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The Worst Nuclear Disaster In US History That You’ve Never Heard About
Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,
The United States government deliberately hid “the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history,” according to experts and an in-depth investigation by NBC4 Southern California. Whistleblowers have also come forward to expose the little-known catastrophe, which occurred north of Los Angeles in 1959 and leaked over 300 times the allowable amount of radiation into surrounding neighborhoods. That contamination is now linked to up to a 60% increase in cancer in the area, but the government still refuses to acknowledge its colossal mistake.
The ongoing tragedy was driven by America’s darkest demons, from dogmatic militarism to aggressive corporatism, and ongoing government and corporate efforts to cover-up the disaster are nothing short of staggering.
In 1947 — two years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Japan — the North American Aviation corporation opened a 2,800 acre nuclear test site in Ventura County, just miles from the San Fernando and Simi Valleys — two adjacent valleys located north and northwest of the city of Los Angeles. North American Aviation amassed power during World War II, when it produced more aircraft than any other company and flexed its muscles as an early and powerful player in America’s emerging military-industrial complex. One of its expansions came in the form of building the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL), where researchers would perform top-secret nuclear tests involving rocket engineering, missiles, and nuclear energy and power.
“The Worst Nuclear Disaster in U.S. History”
For twelve years, things ran smoothly, but on July 1, high levels of radiation leaked from the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE). Workers initiated a contamination cleanup and started and stopped the reactor for two weeks. On July 13, however, the situation grew far more dire: a power surge occurred in one of the nuclear reactors and employees were unable to shut it down.
Whistleblower John Pace, now in his seventies, started working at the facility in January of 1959 and was present on the day of the partial meltdown. He says he has spoken out in recent years because of his guilty conscience. “The radiation in that building got so high, it went clear off the scale,” Pace recalled to NBC4. “They were not able to contain the radiation that was leaking from the reactor.” Blaming equipment failure, Pace said the men working at the facility had two choices: let the reactor explode, a nuclear detonation Pace says “would have been just like the Chernobyl reactor blowing up,” or open the reactor and let the radiation flow out into the atmosphere.
“Do we blow up with it or do we let [the radiation] go?” Pace recalled debating. He was 20 years old. Some workers expressed concerns the wind would blow the radiation directly into the nearby neighborhoods — where their families lived — but with heavy hearts (and upon orders), they opted to release the radiation to avoid a devastating explosion.
As NBC4 documents, “Pace says that dangerous radiation was released for weeks and went whichever direction the wind was blowing. Pace says the large door in the reactor was opened so they could vent the radiation from inside the building. He also remembers that the exhaust stack of the reactor was opened so that radiation could be released from inside the damaged reactor straight into the atmosphere.”
“Each time they started and stopped the reactor . . . radiation from the reactor was released,” he said in 2009 when he began to speak out about the disaster. Supervisors at the facility reportedly barred employees from wearing radiation-detecting film badges, knowing that if they were worn, they would detect radiation “higher than the allowable limit.”
Pace said he and all of the other workers were “sworn to secrecy” and his boss “[got] right in his face” to make it clear. He says he and his coworkers were “just following orders.” “Nobody knows the truth of what actually happened,” he added.
NBC4 reported that “Some experts believe the 1959 partial meltdown at SSFL could be the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, surpassing the radiation released during the Three Mile Island accident.” Three Mile Island involved the partial meltdown of a commercial nuclear reactor in Middletown, Pennsylvania in 1979 and was previously considered the worst nuclear accident in American history — even though the secret Santa Susana disaster occurred twenty years earlier.
North American Aviation Knew This Was a Possibility
In 1947, North American Aviation chose the land overlooking Simi Valley for its new field office partly because it was sparsely populated and thus allowed for secrecy, but mostly because it was close to local research universities — where many of the scientists who worked at the lab taught.
But it had a drawback: “Santa Susana ranked fifth out of the six sites because its weather patterns increased the risk of contaminated air and water flowing off-site. Despite these concerns, the company selected the Santa Susana location for the Field Lab,” NBC4 reported. The Atomic Energy Commission, the precursor to the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, oversaw construction and development.
For twelve years, the secret site developed nuclear power for both military and civilian purposes. The site, divided into multiple “areas,” conducted over 30,000 rocket tests during its decades-long tenure (many of which were for NASA), as well as advanced weapons research. It also boasted the nation’s first civilian nuclear power plant, a feat it accomplished in 1957 with the SRE.
