The nuclear arms race's legacy at home: Toxic contamination, staggering cleanup costs and a culture of government secrecy
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星期二, 八月 1, 2023
House, Weapon, Technology, Pressure, Gaps, Communication, Manhattan Project, Senate, Pacific Ocean, Anglo-French Wars, Atmosphere, Dan Sullivan (U.S. senator), Culture, Trinity, Public, Manhattan, Survival, Nuclear weapon, Uranium, Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, Research, Technology during World War II, Science, Columbia River, Death, Biodegradable waste, Representative, Columbia, Water, Conventional weapon, Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, Ecology, Environment, Glass, Isotope, Plutonium, Radiation exposure, Lithium, Uranium mining
It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it.
Key Points:
- It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it.
- It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing.
- As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production.
- Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to US$640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.
Victims of nuclear tests
- Nuclear weapons production and testing have harmed public health and the environment in multiple ways.
- So far, they have not been included in the federal program to compensate uranium miners and “downwinders” who developed radiation-linked illnesses after exposure to later atmospheric nuclear tests.
- The largest above-ground U.S. tests, along with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands.
- Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult.
Polluted soil and water
- Starting in 1944, workers at the remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract its plutonium content.
- Hanford’s nine reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, discharged water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river through 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down.
- Extracting plutonium from the irradiated fuel, an activity called reprocessing, generated 56 million gallons of liquid waste laced with radioactive and chemical poisons.
- The wastes were stored in underground tanks designed to last 25 years, based on an assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later.
A culture of secrecy
- As the movie “Oppenheimer” shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception.
- But as I’ve argued previously, the principle of secrecy quickly expanded more broadly.
- Initially, strict secrecy – reinforced by the region’s economic dependence on the Hanford site – made it hard for concerned citizens to get information.
Cautionary legacies
- As Nolan’s film recounts, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other Manhattan Project scientists had deep concerns about how their work might create unprecedented dangers.
- Looking at the legacies of the Trinity test, I wonder whether any of them imagined the scale and scope of those outcomes.