Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday

[Octafish]

The story connects a few dots from the present day back to World War II.



War crime, Yakuza, Secret Government. Why not?

Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link.

By Eleanor Warnock
June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST.
Wall Street Journal Blog

Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japan’s nascent nuclear industry.

Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan’s biggest-selling and most influential newspaper) and the founder of both the country’s first commercial broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known, according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.

SNIP...

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

SNIP…

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/

After President Carter was out of office, it was pretty much full-steam ahead for the Japanese bomb during the Pruneface Ronnie-Poppy Bush years. Hence, Fukushima Daiichi Number 3 and other select Japanese reactors were set up to process plutonium uranium fuels.

United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium

By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.

SNIP...

A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japan’s modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.

How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html

Those of who have seen The World at War series on the tee vee are familiar with the black and white footage and great narrative chronicling the main events and figures of World War II. One of those episodes was entitled "The Bomb" and featured an interview with John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War to President Roosevelt and President Truman.

Here's part of what Mr. McCloy said about the Atomic Bomb – the use of which he counseled only as a last resort, after warning Japan to surrender (around 7:30 mark of Part 2):

“Besides that, we’ve got a new force, a new type of energy that will revolutionize warfare, destructive beyond any contemplation. I’d said, I’d mention the bomb. Mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group, was like, it was like they were all shocked. Because it was such a closely guarded secret. It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale – which you’re not supposed to do.”

After the war, McCloy was the United States High Commissioner to Germany, administering the U.S. zone of occupation, making him one of the front-line leaders of the Cold War. In that capacity, one of the questionable things he did was to forgive several NAZI industrialists and war criminals.

The great cartoonist Herb Block, HERBLOCK, depicted McCloy holding open a prison door for a NAZI, while in the background Stalin took a photo (if anyone has a copy or link to the cartoon, I’d be much obliged). About 15 years later, Mr. McCloy served the nation as a member of the Warren Commission.

While he wasn’t a member of Skull and Bones, McCloy certainly worked closely with a bunch of them, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. As a Wall Street and Washington insider, "Mr. Establishment" he was called, Mr. McCloy used the offices of government to centralize power and wealth. That is most un-democratic.

Mother Jones goes into detail:

The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs

How millions in campaign cash and revolving-door lobbying have kept America's atomic arsenal off the chopping block.

— By R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity
Mother Jones
Wed Jun. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report.

The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy, released the report on Wednesday to highlight what it described as the heavy influence of campaign donations and pork-barrel politics on a part of the defense budget not usually associated with large profits or contractor power: nuclear arms.

As Congress deliberated this spring on nuclear weapons-related projects, including funding for the development of more modern submarines and bombers, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million to the 2012 reelection campaigns of lawmakers whose support they needed for these and other projects, the report disclosed.

Half of that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that must approve all spending for nuclear arms—the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Energy and Water or Defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the Center compiled from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to lawmakers who are active on nuclear weapons issues because they have related factories or laboratories in their states or districts.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee this year have sought to erect legislative roadblocks to further reductions in nuclear arms, and also demanded more spending for related facilities than the Obama administration sought, including $100 million in unrequested funds for a new plant that will make plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, and $374 million for a new ballistic missile-firing submarine. The House has approved those requests, but the Senate has not held a similar vote on the 2013 defense bill.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations

It isn't ironic or coincidental. It is the Establishment, the in-group, the Elite, the One-Percent that’s pretty much gotten the lion’s share of the wealth created over the last 50 years. The same group that’s pretty much had their fingers on the atomic button ever since the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as profited from the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the almost continuous state of war since then. For lack of a better term, I call them the BFEE, or War Party.

[SidDithers]

1. Thank you for this post...

It's all kinds of awesome.

Sid

[Octafish]

2. Any time. I hope you learned something.

Most of it seems to have escaped notice by Corporate McPravda, even though it's a very important story.

[RobertEarl]

4. Always more to learn

Nuclear power plants are just slowed down nuclear explosions.
When they are working correctly.

