WOULD YOU RISK ALL THAT TO SAVE THE LIVES OF PEOPLE YOU NEVER MET AND NEVER WOULD MEET?
SOME HAVE.
SOME LOST EVERYTHING DOING SO.
BELOW YOU WILL FIND NUMEROUS MANHATTAN PROJECT SCIENTISTS WHO LATER BECAME ADAMANT ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVISTS, WHISTLEBLOWERS, INFORMANTS TRYING TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC ON THE TRUTH OF RADIATION.
THEY WERE WELL-RESPECTED EXPERTS, SOME WERE NOBEL PRIZE NOMINEES, ONE WAS A NOBEL LAUREATE.
WHY DID THE VERY MEN WHO WORKED TO DEVELOP "THE BOMB" TURN AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER?
MAYBE YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHY BY SIMPLY READING AND PONDERING WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY.
FOR ANY WHO DON'T WISH TO WADE THROUGH THIS LENGTHY POST, WHO ONLY WANT TO READ ABOUT THE MANHATTAN PROJECT WHISTLEBLOWERS, SKIP DOWN TO THE TRIPLE ASTERISKS ***.
YOU MAY WISH YOU'D READ IT ALL AS EACH WHISTLEBLOWER COULD SAVE ANY OF OUR LIVES.
THE TEA ROOM WANTED TO SALUTE THESE MEN AND MORE RECENT NUCLEAR ENERGY WHISTLEBLOWERS, BECAUSE I MAY WELL BE ONE OF THE LIVES THEY SAVED BY PUTTING EVERYTHING ON THE LINE AND INFORMING THE PUBLIC OF SOME NASTY TRUTHS.
THE TEA ROOM ASKS THAT, IF YOU KNOW ANYONE LIVING NEAR THE FACILITIES MENTIONED IN THE FOLLOWING REPORTS THAT YOU INFORM THEM OF THE NOW-KNOWN HAZARDS SO THEY MAY DEVISE SOME METHOD TO HELP PROTECT THEMSELVES, SINCE OUR FEDERAL "PROTECTION" AGENCIES HAVE NO INTENTION OF DOING SO.
DECEMBER, 2012 THROUGH MARCH, 2013
Richard H. Perkins and Larry Criscione are precise and formal men with more than 20 years of combined government and military service.
Perkins held posts at the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) before joining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Division of Risk Analysis in 2008.
Criscione landed at the agency a year later, after five years aboard the USS Georgia as a submarine warfare officer.
Now both men are also reluctant whistleblowers, stepping out publicly to accuse the NRC of being both disconcertingly sluggish and inappropriately secretive about severe -- and in one case, potentially catastrophic -- flood risks at nuclear plants that sit downstream from large dams.
A number of nuclear safety advocates who have looked into the matter in recent weeks have echoed their complaints, and a collection of documents obtained by The Huffington Post -- including a 4-year old internal communication plan for NRC officials seeking to head-off criticism of its handling of the dam threat, as well as detailed correspondence between Criscione and NRC leadership on the issue -- appears to lend credence to the engineers' concerns.
Taken together, the documents and charges shed new light on an agency that has been repeatedly criticized for allowing plant owners to delay crucial safety improvements for years, and for diligently withholding information not as a way of protecting the public interest, but as a way of protecting itself.
"When you're working with sensitive information, you just don't talk about it, so what I'm doing I find to be both perverse and uncomfortable," Perkins said. "But I had to do it."
"It is hypocritical for the NRC -- or any government agency -- under the guise of security, to withhold information from the American public concerning a potentially significant public safety vulnerability, yet take no real action to study and correct the supposed security vulnerability," Criscione said.
"If we believe there is a security vulnerability, we need to take measures to address it and not merely withhold it from public discussion."
Perkins was tasked in 2010 with spearheading what he says was always supposed to become a publicly available review of the dam-flood threat at U.S. nuclear power plants. Instead, he says, NRC management pushed back almost immediately to exclude certain information from the analysis.
When the report was completed and shared internally at the NRC in July 2011, Perkins said he felt he had ultimately prevailed in keeping most of the information he considered pertinent in the report. But he was chagrined when a public version was released last March with substantial portions of the document blacked out.
