Rocky: U.S. nuke work afflicted 36,500 Americans

[struggle4progress]

Radiation sickened 36,500 and killed at least 4,000 of those who built bombs, mined uranium, breathed test fallout

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
August 31, 2007

The U.S. nuclear weapons program has sickened 36,500 Americans and killed more than 4,000 ... Those numbers reflect only people who have been approved for government compensation ... Many of the bomb-builders, such as those at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, have never applied for compensation or were rejected because they could not prove their work caused their illnesses ...

The Rocky calculation appears to be the first to compile the government's records on the human cost of manufacturing 70,000 atomic bombs since 1945. It is based on compensation figures from four federal programs run by the Departments of Labor, Justice and Veterans Affairs. Many people have been paid only recently.

More than 15,000 of the 36,500 are workers who made atomic weapons. They were exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals that typically took years to trigger cancer or lung disease ...

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5686694,00.html

[PDJane]

1. Your government deliberately exposed

service men and women and prisoners to radiation poisoning to determine the effects, too.

[NNadir]

2. And this compares to a dangerous fossil fuel war how?

Dangerous fossil fuels kill millions of people around the world during <em>normal</em> operations, every damn year.

There is not ONE anti-nuke who gives a rat's ass.

Dangerous fossil fuel wars, like the one in Iraq, are killing people even as we speak.

There is not ONE anti-nuke who could be bothered to offer a whimper.

Instead they spend their time linking articles from illiterate reporters and presenting them as <em>facts</em>.

The number of people who died in Denver in the last few years from the operations of dangerous fossil fuel accidents - aka known as car accidents - is astronomical.

The anti-nukes of the car culture set, the Amory Lovins types of the world, couldn't care less.

In fact, the shit for brains anti-nuke Amory Lovins, who has installed his fat, lazy ass in a McMansion in Snowmass and has an office everybody has to drive to, is pretty typical of the rote and vicious and fatal and decidedly vapid consumerist hypocricy of the anti-nuke set. The fact that he bought a McMansion in Snowmass and undoubtedly flies through DIA to head out for his meetings with Walmart - one of the car culture corporations that pay his salary as an indulgence - shows how concerned he really is about Rocky Flats.

I'll bet his anti-nuke pal, Gerhard Schroeder, flush with his 300,000 euro paycheck from Gazprom, loves to drop by Amory's cool million buck pad with the indoor banana plantation when he heads to Aspen Mountain to take in a few runs.

I'll bet they burn a few thousand kilowatt-hours - about 50 times the per capita energy consumption of a Malian, cruising Amory's latest hydrogen hypercar praising website.

There is not ONE anti-nuke who presents statistics like this confusing dangerous fossil fuel wars with dangerous fossil fuel waste, because basically the anti-nuke industry, natural gas and fossil fuel shills all, depends on arbitrary criteria, attempting to isolate nuclear technology from the technologies about which they couldn't care less.

I have yet to see an anti-nuke report once on the number of car-culture fatalities.

Basically the anti-nukes, as the world winds down in the climate change tragedy, are real, real, realy, real, real fucking busy worrying if there'll be a water intrusion into Yucca Mountain in the 30th century. They couldn't care less about what's happening on Interstate 70 even as we speak.

[struggle4progress]

3. So your view is that nuclear weapons are somehow an alternative to auto accidents?

[phantom power]

4. Is it your view that nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are the same thing?

[bananas]

5. Gee, on a supposedly liberal progressive website,

why would someone be attacked for posting about the nuclear weapons industry?
Are there knee-jerk reactionary right-wing republicans in our midst?

[phantom power]

9. Look, I think it is a fair question.

You regularly post comments to the effect that the only reason any country could possibly want a nuclear program is for weapons. And you conflate deaths and injuries from weapons testing with the nuclear energy industry, as if the two are interchangeable.

It begs the question: do you think the nuclear weapons industry is interchangeable the nuclear energy industry? They are related in certain ways, for obvious reasons, but do you think arguing the evils of nuclear weapons is a compelling argument against nuclear energy?

