Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: fallout

  • The Fallout from Nuclear Secrecy

    More than a half century after U.S. nuclear tests shattered the tranquility of Pacific Ocean atolls — rendering parts of them uninhabitable – the U.S. government has quietly released secret fallout results from 49 Pacific hydrogen-bomb blasts with an explosive force equal to 3,200 Hiroshima-size bombs.

    The U.S. government turned over to the Republic of the Marshall Islands 650-plus pages of newly declassified documents that include four reports detailing fallout results of 49 tests it conducted in Operation Redwing in 1956 and Operation Hardtack in 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, according to a three-paragraph press release posted on the web site of the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Majuro on June 12.

    U.S. Ambassador Thomas Armbruster presented the previously classified nuclear documents detailing fallout results to the President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), Christopher  Loeak, and his Cabinet, The Marshall Islands Journal reported. The Journal also indicated that RMI officials are now reviewing these documents, which they had requested. Several documents listed in the press release had been extracted and declassified in the 1980s though they received little public notice.

    Before the nuclear tests, the U.S. government removed all atoll inhabitants; some are still exiled from their radioactive ancestral homelands. All 49 hydrogen-bomb tests were laced with plutonium, one of the deadliest elements known to humankind with a radioactive existence of half a million years.

    From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. government conducted 66 nuclear weapons tests from and near the two atolls of Bikini and Enewetak, when the U.S. administered the Marshall Islands under a U.N.-sanctioned trust arrangement. The reports provide technical and scientific data on results of these second and third most destructive nuclear-weapons operations the U.S. ever conducted and the last ones it exploded in the Marshall Islands and the surrounding waters.

    The reports detail instruments and procedures used to capture and measure fallout from experiments conducted on the atolls, underwater or in the atmosphere. Included are diagrams of flight patterns flown to capture fallout in the clouds, tables listing each detonation, maps showing blast locations plus graphs and charts detailing measurements of old and new radioactive products that were collected by using technical instruments such as spectrometers, aerial radiation detectors or telemeters.

    Not until 1993 did the U.S. declassify information on the explosive force or magnitude of 44 of the 66 nuclear weapons tests conducted at Bikini and Enewetak atolls so as to inform Marshallese and U.S. test personnel. Now, the newly declassified U.S reports give Marshallese and others more fallout results of those explosions.

    The fallout from the 49 explosions in Redwing and Hardtack is hard to comprehend. In 1994, when the U.S. government released details about its 1,054 nuclear tests worldwide from 1945 to its last one in 1992, the data showed the yield – the explosive force – of Operations Redwing and Hardtack at more than 48,846 kilotons, or the equivalent of about 3,200 Hiroshima-size bombs.

    Operation Redwing included tests to assess military effects. Hardtack centered on developing missile warheads and high-yield strategic hydrogen bombs. The next-to-last test in the Redwing series, codenamed Tewa, was launched from a reef at Bikini and packed a yield of 5,000 kilotons — which equates to 333 Hiroshima-size bombs.

    “Tewa was so powerful it lit up the sky in Hawaii,” a U.S. serviceman identified as Carl Duncan is quoted as saying in  describing that blast 2,500 miles from Honolulu. Tewa’s fallout was about 30 percent of its total yield of 5,000 kilotons and contaminated 43,500 nautical miles of ocean, according to “Operation Redwing: Fallout Location and Delineation by Aerial Surveys,” as first declassified in 1988. The U.S. gave a newly declassified version of this report to RMI officials.

    “Eniwetak was hit by very heavy fallout that lasted for days,” Michael Harris, a 22-year-old Army draftee who experienced 12 of the 17 Redwing blasts, wrote, in adding italics on days. “And Carl and Berko (and the rest of the men) were exposed to seven and a half times more radiation than they received from all the other” blasts. (The spelling of Eniwetak has since been changed.)

    The Tewa fallout on the Enewetak base camp did lead to dusting servicemen there with fallout exceeding the maximum permissible exposure, according to a 454-page report titled “Operation Redwing,” dated 1956 and declassified in 1982. However, that report indicated, “The highest exposures were recorded by Air Force flight officers whose aircraft penetrated the nuclear clouds.” The U.S. gave to RMI officials a report focusing on U.S. Air Force operations to collect fallout data titled “Final Report of the Commander Task Group 7.4 Operation Redwing.”

    “Eniwetak was still receiving heavy fallout from the Tewa cloud,” when the next blast, codenamed Huron (each blast was named after a Native American tribe), was detonated the following day, Harris recounted. The Huron blast of 250 kilotons equates to 16 Hiroshima-size bombs. In contrast, the Eisenhower administration at the time disclosed that the Redwing series had powdered Enewetak with only “light” radioactive fallout.

    When a Soviet diplomat delegated to the U.N. Trusteeship Council asked whether these islands must be “lost forever,” the U.S. official in 1956 replied that Bikini and Enewetak might be uninhabitable for at least two generations. Today Bikini and parts of Enewetak are still too radioactive to be safely inhabited.

    As the Redwing tests continued, radiation badges were handed out, which Harris described as “small rectangular plastic discs three inches by an inch and a half.” Even with these, Harris wondered about the future impact of the radiation: “Had our genetic code been compromised? Would we get leukemia or some other form of cancer?”

    His answer came decades later. Those present at Operations Redwing or Hardtack or for six months afterward who succumb to one of 19 primary cancers are eligible for $75,000 compensation made available by Congress.

    At the time of Operation Redwing in 1956, the U.S. government under President Dwight Eisenhower released very little information. This secrecy was politically significant because it kept voters in the dark during the presidential election campaign in which Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson advocated stopping the H-bomb tests being conducted by the Eisenhower administration.

    During the election year, U.S. officials announced only two of the 17 blasts in the Redwing series. This virtual blackout hid from U.S. voters over 77 summertime days during the presidential election campaign Redwing’s 20,820 kilotons of explosive force — or the equivalent of 1,388 Hiroshima-size bombs. That tonnage is the equivalent of 18 Hiroshima-size bombs per day over 77 days.

    Seven Redwing tests received no public notice and the remaining eight blasts were disclosed by Japanese scientists in news articles datelined Tokyo. Thus the fastest and most accurate information about U.S. Redwing testing was disclosed from Tokyo by Japanese, an immense irony given that only a decade earlier, U.S. atomic bombs had contributed to Japan’s surrender by destroying two of its cities. Eisenhower handily won re-election.

    The more powerful 32 detonations in Operation Hardtack were launched in 1958 as the U.S. and the Soviets raced toward declaring a moratorium on such experiments and the U.S. accelerated testing missile warheads. Washington disclosed only nine of the 32 blasts that produced a total yield of 28,026 kilotons, or the equivalent of 1,868 Hiroshima-size bombs – an average of 35 per week in 1958 or five per day. That was the lowest disclosure rate of any U.S. Pacific testing operation.

    Even more ironic than the Japanese disclosures in 1956 were the Soviet ones about the 1958 Hardtack detonations. The Soviets charged that the U.S. had concealed most of the tests being conducted, which even U.S. officials deemed accurate.

    In doing so, the Soviets made huge propaganda gains as they announced their initiative of stopping their nuclear testing that year. Surprisingly, New York Times columnist James Reston wrote that “the United States, which pamphleteered its way to independence and elevated advertising and other arts of persuasion into a national cult, should be unable to hold its own in the battle for the headlines of the world.”