An unredacted version of Perkins's report, obtained by The Huffington Post in October, revealed that much of the blacked-out information was publicly available in other documents and websites already published online, including simple maps of where nuclear plants stood in relation to upstream dams or the height of flood walls designed to protect safety equipment.
Threats of varying significance were identified in Perkins's analysis at the Ft. Calhoun station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among more than two-dozen others.
The document also cited analyses by Duke Energy, owner of the Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina, that were performed as far back as the early 1990s, suggesting that the NRC had known for some time about the flood threats.
Those analyses showed that the 5-foot flood wall protecting crucial safety equipment at Oconee would prove inadequate in the event of a catastrophic failure of the Jocassee Dam, located 11 miles upstream on Lake Keowee. If that dam failed completely, the report suggested, floodwaters as high as 16.8 feet would inundate the Oconee facility, and a meltdown would be a virtual certainty.
A timeline released by the NRC on Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request suggests that the agency was aware of the dam flood threat at Oconee as far back as 1994...
OVER 20 YEARS AND NO CHANGES TO INSURE PUBLIC SAFETY, TO PREVENT A POSSIBLE 'FUKUSHIMA EVENT' ON AMERICAN SOIL.
At NO time did the NRC threaten to shut the facility down, or otherwise force the company to fully assess and correct what appeared to be a risk of unusually high magnitude.
By 2008, NRC had even prepared an internal communications plan to deal with potential questions relating to the vulnerability, which was still unaddressed.
THEY WOULD HELP THEM HIDE THE THREAT FROM THE PUBLIC!
By NRC's own calculus -- which was blacked out in the public release of Perkins's report -- the odds of failure in any given year of a large rock-fill dam like the one at Jocassee were about 1 in 3,600.
For the Oconee plant, that amounted to a 1 in 163 chance of a catastrophic flood in any one of the 22 years remaining on its operating license -- a risk the agency itself described as being "an order of magnitude larger" than Duke's estimate.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Cambridge, Mass.-based advocacy group, calculated that the 34 reactors highlighted in Perkins's analysis are downstream from a total of more than 50 dams -- half of them roughly the size of the Jocassee Dam. "Assuming the NRC’s failure rate applies to all of those dams," Lochbaum noted in an analysis posted to the group's web site, "the probability that one will fail in the next 40 years is roughly 25 percent -- a 1 in 4 chance."
HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES THAT ENDANGER?
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, MILLIONS?
ONE OF MY CHILDREN AND HIS SPOUSE WERE DOWNSTREAM FROM OCONEE, AND WE DID NOT KNOW, THEY WERE NEVER PROMPTED AS TO WHAT TO DO OR TOLD WHAT COULD HAPPEN SHOULD THAT DAM BREAK.
THERE WERE NO SAFETY DRILLS, NO MESSAGES, NOTHING IN ALL THE YEARS THEY LIVED THERE.
I TOOK THIS VERY PERSONALLY, NEEDLESS TO SAY.
DUKE ENERGY SAYS THEY CAN HANDLE IT, BUT STILL NO SAFETY DRILLS FOR THE PUBLIC, STILL NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS TO ALERT PEOPLE TO THE DANGER.
Nuclear safety advocates have questioned [DUKE'S] assertions -- particularly given that the NRC CONTINUES to redact and withhold key information related to the threat.
"You can't have it both ways," said Lochbaum, who reviewed the un-censored version of Perkins report and concluded that the redactions were spurious.
"If it was a true security threat, the NRC and the operator would be obliged to quickly remove the threat. If they had done that at any point over the last 15 years, there would be no need for redactions.
"Google searches will turn up plenty of pictures of Jocassee from the air and ground," Lochbaum added. "I did a YouTube search and even came across a 10-minute documentary about building the dam."
Jim Riccio, a nuclear analyst with the environmental group Greenpeace, which first obtained the unredacted version of Perkins' report, said the emerging paper trail has eroded the NRC's credibility on the issue. "The Commission has failed its most basic mission to adequately protect public health and safety," Riccio said, "and it cannot be trusted to speak honestly about the risks that nuclear power poses."
