Nuclear Technology, Radiation Exposure, and Plutonium

PLANET EARTH — 70 years ago today, the first atomic bomb used to kill people was detonated approximately 580 meters above the center of Hiroshima, Japan. From the Hiroshima Peace Museum website:

One second after detonation, the fireball was 280 meters in diameter. The temperature at the center was over one million degrees centigrade. The heat emitted by that fireball raised surface temperatures near the hypocenter to 3,000 to 4,000 degrees centigrade. Five hundred meters from the hypocenter, the blast pressure was 19 tons per square meter. The maximum wind speed was 440 meters per second. This blast simply crushed all wooden buildings within a radius of two kilometers.[1]

The terrorizing capability to obliterate life on Earth with nuclear war was conceived 70 years ago. Its potential began to manifest in the late 1950s, and was wholly produceable by the 1960s when arsenals of multi-megaton hydrogen bombs numbered in the thousands and ICBMs were deployed. The means to create nuclear weapons came from the existence of uranium. The Manhattan project was all about enriching uranium. Since the 1960s the specter of nuclear annihilation has been steadily amplified by technology that continues the manipulation of uranium to generate radioactive elements especially suited to making nuclear warheads. As Dr. Gordon Edwards has noted, “Plutonium is the primary explosive in most nuclear weapons. It is an artificial element, created inside any reactor that uses uranium fuel. The first reactors were built in the U.S. in order to produce plutonium for bombs.”[2]

From 1995 to 2007 I had the great privilege and high honor to work with Dr. John Gofman[3] and his editor, Egan O’Connor, building the web presence of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility (CNR). CNR was “a non-profit educational group, organized in 1971 to provide independent analyses of sources and health effects of xrays and other ionizing radiations.” In a 1979 Pacifica Radio interview Dr. Gofman recounted producing a small amount of plutonium in the fall of 1943 for the people working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project.

I remember when J. Robert Oppenheimer came back from Los Alamos and came to see me and said he absolutely needed a miligram of plutonium in a hurry. At that time the total world stock was about a tenth of a miligram—yet a year later we were going to have grams of it—and asked if we would prepare it. And we agreed to do it. So we bombarded a ton uranium nitrate on the Berkeley Cyclotron night and day for two months and then we set up a little chemical factory in Gilman Hall in the chemistry department on the campus and we worked night and day around the clock to separate that plutonium out of that ton of uranium and deliver it to Dr. Oppenheimer and Dr. Kennedy: one point two miligrams of plutonium. So it was the world’s largest factor of increase in plutonium production at that moment. The world’s first miligram. I don’t know whether I'm proud of that or sad about it now.[4]

As Maria Gilardin described in Part One of her May 2012 TUC Radio Program, “Shut Down Nuclear Power Plants, The Life and Work of Dr. John Gofman,”

In spite or because of this lab work Gofman has done more in his lifetime to warn people of the dangers of plutonium and radiation than most other scientists. One reason why Gofman is considered one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century by independent colleagues and by the Right Livelihood Committee that gave him the 1992 Award, is that his work bridged two of the most consequential disciplines for the understanding of the risks of radiation: nuclear physics and medicine.[5]

Before the fall of 1943, the total world supply of plutonium was less than a quarter of a milligram. A 2011 report by the International Panel on Fissile Material estimates “the global stockpile of separated plutonium at 485 ± 10 metric tons, of which, roughly half was produced for use in weapons. The other half was produced for civilian uses. About 98% of plutonium is held by states with nuclear weapons, and the remaining 2% is mostly held by Japan, which has over 10 tons of plutonium.”[6]

Among his many gifts, John Gofman had the ability to distill the essence of a process or property of the physical, biological world and make it understandable to people not possessing a background in science. One of his significant contributions to the study of the health effects of exposure to radiation was conducting highly detailed studies and publishing his results with all the raw data used to demonstrate how the conclusions made were reached. In a 1994 interview he succinctly described the fact that there is no safe threshold or dose of radiation exposure.