No sarcasm: what's your position on this: does the nuclear weapons industry constitute a cogent argument against nuclear power? I don't. In fact, considering that energy turned into electricity cannot be used for producing explosions, nuclear energy works against nuclear weaponry. In fact, we can see this directly, in the case of former war-heads being burned in reactors for electricity.

[struggle4progress]

13. Weapons provide the historical and statutory framework for US nuclear power

This is clear from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Act as amended

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Of course, one could also argue...

...That PV - which relies on lots of cheap silicon off-cuts from the the microprocessing industry - directly benefits from DARPA's funding of SEMATECH, and that if the US military didn't fund research for companies like Intel and AMD we wouldn't have the, err, "cheap" PV we do now.

At least, one could if one wanted to slap together an blatant association fallacy.

[struggle4progress]

15. Atomic energy in the US is "subject at all times to the paramount objective of making the maximum

contribution to the common defense and security" 42 USC § 2011.

It cannot be a "blatant association fallacy" to note that the US statutory basis governing atomic energy identifies common defense and security as the paramount objective of the law.

Nor are these merely archaic words: they signify that the industry was created as a political cover for the weapons program and as a means of ensuring that the US maintained a pool of nuclear expertise from whom weapons developers could be drawn. And more than once in my lifetime there has been serious political discussion about solving a weapons-related problem by federalizing some aspect of the civilian power sector. A relatively recent example is the question, sometimes much discussed in the last two decades, of how to ensure the fusion arsenal remained functional after shutdown of Savannah River:

The Department of Energy's Tritium Production Program
Updated September 16, 1997

... On June 4, 1997, DOE issued a request for proposals for a fixed-price contract to provide a commercial reactor for sale or lease for production of tritium ... The Southern Company bid offers the Plant Vogtle located near Atlanta ...

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/97-002.htm

There remained the problem that the civilian industry presented potentially uninsurable accident risks, so (having decided that The development, utilization, and control of atomic energy for military and for all other purposes are vital to the common defense and security 42 USC § 2012(a)) it was further decided that In order .. to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry .. and of the common defense and security, the United States .. may limit the liability of those persons liable for .. losses 42 USC § 2012(i). Catastrophic accident liability caps (42 USC § 2210) should, of course, not be required for an allegedly safe and beneficial civilian technology: in fact, they are imposed because otherwise the civilian industry would not have existed to serve the purposes I have indicated.

<edit:typos>

[Dead_Parrot]

16. Two thoughts...

First off, Tritium is currently extracted at SRS. Try to keep your sources up to date.

Secondly, some words seem to missing from your quotations: words like "In order to protect the public and to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry, in the interest of the general welfare and of the common defense..." I'll leave it to interested readers to dig out the full text of these bills, but you want to be careful about selectively quoting stuff like that. You may appear biased.

Neither of which is relevant to to point, so I'll ask you again what PP has asked: Do you think nuclear power is impossible without nuclear weapons? And if so, do you think this is just the case in the US, or worldwide?

[struggle4progress]

17. First, where tritium is currently produced is completely irrelevant

to the point that the primary intent of the Atomic Energy Act was to support the nuclear weapons industry and that, in historical fact, the civilian industry has been repeatedly contemplated as a potential source for weapons material. I provided an older document illustrating precisely this point.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. That's a rather bizarre concept, isn't it?

To say that what somebody thought of doing is important, but what they actually did is irrelevant? I guess I should put the kettle on and await John Anderton to pop in for a chat. Although, it does reveal a lot about your thought processes and how they relate to reality.

So, do you think nuclear power is impossible without nuclear weapons? And if so, do you think this is the case in just the US, or worldwide?

(I'm just asking in case you happen to be like Mustafa from the Austin Powers films, and have to actually answer a question is it's asked three times. It's a long shot, but I figure it's worth a go.)

[struggle4progress]

20. Tritium Production Licenses Granted to Civilian Power Plants (2002)

Arms Control Today
November 2002

Tritium Production Licenses Granted to Civilian Power Plants
Christine Kucia

Breaking the taboo of using civilian nuclear reactors to supply nuclear weapons materials, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved licenses September 24 and October 1 to allow tritium production at two Tennessee nuclear power plants.

Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, is used in a thermonuclear weapon to boost its yield. It must be replenished regularly because it has a half-life of only 12 years. With the license, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contractor, is authorized to insert tritium-producing burnable absorber rods into its Watts Bar and Sequoyah reactors. The rods will be irradiated over each reactor’s 18-month fuel cycle and then shipped to the DOE-owned Savannah River Site in South Carolina so that the tritium can be extracted for use in nuclear weapons.

The NRC granted the first license amendment September 24, which will allow the Watts Bar reactor to produce tritium in up to 2,304 burnable absorber rods. The Watts Bar reactor is expected to begin tritium production in the fall of 2003. On October 1, the NRC announced the approval of a second tritium production license for the Sequoyah nuclear power plant. Sequoyah’s reactor units 1 and 2 will each irradiate up to 2,256 tritium-producing burnable absorber rods for one fuel cycle. Sequoyah’s two reactors will commence tritium production separately, with Unit 2 beginning irradiation in the fall of 2003 and Unit 1 a year later. The DOE halted all tritium production in 1988. Although the tritium extracted from dismantled weapons can be used to meet short-term needs, the department sought to identify a new production source before 2005 to provide enough tritium to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile at START I levels, as required in a presidential directive. (See ACT, November/December 1998.) As a result of the May 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, also known as the Moscow Treaty, the tritium requirement might be lower in the future, but for now the DOE’s plans are based on START I numbers ...

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_11/tritiumnov02.asp

[NickB79]

22. You answered the wrong question with that post, I hope you realize

Your link demonstrates that the nuclear WEAPONS program is at least partly dependent on civilian nuclear REACTORS for their fissile material. However, that's not what Dead Parrot asked. His question was: are civilian nuclear REACTORS dependent on the nuclear WEAPONS program?

[Dead_Parrot]

24. Somehow, I don't think he's going to answer

Maybe it requires too much thinking.

[struggle4progress]

25. Here's the sequence for anyone who is really unable to read well enough to parse the thread:

The OP #0 consists of a cut-and-paste from a news story discussing death and illness associated with US nuclear weapons work.

In response, DP #4 wonders if the OP believes nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are the same thing

This attack is relaunched in #9, but now directed at B, whom DP accuses of conflat<ing> deaths and injuries from weapons testing with the nuclear energy industry, though nothing whatsoever in the thread supports this claim

OP responds in #13 that Weapons provide the historical and statutory framework for US nuclear power.

DP in #14 claims this is a blatant association fallacy.

So OP clarifies in #15 that the US statutory basis governing atomic energy identifies common defense and security as the paramount objective of the law and cites the historical example of proposed used of civilian reactors to produce tritium for thermonuclear weapons as an example.

DP complains in #16
that the historical example is not up to date. OP responds in #17
that current practices are irrelevant: in historical fact, the civilian industry has been repeatedly contemplated as a potential source for weapons material. DP ridicules that view in #19

So the OP provides, in #20 and #21, evidence showing that weapons-related tritium production in civilian reactors began in 2002 and is expected to continue for a number of years.

At this point, NB79 appears, to claim in #22 that the OP is making the logical error of confusing an implication and its converse.

The rhetorical structure of this maze of insults and shifting goalposts is illustrative

A news story is met with claims that the OP is too ill-informed to distinguish a power reactor from a nuclear weapon. When the OP fails to respond to such tripe, the same attack is relaunched against another poster. When the OP responds carefully with some discussion of the statute and the light shed upon it by history, the history is attacked as "out of date." When the OP abandons the effort to discuss the historical context, and points out that such events appear to be current, the attack shifts again: suddenly the fact under dispute, whether the philosophy underlying the Atomic Energy Act is largely military philosophy, is dropped in favor of an attack on the OP's grasp of high school logic.

[Dead_Parrot]

26. A question is only an 'attack'...

...if you are scared of the truth.

Your posts reveal more than you think, y'know.