When asked whether any part of him believes there could be a legitimate reason for NRC to keep parts of his report from the public, Perkins became animated. "I could so easily answer this question -- I'm dying to answer that question," he said. "But I cannot answer that question without going into the area that I am not allowed to talk about.
I will say that, when you're a regulator, and you're dealing with these safety issues, the public not only should be able to watch what you're doing, they actually must, in accordance with the law, be able to see what you're doing," Perkins added. "We don't work for nuclear operators, after all. We work for the American people."
WELL, THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR OUR SAFETY, BUT NEVER HAVE, NEVER CAN BE EXPECTED TO.
WE MOVE TO THE MISSOURI OZARKS, THE TAUM SAUK HYDROELECTRIC RESERVOIR AND THE FAILURE OF THAT DAM THAT ALMOST KILLED AN ENTIRE FAMILY.
The incident there stuck with Larry Criscione, a mathematical man who says he recognized a could-have-been-me moment in the disaster.
It was eventually attributed to improperly placed and malfunctioning sensors that allowed the reservoir to fill beyond safe levels.
When he learned of the dam issue facing the nation's nuclear power plants, Criscione says he felt compelled to make certain the threat was clearly understood by the American people, even if it meant risking his job.
"One of the most unfortunate aspects about safety is that when an engineer does stand his ground and sacrifices his career over a safety concern -- and by doing so, prevents a disaster -- no one ever knows," Criscione said.
"We cannot know of something that did NOT occur.
We cannot know of something that was PREVENTED.
Had a technician or engineer gone to the press in November 2005 and got the sensors at Taum Sauk fixed, he would have never known the ordeal from which he spared the superintendent and his family..."
After learning of the heavy redactions in Perkins' report, Criscione's own twinge of conscience, he says, prompted him to independently investigate the dam flood risk issue.
Four days after Perkins filed his complaint with the Inspector General's office, Criscione dispatched a lengthy letter to the NRC's chairwoman, Allison MacFarlane.
The letter included dozens of attachments of unearthed internal correspondence between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Duke Energy regarding the flood threat at Oconee.
Both the letter and the documents were obtained independently by The Huffington Post, and while Criscione and NRC officials said they could not comment on their contents, they independently confirmed that the materials were genuine and were being addressed internally.
The Huffington Post has made Criscione's letter and the attached documents available here.
Criscione prefaced his letter by quoting a former Navy admiral, who shepherded the development of the nation's nuclear submarine force:
"'A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the latitude to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct them.'"
[THE NRC] did not take a hard stance and force Duke to rectify the situation immediately -- a timidity that, according to Criscione's letter, sparked internal objections beyond his own and those of Perkins.
In one instance in 2009, a protestation was filed by a deputy director within the Division of Risk Assessment, who was quoted as saying, "I remain concerned that this approach is not in the best interest of public health and safety and security, regulatory stability, and our role as a strong regulator."
WHAT THE NRC "REGULATES" IS KEEPING OPERATING COSTS DOWN FOR ITS "BABIES", THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY'S AGING LEAKERS ALL ACROSS AMERICA.
IN DOING SO, IT RISKS ALL OUR LIVES AND HEALTH.
I TAKE GREAT OFFENSE TO THAT. DUKE ADMITS IT HAS DONE NOTHING TO CORRECT THE THREAT!
Duke has acknowledged that, given a Jocassee Dam failure with subsequent site inundation, all three Oconee units will go to core damage; that is given a dam failure, the conditional core damage probability is 1.0. ...
For a Jocassee Dam failure, using potentially optimistic assumptions, Duke estimates that containment will fail approximately 59 to 68 hours after dam failure without mitigating actions.
Under the dam break conditions, resultant flood waters and infrastructure damage would affect public evacuation and potentially affect emergency operations facility response capability.
Duke has not demonstrated that its radiological emergency plan actions can be adequately implemented under these conditions.
"Like all probabilities, CCDP must be a number between 0 and 1," Criscione wrote.
"A value of 0 means that given only that specific event, there is NO chance that core damage will occur.