    Samples made during several Hardtack tests showed that fractions of the radioactive elements of strontium and cesium were dispersed over distances of more than 4,000 miles, according to a report titled “Operation Hardtack: Fallout Measurements by Aircraft and Rocket Sampling” dated 1961 and declassified in 1985. The U.S. gave a newly declassified version of this report to RMI officials.

    That 4,000-miles range means the radioactive elements could have descended on San Francisco and other West Coast areas.  Both radioactive elements pose serious health problems.

    The decades-long delay in receiving a full accounting of these fallout results helps to substantiate the contention of the RMI that its negotiators were denied vital information when they agreed in 1986 with President Ronald Reagan to form an independent nation, thus ending the American administration of the U.N.-sanctioned trust territory established in 1947.

    Kept in the dark about the fallout results, the Marshallese agreed to terms so insufficient that a U.S.-financed $150 million nuclear-claims trust fund is now penniless, unable to compensate fully Marshallese for health and property damages presumed to have resulted from the tests. RMI’s appeals to Congress, the U.S. courts and the Bush administration have been turned back and the Obama administration has yet to help them.

    Last September, Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu of the United Nations reported to its Human Rights Council that the U.S. government should:

    –Remedy and compensate Marshall Islanders for its nuclear weapons testing that has caused “immediate and lasting effects” on their human rights,

    –Open up still-secret information and records regarding the environmental and human health effects of past and current U.S. military use of the islands,

    –Grant Marshallese full access to their  medical and other records, and

    –Consider issuing a presidential acknowledgment and apology to victims adversely affected by the 66 weapons tests it conducted when it administered the Marshall Islands as a U.N. strategic trust territory.

    Over the decades, the Marshallese have not been alone in wanting more information about the nuclear tests. In 1954, the Association of State Health Officials voted to ask the federal government to give health officials with security clearances access to classified atomic energy information so as to prevent health hazards.

    From 1945 to 1992, the United States carried out 1,054 nuclear tests worldwide.

    Beverly Deepe Keever is the author of News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb and the newly released Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting.

  • Moving Back to Rongelap?

    This speech was delivered at the 2012 World Conference against A- and H- Bombs.


    Good morning. My name is Jelton Anjain. I bring warm lakwe (greetings) on behalf of the people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Rongelap Atoll local government and especially the displaced people of Rongelap. I have the great honor and privilege to be here joining you throughout this week to commemorate all the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombs. This conference is significant in that they bring us together from different parts of the world where we become one in friendship to fight for peace and justice and try to convince the world to eradicate the use of nuclear weapons.


    I would like to take this opportunity to give special thanks to the Organizing Committee for inviting me to join you this week. Last time I joined these rallies was when I escorted my uncle John Anjain back in 2004. Now my father Jeton Anjain and all my uncles who fought this nuclear injustice have passed away and we, the younger generations, still carry on their legacy. We are a small group of people, but we will never stop in our fight against this nuclear injustice that was brought upon us.


    I’d like to tell you a hypothetical story. We all know the importance of making a living from our natural resources.


    “If the islands were not used for testing of nuclear bombs and our islands remained clean today, and if I was a farmer, I would easily go into my field of crops and harvest, and afterwards, I’d take my spear gun and go spear fishing. For a day’s work, a normal farmer/fisherman would easily make over $500 if he takes his crops and fish to sell at any market. Now, since the islands are contaminated and we were forced to get sicknesses and to leave our homeland, those normal farmers/fishermen who are not fortunate enough to get educated and cannot find a decent job, they are forced to live on $75 for their quarterly compensations from the US government.”


    That has always been the situation of the Rongelapese over the years and that is the situation of the Rongelapese today.


    Just in 2010, the US Congress sent a letter to the US Department of Interiors’ office of Insular Affairs urging them to have the people of Rongelap move from Mejatto Island in the Kwajalein Atoll back to Rongelap. Despite the fact that the islands are not ready and still contaminated, US Congress is urging our people to move back. US government is telling our people that those who choose not to move to Rongelap will no longer receive compensation. We were given until October of 2011 to move back but are people are still uneasy about going back as we know the islands are still not clean. The US calls this relocation a necessity due to budgetary difficulties. Since the scientists have certified these islands as ready for resettlement, it is a legal and economic necessity. Now if the scientists are saying that these islands are safe to go back to, why are they urging our people to “consume 30% local diet from the land and 70% imported food.” This statement alone clearly indicates that the islands are still contaminated.


    Now they say it’s a “legal and economic necessity.” Our lives are worth more than their money, our lives are worth more than their legal system. We have a right to live a full and healthy life as human beings. Mejatto Island is only 60 miles away from the urban city of Ebeye. And Ebeye is the closest place our people on Mejatto get their imported food from, but transportation to and from Ebeye is hard to come by, especially when the weather and seas are not good. If we move back to our islands and are not allowed to eat from the land, how can our people get imported food from Ebeye when it is close to 200 miles away from Rongelap? And transportation is always a problem. People would have to rely on tri-annual ships that would come and bring them food, and if the ships don’t make their scheduled runs, they would be forced to eat off the land which is poisonous.


    The RMI national government does not support this relocation by the US government for the Rongelap people to move back even though the Rongelap local government and the US government are pushing for it. The Alap association of Rongelap, which I represent, does not support this resettlement at the moment, for we all know the islands are still not livable. We do not want to risk going back and have our people get sick again just like we did when the US told our people back in 1957 that the islands were safe to return to after three years of exile. We surely don’t want to take that risk again. The community is uncertain as to whether to go back home or not because our local leadership does not conduct public hearings to report on current status of the radiation, funds and reports on guaranteed better and safe life. People do not trust the Department of Energy (DoE), they are not truthful about the cleanup and safety of the islands and guaranteed health insurance for the people, especially the descendants of our hibakusha. Like you, we go through the same social, economic and health injustices caused by what the US did to our islands, for the so-called “good of mankind.” I tell you, slavery still exists today: we are slaves to the social and cultural instability. We are slaves to the limited educational skills we bear. We are slaves to the health problems our children and elders encounter every day. We are slaves for we lack the economic stability to prevent these causes of slavery in our lives.


    So I am here today, my friends, as their voice. I come to ask you to be our extended voice to the world. Let the world know of what we go through every day we wake up to greet the sun. I ask that we stand together to fight this injustice. Only then will we be able to overcome all of this.


    Komol.

  • Consequences of a Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence

    Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war, and the consequences of such a failure would be profound.  Peer-reviewed studies predict that less than 1% of the nuclear weapons now deployed in the arsenals of the Nuclear Weapon States, if detonated in urban areas, would immediately kill tens of millions of people, and cause long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.  A full-scale war, fought with the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, would so utterly devastate Earth’s environment that most humans and other complex forms of life would not survive.


    Yet no Nuclear Weapon State has ever evaluated the environmental, ecological or agricultural consequences of the detonation of its nuclear arsenals in conflict. Military and political leaders in these nations thus remain dangerously unaware of the existential danger which their weapons present to the entire human race. Consequently, nuclear weapons remain as the cornerstone of the military arsenals in the Nuclear Weapon States, where nuclear deterrence guides political and military strategy.   


    Those who actively support nuclear deterrence are trained to believe that deterrence cannot fail, so long as their doctrines are observed, and their weapons systems are maintained and continuously modernized. They insist that their nuclear forces will remain forever under their complete control, immune from cyberwarfare, sabotage, terrorism, human or technical error. They deny that the short 12-to-30 minute flight times of nuclear missiles would not leave a President enough time to make rational decisions following a tactical, electronic warning of nuclear attack.