When they go bad, like Fukushima, they go fast: Boom, like Fukushima.

Now the Japanese are burdened with something the US and themselves told themselves could never happen. Japan was in deeply in debt before and now they have a debt to clean up after Fukushima that may never be paid for.

Who's next?

[freshwest]

41. This is very important history you posted. A few links to the present, may change the future.

[bananas]

3. Good stuff - can you repost it in the Energy/Environment group?

This kind of information is sorely lacking there.

[Octafish]

10. Thanks, bananas -- Done.

Interesting how the subjects of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are cojoined in reality, yet separate in the public mind.

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons: Making the Connections

EXCERPT...

In 1953 President Dwight Eisenhower, for whatever motives one wishes to ascribe to him, announced his "Atoms for Peace" program, by which the destructive force of the atom was to be harnessed for "peaceful" purposes. It was also at this time that the U.S. began offering nuclear technology and training to the rest of the world.

In 1954 utilities which were to operate commercial nuclear reactors were given further incentive when Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act so that utilities would received uranium fuel for their reactors from the government in exchange for the plutonium produced in those reactors. The plutonium was to be shipped to Rocky Flats in Colorad- o, where the federal government made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.

In retrospect it is a simple matter to see that there never was an intention to separate nuclear weapons produc- tion from the use of commercial nuclear power. In a document from the Los Alamos National Laboratory dated August, 1981, one finds this statement:

"There is no technical demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one. What has persisted over the decades is just the misconception that such a linkage does not exist." ("Some Political Issues Related to Future Special Nuclear Fuels Production," LA- 8969-MS, UC-16).4

CONTINUED...

[bananas]

14. They used to lock or move threads dealiing with the subject.

The pro-nukes claimed that nuclear energy had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and would get threads moved out of the forum, prohibiting discussion of the subject. I couldn't believe it.

[malaise]

5. Thanks Octafish

I have so much to learn

[Octafish]

11. As I.

Nuclear Weapons and Energy represent just two of the ways The Establishment -- in the USA and globally -- consolidates wealth and political power. Some background:

The United States today operates as an Empire in service of Royalty -- the Filthy Rich.

Remembering the Killing of Karen Silkwood

August 11, 2009 in Capitalism, Environmental Justice, Nuclear, Organizing

After watching the brilliantly-acted and courageous film Silkwood (1983, starring Meryl Streep), I learned the compelling story of Karen Silkwood and her death, which has seemingly been forgotten by America. Karen, only 28, was a union activist working in a Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in Oklahoma, who died in a suspicious car accident while on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter for a story that would have exposed the company’s dangerous and illegal mishandling of plutonium.

Karen was active in her union, calling attention to the radioactive contamination in the plant, and spent months compiling evidence to show that the company was deliberately covering up the fact that their fuel rods contained imperfections, which could put millions of lives at risk if they sparked a meltdown. The night of her death, many believe Karen was deliberately driven off the road by another car, and her family was later able to sue Kerr-McGee for $1.3 million in damages, but the company admits no wrongdoing.

The nuclear plant where Karen worked was shut down in 1975, one year after her death. When Karen’s story became public controversy, it helped display the dangers inherent to nuclear power, contributing to the amazingly successful anti-nuclear movement that has stopped construction of all new nuclear plants in the US since 1979. Thus is especially important today as some corporate lobbyists are trying to repackage nuclear power as a “clean” or “carbon-free” energy “source.” In fact, it’s none of those things.

Karen’s story is both a warning and an inspiration – that capitalism pushes companies to sometimes do terrible things to protect their profits, even if it means endangering lives, but also that brave people such as Karen Silkwood, in bringing the truth to light, can challenge us to create a better world.

CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/08/11/remembering-the-killing-of-karen-silkwood/

Most importantly: You are most welcome, malaise. The fact you love to learn is, from what I can tell, the reason for the universe being the way it is: A marvel to behold and treasure. As for the miscreants and greedheads, we can learn from them, too.

