorable." At
midnight, just seven hours from the shot, the weather report reports
there are "less favorable winds at 10,000 to 25,000-foot levels."
Winds at 20,000 feet "were headed for Rongelap to the east."

March 1 - Bikini's weather outlook downgraded to "unfavorable" and
Joint Task Force 7 directs several ships to move 20 miles to the south
to remove them from the expected fallout zone. Despite weather reports
showing that winds are blowing in the direction of inhabited islands,
the March 1 Bravo hydrogen bomb test is detonated at Bikini. At 15
megatons, it is 1,000 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb. Within
hours a gritty, white ash is enveloping islanders on Rongelap and
Ailinginae Atolls. A few hours later, American weathermen are exposed
to the snowstorm of fallout on Rongerik, and still later the people of
Utrik and other islands experience the fallout "mist". Those exposed
experience nausea, vomiting and itching skin and eyes. March 3
Rongelap islanders are evacuated 48 hours later, and Utrik is
evacuated 72 hours after Bravo. Both groups are taken to Kwajalein for
observation. Skin burns on the heavily exposed people begin to
develop, and later their hair falls out. The U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission issues a statement to the press calling Bravo a "routine
atomic test", and stating that some Americans and Marshallese were
"unexpectedly exposed to some radioactivity. There were no burns. All
were reported well."

March 7 - Project 4.1, "Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to
Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fallout from High Yield
Weapons," establishes a secret medical group to monitor and evaluate
the Rongelap and Utrik people.

April - A Project 4.1 memo recommends that the exposed Rongelap people
should have "no exposure for (the) rest of (their) natural lives."
April 29 Department of Defense report states that the "only other
populated atoll which received fallout of any consequence at all was
Ailuk...It was calculated that a dose...would reach approximately 20
roentgens. Balancing the effort required to move the 400 inhabitants
against the fact that such a dose would not be a medical problem it
was decided not to evacuate the atoll."

May - Utrik Islanders allowed to return home because, according to
U.S. officials, "Their island was only slightly contaminated and
considered safe for habitation."

1956

May - Operation Redwing begins at Enewetak and Bikini. A total of 17
nuclear tests, including several hydrogen bombs, are detonated.
November U.S. officials give the Enewetak Islanders living on Ujelang
$25,000 cash and a $150,000 trust fund (earning 3 1/3 percent
annually) as compensation. Bikini Islanders living on Kili are given
$25,000 cash and a $300,000 trust fund (yielding about $15 per person
annually). Throughout the 1950s, both the Bikinians and Enewetakese
face food shortages and repeated bouts of near starvation, as their
"temporary" islands prove difficult and inhospitable.

1957

July - Rongelap is declared safe for rehabitation "in spite of slight
lingering radiation." The Rongelap people, who have been living
temporarily in Ejit Island, Majuro, return to Rongelap. Brookhaven
National Laboratory scientists report about Rongelap: "Even though the
radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly
safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than
those found in other inhabited locations in the world. The habitation
of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological
radiation data on human beings."

1958

May - Operation Hardtack begins at Enewetak and Bikini, with 32 tests,
including several hydrogen bombs. August The last nuclear detonation
in the Marshall Islands takes place on August 18, bringing to 66 the
total of nuclear weapons tests at Bikini and Enewetak.

1963

The first thyroid tumors begin appearing among the Rongelap people
exposed to the Bravo test in 1954. Also, a higher than normal
incidence of growth retardation among young Rongelap Islanders is
noted by U.S. doctors.

1966

January - The U.S. Congress approves an exgratia payment of $950,000
(about $11,000 per capita) to the exposed Rongelap people for injuries
resulting from their exposure in 1954.

1969

October - Bikini Atoll is declared safe for rehabitation by U.S.
officials. "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no
discernible effect on either plant or animal life," says the AEC.

1972

October - Because it is not satisfied with information provided by the
AEC, the Bikini Council votes not to return to Bikini as a community,
but says it will not prevent individuals from returning. Several
Bikini families move back to Bikini into newly built homes.

November - John Anjain's son, Lekoj, who was one year old when exposed
to fallout on Rongelap in 1954, dies of leukemia at the National
Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

1973

AEC draft report, not publicly released, concludes that Bravo fallout
may have contaminated as many as 18 atolls and islands, including
Kwajalein and Majuro.

1975

June - During regular monitoring at Bikini, radiological tests show
"higher levels of radioactivity than originally thought" and it
"appears to be hotter or questionable as to safety," states a
Department of Interior official.

August - AEC surveys suggest some Bikini ground wells are too
radioactive for safe use, and that the consumption of pandanus,
breadfruit and coconut crabs needs to be prohibited.

October - The Bikinians file suit in U.S. federal court demanding a
complete scientific survey of Bikini and other northern Marshall
Islands be conducted.

1976

July - The U.S. Congress approves $20 million and military logistic
support for a nuclear cleanup of Enewetak Atoll. A Brookhaven National
Laboratory report on Rongelap shows that 20 of 29, or 69 percent of
the Rongelap children who were under 10 years old in 1954 have
developed thyroid tumors. The people of Utrik, whose original exposure
in 1954 of 14 rads of radiation was less than one-twelfth that of
Rongelap, suddenly show a higher rate of thyroid cancer than the
Rongelap people, indicating the long latency period before health
problems develop from low level radiation exposure.

1977

May - The nuclear cleanup at Enewetak Atoll begins. About 700 U.S.
Army personnel carry out the cleanup's first phase, which includes
scraping and collecting 100,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and
debris, and 125,000 cubic yards of uncontaminated debris and dumping
it in a bomb crater on Runit Island to be sealed with a cap of cement.

June - A Department of Energy study reports: "All living patterns
involving Bikini Island exceed Federal (radiation) guidelines for 30
year population doses." About 100 Bikinians continue living on Bikini.
The U.S. Congress approves about $1 million in compensation for
Rongelap and Utrik ($100,000 each goes to the Rongelap, Utrik and
Bikini for building community facilities; $1,000 each to the 157
exposed Utrik people; and from $25,000 for people with thyroid tumors
to Q00,000 for people the families of those who have died).

1978

May - Interior Department officials describe the 75 percent increase
in radioactive cesium found in the Bikini people as "incredible."
Plans are announced to move the people within 90 days.

August - A Department of Energy survey of the northern Marshall
Islands reveals that in addition to Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and
Utrik, 10 other atolls or islands "received intermediate range fallout
from one or more of the megaton range tests." These included inhabited
atolls and islands of Ailuk, Likiep, Mejit, Ujelang and Wotho.

September - The 139 people living on Bikini Atoll are evacuated by
U.S. officials. The U.S. government funds a $6 million trust for the
Bikini people.

1980

March - The U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency announces that the Enewetak
nuclear cleanup is completed. The estimated cost of the cleanup and
rehabilitation was $218 million. Enewetak Islanders begin returning
home to the southern islands in the atoll.

1981

The Bikinians file a class action law suit against the U.S. government
in U.S. courts seeking $450 million in compensation. Attorneys for the
Marshall Islands Atomic Testing Litigation Project file lawsuits on
behalf of several thousand Marshall Islanders seeking about $4 billion
in compensation from the United States for personal injuries from the
nuclear testing.

1982

The U.S. establishes a second trust fund of $20 million for the Bikini
people. Later, it will increase this with an additional $90 million
appropriation in the late1980s.

1983

Compact of Free Association is approved in a plebiscite by about 60
percent of Marshal Islands voters. The Compact includes a Section 177
trust fund of $150 million that is to provide $270 million in
compensation payments over the 15 year life of the Compact (Bikini $75
million; Enewetak $48; Rongelap $37 million; Utrik $22 million;
Nuclear Claims Tribunal $45 million; $2 million annually for medical
care for the "four atolls" 53 million for a nationwide radiological
survey; etc.).

1985

March - In a statement delivered to Rep John Seiberling, chairman of
the subcommittee on public lands and national parks, Dr. Thomas
Hamilton states: "I have performed examinations on over 7,000 people
from the northern atolls and from three southern atolls...There are
several northern atolls in which the prevalence rates of thyroid
neoplasia (benign and malignant) are equal to or greater than those
observed by Brookhaven on Utirik Atoll where the radiation dose is known."

May - Rongelap people evacuate their atoll, moving to Mejatto, a small
island in the northwestern section of Kwajalein Atoll. Rongelap
leaders say they fear that continued residence on Rongelap will expose
them to dangerous levels of radiation.

1986

The U.S. Congress approves the Compact of Free Association. The
Compact includes an espousal provision, prohibiting Marshall Islanders
from seeking future legal redress in U.S. courts and dismissing all
current court cases in exchange for a $150 million compensation trust
fund. October The Compact between America and the Marshall Islands
goes into effect.

1991

August - The Nuclear Claims Tribunal approves its first compensation
awards, based on a list of health conditions presumed to be caused by
radiation, and therefore eligible for compensation. Because of
concerns that the $45 million available may not be adequate to pay all
claims, the Tribunal limits initial payments to 25 percent of the
total awards.

1994

January - U.S. Rep. George Miller writes to President Bill Clinton:
"Some Rongelapese have said they believe they were used as 'guinea
pigs' to further U.S. understanding of the effects of radiation on
humans. In light of recent disclosures regarding actual radiation
experimentation in the United States during this period, that
possibility cannot be ignored." He also comments on an ongoing thyroid
study in the Marshalls. "The findings of the thyroid survey are
disturbing. The Committee has been informed that even if only 50
percent of the survey results are verified...the incidence rate is
still significantly higher, by a factor of 100, than the rate of
thyroid cancer found anywhere else in the world." The U.S. Department
of Energy begins releasing thousands of previously classified nuclear
test era documents, many of which confirm the wider extent of the
fallout contamination in the Marshall Islands.

July - U.S. Representatives George Miller and Ron de Lugo write to Dr.
Ruth Faden, chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments: "...There is no doubt that the AEC intentionally returned
(Marshallese) to islands which it considered to be "by far the most
contaminated places in the world,' but which it told the people were
safe. Nor is there any doubt that the AEC, through the Brookhaven
National Laboratory, then planned and conducted test after test on
these people to study their bodies' reaction to life in that
contaminated environment. "

December - A five-year study of 432 islands in the Marshall Islands
shows that 15 atolls and single islands -almost half of this nation
were dusted by radioactive fallout from the U.S. nuclear weapons tests
of the 1950s. However, the Nationwide Radiological Survey -funded by
the U.S. and conducted by the Marshall Islands government -states that
with the exception of islands in Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and
Rongerik, "the amount of radioactivity remaining in the environment
has diminished to levels that are not of concern." Paul C. Warnke,
formerly the chief nuclear arms negotiator for the U.S. who held other
high level positions for the State Department, states his support for
additional compensation, observing that Marshall Islands negotiators
of the Compact were unaware of the magnitude of radiation problems in
the Marshall Islands when they negotiated compensation levels with the
United States.

1995

February - Marshall Islands officials testify before President
Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in
Washington, D.C. stating that fallout exposed many more than the four
atolls acknowledged by the U.S. government, and that islanders were
purposefully resettled on contaminated islands so the U.S. could study
the long-term effects of radiation.

October - The U.S. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
issues its final report, including observations and recommendations on
the Marshall Islands. The report recommends that at least two more
atolls, Ailuk and Likiep, be included in a medical program, and that
the Department of Energy's program "be reviewed to determine if it is
appropriate to add to the program populations of other atolls to the
south and east of the (Bravo) blast whose inhabitants may have
received exposures sufficient to cause excess thyroid abnormalities."

December - The Nuclear Claims Tribunal reports that it has awarded
$43.2 million, nearly its entire fund, to 1,196 claimants for 1,311
illnesses.

1996

August - The Nuclear Claims Tribunal projects that it will have $100
million in personal injury claims by 2001, when the Compact ends. Land
claims for Bikini, Enewetak and other northern islands are also
pending before the Tribunal. The Tribunal's claim claim fund, however,
is limited to $45 million.

go to top of pagetop

Selected Bibliography

Alcalay, Glenn. "Marshall Islands Field Report: Cultural Impact of the
U.S. Atomic Testing Program." Anthropology Dept., Livingston College,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903, April 7, 1981)

Annual Report to the Nitijela, 1995 (Majuro: Nuclear Claims Tribunal).

Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives.
American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Radiation Experiments
on U.S. Citizens (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1986).

Conard, Robert, M.D. A Twenty Year Review of Medical Findings in a
Marshallese Population Accidentally Exposed to Radioactive Fallout
(Upton, NY: Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1975).

December 31, 1978. "Announced U.S. Washington, D.C.: Summary of
Thyroid Findings in Marshallese 22 Years after Exposure to Radioactive
Fallout (Upton, NY: Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1977).

Dobyns, Brown M. M.D. Ph.D. "A Study of the Physiological Function and
Histiological Changes in Thyroid Irradiated with Radioactive Iodine.
Prepared for the Department of Energy." (Cleveland, Ohio: Case Western
Reserve University, September 30, 1981)

Gensuikin (Tapan) Medical Team. "Report on the Investigation of Damage
Done by the Bikini Hydrogen Bomb Test to the People of the Marshall
Islands." Tokyo, Japan: Revised edition, February 1973).

Hines, Neal O. Proving Ground: An Account of the Radiobiological
Studies in the Pacific, 1946-1961 (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1962).

Johnson, Giff. Collision Course at Kwajalein: Marshall Islanders in
the Shadow of the Bomb (Honolulu: Pacific Concerns Resource Center, 1984).

Tuda, Tomaki, et al vs. the United States of America: "Petition in the
Nature of a Class Action for Just Compensation for Unlawful Takings of
Property and for Damages for Breaches of Fiduciary Responsibility."
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Court of Claims, March 16, 1981).

Kiste, Robert C. The Bikinians: A Study in Forced Migration. (Menlo
Park, CA: Cummings Publishing Co., 1974).

Kotrady, Konrad M.D. "The Brookhaven Medical Program to Detect
Radiation Effects in Marshallese People: A Comparison of the Peoples'
vs. the Program's Attitudes." January 1, 1977.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Dose Assessment at Bikini Atoll
(UCRL-51879, Pt. 5, prepared for the Department of Energy, Tune 8, 1977).

Marshall Islands Chronology, 1944-1983 (Honolulu: Micronesia Support
Committee, 1983).

Muller, Phillip. "Statement of the Government of the Marshall Islands
to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee." (Washington,
D.C.: June 26, 1996).

Niedenthal, Jack. The People of Bikini: From Exodus to Resettlement
(Majuro: Bikini Atoll Local Government, 1996).

