Calling Dr. Strangelove

No, the crazy man should not have nuclear weapons.

But wait, which crazy man are we talking about, here?

The fact is, if we want to continue as a species, as a planet, Nobody should have nuclear weapons.

And anybody who thinks nukes are a good idea is just plain crazy.

You’re shaking your head, saying “that’s naïve”?

Do a Google search on “nuclear accidents," do a little light reading for a while, and then let me know if you think nukes—any kind of nukes, anywhere, in the hands of anyone—are a good idea.

We're in a situation here where "providing for the common defense" runs a collision course with "promoting the general welfare." Nukes are bad.

Aside from the obvious dangers of a never-ending arms race, spurring on the non-nuke states to try and get some of their own, we’re poisoning the environment with this shit, which never goes away.

Hey, we’re the United States, and we have the most nuclear weapons and they’re pointed at you.

Meanwhile, we’re literally killing our own children.

The Radiation and Public Health Project released a report in October of 1999 which found that "the cancer-causing radioisotope Strontium-90 has been found in the teeth of children born in the 1980's at levels equal to those of the middle 1950's, when the U.S. and the former Soviet Union were conducting routine above-ground bomb tests.”

Radiation=Cancer. God forbid.

“The elevated levels were attributed to accidents such as Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), with contributions from ongoing releases at other nuclear reactors. Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, has said that, ‘Strontium-90 is a known carcinogen and a marker for other shorter-lived fission products and simply should not be present at all in our children’s teeth.’" (From www.lutins.org/nukes.html, which goes on:)

“In addition to accidents, the day-to-day operations related to nuclear materials processing and handling have led to massive contamination of this country's landscape. The U.S. Department of Energy spends over $4 billion each year for the restoration and management of sites contaminated by nuclear materials. Their 2000 Federal budget noted: ‘The Environmental Management (EM) program is responsible for addressing the environmental legacy resulting from the production of nuclear weapons.

"The nuclear weapons complex generated waste, pollution, and contamination that pose unique problems, including unprecedented volumes of contaminated soil and water, radiological hazards from special nuclear material, and a vast number of contaminated structures. Factories, laboratories, and thousands of square miles of land were devoted to producing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Much of this is largely maintained, decommissioned, managed, and remediated by the EM program, which is sometimes referred to as the 'cleanup program.' EM's responsibilities include facilities and sites in 30 states and one territory, and occupy an area equal to that of Rhode Island and Delaware combined—or about 2.1 million acres.”

Nukes=global death.

We used to know this, as a nation, as a people. We used to have a general consensus on the gravity of the threat, the sheer horror of the evil—not Kim Jong Il, or the bogeyman of the moment, but the nukes themselves.

Even Ronald Reagan was forced to engage in talks with Russia about reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world—the result of which was the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces, the INF.

This “treaty, whose text is on this table, offers a big chance, at last, to get on the road leading away from catastrophe. It is our duty to take full advantage of that chance and move together toward a nuclear-free world…”

So said former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, at the signing of the INF in 1987.

So what happened since then? What happened to our awareness, our informed knowledge that, one way or another, nukes will wipe us out?

I don’t know, but we better get back there. Before it’s too late.

But the real problem here is not nuclear weapons, but war itself. We're a nation that lives by the sword, which we wield while declaring the logical fallacy that we have to make war in order to "keep the peace." How different the world might be if we laid down our arms.

Then, there might actually be peace.



One of the scariest books I've ever read, which I highly recommend is The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age: The Hidden History, The Human Cost (Greenpeace Communications: 1989). Unfortunately it only goes up to the late 80s, but all over the web you can find information about nuclear accidents that have occurred since then (the following also comes from the Al Lutin's excellent www.lutins.org/nukes.html, the information on which I checked with a quick zip through Google):

December, 1991: One of four cold fusion cells in a Menlo Park, CA, laboratory exploded while being moved; electrochemist Andrew Riley was killed and three others were injured. The other three cells were buried on site, leading to rumors that a nuclear reaction had taken place. A report concluded that it was a chemical explosion; a mixture of oxygen and deuterium produced by electrolysis ignited when a catalyst was exposed. The Electric Power Research Institute, which spent $2 million on the SRI cold fusion research, suspended support for the work pending the outcome of an investigation.

