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

[Joseph Shonka]

PhD in NE from Ga Tech.  Worked at GTRI.  Haven’t read his book but there was a nuclear powered aircraft program and Dawsonville was one of the research facilities.    Bio can be read at: at https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwi-692N9N_nAhWQmeAKHVgSDRsQFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FJames-A.-Mahaffey%2Fe%2FB004AOQX7G%253Fref%3Ddbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&usg=AOvVaw1_XOAMs0kXmciRgN_f-wKx


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> On Feb 20, 2020, at 5:16 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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/
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