The Marshall Islands Journal (Majuro: Micronitor News and Printing
Company, 1970-1996).

~~~~~~~

Radioactive Artifacts

http://www.artvt.com/painters/radbooth.html

1. Protective gear worn by a fireman who helped shovel debris off
the roof of the burning reactor at Chernobyl.

2. Sand from the Nevada Test Site where 563 atomic bombs were
detonated between 1948 and 1980.

3. Book from Vernon Elementary School located 1000 yards from the
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant where radioactivity leaked downhill
and was measurable inside the school.

4. Coral and shells from the Pacific Islands of Eniwetok, Bikini,
the Christmas Islands and Johnson Islands where 106 atomic bombs were
detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1962, and from the
Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls where 5 bombs were exploded by France in
1995.

5. Gloves worn by a worker at American Atomics, Tucson, Arizona,
for inserting tritium into glass slivers used in digital watches.

6. Flower picked within a three mile radius of the Three Mile
Island reactor, 1993.

7. Sheepskin from Doug Clark's herd, Cedar City, Utah, killed by
radioactive fallout from Dirty Harry, a 32 kiloton atomic bomb dropped
at the Nevada Test Site, May 19, 1953.

8. Water from Rio Puerco, Church Rock, New Mexico, July 16, 1979,
where a broken dam sent 1100 tons of radioactive uranium mill wastes
and 90 million gallons of contaminated liquid down stream towards Arizona.

9. Radioactive contaminated milk from St. George, Utah, and Troy,
NY, where fallout raised the rate of infant mortality in 1953, and
from Windscale, England, 1957.

10. Dogtags from Harry Coppolo, Lyman Quigley, and Harold J. Ralph,
three of thousands of GI's who were sent to clean up ground zero of
Nagasaki several weeks after the bomb was dropped and died of
radiation related cancer thirty-five years later.

11. Apple from Joe Harding's lunch at the Paducah, KY., uranium
enrichment plant. He said, "After a couple hours of work the uranium
dust on the floor was so thick you could see your tracks when walking
around. There was no particular lunch room or lunch hour. You just sat
down somewhere, blew away the uranium dust and had your lunch."

12. Chunks of concrete and asphalt from Grand Junction, Colorado,
where 6000 structures including schools were built with uranium
tailings deposits in the building materials or in the landfill under them.

13. Orange from the Ukraine.

14. Notebook and Pencil from Rm. 180 in Bldg. 771 of the Rocky Flats
plutonium factory near Denver, where a plutonium trigger spontaneously
ignited on September 11, 1957. During the 13 hour fire which had to be
extinguished by water as a last resort, an estimated 20 to 250
kilograms of plutonium went out the stocks, plus thirty thousand
gallons of contaminated unfiltered water entered local streams and the
water table.

15. Water from the shore of Ocean City, Maryland, where 120 barrels
of radioactive cesium were dumped and are leaking.

16. Uranium mine tailings from Durango, Colorado. Greta Highland of
Durango called it "the biggest, best sand pile in the world. After
school my friends would sneak into the mill yard and play in the
tailings."

~~~~~

" 4. Coral and shells from the Pacific Islands of Eniwetok, Bikini,
the Christmas Islands and Johnson Islands where 106 atomic bombs were
detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1962, and from the
Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls where 5 bombs were exploded by France in
1995.

7. Sheepskin from Doug Clark's herd, Cedar City, Utah, killed by
radioactive fallout from Dirty Harry, a 32 kiloton atomic bomb dropped
at the Nevada Test Site, May 19, 1953."

Do ANY of those locations RING A BELL within your mind...???

Dang, this SCIENCE STUFF is hilarious....!!!!!

~~~~~

LOW LEVEL RADIATION IS INVISIBLE TO THE SENSES

LOW-LEVEL RADIATION CANNOT BE CONTAINED

The increase in natural background radiation has the prospect af
altering the entire schema of biogenetic evolution, which has been
under slow and steady evolution for billions af years. Mankind, by
developing atomic technologies, is unleashing forces which it does not
understand and cannot control. Unlike the sorcerer's apprentice in
Gothe's fanciful tale, there is no wise sorcerer who can step in and
undo the damage we are causing. The effects of low-level radiation
seem very abstract since we cannot see, feel, touch or sense them.
They are statistical. But the danger is that they, bad enough by
themselves, will act in concert with other systemic effects in
unpredictable and disastrous ways. They will act not only on people,
but on those biological systems which support us. Because these
changes occur beyond our noticing, beyond the ability of scientists to
judge, and in so many disparate ways, we will not notice the decline
in the spiritual and physical quality of our world. When finally the
effects of this process are so bad that no one can disagree, it will
be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

Mel Gulikson
systems ecologist, cultural theorist

Bwaaaahahahaeeheeheeohohohohohahahahahaaaaa.....

Stop...Yer Crackin' Me UP.....!!!!!

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS!

* WHAT's so bad about low-level radiation?
It can kill you. The hazards of ionizing radiation have put
billions of people at risk.

* HOW do I know if I am being exposed?
You don't. You cannot detect low-level radiation with your senses.

* HOW does it affect me?
It damages cells, accelerating aging and creating an environment
conducive to cancer. Fetuses and young children are by far the most
susceptible to radiation-induced cancer.

* WHAT types of cancer does it cause?
All forms of human cancer can be induced by radiation.

* WHAT is a safe dose?
It has been scientifically proven that "there is no safe
threshold. Ionizing radiation is not like a poison out of a bottle
where you can dilute it and dilute it. The lowest dose of ionizing
radiation is one nuclear track through one cell. You can't have a
fraction of a dose of that sort. Either a track goes through the
nucleus and affects it, or it doesn't."[+]

* WHAT about x-rays - are they dangerous?
Yes. "Medical radiation from x-ray machines is roughly twice as
harmful per unit dose as Hiroshima-Nagasaki radiation."[+]

[+] Dr. John Gofman, MD, Ph.D. in nuclear/physical
chemistry, Professor Emeritus in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC
Berkeley.
(For more information, see Gofman's Committee for Nuclear
Responsibility)

* WHAT can I do?
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.."
Edmund Burke
English Statesman 1729-1797

~~~~~

REMEMBER:

1948 (April - May) Sandstone bomb tests at Eniwetok, 3 tower shots,
biggest 49 KT.

1948 (May 14) Four people exposed to fallout of fission products at
Eniwetok in the South Pacific.

1951 (April - May) Greenhouse bomb tests at Eniwetok; four tower shots.

1951 (Oct - Nov) Buster-Jangle bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 7 shots
from 0.1 to 31 KT; includes first surface and underground bursts (each
1.2 KT).

1954 Indications appear that tissue burdens of uranium in man are
lower than predicted by models (Eisenbud & Quigley).

1955 (May 14) Wigwam bomb test off west coast of US; 1 deep (2000 ft)
underwater burst of 30 KT.

[Granny & Eastman were THERE, too...!!!]

1958 Stannard proposes that lung be regarded as a moderately
radiosensitive organ.

1960 (June Cool 19-yr. old commits suicide with 10 Ci. Cs-137 source;
exposure time 20 hr.; death 18 days later (USSR).

1961 (Jan 3) Prompt criticality accident at SL-1 US Army reactor in
Idaho Falls kills three. Recovery efforts expose 47 persons.

[Had to watch the TRAINING FILM on that one in Nuke School at Idaho
Falls....]

1961 (June 1Cool Reactor LOCA on the first USSR nuclear missile
submarine, the K-19. Fourteen crew members allegedly die from
radiation exposure rigging a provisional cooling system using a
reserve tank and pipes cut off one of the torpedoes. The welding took
90 minutes. Capt. Nikolai Zateyev reported that "the ones who got
radiation doses began to swell visibly. Their faces grew red. After
two hours, watery discharges came from the roots of their hair. Soon
it became frightening to look at their eyes and swollen lips. They
were completely disfigured. Hardly able to move their tongues, they
complained of pain in the entire body." Eight officers and sailors
died within days, six more died within the next several years.

1964 (July 24) 38 year old worker at uranium recovery plant, United
Nuclear Corp., Wood River, RI, receives 8800 rad, 2200 of which is
neutrons; dies 49 hours after accident of central nervous system
failure. 6 other persons exposed in the criticality accident.

[Do these LAST TWO sound familiar to you...??? I was additionally
"dosed" at Idaho Falls in 1970 and immediately began to experience
extreme joint pain and have had "central nervous system" damage ever
since...!!!]

~~~~~~~

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/chrono3.htm

1948 (April - May) Sandstone bomb tests at Eniwetok, 3 tower shots,
biggest 49 KT.

1948 (May 14) Four people exposed to fallout of fission products at
Eniwetok in the South Pacific.

1948 Heinz Spiess asked to investigate Ra-224 therapy cases in Germany.

1948 Six patients at U. of Rochester who received uranium for kidney
function tests described. Threshold for kidney damage described.

1948 Halogen quenching gases introduced in gas-filled detectors.

1949 (Mar 1) AEC announces the selection of a site in Idaho for the
National Reactor Testing Station.

~~~~~

I was TRAINED there, on a Pressurize Water Reactor...!!!