A value of 1 means that given that specific event (e.g. a failure of the Jocassee Dam) then core damage WILL CERTAINLY OCCUR.
For most initiating events (e.g. tornadoes, loss of offsite power, fires) the CCDP is typically a very small fraction on the order of one ten-thousandth to one-tenth.
"1.0 might not sound big," he wrote. "But it's enormous."
AND TODAY, 3 YEARS LATER, HAS ANYTHING CHANGED?
NO.
THE NRC AND DUKE ENERGY SOOTHED MOST OF CONGRESS' NERVES ABOUT THE WHOLE THING AND EVERYONE IN THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CELEBRATED ANOTHER WIN FOR NUKES, ANOTHER FAILURE TO MAKE, TO FORCE 'BIG NUKE' TO DO ANYTHING TO REMOTELY HELP AMERICANS BE SAFE.
LIKE I SAID, PLEASE, PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU KNOW IN THE AREAS MENTIONED.
YOU JUST MAY SAVE LIVES BY DOING SO.
THE NEXT WHISTLEBLOWER, WHO IS STILL BLOWING WHISTLES, IS PERHAPS A FAMILIAR NAME TO MANY OF YOU. ARNOLD GUNDERSEN...
FEW REALIZE HIS CREDENTIALS.
Gundersen is a former nuclear industry executive, and engineer with more than 44 years of nuclear industry experience.
His curriculum vitae shows Gundersen is a licensed Critical Facility Reactor Operator.
Gundersen is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1971), with a B.S. cum laude and a GPA of 3.74 in nuclear engineering, holds a master's degree in nuclear engineering, and gained an Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship (1972).
He was an invited chapter author for the Department of Energy's Decommissioning Handbook, First Edition, 1981-1982.
Gundersen holds a nuclear safety patent, Energy Absorbing Turbine Missile Shield – U.S. Patent # 4,397,608 , 8/9/1983, and managed and coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants in the US.
Gundersen is chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates, and on the board of directors for Fairewinds Energy Education a 501c3 non-profit organization.
POINT BEING, THE MAN IS A RECOGNIZED EXPERT IN THE FIELD OF NUCLEAR ENERGY....NOT A "KOOK", JUST A HATED WHISTLEBLOWER WHO WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT THE FAILURES AND SCHEMES HE'S SEEN AND SEES TODAY.
"In 1989, Arnold Gundersen of Goshen, Connecticut, was a senior vice president with Danbury-based Nuclear Energy Services (NES), a card-carrying member of the nuclear industry.
Since then, he has become a dedicated whistleblower, taking on the industry that once supplied him in his family with a comfortable lifestyle and a bright future.
Mr. Gundersen made the transition between these two worlds after he uncovered what he felt were safety violations at NES and reported the problem to management.
Soon after making this report he was dismissed from his job and began a five-year effort to prove his case. WHAT CAUSED HIM TO LOSE HIS JOB?
He discovered radioactive material in an accounting safe at Nuclear Energy Services in Danbury, the consulting firm where he held a $120,000-a-year job as senior vice president.
Three weeks after he notified the company president of what he believed to be radiation safety violations, he was fired.
A report prepared by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission eventually concluded that there HAD been irregularities at NES, and a second document, prepared by the Office of the Inspector General, noted that the NRC had violated its own regulations by improperly steering business to NES.
But that vindication was small solace to the Gundersen family, who had by then lost their home."Without the intervention of Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Sen. John Glenn, we would have been dog meat", Mr. Gundersen said.
"We would have been selling apples on the street.
My bitterness is not toward my former employer, but toward the government agencies that did nothing to rectify it.
I had believed in the government, but now I know that it is an organism and when you attack it, it reacts like an organism. But as a result of my case, Connecticut has toughest whistleblower protection bill in the country."
Hired by the Vermont Legislature, Gundersen said in 2010 that the nuclear power plant Vermont Yankee should shut down voluntarily to stop its radiation leaks.
He said the leak of radioactive tritium at Vermont Yankee may soon be followed by releases of other, more dangerous materials if the plant keeps operating.
State Health Commissioner Wendy Davis says it's likely that tritium has already reached the Connecticut River.
