AWTW: Nuclear Bhopal’s for India’s people?

Birth defects from uranium mining, Jadugoda, India

Comment: A picture of little hands can tell about the problems of Nuke Cycle! Why is American pushing the Nuke Cycle? On the other hand, America says, it will stop Nuke Bombs! America government is lying to the world or they would not hire a Nuke Bomb maker in the Dept. of Energy!

Kasama received this article from A World To Win News Service.
31 August 2009.
Posted by n3wday on September 8, 2009

A World to Win News Service. In mid-July Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to India with a deadly agenda.

India feared a change in its relations with the U.S. under the new Obama government. Further, with Clinton’s visit coming only days after the G-8 meeting of the developed countries of the world including the U.S. had reaffirmed a commitment to not pass along enrichment and nuclear reprocessing technology to non-signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India, a non-signatory of this treaty, may have thought it had cause for concern.

But Clinton unabashedly informed the world, “We have just completed a civil nuclear deal.

If it is done through proper channels and safeguarded, then it is appropriate. ” (india-server. com/news/ hillary). India remained a “global partner”, she said, and the two countries would proceed with agreements initiated by Bush on military issues (the sale of billions of dollars worth of U.S. airplanes and military technology) and civilian nuclear deals.

She continued, “I’m so pleased that Prime Minister Singh told me that sites for two nuclear parks for U.S. companies have been approved by the government. These parks will advance the aims of the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement, facilitate billions of dollars in U.S. reactor exports, and create jobs in both counties, as well as generate much-needed energy for the Indian people.” The two sites are of “significant acreage” and have forested buffer zones to allow for future expansion. (Frontline, 1 August 2009, tni.org) They are in Andhra Pradesh, where Maoists lead the masses in a people’s war that is often in sharp conflict with the Indian government’s encroachment on tribal lands, and in Gujarat. In both states anti-government feeling runs high among the poor and downtrodden.

Her visit received scant publicity in the Western press.

In India, news of the Clinton visit was big and controversial.

One the one hand, Indian industrialists (like Ratan Tata) salivate at the possibilities of this new deal.. On the other hand, the anti-nuclear forces promise a tough fight, and have joined ranks with the Indian section of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) to protest this agreement. They are outraged by the U.S. demand for the enactment of an Indian law to protect American companies against liability for future disasters like the poison gas leak in Bhopal 25 years ago.

In 1984 a pesticide manufacturing plant owned by the U.S. company Union Carbide leaked a cloud of 42 tons of toxic chemicals into the air of the densely populated city of Bhopal. Of the 800,000 people living in the city, 8,000 to 10,000 died within 72 hours. About 300,000 were injured. As many as 25,000 have died from gas-related causes since then.

The worst hit area was the slum next to the factory. Most of the victims were poor people from villages who had moved to the city in search of jobs. “Many– particularly children and the elderly – died in their beds as the gas seeped into their homes. Others, including women clasping babies, fled only to collapse in the street. Many were later found, huddled, sick and dying in the city’s doorways. Herds of oxen lay dead and the bodies of goats littered the roadsides where they used to roam. Leaves on the trees were yellow and shrivelled – crops in the fields were scorched and covered with a fine white film.” (BBC, 28 August 2002).

In Bhopal today there are abnormally high levels of skin cancer, lung cancer, gastro-intestinal cancer, genetic defects, serious menstrual problems and miscarriage rates seven times the national average. Survivors suffer from poor co-ordination, memory loss, partial blindness, paralysis and impaired immune systems. Often their babies are born with deformities. Now, on average one person dies per day, with 100,000 suffering from chronic illness. Every day 4,000 people queue at the city’s gas relief hospitals with ailments ranging from damaged lungs and severe heart problems to wrecked immune systems and diseases such as tuberculosis. (AWTWNS, 14 February 2005)

None of the four safety systems were in operation due to budget cutbacks at the Union Carbide plant. The company refused to listen to the warnings by the doctor at the plant. She wanted a plan of action for evacuating the people living in the neighbourhood in case of a leak and she left her job before the disaster to protest the company’s inaction.

Insisting there was sabotage, to this day Union Carbide (now owned by the Dow chemical company) refuses to accept responsibility for this tragedy. Instead they negotiated a settlement of $470 million paid to the Indian government to distribute. This meant a measly sum of $400 to each of the victims.