[I]onizing radiation is not like a poison out of a bottle where you can dilute it and dilute it. The lowest dose of ionizing radiation is one nuclear track through one cell. You can’t have a fraction of a dose of that sort. Either a track goes through the nucleus and affects it, or it doesn’t. So I said ‘What evidence do we have concerning one, or two or three or four or six or 10 tracks?’ And I came up with nine studies of cancer being produced where we’re dealing with up to maybe eight or 10 tracks per cell. Four involved breast cancer. With those studies, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a question of ‘We don’t know.’ The DOE has never refuted this evidence. They just ignore it, because it’s inconvenient. We can now [in 1994] say, there cannot be a safe dose of radiation. There is no safe threshold. If this truth is known, then any permitted radiation is a permit to commit murder.

In 1971, Gofman and colleague, Arthur Tamplin published the seminal book, Poisoned Power, The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. It was republished in 1979 with an extension to the subtitle, “Before and After Three Mile Island.” I produced a complete hypertext representation of the 1979 edition in 1998. Chapter 8, “The Nuclear Legacy — Radioactive Wastes and Plutonium,” contains a section titled, Plutonium, The Ultimate Hazard:

The worldwide inventory of plutonium is man-made. It was virtually non-existent in the earth's crust before the U.S. atomic bomb program was initiated. By far the major use of plutonium today is in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.

Plutonium has several nuclides, the most important being plutonium-239 (Pu-239) which is used in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.... Its extremely long half-life, 24,000 years, will keep Pu-239's radioactivity undiminished much longer than the recorded history of modern man.

The cancer producing potential of plutonium is well known. An amount as small as one ten-millionth of an ounce injected under the skin of mice has caused cancer. A similar amount injected into the blood streams of dogs has produced bone cancers. However, it is the lung that is the most vulnerable to plutonium.

The vulnerability of the lung to plutonium exists because plutonium exposed to air ignites spontaneously. As it burns, it forms numerous tiny particles of plutonium dioxide. These particles are intensely radioactive. If inhaled, they are deposited in the deepest portions of the lung. There they remain, immobilized for hundreds of days, and during this time their radiation is able to affect the cancer-sensitive cells of the lung. The tissue around the particle is exposed to a very intense localized dose of radiation.

Thus in just 7 decades—an infinitesimal blip in geologic time—we humans have created astronomically vast amounts of plutonium, an artificial element, and one of the most deadly dangerous substances imaginable. Further, it is supremely important to understand that a significant portion of the generated plutonium comes from nuclear power plants. Two books highly relevant to this situation are The Nuclear Power Deception and Nuclear Wastelands.[7]

I first began to learn of all this in the 1970s and was overwhelmed by it. I didn’t know what to do to respond to the knowledge of the absolute power of nuclear weapons to destroy humanity and all life on earth. In addition, and inextricably related to the weapons themselves, was and is the ever increasing burden to the biosphere of man-made radioactive matter being generated in nuclear reactors. Regarding all this man-made radioactivity, Dr. Edwards has observed, “It is a big, big problem. In fact it’s an unprecedented problem. One of the greatest—I believe—one of the greatest unsolved problems that the human race is facing.”[8] It is the time span of these long-lived radioactive elements that is so difficult to comprehend, especially plutonium which will remain absolutely lethal to all biological life forms for what will be, in effect, eternity.[9]

Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction Symposium

Beginning on February 28 of this year Helen Caldicott convened an extraordinarily vital Symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction (DPNE). It reawakened an urge to once more look deeply at the threat posed by the consequences of playing with the poisoned fire. In May work began on crafting a collection of files to highlight and emphasize the significance of this Conference. The shortcut link to it is: <ratical.org/ne>. Here you will find background on the Symposium, complete transcripts with inlined slides of 8 speakers (soon to be 9), mp3s of all speakers plus the Q&As, additional educational materials, and means to engage with people working to abolish nuclear weapons.

Dr. Caldicott set up the Symposium after reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly that itself was based on a short article in the 19 April 2014 Huffington Post, written by Stephen Hawking (Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Physics at Cambridge), Stuart Russell (Berkeley computer science professor), Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek (both physics professors at M.I.T.) titled, “Transcending Complacency on Superintelligent Machines.” I learned of this background from Maria Gilardin’s first installment of an eight-part mini-series on the Symposium produced in her exemplary Time of Useful Consciousness Radio program. The following is an excerpt of what the four authors wrote:

Artificial intelligence (AI) research is now progressing rapidly. Recent landmarks ... as self-driving cars, a computer winning at Jeopardy!, and the digital personal assistants Siri, Google Now and Cortana are merely symptoms of an IT arms race fueled by unprecedented investments ...

The potential benefits are huge; everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide ... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.

Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, for example, world militaries are considering autonomous weapon systems that can choose and eliminate their own targets; the UN and Human Rights Watch have advocated a treaty banning such weapons....

Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organized in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.... One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

So, facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right? Wrong. If a superior alien civilization sent us a text message saying, “We’ll arrive in a few decades,” would we just reply, “OK, call us when you get here—we’ll leave the lights on”? Probably not—but this is more or less what is happening with AI. Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity, little serious research is devoted to these issues outside small non-profit institutes ... All of us—not only scientists, industrialists and generals—should ask ourselves what can we do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks [of artificial intelligence].

Steven Starr[10] was one of the speakers at the Symposium. In 2013 with his help I made a hypertext transcript of the presentation he gave that March at the Helen Caldicott Foundation Fukushima Symposium [webcast archive is here] on “The Implications of The Massive Contamination of Japan With Radioactive Cesium.” In that talk he presents an examination in very clear terms of the what we are dealing with. While he focused on cesium-137, plutonium is also something new to us as a species.

Long-lived radionuclides, such as cesium-137, are something new to us as a species. They did not exist on Earth, in any appreciable quantities, during the entire evolution of complex life. Although they are invisible to our senses, they are millions of times more poisonous than most of the common poisons we are familiar with. They cause cancer, leukemia, genetic mutations, birth defects, malformations and abortions at concentrations almost below human recognition and comprehension. They are lethal at the atomic or molecular level.

They emit radiation, invisible forms of matter and energy that we might compare to fire, because radiation burns and destroys human tissue. But unlike the fire of fossil fuels, the nuclear fire that issues forth from radioactive elements cannot be extinguished. It is not a fire that can be scattered or suffocated, because it burns at the atomic level – it comes from the disintegration of single atoms.

At the DPNE Symposium he spoke on “Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event Waiting To Happen.” In it Mr. Starr presents a lucid, compelling assessment of the overriding necessity to educate recent generations growing up since the 1980s who essentially have no knowledge or understanding of the effects or consequences of nuclear war. Excerpting the beginning of his talk:

Two days ago my wife Nina and I were blessed with a visit from my niece on her way from Vermont back to California. In her twenties, and filled with an abundant searching curiosity and energy, she was returning from working at a summer camp for teenagers and related how in conversations they expressed their underlying fear of the world ending as a result of myriad human activities. Of the plethora of issues demanding resolution through the exercise of our intelligence with clarity and coherence, it has always seemed the most fundamental challenge—far exceeding every other item on the list—is the threat of nuclear annihilation.[11]

A New Movement to Ban Nuclear Weapons

As terrifying and paralyzing as the prospect of this reality is, energy wells up from within to seek paths to address this seemingly impossible-to-solve puzzle. My interest to look at this is fundamentally inspired by Helen Caldicott’s example and commitment.[12] One of the 8 (soon to be 9) transcripts is of Tim Wright who spoke about “A New Movement to Ban Nuclear Weapons.” Tim is the Director (Asia Pacific) of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).[13] The ICAN was launched in Vienna on 30 April 2007. This timeline conveys a sense of its momentum. Tim spoke in a grounded, engaged, clear, voice. The awareness he expressed was palpable. At the start he acknowledged how reading Helen Caldicott’s autobiography informed his own work:

