Thursday, April 11, 2019

Chernobyl’s disastrous cover-up is a warning for the next nuclear age Kate Brown Before expanding nuclear power to combat climate change, we need answers to the global health effects of radioactivity

Chernobyl’s disastrous cover-up is a warning for the next nuclear age

Before expanding nuclear power to combat climate change, we need answers to the global health effects of radioactivity

Illustration: Bill Bragg
 Illustration: Bill Bragg
In 1986, the Soviet minister of hydrometeorology, Yuri Izrael, had a regrettable decision to make. It was his job to track radioactivity blowing from the smoking Chernobyl reactor in the hours after the 26 April explosion and deal with it. Forty-eight hours after the accident, an assistant handed him a roughly drawn map. On it, an arrow shot north-east from the nuclear power plant, and broadened to become a river of air 10 miles wide that was surging across Belarus toward Russia. If the slow-moving mass of radioactive clouds reached Moscow, where a spring storm front was piling up, millions could be harmed. Izrael’s decision was easy. Make it rain.
So that day, in a Moscow airport, technicians loaded artillery shells with silver iodide. Soviet air force pilots climbed into the cockpits of TU-16 bombers and made the easy one-hour flight to Chernobyl, where the reactor burned. The pilots circled, following the weather. They flew 30, 70, 100, 200km – chasing the inky black billows of radioactive waste. When they caught up with a cloud, they shot jets of silver iodide into it to emancipate the rain.

Midnight in Chernobyl and Manual for Survival review – the hidden story uncovered


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In the sleepy towns of southern Belarus, villagers looked up to see planes with strange yellow and grey contrails snaking across the sky. Next day, 27 April, powerful winds kicked up, cumulus clouds billowed on the horizon, and rain poured down in a deluge. The raindrops scavenged radioactive dust floating 200 metres in the air and sent it to the ground. The pilots trailed the slow-moving gaseous bulk of nuclear waste north-east beyond Gomel, into Mogilev province. Wherever pilots shot silver iodide, rain fell, along with a toxic brew of a dozen radioactive elements.
If Operation Cyclone had not been top secret, the headline would have been spectacular: “Scientists using advanced technology save Russian cities from technological disaster!” Yet, as the old saying goes, what goes up must come down. No one told the Belarusians that the southern half of the republic had been sacrificed to protect Russian cities. In the path of the artificially induced rain lived several hundred thousand Belarusians ignorant of the contaminants around them.
The public is often led to believe that the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a depopulated 20-mile circle around the blown plant, safely contains Chernobyl radioactivity. Tourists and journalists exploring the zone rarely realise there is a second Chernobyl zone in southern Belarus. In it, people lived for 15 years in levels of contamination as high as areas within the official zone until the area was finally abandoned, in 1999.
In believing that the Chernobyl zone safely contained the accident, we fall for the proximity trap, which holds that the closer a person is to a nuclear explosion, the more radioactivity they are exposed to. But radioactive gases follow weather patterns, moving around the globe to leave shadows of contamination in shapes that resemble tongues, kidneys, or the sharp tips of arrows.
England, for example, enjoyed clear weather for several days after the Chernobyl accident, but rain started on 2 May, 1986 and fell heavily on the Cumbrian fells – 20mm in 24 hours. On the uneven, upland terrain, radioactive fallout pooled in rivulets and puddles. The needles on radiation detectors at the Sellafield (formerly Windscale) nuclear processing plant went upwards alarmingly, 200 times higher than natural background radiation. From 5 becquerels a square metre, radiation levels in topsoil spiked to 4,000 bq/m2. Kenneth Baker, the then environment secretary, issued assurances that the radioactive isotopes would soon be washed away by rain.
Ukrainians protest against the cover-up of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, April 1990.

 Ukrainians protest against the cover-up of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, April 1990. Photograph: Игорь Костин/РИА Новости
Two months later, however, levels rose yet higher to 10,000 bq/m2 in Cumbria and 20,000 bq/m2 in south-western Scotland, 4,000 times higher than normal. Scientists tested sheep and found their levels of caesium-137 were 1,000 becquerels per kilogram – too high for consumption. In the midst of general anxiety, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fish and Food (MAFF) issued temporary restrictions on the sale of meat for 7,000 farms.
The early predictions of caesium being washed from upland soils proved optimistic. The mineral-starved native plants efficiently drank up radioactive isotopes. Tiny micro-fungi moved caesium-137 from the roots to plant tips, where grazing sheep fed.
Researchers added months, then years, to their predictions of how long the radioactive caesium would linger in the environment. Eventually, restrictions remained in place for 334 farmers of north Wales for 26 years.
As researchers monitored Chernobyl radioactivity, they made a troubling discovery. Only half of the caesium-137 they detected came from Chernobyl. The rest had already been in the Cumbrian soils; deposited there during the years of nuclear testing and after the 1957 fire at the Windscale plutonium plant. The same winds and rains that brought down Chernobyl fallout had been at work quietly distributing radioactive contaminants across northern England and Scotland for decades. Fallout from bomb tests carried out during the cold war scattered a volume of radioactive gases that dwarfed Chernobyl.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f478322b4966093c52b68af9b6be9d953f9194a9/0_418_6720_4032/master/6720.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=bea457f65fe9b05ab456f5115445e935