The head of Union Carbide at that time, Warren Anderson, was arrested by the local government and charged with homicide when he travelled to India after the 1984 disaster. But due to pressure from the U.S. government he was released on bail immediately. Since then he has not presented himself to the court. India has an extradition treaty with the U.S. but the Indian government has shown no desire to start extradition proceedings against him.

The Bhopal disaster is the backdrop for Clinton’s negotiations with the Indian government over the nuclear plants to be set up by two multinationals, General Electric (U.S.-based and one of the largest corporate polluters in that country) and Westinghouse Electric (majority owned by Toshiba).

The companies are loath to miss out on lucrative possibilities but worried about having to pay for any tragedies they might create in their drive for profit. They are concerned about being at a competitive disadvantage in comparison to their rivals, the French company Areva and Russian Rusatom. These companies are already immune from liability because they are considered “sovereign”, that is, fully or partially controlled by their governments.

While the details of the India liability law for the U.S. companies are not fully worked out, one anonymous Indian minister told a reporter: “The draft of the Nuclear Liability Bill is ready. What this will do is indemnify American companies so that they don’t have to go through another Union Carbide in Bhopal.” (Frontline)

In an article at tehelka.com, activist and journalist Nityanand Jayaraman writes “Areva and Rusatom are already in the race to supply nuclear plant equipment to India.

But private sector players like GE and Westinghouse say they will not invest until India ratifies the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSCNL) and installs a domestic civilian nuclear liability regime.

They want no part of the liabilities arising out of a Bhopal-like disaster. Rather, they say, the entire liability in the event of a catastrophe should be borne solely by the Indian operator of the facility.

Like his predecessor, President Obama is pushing India to guarantee that the Union Carbides of the nuclear world suffer no losses regardless of the role that may be played by their equipment and technology in causing the disaster.”

Jayaraman concludes, “At a time when neither the U.S. nor the Indian government has done anything to address the lingering liabilities of the Bhopal disaster, it is unacceptable to project U.S. multinationals as the only real victims of the Bhopal disaster, and take steps to immunize them from liabilities in the future.”

What kind of tragedy can one expect from a nuclear disaster for which U.S. companies do not want liability?

The Frontline article describes the hazards associated with nuclear power. “Each stage of the so-called nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to fuel fabrication, and from the operation and maintenance of nuclear reactors to the handling or reprocessing of spent fuel, is fraught with exposure to ionising radiation. Radiation is a unique and long-acting poison that causes chromosomal damage even in small doses – and hence cancer and genetic damage. Radiation cannot be neutralised or destroyed. And there is no threshold below which it is safe.

“Nuclear power generation, as well as the transportation and handling of nuclear materials, inevitably exposes occupational workers to radiation. It is also fraught with routine emissions and effluents that are hazardous to the public in the vicinity. It leaves behind wastes, which remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years… The economic lifespan of a nuclear reactor is only 30 or 40 years. But it remains hazardous for thousands of years.”

Twenty-three years ago the Chernobyl nuclear explosion and fire released four hundred times more radioactive fallout than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Fallout drifted as far north as Ireland. Despite heroic efforts on the part of firefighters whose boots melted into the radioactive mess as they battled flames, 4,000 people died in the nearby area. In the Ukraine alone, those designated as permanently disabled by the Chernobyl accident rose from 200 in 1991 to 64,500 in 1997 to 91,219 in 2001. (International Herald Tribune, 25 August 2009)

Clinton’s visit to India took up other, no less significant issues like military agreements of strategic import to the U.S. We have focused here only on one glaring aspect. The deals to export U.S. nuclear technology to India that the Obama administration is pushing through will be worth $20 billion in sales. The dangers and potential damage that may be inflicted on the broad masses of Indians are incalculable.

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/awtw-nuclear-bhopals-for-indias-people/#more-13219

The U.S. Department of Energy; nuclear by nature, forever?

