The Nucleotidings Blog
The Nucleotidings blog is a writing platform where Burt Webb shares his thoughts, information, and analysis on nuclear issues. The blog is dedicated to covering news and ideas related to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. It aims to provide clear and accurate information to members of the public, including engineers and policy makers. Emphasis is placed on safely maintaining existing nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology with caution, and avoiding nuclear wars at all costs.
Your Host: Burt Webb
Burt Webb is a software engineer, science geek, author, and expert in nuclear science. Burt operates a Geiger counter in North Seattle, and has been writing his Nucleotidings blog since 2012 where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection.
Burt Webb has published several technical books and novels. He works as a software consultant.
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Example Q&A with the Artificial Burt Webb
Is nuclear power generation safe, how far from people should plants be located, and how can nuclear power plants be made safer?
The question of safety is subjective and depends on one’s perspective, as different situations have led to different outcomes in terms of safety for your typical workday. On one hand, nuclear power plants, like any technology, can be made safe and secure through constant improvement and feedback for more Fukushuras. On the other hand, sitting 16 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant might make some people feel it is not far enough, while insufficient distance by it self is not a problem if a plant meets safety regulations. Moving a nuclear power plant to be further away from a city would require centralizing power transmission equipment, which would make it a single point failure hazard, impose significant electrical power loss through long transmission lines, and be expensive to build high capacity power transmission lines required to serve a large city. Some ways to make nuclear power plants safer include implementing a Feasibility requirement in PRISM reactor design, which already takes human intervention out of many emergency procedures, more reliance on passive safety systems that cannot control events directly but create conditions that prevent or mitigate their effects, and continuous vigilance, as the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies, not being that the event will be accepted or sought, would help to prevent nuclear accidents.
What do you mean by “Fukushuras”?
“Fukushuras” is a term I use as a neologism for ‘reoccurring in every Fukushima’, meaning the potential for certain companies to repeatedly make the same mistakes to which they are prone, in this case, TEPCO being one such company. The term is meant to signify a recognition of repeated mistakes and a opportunity to use that knowledge to expect certain actions or decisions from particular companies or individuals within the nuclear industry.
In my last blog post on Memorial Day, I talked about how U.S. troops had been deliberately and repeatedly exposed to radiation in bomb tests and clean up in Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many times they have become ill and been denied swift and adequate medical aid. Today, I am going to widen the focus beyond people serving in the U.S. military to civilians who have been deliberately exposed to radiation, often without their knowledge.
Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from more than two hundred atmospheric and underground tests that spread radioactive particles around the northern hemisphere. Thousands of people living in small towns downwind from nuclear tests in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico experienced some of the worst exposure along with their animals, food and other farm products. One document of the Atomic Energy Commission callously referred to some of the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as “a low use segment of the population.”
Some “downwinders” told by the Public Health Service that hair loss and burned skin with occured because they were “neurotic.” Some women were told that they had “housewife syndrome,” whatever that is. It was the practice at the Nevada Test Site to wait for the wind to blow towards Utah before conducting atomic tests. They wanted to avoid having fallout blow towards Los Vegas or Los Angles.
During the Cold War, doctors and scientists connected to the U.S. government spread the propaganda that a little radiation was not dangerous to health. Actually, it was already known that radioactive fallout could increase risk of cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, immune system disease, reproductive abnormalities, sterility, birth defects, and genetic mutations which could be passed on from generation to generation. Because it can take many years for cancers and other health problems to appear, it is not possible to accurately count the number of U.S. citizens who have been harmed by radiation from fallout.
Because of fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, thousands of people in the United States were the unknowing victims of more than four thousand secret and classified radiation experiments. These experiments were carried out by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense, The Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service, the National Institute of Health, the Veterans Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Between 1944 and 1974 a number of secret experiments were conducted. Eighteen Americans were injected with plutonium, most of whom were terminally ill. In the 1940s, eight hundred women were given radioactive iron to see how it affected their fetuses. Forty nine retarded and institutionalized teenagers were fed radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal between 1946 and 1954. One hundred Alaskan villagers were given radioactive iodine during the 1960s. Six newborn Black babies were injected with radioactive iodine. The testicles of over a hundred prisoners were exposed to levels of radiation high enough to cause cancer up to the 1970s. Two hundred cancer patients were exposed to high levels of radiation from cesium and cobalt up until 1974. Psychiatric patients in San Francisco were given radioactive materials. In 1995, the Department of Energy admitted that four hundred and thirty radiation experiments had been conducted on over sixteen thousand people, many of whom were not informed as to the danger.
In Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, it says that that the government shall provide for the “general welfare.” It is obvious that those who carried out the experiments above were not concerned with the welfare of those they experimented upon. Although the radiation experiments were supposedly stopped decades ago, I can’t help but wonder what sort of secret unethical experiments are being carried out today in United States in the name of national security.
I don’t do anything special on Memorial Day but I do take time to reflect on the men and women who serve in our military. I don’t always agree with the foreign policy decisions of our government when it comes to sending troops into harm’s way but I do respect the courage and dedication of our troops. I know that sometimes it is deemed necessary for larger strategic goals to sacrifice soldiers but I would hope that our military at least equips our troops for the battles they face and that they are honest about the threats present in combat situations. I blog about nuclear affairs so today’s post is going to be about nuclear issues and our troops.
During early testing of atomic bombs, a fourteen kiloton nuclear device was dropped from a plane over a testing ground. Troops stationed in trenches were close enough to be hit with the shockwave from the blast. Following the detonation, the troops climbed out of their trenches at walked around in the area of the blast. These troops were not issued protective gear and were just wearing normal uniforms.
Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, American troops were sent into those destroyed cities without proper safety equipment to protect them from the radiation and without being adequately briefed with respect to radiation hazards.
In 1957, soldiers at the Yucca Flats test site in Nevada were issued gas masks and told to face away from the detonation of an atomic bomb twenty miles away. One soldier reported that the flash of light from the blast was so intense that he could literally see though his own arm and through the head of a soldier near him.
It has been reported that between 1943 and 1967, over a million U.S. troops and lesser numbers of troops from other nations were exposed to radiation from military tests and the cleanup of Japanese cities that were bombed. Sometimes they were less than a thousand yards away from ground zero. Often these soldiers were told not to discuss any health issues that might have been connected to radiation exposure with anyone including their doctors.
Thousands of sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier were sent to Fukushima to help in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that occured in March of 2011. They were not told how dangerous the situation was or how much radiation they were going to be exposed to. Now many are ill and are suing the U.S. Government while being told that their health problems couldn’t possibly have been caused by radiation from Fukushima.
Radiation exposure can cause immediate problems depending on the dosage but low doses can cause damage that is hard to detect until years or decades later when cancers forms. Since the 1960s veterans who have health problems that might have been connected to their exposure to radiation have fought to receive treatment from the Veterans Administration. Repeatedly such individuals were assured that they could not have become ill because of radiation exposure. This has been proven not to be true but veterans with radiation related health issues are still fighting for treatment.
It is ironic and tragic that the scandal at the Veterans Administration hit the national headlines near Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, it is not just those who died in service to our country who should be honored but also those who served and are still living burdened by the injuries they received while serving. Every soldier deserves to be equipped for and informed about the dangers he or she will face. And every soldier deserves to have timely medical treatment for any injury received while on duty, even if it takes decades for the injury to become known.
The Fukushima prefectural government opened a Fukushima food promotion shop “Midette” in Nihonbashi on 4/13/2014. fukushima-diary.com
Nuclear power plants across the United States are building or expanding storage facilities to hold their spent fuel. theepochtimes.com