1970

~~~~~

1949 (May) William Bailey, maker and user of Radithor, dies of bladder
cancer.

1949 (Aug 29) USSR explodes first A-bomb at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1949 (Sept 7) Accident at Los Alamos Labs 1 person exposed to
transuranics.

1949 (Sept 23) Truman announces USSR has tested A-bomb.

1949 (Oct 29) AEC committee headed by Oppenheimer votes against
hydrogen bomb. Teller urges construction.

1949 (Dec 2) The Green Run at Hanford reprocesses one ton of
irradiated uranium 16 days after irradiation (instead of normal 83-101
days); releases 20,000 curies of xenon-133 and 7,780 curies of
iodine-131; plume measures 200 by 40 miles.

1949 First Tri-Partite Conference on Internal Dosimetry (Chalk River,
Ontario). Accumulated experience of war years utilized.

1949 NCRP lowers basic "Maximum Permissible Dose" for radiation
workers to 0.3 rem/week; risk-benefit philosophy introduced; limits
for the general public set at 10% of the occupational limit.

1949 Officials in Mayak Chemical Combine at Chelyabinsk, USSR begin
dumping wastes from plutonium production into the Techa River. From
1949 to 1956, 2.75 million curies of radioactivity is dumped into the
river without notifying the townspeople downstream. Some exposed to
doses as high as 350 rem/yr.

1949 Berkelium discovered by G. T. Seaborg, S. G. Tompson, and A.
Ghiorso (United States).

1950 (Jan 21) Truman orders construction of hydrogen bomb.

1950 (Jan)174 Aircraft Factory Kansas, 1 person accidentally exposed
to an x-ray device.

1950 (April 11) Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, B-29 crash kills crew of 13
and high explosive of nuclear weapon burns.

1950 (Aug 17) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg indicted in atom spy case.

1950 Second Tri-Partite Conference on Internal Dosimetry (Buckland
House, Harwell, U.K.)

1950 Californium discovered by G. T. Seaborg, S. G. Tompson, A.
Ghiorso, and K. Street Jr. (United States).

1950 ICRP and ICRU reorganized from pre-war committees and expand
scope of interest beyond medicine.

1950 ICRP adopts basic MPC of 0.3 R/week for radiation workers.

1950s Radium beagle studies in Utah and Davis.

1950s AEC develops regulations for individual radionuclides under
occupational exposure conditions.

1950s Fallout shelters are built as part of major Civil Defense program.

1950-1954 Work with tritium at Hanford includes checks in man.

1950s-1960s Argonne study of Ottawa and La Salle, Illinois radium dial
painters.

1950s-1970 Large scale program at Argonne on toxicity of radium in mice.

1951 (Jan - Feb) Sandstone bomb tests at Nevada Test Site, five air
drops; yield range 1.0 - 22 KT. in the Ranger Series

1951 (April - May) Greenhouse bomb tests at Eniwetok; four tower shots.

1951 (Oct - Nov) Buster-Jangle bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 7 shots
from 0.1 to 31 KT; includes first surface and underground bursts (each
1.2 KT).

1951 (Dec 20) First electricity is generated from atomic power at
EBR-1 Idaho National Engineering Lab, Idaho Falls.

1951 Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility is constructed 16 mi. from
Denver.

1951 Follow-up of Los Alamos plutonium workers begins.

1951 K. Z. Morgan suggests lowering allowable exposure levels of radon.

1951 First organizational recommendations since 1941 for permissible
levels of radionuclides, primarily from NCRP.

1952 (April - June) Tumbler-Snapper bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 8
shots; yields 1 to 31 KT.

1952 (June 2) Reactor criticality accident at Argonne National Labs, 4
persons exposed.

1952 (July 9) Accidental exposure of 1 person to transuranics at Los
Alamos Scientific Labs.

1952 (Oct - Nov) Ivy bomb tests at Pacific Proving Grounds; 2 shots;
includes first hydrogen bomb: "Mike".

1952 (Oct 3) Great Britain explodes its first A-bomb (25 KT) in lagoon
of Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia.

1952 (Oct 31) US explodes the first hydrogen bomb.

1952 (Oct) Operations begin at the Savannah River Plant in Aiken,
South Carolina, with the startup of the heavy water plant.

1952 (Dec 12) Explosion and meltdown at NRX reactor Chalk River,
Ontario, Canada. Future U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thru his
involvement in the US Nuclear Submarine program, is one of the
volunteer workers who participates in the cleanup, going in until he
receives his Maximum Permissible Dose.

1952 Charlie Steen discovers largest underground uranium deposit ever
found in U.S. and begins the uranium boom.

1952 Long-term experiments on thousands of mice with Sr/Y (Argonne).

1952 Follow-up on Ra-224 cases begins.

1952 First beagle injected with radioactive material at Utah.

1952 Synthesis of einsteinium discovered in products of first
thermonuclear test. Kept secret until 1955.

1952 Marinelli studies transport of radium in lung of man (ANL).

1953 (Jan) Experimental reactor criticality accident in USSR, 2
persons exposed, doses of 300 rem and 450 rem external gamma.

1953 (Mar - June) Upshot-Knothole bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 11
shots 0.2 - 61 KT; first firing of nuclear warhead from cannon (15 KT)
and Shot Harry which leads to contamination of St. George, Utah and
the "downwinders".

1953 (June 19) Rosenbergs executed as spies who gave the plans for the
atomic bomb to the USSR.

1953 (Aug 12) USSR explodes its first hydrogen bomb.

1953 (Oct 14 & 26) Operation Totem, British tests, 10 KT and 8 KT
explode at Emu Field test site in South Australia. In Operation Hot
Box, 3 men fly thru mushroom cloud six minutes after detonation of
Totem 1 and receive 10-15 rem.

1953 (Dec Cool Eisenhower delivers "Atoms for Peace" speech to UN
General Assembly.

1953 (Dec 23) Oppenheimer loses security clearance due to contact with
Communists in the '30s (and opposition to H-bomb.)

1953 International Commission on Radiological Units introduces concept
of absorbed dose defining the rad as depositing 100 ergs per gram of
any substance.

1953 Synthesis of fermium. Like einsteinium, it is found in hydrogen
bomb products and is kept secret until 1955.

1953 Argonne Cancer Research Hospital opens.

1953 Third Tri-Partite Conference on Internal Dosimetry (Arden House,
Harriman, NY) sets dose limit of 1.5 rem/yr. to individual members of
the general public; 100 pCi/l of air for radon (12 WL months/yr.).

1953 Production of nuclear weapons triggers begins at Rocky Flats, CO.

1954 (Jan 21) US Navy launches the first nuclear powered submarine,
the U.S.S. Nautilus; capabilities include cruising 62,500 miles
without refueling.

1954 (Feb - May) Castle bomb tests at Pacific Proving Grounds; 6
shots; includes 15 MT "Bravo".

1954 (March 1) US hydrogen bomb test (Castle Bravo) over Bikini
results in fallout over Marshall Islands, contaminates crew of 23 on
Fortunate Dragon 7, 28 US servicemen, and 239 Marshall Islanders.

1954 (June) First electricity generated from nuclear power in USSR in
a five megawatt power station.

1954 (Aug 30) Atomic Energy Act of 1954 passed permits private
ownership of nuclear power.

1954 (Sept 6) Ground broken for Shippingport Atomic Power Station (PA).

1954 (Sept 13) 40,000 USSR soldiers participate in wargame where a
nuclear bomb is detonated at 1,150 feet in the air. Troops sent
immediately into contaminated dust in Totsk, Kazakhstan.

1954 Work on Ra-223, daughter of actinium, and its biological effects
(Berkeley, CA).

1954 Kerr-McGee opens uranium mines in Red Rock, Arizona, employing
100 Navajos.

1954 Indications appear that tissue burdens of uranium in man are
lower than predicted by models (Eisenbud & Quigley).

1954 Radioactive particles receive attention at Hanford.

1954 Utah conference on plutonium, radium, and mesothorium (2nd Annual).

1954 Start-up of Rocky Flats plant (Colorado).
Peaceful Use Era

1955 (Jan 10) AEC announces the Power Demonstration Reactor Program
under which the AEC and industry would cooperate to build and operate
reactors.

1955 (Feb - May) Teapot bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 6 shots;
yields 1 - 43 KT.

1955 (Mar 1) 1 person exposed to fission product fallout at Nevada
Test Site.

1955 (May 14) Wigwam bomb test off west coast of US; 1 deep (2000 ft)
underwater burst of 30 KT.

1955 (July) Arco, Idaho becomes the first U.S. town to be powered by
nuclear energy.

1955 (Aug 8-20) First UN International Conference on Peaceful Uses of
Atomic Energy held in Geneva, Switzerland.

1955 (Nov 22) USSR explodes second hydrogen bomb.

1955 (Nov 29) EBR-1 melts half its fuel rods.

1955 (Dec Cool Melbourne, Australia, 3 persons are accidentally exposed
to a Cs-137 radiography device.

1955 Albert Einstein (born 1879) dies.

1955 Formulation of standards for single exposures by Morgan, Snyder,
& Ford.

1955 United Nations Scientific Committee (UNSCEAR) organized to gather
information, much of it pertinent to standard setting.

1955 Synthesis of mendelevium G. T. Seaborg, S. G. Tompson, A.
Ghiorso, and K. Street Jr. (United States).

1956 (April 30) Los Alamos Scientific Labs accidentally exposes one
person to transuranics.

1956 (Jan 1Cool Reynolds Electric, Las Vegas, NV, 4 persons exposed to
plutonium.

1956 (May - July) Redwing bomb tests at Pacific Proving Grounds; 13
shots; first US airdrop of thermonuclear device (MT range).

1956 (May 16 & June 19) Operation Mosaic, British tests, 15 KT & 98 KT
on Monte Bello Islands in West Australia; cloud contaminates mainland
on second shot.

1956 (June 6) AEC safety study warns against construction of the Fermi
breeder plant.

1956 (July 27) Broken Arrow 1, Lakenheath AFB, UK. US B-47 bomber
catches fire on landing and crashes into nuclear bomb storage igloo. 3
Mark 6 bombs containing 8000 lb. of TNT trigger each threaten to
explode. Fire crew heroically pour foam on igloo instead of trying to
save four trapped fliers.

1956 (Sept - Oct) Operation Buffalo, British tests, 15 KT & 10 KT
tower shots, 3 KT airburst, and 1.5 KT surface detonation at
Maralinga, South Australia.

1956 (Oct 17) First full-size nuclear power plant, Windscale, opened
by Queen Elizabeth II (Britain).

1956 National Academy of Sciences and ICRP recommend lower basic
permissible dose for radiation workers to 5 rad/year.

1956 Indications that uranium may be less toxic to humans than animal
experiments predict --Eisenbud.

1956 Early reports of strontium metabolism in man by Comar, Laszlo, &
Spencer.

1956 Irene Joliot-Curie (born 1897) dies of aplastic anemia.

1957 (Jan 1) US Air Force and AEC pick Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (California) to develop Pluto, a Supersonic Low-Altitude
Missile. Pluto uses a nuclear ramjet to propel itself to Mach 3. Its
reactor, Tory, is designed by Ted Merkle. The missile is planned to
fly under radar and drop hydrogen bombs on the USSR.

1957 (Mar 29) "Study of Some Physical and Biological Aspects of the
Action of High Energy Electrons on Microorganisms." is published by
Michael Reese Hospital. The work, (for the U.S. Army Quartermaster
Corps, is to "be used in developing the high energy electron beam from
the linear accelerator as a tool for the preservation of food by
irradiation

1957 (May - Oct) Plumbbob bomb tests at Nevada Test Site; 24 shots;
including the highest yield shot fired to date in the continental US
("Hood", 74 KT); first deep (790') underground burst ("Ranier", 1.7 KT).

1957 (May 15) First British hydrogen bomb destroys Christmas Island in
South Pacific.

1957 (May 22) Broken Arrow 2, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico; B-36 bomber
mistakenly releases 10 MT Mark 17 hydrogen bomb at 1700 feet over
University of NM land; makes crater 12 ft deep and 25 ft in diameter;
no contamination found.

1957 (July 2Cool C-124 goes down in Atlantic losing two nuclear weapons;
never recovered.

1957 (July) The Sodium Reactor Experiment in Santa Susana, CA.
generates the first power from a civilian nuclear reactor.

1957 (Aug 31) "Smoky" is tested at Nevada test site.

1957 (Sept 1) Eisenhower signs Price-Anderson Amendment to the Atomic
Energy Act to limit liability in case of nuclear industry accident.

1957 (Sept 11) $1 million fire in Building 771at Rocky Flats, CO blows
out all 620 filters and releases unspecified amount of contamination
from the 30 - 45 lb. of burning plutonium.

1957 (Sept 29) Explosion of underground, high-level nuclear waste
storage tank at Mayak Chemical Complex, near Chelyabinsk and Kyshtym
(USSR) in the Urals vents 2 million curies over 15,000 sq. miles.
Population of over 250,000 resettled due to Sr-90 contamination,
10,180 exposed. Possibly the world's worst nuclear accident.

1957 (Sept - Oct) Operation Antler, British tests, 1 KT & 6 KT tower
shots, 25 KT air burst.

1957 (Sept) U.S. sets off first underground nuclear test in a mountain
tunnel in the remote desert 100 miles from Las Vegas, NV.

1957 (Oct 1) UN establishes the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in Vienna, Austria.

1957 (Oct 10-12) Fire at Windscale Pile No. 1 (England) releases I-131
over 200 sq. mi. Contaminated milk dumped into Irish Sea.

1957 (Oct 11) Homestead AFB, Fl., B-47 crashes on landing, kills four
man crew, high explosives on nuclear weapon explode.

1957 (Dec 2) Shippingport, a PWR/LWBR, goes critical in Shippingport,
PA; closed Oct 1982.

1957 NCRP introduces age prorating concept of 5(N-1Cool for occupational
exposure and 0.5 rad/year general public.

1957 American Council of Governmental Industrial Hygienists suggests a
single value for air concentration of both soluble and insoluble
natural uranium.

1957 Wash-740 projects damage from maximum credible nuclear accident.

1957 Nobelium discovered at the Nobel Institute of Physics (Sweden).

1958 (Jan 31) Sidi Slimane, French Morocco, US B-47 crashes with one
nuclear weapon, radioactive contamination spread to asphalt beneath
plane wreckage.

1958 (Mar 11) Broken Arrow 3, Florence, SC, B-47 drops bomb from 14000
ft on garden of Walter Gregg in Mars Bluff, SC makes crater 35 ft deep
and 75 ft across; chemical trigger designed to set off TNT explodes
spreading plutonium contamination.

1958 (April - Aug) Hardtack-Phase I bomb tests at Eniwetok Proving
Grounds; 31 shots; including 2 rockets detonated at high altitudes (up
to 252,000 feet).

1958 (May 22) Construction begins on the world's first nuclear powered
merchant ship, N. S. Savannah, in Camden, NJ. Ship is launched July
21, 1959.

1958 (May 23) NRU experimental reactor at Chalk River (Canada) goes
out of control and releases radioactivity.

1958 (June 16) Oak Ridge National Labs, 8 persons exposed at the Y-12
site during a chemical operations criticality accident.

1958 (June 30) North American Aviation L 47 homogeneous reactor, 5 Wt,
in Canoga Park, CA, is closed.

1958 (June) Alice Stewart publishes first major findings on
carcinogenic effect of diagnostic radiation on children.

1958 (Aug - Sept) Argus Project; detonation of 3 low-yield nuclear
devices in outer space.

1958 (Sept) Troitsk A, a LGR, goes on-line in Troitsk, Chelyabinsk,
RSFSR (USSR); closed 1989.

1958 (Sept - Oct) Hardtack-Phase II at Nevada Test Site; 19 shots;
including underground tests (100' to 850') and some shots dropped from
balloons

1958 (Oct 15) Vinca Yugoslavia 6 persons, reactor criticality accident
(est. doses: 436 rad, 414 rad, 426 rad, 419 rads, 323 rads, 207 rads ).

1958 (Nov 4) Dyess AFB, Texas, B-47 catches fire on take-off; nuclear
weapon's high explosive detonates, blasting crater 35 ft in diameter
and 6 ft deep; nuclear materials recovered near crash site; one killed
in crash.

1958 (Nov 1Cool Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment Facility, National
Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, suffers extensive fuel damage and
releases radioactive material.

1958 (Nov 26) Chennault AFB, Lake Charles, LA, B-47 catches fire on
the ground, one nuclear weapon destroyed, contaminates wreckage.

1958 (Dec 30) Los Alamos Scientific Lab, 3 persons exposed during a
chemical operations criticality accident.

1958 Frederic Joliot-Curie (born 1900) dies.

1958 Construction begins on Dresden #1.

1958 Reprocessing plant criticality at Los Alamos, NM kills 1.

1958 Bureau of Radiological Health organized within US Public Health
Service.

1958 Stannard proposes that lung be regarded as a moderately
radiosensitive organ.

1958 Synthesis of nobelium.

1959 (Feb 17) High levels of Sr-90 reported in US milk and in
children's bones.

1959 (Apr) Marcoule G2, a GCR, goes on-line in Marcoule, Gard
(France); closed Feb 1980.

1959 (July 6) Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, C-124 crashes on take-off,
catches fire and destroys nuclear weapon, spreading contamination
below the weapon.

1959 (July 26) AEC's Sodium Reactor Experiment reactor, Santa Barbara,
CA, 10 of 43 fuel assemblies damaged due to lack of heat transfer,
releases contamination.

1959 (Oct) Dresden-1 Nuclear Power Station in Illinois achieves a
self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It is the first US nuclear
powerplant built entirely without government funding.

1959 (Nov) Chemical explosion disperses 15 g of plutonium at Oak
Ridge, TN.

1959 (Dec) Troitsk B, an LGR, goes on-line in Troitsk, Chelyabinsk
(USSR); closed 1989.

1959 Leaking waste drums discovered at Rocky Flats, CO. Radioactive
oils from drums flow into soil, contaminating farmlands east of plant.

1959 ICRP 1 published (superseded by ICRP 26).

1959 Large feeding experiment with Sr-90 begins with miniature swine
at Hanford.

1959 Tri-State Leukemia Survey begun in NY, Minnesota, & Maryland.

1959 Report of Committees 2 of NCRP and ICRP on occupational limits
for exposure to radionuclides. Utilizes dual system; uses effects
directly for radium and bases other bone seekers on it; uses the
computational approach for all others using external radiation effects
as basis.

1959 Federal Radiation Council (FRC) formed to advise the US President
about radiation matters, especially standards. Series of reports issued.

1960 (Feb 13) France explodes its first A-bomb.

1960 (Mar Cool Niagara Falls, NY (Lockport Air Force Base), 9 persons
exposed to radiation from a radar klystron tube.

1960 (Mar 15) Gen. Dynamics CIRGA Zirconium Hydride Mod., 25 Wt, in
San Diego, CA is closed.

1960 (Mar 29) U. of Wisconsin, 12 people are accidentally exposed to
radiation from a Co-60 source.

1960 (April 3) Waltz Mill, test reactor outside Pittsburgh, PA melts
one fuel element.

1960 (May) Marcoule G3, a GCR, goes on-line in Marcoule, Gard
(France); closed July 1984.

1960 (June 7-Cool Jackson, New Jersey, BOMARC missile catches fire,
unknown amount of plutonium released to atmosphere.

1960 (June Cool 19-yr. old commits suicide with 10 Ci. Cs-137 source;
exposure time 20 hr.; death 18 days later (USSR).

1960 (July) Dresden #1 goes online, first BWR, 700 MWt, manufactured
by GE, in Morris, Ill; closed Oct 31,1978.

1960 (Sept 1) Lockheed pool-type reactor, 10 Wt, in Dawson Co.,
Georgia, is closed.

1960 (Nov Cool Sandia National Lab, NM 2 persons accidentally exposed to
radiation from a Van de Graaf accelerator.

1960 (Nov 2Cool Six men soaked with reactor coolant from USS Nautilus
docked at Portsmouth, NH; dosimeters and contaminated clothing thrown
away.

1960 (Nov 9) Patient swallows 2.03 millicuries of radium-226; calcium
DTPA given as therapy, dies Aug 1965 from permanent blood changes (USSR).

1960 Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station, 600 MWt, PWR, goes on line in
Rowe, Mass. closed Oct 1, 1991.

1960 Miniature swine at Hanford enter radioiodine experiment.

1960 First series of BEAR reports issued by NAS-NRC. Does not address
standards directly but contains much pertinent information.

1960 ICRP 3 "Report of Committee III on Protection Against X-rays up
to Energies of 3 MeV and Beta- and Gamma-rays from Sealed Sources"
published.

1960s Metabolism of americium and radiocalcium in rat (Durbin at
Berkeley).

1960s Large effort at Oak Ridge on trace elements in human tissue.

1960s Beginning of population radiation exposure standards.

1960s AEC develops elaborate code of Federal Regulations for
radionuclide exposure (10CFR20). Patterned after 1959 ICRP/NCRP
reports but adds population exposure limits by use of a scaling factor.

1960-1961 First two reports from FRC on basic radiation protection
guides. Introduces formally the concept of balancing risks and benefits.

1961 (Jan 3) Prompt criticality accident at SL-1 US Army reactor in
Idaho Falls kills three. Recovery efforts expose 47 persons.

1961 (Jan 29) Broken Arrow 4, Goldsboro, NC B-52 crashes, 24 MT bomb
is one interlock away from detonating, hole 50 ft deep and 3 acres in
area excavated to look for portion of one weapon, 4 million cu. ft. of
earth removed.

1960s AEC develops elaborate code of Federal Regulations for
radionuclide exposure (10CFR20). Patterned after 1959 ICRP/NCRP
reports but adds population exposure limits by use of a scaling factor.

1961 (May 11) Mound EG$G Miamisburg, OH, 1 person involved in
plutonium exposure.

1961 (June) Walter Reuther releases study of forty reactor accidents,
arguing against construction of Fermi breeder.

1961 (June 12) US Supreme Court gives Fermi breeder go ahead to begin
construction.

1961 (June 1Cool Reactor LOCA on the first USSR nuclear missile
submarine, the K-19. Fourteen crew members allegedly die from
radiation exposure rigging a provisional cooling system using a
reserve tank and pipes cut off one of the torpedoes. The welding took
90 minutes. Capt. Nikolai Zateyev reported that "the ones who got
radiation doses began to swell visibly. Their faces grew red. After
two hours, watery discharges came from the roots of their hair. Soon
it became frightening to look at their eyes and swollen lips. They
were completely disfigured. Hardly able to move their tongues, they
complained of pain in the entire body." Eight officers and sailors
died within days, six more died within the next several years.

1961 (June 22) Nuclear Dev. Corp. of America Crit. Ex., 100 Wt, in
Pawling, NY, is closed.

1961 (Sept 1) USSR resumes nuclear testing.

1961 (Sept 15) US resumes underground testing.

1961 (Sept) President Kennedy advises Americans to build bomb shelters.

1961 (Oct 3) USSR explodes a 58 megaton hydrogen bomb in the air over
Novaya Zemla. Largest weapon ever exploded in history.

1961 (Oct 20) Ohio Rad Lab, Miamisburg, OH, 1 person involved in
polonium exposure.

1961 (Oct 21) Oak Ridge National Labs, TN, accident at X-10 site
exposes 1 person to fission products.

1961 (Nov 25) US Navy commissions world's largest ship, the U.S.S.
Enterprise, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

1961 Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons is resumed as well; over
100 detonations occurred before the treaty was signed

1961 First documented cases of dumping of radioactive waste into the
Barents Sea (north of Finland) by USSR navy vessels.

1961 Synthesis of lawrencium by A.H. Ghiorso, T. Sikkeland, A. E.
Larsh, R. M. Latimer (United States).

1961 Federal Regulations adopted in Title 10 Code of Federal
Regulations, Part 20.

1961 20 aged volunteers receive injections with radium in and thorium
in Boston, MA. Potential doses well above occupational limits. No
follow-up done.

1962 FRC Report No. 3 on the health implications of fallout.

1962 Congressional hearings on fallout.

1962 (Apr 7) Hanford, Washington, 22 persons accidentally exposed in a
chemical operations criticality.

1962 (June 19) Test-shot Starfish, 1.4 MT explosion 400 km. above
mid-Pacific, launched from US Johnston Island.

1962 (July 25) Test-shot Bluefish Prime; missile blows up on pad,
warhead detonated by radio spreading contamination over the pad.

1962 (July 25) Mayaguez, PR, 10 persons exposed in a reactor
criticality accident.

1962 (Oct 7) Antarctica, Nukey Poo reactor has hydrogen fire in
containment.

1962 (Nov 20) AEC submits a "Report to the President on Civilian
Nuclear Power."

1962 (Nov) Berkeley 1, a GCR, goes on-line in Berkeley, Gloucester
(Britain); closed Mar 1989.

1962 (Nov) Berkeley 2, a GCR, goes on-line in Berkeley, Gloucester
(Britain); closed Oct 1988.

1962 Neils Bohr (born 1885) dies.

1963 (Jan 11) Sanlian, PR China, 6 persons are exposed to a Co-60
source in home (5-9 days) acute radiation syndrome , deaths of two in
11 to 12 days despite bone marrow transplant, amputation of LT. leg of
one survivor 5 years post accident.

1963 (Jan) Indian Point 1, a 615 MWt PWR, goes on-line in Buchanan,
NY; closed Oct 31,1974.

1963 (Apr 10) Nuclear submarine USS Thresher sinks in North Atlantic.

1963 (Apr 24) Westinghouse CVTR Mockup, Heavy Water, 3 KWt, in Waltz
Mill, PA is closed.

1963 (June 13) Construction begins at first commercial reprocessing
facility, West Valley.

1963 (July 1) Oak Ridge Research Reactor, Oak Ridge (Tenn.) melts part
of an element releasing 1000 curies of fission products.

1963 (Aug) Humboldt Bay 3, a BWR, goes on-line in Eureka, CA; closed
July 2, 1976.

1963 (Aug) US and USSR sign Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits
underwater, atmospheric, and outer space nuclear tests. More than 100
countries eventually ratify the treaty.

1963 (Nov 13) Medina Base, San Antonio (TX), 123,000 lb. of high
explosives on nuclear weapons catch fire.

1963 (Nov) Hallam, a LMGMR, goes on-line in Hallam, Nebraska; closed
Sept 1964.

1963 (Dec 9) Vallecitos, a GE BWR, 50 MWt, in Alameda County, CA, closed.

1963 FRC Report No. 4 on estimates and evaluation of fallout in the
United States through 1962.

1963 Second Congressional hearing including Radiation Standards and
fallout.

1963 Radium-224 added to Utah beagle experiment.

1963-70 64 volunteer prisoners receive testicular irradiation at
Washington State Prison; exposures from 7 to 400 roentgen.

1963-1971 67 volunteer prisoners receive testicular irradiation at
Oregon State Prison; exposures from 8 to 600 roentgens.

1964 (Jan) Latina, a GCR, goes on-line in Borgo Sabotino, Latina
(Italy); closed Dec 1987.

1964 (Jan) Louisiana Pipeline, 2 persons are accidentally exposed to
an Ir-192 radiography source.

1964 (Feb) Chinon A1, a GCR, goes on-line in Chinon, Indre-et-Loire
(France); closed April 1973.

1964 (Mar) Hunterston A1, a GCR, goes on-line in Ayrshire, Strathclyde
(Britain); closed Mar 1990.

1964 (Apr 21) US satellite disintegrates over Madagascar and releases
17,000 Ci of plutonium into the atmosphere from a SNAP-9.

1964 (Apr) Beloyarskiy 1, an LGR, goes on-line in Zarechnyy,
Sverdlovsk, RSFSR (USSR); closed 1983.

1964 (June) Garigliano, a BWR, goes on-line in Sessa Aurunca, Campania
(Italy); closed Mar 1982.

1964 (June 12) Rocky Flats, Golden, Co, 1 person accidentally exposed
in a plutonium glove box explosion.

1964 (July 10) Hanford, WA, 1 person accidentally exposed during
plutonium explosion.

1964 (July 24) 38 year old worker at uranium recovery plant, United
Nuclear Corp., Wood River, RI, receives 8800 rad, 2200 of which is
neutrons; dies 49 hours after accident of central nervous system
failure. 6 other persons exposed in the criticality accident.

1964 (Aug) BONUS, a BWR, goes on-line in Rincon, Puerto Rico; closed
June 1968.

1964 (Sept 29) South Bay Hospital Redondo Beach, CA, 2 persons are
exposed to an x-ray misapplication.

1964 (Sept) Hunterston A2, a GCR, goes on-line in Ayrshire,
Strathclyde (Britain); closed Dec 1989.

1964 (Oct 3) US nuclear warships, Enterprise, Long Beach, and
Bainbridge complete "Operation Sea Orbit," an around the world cruise
without logistic support of any kind.

1964 (Oct 16) China explodes its first A-bomb.

1964 (Dec Cool Bunker Hill AFB, Peru (Indiana) B-58 catches fire,
portions of nuclear weapons burn contaminating crash site.

1964 (Dec) Novovoronezhskiy 1, a PWR, goes on-line in Novovoronezh,
Voronexh, RSFSR (USSR); closed 1988.

1964 ICRP 4 "Report of Committee IV on Protection Against X-rays
Electromagnetic Radiation Above 3 MeV and Electrons, Neutrons and
Protons" published.

1964 ICRP 5 "Report on Committee V in the Handling and Disposal of
Radioactive Materials in Hospitals and Medical Research
Establishments" published (superseded by ICRP 25).

1964 ICRP 6 published as a revision to ICRP 1 (superseded by ICRP 26).

1964 FRC introduces the concept of protective action guide (PAG) and
average annual limits of 170 mrem/year to "critical segment" of
general population.

1964-1965 In the Gulf of Abrosimov off Novaya Zemlya, USSR, eight
naval reactors are dumped into the sea, including three with fuel
still intact.

1964-1979 Repeated rupture (burning) of the fuel assemblies of the
core of Beloyarsk 1 (USSR) lead to overexposures in trying to repair
core.

