[ RadSafe ] Radiation in San Fran's water

Fri Apr 22 19:45:59 CEST 2005

fyi
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------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Don Kline" <gulfwarvet2003 at yahoo.com>
To: clj.rt at verizon.net
Subject: [counter-recruitment] Radiation in SF's water
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 10:50:11 -0700 (PDT)

http://www.sfbayview.com/033005/dontdrink033005.shtml
Don’t drink the water
by Dennis Kyne
 From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested atomic and thermonuclear  
weapons at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. After talking the islanders  
into leaving their homes, the Navy moved in 240 decommissioned World War  
II ships and anchored them around the test site to see how they would  
withstand the bomb blasts. The ships were contaminated with fission  
products, including strontium 90 and cesium 137, as well as residual  
plutonium from the bombs.
Something had to be done with the ships; these dead vessels that had now  
been irradiated needed to be cleansed. The Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS)  
Historical Radiological Assessment (HRA), which is available in San  
Francisco at the Main Library as well as the Bayview branch library,  
states very clearly that “the most severely contaminated ships were  
eventually transferred to HPS for decontamination. Radioactively  
contaminated marine growth attached to ship hulls was removed with  
sandblasting.” Fuel contaminated with plutonium and fission products was  
burned and evaporated into the air, and many materials were welded off and  
stored or disposed of at the Shipyard.
The radioactive sand from the blasting had to be discarded. Questionable  
standards for capturing contamination existed during this period, and with  
certainty we can say the radiation didn’t get separated from the water via  
a true pollution prevention mechanism. Thus it dropped in the bay or  
flowed out through broken storm drains.
The HRA states that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL),  
operational at the Shipyard until 1969, was responsible for organizing and  
shipping other radioactive garbage in addition to the sandblast remains.  
After housing the local community’s radioactive waste at the Shipyard, it  
was to be dumped offshore near the Farallon Islands.
Along the way, drums containing the waste developed leaks, and whatever  
records were kept have been lost. Some days the fog wouldn’t let up, and  
traveling all the way to the Farallon Islands was out of the question.  
Hidden from witness by the fog, some 55-gallon drums are believed to have  
been dropped to the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
The May 2004 Community Window on the Hunters Point Shipyard states that  
many land sites still are contaminated by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from  
bomb testing and still need to be cleaned. This same document also  
describes the way containers of radioactive materials were used to  
calibrate radiation detectors and asserts there may have been leaks in  
large containers.
Smaller containers used in field studies would be thrown out with ordinary  
garbage. “Ordinary garbage” does not normally include radioactive  
elements. As a matter of fact, none of these elements are ordinary; they  
are manmade.
Here’s the kicker, and an even greater concern if they did dump these  
barrels into the bay: water isn’t just wet. Water is corrosive. And when  
it meets metal, it steals the ions and causes rust. If you have a  
55-gallon drum eroding from the radiation inside, and the water outside,  
you have a potentially deadly experiment going on.
This is one good reason to stop the Lennar home building project that is  
slated to break ground soon on Parcel A at the Shipyard. The need for  
housing does not outweigh the damage to the health of local people should  
this turf be razed, liberating an incredible amount of toxic dust and  
exposing arriving community members to a water table that is nothing less  
than uranium soup.
First off, if you move human beings into these new homes and than bulldoze  
surrounding sites and parcels, the strontium and cesium will be liberated  
and will expose the residents to death. There is no excuse for selling a  
community on housing when they will end up in their grave.
Government cannot put people in, then clean up the mess later. The entire  
mess must be cleaned up first. The fact that the mess is there is  
confirmed by documents available at the library.
If all this isn’t sad enough, Rongalup, an atoll where the inhabitants  
hadn’t been evacuated, became a study group when it was drenched in the  
same radioactive ash as the naval carcasses. Jonathan Weisgall, the  
attorney representing the Bikini Islanders, observes with irony that “we  
had a pretty nice laboratory of exposed people.”
The same radioactive ash was brought back to Hunters Point. Carl Sagan, on  
page 322 of “Cosmos,” explains that “Rongalup residents ended up with  
strontium concentrated in their bones, and radioactive iodine concentrated  
in their thyroids. Two thirds of the children, and one third of the adults  
later developed thyroid abnormalities, growth retardation or malignant  
tumors.”
Not everyone is killed by the flash of a bomb or the meltdown of a reactor  
or even the fallout. However, the fallout will be around for quite some  
time as Sagan tells us. Most strontium 90 decays in 96 years and cesium  
137 in 100 years.
The ships returned to Hunters Point decades ago, but the metal they left  
behind is still present. Studies conducted on Rongalup can be cross  
applied to the current situation in Northern California, where we can say  
without question that contaminated ships returned to Mare Island and  
Hunters Point. We know that a nuclear ship sank in Mare Island, and we  
know that a detonation rocked through nine counties at what is now called  
the Alameda Naval Station, formerly known as Port Chicago.
There is no place in the world that has higher rates of breast cancer than  
these areas. It is absolutely imperative that the Hunters Point community  
take a hard and deep look at the implications of low level radiation on  
the human being. If two thirds of the children developed an abnormality or  
retardation in the Rongalup community, what can we expect in Hunters  
Point, where people were repeatedly exposed to radiation testing, cleaning  
and research facilities that were not made public knowledge until long  
after they had discharged deadly poison all over the soil.
It gets worse. Community Window states, “Most sites are contaminated  
primarily by radio nuclides, ... particularly by cesium 137 and strontium  
90 from bomb testing. However, some sites are also contaminated with  
long-lived radio nuclides such as Ra-226, and so require a very long-term  
assessment of the potential risk caused by the radioactivity.”
It gets worse, because the more we understand how long these elements  
stick around, and how horrific they are to the human gene pool, the sooner  
the developer wants to build new homes alongside the toxic dump sites.
There is a sense of urgency to get this construction going. The most  
powerful forces at City Hall are saying we have been waiting around too  
long.
The sense of urgency should be on cleaning the Hunters Point Shipyard, a  
facility that once collected and analyzed samples of fallout materials  
 from nuclear test sites. Effects of radioactivity on animals were studied  
at Hunters Point. Mare Island Shipyard was still using berths and drydocks  
at the Hunters Point Shipyard to repair nuclear powered ships from 1985 to  
1989. Surely there are some byproducts in the water table from four years  
of nuclear fuel being moved around in the area.
The Navy didn’t clean up though, and until they clean it up, you cannot  
put people in the vicinity of a water table contaminated with cesium 137  
and strontium 90 and a drydock area that just two decades ago housed  
nuclear powered ships. It would be lunacy to accept this as responsible  
civics. The model of civics this employs is the building model.
The model of civics that should be employed is the maintenance model.  
Until this area is maintained and brought to 100 percent clearance of  
radiation and radioactive particles, not one ditch should be dug.
If the leaders of San Francisco choose to dump a housing project onto an  
area that is exposed to low level radiation, they will be sentencing two  
thirds of the young children to some form of abnormality based on the  
short time period covered at Rongalup. Leaders of San Francisco are  
responsible for the health and welfare of the residents of Hunters Point,  
both current and future. Responsibility requires these leaders guarantee  
with certainty that there is no radiation exposure. Anything short of that  
is negligence.
Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a  
degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with  
an emphasis on nuclear proliferation. Email him at d_kyne at hotmail.com and  
visit his website, www.denniskyne.com.

Dennis Kyne
Support the Truth
www.denniskyne.com
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"A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war.
Nor does the human spirit move without
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bosom and in the surrounding world."

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