    The U.S. and Russia continue to keep a total of 2000 strategic nuclear weapons at launch-ready status – ready to launch with only a few minutes warning.   Yet both nations are remarkably unable to acknowledge that this high-alert status in any way increases the probability that these weapons will someday be used in conflict.  How can strategic nuclear arsenals truly be “safe” from accidental or unauthorized use, when they can be launched literally at a moment’s notice?  A cocked and loaded weapon is infinitely easier to fire than one which is unloaded and stored in a locked safe.


    The mere existence of immense nuclear arsenals, in whatever status they are maintained, makes possible their eventual use in a nuclear war.  Our best scientists now tell us that such a war would mean the end of human history.  We need to ask our leaders:  Exactly what political or national goals could possibly justify risking a nuclear war that would likely cause the extinction of the human race?


    However, in order to pose this question, we must first make the fact known that existing nuclear arsenals – through their capacity to utterly devastate the Earth’s environment and ecosystems – threaten continued human existence.  Otherwise, military and political leaders will continue to cling to their nuclear arsenals and will remain both unwilling and unable to discuss the real consequences of failure of deterrence.  We can and must end the silence, and awaken the peoples of all nations to the realization that “nuclear war” means “global nuclear suicide”.


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • A nuclear war between India and Pakistan;
    • 50 Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons detonated in the mega-cities of both India and Pakistan (there are now 130-190 operational nuclear weapons which exist in the combined arsenals of these nations);
    • The deaths of 20 to 50 million people as a result of the prompt effects of these nuclear detonations (blast, fire and radioactive fallout);
    • Massive firestorms covering many hundreds of square miles/kilometers (created by nuclear detonations that produce temperatures hotter than those believed to exist at the center of the sun), that would engulf these cities and produce 6 to 7 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • About 5 million tons of smoke that would quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where strong winds would carry it around the Earth in 10 days;
    • A stratospheric smoke layer surrounding the Earth, which would remain in place for 10 years;
    • The dense smoke would heat the upper atmosphere, destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer, and block 7-10% of warming sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface;
    • 25% to 40% of the protective ozone layer would be destroyed at the mid-latitudes, and 50-70% would be destroyed at northern and southern high latitudes;
    • Ozone destruction would cause the average UV Index to increase to 16-22 in the U.S, Europe, Eurasia and China, with even higher readings towards the poles (readings of 11 or higher are classified as “extreme” by the U.S. EPA). It would take 7-8 minutes for a fair skinned person to receive a painful sunburn at mid-day;
    • Loss of warming sunlight would quickly produce average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere colder than any experienced in the last 1000 years;
    • Hemispheric drops in temperature would be about twice as large and last ten times longer then those which followed the largest volcanic eruption in the last 500 years,  Mt. Tambora in 1816. The following year, 1817, was called “The Year Without Summer”, which saw famine in Europe from massive crop failures;
    • Growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere would be significantly shortened.  It would be too cold to grow wheat in most of Canada for at least several years;
    • World grain stocks, which already are at historically low levels, would be completely depleted; grain exporting nations would likely cease exports in order to meet their own food needs;
    • The one billion already hungry people, who currently depend upon grain imports, would likely starve to death in the years following this nuclear war;
    • The total explosive power in these 100 Hiroshima-size weapons is less than 1% of the total explosive power contained in the currently operational and deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.


    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen, and R. Turco, “Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012.
    B. M. Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison, R. Garcia, “Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8,2008, vol. 105(14), pp. 5307-12.
    C. I. Helfand, ”An Assessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting From Limited, Regional Nuclear War”, 2007, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Leeds, MA.
    D. Starr, S. (2009) “Deadly Climate Change From Nuclear War: A threat to human existence.”


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • The launching of 1000 U.S. and 1000 Russian strategic nuclear weapons which remain on launch-ready, high-alert status, capable of being launched with only a few minutes warning;
    • These 2000 weapons – each 7 to 85 times more powerful than the Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons of India and Pakistan – would detonate in the United States and Russia, and probably throughout the member states of NATO;
    • The detonation of some fraction of the remaining 7700 deployed and operational U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads/weapons would then follow;
    • Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia would be engulfed in massive firestorms . . . the explosion of each weapon would instantly ignite tens or hundreds of square miles or kilometers of the land and cities beneath it;
    • Many thousands of square miles of urban areas simultaneously burning would produce up to 150 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • The smoke would rise above cloud level and form an extremely dense stratospheric layer of smoke and soot, which would quickly engulf the Earth;
    • The smoke layer would remain for at least 10 years, and block and absorb sunlight, heating the upper atmosphere and producing Ice Age weather on Earth;
    • The smoke would block up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere, producing a profound “nuclear darkness”;
    • In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age;
    • There would be rapid cooling of more than 20°C over large areas of North America and of more than 30°C over much of Eurasia;
    • Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold;
    • 150 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere would cause minimum daily temperatures in the largest agricultural regions of the Northern Hemisphere to drop below freezing every night for 1 to 3 years;
    • Nightly killing freezes and frosts would occur, no crops could be grown;
    • Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for at least a decade;
    • Massive destruction of the protective ozone layer would also occur, allowing intense levels of dangerous UV-B light to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth; as the smoke cleared, the UV-B would grow more intense;
    • Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. The targeting of nuclear reactors would significantly increase global radioactive fallout of long-lived isotopes such as Cesium-137;
    • Gigantic ground-hugging clouds of toxic smoke would be released from the fires; enormous quantities of industrial chemicals would also enter the environment;
    • It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals;
    • Already stressed land and marine ecosystems would collapse;
    • Unable to grow food, most humans would starve to death;
    • A mass extinction event would occur, similar to what happened 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out following a large asteroid impact with Earth (70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight);
    • Political and military leaders living in underground shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.

    1. O. Toon , A. Robock, and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War”, Physics  Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008, p. 37-42.
    2. A. Robock, L. Oman, G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences”, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. p. 4 of 14.
    3. S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict”. (2009). ICNND


    See www.nuclearfamine.org or www.nucleardarkness.org for detailed sources of information on the environmental consequences of nuclear war.

  • The Consequences of Chernobyl

    This article was originally published on Counter Punch

    Monday is the 24th anniversary of the
    Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It comes as the nuclear industry and
    pro-nuclear government officials in the U.S. and other nations try to
    “revive” nuclear power. It also follows the just-released publication of
    a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the
    Chernobyl disaster.

    Chernobyl:
    Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
    has just been published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is
    authored by three noted scientists: Russian biologist Dr. Alexey
    Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr.
    Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili
    Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the
    Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of
    Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist
    long-involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

    The book is solidly based—on health data,
    radiological surveys and scientific reports—some 5,000 in all.

    It concludes that based on records now available,
    some 985,000 people died of cancer caused by the Chernobyl accident.
    That’s between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004.

    More deaths, it projects, will follow.

    The book explodes the claim of the International
    Atomic Energy Agency—still on its website – that the expected death toll
    from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book
    shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.

    Comments Alice Slater, representative in New York
    of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: “The tragic news uncovered by the
    comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the
    toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over
    the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current
    industry-driven ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the
    world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the
    true damages caused by Chernobyl.”

    Further worsening the situation, she said, has been
    “the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health
    Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research
    on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA.” WHO, the
    public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA’s claim that 4,000
    will die as a result of the accident.

    “How fortunate,” said Ms. Slater, “that independent
    scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl
    accident.”

    The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set
    up through the UN in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of
    atomic energy,” and its 1959 agreement with WHO.  There is a “need to
    change,” it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing
    for the “hiding” from the “public of any information…unwanted” by the
    nuclear industry.