THEN THERE WAS THIS:
"Radioactive Tritium Found In New Well At Vermont Yankee". Vermont Public Radio. January 21, 2011.
AFTER EVERYTHING WAS REVEALED, WHAT DID THE NRC DO?
In March 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) extended its license for another 20 years.
YES, EXTENDED ITS LICENSE, LEAKS AND ALL, CONTAMINATION OFF THE ENVIRONMENT AND ALL, THE NRC HANDED YANKEE THE RIGHT TO CONTINUE LEAKING FOR ANOTHER 20 YEARS!
YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT! The Vermont legislature had already voted in February 2010 against renewed permission to operate.
The NRC thumbed its nose at that vote.
It re-licensed Yankee.
In January 2012, Yankee's owner Entergy won a court case, invalidating the state's veto power on continued operations.
On August 28, 2013, Entergy announced that, due to economic factors, Vermont Yankee would cease operations in the fourth quarter of 2014.
The plant was shut down at 12:12 pm EST on December 29, 2014.
IT SHUT DOWN, BUT IT WILL STAND THERE AND CONTINUE LEAKING UNTIL ... FOREVER.
26 JAN. 2016, FIVE DAYS AGO, THIS: 60 YEARS OR MORE TO FINAL STAGE DECOMMISSIONING...
"Entergy spent $58 million from the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund in the first year after the Vernon nuclear plant’s shutdown, the company disclosed this week.
Overall, with investment income and trust administrative expenses figured in, the fund decreased by about $69 million in 2015 – from $664.56 million to $595.4 million at year’s end.
Administrators said the new figures show that Entergy is in compliance with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is on track financially in the EARLY stages of Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning.
[NO, IT DOES NOT SHOW THAT. IT SIMPLY SHOWS THEY ARE SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY AND MAKING LITTLE, IF ANY REAL PROGRESS.]
Decommissioning can take up to 60 years under the program, though the actual schedule depends in part on the growth of the plant’s trust fund.
Entergy has estimated that decommissioning Vermont Yankee will cost $1.24 billion.
The trust fund contained a little over half that sum when the plant shut down, and Entergy in early 2015 began spending fund money on a variety of operational expenses including salaries and utilities.
The trust fund has been the subject of much debate. Vermont officials have challenged several of Entergy’s proposed fund uses, and they are particularly upset that the NRC decided to allow the company to withdraw money for long-term management of Yankee’s spent nuclear fuel.
The state has filed a lawsuit and a hotly contested petition seeking to block that use."
BOTTOM LINE, THE NRC HAS BASICALLY TOLD THE STATE OF VERMONT TO GO SCREW ITSELF, THAT THE WILL OF THE STATE MEANS NOTHING.
ENTERGY HAS BASICALLY SAID THEY WON'T HAVE THE FUNDS TO CLEAN UP AND STOP THE DAMAGE BEING DONE BY YANKEE.
IT WILL REMAIN A LEAKER FOR AT LEAST 60 MORE YEARS.
IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS WITHIN THE RADIUS OF VERMONT YANKEE'S FALLOUT PLUME AND WATER CONTAMINATION, PLEASE TELL THEM ABOUT THIS.
NO REAL PROTECTION FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS
A total of 609 complaints of retaliation against whistle-blowers filed with the nuclear commission (NRC)and the United States Department of Labor resulted in only 44 investigations and just 7 enforcement actions during four and a half years.
(1990 TO 1995)
A team established in 1993 to review the nuclear commission's whistle-blower protection program made 47 recommendations to improve the environment for workers who raise safety concerns.
Some of those proposals have been carried out, while others have yet to be completed, Beth Hayden, deputy director of the commission's Office of Public Affairs, said. "
[Read the stories of some of the first nuclear whistleblowers in a New York Times artcle <HERE>.]
READ ABOUT SEVERAL MORE RECENT ONES <HERE>.
FOLLOW THE LINKS PROVIDED AT THAT SITE.
"THE SAN JOSE GE THREE", middle-management engineers in General Electric's nuclear energy division, Gregory Minor, 38, Richard Hubbard, 38, and Dale Bridenbaugh, 44, Feb. 16, 1976.
