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From Steven Schwartz: Today in 1949, the US Atomic Energy Commission and US Air Force conducted a secret experiment at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, exposing thousands of people living downwind to dangerous levels of radioactive iodine-131 and xenon-133 from freshly-irradiated or “green” uranium fuel. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if specially-instrumented aircraft could detect radioactive emissions from nuclear fuel production facilities by mimicking what were thought to be operating conditions in the Soviet Union, in order to better assess Soviet atomic bomb production rates. The fuel was dissolved in acid at the T Plant just 16 days after being removed from a reactor at Hanford (rather than after the more typical 90-day waiting period that allowed the most dangerous radioactivity to decay to safer levels). In addition, safety filters on the high stack were disconnected. Problems with detection equipment and contamination of the on-site monitoring laboratory by the radioactive plume made it impossible to ascertain how much radiation was actually released. A dose reconstruction in the mid-to-late 1980s estimated the amount of iodine-131 alone at 11,000 curies. Two to three times more radiation than expected was released. The Atomic Energy Commission dispatched personnel to secretly monitor the effects and found contamination 20 times above existing “tolerance levels,” especially on vegetation. But the government never alerted the public to the danger. Incredibly, this story only became public in 1986 thanks to Karen Dorn Steele, an enterprising local reporter for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, and environmental activists who used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth and declassify key documents. Yet even today, many facts remain classified. A retired Hanford radiation control manager subsequently told a local reporter that the original plan was to disperse the radiation great distances, possibly as far as Minneapolis, but that adverse weather and rain greatly limited the actual spread. “We really plastered the Columbia Valley.” Making matters worse, contaminated grasses and other feed consumed by cows in the radiation zone concentrated the iodine-131 released in the “Green Run” in cows’ milk, which was then consumed by unsuspecting citizens across the region, including—almost certainly—many people who worked at Hanford. Stephen Schwartz submitted by /u/-AtomicAerials- |