~~~~~~

There is NO LIMIT to the amount of time a given exposure will last in your body.
_________________
The Shadowy Group, bringing

you the.... BEST... In

BEAVER PRODUCTS

For over 200 Years...!!!

~~~~~

Our Motto: We DO give a dam!!!

Opinions posted on Free Dominion are those of the individual posters and are not necessarily the opinion of Free Dominion or its operators. Free Dominion does not advocate violence, hate speech or an overthrow of the government.

Posted: 07/ 15/ 04 10:42 pm Post subject:

This is a BAD thing...!!!

Shocked

Los Alamos Halts All of Its Classified Research After Data Vanishes
By KENNETH CHANG

Published: July 16, 2004

After the disappearance last week of two removable data storage devices, officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory yesterday announced a halt to classified research while they conduct an inventory of sensitive data.

The halt affects the majority of work at Los Alamos, one of the nation's two nuclear weapons research laboratories.
Advertisement
Free IQ Test

The loss of the storage devices was discovered July 7 during preparations to run an experiment in the laboratory's weapons physics division. The devices have not been found.

The security lapse comes as the contract for managing Los Alamos goes out to bid. The University of California has run Los Alamos since it was founded during World War II, but the secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, decided last year to seek competing bids after the discovery that some employees had spent thousands of dollars of laboratory funds on personal items. At the time, Mr. Abraham criticized the laboratory for "systematic management failure" in its business procedures.

In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Abraham was similarly harsh on the laboratory's handling of classified information.

"The investigation to date indicates widespread disregard of security procedures by laboratory employees," Mr. Abraham said. "This is absolutely unacceptable. While our first priority must be to locate the missing material, the government will insist that the University of California, which operates Los Alamos, ensures that the laboratory take strong measures to correct the systematic flaws that allowed this problem to occur."

Conducting the inventory will take at least several days, said Kevin Roark, a laboratory spokesman. Employees involved in classified research will also repeat training on laboratory procedures and policies on handling sensitive data on floppy disks, CD-ROM's, memory cards and other removable data storage devices.

Officials declined to say what kind of storage devices were missing or whether the data involved nuclear weapons research.

The Department of Energy will soon release a request for proposals for running Los Alamos after the University of California's current contract ends in September 2005.
_________________
The Shadowy Group, bringing

you the.... BEST... In

BEAVER PRODUCTS

For over 200 Years...!!!

~~~~~

Our Motto: We DO give a dam!!!

Opinions posted on Free Dominion are those of the individual posters and are not necessarily the opinion of Free Dominion or its operators. Free Dominion does not advocate violence, hate speech or an overthrow of the government.

Posted: 09/ 22/ 04 8:51 pm Post subject: Nuclear weapons: Can they be stopped?

BBC SEZ:

Nuclear weapons: Can they be stopped?
By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Nuclear technology is now so widespread that it is only political will which stops many countries from making nuclear weapons.

Preliminary installation of a turbo generator at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant
Iran denies it wants to build nuclear weapons

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear regulatory body the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said recently that 40 countries could make the bomb if they wanted to.

The reason for this is that the technology legally used to enrich uranium to make fuel for nuclear power can easily be developed to make material for nuclear weapons.

A country could do this in secret or withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and do it anyway.

This is the Achilles' heel of the NPT - an agreement designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons while allowing countries access to nuclear power.

But if even only one or two of them go nuclear, or are thought to be doing so, it could bring tension and even war into their regions.

We are determined to use every resource at our disposal
US Under Secretary John Bolton

The United States has not ruled out the use of military action to prevent proliferation.

The US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton wrote in the Financial Times earlier this month:

"We are determined to use every resource at our disposal - using diplomacy regularly, economic pressure when it makes a difference, active law enforcement when appropriate and military force when we must."

Such a policy can be expected to continue under a second Bush administration. A President Kerry would probably be more cautious about the use of force.

Take Iran and North Korea, the two countries currently in the frame.

Iran

Iran says that it intends to enrich uranium to make fuel, claiming its right to do so. It is defying a demand from the IAEA for it to suspend its plan and await fuller inspections.

The US and others, including Britain, demand that Iran abandon enrichment altogether on the grounds that it cannot be trusted.

If Israel thought that Iran was using its enrichment capability to build a bomb, which Iran says it is not, it might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel will certainly not give Iran the benefit of any doubt.

Only this week, reports emerged that the US was supplying Israel with 500 "bunker-busting" bombs which would be useful in any such attack. Israel has already started a diplomatic and media campaign to publicise its fears of Iranian intentions.

North Korea

North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and is said by British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell, who visited the country recently, to have produced possibly two nuclear devices already. Talks have so far failed to make it change its mind.

Anti-US demonstrators in Pyongyang
North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to check US aggression

"A North Korean nuclear weapon could tip Japan and South Korea into making their own," said Dr Gary Samore, Senior Fellow for Non-Proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a former official in the Clinton administration.

It would also force a second Bush administration to decide whether to keep talking, to reluctantly accept a nuclear North Korea and impose sanctions, or try to destroy its nuclear plants.

The risk of that is great. It could start a general war on the Korean peninsula.

Tightening the Treaty

There is a move afoot to tighten the NPT which is reviewed every five years. The next review is in 2005.

Libya is now held up as an example of how a rogue nuclear state can be brought back into the international fold
The Bush administration has proposed a number of Treaty amendments, the most important of which would stop the spread of enrichment technology.

"The first proposal would close the loophole in the Treaty that allows states such as Iran and North Korea to pursue fissile material for nuclear weapons under peaceful cover.

"Enrichment and reprocessing plants would be limited to those states that now possess them," John Bolton told a nuclear conference earlier this year.

Another proposal would prevent the sale of nuclear fuel to countries without a rigorous inspection regime.

However, Washington is not relying on the NPT being made to work more effectively.

"Counter-proliferation"

It has initiated a much more active campaign which it calls "counter-proliferation."

Statistically, the treaty is doing OK
Dr Gary Samore

It has formed the "Proliferation Security Initiative" with like-minded countries.

Sometimes called an "action not an organisation", the PSI is aimed at disrupting the sale and shipments of nuclear components, if necessary by interceptions at sea.

The US has also got the Security Council to pass Resolution 1540 which insists that member states tighten procedures to try to stop what are called "non state actors" i.e. rogue scientists from selling their wares and expertise.

