[ RadSafe ] Secret research by U.S. Navy revealed effects of nuclear radiation on animals?

[Roger Helbig]

>From  https://www.dawsonnews.com/local/what-happened-inside-georgia-nuclear-aircraft-lab-finding-facts-forest-dr-james-mahaffey/
- this is local newspaper in Dawson County, Georgia .  Do any of you
know the "researcher" Dr James Mahaffey,

Roger Helbig


New post on nuclear-news

Secret research by U.S. Navy revealed effects of nuclear radiation on animals

by Christina MacPherson
What happened inside the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Lab? Finding the
facts in the forest with Dr. James Mahaffey  Jessica Taylor Dawson
News jtaylor at dawsonnews.com Feb. 19, 2020,
Over half a century later, rumors still swirl around Dawson Forest and
the mysterious remnants of Dawson County’s past in the Cold War.

Though the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Facility has been out of
commission for nearly 50 years, local residents can still be heard
whispering about two-headed deer and oak leaves the size of elephant
ears spotted around the nuclear facility’s remains.

For nuclear engineer and author, Dr. James Mahaffey, the task of
unraveling the history behind Dawson County’s top-secret nuclear test
site and separating facts from the fiction has led to decades of
research and hard work. .........

On paper, it seemed feasible as an incredible amount of power could be
housed in a very small space, however the findings from the
Dawsonville laboratory proved that nuclear aircraft would take more
than what was originally thought.

“Any nuclear reactor on this earth has shielding,” Mahaffey explained.
“It’s got lead, concrete, steel, you know, heavy things to keep it
from killing everybody, but you put it in an airplane and you can’t
have concrete and steel and lead. It’s got to be naked.”

Components for nuclear-powered engines were assembled in a facility in
Idaho then brought to Dawsonville for testing inside the reactor. In
Mahaffey’s research, he discovered that the facility found that rubber
tires either melted or turned to rock when exposed to different
radiation. Hydraulic fluids turned into a tacky substance akin to
chewing gum. Transistors in the radio system were immediately killed
by radiation.

The other aspect of the Dawsonville facility was testing the effects
of radiation on the environment and living creatures.

“What does flying over a farm with a nuclear aircraft do to the farm?
Well, it kills everything on the ground. It kills trees, grass, crops,
insects, birds, anything. It might even kill the farmer if he’s out
looking at it so what are you going to do about that? And also, what
happens when one of these things crashes,” Mahaffey said. “If a jet
plane crashes you clean it up and you pay the people for the house
that it destroyed and all that, but what if it’s a nuclear aircraft?
Nuclear aircraft - when it crashes - it makes a five mile radius area
contaminated with long lasting radionuclides and you have to fence it
off so nobody can go there. Are you really willing to have that as
part of your Air Force operations?”

The effects of radiation were tested through controlled
experimentation but also through observation of what Mahaffey
describes as “instant taxidermy” of animals caught inside the kill
zone around the outside of the operational reactor.

“Any animal like a toad frog that happened to be hopping around on the
ground when the reactor was turned on, he died and interestingly it
also killed all the bacteria in and around the frog,” Mahaffey said.

“When those [bacteria] die, it doesn’t deteriorate so you have this
dead frog that you can put on your mantle and it’ll just stay there.”

According to Mahaffey, the scientists conducted many experiments with
animals including releasing rats and studying the effects of radiation
on them.

“I heard a rumor that the largest animal they ever irradiated was a
mule and the mule died of course, and like a toad frog it would not
deteriorate in a normal way,” Mahaffey said.

Billions of dollars were poured into the Nuclear Aircraft Project that
GNAL was part of during the 1960s, but funding was cut in the John F.
Kennedy administration. The GNAL was closed in pieces and shut its
completely in 1971.

The GNAL buildings inside Dawson Forest were dismantled and hauled
away. The hot cell building, the only remaining structure still
standing, was boarded up with stainless steel to keep intruders from
entering the radioactive building. To this day, the building remains
radioactive with particulates of Cobalt 60.  ......

What makes Dawsonville’s secret nuclear facility stand out from other
nuclear facilities for Mahaffey is the very detailed extent to which
they dug into the dangers of nuclear fission products.

“An enormous amount of work was done to find out how having this
reactor affects the environment. I’ll give them that,” Mahaffey said.
“They wanted to find out how groundwater would transport radiation and
they dug wells all over the facility, and they would have monitors
monitoring what type of radiation, how much radiation and knew how
fast radiation could transport in the environment.”

Great care went into studying radiation in the Etowah River including
the construction of rafts to track and map the flow of radiation as
well as the atmospheric effects of radiation.

“This was all unknown,” Mahaffey said. “You have to build a facility
that’ll test it in real ways, not just computer simulations and it has
to be somewhere where you’re not potentially going to wipe out a
city.”  https://www.dawsonnews.com/local/what-happened-inside-georgia-nuclear-aircraft-lab-finding-facts-forest-dr-james-mahaffey/