Though SSFL went on to operate for decades, during which time the area became more suburbanized and more densely populated, a modification to the facility in 1953 transferred partial ownership to the government. In that year, the Atomic Energy Commission supervised the addition of a new wing to the field office: Area IV.
The 209-acre section of the field lab was dedicated to the development and testing of experimental nuclear reactors, and “[o]ver the course of four decades, Area IV would be home to 10 reactors, a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, a uranium fuel facility and a ‘hot lab’ for remotely cutting up dangerous radioactive material.”
The 1959 nuclear disaster occurred in Area IV.
Excessive Cover-Up, Insufficient Clean Up
The Atomic Energy Commission reported to the public six weeks after the incident that a “fuel element failure” — a minor accident — had occurred but that no radiation had leaked to surrounding communities. This seemed inconsistent with the fact that when they restarted the reactor on the 15th of July, the radiation levels surpassed measurable amounts, denoting a second incidence of leaks that was even more concentrated. Citizens were unaware of these facts and the public announcement was accepted without suspicion.
“What they had written in that report is not even close to what actually happened,” Pace said. “To see our government talk that way and lie about those things that happened, it was very disappointing.”
Behind the scenes, high levels of radiation were found in and on the reactor, and by the 17th, radiation was still actively leaking. An internal government memo from July 17 not only admitted there had been intermittent leaks before the one on the 13th, but reported that as a result of that disaster, “concentration [was] 300 times the maximum permissible concentration in air for unidentified beta gamma emitters.” The memo recommended shutting down the area where the reactor was housed.
Dan Parks, a health physicist who worked at SFFL at the time — with the express purpose of monitoring radiation on site — says the spill was so bad he found radioactive material “lying on the pavement.” He says he also witnessed “Burn Pits,” where radioactive materials and other hazardous waste were burned, engulfing the facility in contaminated smoke. To this day, he is concerned about the remaining radiation: “I don’t want to lose my own life. We drink the water, we brush our teeth in the water,” he said.
While a small-scale cleanup occurred in the months following the leak, it was not thorough, nor did it clear the radiation that had seeped into the atmosphere and environment. The reactor was shut down for investigation on July 26. The reactor was cleaned and uranium, sodium, and other fuel materials were removed. In October, filmmakers came to the facility to document the “recovery” of the reactor, though presumably, no mention of the massive spill was made. The reactor was replaced by November, but the cleanup did not extend to the land surrounding it. Parks suspects the damages have not been remedied. “I know it’s out there — the contamination,” he said.
The truth was kept entirely secret until 1979, when UCLA students uncovered Atomic Energy Commission records documenting the accident and released them to the media. That same year, NBC4 broke the news that a partial meltdown had occurred in 1959, but reporters were unaware of the radiation. The news sparked concern and inspired concerned citizens to push for a full-scale clean up, which has yet to happen. By that time, two more nuclear accidents had transpired (one in 1963 and another in 1969).
60% Increased Rate of Cancer
The radiation released in 1959 (and the lack of sufficient cleanup) has not been without consequence. A 1989 Department of Energy study found radiation in the soil, groundwater, and bedrock on the hilltop — a finding made more troubling when considering North American Aviation’s initial concerns about the location: that the area’s weather patterns could carry contamination off-site.
A 1997 study found increased rates of cancer among SFFL employees. A 2009 study of the soil by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, a division of the CDC) found “areas of concern” at the facility that had the potential to run off-site. That study, however, suggested it was not affecting the health of residents nearby (interestingly, the CDC grants compensation to people who worked at the SSFL before, during, and after the 1959 meltdown and developed cancer).
A 2007 University of Michigan study — commissioned two years earlier by the very same ATSDR that found there was no risk in 2009 — found rates of cancer increased as much as 60% in areas surrounding the SSFL. NBC4 identified countless residents stricken with cancer who are convinced their proximity to SSFL has led to serious health problems throughout their lives:
- The Selzer family, which has no history of cancer, has been devastated by the disease:
- Three of three sisters have struggled with various cancers for years and recently lost their mother to cancer. The daughters played in, swam in, and drank the water running down the hills from SSFL.
- Bonnie Klea, who worked at the facility as a lab secretary from 1963 to 1971, developed bladder cancer and says people in 14 of 15 homes on her street also developed cancer.
- Krista Slack suffers from “triple-negative” breast cancer, a rare condition linked to people of African-American and Jewish descent. Slack is neither and her doctor suspects her illness is due to the fact that she grew up in Simi Valley. Her mother died of cancer last year.