The A Q Khan network

One such rogue scientist was Dr A Q Khan, the "father " of the Pakistani bomb, who was found to be transferring his expertise, certainly to Libya and possibly to Iran.

Pakistani nuclear-capable missiles
Pakistan began its nuclear programme in the 1970s

An interception of some his equipment on the way to Libya took place last year when a charter ship was diverted to an Italian port.

Libya subsequently renounced its secret nuclear programme and has been rewarded by the lifting of sanctions.

Libya is now held up as an example of how a rogue nuclear state can be brought back into the international fold.

NPT flaws

Non-nuclear and strongly anti-nuclear countries like New Zealand point to two further flaws in the NPT.

They complain that the nuclear powers accepted as such under the NPT (the US, Soviet Union (now Russia), China, Britain and France) have not worked for total nuclear disarmament as they are supposed to and as they re-committed themselves to at the last NPT review meeting in 2000.

This leads to claims that the NPT is a club used by the powerful, especially the US, to keep down the weak.

The other flaw is that a number of nuclear powers are not members of the NPT. These are Israel, India and Pakistan. They are therefore free of restrictions. Iran for one says that this unfair and that Israel should be forced to give up its nuclear weapons.

Israel in turn claims that it is in special peril.

India and Pakistan argue that if the US and others have weapons for defence and proclaim the value of the nuclear deterrence, then so should they.

However, the failure to bring them into the NPT has tempted others to join them outside. North Korea has done so.

And successes

However, there have been non-proliferation successes.

South Africa and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. The whole of South America remains nuclear-free.

"The number of countries in the NPT which have pursued nuclear weapons is very small. Libya has given up. North Korea has left. That leaves the question of Iran, " said Dr Samore.

"Statistically, the treaty is doing OK," he said.

Posted: 04/ 17/ 05 10:13 am Post subject:

" Guam, you see, is probably the most contaminated island in the world that are military is responsible for. "

CLOSE.....

But, no seegar...!!!

Check out Johnston Atoll & Sand Island....

or, perhaps the MARSHALL ISLANDS:

Marshall Islands 1946-1996

(454.4498) WISE Amsterdam

1944
February - US forces capture Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, from the japanese. Americans recruit Marshallese living on outer islands of Kwajalein lagoon as labours in support of war effort.

1945
July 16 - at 5:29 am, Trinity, the forst test of an atomic bomb, takes place at Alomogordo, New Mexico, US.

August - on the 6th, US drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It is estimated by Japanese that 140,000 died by december, 1945, as a result of the bomb. Three days later the second bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. About 70,000 died by december, 1945, as a result of the bomb. On the 10th Japan surenders to the US: The end of World War II.

November - American military and political leaders begin planning nuclear experiments for further development of nuclear weapons. Two tests, codename Operation Crossroads, planned to test effects of atomic explosions on naval vessels. Search begun for an appropriate site.

1946
January - Navy officials in Washington, D.C. announce that Bikini atoll, in the Marshall islands, fulfills all climatic and geographical requirements for Operation Crossroads.

February 10 - Bikinis first relocation accomplished swiftly and with little planning. Military governour of the Marshalls obtains consent of Bikini's paramount chief for the relocation, informing that the scientists were experimenting with nuclear devices "... for the good of mankind and to end all world wars." After deliberation, the Bikini's consent to move, but have no real alternative other than submission to US plans.

March 7 - 166 Bikinians move from Bikini to unhabited Rongerik Atoll, almost 100 miles east, whose 17 islands barely contained one-half square mile of dry land. Already two month later they express anxiety over the resources and make the first of many requests to return home.

June - Operation Crossroads begins at Bikini Atoll. It includes two atomic bomb blasts - Able (june 30) and Baker (july 24). About 250 ships, more than 150 aircraft for transport and observation, and 40,000 military, scientific and technical personnel are eventually involved in Operation Crossroads.

December - Bikinians situation on Rongerik worsens. Food shortages occur during the winter month of 1946/47.

1947
June - Military govanor appoints investigation board to look into Bikinians plight. In meeting with the people, they report that there is insufficiant food, the store is bankrupt, fresh water supplies are low, and the atoll has only one brackfish well. The Bikinians suggest Kili Atoll as a possible relocation site.
I hate living on Ebeye, it's a terrible life here. I'd much rather be living on Mejato with my family. But I've been so ill and now the doctors can't find what's wrong with me - they tell me I have to live here to be near a hospital and so I can get a flight to Honululu if I need to quickly. I hope to move away one day but right now I don't dare. I'm afraid.
Lijon Eknilang from Rongelap. She had seven miscarriages and suffers from a thyroid tumor.

July - The Marshall Islands, along with the Caroline and Mariana Islands, formerly under a League of Nations mandate to the Japanese, become the United States Trust territory of the Pacific unter the United Nations. Military gouvernment ends, but Navy given authority for the new administartion until it can be transferes to a civil agency.
The situation on Rongerik further deteriorates. A medical officer, after visiting Rongerik, reports the the Bikinians were "visibly suffering from malnutrition."

October 17 - Navy officials announce the Bikinians will be moved to Ujelang, the western-most atoll in the Marshalls.

November 22 - Ten Bikinians and twenty Seabees go to Ujelang to begin construction of a new village.

December - On 2nd Washinton officials announce that Enewetak Atoll is to be used for a second series of nuclear tests, and that its inhabitants must be moved immidiatly. On 21st the people of Enewetak are quickly relocated to Ujelang Atoll, which has only one fourth the land area of Enewetak, and has a much smaller lagoon - 25 square miles compared to Enewetaks 390 square miles.
Bikinians remain an Rongerik Atoll, despite having build housing at Ujelang.

1948
January - The high commiciner of the trust territory requests an independent survey of the Rongerik situation by University of Hawaii anthropoligist Dr. Leonard Mason.

February 4 - A medical officer an food are flown to ronegik. After their examination, the doctor states their condition to be that of starving people.

March 14 - Bikinis are evacuated from Rongerik and are sent to a temporary camp on Kwajalein. The Rongerik resettlement lasted two years and one week.

April - Operation Sandstone begins on Enewetak. This series includes 3 atomic tests, on april 14, april 30 and may 14.
Search begins for alternative resettlement sites for the Bikinians. One June 1, they vote two to one in favor for Kili Atoll, uninhabited former Japanese copra plantation, over Wotje Atoll, inhabited and controlled by former paramount chief.

September - Advance party of 24 Bikini men and eight Seabees arrive on Kili and begin construction of a new village.

November 2 - The total Bikini community arrives on Kili. The disadvantages of the island include a lack of a lagoon and protected anchorage, and the heavy winter surf which isolates and halts offshore fishing from november to late spring. Kili has advantages of good agriculturesoil and stands of quality coconut trees for copra export.

1950
April - Operation Greenhouse begins at Enewetak; this series includes 4 atomic tests: on April 7 & 20, May 8 and 24.

1951
January - The 40 foot ship provided for the Bikinians by the administration washes into Kili reef by the heavy surf and sinks with a full load of copra. (Because of rough seas and a shortage of vessels, food supplies on Kili run critically low on more than one occasion from 1951 to 1953. At one point the situation becomes so critical that an air drop of emergancy rations is required).

January - The Marshallese labour camp on Kwajalein (about 500 people) is relocated to the island of Ebeye, 3 three miles away.

July 1 - The Navy administration of the Trust territory is replaced by the US-Departement of the Interior.

1952
Operation Ivy begins at Enewetak, includig the first thermo-nuclear bomb test, Mike (October 31) estimated at 10.4 megatons and King (November 15), a "high yield" atomic test. "Mike" blast vaporizes Elugelap Island, and leaves a crater one mile in diameter and 175 feet deep in the coral reef. The mushroom cloud rises to 130,000 feet in just 15 minutes.

1954
The population on the island of Ebeye, a 66 acre island less than a mile long and 650 feet wide, grows to 1000 people as the Kwajalein base offers employment for 220 Marshallese.

February - The US gouvernment informs the chief of rongelap that a hydrogen bomb test is going to be carried out soon, but does not inform him of any precautionary measures to take.

March - Operation castle begins at Bikini and Enewetak with six atomic tests. The series includes Bravo, largest thermonuclear bomb at 15 megatons, and five other blasts, all in the high yield range, 100 kilotons and above.

March 1 - "Bravo" exploded at Bikini at 6:45 am. Despite an incomplete and somewhat alarming report concerning the winds above Bikini, the decision is made t proceed with the test. Winds from sea level to 55,000 feet were generally heading east or northeast, in the direction of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utirik, all inhabited atolls.
The Bravo detonation creates a blinding flash of light followed by a fireball that shoots upward at the rate of 300 miles an hour. Within 10 minutes the giant nuclear cloud reaches more than 100,000 feet (21.6 miles). Winds several hundred miles per hour at the center an 70 to 100 miles an hour at the blast's edge rock the placid lagoon like a full scale typhoon.
Joint task force Seven ships are located in monitoring positions about 30 miles from the blast, in what was expected to be an upwind position. Within minutes after the explosion, Radiation Safety (RadSafe) personel see the unexpected movement of the cloud, and the ships begin to record a steady increase in radiation levels. All personnel are ordered below decks, and hatches and watertight doors are sealed. The ships proceed due south away from the danger zone.
Approximately one and a half hous after the blast, a "gritty, white ash" begins to fall on the 22 fisherman aboard the Japanese fishing vessel "Lucky Dragon", which was in the waters near Bikini. The fishermen were unaware that the ash was fallout from a nuclear test. In three days they begin to experience the affects of acute radiation exposure: itching of the skin, nausea, and vomiting. Two weeks after their exposure, they arrive in Japan. Within two years the Japanese gouvernment recieves $2 million in compensation from the US for the Lucky Dragon's exposure.
Radsafe personnel stationed on Rongerik increase observations following news of the nuclear cloud's erratic behavior. Approximately 7 hours after detonation, radiation exceeds monitoring instrument's maximum scale of 100 milirads per hour. taking strict radiation precautions, all personnel put on extra clothing and remain inside tightly shut building. Within 34 hours after the "Bravo" explosion, all personnel put on extra clothing and remain inside tightly shut building. Within 34 hours after the "Bravo" explosion, all 28 Americans are removed from Rongerik.
Four to six hours after the blast, a white, snow-like ash begins to fall on the people living on Rongelap and the 18 Rongelapese on Ailingnae, about 100 miles east of Bikini. The white dust soon forms a layer on the island an inch and a half thick. The fallout is also carried into the drinking water catchments. Later that day, personnel go to Rongelap, find the radiation levels dangerously high, and tell the people not to drink the water. They then leave to report their findings.

Unlike the Americans stationed on Rongerik, the People of Rongelap were not told of any precautionary measures to protect themselves from the fallout. About 24 hours after the Americas were evacuated from Rongerik, ships from the Seventh Fleet arrive at Rongelap and Ailingnae to remove the people. It has been more than two days since the people were initially exposed to the radioactive fallout.

Utirik Atoll, about 275 miles east of Bikini, is the last to experience the fallout from the "Bravo" blast. The Fallout beings about 22 hours after the test, and is described as "mist-like". The 157 islanders on Utirik are removed by the Navy three days and six hours after "Bravo".

March 5 - Many of the exposed people, having all been evacuated to Kwajalein, begin experiencing symptoms of acute radiation exposure: itching and burning of the skin, eyes and mouth, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. During the month, the second stage of radiation exposure begins to be felt: hair on the heads of many people wholly or partially falls out, the skin 'burns' begin appearing on the necks, shoulders, arms and feet of the more heavily exposed.
According to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) approximately 90% of the exposed Rongelap people suffer from skin lesions and loss of hair, beginning about two weeks after exposure.
The maximum permissible dose per week of radiation to the thyroid gland is set at 0.3 rems. According to the AEC, the exposed children on Rongelap received a dose of 500 to 1,400 rads to the thyroid gland, or 1000 to 2000 times more than the maximum permissible dose.

May - After initial examination, Rongelapese resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro Atoll, because high radiation levels on Rongelap prevent their return. They are examined by AEC medical teams in September, 1954, and in March 1955, 1956 and 1957.
Utirik people, receiving what AEC officials term "small" amounts of radioactive fallout from "Bravo" test (at 14 rads), return to Utirik from Kwajalein. AEC states "their island was only slightly contaminated and considered safe for habitation."

1956
Operation Redwing begins at Enewetak and Bikini, and includes 13 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. "Cherokee" blast listed as "several megatons."

September - Enewetakese, who had received NO compensation for use of their home atoll, are offered $25,000 in cash and a trust fund of $150,000 with semi-annual interest payments, by the U.S. government. The people, faced with difficult living conditions on Ulelang Atoll, accept offer.

November - Bikini people sign agreement giving the U.S. government "full use rights to Bikini Atoll until such time as it determines it will no longer be necessary to occupy and use the said Atoll." In return the Bikinians are given "full use rights" to Kili Island and several islands in Jaluit Atoll and $25,000 in cash and a $300,000 trust fund yielding semi-annual interest payments of $4,972.50 (approximately $15 per capita) - to be divided among the Bikinians living on Kili.

1957
July - AEC radiological survey states that "in spite of slight lingering radioactivity" Rongelap Atoll is safe for habitation. People move back to Rongelap from Majuro Atoll, after three year exile. (In 1971 a Japanese medical survey team reported: "Our conclusion concerning the human test on the people of Rongelap is that it was a great mistake to permit the people of Rongelap to return to their island in July, 1957 without sufficient work having been done to remove radioactive pollution from the island.")

1958
January - Typhoon Ophelia causes great destruction on Jaluit and other southern atolls. All Bikinians living on Jaluit have to move back to Kili as colony site becomes uninhabitable. Still births and miscarriages among exposed Rongelap women more than twice the rate of unexposed Marshallese women (for first four years only, following exposure in 1954). Operation Hardtack (Phase 1) begun at Enewetak and Bikini, largest and final test series conducted in the Marshalls. Series includes 29 nuclear tests, and two blasts of megaton strength near Johnston Island. Following Operation Hardtack, U.S. concludes nuclear testing program in the Marshalls, after more than 60 announced atomic and hydrogen bomb tests at Enewetak and Bikini. More than $2.5 billion spent during the testing program in the Marshalls, begun in 1946.

1960
Kwajalein converted from Naval Air Station to part of the Army's new Pacific Missile Range.
During winter months, field trip vessels unable to provide adequate service to Kili Island; Bikinians face food shortages again.

