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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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Howard Hu, Arjun Makhijani 
Excerpts from Chapter 12 of Nuclear Wastelands, MIT Press, 1995
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Assessing Global Health and Environmental Risks from Nuclear Weapons Production Introduction by Arjun Makhijani This article is a reprint of excerpts of Chapter 12, from the book, Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects, edited by Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu and Katherine Yih, MIT Press, 1995. The book was the result of a joint effort by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. The excerpt is reprinted with permission from MIT Press. Full references have been provided here. This introduction serves as a brief update. The last few years have confirmed that the nuclear weapons production and testing of the past half century will continue to have profound health and environmental effects for uncounted generations to come. In 1997, the US National Cancer Institute released a study estimating substantial radiation doses to the thyroids of almost all US children resulting from milk contaminated with iodine-131 from fallout. Between 10,000 and 75,000 excess thyroid cancers are estimated to occur in the US alone from this single radionuclide. The estimates from global fallout to global populations will be much higher. Additional information has also become available on the environmental problems. An in-depth study published by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in 1997[1], we found that there are far more highly plutonium contaminated wastes than previously assumed. These wastes were discarded and buried as "low-level" waste during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Further, it has previously been assumed that the migration of plutonium and other transuranic elements through the soil would be slow (on time scales of hundreds of centuries to reach the water table). This assumption was based on a limited, laboratory understanding of the behavior of transuranic. Actual data from several sites now shows that these radionuclides are migrating in decades and, in some case, have already reached the groundwater. In Idaho, they are threatening the Snake River Plain Aquifer. It would be wrong to assume that people far away from areas where nuclear weapons production are located are not affected by these developments. Nuclear Weapons plants are often located in or near agricultural areas. For instance, potatoes grown in southern Idaho are eaten all over the United States, and I suspect in many other parts of the world. New data on the effects of underground nuclear testing are also worrisome. Limited data from the Nevada Test Site indicate that, contrary to official assumptions, plutonium is migrating away from the test locations. This indicates that the huge amounts of long-lived radionuclides left underground and undersea (in Polynesia) may pose threats far larger than anticipated. Recent data from Britain underline further the unexpected way in which the contamination from nuclear materials production can spread through the environment, diffusing and re-concentrating by a variety of processes. Pigeons found near the Sellafield plant have been found to be highly radioactive. Their feathers are highly contaminated, apparently from nesting in abandoned nuclear facilities that have not even fully decommissioned. The pigeon droppings and meat are also contaminated. Finally, in 1997, the US Department of Energy admitted what my colleagues and I at IEER had suspected for some time — that internal radiation doses were not integrated into worker dose records. Our suspicions were based on a study of the Fernald records discussed below. Internal measurements such as urine sampling data and whole body counts were not part of worker dose records, but kept as part of separate databases.[2] This reinforces our conclusions discussed in regard to the poor quality of much of the data and the epidemiological studies based on such data. Most raw data on health and environment in most nuclear weapons states remains secret. The continuing revelations and assessments in the United States show how important full public disclosure is. The general trend of conclusions has been that the most data that has been revealed, the more serious the problems have been found to be.
[1] Marc Fioravanti and Arjun Makhijani, Containing
the Cold War Mess: Restructuring the environmental management of the U.S.
Nuclear Weapons Complex.
[2] See also IEER's newsletter, Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6, No. 2, Nov. 1997. |
Roughly 70,000 nuclear warheads have been fabricated worldwide. This does not include reworking of materials and components of obsolete weapons into new ones. As we have discussed there are many aspects of environmental contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production that we cannot estimate due to lack of data. But we can make some order-of-magnitude estimates of waste generation and environmental contamination from some of the principal processes based on the information in Tables 1 and 2 (all waste and discharge estimates, except krypton-85, rounded to one significant figure):
These summary estimates provide a starting point for the work ahead in making estimates of the contamination in specific areas and countries. They are to be regarded as indicative rather than definitive. Moreover, they do not convey the real extent of the damage. Some of the worst damage has been in the former Soviet Union. Entire river systems have been contaminated in some cases, as for instance with the river system near the Chelyabinsk-65 plant. Lake Karachay at Chelyabinsk-65 is perhaps the most contaminated body of water on Earth. The dose rate near the pipe that discharges radioactive wastes into it is 6 grays per hour, which would yield a lethal (LD50) dose in about 45 minutes.