- Arline Mathews lost her son to a rare brain cancer linked to exposure to radiation. When he was in high school, he ran through the Santa Susana hills while training for cross country. Arline Mathews’ grandson now has leukemia, a condition linked to parents with damaged genetic material.
- Ralph Powell worked as a security guard at SFFL and remembers being covered in flames at the Burn Pits. “I saw clouds of smoke that was[sic] engulfing my friends, that[sic] are dying now,” Powell said. He also worries he carried radioactive material into his home that caused his son to develop leukemia. He died at the age of eleven.
There are more cases like these, but officials continue to downplay the health dangers.
Moreover, studies have found more than just radiation leaked into the environment. As NBC4 explains,
“In addition to the radiation, dozens of toxic chemicals, including TCE and Perchlorate, were also released into the air and dumped on the soil and into ground and surface water from thousands of rocket tests conducted at the Santa Susana Field lab from the 1950s to 80s. The tests were conducted by NASA, and by Rocketdyne, a government aerospace contractor.
According to a federally funded study obtained by the I-Team, ‘emissions associated with rocket engine testing’ could have been inhaled by residents of ‘West Hills, Bell Canyon, Dayton Canyon, Simi Valley, Canoga Park, Chatsworth, Woodland Hills, and Hidden Hills.’”
Worse still, some analyses suggests the radiation is still exponentially higher than government agencies are willing to admit.
The Adjacent Children’s Summer Camp
SSFL is located directly next to the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a Jewish cultural and community center that has been in Simi Valley since 1947 — the same year SSFL was built. The establishment also runs a children’s summer camp that hosts 30,000 children every year. In 1993, an EPA-supervised study found “radioactive elements” in a limited number of soil samples from the Brandeis property, leading Brandeis-Bardin to file a legal complaint against several entities in December of 1995.
The Brandeis-Bardin complaint implicated every company that came to be involved in the facility throughout the years (due to acquisitions and mergers): North American Aviation, Atomics International, North American Rockwell Corporation, Rockwell International Systems, and Rocketdyne. Boeing would take ownership of SSFL in 1996 when it purchased Rocketdyne — after this suit was filed. The Brandeis-Bardin complaint explicitly acknowledged the extent of the spill, noting it “released mercury, vinyl chloride, polychlorinated biphenyls, radioactive tritium, cesium, [and] strontium” into “the soil, air, and groundwater” and that these elements “seeped” into the environment.
The complaint alleged the 1959 disaster caused “irreparable harm” to the Brandeis property. Brandeis eventually settled with Rocketdyne in 1997 and now claims the land is safe. It told NBC4 in a written statement it regularly tests the land with optimal results but declined to provide any documentation. Instead, it claimed the EPA certified the premises as safe in 1995 — the same year Brandeis sued for indisputable contamination on the property. “Extensive tests have been undertaken for more than 20 years to verify the ongoing safety of the property,” the institute’s statement to NBC4 said.
Though the Brandeis-Bardin complaint was resolved, the Boeing Company’s acquisition of the facility when it purchased Rocketdyne proved cataclysmic for any effort to fully investigate or clean up the still-secret radiation. To read more about how Boeing evaded the truth, manipulated research, and paid off government officials to avoid resolving the disaster decades after it happened, read Part 2.
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Partial core meltdown occurred at Fermi I outside Detroit in 1966. We almost lost Detroit.
Just bad luck I suppose.
I've got this gnarly lump on my thyroid.
Maybe I should get it checked out.
We had to nuke some folks.
The wheels on the bus go round and round...
Just think, this just one that you being told about now. This likely happened mroe than just once.
OMG..
So THAT’S why Jerry Brown ever got elected.
(Besides the fact that he was going with Linda Rondstat, who was VERY VERY hot in the day… but don’t look now)
sing about it, GSH
spoiler
My assistant scoutmaster was exposed to radiation in a 1967 accident. He and his wife had two sons and opted not to have any more kids thereafter.
1967 (Oct 4) Pittsburgh, PA Three workers (McCandless, Zemla, & Czwalga) exposed to x-rays & neutrons while working on an operating accelerator due to a failure of the interlock system. The accident occurred at the Gulf Research Laboratory in Harmarville, near Pittsburgh. Czwalga received a 600-rem whole body dose, plus localized doses of 6600 rad to the feet and legs and 8800 rad to the hands and forearms. His hands and feet had to be amputated, but he survived largely due to a bone marrow transplant from his identical twin. Doses to the other workers were 300 rad and 125 rad. All three workers were protected from infection during recovery by reverse isolation.
https://www.roadtechs.com/rpchron.htm
Ah, c'mon, you can do better than that... The following event is the only known reactor incident in the United States which resulted in immediate fatalities.