1961
Army's Pacific Missile Range at Kwajalein completed. Kwajalein lagoon becomes target for Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles fired from California. Because of increased job opportunities for Marshallese at the missile range, population on Ebeye continues to expand.
A report for the AEC by Dr. Robert Conard (of Brookhaven National Laboratory) shows that after the exposed people of Rongelap were returned to their island in July, 1957, their body burden of radioactivity rapidly increased. In 1961 it was recorded by the AEC that their body levels of radioactive cesium rose 60 fold, zinc rose 8-fold and strontium-90 rose 6-fold.
Last month we had three suicides. Being the chief executive of Kwajalein Atoll Development Cooperation and the mayor of Ebeye and the one responsible for the wellbeing of these people, I'd rather they went to the US and learned some new things, learned how to be themselves, rather than stay here and commit suicide in my face. Once again someone comes to wake me at 2 a.m. to tell me there's been another suicide. [...] I would rather our young people went to fight a justified war on behalf of the US than fought against themselves here over a can of beer or bottle of rum.
Alvin Jacklick, 1987

1963
Polio epidemic throughout the northern Marshall Islands, caused by a case in American population at Kwajalein. 196 cases of severe residual paralysis secondary to polio were recorded among the 18,000 inhabitants of the Marshalls, although polio vaccine had been discovered 8 years earlier. The attack rate in the U.S. is about one patient with severe residual paralysis per 1,000 infections of polio.

1964
First thyroid tumors begin appearing among radiation-exposed Rongelap people - also, a higher than average level of growth retardation among young Rongelap children. A 99-year lease for Kwajalein Island (750 acres) signed by Kwajalein landowners, Army Command and Trust Territory. Lease provides compensation of $500 per acre for past use (since the end of WWII) and $500 per acre for future use. An additional payment of $40 per month is provided for each of the original 148 Mid-Corridor residents relocated by the Army to Ebeye in 1964. "Mid-Corridor" refers to central two-thirds of Kwajalein lagoon required by Army for its missile testing. (Marshallese Congressman Ataji Balos stated in 1976, "The people of Kwajalein do not recognize the validity of that lease. When it was negotiated, the Army promised to help the people of Ebeye with social and economic problems. So did the Trust Territory. That lease was signed on the basis of those promises. Those promises have not been kept.")

1965
July - Congress of Micronesia, a territory wide legislative body modeled on the U.S. Congress, holds first session after being created by an executive order in 1964.

1966
January - Ex gratia payment by U.S. government of about $950,000 for injuries resulting from radioactive fallout. ($10,800 per capita.) In a 1966 film entitled "Return to Bikini," the AEC says the island has returned "almost to normal" when in fact it is covered with thickly entangled scrub weeds, and debris from the nuclear testing program.

June - New England Journal of Medical Science reports that the death rate among Marshallese exposed to radiation was 13.0 per thousand compared with 8.3 for the Marshalls as a whole, in the 12 years following the "Bravo" test in 1954.

1967
Enewetakese living on Ujelang Atoll nearly starve, when the few crops available are attacked by growing number of rats on the island.

1968
Enewetak people living on Ujelang Atoll face starvation conditions. Supply ship arrives, but is short of goods - islanders board ship and refuse to leave, stating they wish to abandon Ujelang. Ataji Balos a government official (later a member of the Congress of Micronesia), agrees to stay on Ujelang with the people until a new supply ship returns with sufficient food. Ship returns within two weeks.
President Johnson promises 540 Bikinians, living on Kili and other islands, a permanent return to Bikini because radiation levels, according to the AEC, dropped below the danger level. Brookhaven National Laboratory (on contract to the AEC) medical team reports that all but two of the nineteen children on Rongelap who were less than ten years old when their island was subjected to radioactive fallout in 1954, have developed abnormal thyroid glands.

1969
Bikini resettlement planned to extend over period of eight or more years to allow for maturation of newly planted crops. The AEC and Defense Department plan first phase of cleanup of radioactive debris on Bikini, while Trust Territory assumes responsibility for second phase of replanting the atoll, constructing houses and relocating the community.

October - Bikini cleanup phase finished. AEC, military personnel and equipment withdraw and weekly air service to Kwajalein terminated. Phase two of rehabilitation marked by serious logistics problems. Bikini declared safe for reoccupation. AEC states, "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernable effect on either plant or animal life ".

October - Congressman Balos' and other Marshall Islanders' actions set in motion U.S. Congressional legislation to pay $1,020,000 to the Enewetak people to be phased in a trust fund. Medical survey by Dr. Robert Conard (Brookhaven) shows little difference in radioactivity levels among exposed and unexposed Rongelap people living on Rongelap. However, as late as 1969 the body radioactivity levels of previously unexposed Rongelap people was 10 times that of Marshallese living on Kili.

1970
AEC conducts survey on Enewetak and finds that atoll radiation level has dropped enough to allow islanders to return if extensive cleanup of remaining radioactive debris is undertaken.

1971
Bikini rehabilitation program proceeds at snail's pace; because of erratic shipping and no air service, supplies arrive late. Eventually replanting at Bikini and Enyu Islands completed.

September - Air Force Pacific Cratering Experiments (PACE) project begun on Enewetak. More than 220 tons of explosives brought to Enewetak for series of tests, aimed at simulating nuclear bomb blasts. Six tons actually detonated; 190 holes drilled into reefs and land for explosives; and 86 trenches (seven feet deep, 3 feet wide and 6 feet long) dug in different parts of the atoll.

December - Japanese medical survey team comes to Marshall Islands at request of Marshallese. Administration refuses medical team permission to travel to Rongelap and Utirik, in what administration terms conflict over credentials. Medical team stays on Majuro and meets with those exposed to radiation - their report states: "the team was welcomed by the islanders, who strongly desired our investigation work...."

1972
January - Marshallese Congressman Ataji Balos accuses the U.S. of consciously allowing Marshallese people to be exposed to radioactive fallout in order to study the effect of radiation on human beings; states the Brookhaven medical team is using Rongelap people as guinea pigs and not giving them proper medical examinations and treatment.
Marshallese refuse to allow AEC doctors to examine them during annual AEC medical survey, until AEC agrees to include independent doctors on their team.
Bikinians living on Kili Island begin moving back to Bikini atoll.

February - Congress of Micronesia creates Special Joint Committee concerning Rongelap and Utirik Atolls to investigate the problems of the irradiated people living on those atolls.

April - Military ends use of Enewetak Atoll as support site for Pacific Missile Range at Kwajalein. Air Force quarantines Runit Island, site of several large nuclear tests, in Enewetak and denies access to anyone for any purpose. Radiation data suggests Runit will be unsafe for habitation for 240,000 years.

September - Conard medical team discovers two more Marshallese with thyroid abnormalities, one from Ailingnae and the other from Rongelap. To date, 18 out of 19 Rongelap people who were under 10 years old when exposed to radiation from "Bravo" in 1954, have had thyroid abnormalities. Enewetakese file suit in federal court in Hawaii to stop Air Force PACE project. Temporary injunction granted. In January 1973, federal judge orders program halted. U.S. Pentagon in June calls off the PACE tests in face of court action by Enewetakese.

October - AEC announces that coconut crabs on Bikini, considered a delicacy in the Marshalls, can be eaten on a restricted basis. (Even in 1978, they were still not safe for every day consumption.)

November - Lekoj Anjain, from Rongelap, one year old at the time of his exposure to radioactive fallout, dies of myelogenous leukemia, at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, U.S. (At age 13, he was taken to the U.S. for removal of thyroid nodules - his mother, father, and two brothers also had thyroid lesions surgically removed.)

December - U.S. begins separate negotiations with Mariana Islands towards that district becoming a U.S. commonwealth (commonwealth agreement signed in 1975, gains Congressional, then presidential approval in 1976. Key provision in agreement is military rights to two-thirds of Tinian Island, used in WWII to launch A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for an air naval base).

1973
February - Japanese medical survey team report following investigation trip to Marshalls in December, 1971 states: "...The body burden (of radiation) on the 'unexposed group' of Rongelap is actually higher than that on the people of other islands. This means that the people of Rongelap who were not exposed to the fallout, received a considerable amount of radioactive nuclides from the environment. Consequently, the 'unexposed' group actually became an 'exposed' group..." Ebeye population estimated at 5,260 people living on 53 available acres. Average of 10 persons per single room housing unit. Between 400-500 Marshallese employed at Kwajalein Missile Range (KMR).

(Waiting for the plane on Kwajalein) there was nowhere to go to but one of the restaurants. We went and sat down and tried to order a drink but the waiter asked for our passes and said we couldn't sit there. I don't see what they think we are going to do to them, three Marshallese women sitting in their restaurant. It's not like there's anything to spy on there. [...] When you go to Kwajalein you enter the terminal and they say Stop!, so everyone has to stop. Sit down! and we all sit down. You feel like everyone does what we're told, when to stop, when to sit, when to go. So that's democratic government.
Evenlyn Konou, Senator in the Marshallese government

1974
U.S. spends $435,000 for Bikini cleanup program.

June - AEC reports that nearly 28% of the Marshallese exposed to radiation originally have developed thyroid nodules or tumors, in contrast to an average 3 or 4% among Americans. Brookhaven National Laboratory study states that of 68 persons irradiated on Rongelap, 29 have developed thyroid abnormalities and 24 have undergone surgery in the U.S. for removal of the tissue. The study also notes significant growth retardation among Rongelap children.

September - Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Enewetak released - states radioactivity in northern islands much greater than southern islands. Report suggests no habitation of northern islands, although islanders have stated a preference for these islands. EIS proposes using A-Bomb crater in Runit Island as "dump" for radioactive material removed from other islands, and covering it with a cement "cap."

December - 97 Bikinians now living on Bikini.

1975
April - Enewetak Chief, Johannes Peter appeals to U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee to rid their atoll of radiation dangers, so the people can return home.

June - New radiological tests discover "higher levels of radioactivity than originally thought" on Bikini and it "appears to be hotter or questionable as to safety," states an Interior Department source.

August 6 - Data on local foods grown on Bikini island point to the need to restrict completely the use of pandanus, breadfruit, and coconut crabs, according to a preliminary report issued by the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA -formerly AEC). In addition, the report states that banana and papaya grown on Bikini are not recommended for consumption until they have been analyzed and declared acceptable.

October - Bikinians file law suit in Honolulu court, demanding complete scientific survey of Bikini to determine if it is fit for human life. Bikinians law suit maintains that U.S. government has refused to employ highly sophisticated technical equipment to measure radiation. Ebeye population estimated at 7,049 living in "deteriorating and substandard" housing units according to a Trust Territory study. Average of 12.3 persons per single room units.

December - For second year in a row, U.S. Congress refuses to approve funds to clean up radioactive debris on Enewetak for islanders to return home.

1976
July - U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Territorial and Insular Affairs, holds hearing on Ebeye and Majuro. Calling the situation at Ebeye Island a "patent violation of basic human rights" the Subcommittee demands strong corrective action on the part of the Departments of Defense and Interior. U.S. Congress appropriates $20 million for Enewetak cleanup. In addition, military agrees to provide equipment and personnel for massive project, estimated to cost well above $50 million.
On July 4th, 1976, only a matter of hours after Trust Territory Acting High Commissioner Peter Coleman had finished telling the United Nations Trusteeship Council there was no segregation at Kwajalein the command of Kwajalein Missile Range celebrated the American Blcentennial by closing Kwajalein Island to any Marshallese.... So American Independence was celebrated at Kwajalein Atoll by enforcement of all out and total segregation.
Congress of Micronesia Representative Ataji Balos, July, 1976

December - Washington Post exposes CIA surveillance of Micronesians during political status negotiations with the U.S. According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Henry Kissinger authorized the ClA's "information collection" operations, which included electronic surveillance, as early as 1973. The Intelligence Committee report states that Kissinger granted permission for a study of "the possibility of exerting covert influence on key elements of the Micronesian independence movement" to "support U.S. strategic objectives."

December - Utirik islanders refuse to submit to examination by Dr. Knud Knudsen, during AEC's annual medical survey. Los Angeles Times points to "monumental culture clash" between the AEC scientists and the Marshallese underlying their refusal of medical examinations.

1977
March - U.S. Congress approves $1,083,000 to compensate the Rongelap and Utirik islanders whose thyroid problems and cancers appeared since 1963. 56 Enewetak islanders, who had lived on Ujelang Atoll in a U.S.-imposed exile since 1948, return to Japtan Island in southern Enewetak Atoll (Japtan is 6 miles from Runit Island, off-limits and considered the most radioactive in the atoll).

June - Study prepared for ERDA states, "All living patterns involving Bikini Island exceed Federal (radiation) guidelines for 30-year population doses."
Sudden increase in thyroid disease and cancer among Utirik people, which did not become apparent until 22 years after their exposure in 1954, forces government scientists to revise theories on radiation safety levels for human beings.
Army plans to clean up from northern area of Enewetak an estimated 125,000 cubic yards of non-contaminated debris, 7,300 cubic yards of radioactive material and another 79,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with plutonium. The radioactive debris will be dumped into an A-bomb crater on Runit Island and sealed with a "cap" of cement. Besides plutonium, the radioactive contaminants at Enewetak are cesium 137, strontium 90 and cobalt 60. Army troops from Schofield Barracks in Hawaii begin arriving at Enewetak to carry out clean-up.

October - ERDA monitoring of Bikinians who returned in early 1970's shows an uptake in radioactive nuclides - "some of them are eating unapproved foods" high in cesium, according to ERDA scientist.
Following tests which show the Bikinians taking in higher than acceptable concentrations of cancer causing radiation from the water and food grown in the island's still radioactive soil, the U.S. government begins sending all food and drink to Bikini.

1978
Interior Department officials confirm seven new thyroid cases over past 18 months in Rongelap and Utirik islanders exposed to fallout. Counting these, 33 of Rongelap's 82 inhabitants at the time of the fallout have developed thyroid problems. Of 21 Rongelap children under 12 years of age at the time of the explosion, 19 have had thyroid tumors or problems.

March 30 - Kwajalein landowners and supporters reclaim island in off limits "Mid-Corridor" area of Kwajalein lagoon to protest use by Army. Handel Dribo, a landowner on Kwajalein states, "for 12 years my land was used by the military. l have not received one penny." Army goes ahead with missile test while Marshallese occupy island in hazardous area.

April - A Trust Territory report reveals the dire overcrowding and public health hazards on Ebeye Island. T.T. report states that:

* at least 8,000 Marshallese live on Ebeye's 66 acres (less 13 used by the Coast Guard) giving it an extrapolated population density of 65,000 people/sq. mile compared with developed islands of Hawaii, 120 people/sq. mile and Washington, D.C., 12,400 people/sq. mile.
* as of 1977, more than 13 people live in each single room unit on Ebeye, and in extreme cases up to 40 people in one unit.
* unemployment rate on Ebeye is 36% of actual workforce.
* Ebeye lagoon bacteria counts have been 25,000 times higher than deemed safe by the U.S. Public Health Service and the World Health Organization.
* incidence of hepatitis on Ebeye is three times higher than that recorded on any Micronesian island.