    “An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience
    is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have
    dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe,” it states.

    The book details the spread of radioactive poisons
    following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on
    April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the
    reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were “hundreds of
    millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout
    from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The most
    extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant—in the
    Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and
    Russia.

    However, there was fallout all over the world as
    the winds kept changing direction “so the radioactive emissions…covered
    an enormous territory.”

    The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the
    plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and
    Strontium-90.

    There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by
    maps, of where the radionuclides fell out.  Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and
    Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany,
    Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological
    measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons “fell on Asia…Huge
    areas” of eastern Turkey and central China “were highly contaminated,”
    reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.

    Northern Africa was hit with “more than 5% of all
    Chernobyl releases.” The finding of  Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239
    and Plutonium-240 “in accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of
    significant Chernobyl contamination,” it says. “Areas of North America
    were contaminated from the first, most powerful explosion, which lifted a
    cloud of radionuclides to a height of more than 10 km. Some 1% of all
    Chernobyl nuclides,” says the book, “fell on North America.”

    The consequences on public health are extensively
    analyzed. Medical records involving children—the young, their cells more
    rapidly multiplying, are especially affected by radioactivity—are
    considered. Before the accident, more than 80% of the children in the
    territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia extensively contaminated by
    Chernobyl “were healthy,” the book reports, based on health data.  But
    “today fewer than 20% are well.”

    There is an examination of genetic impacts with
    records reflecting an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” wherever
    there was fallout. This will continue through the “children of
    irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” So “the genetic
    consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of
    millions of people.”

    As to fatal cancer, the list of countries and
    consequences begins with Belarus. “For the period 1900-2000 cancer
    mortality in Belarus increased 40%,” it states, again based on medical
    data and illuminated by tables in the book. “The increase was a maximum
    in the most highly contaminated Gomel Province and lower in the less
    contaminated Brest and Mogilev provinces.” They include childhood
    cancers, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers.

    Considering health data of people in all nations
    impacted by the fallout, the “overall [cancer] mortality for the period
    from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was
    estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”

    Further, “the concentrations” of some of the
    poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to
    200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”

    The book also examines the impact on plants and
    animals. ”Immediately after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant
    mutations in the contaminated territories increased sharply.”

    There are photographs of some of these plant
    mutations. “Chernobyl irradiation has caused many structural anomalies
    and tumorlike changes in many plant species and has led to genetic
    disorders, sometimes continuing for many years,” it says. “Twenty-three
    years after the catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole
    spectrum of plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from
    knowing all of the consequences for flora resulting from the
    catastrophe.”

    As to animals, the book notes “serious increases in
    morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in
    the public health of humans—increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies,
    decreasing life expectancy…”

    In one study it is found that “survival rates of
    barn swallows in the most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear
    power plant are close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination,
    annual survival is less than 25%.” Research is cited into ghastly
    abnormalities in barn swallows that do hatch: “two heads, two tails.”

    “In 1986,” the book states, “the level of
    irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the
    Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of
    times above acceptable norms.”

    In its final chapter, the book declares that the
    explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant “was the worst technogenic
    accident in history.” And it examines “obstacles” to the reporting of
    the true consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on
    “organizations associated with the nuclear industry” that “protect the
    industry first—not the public.” Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.

    The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F.
    Kennedy’s call in 1963 for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear
    weapons.“The Chernobyl catastrophe,” it declares, “demonstrates that the
    nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our
    environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only
    theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear
    weapons.”

    Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA’s and WHO’s
    dealing with the impacts of Chernobyl, commented: “It’s like Dracula
    guarding the blood bank.” The 1959 agreement under which WHO “is not to
    be independent of the IAEA” but must clear any information it obtains on
    issues involving radioactivity with the IAEA has put “the two in bed
    together.”

    Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book,
    she said: “Every single system that was studied—whether human or wolves
    or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria—all were changed,
    some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”

    In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman
    of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes
    about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts
    of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The
    book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data
    concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of
    people and the environment…The main conclusion of the book is that it
    is impossible and wrong ‘to forget Chernobyl.’”

    In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the
    IAEA-WHO that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl
    catastrophe is among the biggest.

    The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book
    documents, an ongoing global catastrophe.

    And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power
    plants to be built and for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines
    now running—and a switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led
    by solar and wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people
    dead from one disaster.

  • Preventing an Accidental Nuclear Winter

    Nuclear Winter

    In a study made by the World Health Organization, they found that a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could kill one billion people outright. In addition, it could produce a Nuclear Winter that would probably kill an additional one billion people. It is possible that more than two billion people, one-third of all the humans on Earth would be destroyed almost immediately in the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. The rest of humanity would be reduced to prolonged agony and barbarism. These findings are from a study chaired by Sune K. Bergstrom (the 1982 Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine) nearly 20 years ago. (1)

    Subsequent studies have had similar findings. Professor Alan Robock says, “Everything from purely mathematical models to forest fire studies shows that even a small nuclear war would devastate the earth.” (2)

    Rich Small’s work, financed by the Defense Nuclear Agency, suggests that burning cities would produce a particularly troublesome variety of smoke. The smoke of forest fires is bad enough. But the industrial targets of cities are likely to produce a rolling, black smoke, a denser shield against incoming sunlight. (3)

    Nuclear explosions can produce heat intensities of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade at ground zero. Nuclear explosions can also lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere, creating more than l00,000 tons of fine, dense, radioactive dust for every megaton exploded on the surface. (4) The late Dr. Carl Sagan said the super heating of vast quantities of atmospheric dust and soot will cover both hemispheres. (5) For those who survive a nuclear attack, it would mean living on a cold, dark, chaotic, radioactive planet.

    A nuclear warhead is far more destructive than is generally realized. For example, just one average size U.S. strategic 250 Kt nuclear warhead has an explosive force equal to 250,000 tons of dynamite or 50,000 World War II type bombers each carrying 5 tons of bombs. The truck bombs that terrorists exploded at the New York World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City each had an explosive force equal to about 5 tons of dynamite. (6)

    Accidental Nuclear War

    The U.S. and Russia each have more than 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads set for hair-trigger release. If launched they could be delivered to targets around the world in 30 minutes. They would have an explosive force equal to l00,000 Hiroshima size bombs. (7) Russia and the U.S. have more than 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. The more automated and shorter the decision process becomes the greater is the possibility of missiles being launched to false warnings.

    The U.S. is trying to decide whether to build an anti-missile “star wars” defense or not. In order for an anti-ballistic missile to hit another missile traveling at incredible speed that can come from many different directions, it would be necessary to have a very complex computerized system.

    President Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Casper Weinberger, said that since an anti-missile defense would require decisions within seconds, completely autonomous computer control is a foregone conclusion. There would be no time for screening out false alarms and a decision to launch would have to be automated—there would be no time for White House approval. (8)

    A highly automated defense system that has no time for determining whether a warning is false or not is highly likely to launch to a false warning. There are always false warnings. For example, during 1981, 1982 and 1983 there were 186, 218 and 255 false alarms, respectively, in the U.S. strategic warning system. (9)

    There have been at least three times in the last 20 years that the U.S. and Russia almost launched to false warnings. Fortunately there was enough time to determine that the warnings were false before decision time ran out.

    In 1979, a U.S. training tape showing a massive attack was accidentally played.

    In 1983, a Soviet satellite mistakenly signaled the launch of a U.S. missile.