Revisiting Chernobyl: 'It is a huge cemetery of dreams'


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The Chernobyl explosions issued 45m curies of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere. Emissions from Soviet and US bomb tests amounted to 20bn curies of radioactive iodine, 500 times more. Radioactive iodine, a short lived, powerful isotope can cause thyroid disease, thyroid cancer, hormonal imbalances, problems with the GI tract and autoimmune disorders.
As engineers detonated over 2,000 nuclear bombs into the atmosphere, scientists lost track of where radioactive isotopes fell and where they came from, but they caught glimpses of how readily radioactivity travelled the globe. In the 1950s, British officials detected harmful levels of radioactive caesium in imported Minnesota wheat. The wheat became radioactive from US bomb tests in Nevada, 2,500km from the Minnesota wheatfields. But over the years, scientists failed to come to an agreement on what the global distribution of radioactivity in the food chain did to human health. When the Chernobyl accident occurred, experts in radiation medicine called for a long-term epidemiological study on Chernobyl-exposed people. That study never occurred. After Fukushima, Japanese scientists said what Soviet scientists asserted after Chernobyl – we need 20 years to see what the health effects from the accident will be.
Fortunately, Chernobyl health records are now available to the public. They show that people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anaemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterised as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had in their bodies 8,498 bq/kg of radioactive caesium (20 bq/kg is considered safe).
For decades, researchers have puzzled over strange clusters of thyroid cancer, leukaemia and birth defects among people living in Cumbria, which, like southern Belarus, is an overlooked hotspot of radioactivity from cold war decades of nuclear bomb production and nuclear power accidents.

 Britain’s nuclear U-turn puts us in a very lonely club

Fred Pearce

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Currently, policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health. What we do know is that as fallout from bomb tests drifted down mostly in the northern hemisphere, thyroid cancer rates grew exponentially. In Europe and North America, childhood leukaemia, which used to be a medical rarity, increased in incidence year by year after 1950. Australia, hit by the fallout from British and French tests, has one of the highest incidence rates of childhood cancer worldwide. An analysis of almost 43,000 men in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, showed that sperm counts dropped 52% between 1973 and 2011.
These statistics show a correlation between radioactive contaminants and health problems that are similar to those that materialised in Chernobyl-contaminated territories. A correlation does not prove a causal link. These statistics do, however, invite a lot of questions; questions that scientists and stakeholders should tackle before we enter a second nuclear age.
 Kate Brown is a historian of environmental and nuclear history at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her new book is Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
----------------------------------
Fukushima 8th anniversary, 3.11.19 Nuclear power is not clean, green, renewable. It is dirty, dangerous, expensive. Its radioactive waste causes leukemia and other cancers and lasts millions of years. Moreover, there is no place to store this radioactive waste. Ever. The End.

Sheila Parks, Ed.D.
Founder, On Behalf Of Planet Earth
617 744 6020


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BATH IRON WORKS WARSHIP LAUNCH TO HEAR, “LBJ, LBJ, HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”

BATH IRON WORKS WARSHIP LAUNCH TO HEAR, “LBJ, LBJ, HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”
 
Statewide peace groups will gather to protest the “christening”[sic] of a Zumwalt class warship at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works (BIW) shipyard on the morning of Saturday, April 27 at 8:30 am. The ship will be named for President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was driven from office by anti-war protesters over his bombing of civilians during the Vietnam War.
 
Naming the warship after LBJ supports the Pentagon’s attempt at revisionist history around America’s most unpopular war. Veterans for Peace (VFP), which was founded in Maine by Vietnam War veterans, maintains a website called Vietnam Full Disclosure (https://www.vietnamfulldisclosure.org ) to counter the Pentagon’s efforts to whitewash that war. Several VFP members from around the U.S. are expected at the April 27 protest.

Bruce Gagnon of Brunswick, a member of VFP who became an activist while in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, said, “Our real security needs as a nation are to urgently address climate change and plan for sea level rise that is already underway. How will this affect BIW’s shipyard in Bath? Continuing to build expensive, provocative and polluting weapon systems like Zumwalt destroyers ignores climate change as the biggest threat to our collective safety.” Gagnon has helped organize protests at BIW for the past several years. In 2018 he fasted for 37 days to oppose a tax giveaway by the state of Maine to General Dynamics.

“Making warships at BIW is not even a good jobs policy. Researchers have consistently found that investment of the same resources in sustainable energy solutions like commuter rail or wind turbines would produce many more jobs,” said Mary Beth Sullivan of PeaceWorks of greater Brunswick. “We need conversion of the BIW shipyard now.” Sullivan referenced the UMass Amherst study in 2011, “The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: 2011 Update” by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier (https://www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/449-the-u-s-employment-effects-of-military-and-domestic-spending-priorities-2011-update ).

Another PeaceWorks member has spent the past year gathering names of people willing to engage in civil resistance on April 27. Karen Wainberg of Brunswick says she had more than 50 names on her list at this time.