[malaise]

13. Yes I do remember Silkwood

There are some really evil folks around

[Initech]

6. The CIA: creating more terror than it's been solving since 1959!

And now the nuclear reactor it defied laws to create is destroying the planet! Beautiful!

[Octafish]

12. CIA Blocks Book on Chinese Nuclear Weapons

Someone there doesn't seem to care much for daylight, as Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists attests:

CIA Blocks Book on Chinese Nuclear Weapons

April 4th, 2007 by Steven Aftergood

An eagerly awaited book on the history of the Chinese nuclear weapons program will not be published due to objections from the Central Intelligence Agency, which said it contains classified information.

A federal court last week ruled (pdf) that the CIA was within its rights to block disclosure of 23 sections of a manuscript by former Los Alamos intelligence specialist Danny B. Stillman, who had brought a lawsuit asserting his First Amendment right to publish the volume.

During the 1990s, Mr. Stillman traveled to China nine times, including six trips that took place after his retirement in 1993. He visited nuclear weapons facilities and “engaged in extensive discussions with Chinese scientists, government officials, and nuclear weapons designers,” resulting in a 506-page manuscript entitled “Inside China’s Nuclear Weapons Program.”

SNIP...

In a March 30 ruling, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the DC District Court wrote that the non-disclosure agreements signed by Mr. Stillman contain “incredibly broad language” with regard to protection of classified information.

SNIP...

Since those passages constitute about 15% of the total manuscript and include some of the most interesting and valuable information that he gathered in his travels to China, the author said he would not publish the remainder.

SOURCE: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2007/04/cia_blocks_book.html

Censorship is now as American as Atomic Pile.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Another fantastic posting, Octafish.

Very disheartening but very fantastic.
rec.

[Octafish]

15. Nuclear power and weapons have served to concentrate power and wealth.

Something else that bears repeating: Nuclear power and weapons are most un-democratic. Apart from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there's almost no one talking about it in the media.

US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

South News July 1

Washington: In an enormous drain on resources the United States has spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons according to a new study

A four-year study of newly declassified Pentagon documents, released yesterday by the Brookings Institute, looked at the expenditures of producing and deploying nuclear explosives over the past 5 1/2 decades with current spending on the arsenal at about $35 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of the total defense budget.

Since the birth of the atomic weapons program in 1940, a total of $5.5 trillion was spent through 1996, the Washington think tank reports. That is 29 percent of all U.S. military spending and almost 11 percent of all government spending through the 52 years.

In the first comprehensive audit of the US nuclear arsenal,it calculated costs for research, development, deployment, command and control, defenses and dismantlement. The U.S. government has never attempted to track these costs, and whether the weapons helped to bring down the Soviet Union, against whom most of the arms were aimed after World War II, remains an open question, Stephen I. Schwartz, chairman of the four-year study, said in the report.

"Given the significant sums expended on nuclear weapons and their central role in the cold war, it is striking that so few have expressed an interest in either the cumulative or the annual costs,'' Schwartz wrote.

SNIP...

Highlights of the report:

• The United States produced 70,000 nuclear warheads between 1945 and 1990, with an arsenal that peaked in the 1960s at 32,000 warheads
• Making the warheads was relatively inexpensive. Firing, storing and handling them was extremely costly. The 70,000 warheads cost $409.4 billion, only about 7 percent of the total. But thousands of aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, and a large network of factories, bases and personnel cost $3.241 trillion.
• In 1996 dollars, the World War II Manhattan Project cost more than $26 billion.
• The United States has produced 65 warhead types for 116 different weapons systems.
• Thirteen major U.S. facilities - including Washington state's Bangor submarine base - handle and maintain nuclear weapons, and cover an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
• Some 6,135 strategic ballistic missiles were purchased at a cost of $266 billion, as well as 4,680 strategic bombers since World War II at a cost of $227 billion.
• The 2,975 submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone cost $97 billion, said the report. Since their inception, the United States has designed and deployed 14 kinds of strategic bombers. Some 210 nuclear-powered military vessels have been built or are being built.
• The figures include the estimated $7 billion costs of attempting to develop a nuclear-powered airplane, which never got off the ground.
• At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal - long-range strategic and short-range tactical - is estimated at 10,635 warheads.
• The current stockpile has the equivalent explosive force of about 120,000 Hiroshima bombs.
• The United States is spending an estimated $35 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, the Brookings Institution says in a massive study.