    In 1995, Russia almost launched its missiles because of a Norwegian rocket studying the northern lights. (l0)

    If the U.S. builds an anti-missile defense it appears certain that missiles would be launched to false warnings because no time is available for determining whether a warning is false or not.

    Preventive Action Needed

    Plans to build an anti-missile defense need to be carefully researched as to how it could increase the danger of an accidental nuclear war. As the research progresses, the findings need to be widely discussed in the news media. The more widely and clearly the danger is made known the more concerned the public should be for agreements to greatly reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons from the world.

    As humanity’s safety becomes more and more dependent upon technology, the technological dangers need to be guarded against. Technical errors in one system may trigger errors in others. When researching missile defense dangers the following types of factors need to be included in the assessments, e.g. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)), “Dead Hand” control of missiles, High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), Hazards of Electromagnetic Radiation to Ordnance (HERO). Russia’s blind spots in its satellite warning system also need to be included in this research.

    The U.S. and Russia are in a position where either can destroy humanity in a flash and yet there appears to be little recognition of this peril hanging over the world. Only 71 out of 435 U.S. congressional representatives signed a motion calling for nuclear weapons to be taken off of hair-trigger alert. (11) The U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999. (12)

    Queen Noor al Hussein, of Jordan, said “The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought.” (13) There is a need to greatly increase public awareness of the danger in order to provide broad, long-term understanding and support for arms agreements ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

    Reference and Notes

    1. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA, 1983.

    2. Robock, Alan. “New models confirm nuclear winter,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, September l989, pp 32-35.

    3. Blum, Deborah. “Scientists try to predict nuclear future from forest fires,” The Sacramento Bee, November 28, 1987.

    4. Sagan, Op.Cit.

    5. Ibid

    6. Babst, Dean, Preventing An Accidental Armageddon,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, February 2000,

    7. Blair, Bruce. “Nuclear Dealerting: A Solution to Proliferation Problems,” The Defense Monitor, Volume XXXIX, No.3, 2000.

    8. Strategic Defense and Anti-Satellite Weapons, hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 25, 1984, pp. 69-74.

    9. Letter from Air Force Space Command headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, February 16, 1984.

    10. Babst, Op.Cit.

    11. The Sunflower, No. 31, Jan. 00, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif.

    12. Gordon, Michael R. “Russia rejects call to amend ABM treaty,” Contra Costa Times, Oct. 2l, 1999.

    13. Hussein, Queen Noor al. “The Responsibilities of World Citizenship,” Waging Peace Series, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif., Booklet No 40, July 2000.

    *Dean Babst is a retired government research scientist and Coordinator of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Accidental Nuclear War Studies Program. The author acknowledges the helpful suggestions of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Bob Aldridge, who heads the Pacific Life Research Center, and Andy Baltzo, who is Founder of the Mount Diable Peace Center in northern California.

  • National Cancer Institute’s Management of Radiation Studies: A Congressional Investigation

    The role of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the study assessing the public health impacts of exposure of the American people to fallout from atomic bomb tests detonated at the Nevada Test Site in the l950s was the focus of a recent congressional investigation.This investigation also assessed the NCI’s role in management of three studies of Chernobyl exposed populations. The congressional investigation found:

    I. Researchers at the NCI substantially delayed the release of the Nevada Test Site fallout report, despite data that showed that significant numbers of children across the nation received doses of radiation that were much higher and posed greater health risks than previously believed.2

    II. The NCI neither involved the public in its Nevada Test Site bomb test fallout study nor adequately responded to governmental requests for information developed through the study.3

    III. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the NCI management performed little oversight or tracking of the project. As a result, they failed to ensure that the report was completed in a timely fashion and that important issues were addressed in an open manner.4

    IV. The NCI Nevada Test Site fallout report does not meaningfully inform the American public of the impacts of the radioactive fallout from the weapons testing program.5

    V. The management failures of the I-131 study have been repeated in a NCI-led international effort to study the effects of radioiodine releases on thyroid cancer in the areas surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 6

    [As a result of these and other factors, it is uncertain whether the Chernobyl studies will be able to locate and screen those intended to participate, depriving these people the benefits of medical screening and the study, of its subjects so essential to meaningful results from these studies on the causal link between I-131 exposure and thyroid disease and cancer- Ed.].

    Conclusion:
    This congressional investigation on the NCI’s role in management of both the NTS fallout study and the three Chernobyl exposure studies raise some serious concerns with regard to openness and management by the NCI. These studies have been jeopardized by mismanagement within NCI.

    Personal Observations:
    As a person significantly exposed to environmental radiation emissions from the both NTS fallout and a Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility during the l950s, I applaud this comprehensive congressional investigation into the past management by NCI of radiation exposure studies.

    It is my sincere hope that this excellent and comprehensive analysis will result in significant restructuring of management within NCI within these contexts, and adherence to a consistent policy of openness and public involvement on the part of all federal agencies involved in assessment of public health impacts of environmental radiation exposure.

     

  • Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste

    More than a half century after the beginning of the Nuclear Age, there is no satisfactory answer to the serious dilemma of how to dispose of the large quantities of radioactive wastes created by military and civilian uses of nuclear energy. This paper examines technological options for waste disposal, and concludes by favoring Multibarrier Monitored Retrievable Storage (MMRS). The authors point out, however, that this form of storage (it is not really disposal) will require “continuous monitoring… essentially forever.” Thus, the best of the options will require something akin to a “nuclear priesthood” to pass along their skills at monitoring these wastes for thousands of generations – a sobering thought.

    Our century’s indulgence in nuclear technology has created radioactive wastes that are a problem not only in the present but will affect thousands of generations in the future. The problems are so long-term that they are beyond our capacity to plan for adequately. At a minimum, we should cease – with all due speed – to generate more nuclear wastes.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s directors issued a policy statement on nuclear power in May 1996 calling for “a world adequately supplied by renewable, environmentally benign energy sources, and the worldwide elimination of nuclear power.” A copy of the full statement is available from the Foundation.

    – David Krieger

    Introduction

    Disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste is a critical problem for our time and will remain so well into the future. There are two main waste sources: Nuclear power reactors and bomb-related nuclear material from the production facilities and from the decommissioned U.S. and (former) U.S.S.R. nuclear weapons.

    This paper deals with disposal of (a) reactor spent fuel rods and (b) waste sludge from the bomb-grade plutonium separation process. Disposal of bomb-grade plutonium from decommissioned weapons and from existing stockpiles present somewhat different problems which are not treated here.*

    Nuclear waste disposal poses a number of different yet interconnected problems, all of which must eventually be resolved in an integrated fashion: technical, economic, health-related, environmental, political. The present paper addresses primarily technical issues, and does not attempt an analysis of the overall problem.

    Management of radioactive waste is a complex, multifaceted procedure. Spent commercial fuel rods present the most demanding challenge of all waste problems because of the high level of radioactivity. The fuel rods, relatively harmless before entering the reactor, emerge having become dangerously radioactive. They require storage for at least ten years under circulated water in a pool inside the reactor containment structure.

    By statute, the government, through the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, has promised to provide disposal capacity for the waste generated by the nation’s nuclear power plants. Some of the waste which has accumulated over 45 years of Cold War nuclear bomb production also falls into the high-level category.

    The term “high-level” nuclear waste has had its meaning changed in the U.S. over the years. At the present time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has defined “high-level” very narrowly as mostly, but not entirely, spent fuel elements and reprocessed military wastes, such as sludges. They further define “spent fuel,” concentrates of strontium-90 and cesium-137, and transuranics as something not necessarily included in their definition of “high-level” waste.