May - Medical examinations conducted in April suggest that 139 people on Bikini are well above over-all radiation "safety" levels set by U.S. Examinations show that people are being exposed to strontium-90 as well as external radiation from fallout material still on the ground.
Interior Department officials describe the 75% increase in radioactive cesium found in Bikinians living on Bikini as "incredible." Interior states plans to move residents to another island "within 75 to 90 days."

~~~~~~~

ABLE

BAKER - Granny & Eastman present

Posted: 11/ 30/ 05 10:20 pm Post subject:

Atomic Veterans

Since the 1980s, claims by atomic veterans exposed to ionizing radiation for a radiogenic disease, for conditions not among those listed in title 38, U.S.C. 1112 ©(2), have required an assessment to be made by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as to nature and amount of the veteran's radiation dosing. Under this guideline, when dose estimates provided are reported as a range of doses to which a veteran may have been exposed, exposure at the highest level of the dose range is presumed. From a practical standpoint, VA routinely denied the claims by many atomic veterans on the basis of dose estimates indicating minimal or very low-level radiation exposure.

As a result of the court decision in National Association o f Radiation Survivors v. VA and studies by GAO and others of the U.S.'s nuclear weapons test program, the accuracy and reliability of the assumptions underlying DTRA's dose estimate procedures have come into question. On May 8, 2003, the National Research Council's Committee to Review the DTRA Dose Reconstruction Program released its report. It confirmed the complaints of thousands of atomic veterans that DTRAs dose estimates have often been based on arbitrary assumptions resulting in underestimation of the actual radiation exposures. Based on a sampling of DTRA cases, it was found that existing since the most recent VA outreach effort was announced, The American Legion has been contacted by veterans who contend that the number of participants identified was understated by tens of thousands, and that participation in these clandestine chemical programs extended decades beyond the World War II era. As with Project 112/ SHAD, investigators did not always maintain thorough records of the events, adverse health effects were not always annotated in the service members' medical records, and participants were warned not to speak of the program. Without adequate documentation of their participation, participants may not be able to prove that their current ailments are related to the testing. It is important that DoD commit to investigating these claims as they arise to see if they have merit. It is also important that VA commit to locating those identified by DoD in a timely manner, as many of them are W WII era veterans. Congressional oversight may be necessary to ensure that these veterans are granted the consideration they deserve.

http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/117109.html

Posted: 08/ 19/ 06 12:05 am Post subject:

Surviving a Nuclear Attack on Washington, D.C.
National Journal ^ | June 24th 2005 | By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

WASHINGTON — What if we fail to prevent an attack?

Assume every line of defense against nuclear terrorism is breached: the efforts to lock up nuclear material abroad, to spy out hidden weapons programs, to deter rogue states and capture terrorists, to detect smuggled bombs at the border or downtown — every preventive measure discussed in the previous five installments of this series. Assume someone, somehow, gets all the way through. It only has to happen once.

Assume that this someone puts together a crude atomic bomb, of the “Little Boy” type dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, a heavy and awkward device but one still small enough to fit into a medium-size truck.

Assume that of all the potential targets in the world, from Los Angeles to Moscow, the spot where this someone parks the bomb is on Pennsylvania Avenue, halfway between the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

Assume the bomb goes off. Now what?

The First Minutes: 15,000 Dead

At zero hour, the conventional explosives in the bomb go off. They launch a slug of highly enriched uranium down a surplus artillery tube toward another, larger, but still less-than-critical mass of uranium. As the two come close, the radiation each emits destabilizes atoms in the other, which causes those atoms to split, which emits more radiation, which splits more atoms, which emit more radiation — a nuclear chain reaction. If the bomb makers botched their calculations, the energy released blows the uranium slugs apart too early — a 1-kiloton fizzle, still as powerful as 1,000 tons of TNT, occurs. If the bomb makers got it right, the two uranium masses slam together with sufficient force to reach supercritical mass for a fraction of a second. Depending on the details of the bomb’s design, the resulting explosion has the force of 12,000 to 18,000 tons of TNT — 12 to 18 kilotons.

Parked midway between the White House and the Capitol, the bomb is right in front of the National Archives at 700 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are displayed. The Archives is vaporized. The dust that was the building, the documents, the pavement outside, the Navy Memorial across the street, the bodies — all now highly radioactive — shoots five miles up in the air. Remember that dust: It will start coming back down as “fallout” in about 15 minutes.

In the first second, the blast flattens the Justice Department and the FBI’s headquarters, one block west of the Archives, and the Federal Trade Commission, one block east. The offices of the Internal Revenue Service — less than a quarter-mile west from ground zero — and both wings of the National Gallery of Art — within half a mile southeast — collapse. Northward, the shock wave plows through blocks of office buildings to smash in the southern end of the new Convention Center; southward, it blows through the Museum of Natural History, then races over the Mall — and the tourists on it — to destroy the Smithsonian Castle — 0.41 miles — and damage the Energy Department — at 0.49 miles distant — which oversees the U.S. nuclear programs.

The force of the blast is fading at this range, and as it uses up some of its energy in plowing through one massive building after another. But those same structures are channeling the force of the explosion up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, toward the White House and the Capitol.

The ground-level detonation of a 12-kiloton bomb, the lowest estimated yield for the Hiroshima bomb, produces 5 pounds of pressure per square inch — enough to flatten houses and smash up reinforced concrete or monumental stone buildings — at a distance of about 3,400 feet from ground zero. A 15-kiloton bomb, the middle estimate, produces such force at about 3,700 feet; an 18-kiloton bomb, the extreme high end, at about 3,900 feet. From the midpoint of Pennsylvania Avenue to the center of either the White House or the Capitol is just over 4,000 feet. The Founding Fathers’ obsession with the separation of powers, made physical in L’Enfant’s design for the federal city, puts the seats of the executive and legislative branches a mile and a half apart — by happenstance, just far enough that no single Hiroshima-style device can wreck them both.

Both buildings are badly damaged, however. The White House, low to the ground, partially shielded by the Treasury, and rebuilt with reinforced concrete by President Truman, sustains less damage than the sandstone-and-marble Capitol, exposed high on its hill. But even on the far side of each structure from ground zero, doors blow in, windows explode in showers of glass, walls crack. In rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, the clothing and skin of victims burn. But these two citadels of democracy stand.

Beyond the Capitol and the White House, the shock wave drops off. How fast? Hard to tell. No one has ever set off a nuclear weapon at ground level in a city: U.S. bombers detonated the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs nearly 2,000 feet up in the air to ensure maximum destruction unimpeded by obstacles on the ground. Naval Postgraduate School professor Robert Harney calculates that in the densest cities — like Manhattan with its skyscrapers — exploding the device at ground level might cut the radius of destruction by roughly half, compared with a ground burst on a perfectly flat plain; by one-third, estimates the RAND think tank; by a few percent, caution government experts speaking anonymously.

Assume, though, that all the urban uncertainties damp the blast force down to that of a 10-kiloton bomb on an open plain. Almost every building within a half-mile of ground zero collapses onto its occupants. Wood and brick structures collapse, and reinforced concrete or monumental stone structures take heavy damage, at up to two-thirds of a mile, just short of the White House and Capitol. A mile or so away — around Capitol Hill, Farragut Square, and Mount Vernon Square — houses are damaged but mainly still standing, which means most of their occupants survive. Two or three miles away, windows shatter violently from Adams Morgan to Arlington. People who happen to be looking straight at the flash are blinded — most of them temporarily — at 13 or 14 miles out. Hundreds of drivers crash. According to estimates in the Department of Homeland Security’s unpublished National Planning Scenario No. 1, nearly 15,000 people are dead — 95 percent of them within that lethal half-mile of ground zero — and another 15,000 are injured.

All of this takes less than 15 seconds.

As minutes pass, the electrical power grid reels from the sudden loss of every substation downtown and a surge of electromagnetic pulse up power lines. Fuses blow and safeties trip in “many states,” National Planning Scenario No. 1 guesstimates. Well into West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, all the lights go out.

And then, across the region, the emergency generators kick in at firehouses, police stations, local emergency operations centers, major hospitals, and military bases. Broken windows aside, the Pentagon remains intact. So does Fort McNair, home to the military’s local homeland defense command, Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region. Said Army Col. James Bartran, JFHQ-NCR’s operations chief, “This area has more capability for responding than anywhere else in the nation; that’s here and ready.” Totally outside the blast zone are Andrews Air Force Base, Bolling Air Force Base, Fort Belvoir, the hospitals at Walter Reed and Bethesda, and even Reagan National Airport. So, too, are the fire, police, and medical services of Alexandria and Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia, of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, and even District of Columbia responders in the northern and eastern portions of the city.

Hundreds of miles above Washington, military satellites are measuring the explosion and the mushroom cloud. Data fill the screens at Colorado Springs, home of U.S. Northern Command. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories in New Mexico, nuclear weapons scientists turn from the TV news to start software that predicts the fallout path. And at the Homeland Security Department’s alternative command post outside Washington — location undisclosed — dazed functionaries mechanically punch through checklists to assemble an Interagency Incident Management Group. They call agency after agency, backup number after backup number, until they get the military people and the scientists and the emergency managers and the local responders all talking to each other.

The country is already starting to move. So is the fallout. Now everything depends on time.

The First Hours: Your Instincts Can Kill You

Everyone for miles has seen the flash. Everyone can guess what’s happened. Everyone knows the obvious things to do. And most everyone is wrong.

Checking CNN won’t work: The power’s out.

Picking up the phone won’t work: Even if the attack didn’t crash the network, everyone’s calls to 911 or to their family will.

Jumping into your car won’t work: A few hundred thousand people just had the same idea — imagine rush hour, only with most stoplights out and the streets downtown blocked by rubble.

Even professional lifesavers have to fight their instincts. Rushing to the rescue won’t work: More than 15,000 people are injured — that’s more than all the firefighters — paid and volunteer combined — and hospital beds in the D.C. area. Besides, most victims are trapped inside several square miles of burning, collapsed, or tottering buildings, with the streets to reach them gridlocked.

And while people are fighting traffic, either to flee ground zero or to get there to help, the fallout is starting to come down.

Everyone’s first reaction is wrong because the problem is not, in fact, the nuclear blast. If at this point you’re still alive and uninjured — and after a Hiroshima-sized explosion at ground level, 99 percent of the people in the D.C. area are — then your real problem is the radioactive dust that the blast threw into the air. According to the estimates in National Planning Scenario No. 1, an explosion that kills 15,000 people outright could eventually expose 200,000 people to lethal doses of radiation if they stay exposed and unprotected in the fallout path for 24 hours. Sitting downwind in gridlock, with your vehicle’s windshield shattered, goes a long way toward giving you a lethal dose. All sorts of simple alternatives — moving away from downwind, seeking proper shelter, even taking a shower — go a long way toward saving you.

Fallout is simply radioactive dust, launched miles into the air in a mushroom cloud and then carried on the wind. Much of it is alpha particles, whose radiation cannot penetrate bare skin, or beta particles, which cannot penetrate layers of clothing. Both are most dangerous if inhaled — or if they settle on food that is eaten unwashed. More deadly are the gamma rays, whose radiation can go through walls. But even gammas cannot hurt you from cloud height. The danger starts when the dust settles to earth.

The ideal is to avoid the fallout in the first place. In apocalyptic gridlock, you cannot drive very far. But you may not have to. Normal winds blow the cloud into a long but narrow plume, just a few miles across. In typical Washington-area weather, Virginia, Montgomery County in Maryland, and most of the District itself are not in the fallout path at all. People in the path could conceivably walk out of the fallout zone in the 10 or 15 minutes before the dust begins to fall — if they know which way to go.

But, of course, you cannot count on perfectly typical weather. The wind might shift; the breeze you feel at ground level may be blowing crosswise to the radioactive clouds five miles up; a still day might cause the fallout to seep outward slowly in all directions; sudden rain or snow could wash the dust out of the sky, heavily dousing everything beneath the storm but sparing areas farther out.

If you do not want to trust in weather and traffic, the alternative is what the experts call “sheltering in place.” You want to be in a building, as solid as possible to block the gamma rays, as airtight as possible to keep out radioactive dust. You need to turn off air conditioning, close vents, seal the seams around windows and doorways. If you wondered what former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was talking about, this is what you need the duct tape for. Abandon rooms with windows broken by the blast.

The dust that does not seep into the building will settle outside, on the roof and on the ground, emitting gamma rays. A car with an intact windshield stops 30 to 50 percent of the radiation — probably not enough, however, to save someone who’s inside the car and stuck in traffic a few miles downwind of ground zero. A wood-frame house, similarly, stops just 30 to 60 percent of gamma rays. A windowless basement stops 90 percent. The middle floors of a concrete apartment building, safely away from both roof and ground, stop 99 percent or more. But there is no 100 percent protection.

For those whom evacuation and shelter fail — or for those, like the thousands fleeing in blind panic, who never try either — there is still decontamination. A lethal dose of radiation takes time to build. The sooner the radioactive dust is off the skin, the better. And it is not that hard to remove. “Radiation contamination is easier than chemical,” said Col. David Jarrett, a medical doctor and the director of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda. “Simply removing the clothes and washing takes off up to 90 percent.”

Every major Washington-area hospital has some decontamination facilities, but 10,000 radiation patients in one day would swamp them. So mass decontamination falls to fire departments, with their mobile pumps and generators; their protective gear; their hazardous-materials experience; and, because both Maryland and Virginia have nuclear power reactors, their years of radiation training. Area firefighters can quickly set up special decontamination tents, and they have plans to take over buildings that have lots of showers — so high school gyms, for example, are a good place to head for. In the chaos of those first hours, said Michael Cline, state coordinator at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, “the real key is to make sure people go to those facilities.” It will take every firefighter available to man the decontamination sites, and every cop to control the crowds pouring in panic out of the city.

So who goes in to save the wounded? Even if first responders can get downtown in time to save blast victims, they still have to get back out before radiation claims both rescued and rescuer alike. Breathing masks keep alpha particles out of the lungs, protective clothes keep betas off the skin, but nothing light enough to wear can keep out gammas. Responders have radiation sensors, modeling software, and Energy or Defense Department analysts on call to map the radiation plume, plus dosimeters to measure their own exposure. Existing safety standards, written for nuclear power plant accidents, mandate “turn-back limits” on lifesaving runs into the fallout zone.

“Responders are going to have to assess risk relative to lives saved,” said Fairfax County Fire Chief Michael Neuhard. “It may well be that you are committed largely to decontamination, to treating people on the periphery.” Tens of thousands of people fleeing the city could be saved by decontamination. Tens of thousands of others downwind will need help evacuating or finding shelter. Sending rescue workers into the fallout zone will probably cost more lives than it will save.

“We need people to be able to take care of themselves for 72 hours,” said Lara Shane, director of public education for the Homeland Security Department. For any disaster, from nuke to hurricane, DHS advises stockpiling a three-day supply of food and water, a flashlight, and a radio — a battery-powered radio. The power is out; most stations are off the air. But government transmitters and a few private channels will be broadcasting on backup generators. And everything and everyone, from satellites to Energy Department survey planes to local firefighters, are trying to track the fallout plume. At some point — in minutes with good planning, in hours without it — those little battery-powered radios will come alive with urgent bulletins: where the cloud is drifting, what areas should evacuate, what roads are open, and where people can find shelter or decontamination sites.