Comment: You will find the article interesting, you will understand why Dept of Energy came to Southside Virginia, and it had nothing to do with Green Jobs, it was uranium! People of Virginia, you need to wake up and join us in this fight against uranium mining or we all will be mined for weapons and not nuclear plants! I agree with the article, we need to separate the nuclear side of Department of Energy to DOD and then maybe we will have a True Department of Energy without Nuclear Weapons!

by Ann Garrison

On March 11, 2009, Barack Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, announced his support for a new generation of nuclear power , but Terry Macallester, writing five days later, on March 16, 2009, in Common Dreams, warned that these new power plant designs could, by 2075, produce enough plutonium to make a million nuclear bombs, and cause nuclear anarchy.

The next day, March 17, 2009, New York Times ran Stephanie Cooke's well-reasoned, but, nevertheless curious, op-ed about Barack Obama and Steven Chu, beginning thus:

"PRESIDENT OBAMA has made clean and efficient energy a top priority, and Congress has obliged with more than $32 billion in stimulus money mostly for conservation and alternative energy technologies like wind, solar and biofuel.

Sadly, the Energy Department is too weighed down by nuclear energy programs to devote itself to bringing about the revolution Mr. Obama envisions."

It seemed a bit strange, or disingenuous, of Stephanie Cooke, to suggest that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, former head of Berkeley's Lawrence Livermore Labs, really wants to "avoid getting dragged down by the nuclear undertow," since Chu, a physicist, has openly advocated a nuclear renaissance.

Now we need an honest update on the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW)

Bush's former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now Obama's, and he has often pitched for continuing to develop the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead:

Chu headed Lawrence Livermore Labs while it led development of the design for the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), a new strategic tactical nuclear weapon, under Bush.

The RRW would have, and still may be, the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal in many years.

Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) worked on the RRW, first in competition with Livermore, and then, under the direction of Livermore, then headed by Chu, from 2006 until 2008, when Congress defunded further development, The London Guardian reported recently that RRW developers in the U.S. had simply moved to Britain's Aldermaston nuke bomb factory, to work alongside British scientists in finishing the design, with British and who knows what other, funding, quite likely slush funding. There are quite a few very slushy funds scattered throughout the military and intelligence departments of the U.S. national security state.

It's virtually inconceivable that the U.S. could have continued development of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead without Chu's knowledge, either before or after he became Secretary of Energy, which is to say, of Nuclear Power, Weapons, and Waste, because, before becoming the top nuclear power and weapons official in the U.S., he headed the lab overseeing the RRW design. And he most certainly knows now, since this 02/09/2009 London Guardian exposé. There seems, however, to be no evidence that he has made any evidence to halt the RRW's ongoing development at Aldermaston.

Chu's official statement on the RRW says that, "Under this budget, development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead will cease," but "under this budget" sounds like a very convenient way of taking credit for Congress's vote to defund RRW's development, without acknowledging that he's overseeing its continuation, covertly, in cooperation with Britain, at Aldermaston.

Did Congress simply get fed up with funding the development of a new nuclear weapon, in hard times, or, did they decide it was a lousy, hugely toxic, and dangerous idea, discouraging to the goal of world peace, which most of the world embraces, honestly or not?

Cooke seems either to have skipped research into Chu's background, even so recent as his 03/11/2009 embrace of next generation nuclear power.

Or, she may have intended, for whatever reason, to greenwash, and apologize, for Obama and Chu's nuclear predilections, by saying that there's just no changing the U.S. Department of Energy and its nuclear DNA, no matter how one might want to.

Or, she may even have meant to encourage whatever renewables interest Obama and Chu may have, with flattery. This might be a logical, persuasive rather than confrontational strategy, but, nevertheless, these important question still hangs:

How are Steven Chu and Barack Obama involved with the U.S.-British, Reliable Replacement Nucleaer Warhead development in Britain, now, even though this obviously began after Congress defunded the new nuclear weapon, and before George Bush left office? They essentially have to pick up where George left off, to complete it, or abandon it, as much of the world, including many of us in the U.S.A., which they would.

Do they have any intention of shutting it down, over, no doubt, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's objections? And, who is managing and funding this nuclear weapons development now, at Britain's Aldermaston. And, to what strategic purpose?

This is serious business, designing and building the first new nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, in years. Not a decision that U.S. and British national security state cabals should make without public approval or oversight.

The U.S. Department of Energy, nuclear by nature?