    Because this NRC definition is contrary (if not actually contradictory) to standards of the rest of the world and makes no sense to the authors, “high-level” nuclear waste is defined here as all radioactive waste material coming from nuclear reactor fuel rods whether confined or not:

    a) Spent nuclear fuel rods, clad or declad, from commercial electricity generating reactors; average radioactivity being more than 2.5 million curies per cubic meter.
    b) Semi-liquid sludge from nuclear bomb fabrication waste processing residue – average radioactivity being about 3500 curies per cubic meter.

    All this waste contains five shorter lived and longer lived radionuclides of main concern. The shorter lived are strontium-90 whose half life, t1/2, is 28.5 years, and cesium-137 whose half life, t1/2, is 30 years. See Ref. 1 for the half-life values used in this study. The radioactivity of these shorter lived nuclides is approximately 95% of the total radioactivity of the nuclides of concern. Total hazardous life for these shorter lived nuclides is considered to be between 600 years and 1000 years depending upon one’s point of view.

    The longer lived isotopes are plutonium-239 whose t1/2 is 24,110 years, plutonium-240 whose t1/2 is 6,540 years, and curium-245 whose t1/2 is 8,500 years. Plutonium-238 whose t1/2is 88 years will have essentially disappeared after several thousand years, so in storage terms of the longer lived elements this isotope is not of concern as long as it will have been successfully contained for the next several thousand years. As for the life of these longer lived materials, the NRC considers 10,000 years as the storage time required; however, some people consider a lifetime as long as 100,000 years to 500,000 years as more appropriate.

     Table I
    Radioactivity for 100 Tons of Spent Fuel *
    Curies Remaining
     

     Isotope
    		  

      t1/2 yrs
    		  

      10 yrs
    		  

      500 yrs
    		  

      1000 yrs
    		  

     10,000 yrs
    		  

     100,000 yrs
    		  

     200,000 yrs
     

    Sr-90
    		      28 2,000,000         15    trace  

     –
    		  

      –
    		  

      –
     

    Cs-137
    		      30 3,000,000        40    trace  

     –
    		  

      –
    		  

      –
     

    Pu-239
    		 24,110     22,000   27,000  29,000  56,000    8,000      240
     

    Pu-240
    		   6,540      49,000 175,000 170,000  69,000         7      trace
     

    Cm-245
    		 85,000     56,000   52,000  52,000  25,000        0.5      trace
     * A typical 1000 megawatt reactor contains about 100 tons of enriched uranium, one-third of which is renewed each year.

    Table I (above) extracted from Ref. 2 should be helpful. It must be noted that as some radioactive isotopes disintegrate, they create other radioactive isotopes in the process. Thus Pu-239 and Pu-240 increase at first and do not begin decreasing until many years later.

    Table I illustrates, as does Figure 1 (below), rather spectacularly the fallacy of the NRC rationale for a 10,000 year waste storage lifetime, when the radioactivity for the plutonium isotopes are greater after that long period than at the outset. However, it must be noted that this Pu-239 is relatively confined and in general will not be disturbed, so the basic health hazards from such radioactive materials as radon and radium from uranium ores appear to be far more serious.

    The general nuclear waste disposal approach is that the repositories should not be more dangerous than natural ores of uranium and thorium. In fact, they might be much less hazardous; after all, the natural ores have no barriers such as containers, and radium is leached from many of the ores so that traces get into the food chain. Spent fuel rods have to be stored between 13,000 and 14,000 years before their level of radioactivity decreases to that of natural uranium ore.

    One of the most serious engineering problems is that of allowing for release of the prodigious heat emanating from stored nuclear power waste. Most of the heat comes from the strontium-90 and cesium-137 at the start, but the longer-lived actinides produce more in later years. As noted in Table II (below), the heat liberated by spent nuclear reactor fuel decreases significantly as it ages.

    From a practical engineering standpoint there is little difference between a 500 year lifetime and a 500,000 year lifetime. The 500 years is so long a time that no storage prototype system can ever be tested, thus the basic engineering considerations remain unchanged regardless of the waste lifetime. It is on this fact that any long-term storage conclusions are predicated. As is discussed below, any storage technique that utilizes permanent or nonretrievable ground burial is fundamentally a violation of basic engineering principles. This was pointed out to the nuclear industry over 25 years ago, but their response at that time was that they had “faith” that some satisfactory new technique would be developed, by the government of course and at taxpayers’ expense, before it would be necessary to initiate long-term storage. Obviously, that has not happened and we are now faced with a nuclear waste disposal problem that has no fully satisfactory solution and probably never will have.

    Multibarrier Monitored Retrievable Storage (MMRS)

    This, unfortunately, is the final technique of choice for this particular waste disposal problem. It is unfortunate because there must be a continuous monitoring of the waste essentially forever. There are two fortunate aspects deserving mention: (1) the total volume of the waste involved is small by world standards, i.e., one football field for each type of waste each ten or twelve stories high, and (2) the number of people theoretically required to perform the monitoring task is also quite small, perhaps one hundred people or less worldwide. A ball park estimate of costs in present day dollars indicates that about $100 million is required over a 10,000 year time period for each 1000 megawatt nuclear power plant.

    For the nuclear power plant waste, which consists of spent fuel rods, the most desirable inner barrier is the original cladding used for the nuclear fuel in the basic power plant configuration. This excellent cladding barrier is usually zirconium but sometimes stainless steel is used. The lifetime of this cladding has never been tested, so there is no telling exactly how long it can be depended upon. Safety engineering, however, dictates that because this barrier has already proved to be very reliable, it should be left in place and not removed. Further barriers have to be determined as a result of experimental development based upon both thermal characteristics and mechanical properties. Possibilities include glass, copper, ceramic, additional zirconium, stainless steel, nickel, or titanium. All this is for the power plant spent fuel rods only. Bomb waste having been processed requires another barrier or cladding before application of the “standard” multibarriers.

    Because the bomb waste is initially in a semi-liquid sludge form, it has to be solidified at the outset. The quantities involved are approximately 105 million gallons for the U.S. as of 1994, so the total quantity worldwide would be about 200 million gallons. A ball park estimate of the solidified quantity results in roughly the same volume as the power plant waste with the identical radioactive nuclides. The major difference between this solidified nuclear bomb waste and the spent fuel rods will be that the former will probably be contained in vitrified or glassified cylinders as compared with the latter being in long slender cylindrical fuel rods with metallic cladding. Actually, if we fabricated the bomb waste’s vitrified cylinders in long slender rods the same size as the spent fuel rods, the remainder of the waste disposal process could be identical for both waste components.

    Of special note here is that the final configuration must be a solid container or cask whose outer surface is monitored. Engineering jargon usually refers to this approach as placing the canister in a “bath tub.” Sensitive radioactive sensors in the “bath tub” must monitor this outer container surface continuously in an automated fashion. Such automation must incorporate Built-In-Self-Test, making use of many space exploration techniques.

    While the waste canisters or containers are stored in shallow, underground but easily accessible facilities, all testing and monitoring should be performed by automated equipment. Such techniques preclude human errors caused by boredom, undetected equipment malfunctions, and misinterpretation of displayed information. Human intervention is necessary only for overall supervision and periodic testing of the automated equipment because of multiple error causation possibilities beyond the original design. We have to remember that there is nothing that is 100% safe; nuclear bombs for example only possessed six or seven safety interlocks. Periodically, the nuclear waste monitoring equipment must be replaced and the waste canisters themselves will require retrieval and automatic repackaging every hundred years or more. It is noted that there are essentially two sets of automatic equipment, (1) the canister “bath tub” monitors and (2) the retrieval/repackaging mechanism. The latter might well be simply remote controlled equipment or a combination of semi-automatic components.