And all this time, the radiation that keeps the helpers out of downtown, and the victims in it, is fading. By the physicists’ rule of thumb, 90 percent is gone in seven hours, 99 percent in seven times seven — that is, 49 — hours, or two days; and 99.9 percent in seven times seven times seven hours, or two weeks: the civil defense “all-clear” standard from the Cold War.

The First Days: Nation in Motion

Find a small pond. Throw a big rock in it. Now watch the ripple effect.

That, in essence, is the United States after a nuclear terrorist attack. In the early hours, disaster and response alike are local, limited by wind speed and gridlocked highways. In days, the effects convulse the entire country.

With perfectly average weather — a big assumption — the fallout spreads to the east and north along a path 200 miles long and 25 miles wide, drifting out to sea north of Atlantic City, before its radioactivity fades below the National Response Plan’s threshold for increased risk of cancer — 1 rem, which is one-fifth of the acceptable annual dose for nuclear power workers; the rem is the standard unit of measurement for human exposure to radioactivity. Real-world uncertainty about shifts in the wind keeps millions of people on alert to evacuate or take shelter, anxiously following broadcast bulletins as if awaiting a particularly violent hurricane — but without the years of planning that guide Gulf Coast evacuations. Local governments, the Red Cross, and the National Guard struggle to control, feed, shelter, and in some cases decontaminate what National Planning Scenario No. 1 guesstimates to be half a million displaced people. With local hospitals overflowing or contaminated, thousands of patients are shipped out across the country — the less sick they are, the farther they go — to military, veterans, and private medical centers activated under the National Disaster Medical System.

As victims ripple outward from the fallout zone, rescuers are converging inward. The first responders are reeling now. Many are dosed with radiation despite taking precautions, most are using contaminated equipment. All are exhausted from working nonstop shifts wearing heavy protective gear. But as the front line crumbles, reinforcements from the next ring of counties step forward, and from the next county after that, and then the next state, and the next.

“What you have kicking in is something called statewide mutual aid,” said Arlington Fire Chief James Schwartz, who commanded units from four counties at the Pentagon on 9/11. “As Arlington has depleted its capability helping the District, its emergency management system would contact the state: You could see units from Fredericksburg or Richmond coming into Northern Virginia.” A parallel system exists in Maryland. Nationwide, the District and every state but California and Hawaii are party to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which provides databases and advance teams to match what disaster-struck states request with what unaffected states can offer. Federal resources, civilian and military, rally under the National Response Plan.

Across the country, firefighters, paramedics, police, soldiers, and volunteers are loading up their trucks and rolling toward Washington. The resources the nation can mobilize are staggering. The United States has more than 155,000 emergency medical technicians, 600,000 police and sheriff’s deputies, a million firefighters, 1.6 million active-duty military troops, and 1.1 million in the Reserves and National Guard. Taking just 10 percent of those people from their regular duties equals a midsized city of rescuers. The Red Cross alone mustered nearly 55,000 volunteers for 9/11. And in this sea of numbers are countless islands of specialized capabilities. Washington-area jurisdictions have mobile communications vans and generators. Virginia alone has 13 state-sponsored hazardous-materials teams with radiation-monitoring equipment.

The Energy Department has several airplanes and helicopters equipped to monitor fallout from the air, and rapidly deployable teams of nuclear scientists. The Homeland Security Department controls a Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies prepacked to be moved by air. And the military has all of this and more: mobile hospitals, hazard-suited rescue units, radiation sensors, mobile water purification, warehouses full of Meals Ready to Eat, and the trucks, planes, and helicopters to transport them around the world. In a few days, just as the radiation ebbs, all this aid flows in.

The greatest challenge, in fact, is not getting the resources but coordinating them. At the World Trade Center on 9/11 — one incident in one jurisdiction — firefighters and police had neither radios nor procedures designed to work together. The Pentagon response that day was smoother, with four neighboring jurisdictions reinforcing Arlington’s Fire Chief Schwartz. And “since Sept. 11, we’ve really made a concerted effort on interoperability,” said Scott Graham, a battalion chief in Montgomery County. “Communications within the region have improved greatly.”

But even now, Washington-area agencies sometimes have to physically swap radios to talk on each other’s networks. And nationwide, no common channel, no standard protocol links either local governments or federal agencies.

The nation has, at least, adopted a common framework that organizes all of these assets. Under the Incident Command System — developed by local firefighters, endorsed by Homeland Security, and being taught to federal civilians and the military alike — the local government of the stricken area has command. Units from neighboring jurisdictions answer requests from the local chief. So do the federal agencies — from Energy to Health and Human Services to the Environmental Protection Agency to Defense. They are grouped according to 15 functions by the National Response Plan, and all of them are, in theory, coordinated by a “principal federal official” named by the secretary of Homeland Security. “Issues beyond the secretary’s authority to resolve,” the National Response Plan says unhelpfully, “are referred to the appropriate White House entity for resolution.”

How well this structure comes together after a nuclear explosion is unknown. “Many times, in national exercises,” said Red Cross Executive Vice President Alan McCurry, “we stop before we get to this part.”

The First Weeks: Thousands Fall Ill

By the 14th day after the attack, power should be back on across most of the area. Radiation levels fall to a thousandth of their peak. Rescue workers from across the country are in place and, one hopes, organized. But now, depending on how well sheltering, evacuation, and decontamination went in the first hours after the attack, tens of thousands of exposed people start to die.

“Most of the deaths occur at two-to-four weeks after the incident,” said Col. Jarrett, citing studies of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and nuclear power accidents. Victims will start vomiting a few hours after exposure, but then they enter a latent phase: “They have a couple of weeks before they start becoming clinically ill, and they can be moved to treatment centers across the country, not as patients, but as passengers,” said Jarrett. The bad news is, there is no cure for radiation sickness — not yet, anyway.

Radiation sickness is strange and slow. A high enough dose of radiation can kill in hours, but anyone close enough to get that much is probably dead from the explosion. The less intense energy of the fallout bombards the body and breaks random bits of DNA. Until the cells can repair their genetic code, they cannot divide to make new cells. That’s it: “All that radiation does is stop cells from dividing,” said Evan Douple, a health physicist with the National Academy of Sciences. "It doesn’t kill them.”

But a few tissues have such high wear and tear that they need new cells constantly. The most obvious, and least essential, is the hair follicles, which explains why cancer patients lose their hair during radiation therapy. Another one is the lining of the digestive tract. At a dose of 1,000 rems or more — 200 times the maximum permitted for nuclear reactor workers in a year, the lining stops regrowing. In seven to 10 days, the lining wears right through, causing infection and internal bleeding. At a dose of a few hundred rems, the bone marrow stops replenishing white blood cells for the immune system and platelets for clotting. After a few weeks, minor injuries continue to bleed and infections fester unchecked.

Specialized treatments do exist. The best known is potassium iodide, stockpiled for the population around nuclear power plants and sold on survivalist Web sites as “antiradiation pills.” Atomic reactions produce radioactive iodide, which accumulates in the thyroid gland, particularly in growing children, eventually causing cancer. Flooding the body with good iodide keeps out the bad. Unfortunately, it does nothing about the dozens of other radioactive isotopes in the fallout from an atomic bomb, which will kill you long before you can develop cancer.

The National Stockpile also includes chelating agents — most famously a substance known as “Prussian blue” for its normal use, as a dye — which chemically bind with certain types of radioactive particles inhaled from the fallout cloud and flush them from the body. Scarce and expensive, chelators still do nothing to reverse the damage done before you take them.

Once the immune system is compromised, the only treatment available today is intensive care: infusions of antibiotics to control infection, platelets to control bleeding, and, at the cutting edge, hormonal growth factors to jumpstart the recovery of bone marrow. This regime has saved victims of radiation accidents — if started promptly, under a doctor’s supervision, in a fully equipped hospital. There is no way to provide that standard of care for tens of thousands of victims.

The government has ramped up its research into the next generation of growth factors, which would regenerate bone marrow without the traditional panoply of other treatments. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute sees the most promise so far in a steroid called 5-Androstenediol, brand-named “Neumune” by the institute’s corporate development partner, Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals. Neumune requires no refrigeration, has no known side effects, and can be packaged in disposable needles like the nerve gas antidotes now issued to troops and first responders. Five injections over five days dramatically boost survival rates in animals.

So far, unfortunately, that first injection has to be given within four hours of exposure, before the damage to cells outraces the capacity for regrowth. But it is probably impossible to distribute tens of thousands of stockpiled doses across a fallout zone within four hours; and Hollis-Eden’s own cost estimates for mass production are $75 to $100 per person: too high to put Neumune in every citizen’s emergency kit. The current cost and the four-hour window wouldn’t impede first responders, however. With Neumune in their gear, they could be far bolder in fallout-zone rescue operations.

Long-Term Costs

The high toll of a nuclear attack continues long after the fires die down. In the worst case — no one gets to shelter, no one evacuates, no one is decontaminated — National Planning Scenario No. 1 estimates that radiation-damaged DNA will manifest, eventually, as 50,000 cases of cancer, half of them fatal. People keep dying for decades.

The scenario does not even guess the economic cost. Abt Associates, a research and consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., estimates $150 billion to $3 trillion for the loss of life alone, plus up to $500 billion in property damage. The indirect disruptions ripple unpredictably through the world economy. Just closing the highways and rail lines through Washington costs shippers $5 billion a week. And in contrast to the swift federal response to stabilize the financial markets after 9/11, the Treasury and other key agencies may be too badly damaged and decimated to intervene quickly. “If there’s a long gap between the attack and the ability of the federal government to start running in a normal way,” said Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Robert Hormats, “that has a very serious economic impact, psychologically in particular.”

How long before the seat of government is restored — if it is restored? “When you go back depends on what standards you use,” said Thomas Cochran, a physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The traditional approach to cleanup is to demolish badly contaminated buildings, which would include the White House and the Capitol, scrub every surface of the rest, then dig up the top few inches of asphalt and soil and cart all of it away, if anywhere will take it. Meeting the EPA standard for public safety — no more than 15 millirem of radiation exposure per year — would cost trillions of dollars for a midsized city, according to a study led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researcher Barbara Reichmuth. But the cost drops by half or more when the acceptable threshold is raised to 100 or, better, 500 millirem, which is still just 10 percent of the 5-rem level approved for nuclear reactor workers. The nation may well develop a new tolerance for radiation hazards.

Overall, though, it is impossible to calculate the total cost of a nuclear attack on Washington, because that cost depends on what is done in the first hours, days, and weeks after the attack, which in turn depends on what is done in the years before. If fallout places hundreds of thousands of people at lethal risk, then improving the response by just 1 percent saves thousands of lives. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for example, has proposed running computer models of various combinations of nuclear yield and weather conditions for selected cities, providing baseline scenarios for planners. That data might allow radio announcements about shelters and evacuation to air a few crucial minutes faster. So might more drills, better communications, or a clearer chain of command.

The odds of a nuclear attack are low. But experts say the huge potential cost of such an attack merits more preparation. And such preparation would save lives in more-likely disasters. Research into drugs to heal irradiated bone marrow could spin off into treatments for immune disorders such as AIDS. Predictive models, decontamination gear, and public-warning systems for nuclear fallout would be useful in a reactor leak, a nerve gas attack, or an ordinary chemical spill. More hospital beds would help with outbreaks of anthrax, smallpox, or avian flu. Compatible radios and common training for emergency responders would make a difference every time a cop or firefighter responded to a call across the county line. A battery-powered radio would be handy anytime the lights went out. In the worst-case nuclear disaster, these everyday defenses would matter that much more. It might be wise to think how best to use them.

“It’s not good enough anymore to plan to do these plans,” said Shelley Hearne, director of the Trust for America’s Health, a nonpartisan group that advocates building a strong public health infrastructure. “Everyone hates this conversation; but I get even madder when I see how little we deal with it. There are things we can do, and do well — and it’s OK to talk about it.”

Posted: 08/ 25/ 06 11:46 pm Post subject:

Posted: 08/ 26/ 06 12:11 am Post subject:

Axis Of Nukes

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 8/25/2006

Weapons Of Mass Destruction: In what should be a loud wake-up call for the U.S. and its allies, South Korea's defense minister says it's now likely North Korea has at least one nuclear bomb and maybe two.

Rogue regimes with nukes are no longer a hypothetical threat. They're all too real, and to stop the trend we have to do something other than talk.

Speaking to the media Thursday, South Korean defense chief Yoon Kwang-ung asserted there was no longer any doubt that North Korea had "one or two" nuclear weapons. There's also growing evidence, he said, that North Korea is readying its first nuclear weapons test.

This clearly demonstrates the failure of the Clinton-era policy of endless negotiations and lavish incentives as means for halting the spread of nuclear weapons.

As we now know, the North Koreans — right after agreeing with Clinton's special envoy Jimmy Carter to end their nuclear program in exchange for billions in aid and access to commercial nuclear technology — began cheating. Such was their contempt for Clinton, for Carter and for America's resolve to stop them. We talked, they built.

Today, North Korea has a weapon with which to threaten us and our allies — a weapon it should not have. And its Taepodong-2 missile potentially puts the weapon in range of the West Coast.

What now? Further negotiations don't hold out much prospect, since we appear to have given North Korea the greatest leverage a nation could have in security negotiations — nuclear weapons.

But if we do talk, we'd better be clear in what we say — and prepared to back it up. If we say it's "unacceptable" for North Korea to have weapons, it means talk must end. We can still take out its nuclear weapons, but not with diplomacy.

The mistakes we've made with North Korea hold important lessons for an even more serious problem: the burgeoning nuclear program under way in Iran, a program that probably will produce a nuclear weapon within a few years.

As we noted last week, a new report from the House Committee on Intelligence is sounding the alarm over the Iran threat. "Iran's support of radical Islamists with weapons and money demonstrates in real terms the danger it poses to America and our allies," said the committee's chairman, Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.

The report (at http://intelligence.house.gov/Media/PDFS/IranReport082206v2.pdf) is sobering. It outlines what we know of Iran's efforts to build a nuclear weapon — and the sophisticated missiles it's building to deliver them.

Its Shahab-3 missile already puts any Iranian nuke in range of Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, India and southeast Europe. Its next-generation missile — the 2,500-mile Shahab-4 — will be able to hit Germany, Italy and Moscow.

Iran's nuclear buildup continues apace. On Friday, an exile group that's provided accurate information in the past said Iran has 15 advanced P-2 centrifuges. These are four times more efficient than Iran's 164 older P-1 centrifuges and will speed Iran's attempts to turn uranium into fissionable, bomb-grade material.

Events are moving fast. Now that we have strong reason to believe North Korea — Iran's friend and partner — has a nuclear weapon, will we just stand by and let Iran have one too?

ts Shahab-3 missile already puts any Iranian nuke in range of Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, India and southeast Europe. Its next-generation missile — the 2,500-mile Shahab-4 — will be able to hit Germany, Italy and Moscow.

	The time now is 02/ 09/ 10 10:15 am
	Home ∴ Forum ∴ Recent ∴ Register ∴ Profile ∴ Log in to check your private messages ∴ Log in FAQ ∴ Search ∴ Donate ∴ Activist's Toolbox ∴ FD Links ∴ FD Swag [ Login to join chat ] FD Arcade - Click Here-->