THESE THREE MEN'S FINDINGS AND 'PREDICTIONS' DEEPLY AFFECT ALL OF US TODAY.
Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan, a series of explosions and a containment failure at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant resulted in media coverage of the "GE Three".
Bridenbaugh described design flaws of General Electric's Mark 1 reactors, which account for five of the six reactors at the Fukushima 1 power plant.
Bridenbaugh claimed that the design "did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant" and that, despite efforts to retrofit the reactors, "the Mark 1 is still a little more susceptible to an accident that would result in a loss of containment."
AND HE WAS CORRECT.
HAD GE CORRECTED THIS OR PULLED ALL THOSE REACTORS, WE WOULD NOT BE HAVING THE CURRENT "EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT" GOING ON IN OUR WORLD TODAY, IN JAPAN.
The six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are all GE-designed boiling-water reactors,Five have containment systems of GE's Mark I design, and the sixth is a Mark II design. They were placed in operation between 1971 and 1979.
If the cooling systems ever failed at a “Mark 1” nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment.
Now, with one Mark 1 containment vessel damaged
at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and other vessels
there under severe strain, the weaknesses of the design — developed in
the 1960s by General Electric — could be contributing to the unfolding
catastrophe.
WE WOULDN'T BE SITTING HERE, WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN AGAIN.
THERE ARE 23 OF THESE FLAWED REACTORS IN CURRENT OPERATION IN 13 STATES IN AMERICA.
IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU CARE FOR LIVE WITHIN RANGE OF THE FOLLOWING NUKE FACILITIES, PLEASE DEVELOP AN ESCAPE PLAN, A PAN A, B AND C, AND PASS THIS ON TO OTHERS.
The following 23 U.S. plants have GE boiling-water reactors (GE models 2, 3 or 4) with the same Mark I containment design used at Fukushima, according to the NRC online database:
- Browns Ferry 1, Athens, Ala., operating license since 1973, reactor type GE 4
- Browns Ferry 2, Athens, Ala., 1974, GE 4
- Browns Ferry 3, Athens, Ala., 1976, GE 4
- Brunswick 1, Southport, N.C, 1976, GE 4.
- Brunswick 2, Southport, N.C., 1974, GE 4.
- Cooper, Brownville, Neb., 1974, GE 4.
- Dresden 2, Morris, Ill., 1970, GE 3.
- Dresden 3, Morris, Ill., 1971, GE 3.
- Duane Arnold, Palo, Iowa, 1974, GE 4.
- Fermi 2, Monroe, Mich., 1985, GE 4.
- FitzPatrick, Scriba, N.Y., 1974, GE 4.
- Hatch 1, Baxley, Ga., 1974, GE 4.
- Hatch 2, Baxley, Ga., 1978, GE 4.
- Hope Creek, Hancock's Bridge, N.J. 1986, GE 4.
- Monticello, Monticello, Minn., 1970, GE 3.
- Nine Mile Point 1, Scriba, N.Y., 1969, GE 2.
- Oyster Creek, Forked River, N.J., 1969, GE 2.
- Peach Bottom 2, Delta, Pa., 1973, GE 4.
- Peach Bottom 3, Delta, Pa., 1974, GE 4.
- Pilgrim, Plymouth, Mass., 1972, GE 3.
- Quad Cities 1, Cordova, Ill., 1972, GE 3.
- Quad Cities 2, Moline, Ill., 1972, GE 3.
- Vermont Yankee, Vernon, Vt., 1972, GE 4.
- Clinton, Clinton, Ill., 1987, GE 6, Mark III.
- Columbia Generating Station, Richland, Wash., 1984, GE 5, Mark II.
- Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, Miss., 1984, GE 6, Mark III.
- LaSalle 1, Marseilles, Ill., 1982, GE 5, Mark II.
- LaSalle 2, Marseilles, Ill., 1983, GE 5, Mark II.
- Limerick 1, Limerick, Pa., 1985, GE 4, Mark II.
- Limerick 2, Limerick, Pa., 1989, GE 4, Mark II.
- Nine Mile Point 2, Scriba, N.Y., 1987, GE 5, Mark II.