CONTINUED...

http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/980701-USnukes.htm

These numbers, IMO, are low. Of course, if we had the free press the Constitution mentions, let alone Congress and Executive, we would know the answer.

Thank you for the kind words, dixiegrrrrl. I very much appreciate you standing up on this and many other subjects of import to Democrats and all who believe in democracy, peace and justice.

[WillyT]

8. Well... I Spent A Good While Looking... No Image Of Said Cartoon...

Although it is mentioned several times on the web...

No luck with Google, no luck with WaPo, no luck with LOC, no luck with the foundation...

I'm thinking microfiche might be the only way.

[Octafish]

19. I wrote an email to somebody... If I get it, I promise to post.

In the meantime, something else about the Washington Post:

Why the Washington Post's Description of the Nuclear Disaster as “non-catastrophic” is both Callous and Erroneous

Trivializing Fukushima

by LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
CounterPunch May 01, 2012

On April 23, 2012, the editorial board of the Washington Post proclaimed that the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan was “non-catastrophic.” The writers eagerly promoted nuclear power while omitting inconvenient deal-breakers such as cost, waste, safety, health risks and human rights. The board taunted Germany and Japan – and the anti-nuclear movement – for looking to renewables but misrepresented Germany’s successes. They showed a shocking disregard for the suffering in Japan due to a very real catastrophe that is by no means over. And they utterly ignored those who have already paid the price for the nuclear fuel chain, like indigenous uranium miners, and its newest victims, the children of Japan whose future has been stolen.

SNIP...

WP: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was “scary but ultimately non-catastrophic.”

FACT: The Post is writing in the past tense about an accident that is not over. The extent of radioactive contamination is still unknown and growing. Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi remains precarious and could cause further, and greater, harm, with its high-level radioactive waste pool on the brink of potential collapse.

To the existing human suffering in Japan will be added, over time, countless people who will sicken and die prematurely as a result of their exposure to the Fukushima radiation. In addition to cancer, likely negative health effects can include birth defects, spontaneous abortions, brain tumors, diabetes, heart disease, and genetic and teratogenic mutations. Emotional suffering should not be dismissed. The Post writers would do well to imagine their own children forbidden to play outside; evacuated hundreds of miles away; or shamed into consuming radioactively contaminated food and milk. In Japan, stress, grief and guilt have split families and entire communities apart. Farmers and fishermen have lost their livelihoods due to radiological contamination of land and sea. Thousands are being forced to accept permanent exile from their homes, jobs, friends, land and everything they once knew. With a 20km (12.4 mile) area around the stricken reactors a “dead zone” for a minimum of decades and potentially centuries, it is hard to know what more the Post editorial writers need to qualify as “catastrophic.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/01/trivializing-fukushima/

And a PDF from BeyondNuclear.org:

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/Why%20the%20WP%20is%20Wrong.pdf

If I get that cartoon...I promise, WillyT!

[WillyT]

20. Way Cool !!!

Interesting that the WaPo doesn't have a copy of it.



And thank you!!!

[Blue_In_AK]

9. Well, Octafish, if we're all doomed,

I hope to meet you on the other side in some parallel universe.


Seriously, I always learn so much from your posts. It's kind of like I knew or had heard of a lot of these things, but you're so very adept at putting it all together in a linear historical context. It really helps.

[Octafish]

23. Hiya, Blue_In_AK!

Last edited Fri Jun 15, 2012, 09:10 PM - Edit history (2)

If ya are ever in the Motor City, let me know. Come on by. You'll be Home.



The stuff about Mr. McCloy in the OP -- I was watching the History Channel when my eyebrows hit my hairline.