On December 21, 1960, the reactor was shut down for maintenance, calibration of the instruments, installation of auxiliary instruments, and installation of 44 flux wires to monitor the neutron flux levels in the reactor core. The wires were made of aluminum, and contained slugs of aluminum–cobalt alloy.
On January 3, 1961, the reactor was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of eleven days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that the main central control rod be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect it to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 p.m., this rod was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power surge caused water surrounding the core to begin to explosively vaporize. The water vapor caused a pressure wave to strike the top of the reactor vessel, causing water and steam to spray from the top of the vessel. This extreme form of water hammer propelled control rods, shield plugs, and the entire reactor vessel upwards. A later investigation concluded that the 26,000-pound (12,000 kg) vessel had jumped 9 feet 1 inch (2.77 m) and the upper control rod drive mechanisms had struck the ceiling of the reactor building prior to settling back into its original location. The spray of water and steam knocked two operators onto the floor, killing one and severely injuring another. One of the shield plugs on top of the reactor vessel impaled the third man through his groin and exited his shoulder, pinning him to the ceiling. The victims were Army Specialists John A. Byrnes (age 27) and Richard Leroy McKinley (age 22), and Navy Seabee Construction Electrician First Class (CE1) Richard C. Legg (age 26). It was later established that Byrnes (the reactor operator) had lifted the rod and caused the excursion, Legg (the shift supervisor) was standing on top of the reactor vessel and was impaled and pinned to the ceiling, and McKinley, the trainee who stood nearby, was later found alive by rescuers. All three men succumbed to injuries from physical trauma; however, the radiation from the nuclear excursion would have given the men no chance of survival.
Standard Disclaimer: Because one should always move control rods by hand.
And extra points for getting the story correct... The bodies of all three were buried in lead-lined caskets sealed with concrete and placed in metal vaults with a concrete cover.
I just don't buy all this stuff about government lying. No wait . . .
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." — Frederich Nietzsche
You have a whole shitload of links in there. How about including one identifying where this happened?
EDITED TO ADD:
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/benchmarks-three-men-die-nuclear-re...
Because I don't spoon-feed. I expect you to have enough curiosity on your own to google appropriate key words/phrases out of what I post if you wish to know more.
Fair enough. Just seemed a bit incongrous considering all of the links to random facts.
Cheers!
My dad was an engineer for NAA in the early 60s.
He got a job at the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS, to later become Idaho National Lab) after that, Phillips 66 (the gasoline company) had a contract to do LOFT (Loss of Fluid Test). He told your story (based on gossip at NRTS) that one of the guys was fooling around with the other guy's wife and the conflict had something to do with the accident.
Incidentally, LOFT was a project to quickly (couple years) design a reactor that could have the worst thing happen to it (punch a big hole in the main cooling pipe), have the exiting coolant flow to the core and keep it cool until the reactor could be properly shut down. They were actually going to test this. Design took more than a couple years but when it got close to test time (early 70s), the environmentalists objected to the radiation being released and stopped it.
"My assistant scoutmaster was exposed to radiation in a 1967 accident."
My assistant scoutmaster exposed himself.
Now cut that out!
I Claudius was a great series.
^^^ That is bullshit.
1) Chernobyl was not a nuclear detonation
2) Chernobyl did not "explode", it caught on fire.
3) It is not possible for a controlled reaction to turn into a nuclear detonation. Nuclear detonations involve critical mass, and nothing in any normal nuclear work save researching new nuclear bombs involves critical masses.
I'm not saying he's a total liar, I think an old mans story is being bungled by a shitty reporter.
>Nuclear detonations involve critical mass
Which also requires a certain amount of enrichment of the uranium...they reserve the good "shit" for the nuclear weapons.
Usually, reactors use uranium with 4 percent to 40 percent U235 (the higher percentage being reserved for breeder reactors and/or the production of medicinal radioactive isotopes), while nuclear bombs require uranium of 80 percent or more U235.
Used Nuclear Rods contain an awesome amount of Plutonium 239, Weapons Grade material.
That is why the USA gives reactors away to Foreign Nations. We harvest the used Fuel Rods.
(Uranium 238 transmutes into Neptunium 240 which transmutes into Plutonium 239.)
Just where in the hell do you think that the Plutonium released from Fukushima originated?
Yes. Iran already has more than enough fissile material for a Nuclear Bomb...without any enrichment.
That is the SIDE SHOW....for the ignorant.
The reason why the USA is pissed off is that Iran will not surrender her used Fuel Rods.