Highly radioactive liquid wastes that result from reprocessing have been responsible for the worst accident resulting from nuclear weapons production, the explosion of a tank at Chelyabinsk-65 containing highly radioactive waste in September 1957. It resulted in the contamination of about 15,000 square kilometers of land and the evacuation of over 10,000 people. Dozens of tanks in the United States and elsewhere are at risk of explosions.
Uranium mining has been responsible for contamination not only in the nuclear weapons states but also in many other countries. Some of the most polluted areas from nuclear weapons production are in East Germany, which supplied the Soviet nuclear weapons program, and in the Third World, which supplied the programs of the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Even within the nuclear weapons states, uranium mining and resultant contamination have disproportionately affected tribal peoples.
The nuclear-weapons industry has contaminated groundwater, surface waters, seas, and oceans. For instance, the sea off Sellafield in England and the seas off Russia have been the dumping grounds for large amounts of radioactivity. In the United States and elsewhere, groundwater at many of the sites where weapons factories are located has become highly contaminated. While this water is not now being used for domestic consumption, it is not evident how its use can be regulated once institutional control of the sites is lost, or once they have been designated for other uses.
Decommissioning and cleaning up nuclear-weapons plants will produce additional large quantities of waste, the magnitude of which will become clear only over the next decade or so as decommissioning proceeds in the United States and possibly in other countries. Dismantlement of unwanted nuclear weapons and disposition of the fissile materials they contain present further formidable security and environmental challenges.2
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Table 1: Radioactive Waste Production per Kilogram of Highly Enriched Uranium (order of magnitutde U.S. estimates) 1 |
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Uranium mining waste2 |
On the order of 100 metric tons, with l to 10 or more becquerels of uranium per gram of soil |
| Uranium mill tailings3 | About 100 metric tons, total 0.06 curies (about 2.2 gigabecquerels) thorium-230 0.06 curies (2.2) gigabecquerels radium-226 Heavy metals such as copper, arsenic, molybdenum, vanadium 0.02 to 2 kg of uranium emissions to the air (0.01 to 1 percent of production) |
| Uranium processing4 | 200 kilograms of depleted uranium Air emissions of uranium 0.02 to 0.2 kg (0.01 to 0.1percent of production) Solid waste uranium content on the order of 2 kilograms (1 percent of production) |
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1. Uranium requirements for plutonium production are not included All
figures except unit conversions are estimated to one significant figure. |
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Exposed Populations
Broadly speaking, the making of nuclear weapons has exposed five groups of people to environmental and health dangers:
1. workers at nuclear weapons facilities;
2. armed forces personnel who participated in atmospheric weapons testing;
3. people living near nuclear weapons sites;
4. people who were subjects of experiments;
5. the world's inhabitants for centuries to come.
These categories include only those affected by the production and testing of nuclear weapons. As we have noted, the transportation, deployment, and possible use of nuclear weapons are not within the scope of this book. Generally, the most intensely exposed people have been workers in nuclear-weapons plants and testing facilities and members of the armed forces. Within these two populations, the extent of exposure varies according to the specific nature of their duties and length of service.
The third set of victims, often called "downwinders," are people who live near nuclear-weapons facilities. The definition of "near" extends in some cases to hundreds of kilometers downwind, especially in the case of atmospheric nuclear-weapons testing and large intentional or accidental releases, such as those that occurred at Chelyabinsk-65 or at Hanford in the United States. Some downwinders have been as highly exposed as workers and armed-forces personnel. This is certainly the case for some affected by the explosion at Chelyabinsk-65, for iodine-131 exposures from the first two decades of operation of the Hanford plant, and for nuclear-testing downwinders among the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands and people living near the Soviet test site near Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Recent revelations in the United States have brought to light human experiments involving thousands of people. Finally, there have been and will continue to be exposures to the entire global population, mainly due to atmospheric nuclear-weapons testing [3] but also to releases of krypton-85 and other gaseous radionuclides from plutonium production. Given the long-lived nature of some of the radionuclides involved, these exposures will persist for thousands of years.