Mark Roman of Solon plans to be there representing the Maine Natural Guard, an organization dedicated to pointing out the Pentagon’s enormous carbon footprint. “I cannot stand by and watch lawmakers waste our tax dollars on warships that are huge polluters when that money could be spent on climate change solutions, or on housing and food for the 43,000 children in Maine living in poverty,” he said. Roman has been active in the Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign at BIW since 2009.

Organizations sponsoring the April 27 protests and resistance include Americans Who Tell the Truth, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), Durham Quaker Meeting, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Island Peace & Justice, Maine Natural Guard, Maine Veterans for Peace, Midcoast Peace & Justice Group, Pax Christi Maine, Peace Action Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Peace & Justice Group of Waldo County, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, and Peninsula Peace & Justice.
##
 

 
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Lisa Savage
Went 2 the Bridge blog


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CHELSEA MANNING OUT OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT Payday men's network

Payday men's network<payday@paydaynet.org>
Published on Thursday, April 04, 2019 by Common Dreams

'Thank Frickin God': Chelsea Manning Released From Solitary Confinement

"While this is a big win, there's still a road ahead to get her out of jail."
 Description: Chelsea Manning at UCLA, March 6, 2018.
Chelsea Manning at UCLA, March 6, 2018. (Photo: UCLA, Flickr)
This is a breaking story... 
Chelsea Manning is out of solitary confinement, but she remains in prison after refusing to testify to a grand jury due to her concerns that the exercise is a "perjury trap."
In a statement posted on her official Twitter account Thursday afternoon, Manning's team announced that "After 28 days in so-called 'administrative segregation' (solitary confinement), Chelsea has finally been moved into general population at Truesdale Detention Center."
That's good news, though the fight isn't over for Manning. 
"While this is a big win, there's still a road ahead to get her out of jail," the account said.
Manning has been at the prison since March 8. As Common Dreams reported at the time, the whistleblower said in a statement the day before her imprisonment that her testimony was irrelevant to the case and that the only reason for her involvement in the grand jury was likely to trap her in making inconsistent statements.
"I have nothing to contribute to this case, and I resent being forced to endanger myself by participating in this predatory practice," Manning said in her statement March 7. 
Manning's release from solitary comes just two days after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the practice torture. 
Supporters of Manning celebrated the news Thursday but continued their calls for Manning's full release from prison. 
"She's still in prison though when she should be free, so please keep fighting for her," said Evan Greer, deputy director for Fight for the Future. 
"Good news, but the fight isn’t over yet!" said Bob Bland, co-chair of the Women's March.

Crucial: Go to https://xychelsea.is and see what we can do to help her, including:
► Donate to Chelsea's legal defense fund
► Donate to help cover 
Chelsea's rent
► Write to Chelsea at:
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning
William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center
2001 Mill Road
Alexandria, VA 22314
US

FREE CHELSEA MANNING!

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Payday, men working with the Global Women’s Strike



50TH ANNIVERSARY of HARVARD '69: TAKEOVER OF UNIVERSITY HALL; BUST; STRIKE! -- Events: April 9 + April 12

Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>
Also, Tuesday evening at Porter Square Books: https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/you-say-you-want-revolution-sds-pl-and-adventures-building-worker-student-alliance Good morning, 50^th Anniversary Events Participants, [all invited...] We are now one week out. Over 100 of us have already said we …

"It was a very thin line"--the Doug Rawlings podcast; Free Chelsea Manning (again)! Courage to Resist

Courage to Resist Jeff Paterson<jeff.paterson@couragetoresist.org>
Courage to Resist
doug rawlings podcast
Podcast: Doug Rawlings, "It was a very thin line and you could very easily step across it."
“Moral injury is the realization years later that you were part of it, that you are culpable for some of these things. So I refer to some guys as sociopaths and stuff like that. But where was I? Why didn’t I intervene and stop this guy from smacking around this papasan or these guys from gang raping this 16-year-old villager? Why didn’t I stop that? I didn’t.”
This year marks 50 years of GI resistance, in and out of uniform, for many of the courageous individuals featured in our currently weekly podcasts highlighting Vietnam-era veterans.  Please help us raise at least $7,500 to produce this year-long series of dozens of interviews so that this history is not lost!
“But then something changed. Guys started saying: “I’m not going out there. I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do that.” That stuff started happening more and more and more and more, such to the point where some people make the claim, and I think rightfully so, that that war ended because the troops were beginning to mutiny big time." Listen to Doug Rawling's story now.
D O N A T E
to support the production of these podcasts
This Courage to Resist podcast was produced in collaboration with the Vietnam Full Disclosure effort of Veterans For Peace -- "Towards an honest commemoration of the American war in Vietnam."

ctr videoChelsea Manning out of solitary confinement after a month

US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning been jailed for the last five weeks for being held in “contempt of court” for refusing to collaborate with the grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Last week, she was finally released from solitary confinement into the general population at the Truesdale jail in Alexandria, Virginia. For her principled stand, she is facing another 17 months behind bars. For more information, including how to donate to her legal fees and write to her directly, visit couragetoresist.org
COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist