[ RadSafe ] Committee backs legislation to compensate Idaho
downwinders
Sandy Perle
sandyfl at earthlink.net
Tue Feb 22 05:55:06 CET 2005
Index:
Committee backs legislation to compensate Idaho downwinders
Atomic Testing Museum Opens in Las Vegas
Los Alamos lab develops fast nuclear materials detector
Report: Agency to build schools on formerly contaminated sites
=========================================
Committee backs legislation to compensate Idaho downwinders
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A state Senate committee on Monday backed
expanding a federal program that would pay $50,000 to Idaho residents
with diseases linked to fallout from Cold War-era nuclear testing in
neighboring Nevada.
The Senate State Affairs Committee voted to back a measure that's
already gotten House approval and is likely to pass the full Senate.
It would encourage Idaho's U.S. congressional delegation to support
adding at least four counties - Blaine, Gem, Custer and Lemhi - to a
list of 21 others in Arizona, Nevada and Utah already included in the
1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
That program pays out money to victims and their beneficiaries.
Idaho residents who say their health was compromised believe the
money - and official recognition that they were injured by 1950s
atmospheric nuclear weapons-testing fallout when it wafted over the
state - would make it easier to stomach years of mysterious, often-
deadly diseases.
"We were innocent victims," said Sheri Garmon, who grew up in Emmett,
Idaho, in Gem County, and has developed thyroid cancer and breast
cancer that has spread to her liver.
"We were involuntarily sacrificed for the national security of
America," she told the committee.
Garmon was like other Idaho kids who drank milk from local dairies.
Cows ingested radioactive fallout from Nevada that came north on the
wind, sometimes covering the land with fine, white ash.
"My parents were unaware we were eating radiated food, in a county
that was radiated by our government," said Margaret Satterlee, a
native of Bellevue in Blaine County who is now infertile after three
surgeries to remove ovarian tumors.
Satterlee's sister died of ovarian cancer, she told the committee.
The 1990 program has paid out $434 million to about 8,700 downwinders
in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, according to the U.S. Department of
Justice. The payments are linked to tests from 1951 to 1958 and in
1962.
But Idaho isn't on the list.
In 1997, the National Cancer Institute released a study with a map
tracing the fallout's path. Iodine-131, an isotope released when a
nuclear bomb is detonated, spread from ground zero in Nevada to the
East Coast.
Four Idaho counties ranked just behind Montana's Meagher County as
getting the highest doses of the isotope, which can cause thyroid
disease.
"I have no reason to believe that the nuclear tests in Nevada didn't
affect us," said Sen. Edgar J. Malepeai, D-Pocatello. "So I'm going
to look very seriously at what they (proponents) have to say. The
testimony this morning was pretty compelling."
The National Academy of Sciences is now studying the 1990
compensation program's adequacy - in light of the information from
the National Cancer Institute study about the path of the fallout.
The study will include testimony from hundreds who spoke at meetings
in Idaho last November before the academy's Board on Radiation
Effects Research.
It's due to be released by March 31.
That's when members of Idaho's U.S. congressional delegation say
they'll decide whether to back the effort spearheaded by Garmon and
Satterlee to compensate Idaho victims.
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is "waiting for what the science
says," said Mike Tracy, a Craig spokesman in Boise. "That's going to
be the determining factor for him at this point."
Calls to the offices of U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson and U.S. Sen. Mike
Crapo weren't immediately returned for comment.
State Sen. Brad Little, R-Emmett, who agreed to sponsor the
bipartisan resolution along with state Sen. Clint Stennett, D-
Ketchum, said just how many Idaho residents become eligible for
payments would depend on how much of the state is included in
possible changes to the federal compensation plan.
---------------
Atomic Testing Museum Opens in Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS, Feb. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Atomic Testing Museum, the
first museum of its kind in the nation, officially opened to the
public on February 20. An invaluable resource, the museum provides
multiple viewpoints on the work conducted at the Nevada Test Site and
its impact on the nation.
The Nevada Test Site served as the nation's principal on-continent
nuclear weapons testing facility from 1951-1992.
"Our goal is to educate visitors on the significant role the Nevada
Test Site played in local, national and international history and to
encourage public exchange about it," said Bill Johnson, director of
the Atomic Testing Museum.
The 8,000 square foot permanent exhibit hall includes artifacts on
loan from personal collections, the Smithsonian Institution, Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory and pieces of the Berlin wall and World Trade
Centers. Designed to be a highly interactive experience, the exhibits
include touch screens, motion-sensitive plasma TV presentations,
audio interviews with former workers from the test site and various
other multi-media components.
"The galleries have been designed to immerse visitors immediately,"
Johnson said. "The museum takes people from a copy of a letter from
Einstein urging President Roosevelt to investigate the use of atomic
technology all the way to the 1992 moratorium on atomic tests. Along
the way there's a number of interactive stations and timeline walls."
In addition to the permanent exhibits, the museum also has a 2,000
square foot changing exhibit hall, a museum store and a History Walk.
Adjacent to the museum are the Nuclear Testing Archives, a collection
of over 310,000 documents related to radioactive fallout from U.S.
testing of nuclear devices.
About the Atomic Testing Museum
In development since 1997, the Atomic Testing Museum is a program of
the 501(c)(3) non-profit Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation
(NTSHF) and an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum
has received approximately $2 million in federal grants and $3
million in grants and pledges from private sources. Located just off
the famous Las Vegas Strip in the Frank H. Rogers Science and
Technology Building on the Desert Research Institute campus at 755
East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV, patrons can visit the museum Mon-
Sat, 9am-5pm and Sun, 1-5pm. Admission is $10 with discounts for
seniors, students and military personnel with proper identification.
For more information call (702) 794-5161 or visit
www.atomictestingmuseum.org
--------------------
Los Alamos lab develops fast nuclear materials detector
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - A team of Los Alamos National Laboratory
scientists has developed a prototype detector that could quickly
screen vehicles and cargo crossing U.S. borders for nuclear
materials.
The detector would provide border security with a fast way to screen
for weapons being smuggled into the United States without
interrupting legitimate international trade.
The scientists presented their prototype detector at the Association
for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., this weekend.
"We believe we've worked through all of the major obstacles to
building a prototype system for a range of security scenarios," Los
Alamos lab scientist Chris Morris said.
A recent CIA report noted that the United States is more likely to be
attacked by a weapon smuggled into the country than by one delivered
by a ballistic missile.
But with more than 7 million sea cargo containers entering U.S. ports
each year, as few as 2 percent of them are ever screened.
For the last two years, the team has been looking at ways to develop
a technology to screen quickly and effectively without causing delays
at border crossings.
The detector they developed uses naturally occurring cosmic radiation
to detect nuclear materials, like uranium and plutonium, hidden
within cargo, even if protected behind a thick lead shield.
The cosmic radiation - mostly protons - generates a cascade of
particles when it hits Earth's atmosphere. One variety of the
particles is called muons.
Each minute, more than 10,000 muons hit every square meter of Earth,
passing through nearly everything in their path.
But dense materials with a large number of protons, like plutonium
and uranium, produce stronger electromagnetic forces that deflect
muons from their course.
The lab's system uses two detectors above the target and two below,
so that scientists can measure how many muons are deflected.
Then a complex mathematical algorithm translates the data into a
three-dimensional image that allows screeners to locate suspicious
items.
In some tests, the team pinpointed 800 grams of plutonium in a lead
box surrounded by 12 tons of iron parts in a container.
The algorithm also can analyze the data to determine whether a bomb,
nuclear material or shielding are present.
The system has a rate of false positives or negatives of less than 3
percent, lab scientist Rick Chartrand said. He said improvement is
still possible.
A new prototype now under construction will be able to check large
objects, such as auto engines, in one minute. Scientists predict
future prototypes will be able to screen most vehicles at border
crossings in about 20 seconds.
-------------------
Report: Agency to build schools on formerly contaminated sites
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A government agency overseeing a program to
improve school buildings in New Jersey's 31 poorest districts has
purchased at least 22 contaminated or possibly contaminated sites,
according to a published report.
The Schools Construction Corp. plans to build one middle school
campus on a federal Superfund site with radioactive soil once the
land is decontaminated, Gannett New Jersey reported Sunday.
EPA project manager Rick Robinson said the site - once cleaned up -
will be one of the least contaminated areas in Gloucester City.
Federal officials plan to spend as much as $20 million to complete
the job.
But so far that has not inspired confidence in some local residents.
"Right now I'm scared of cancer," Kim Garwood, 47, said. Her family
has decided not to send her granddaughter to the new school.
The sites being purchased by the Schools Construction Corp. will be
cleaned or capped, keeping the contaminated soil, water or air from
reaching the students.
However, William E. Wolfe, a former state Department of Environmental
Protection policy analyst told Gannett New Jersey the remedies can be
incomplete.
The schools construction program "needlessly increases the risk when
there are alternatives that haven't even been considered," Wolfe told
Gannett, which owns six newspapers in New Jersey including the
Courier-Post of Cherry Hill.
Superintendent Mary T. Stansky said the site for the middle school
was chosen because it reduced the number of residents who would be
displaced by the new 800-student school.
"We only agreed to it because we know it's going to be perfectly
safe," Stansky said. "I think if we had a non-contaminated property,
that is the choice. I have kids too. That is certainly the best
choice. But ... you can't take eight acres of houses."
Joseph J. Seebode, an assistant commissioner of the state Department
of Environmental Protection, said most of the approximately 200
agency school sites the department is evaluating are polluted.
However, he said the vast majority have only mild contamination
issues.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614
Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714 Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144
Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/
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