[struggle4progress]

28. I've clearly indicated why I think US statutes governing atomic power are geared towards weaponry

PP's original "question" was Is it your view that nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are the same thing? You then claim to re-ask this question in the form "Do you think nuclear power is impossible without nuclear weapons?" and later as "Are civilian nuclear REACTORS dependent on the nuclear WEAPONS program?"

It is true that I will not answer such questions in the form asked for the simple reason that it is a waste of time from which nothing interesting results. PP's original question was merely an insult, as you are perfectly aware. Regarding your rephrasing, I merely say that I am not nearly as interested in logical impossibilities as I am in the historical realities and the dependencies that the history suggests.

To properly answer something like your rephrased version, I naturally try to avoid uninteresting questions of "impossibility" and attempt to discuss dependencies in historical context. In response, you have clearly indicated that the history, even that as recent as ten years ago, is of absolutely no interest to you, and when I bring the material into the present, you drop that line of thought and post more insults.

Your saying about me to another poster, I don't think he's going to answer. Maybe it requires too much thinking, represents neither rational debate nor inspired rhetoric: it is merely schoolyard nyanny-nyanny-nyah-nyah. Grow up.

[Dead_Parrot]

31. On the contrary, I find it fascinating.

At least, from a psychiatric veiwpoint. You claim that answering the question "is a waste of time", yet you are quite able to write at length about why you won't answer it. If you simply turned around and said "I think the US military is too deeply entwined with the civilian power program" I suspect pretty much everybody would agree with you, but that would mean admitting that the problem lies US government, and not the basics of nuclear power: It doesn't carry the "nuclear is teh evil" vibe you seem to be so fond of.

You could look at little further afield: You could look at Finland, where they seem to manage 4 reactors without a weapons program and are building a fifth: Or South Africa, which is proof that even if power and weapons are developed together, they can be unraveled. I'm guessing you don't like that, but feel free to come out and say "I'd like to keep the reactors but ditch the weapons, like SA did".

Or is the mere suggestion another attack?

[struggle4progress]

21. National Nuclear Security Administration: Weapons Activities - Readiness Campaign Assessment

Program Code 10003406
Program Title National Nuclear Security Administration: Weapons Activities - Readiness Campaign
Department Name Department of Energy
Agency/Bureau Name National Nuclear Security Administration
Program Type(s) Research and Development Program
Capital Assets and Service Acquisition Program
Assessment Year 2005

...

Measure: Cumulative number of Tritium-Producing Burnable Absorber Rods (TPBARs) irradiated in Tennessee Valley Authority reactors to provide the capability of collecting new tritium to replace inventory for the nuclear weapons stockpile

Year Target Actual
2005 240 240
2006 240 240
2007 480
2008 720
2009 960
2010 960
2011 1,200
2012 NA

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10003406.2005.html

[struggle4progress]

18. Second, regarding use of ellipses in 42 USC § 2012(i), here is the full text:

In order to protect the public and to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry, in the interest of the general welfare and of the common defense and security, the United States may make funds available for a portion of the damages suffered by the public from nuclear incidents, and may limit the liability of those persons liable for such losses.

It is clear that if one expects damages suffered by the public from nuclear incidents and wants to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry for the common defense and security, then one might limit the liability of those persons liable for such losses. Similarly. one might believe that to make funds available for a portion of the damages suffered by the public from nuclear incidents is a way to protect the public. On the other hand, there seems to be no credible argument that limiting the liability of persons liable for damages suffered by the public from nuclear incidents represents an effort to protect the public ... in the interest of the general welfare. Thus, the natural interpretation involves reading the text as a parallel construction.

So I merely reproduced the portion of the text related to liability limitation: In order .. to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry .. and of the common defense and security, the United States .. may limit the liability of those persons liable for .. losses 42 USC § 2012(i)

<edit:HTML>

[hunter]

30. Our highway system was also built under the guise of national defense.

Paradoxically, they have made our nation less secure and much more dependent upon foreign resources.

[Kolesar]

33. They just used "national defense" as "constitutional" justification for a federal program

Otherwise, the highway program could have been tied up in lawsuits by those who oppose it: railroad monopolies and landowners getting vacated for "eminent domain" takings.