- Perry, Perry, Ohio, 1986, GE 6, Mark III.
- River Bend, St. Francisville, La., 1985, GE 6, Mark III.
- Susquehanna 1, Salem Township, Pa., 1982, GE 4, Mark II.
- Susquehanna 2, Salem Township, Pa., 1984, GE 4, Mark II.
In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks.
Questions about the design escalated in the mid-1980s, when Harold Denton, an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asserted that Mark 1 reactors had a 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident.
Although G.E.’s liability would seem limited in Japan — largely because the regulatory system in that country places most liability on the plant operator — the company’s stock fell 31 cents to $19.61 in trading Tuesday.
[THIS WAS IN 2011.]
HAD THEY LISTENED, HAD THEY SIMPLY PULLED ALL THOSE FAULTY REACTORS 40 YEARS AGO, HOW MANY LIVES WOULD BE SAVED TODAY?
SHOULD G.E. BE HELD LIABLE?
YES!
WILL THEY BE?
NO.
WILL THEY BE WHEN WE HAVE OUR AMERICAN VERSION OF FUKUSHIMA?
NO.
BECAUSE THE NRC AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL, CONGRESS IN PARTICULAR, PROTECTS KNOWN KILLERS, PROTECTS WHAT HARMS US.
WE CAN ACCEPT THAT AND DO NOTHING, OR WE CAN DAILY DO ALL WE CAN TO MAKE THE PROTECTION AGENCIES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ANSWER TO US, PROTECT US...OR ELSE...OR ELSE JUST MAYBE WE'LL FIND OTHERS WHO WILL....DISSOLVE THE AGENCIES THAT SHIELD THE KILLERS, REPLACE THEM.
WE ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
WE ARE AMERICA.
WE HAVE THE POWER.
AND WE DON'T NEED NUCLEAR POWER!
TO HELL WITH NUCLEAR POWER...THAT'S WHERE IT BELONGS ANYWAY.
*** MANHATTAN PROJECT SCIENTISTS TURNED ANTI-NUCLEAR/ANTI-NUCLEAR WAR
MAYBE THE MOST SURPRISING SWITCH TO ANTI-NUCLEAR AMONG ALMOST 100 FROM THE MANHATTAN PROJECT WAS OPPENHEIMER.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a fascinating, complex, and extremely seductive figure.
As director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Oppenheimer, or “Oppie,” as his friends called him, bore major responsibility for building the atomic bomb and some responsibility for obstructing scientists desperately seeking to prevent its use.
Understanding clearly what he had wrought and terrified by the future this augured, he later struggled for international control of nuclear weapons and fought to prevent development of the hydrogen bomb. Spurred by troubling questions from Danish Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard about slaughtering civilians and precipitating a potentially catastrophic arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, many scientists pondered the ethical implications of what they were doing far more deeply than Oppenheimer.
He was perhaps the most knowledgeable and articulate critic of America’s nuclear policies.
PERHAPS THE GREATEST WHISTLEBLOWER OF ALL TIME,
Dr. John Gofman was instrumental in inducing the health physics scientific community both to acknowledge the cancer risks of ionizing radiation and to adopt the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model as a means of estimating actual cancer risks from low-level radiation and as the foundation of the international guidelines for radiation protection.
Gofman's earliest research was in nuclear physics and chemistry, in close connection to the Manhattan Project.
He co-discovered several radioisotopes, notably uranium-233 and its fissionability ; he was the third person ever to work with plutonium, and, having devised an early process for separating plutonium from fission products at J. Robert Oppenheimer’s request, he was the first chemist ever to try and isolate milligram quantities of plutonium.
In 1963, Gofman established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.
Later in life, Gofman took on a role as an advocate warning of dangers involved with nuclear power.
From 1971 onward, he was the Chairman of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility.
He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his work on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster's low-level radiation exposure on the population Dr. John Gofman testified in the Kerr-McGee/Karen Silkwood legal case.
Gofman was giving testimony about the dangers of 1 nanocurie of plutonium in the body:
“Two thousand times a minute these bullets, alpha particles are coming out . . . . delivering 5 million of those volts of energy, each one.