Cooke, again, writing in the NY Times, was most certainly correct that, in the unlikely event that Chu choose to emphasize solar, wind, and other forms of renewable power over nuclear, he would have to recreate or even rename, the U.S. Energy Department, because it is and always has been, above all, the Department of Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, and, Nuclear Waste; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to oversee the creation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear power infrastructure after the end of World War II.

There are more nuclear, and coal-fired, power plants in Barack Obama's Illinois than in any other state in the union; and Chicago-based http://www.exeloncorp.com/, the largest nuclear power corporation in the U.S., gave Obama's campaign over $200,000 in bundled contributions.

However, Obama did, very shortly after taking office, and, at long last, shut down the longstanding DOE plan to make one of Native America's most sacred sites, Yucca Mountain, a big high radiation nuclear waste dump, in Nevada.

By doing so, he handed a hard, lifelong won victory to the Western Shoshone people, and, to Carrie Dann, lifelong Native American environmental and indigenous rights activist, and, defender of indigenous sacred sites.

By convening a "panel on nuclear waste," to choose the best way to dispose of waste generated by the next generation of nuclear reactors, Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu unfortunately implied that there is a "best way, " or, rather, a rational way.

But, whatever their panel's conclusion, Obama and Chu have at least promised that it will not mean the nuclear disposal of the magnificent Carrie Dann's sacred mountain. Turning Yucca Mountain into a High Radiation Nuclear Waste Dump had been a pillar of the Global Nuclear Energy Project since its inception under Bush; Carrie, the Western Shoshone, and the rest of the Native Southwest fought to save their sacred mountain for 22 years, so this was a huge victory, even as the Navajo and other Native Americans continue to battle uranium mining leases expanded by the Energy Department under George Bush.

Is the Energy Department nuclear by nature, now and forever, amen?

Stephanie Cooke aptly said that the U.S. Department of Energy has "nuclear weapons in its DNA"; it grew out of the Atomic Energy Commission, created to manage and build atomic weapons after World War II, after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nation states raced to build and place their own weapons on the global nuclear chessboard.

"Today, the department’s main task is managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites.

Approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on these activities, while only 15 percent is allocated for all energy programs, including managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and researching and developing new technologies."

The name of the Energy Department seems incidental to the central questions:

1) How will we develop and energy resources, now, to what purpose?
2) Will our energy resources sustain life and future generations?


With these questions in mind, however, I'll gladly agree that "the Energy Department must be relieved of duties that aren’t related to energy"---i.e., that it must be relieved of its primary task, nuclear weapons handling, which Obama's Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag has suggested moving into the equally misnamed, but, better understood, Department of Defense (DOD).

This is a good idea, a damn good, and most excellent idea.

Obama's OMB Budget Director Peter Orszag should be applauded for championing such rare honesty and focus in Washington D.C. Let's do indeed pass the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to the "Defense Department"!

Finally turn the Energy Department into the Real Energy Department, and hopefully even: the Renewable, Sustainable Energy Department, mandated to build renewable energy and sustain life. Yeah Peter Orszag!!!

The new Chief of the OBM is not only intelligent but rational!!! He's tacking the logical contradiction of an "Energy Department" whose primary task is management of our nuclear weapons arsenal. This is the best idea I've heard out of Team Obama yet.

We've still got these problems, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, overseer of Lawrence Livermore Labs during the design of the Reliable Replacement Nuclear Warhead (RRW), and the covert continuation of the RRW development, at Aldermaston, but perhaps they could both, at least be moved over and locked up at DOD, with the rest of the nuclear weapons, to give Energy a chance.

http://coloredopinions.blogspot.com/2009/03/nuclear-by-nature-us-dept-of-energy.html

Maralinga - Our Own Shame - The Atomic Bomb That Killed Many Australians

Comment: I am putting this on the web because US gov't did the same to our Military and children out west and used them as test objects, knowing the problems that would develop later!!

Maralinga - Our Own Shame

Timeline and Photos - jump here!
The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project (DPIE Issues Paper)

Britain actively used Australian soil and people to conduct it's nuclear testing program during the 1950s and 1960s. The 5 areas it conducted the tests are at Monte Bello Islands in north-western Western Australia (just off the mainland, near Monkey Mia); Emu Field in north-western South Australia; the infamous Maralinga in south-western South Australia; Christmas Island and Malden Island, both due south of Hawaii, on either side of the Equator. After the Grapple series of tests, the British lent the site to the US in 1962 for the Dominic series of 25 explosions.