We want to steal their Plutonium.
Critical Mass is another misnomer.
All currently operational Nuke Reactors are running in a Supercritical Geometry in order to produce the heat necessary for generating electricity.
In an EXTREME SUPERCRITICAL GEOMETRY one gets that uncontrollable Chain Reaction at a explosively fast rate..
It is the DENSITY of that geometry, that lattice, which determines Criticality or Supercriticality.
Indeed, it is the density. and nothing in a research grade or even research reactor grade should *ever* have the density to go critical.
Nuclear Reactors do not work at all without being SUPERCRITICAL
Criticality is a condition where the reaction is self sustaining.
Sub Critical means that Energy has to be added in order for the reaction to happen.
Supercritical means that there is an excess of energy that can be utilized elsewhere.
They must operate in that configuration in order to produce HEAT to generate the Steam to run the Turbines..
The way to lose unfounded fear is through educating yourself...at least...at the very least...about the basics.
I am more concerned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been bought off and paid for by the Nuclear Industry.
It is much worse than the Nevada State Gaming Commision being bought and paid for by the Gaming Industry as there are real lives at stake.
Read my post below about the coverup of a Nuclear Accident at San Onofre, California which was not reported. Sempra Energy and Pacific Gas and Electric are just much too powerful.
That IS the problem.
You can downarrow this all that you want. it will not change the science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w1898sFn6M
Chernobyl exploded.
it was a STEAM Explosion that ripped the top off of the reactor core and the roof off of the top of that building.
Watch this about the disaster at Chernobyl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITEXGdht3y8
LEARN, DAMN IT!!!
It is possible to have a Nuclear Explosion with a Subcritical Mass of fissile Material.
Thank God this accident didn't happen at a coal fired plant.
Top climate change scientists' letter to policy influencersQuantitative analyses show that the risks associated with the expanded use of nuclear energy are orders of magnitude smaller than the risks associated with fossil fuels.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scient...
Harry Shearer regularly covers "News of the Atom" as only Harry Shearer can....
"Safe, Clean, Too Cheap to Meter!"
http://harryshearer.com/le-shows/september-13-2015/
(News of the Atom at 45:07).
..exactly like Obama's $2500.00 family health care premium reductions with his "Affordable Care Act".
Hello, I am from .gov and I am here to lie to you.
What about that lump on your 3rd testicle ?
It’s not PC to denigrate or discriminate against mutants who identify as extrasexuals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfmDomjH_A
Democrat urban politcal machines are like a slow motion nuclear accident.
Exactly, on balance, there may as well have been a meltdown not much would have changed in the grand scheme of things.
Detroit would have been bad if that thing had melted down.
Even the blacks would have moved out!
pods
No, the gov't would have told them they had to stay to get welfare and food stamps.
To quote that great philosopher of our day, Rihanna, "Bitch better have my money". We sure pick our idols well, don't we?
Would anybody miss it if we had?....., anyone?
Holy Shit. This means that the United States Government LIES to it's citizens!?
The US government not only lies, sometimes they deliberately dump radioactive compounds on the populations of major US cities.
Revealed: Army scientists secretly sprayed St Louis with 'radioactive' particles for YEARS to test chemical warfare technology
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210415/Revealed-Army-scientists-secretly-sprayed-St-Louis-radioactive-particles-YEARS-test-chemical-warfare-technology.html#ixzz3n9fIcletwell, that sure fucking explains the mutants crawling all over southern California, the Kardashitards, and Bruce Trans-Jenner.
Uhhmm, it's Caitlyn. Haven't you read the Hedge's anti-discrimination policy? Sheesh.
No one wants to be an ugly old woman...except Bruce.
He will have a change of heart once the jail time is either served, or off the table.
So when the EMP strike comes from a Russian sub, all these reactors acroos the US go into meltdown. Great f'ing times to live in a liberal utopia, huh?
No mention of this lovely site?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
Only robots can go near the storage units which are slowly corroding. Plants have been genetically modified to absorb the radioactive metals from the ground. These are later collected, burned and the metals recovered.
One story has it that they released radioactive gas purposely to see the effects downwind.
When you watch the old test films and see soldiers lined up with glasses watching the explosions do you really stop and think how little these lives meant to them?
Off topic:
I turned on CNBS in time to see them talking about Glencore, and they were pretending like it was them who was breaking the story. Nice to know their crack "reporters" are only a month behind the curve.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/24/opinion/the-mini-hiroshima-near-cincin...