    A summary of our viewpoint is that the best disposal method known to date consists of sealing the zirconium or stainless steel-clad spent fuel rods, without reprocessing, in copper or steel canisters and storing these in a geologic but easily accessible repository. This is the once-through fuel cycle. The spent fuel rods should be allowed to stand at least ten years under water so that most of the radioactive materials decay, and the rate of heat generation has fallen by about 86%. The repositories must have multiple barriers. The canisters must be arranged so that sufficient cooling air can circulate around them after disposal. The waste density must not exceed that required for adequate heat flow.

    A major point to be made is that a very responsible and conscientious group of people is required to take care of our long-term nuclear garbage. This group must have substantial credentials for at least several centuries of resource concern and responsible treatment of their environment. Few groups in the world will qualify and it is worth considerable remuneration from the society at large to this select management group to perform the waste monitoring required. The compensation referred to, while quite large for the equipment and personnel involved in terms of the select group, will be minuscule compared with the monetary interest the U.S. presently pays on its debt or the amount societies throughout the world have been willing to spend on weapons of mass destruction.

      Table 2: Thermal Power Per Metric Tonne* of Spent Fuel
     

    Age (years)
    		  

     Rate of Heat Liberated(watts)
    		  

     Percent of Heat from Strontium and Cessium
     

    1
    		  

     12,300
    		  

     67
     

    5
    		  

      2,260
    		  

    69
     

    10
    		  

      1,300
    		  

    72
     

     20
    		  

      950
    		  

     68
     

     50
    		  

      572
    		  

     56
     

    100
    		  

      312
    		  

     31
     

     200
    		  

     183
    		  

     5

     * 2 metric tonne = 1000 kilograms = 1 long ton = 2200 lbs.

    Nonretrievable Geologic Storage

    The major effort toward long-term high-level nuclear waste disposal has been in the area of depositing in the ground all the dangerous material in some sort of containers. This approach seeks to find a permanent disposal technique so the waste can be left for posterity without any possibility of future generations being at risk. While the motivation and results sought after are commendable, the reality of what is being attempted has not really been fully recognized.

    Of prime importance here is the basic engineering principle alluded to above that any truly new system has to be tested for at least one life cycle in order for there to be reasonable confidence that there have been no design or fabrication errors. Given a new disposal system that has a life cycle of at least 300 years, the required engineering prototype test is not possible. After twenty-five years, the faith of responsible nuclear power parties that government would figure out an acceptable solution eventually is as remote a possibility today as it was in the first place. Needless to say, that confidence in a permanent solution has now been thoroughly shaken, as basic engineering considerations dictated at the outset.

    The geologic materials investigated throughout the world have included salt, granite, volcanic tuff, and basalt. Each particular site chosen, after much consideration of geologic and scientific aspects, has proven to have some flaw that makes such contemplated irretrievable burial unacceptable. In some instances fractures in the structure have occurred or been discovered whereby the nuclear waste could eventually get outside the confinement volume. Other problems include the buildup and then outflow of water. Earthquake susceptibility is always of concern and automatically precludes use of some sites.

    In the end it does not look as though we can possibly have sufficient confidence in any one geologic site that would allow permanent disposal. One possibility, of course, is to treat the waste similarly to the way we instituted nuclear power in the first place, i.e., proceed with what seems satisfactory at the time and leave any serious long-term problems to be solved only after they have actually arisen. In other words, there is always the irresponsible option of letting our distant descendants be plagued with our 20th century errors.

    Burying of Casks Inside Underground Bomb Test Cavities

    Given the already contaminated underground cavities made by bomb-testing in Nevada, a logical option would appear to be the use of these voids for permanent waste disposal. An important factor to be considered is the high level of radioactivity already present within those cavities. While leaks into the air occurred in some tests, in most cases all of the radioactivity from the explosions was confined. After all, this was the bomb-testing option of choice to prevent contamination of the atmosphere. A typical test was the Chesire experiment, conducted on February 14, 1976. It was a hydrogen bomb with a yield between 200 and 500 kilotons. It was detonated at a depth of 3830 feet, which was 1760 feet below the water table.

    There is already considerable experience in drilling into bomb cavities. The purpose was to sample the radioactive materials for analysis, in order to estimate the yield and efficiency (which is the percentage of U-235 and/or Pu-239 which underwent fission). If the deeper cavities are chosen (to insure that they are well below the water table), it would be easiest to drill a shaft in the same place as the original one. By now, the fission products which are most dangerous, such as iodine-131, have all decayed. The only gaseous fission product left is krypton-85, with half-life 10.7 years. It is not nearly as dangerous as radon, and in any case only a small amount would diffuse out. Casks of waste would be lowered into the cavity using a cable suspended from a derrick, with the operator inside a shielded housing, if necessary. At the end, the cavity is filled with earth, and the shaft closed.

    Although this burial technique looks promising and derserving of further study, it is by no means clear that this technique for disposing of hazardous waste is satisfactory. It could develop that creating new cavities for the express purpose of using them as repositories could become attractive. In that case, the site would be carefully chosen with the water table in mind, and the cavity blasted very deep. Hydrogen bombs might be best since most of the energy comes from deuterium fusion, thus minimizing the amount of radioactivity created.

    So much for the positive aspects. Negative aspects include the idea that just because deep underground cavities are already contaminated with long lived radioactive nuclides from nuclear bomb explosions, we are not justified increasing the potential future health hazards by orders of magnitude. As with other geologic burials, there are possibilities of earthquakes, ground fractures, and unanticipated failures in the deep drilled shafts that would cause water leakage. However, of all the possible permanent disposal sites, these deep holes of hazardous remnants from past bomb development follies appear to be the most attractive, even though a time period of at least 10,000 years is too long to confidently conclude that there are no significant failure-modes.

    Because permanent geologic disposal in nuclear bomb cavities violates fundamental engineering principles, it can be considered to be irresponsible for present generations to pursue that option. Perhaps considerations of our lack of knowledge today of what the worldwide land usage was many thousands of years ago will provide an understanding of our cautious conclusions here. We simply cannot be reasonably certain how the use of land throughout the world will evolve over the forthcoming thousands of years. Thus conscientious adherence to responsible behavior requires our not utilizing this bomb cavity technique at present. Further study might possibly result in something useful a hundred or more years hence.

    Burial Between Tectonic Plates

    The interior of the Earth contains the elements potassium, uranium, and thorium, all slightly radioactive. This radioactive decay liberates heat, which keeps the Earth’s core hot. The consequence of a hot, liquid core is movement of floating tectonic plates, and formation of mountain ranges and continents. Were this not the case, mountains and all land would erode down, and our planet would be covered with water. Without this radioactivity, we would not exist.

    Geologists discovered many years ago that the continents are in constant motion relative to each other. Far below the ground tectonic plates are sliding very slowly over each other. The continents rest on these plates, so the oceans are changing size and shape while the surface continents are moving relative to one another. At the edge of a plate whose motion is toward the ocean, there will be a subduction layer between that tectonic plate and the one below. Any material between the plates at that point will be pulled in between and remain there for at least several million years.