[struggle4progress]

6. Post #2 makes no sense as a reply to the OP, hence my question in #3.

[bananas]

7. Post #2 makes no sense at all! nt

[NNadir]

8. Sure it doesn't...

At least if you are indifferent to dangerous fossil fuels, it doesn't.

Of course, if you actually couldn't care more about dangerous fossil fuel waste and the way it is killing (not merely affecting) millions each year, you are willing to call to task the dangerous fossil fuel industry and its apologists.

The anti-nuke gas shill industry depends on not seeing the comparison between dangerous fossil fuel weapons - about which it could care less - and nuclear weapons. The same group suddenly wants to represent that only nuclear technology is dual use.

Why? Because otherwise people would do as I do, which is to DEMAND an end to the dangerous fossil fuel weapons industry, the dumping of dangerous fossil fuel waste and dangerous fossil fuel accidents.

We all oppose nuclear war and most of us oppose nuclear weapons. I know I do. But I don't stop at nuclear weapons in some kind of arbitrary diddling nonsense mongering. I look at where actual war and actual death is actively taking place.

Nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. There has not been ONE year since 1945, not ONE, where dangerous fossil fuel weapons have STOPPED being used. It follows a priori that the greatest risk to humanity for the last 62 years has been dangerous fossil fuel weapons.

Moreover the cause of wars using dangerous fossil fuels to kill is often a desire for access to more dangerous fossil fuels.

Now.

There is a set of people who would like to represent otherwise. Why? Because they hate the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free energy. Why do they hate it? It's certainly not because they hate war. It's not because they hate energy waste. It's not because they hate energy accidents. All of these things take place on a vast scale in connection to dangerous fossil fuels.

The reason the anti-nuke industry tries to make these representations is because they have an arbitrary focus. Now. When you point out this arbitrary focus they get annoyed and whine.

Tough shit. It's time to stop playing cute. The planet is dying. The anti-nuclear industry couldn't care less. They burn more watts hawking their crapola than the entire nation of Cameroon uses in a year. They think that the solution to climate change is to have retarded stoned out rock guitarists play at rock festivals wearing "No Nukes" teeshirts.

How dumb, exactly, is that?

The "talk about renewables" while "using dangerous fossil fuels" industry couldn't care less about this state of affairs, which is why it maligns the only exajoule scalable form of fossil fuel relief, that would be nuclear energy.

The fact is that dangerous fossil fuel weapons - and wars - have affected millions of people.

There is not ONE anti-nuke, as in zero, as in nada, NOT one who would attempt to confuse dangerous fossil fuel weapons with dangerous fossil fuel technology.

And let's be clear. The weapons operations at Rocky Flats are over. The dangerous fossil fuel weapons program is producing and using the weapons on real live people.

It is unsurprising that the "we-hate-nukes" industry couldn't care less about this distinction. No it's not surprising at all.

[struggle4progress]

10. Nuclear weapons regularly enter the calculus of geopolitical extortion

Nuclear states have regularly engaged in such nuclear extortions since 1945, though sometimes more covertly than India did in 1998:

17 Days in May ...

13 May: India conducts tests of two sub-kiloton nuclear devices at Pokhran, which, the government states, complete its “planned series of nuclear explosions.” ...

18 May: L K Advani, home minister and former BJP president, warns Pakistan ... “India’s decisive step to become a nuclear weapon state has brought about a qualitatively new stage in Indo-Pak relations, particularly in finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem” ...

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/india/nuke/chron.htm

[struggle4progress]

11. Nuclear extortion plays a now-traditional role in US effort to dominate the oil states

... The first country to introduce weapons of mass destruction into the Middle East was the United States, which initially brought in nuclear weapons on its planes and ships as far back as the 1950s ... http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/485

... Today, the United States is the only nuclear power that continues to deploy nuclear weapons outside its own territory. The approximately 480 nuclear bombs in Europe are intended for use in accordance with NATO nuclear strike plans, the report asserts, against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Iran and Syria ... It is unclear whether NATO parliaments are aware of arrangements to target and potentially strike Middle Eastern countries with nuclear weapons based in Europe ... http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/nato.htm

[struggle4progress]

12. So recent US efforts to grab oil involve "threats of nuclear confrontation" with Iraq and Iran

[hunter]

23. We blame those threats on nuclear power and not oil?

Sounds like using gasoline creates a much larger threat of nuclear warfare than nuclear power.