It is possible to make rough, order-of-magnitude estimates of the number of exposed armed forces and worker populations in some instances. The figure for exposed "downwinders" is considerably more fluid, mainly because of the interlinked problem of defining the boundary of the "downwind" area and uncertainties about doses to people off-site.
About 250,000 members of the U.S. armed forces participated in the atmospheric nuclear-weapons-testing program. The number of workers in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex at any time has been on the order of 100,000 since the mid-to-late 1950s, excluding workers in uranium mining and milling. (Current employment during the decommissioning phase is actually higher.) Considering some turnover of workers and recent increases in employment for clean-up operations, several hundred thousand people have at one time or another worked in the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex.
In the Soviet Union, the number of workers involved in the nuclear-weapons complex has been reported to be on the order of 1 million, including people engaged in uranium mining and milling. No reliable estimate is available for armed forces personnel involved. Large numbers of people were involved in uranium mining and milling in other countries. Perhaps the largest number in a single place was the 450,000 uranium mine and mill workers in East Germany, which supplied much of the uranium for the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Tens of thousands of people, at the very least, have been involved in uranium mining in China, including the period of particularly labor-intensive mining during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
While this book has not attempted to gather comprehensive data on the number of workers involved in this global industry, it would appear that at least two million people have been involved in various aspects of nuclear-weapons production and worldwide; the true figure is probably considerably higher.
The levels of exposure to radiation of the four population groups vary widely. Exposures due to global fallout are on the order of a few tens of microsieverts per year. However, the dispersed nature of fallout has resulted in exposure of billions of people to such levels of radiation.
Researchers have made various estimates of levels of exposures to downwinders. The most highly exposed groups that we know about are those living downwind and downriver of the Chelyabinsk-65 and downwind of the Semipalatinsk sites in the former Soviet Union, the people of Rongelap, and, in the case of thyroid doses, children living downwind of Hanford in the early years of production. The downwind exposures near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, may also be high, but this remains the subject of study and controversy.
The most highly exposed groups have tended to be workers. The most severe exposures of workers for whom some data is available were in the Chelyabinsk-65 gas-graphite reactor and reprocessing plant. Worker doses in the early years averaged about 1 sievert, according to data published so far.
However, under many circumstances, notably in facilities that processed uranium, internal exposures may have been high among certain groups of workers. For instance, at the uranium-processing plant near Fernald, Ohio, data on employees indicate cumulative lung doses of several sieverts for some production workers. Yet neither the plant's corporate contractors nor the Department of Energy calculated internal doses from urine and lung-counting data that were collected at the plant.
Even greater uncertainties exist in regard to internal exposures for armed forces personnel, notably to alpha-emitting radionuclides.[4] Thus, the overall exposures to workers, armed forces personnel, and downwind populations will remain the subject of considerable uncertainty, and controversy, for some time. Because most official data on these subjects in most countries are still secret, it is impossible to know whether reliable quantitative estimates can be produced at least for an appreciable fraction of the exposed population.
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Table 2: Radioactive Waste Production per Nuclear Weapon (order of magnitude U.S. estimates)1 |
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| Uranium mining waste2 | 2,000 metric tons, with a total of 2 to 20 gigabecquerels of uranium |
| Uranium mills | 2,000 metric tons 1.2 curies (about 44 gigabecquerels) thorium-230 1.2 curies (about 44 gigabecquerels) radium-226 Heavy metals such as copper, arsenic, molybdenum, vanadium 0.4 to 40 kg uranium emissions to the air |
| Uranium processing | 4 metric tons depleted uranium Air emissions 0.4 to 4 kilograms Solid waste uranium content on the order of 40 kilograms |
| Reprocessing, high-level waste3 | 12,000 curies (440 terabecquerels) each of strontium-90 and cesium-137, and equal amounts of yttrium 90 and barium-137 (non-decay-corrected) |
| “Low-Level” waste4 | 50 cubic meters containing 10 tera becquerels of radioactivity |
| Transuranic waste | 7 cubic meters containing 700 giga-becquerels of alpba radioactivity |
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1. Each nuclear weapon is assumed to contain 4 kg Pu-239 and 20 kg 93%uranium-235.