    Concern over the years has been to consider just how one could perform the placement of high-level nuclear waste into a tectonic plate subduction layer. One major problem is digging down to that depth. But even more stringent than that is the problem of construction of shaft walls that will withstand the weight of all the earth above. The same problem is encountered when constructing a research module to descend to the ocean floor. While the ocean depth is a maximum of about 6 miles, the tectonic plate depth is as much as 50 miles. Finally, there are the construction strength problem differences between an enclosed submerged module in the ocean and the side wall problems in a shaft through which nuclear waste canisters are to be lowered.

    There has not been, nor is there even a contemplated possibility of constructing a shaft that would be strong enough for this nuclear waste disposal option. Thus, another apparently attractive approach seems to be beyond our reach.

    Transmutation

    Soon after commercial generation of electricity via reactors started and their high-level waste began to accumulate, ways to simplify and manage the problem were sought. Among these was reprocessing to separate the waste into several fractions, and then, using neutrons, to transmute via fission the transuranium elements (neptunium, plutonium, americium, etc.) into nuclides which have relatively short half-lives so that they lose their radioactive sting in a repository during an abbreviated storage time. The transuranium elements would require sequestering in a repository for many thousands of years.

    If the nuclear waste is bombarded with neutrons, electrons, or other atomic particles so that it is changed from a long-lived to a short-lived radioactive material, the process has been termed “transmutation.” About thirty years ago, people inquiring about the long-term nuclear waste disposal for commercial reactors were told that the military had the identical problem for its nuclear bomb waste. Because the military waste was already twenty years old, the word to one of the authors was that the military had not only decided that transmutation was the best solution to this problem but had already worked out all pertinent details. Many years and many nuclear reactors later, of course, we found out that the military had not developed any viable transmutation waste disposal system at all.

    In fact, the basic problems with transmutation have been perennial. Each nuance has resulted in the same general result. Any process based on transmutation would require reprocessing to separate the waste into several fractions, and then, using neutrons, to transmute via fission the transuranium elements (neptunium, plutonium, americium, etc.) into nuclides which have relatively short half-lives. Considerable research has been carried out recently on these nuclear incineration techniques. Tests are being conducted at Hanford, Los Alamos, and Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Success of the proposed procedure depends on reprocessing spent fuel by either the PUREX process or a technique similar to the TRUMP-S process. The actinides would then be reintroduced into the reactor or bombarded with neutrons generated using an accelerator. Thus neutron sources might be either nuclear reactors, perhaps of the breeder type, or linear accelerators to produce high-energy protons, which collide with lead, bismuth, or tungsten targets. This produces abundant neutrons, which must be moderated using heavy water. The neutrons then cause fission of the actinides, and liberation of huge amounts of energy, as in a nuclear reactor.

    Disposal of wastes by transmutation is intimately related to fast breeder reactors. While American reactors of this type were phased out by Congress in 1983, a new type, the Integral Fast Reactor, is now being studied. These breeder reactors use liquid sodium as coolant and have no moderator. They are being promoted as a way to cope with nuclear waste. The problem, of course, is that “we’ve heard that story before.”

    Even though the outlook for nuclear transmutation is most unpromising, a few details are perhaps in order. The accelerator procedure is highly unfavorable from the standpoint of energy consumption. The steel and other parts would be activated by neutrons, and become radioactive. It seems that about as much radioactive waste would be produced as is consumed, as stated above, if not more. Costs would be fantastic. The procedure could not easily be used with fission products. They absorb neutrons poorly; after all, they were in a neutron environment for years, and survived. Only two, iodine-129 and technetium-99, are easily transmuted to nonradioactive nuclides, and these are not particularly important. Technetium-99 (half-life nearly a quarter of a million years) is converted by neutrons into technetium 100 (half-life only 16 seconds) forming ruthenium. If this process is carried out while a stream of ozone is passed through the apparatus, volatile ruthenium tetroxide is constantly removed. Transmutation might be successful in this case, and perhaps that of iodine-129, but in general the technique is not expected to be satisfactory.

    In 1992 a group of nine qualified experts finished an exhaustive assessment of disposing of waste through transmutation via fast breeder reactors, accelerators, and high temperature electrolysis techniques (the Ramspott report, after the first author). These scientists are associated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, two universities, and a private firm. The study concluded that high-temperature electrolysis procedures for separating actinide metals in reprocessing high-level waste offers no economic incentives or safety advantages. Unfortunately, actinide separation and transmutation cannot be considered a satisfactory substitute for geological disposal.

    Spacecraft Transport to the Sun

    Of all the theoretically possible disposal techniques one can think of, this is one of the most preferable. Materials on the sun are already similar to our waste products, so our depositing high level nuclear materials on the sun would blend right in. Unfortunately, the numbers are such that we cannot do the job, either technologically or economically.

    Given the liquid sludge nuclear bomb waste of about 108 gallons for the U.S. alone, the following ballpark numbers apply:

    ~0.1 = conversion factor for solidification.
    ~0.1 = conversion factor for gallons to cu ft.
    ~100 lbs/cu ft density.
    10,000 lb effective spacecraft waste payload for an Apollo-type vehicle assuming the additional 7000 lb payload will be required for containers and the retro-rockets.
    108 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 100 x 10-4 = 104 spacecraft for only accumulated U.S. military waste.

    Besides the fact that the U.S. does not have the economic resources to fund such a gigantic number of spacecraft, each vehicle would have to have perfect launch systems that would not blow up on the launch pad plus perfect guidance systems that would insure the vehicle not turning around back toward the Earth. Obviously, this is beyond any forseeable capability and must be abandoned as a possible option.

    Conclusions

    A major point emphasized in this study is that it is unethical to force a known potential environmental hazard on future generations when a reasonable alternative exists. This aspect was phrased above in engineering terms, i.e. basic engineering principles; however, it could easily have been phrased in more socially oriented terms. This leads to the only responsible choice being the multibarrier monitored retrievable storage (MMRS) technique which will cost in present dollars between $100 million and $1 billion per 1000 megawatt power plant over a 10,000 to 100,000 year storage period.

    It also needs to be pointed out that there are some important lessons to be learned from Mother Nature:

    1) The natural nuclear reactors at Oklo in Gabon, West Africa, demonstrated that the plutonium and most metallic fission products did not leach out, even over thousands of centuries of leaching. Even the strontium-90 stayed in place until it decayed. The cesium-137 did migrate out, and the iodine fission products evaporated. Despite this favorable result, strictly speaking it applies to the particular geology of that area.

    2) Another natural site teaches us more valuable lessons about the behavior of radioactive materials during long storage. There is a hill called Morro do Ferro in Brazil where there are 30,000 tons of thorium and 100,000 tons of rare earths. Much of the fission products are rare earths. Chemically, thorium resembles plutonium in some ways and the rare earths resemble curium and americium. Again, the evidence is that migration of the most dangerous materials from the surface over eons of weathering has been negligible.

    3) Still another area whose study yields valuable lessons is the Koongarra ore body in Australia. This is a giant deposit of uranium ore in a common type of geological formation through which groundwater has been flowing for millions of years. Movement of uranium and its decay products has been investigated by drilling a series of holes through the ore body and surrounding layers. The results indicate that migration of only a few tens of meters has occurred on the weathered surface, and virtually no movement has taken place underground.

    So with responsible behavior designing and implementing the MMRS long-term nuclear waste system, there is reasonable historical assurance that future disasters will probably be avoided even if some failures should occur in that system.

    References

    1. Edgardo Browne, Richard B. Firestone; and Virginia Shirley, Ed.; Table of Radioactive Isotopes, John Wiley & Sons: New York,1986, Table 1 pp. D-10 to D-26.
    2. Warf, James C., All Things Nuclear, First Edition, Southern California Federation of Scientists, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 85.