So, it’s a fantastic projectile.
The alpha particles in the lungs, it is hitting right through the cells of the lung with 2.5 million times more energy that you would get from a carbon burning.
So you see, expecting that your cells are not going to be damaged by that would be about the same expectation when somebody might talk to you and say ‘Well, a small amount of this won’t hurt you.’ That is such an absurd nonsense notion that one wonders how anybody could think of it.”
ANOTHER MANHATTAN PROJECT GENIUS TURNED WHISTLEBLOWER, DR. KARL Z. MORGAN, FOUNDING FATHER OF HEALTH PHYSICS, STRUGGLED RIGHT UP TO HIS DEATH AT AGE 92 TO INFORM THE WORLD OF THE DEADLINESS OF IONIZING RADIATION IN MINUSCULE AMOUNTS.
WHAT TURNED THE MEN WHO HELPED BRING ABOUT THE ATOMIC BOMB TO CHANGE INTO ANTI-NUCLEAR INFORMANTS, MADE THEM TRY TO WARN US ALL ABOUT THE ETERNAL DANGER OF NUCLEAR ENERGY AND WEAPONS?
THE TRUTH!
IT WAS THE TRUTH AND THEY SAW IT.
THEY KNEW.
THEY SAW IT FOR THEMSELVES.
WE OWE THEM OUR DEPEST GRATITUDE, NOT SCORN, NOT INCESSANTLY CRUCIFYING HEM FOR TELLING US THE TRUTH.
THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE RADIOACTIVE ATOM THAT IS A "SAFE LEVEL" INSIDE A HUMAN BODY.
A THIRD MANHATTAN PROJECT SCIENTIST, A scientist who directed a team working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M., Dr. Henry Linschitz helped design and build the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, and then he dedicated himself to persuading people that nuclear war should never be repeated.
Dr. Linschitz, also helped found United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War.
In a 1995 interview with Chemical & Engineering News, published 50 years after the first atomic bomb was detonated in a test, he recalled what it was like to witness the dawn of the nuclear age at the Alamogordo, N.M., test site. Before the detonation, Dr. Linschitz wired the firing cables to the bomb as it sat atop a steel tower.
“It is really difficult to describe adequately the overwhelming impact of the shot,” said Dr. Linschitz, who observed the blast from 15 miles away. “Someone later wrote that the sun rose twice that morning, but the dazzling white light all around on the desert and mountains seemed far brighter than any sun, and the ensuing blast, even at that distance, was a sustained echoing roar.”
A 4TH MANHATTAN PROJECT SCIENTIST,Sir Joseph (Józef) Rotblat was a Polish physicist.
Rotblat was the only physicist to leave the Manhattan Project (1942–46) on the grounds of conscience.
Rotblat's work on nuclear fallout was a major contribution toward the ratification of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
A signatory of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto (1955), he was secretary-general of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from their founding until 1973.
He shared, with the Pugwash Conferences, the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts toward nuclear disarmament.
Rotblat campaigned ceaselessly against nuclear weapons.
He concluded his acceptance lecture for the Nobel prize in 1995:
"Above all, remember your humanity."
NEXT...
Dr. Leo Szilard was a Hungarian-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb.
He invented the chemostat, discovered feedback inhibition, and was involved in the first cloning of a human cell.
He publicly sounded the alarm against the development of salted bombs, explaining in radio talk on February 26, 1950, that a cobalt bomb, a new kind of nuclear weapon using cobalt as a tamper, might destroy all life on the planet. While Time magazine compared him to Chicken Little, and the Atomic Energy Commission dismissed the idea, scientists debated whether it was feasible or not. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists commissioned a study by James R. Arnold that concluded that it was.
YES, IT WAS.
AND, SINCE THE FORMAT ISSUE IS OBVIOUSLY BACK, I WILL END THE LIST, THE LONG LIST, OF THOSE EARLY GREAT MINDS WHO DEVELOPED THE MONSTER THAT CHANGED ALL OUR LIVES INTO A NEVER-ENDING QUESTION MARK.
WILL WE SURVIVE GLOBAL RADIATION?
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