Figures are rounded to one or two significant places, as indicated.
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The Burden of Disease
As noted above, estimating the total toll on human health of nuclear-weapons production worldwide is almost impossible given the types of uncertainties discussed. Aside from the global fallout effects of nuclear weapons testing, estimated to produce hundreds of thousands of excess cancer fatalities over the centuries,(5) uranium mining has been responsible for the largest collective exposures to workers . While precise global estimates are at present impossible, we note that one estimate puts the number of workers who have died of lung cancer and silicosis due to mining and milling in East Germany alone at twenty thousand people. But such estimates are often questionable or preliminary as yet.
Unfortunately, we cannot make similar estimates on a global level of the disease burden that may have resulted from occupational exposures in uranium mining, milling, and the industries related to plutonium reprocessing and nuclear-weapons manufacturing. It is instructive to note that many of the occupational mortality studies of uranium miners in the United States and Canada have estimated lung-cancer risks 2 to 6 times higher than expected. To the extent that this reflects generic risks shared by all uranium miners, and that working conditions have been similar or worse in other uranium-mining countries, this would mean that the mining of uranium for nuclear weapons has led to thousands of excess lung cancers. It is also apparent that a disproportionate share of that burden fell on indigenous or colonized peoples who lived in the areas of and were employed in the mines.
Findings of excess cancers in workers and off-site populations have been noted in many epidemiological studies discussed in this book, while in others they have not been detected. In general, it is difficult to determine the validity of these studies in the face of serious problems with the quality and completeness of the data. For instance, in 1994, U.S. officials admitted that even external dose data for workers have some serious deficiencies. In fact, portions of the data were fabricated in that zeros were entered into the radiation dosimetry records of workers when the badges were not turned in.
Russian data on health are clearly suspect. Even for groups of workers and off-site populations living near Chelyabinsk-65 with high exposures, health outcome data show far fewer than expected leukemia or other cancer fatalities. This result is at considerable variance with well-established risk factors from medical radiation exposure studies and follow-up of Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivors. It is reported that doctors were forbidden to make radiation-related diagnoses, on pain of punishment. Thus, while some dose data indicate that one should find relatively high levels of fatal cancers, the health findings do not correspond to the dose estimates. New diagnoses such as "weakened vegetative syndrome" and even "ABC disease," unknown elsewhere, were created in Russia, possibly to fill the void for radiation-related diagnoses banned by nuclear authorities. [...]
It is also impossible at present to estimate the disease burden due to community exposures to non-radioactive chemical pollution emitted by industries associated with nuclear weapons. The database is so inadequate that it does not permit even qualitative discussion of the health impact for individual countries, to say nothing of worldwide estimates. There are anecdotal reports of damage that are inconsistent with radiation damage. Such damage may be linked to chemical discharges. However, such emissions have not been monitored carefully, or indeed at all for most of the period of nuclear weapons production, so far as publicly available data indicate.
In sum, from the data that are available on environmental releases, discharges, accidents, radiation doses and the current state of knowledge regarding the risks posed by exposure to radiation, it appears likely that health effects have been experienced on a significant scale. Continuing health risks will persist for decades.
Endnotes
1 David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993, p. 37.
2. Arjun Makhijani and Annie Makhijani, Fissile Materials in a Glass Darkly. Takoma Park: IEER Press, 1995; and Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium. Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1994.
3. See IPPNW and IEER, Radioactive Heaven and Earth. New York: Apex Press, 1991.
4. ibid., pp. 17-20.
5. ibid., Chapter 3.