The Nuclear Accident of September 6, 2011, at San Onofre, California was not reported.
They claimed to have closed the reactors due to massive Welding flaws and substandard pipes.
LMAO.
TO THIS DAY there has NOT EVER BEEN ONE SINGLE LAWSUIT FILED against the Contractors and Subcontractors who built that plant...NOT ANY. If the materials used were substandard...if the welds were "faulty" then litigation would have been filed to collect damages.
BUT THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.
Of course those Reactors were running at full power as demand in San Diego and the rest of the Southwest was extreme due to the Temperatures on that day.
Then this idiot over in Arizona tripped a Circuit Breaker that caused a widespread BLACKOUT.
They could not bleed off the power at San Onofre and the pressure built up and blew out every pipe in the place.
Trust No One!
Safe. Clean. Nuclear energy.
Now here - pull this finger for me.
The EPA can handle this one...
"would have been just the the chernobyl reactor blowing up"
yeah...this witness has no idea what he is talking about. reactors don't blow up. Chernobyl was a steam explosion. This reactor was Sodium cooled...totally different tech and not capable of that sort of volumetric expansion. Any Iodine or Cesium would have been gone within 30 days. This is fear mongering rubbish.
Into the trash it goes - just like every other ham-fished nuclear-related article on Zerohedge. Please start taking notes from people who actually undrestand this stuff; this is click-bait tier.
The witness in this case was a 20 year old worker who was about as low on the totem pole as one could get at that facility I would imagine. It was one sentence in the entire article, the rest of the article seems pretty factual, does it not?
The rest of the article does not seem factual at all.
The half life for cesium is 30 years.
Caesium 137 is 30 years...a medium-life half life. The longer a half life, the less dangers.
Caesium 136 and 138 are 16 days are 30 minutes, respectively.
Um, rooooomer has it -- there was a bomb under the reactor itself, placed there during initial construction. over 500,000 people have perished, throughout eastern Europe due to that one incident. The United States and Canada also got a good dose of radiation from Chernobyl. The brave workers that knew they would die went to work to save their family's and fellow Ruski's/Ukrainian's.
"surpassing the radiation released during the Three Mile Island accident.” No harmful radiation was released from the Three Mile Island accident. That and the fact that the first commercial nuclear power plant was not in California it was Shippingport Pensylvania, and I have to conclude that this article is Bull crap. The incorrect use of technical terms about radiation is another clue that the author is clueless. Stick to ecomonics ZH.
"No harmful radiation was released from the Three Mile Island accident. "
says who?
Oh yea,,, Our trustworthy government agencies.
And precious gubbermint would never ever fib!
Um, U ever talk about secondary radiation? There was a spike in childhood cancers-- studied, Baltimore was the test rat, and the source was MILK! Cows ate grass from the radiated fields then produced milk that was radioactive. Do some research then come back and I'll give you your next assignment.
Class dismissed!
Governments hide everything and never admit to anything. The biggest polluter on the face of our planet is the u.s government,,, while said government invokes all sorts of restrictions on its citizens in the name of protecting the environment. LOL.
Everything governments do is intended to protect themselves and they don't give a rats ass who or what they destroy,,, with the rat infested u.s government leading the pack. VW is not even a blip on the scope when compared to government pollution. Co2 is not a greenhouse gas,,, it's a greenhouse tax. One volcano will spew more Co2 into the atmosphere in one moment than a hundred years of VW. But how many will suffer and die from their nuclear fission plants they build? You'll never know because they don't monitor those stats.
Governments are the scourge of the planet. An invention by megalomaniacs to control and rob the low lifes.
they had a flying nuclear reactor powered missile engine....worked as predicted
My grandpa worked on it, got flashed died 1965 pancreatic cancer
My grandma got nothing, it was classified, parts are still classified (for liability reasons).
But the governemt loves you so much, they want to make sure you inject their vaccines.
The SV-40 virus in the polio vaccine caused a lot more cancers. ! in 2 US men will get cancer and 1 in 3 women,
98 million Americans were given polio vaccine contaminated with cancer-causing virus, admits CDC
http://www.naturalnews.com/041345_cdc_polio_vaccine_sv40.html …
Yep,,, another government great idea and mandate. And soon we will all be forced to get vaccinated for everything from hemorrhoids to moles.
As if we already didn't have enough to worry about with unidentifiable refugees flooding into Europe and the U.S. ...
Is this simply a get out the PR campaign that shit happens with this kind of technology and you better learn to live with it!!!...