A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission

Skull and Bones isn't the only secret society crossing paths with progress. Take the KKK and the rest of the neo-confederacy. Please.

[Blue_In_AK]

25. Oh, thanks, Octafish,

and, of course, the same back to you. If you're ever in Anchorage, let us know. We have a guest room.

We very, very seldom make it back east (kids in California and Colorado), but if we ever do, we'll for sure look you up. I would love to meet you.

[G_j]

16. war for the BFEE

IS a party..

thanks for a great post

[Octafish]

26. Money Trumps Peace

The motto of the BFEE.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0215-29.htm

You are most welcome, G_j. Thank you for standing up to them.

[raouldukelives]

17. K&R nt

[Octafish]

32. Zealots of the Atom -- The Nuclear Cult

Zealots of the Atom

The Nuclear Cult

by KARL GROSSMAN
CounterPunch June 18, 2012

Nuclear scientists and engineers embrace nuclear power like a religion. The term “nuclear priesthood” was coined by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, long director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the laboratory’s website proudly notes this. It’s not unusual for scientists at Oak Ridge and other U.S. national nuclear laboratories to refer to themselves as “nukies.” The Oak Ridge website describes Weinberg as a “prophet” of “nuclear energy.”

This religious, cultish element is integral to a report done for the U.S. Department of Energy in 1984 by Battelle Memorial Institute about how the location of nuclear waste sites can be communicated over the ages. An “atomic priesthood,” it recommends, could impart the locations in a “legend-and-ritual…retold year-by-year.” Titled “Communications Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia,” the taxpayer-funded report says: “Membership in this ‘priesthood’ would be self-selective over time.”

Currently, Allison Macfarlane, nominated to be the new head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says she is an “agnostic” on nuclear power—as if support or opposition to atomic energy falls on a religious spectrum. Meanwhile, Gregory Jaczko, the outgoing NRC chairman, with a Ph.D. in physics, was politically crucified because he repeatedly raised safety concerns, thus not revering nuclear power enough.

SNIP...

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear, says ever since the first test of an atomic device, “the diabolically-named ‘Trinity’ atomic blast, when Manhattan Project scientists placed bets on whether or not it would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s been clear something pathological afflicts many in the ‘nuclear priesthood.’ Perhaps it’s a form of ‘Faustian fission’—splitting the atom gave the U.S. superpower status with the Bomb and then over a 100 commercial atomic reactors, so the ‘downsides’ have been entirely downplayed to the point of downright denial. Perhaps the power, prestige and greed swirling around the ‘nuclear enterprise’ explains why so many in industry, government, the military, and even apologists in academia and mainstream media, engage in Orwellian ‘Nukespeak’ and monumental cover ups….The ‘cult of the atom’ has caused untold numbers of deaths and disease downstream, downwind, up the food chain, and down the generations from ‘our friend the atom’ gone bad.”

A parallel situation exists in Russia, the other nuclear superpower. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a biologist, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and environmental advisor to Presidents Yeltsin and Gorbachev, says the nuclear scientists there refer to themselves “atomschiky” or “nuclearists” and “think and act as a separate, isolated caste.” From the beginning of nuclear technology in the Soviet Union, they “were enthusiastic about the great, the fantastic discoveries of splitting the atom and developing enormous power. This ‘secret knowledge’ was magnified by state secrecy and a deep belief—in the Soviet Union as in the United States—of atomic energy ‘saving the globe’…There is a remarkable similarity in the argumentation of these groups here and in the United States. Step-by-step, they turned to an atomic religion, closed societies, a ‘state inside a state.’”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/18/the-nuclear-cult/

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. Well, hell, the dust bunnies under the bed do not seem very important now, do they?

[Octafish]

33. The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet

...may be in second place now.

Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet

In the late 1940's, about 80 kilometers north of the city of Chelyabinsk, an atomic weapons complex called "Mayak" was built. Its existence has only recently been acknowledged by Russian officials. Mayak, bordered to the west by the Ural Mountains, and to the north by Siberia, was the goal of Gary Powers's surveillance flight in May of 1960.

For forty-five years, the Chelyabinsk province of Russia was closed to all foreigners. Only in January of 1992 did President Boris Yeltsin sign a decree changing that. As a result, western scientists who studied the region, declared Chelyabinsk to be the most polluted spot on earth.

SNIP...

The following is a chronological listing of the practices and accidents that caused the environmental crisis:

1949 to 1956: Liquid wastes from the Mayak nuclear complex were dumped into the Techa-Iset-Tobol river system
From 1949 to 1956, medium and high-level radioactive liquid wastes were dumped into the river system Techa-Iset-Tobol. During this period about 76 million m3 of radioactive wastes were released into the Techa river. Over 124, 000 people living along the banks of the river system were exposed to radiation. Protective measures finally began in 1956 when hydrological engineering measures aimed at immobilizing deposited radioactive substances in the upper reaches of the river were implemented. The river system is currently in the process of a natural deactivation that will take a few hundred years. The water downstream is nearly free of excess radioactive caesium, however the riverbed sediment and the riverbanks still contain high levels of caesium and strontium.

1957: Explosion of a nuclear waste storage tank at the Mayak nuclear complex
On September 29, 1957 a liquid radioactive waste storage tank exploded following a failure in the cooling system and polluted an area equal to the size of New Jersey with plutonium and strontium. The explosion formed a radioactive cloud over the provinces of Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen. A total area of 23,000 sq. kilometers was contaminated and the area is now called the East Ural Radioactive Trace, the EURT. This accident was kept secret from the outside world for military safety reasons and 10,700 people were silently evacuated. This nuclear accident released twice the amount of curies that were released by the Chernobyl accident.

1967: The Lake Karachay accident
Two self-contained natural lakes near the plant were chosen to divert waste dumping in the river-system - lake Karachay for high-level waste and lake Staroe Boloto for medium level waste. During the long, hot summer of 1967, lake Karachay dried up and radioactive waste from the exposed lake blew over an area of 2,200 sq. kilometers. Other accidents, irresponsible nuclear waste disposal and day-to-day operations of the Mayak nuclear-chemical facility have contaminated an area with a diameter of 400 km.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wentz.net/radiate/cheyla/index.htm

This subject is among that which gets left out of the local high school's modern world history books. I doubt this is mentioned in many modern world history texts in college, either. Perhaps an independent school teacher will add it to the summer reading list.

[dixiegrrrrl]

34. Gee, I wonder why cancer rates have increased over the years.

[Octafish]

35. Plutonium acts funny, too.

Something everyone should know:

DOE-STD-1128-98

Guide of Good Practices for Occupational Radiological Protection in Plutonium Facilities

EXCERPT...

4.2.3 Characteristics of Plutonium Contamination

There are few characteristics of plutonium contamination that are unique. Plutonium
contamination may be in many physical and chemical forms. (See Section 2.0 for the many
potential sources of plutonium contamination from combustion products of a plutonium fire
to radiolytic products from long-term storage.) [font color="green"]The one characteristic that many believe is
unique to plutonium is its ability to migrate with no apparent motive force.[/font color] Whether from
alpha recoil or some other mechanism, plutonium contamination, if not contained or
removed, will spread relatively rapidly throughout an area.

SOURCE (PDF file format): http://www.hss.doe.gov/nuclearsafety/techstds/docs/standard/DOE-STD-1128-2008.pdf

No wonder "authority" wants everyone to "move on."

[LongTomH]

21. Octafish, thank you for your research and writing!

There are so many interlocked issues in this:

• The seamless relationship between the nuclear weapons industry and the "Peaceful Atom," and
  
• The encouragement of nuclear programs abroad that should have been prohibited by our official non-proliferation program, and
  
• The suppression of alternate energy, such as solar, going back to the Reagan Administration, and
  
• The disinformation campaign against those alternate energies (the campaign against Solyndra is just the most recent incarnation.