Arjun Makhijani is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), Howard Hu is Assistent Professor of Occupational Medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health. IEER Adress: 6935 Laurel Ave. Suite 204, Ta Koma Park, MD 20912, USA; tel +1-301 270-5500, fax -3029, email ieer@ieer.org
| Report on the Health Effect of French Nuclear Testing in Poynesia
Concluded
Children worked at French nuclear test sites in the Pacific; authorities failed to set up adequate health controls for former workers. A sociological inquiry into the health and well-being of Polynesian former nuclear test-site workers and islanders who lived within a radius of 500 km of the French test-sites in the Pacific reveals that 10% of the estimated 10.000-15.000 Polynesians who worked there from 1963 were under 18 years o age when they began work. 6% were children who were 16 years of age of younger. This is one of the findings of a sociological inquiry conducted by a team made up of the Polynesian NGO Hiti Tau, the Eglise Evangelique de Polynesie Francaise and led by independent Dutch sociologists from the Agricultural University of Wageningen. The research was co-ordinatod jointly by the World Council of Churches (WCC, Geneva-Switzerland), the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur la Paix et les Conflits (CDRPC, Lyon-France) and the European Centre on Pacific Issues (ECSIEP, Zeist-the Netherlands) It is the first time since the French nuclear test began in 1966 that Polynesian former test-site workers have been the subject of an independent inquiry. A representative number of 737 former test-site workers took part in the Survey. They answered a wide range of questions about recruitment, work and living conditions at the test-sites, motives for working there, the type of work they carried out, and the health-system that was set up for them. Of the workers 41 % said, they had worked in possibly contaminated zones, and 30% of claimed they were worked wit no protective clothing. Although a large majority (94%) of the test-site workers underwent a medical examination before they arrived at the test-sites, only 48.5% were examined at the end of their stay at the sites. This indicates that no health control system for the former test-site workers exists. The position of the French authorities that there is no reason to believe that the nuclear tests harmed the health of the Polynesians is therefore biased, for the simple reason that the French authorities never bothered to collect relevant data to prove their claim. Many former test-site workers complained about the health-system. They say questions about whether a certain disease from which they are suffering, can be related to activities at the test-sites are often ignored or not taken seriously. Generally, there is no confidence in the health-system, shown by the fact that 91.3% of the former workers would like an idependent medical inquiry to be carried out.
The results of the research are published in the book: Moruroa and US -Polynesians' Experience during thirty years of nuclear testing in the French Pacific by Pieter de Vries and Han Seur. For further information contact: Hiti Tau, Gabriel Tetriarahi, tel +689 52 13 71,; or Eglise Evangelique de Polynesie Francaise, Taaroanui Maraea; World Council of Churches, John Newbury; CDRPC, Bruno Barillot; ECSIEP, Madeleen Helmer.
———————————————————New Book on French colonialism in the Pacific —————————————————— After Moruroa: France in the South Pacific By Nic Maclellan and Jean Chesneaux "After Moruroa" looks at the history of French colonialism in the Pacific -from the French Revolution to the Matignon Accords in New Caledonia and the end of nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. What is the future for France's Pacific colonies? As France integrates further with the European Union, can it retain ties with Pacific islands on the other side of the world? How will political changes in New Caledonia and a growing independence movement in French Polynesia impact on Paris? In a readable and highly informative style, Nic Maclellan and Jean Chesneaux review the social, cultural, political and environmental impact of France's presence in the region. They document French policy over two centuries, drawing on sources from Europe, Australia and the Pacific. With France's "Grand Design" for the Pacific under challenge today, this authoritative study looks at the future for the South Pacific - after Moruroa. Nic Maclellan is an Australian researcher and community development worker, currently working at the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva, Fiji. Jean Chesneaux is emeritus professor of Asian and Pacific History at the Universit de Paris VII. ************************** Nic Maclellan, Jean Chesneaux, After Moruroa: France in the South Pacific, published by Ocean Press (April 1998), GPO Box 3279, Melbourne 3001, Australia, email: ocean_press@msn.co; 300 pages, ISBN 1-876175-05-2, paper Aust$29.95. |
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