Should help Israel with what they did on 3/11 deliberately, but hey if this is true and they are in control of our "shit" just like they were Fukushima I guess we better get use to all of these accident(s) deliberate or otherwise as just a normal part of our lives?!!!
I suspect that the American people will wind up coping with it just like the Japanese people and do absolutely nothing as long as they have their football, baseball and basketball!!!
Two articles about nuclear plants in two days? Are we expecting a false flag at a reactor plant near you? Or just more fear-mongering for clicks?
D1G, S2G, Monju, too...
BTW, for you dumbshits that tell me that molten salt (i.e sodium) reactors are safe, kindly go fuck yourselves today, tomorrow, and pretty much for the rest of your natural lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Monju_sodium_lea...
There was a reason that the US Navy shitcanned the idea of molten sodium reactors long before Monju.
Molten salt reactors and liquid sodium cooled reactors are two different technologies dumbass...
Explain something to me, Mr. Know-it-all.
Why aren't these new molten salt reactors dotting the landscape and providing us all the power we need to propel us to infinite growth forever?
Standard Disclaimer: I seek enlightenment. Preferably from someone who actually has dirtied his hands on something other than a keyboard.
You can always trust your government and the policeman is your friend.
Fuck California. Especially L.A.
I'm pretty sure these same thieving bastards are trying to buy up our land and businesses in Lancaster PA so they can build some GOD DAMNED nuclear plant.
I tell those jew moneymen to keep the hell out of my farming business or I'll plug my pitchfork into their god damn eye sockets!
!@#$%*!!!! ~ I grew up in West Hills! Played in Bell Creek, and gardened in the back yard. Born in '62 left in '83. Only one small basal cell cancer and a thyroid problem, thank God. It could be so much worse for me and my family. :o(
Maybe one of the guys who knows about this stuff can answere my stupid question...Hiroshima and Nagasaki...how are those cities enhabitable after being nuked? I admit I know very little about anything nuclear..
Oh, it's factual enough, I guess, it's not exactly a secret, every few years there would be a new scandal about one or another aspect. When I had to go visit the Rockwell office there in about 1985 I already knew about the history there. Hey I went to Hanford, WA once as well, and was even more paranoid about that. People live there! Go figure. For that matter do you know how many nukes they set off right outside Las Vegas, back then, and the strange disasters up towards St. George east of Vegas?
Anyhow the Reagan Library is just south of the Rockwell nuke zone, so now all the Republican candidates have been irradiated, too.
anyone whose done their own serious research into nuclear power accidents knows about this cover up.
and if they didn't, they hadn't done their OWN SERIOUS RESEARCH.
there are a couple other 'incidents' known about if you search hard enough on the internet. none are that interesting. and there's likely a few in russia that happened that people still don't know about.
who cares.
nuclear power did and still holds massive promise . and yet, humanity is such a godamn messy and incompetent thing that nuclear power seems foolish.
that said, nuclear batteries for space, and nuclear weaopns for human war are perfectly clear and direct tools and are superior in almost every way to their competition.
nuclear power is just a fucking mess. and that is true even if you , like me, aren't scared of all the fear mongering about radiation exposure and accidents. the case against nuclear power is not so much strong as it is self evident. the case for BETTER COAL, BETTER SOLAR, BETTER WIND, BETTER NATURAL GAS, BETTER EVERYTHING is still solid. the case for nuclear is just horseshit at this point until 1) they learn how to fast burn uranium 238 and transuranics [ which is so abudnant it's not even funny as it is the other '99.995%+' of actual material that is both pre-processed as well as that that is 'disposed' of.
until then, fissing only the top end of heavily u235 rods while they are still at peak heat simply makes no fucking sense given the realities of maintanance, mistakes, waste, regulatory cost, bullshit security cost, and of course 'oversite' from the weapons perspective. as it stands nuclear energy is garbage for any and all reasons other than to hide a nuclear weapons program. the u.s. does it, the west does it, germany stopped doing it because the u.s. doens't want germany having nukes. the east is doing it. everyone knows the real deal.
Hollywood movies and Nasa tells us there is liquid water on Mars. Really?
What is the Temperature of Mars? - Space.com
Perhaps California can utilize this mysterious phenomenon with their ongoing drought.
From your link...
A summer day on Mars may get up to 70 degrees F (20 degrees C) near the equator, but at night the temperature can plummet to about minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 C). Frost forms on the rocks at night, but as dawn approaches and the air gets warmer, the frost turns to vapor, and there is 100 percent humidity until it evaporates.
Does that temperature staisfy your criteria? Water flows here on earth at 70oF...at STP.