I blame automobiles for that mess, not nuclear power plants.

We wouldn't care about Iran or Iraq and they wouldn't care about us if we'd never developed this insatiable oil fueled car culture in the United States.

[struggle4progress]

27. Er - huh? The constant implicit threat of nuclear war results from existence of the nuclear arsenal.

I certainly agree with you that US addiction to automobiles affects how that threat is currently exercised.

Conversely, the extortion made possible by the existence of thousands of readily deployable US nuclear weapons has also made possible the car culture and tends to insulate the US from potential effects of real competitition for the oil.

Moreover, reducing US gasoline dependence will not itself eliminate the deployment threat: as long as the arsenal remains available as an extortion tool, its threat can be exercised to control other resources and more generally to maintain an economic pecking order.

Finally, although I'm sure you consider your subject line We blame those threats on nuclear power and not oil? a clever attack, I consider it a juvenile and dishonest attempt to put words in my mouth. Grow up, OK?

[hunter]

29. How many people are living under this nuclear cloud?

We can't really extort from any nation that has nuclear weapons, can we?

The situation you mentioned above, Pakistan and India, calmed down quite a bit when Pakistan got the bomb. A similar thing happened between India and China before that.

MAD sucks bad, but the majority of people in the world are citizens of nations that control significant arsenals of nuclear weapons.

In my ideal world we'd burn up all these weapons and all the depleted uranium leftovers in civilian nuclear power programs.

We're not living in the 'sixties and 'seventies any more. Non-proliferation isn't the option it once was. Nuclear weapons have already proliferated.

On the international economic playing fields nuclear weapons are an illusionary asset. The centrally planned economy and empire of the Soviet Union fell apart because the core of it was corrupt. Our centrally planned economy is failing in a very similar way. Nuclear weapons did not prevent this fall.

This forum is rife with the childish views of people who haven't noticed the world changing all around them for thirty years. We've shot right past the place where simple 'seventies solutions might have been effective and out into the abyss.

Like it or not, we've got to live with with nuclear weapons. We can't wish them away.

To be entirely honest, I worry about cars more than I worry about bombs. At the same time we were doing above ground nuclear weapons testing, drunk drivers were all over the road, gasoline had lead in it, and cars had no safety equipment. How many people died? How many people were maimed? How many people were poisoned?

We still have the bomb, we still have cars, and even with modern safety equipment cars kill more people than bombs, especially if you consider the resource wars that are going on to support cars.

I worry about coal mining more than I do nuclear waste. The accelerating climate change caused by fossil fuels is a far greater danger to natural environments and human health than nuclear power.

To go off on a tangent, my wife's dad got to witness a nuclear explosion up close, from an ordinary trench, and they had him running around near ground zero shortly after the blast. He was lucky and suffered no obvious health problems, unlike some of the guys in those tests, but maybe my wife and kids have got some nuclear weirdness in their genes.

Society and government accepted many unacceptable things in the 'fifties, much as we accept things now that will be deemed utterly unacceptable fifty years from now. Fifty years from now coal mining and nuclear weapons of any kind will almost certainly be among those unacceptable things. (And France will still be getting most of it's electricity from nuclear power plants...)

It seems our basic disagreement is that I don't believe nuclear weapons or pollutants are fundamentally any different than other sorts of weapons or pollutants. You can kill or maim a million people with a nuclear bomb or a million bullets. During the Second World War more cities were destroyed by non-nuclear weapons than nuclear ones.

[TheWraith]

32. And that relates to nuclear power HOW?

You're trying to evade the question. Besides which, I think you greatly exaggerate the actual threat of nuclear weapons deployment.