It all coheres!

[Overseas]

22. K&R. Painful to realize how extensive their lobbying still is.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Bravo for the post. Many thanks.

[Octafish]

40. The Real McCloy

Seems to have served to continue the ideology of the eugenicists, to put it nicely.

A review of Kai Bird's bio, from the LA Times, of all places:

The Real McCloy

THE CHAIRMAN: JOHN J. McCLOY; The Making of the American Establishment, By Kai Bird (Simon & Schuster: $30; 800 pp.)

April 19, 1992|Robert Sherrill | Sherrill is corporations correspondent for The Nation magazine

EXCERPT...

First let's trace his muddy footprints through the business world. McCloy was a key member of various Wall Street firms dedicated to greed; for a while he was chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and also for a while boss of the Ford Foundation. In those roles he assisted railroad management in swindling thousands of small shareholders, helped Chase achieve a merger that launched a flood of other mergers and damaged many smaller banks and made the nation's wealthiest foundation virtually a piggy bank for the CIA.

SNIP...

McCloy became, Bird says, "the country's first national-security manager," someone who believed that when the choice was between national security and constitutional civil liberties, "why, the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me." Those are McCloy's words. No wonder Interior Secretary Harold Ickes wrote in his diary: "I have been told that he is more or less inclined to be a Fascist."

SNIP...

He commuted two-thirds of the death sentences of mass murderers (such as the SS officer who personally executed 1,500 Jews) and radically reduced the prison sentences of doctors who had conducted experiments on death-camp inmates, of high-ranking Nazi Judges who had administered Gestapo justice, and of industrialists who had built the Nazi war machine.

McCloy freed some immediately, including Alfred Krupp, whose munitions factories had worked thousands of slave laborers to death. Krupp's original sentence had included loss of all property; McCloy canceled that punishment and within a few years Krupp was again one of the richest industrialists in the world. Obviously McCloy's obsequiousness toward money and power made him the wrong man to reform Nazi Germany. "Though he could understand the special culpability of the 'big Nazis,' " Bird writes, "when it came to a wealthy and politically well-connected man like Krupp, he suspended his good judgment."

As high commissioner, McCloy dabbled disastrously in the intelligence business, setting up a network of agents in Germany that included the likes of Klaus Barbie, who had shipped 78,000 French Jews to the gas chambers, and Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who had been responsible for some of the "grisliest mass killings on the Eastern Front." Not surprisingly, many of the intelligence operations carried out under McCloy were, says Bird, "fiascos."

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-19/books/bk-588_1_kai-bird

PS: You are most welcome, Tierra_y_Libertad! Mil gracias, Hermano!

[woo me with science]

27. DU Rec

[H2O Man]

28. As always .....

Recommended.

You remain the single most important resource on DU.

Thank you.

[Hotler]

29. Kicking. Thank you sir. n/t

[Oilwellian]

30. Sibel Edmonds got a peek behind the curtains

Edmonds translated other materials that involved the selling of U.S. nuclear information to foreigners and spotted a connection to a previous case involving the purchase of such information. The FBI, under pressure from the State Department, Edmonds writes, prevented her from notifying the FBI field offices involved. Edmonds has testified in a court deposition, naming as part of a broad criminal conspiracy Representatives Dennis Hastert, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Bob Livingston, Stephen Solarz, and Tom Lantos, and the following high-ranking U.S. government officials: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Marc Grossman.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9284#more-9284

And then there's this:

Halliburton charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b0d_1325533125

[KoKo]

31. Thanks Octafish. You are so good at tying this all together and it's much appreciated!

K&R!

[Uncle Joe]

36. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Supersedeas]

37. kickety

[Tsiyu]

38. K & R for truth

All newbies here should be aware: You can do nothing here but go back and read Octafish's posts and you will know more than you ever thought possible about the ugly truth.

Octafish is a national treasure.

Accessed for free. Here on DU.

[spin]

39. K&R (n/t)

[Mnemosyne]

42. K&R, cause it matters, still! nt