You did not read the article which you referenced, did you?
The NASA report states that liquid water may flow on Mars during the Summer and that they have evidence.
However the problem which I have to consider is that phase changes are also dependent upon PRESSURE.
I have not looked at phase change requirements for water for quite awhile. i do not think that I need to.
You must understand that I do know that if I INCREASE PRESSURE then the Boiling Point Temperature of Water is elevated. I APPLY this principle when putting Coolant into a radiator and PRESSURIZING the system.
And if I am in an environment with decrease air pressure then the Boiling Point is diminished.
I know this as I have cooked food in a Pressure Cooker in Flagstaff, 7000 feet above Sea Level, and a Pressure cooker is required to boil food. Water boils in Flagstaff at about 160oF and that is NOT hot enough to boil food. That is another real world application of this principle..
So I can reason that if I decrease pressure then the Freezing Point is also lowered. Water may flow even well below 32oF in the Pressure environment of Mars, which has a scant 1/100th of the density of Earth's atmosphere.
Thus I must conclude that the report has veracity and is quite plausible as it does not violate any common sense or any of the Laws of Thermodynamics..
What evidence are you basing your "feeling" on?
http://www.techinsider.io/nasas-big-mars-mystery-announcement-will-be-ab...
Wherever the water comes from, it's not looking good for life.
"If [recurring slope lineae] form via atmospheric deliquescence, then they are likely eutectic brines with temperatures and water activities too low to support terrestrial life," the new abstract says.
This doesn't mean Mars isn't a worthy or interesting target for exploration, robotic or human. Humanity may be able to terraform the planet (with nuclear weapons, according to Elon Musk) and send people there to colonize it. Also, Mars may have been habitable at one point. Many studies showed it had vast, 450-foot-deep oceans covering 19% of the planet.
Until something went wrong. Mars' internal dynamo stopped and killed its magnetic field, shutting down its protective shield against powerful solar radiation. Over the millennia, the sun blasted away the Martian atmosphere and almost all of its water.
So Mars is most likely a (very) dead planet unless we decide to do something about it.
This year NASA loosely committed to a mission in the 2020s to orbit Europa. That ice moon's subsurface ocean is thought to harbor twice as much water as all of the liquid on Earth.
But the space agency has a bad habit of scaling back and then canceling planned Europa missions while boosting Mars exploration.
For example, NASA killed the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter in 2005. Next, the US space agency pursued a Europa Jupiter System Mission, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), only to back out in 2011. (ESA is still planning that mission as the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer.) Meanwhile, it signed on for another Mars Curiosity Rover-like mission as well as a Phoenix Mars Lander-like probe.
The main hang-up for NASA is not brainpower but cash.
And over the past decade, overall planetary science funding has declined. At the very least, The Planetary Society says, NASA should get $1.5 billion a year — its historic average — to explore the Solar System. Otherwise, continued exploration of Mars and other places could cannibalize money for exploring Europa.
Getting to an icy moon is absurdly complex, so mission cost estimates tend to soar to billions of dollars. Mars is closer, more of a known quantity, and poses less risk of failure. And with an ever shifting cast in Congress and the White House, plus year-by-year budgeting, it's easy to derail a search for alien life beyond Mars.
This year Congress allocated $100 million for NASA to investigate a new Europa mission. That's a drop in the bucket of NASA's $18 billion budget for 2015 and, as part of that money, its $1.44 billion planetary-science program. It's also one-third of the money allocated toward Mars exploration ($305 million).
It's also crucial that the government continue to help NASA increase its dwindling supply of plutonium-238 — a rare, unique, red-hot material that can power spacecraft for decades and could help a submersible robot melt through a miles-thick ice shell with relative ease.
The problem is that we're running out of plutonium-238. It hasn't been made in earnest since the end of the Cold War, and a $50-million-a-year effort by NASA and the US Department of Energy to reboot production has stalled over and over again, according to Scientific American.
Pu-238 is being produced currently in the USA at Oak Ridge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVhQDHIZAw
What we are depleting is the supply of U-235. That is the danger.
up until
3/11/11
we have been
FUKus
is this your fathers socialism
Back in the USSA
Leave it to beaver
Duh. Santa Susana is a known toxic site and has been known as such for decades. This is not news.
Where's Erin Brockovich when we need her?
I watched Erin Brockovitch again a couple of months ago and it was really good - one of those moves that hasn't dated.
What's more surprising is what the fuck is an NBC affiliate thinking by doing actual investigative journalism, when they could nstead be focusing on important issues like which hollywood star has put on weight recently?