Britain detonated its first nuclear device, Hurricane, on Monte Bello Island on October 3, 1952, followed by tests on May 16 and June 19, 1956. The June blast had a 60 kiloton capacity. At one monitoring point, over 3,200 kilometres to the east, radioactive iodine concentrations increased a hundredfold.

Two further atomic bomb tests, Totem 1 and 2, were carried out at Emu Field on October 15 and 27, 1953. The next series of atomic bomb tests were carried out at Maralinga between September 27, 1956 and October 9, 1957, along with a series of "minor" trials up to 1963. The Grapple series of tests were undertaken at Malden and Christmas Islands May 15, 1957, to September 23, 1958.

During the mainland tests many army personnel were deliberately exposed to the blasts just to see what effect radiation had on troops. Security at the test sites was lax. The testing range boundaries were not properly monitored, allowing people to walk in and out. Any signs were in English, which the local Aboriginal population could not read. Fallout from the ground blasts led to massive contamination of the Australian interior. The fallout from Maralinga even reached Adelaide and Melbourne. Some places are still heavily radioactive due principally to the presence of 20 kg of plutonium, the most toxic element known to humans.

Maralinga is Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal dialect for "Field of Thunder". Aborigines may have been directly affected by the blasts. Compensation is currently being sought in Australian courts

Fifteen thousand Australians were involved in the work at the three British test sites over the twelve years in Australia.



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British Nuclear Testing in Australia
UK ATMOSPHERIC NUCLEAR TESTS IN AUSTRALIA
AND AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND 1952-58
We have made a successful start. When the [nuclear] tests are completed, as they soon will be, we shall be in the same position as the United States or Soviet Russia. We shall have made and tested the massive weapons. It will be possible then to discuss on equal terms.
Harold Macmillan, U.K. Prime Minister, 1957.

Code-name Location Date Yield Explosion Conditions
Hurricane Monte Bello
(off Trimouille Is) 3 Oct 1952 25kt Ocean surface burst (HMS Plym)
Totem 1 Emu Field 15 Oct 1953 10kt Tower
Totem 2 Emu Field 27 Oct 1953 8kt Tower
Mosaic G1 Monte Bello
(off Trimouille Is) 16 May 1956 15kt Tower
Mosaic G2 Monte Bello
(off Alpha Is) 19 June 1956 60kt Tower
Buffalo Maralinga
(One Tree) 27 Sept 1956 15kt Tower
Buffalo Maralinga
(Marcoo) 4 Oct 1956 1.5kt Ground
Buffalo Maralinga
(Kite) 11 Oct 1956 3kt Airburst over land
Buffalo Maralinga
(Breakaway) 22 Oct 1956 10kt Tower
Grapple 1 Malden Is, Pacific
(Short Granite) 15 May 1957 ~2Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple 2 Malden Is, Pacific
(Orange Herald) 31 May 1957 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple 3 Malden Is, Pacific
(Purple Granite) 19 Jun 1957 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Antler Maralinga
(Tadje) 14 Sept 1957 1kt Tower
Antler Maralinga
(Biak) 25 Sept 1957 6kt Tower
Antler Maralinga
(Taranaki) 9 Oct 1957 25kt Balloon-burst over land
Grapple X Christmas Is
(Round C) 8 Nov 1957 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple Y Christmas Is
(Grapple Y) 28 Apr 1958 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple Z Christmas Is
(Pennant 2) 22 Aug 1958 ~1Mt Balloon-burst over land
Grapple Z Christmas Is
(Flag Pole 1) 2 Sept 1958 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple Z Christmas Is
(Halliard 1) 11 Sept 1958 1Mt Airburst over ocean
Grapple Z Christmas Is
(Burgee 2) 23 Sept 1958 1kt Balloon-burst over land

Source: Australian Ministry of Defence, 20 March 1984
Aust Test Photos: Courtesy Department of Primary Industries and Energy (now DISR), 1995

http://www.sea-us.org.au/thunder/britsbombingus.html