November 24, 1992: The Sequoyah Fuels Corp. uranium processing factory in Gore, Oklahoma closed after repeated citations by the Government for violations of nuclear safety and environmental rules. Its record during 22 years of operation included an accident in 1986 that killed one worker and injured dozens of others and the contamination of the Arkansas River and groundwater. The Sequoyah Fuels plant, one of two privately-owned American factories that fabricated fuel rods and armor-piercing bullet shells, had been shut down a week before by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when an accident resulted in the release of toxic gas.

Thirty-four people sought medical attention as a result of the accident. The plant had also been shut down the year before when unusually high concentrations of uranium were detected in water in a nearby construction pit. A Government investigation revealed that the company had known for years that uranium was leaking into the ground at levels 35,000 times higher than Federal law allows; Carol Couch, the plant's environmental manager, was cited by the Government for obstructing the investigation and knowingly giving Federal agents false information.

May 28, 1993: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a warning to the operators of 34 nuclear reactors around the country that the instruments used to measure levels of water in the reactor could give false readings during routine shutdowns and fail to detect important leaks. The problem was first bought to light by an engineer at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut who had been harassed for raising safety questions. The flawed instruments at boiling-water reactors designed by General Electric utilize pipes which were prone to being blocked by gas bubbles; a failure to detect falling water levels could have resulted, potentially leading to a meltdown.

March 31, 1994: Fire at a nuclear research facility on Long Island, New York resulted in the nuclear contamination of three fire fighters, three reactor operators, and one technician. Measurable amounts of radioactive substances were released into the immediate environment.

May, 1997: A 40-gallon tank of toxic chemicals, stored illegally at the U.S. Government's Hanford Engineer works exploded, causing the release of 20,000-30,000 gallons of plutonium-contaminated water. A cover-up ensued, involving the contractors doing clean-up and the Department of Energy, who denied the release of radioactive materials. They also told eight plant workers that tests indicated that they hadn't been exposed to plutonium even though no such tests actually were conducted (later testing revealed that in fact they had not been exposed). Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc., operator of the Hanford Site, was cited for violations of the Department of Energy's nuclear safety rules and fined $140,625.

Violations associated with the explosion included the contractor's failure to assure that breathing devices operated effectively, failure to make timely notifications of the emergency, and failure to conduct proper radiological surveys of workers. Other violations cited by the DOE included a number of events between November 1996 and June 1997 involving Fluor Daniel Hanford's failure to assure adherence to PFP "criticality" safety procedures. ("Criticality" features are defined as those features used "to assure safe handling of fissile materials and prevention of...an unplanned and uncontrolled chain reaction that can release large amounts of radiation.")

August 8, 1999: The Washington Post reported that thousands of workers were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals over a 23-year period (beginning in the mid-1950's) at the Department of Energy's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. Workers, told they were handling Uranium (rather than the far more toxic plutonium), inhaled radioactive dust while processing the materials as part of a government experiment to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel.

February 15, 2000: New York's Indian Point II power plant vented a small amount of radioactive steam when a an aging steam generator ruptured. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission initially reported that no radioactive material was released, but later changed their report to say that there was a leak, but not of a sufficient amount to threaten public safety.

June, 2000: U.S. Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) led a field senate hearing regarding workers exposed to hazardous materials while working in the nation's atomic plants. At the hearing, which revealed information about potential on and off-site contamination at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, DeWine noted, "We know that as a result of Cold War efforts, the government, yes, our federal government, allowed thousands of workers at its facilities across the country to be exposed to poisonous materials, such as beryllium dust, plutonium, and silicon, without adequate protection." Testimony also indicated that the Piketon plant altered workers' radiation dose readings and worked closely with medical professionals to fight worker's compensation claims.

July, 2000: Wildfires in the vicinity of the Hanford facility hit the highly radioactive "B/C" waste disposal trenches, raising airborne plutonium radiation levels in the nearby cities of Pasco and Richland to 1,000 above normal. Wildfires also threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. In the latter case, the fires closely approached large amounts of stored radioactive waste and forced the evacuation of 1,800 workers.

March 6, 2002: Workers discovered a foot-long cavity eaten into the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Borated water had corroded the metal to a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner which held back over 80,000 gallons of highly pressurized radioactive water.