Dr. Caldicott is the living embodiment of a supremely vital, conscious member of our human family, calling us on to face squarely what we have brought into existence and what we must, if we are successful, abolish if we are to not fulfill what she shared in an e-mail last January. I asked about an exchange she had years ago with Carl Sagan to which she wrote, “I asked Carl if he thought that there was any other life in the universe and he said after a pause: No because if any other species had reached our stage of evolution they would have destroyed themselves.”

As naive or foolish as it may sound, we cannot accept that this is the only possible outcome of the human project here on Earth. I understand that as a white man I have been given extraordinary privileges and opportunities that the majority of my fellow human beings alive today do not enjoy. With this understanding, I endeavor to live out the maxim, those to whom much is given, much is expected in return.

Tim described a promising recent shift in the way nuclear weapons are being thought about and related to by the overwhelming majority of the family of nations that do not possess, nor house, these annihilation machines.

In researching sources to link to for Tim’s talk, I looked up what I could find about what he referred to as “weasel states.”

In doing so, I found my way to Wildfire and Richard Lennane. I wrote a summary paragraph about this project in the What To Do section of the DPNE collection:

This group is exercising refreshing human intelligence with clarity. The analysis presented is cogent and well-informed as well as highly effective at exposing government hypocrisy. Richard Lennane, listed as Wildfire’s “Chief Inflammatory Officer,” is based in Geneva, Switzerland and also serves as “Head, Implementation Support Unit, Biological Weapons Convention,” United Nations Institute for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA). Two highly incisive youtube films are Wildfire statement at HINW14 Vienna (4:56, Dec 2014) and The Wildfire approach to nuclear disarmament (3:19, 22 Jun 2015). Read a penetrating 2-page summary concerning the What, Why, How, Where, Who, & When of “A treaty banning nuclear weapons”.

Help Close the Book Now On Man-Made Nuclear Extinction

I wrote Richard asking for his ideas about a Petition my friend and colleague rebecca lord and I have been working on. The Petition is inspired by Steven Starr’s talk, “Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event Waiting To Happen,” and after asking him for help, Steven sent the text and references we are using for it. Richard wrote back with very helpful ideas, thoughts, and suggestions. We have incorporated some of what he shared in the current form of the present petition. A copy of it is listed in the What To Do section and the active Petition itself is on change.org.

The current Petition’s title is:

Demand the President of the United States publicly acknowledges and addresses
the threat the US nuclear arsenal poses to the continued existence of Life on Earth.

Its essential thrust is to serve as an educational tool for all people to apprehend what has not been acknowledged, talked about, nor acted upon since the 1980s when both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev publicly stated that nuclear weapons could never be used. Two slides from the talk give by Alan Robock[14] on “Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter: Climatic Effects of Nuclear War, Catastrophic Threats to the Global Food Supply,” summarize what they said. First was from a 1985 Reagan interview while he was President:

and second was a 2000 interview with State of the World Forum Co-Chair Mikhail Gorbachev:

Please do sign the Petition; talk it up with your family and friends, as well as (of course) give it play on whatever social networking conduits you’re hooked up to. Previously I was not inclined to make a facebook or twitter page for ratical.org. This will be amended in the near term to give additional visibility and play to the DPNE collection and its educational purpose: to assist in putting the threat of nuclear annihilation back on the front burner so we can finally, collectively, as the single, precious, fragile, extraordinarily gifted human family that we are, come together and abolish these weapons that another speaker, physicist and cosmologist, Max Tegmark,[15] so pointedly described in his talk, “Artificial Intelligence and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War: A Cosmic Perspective”:

Educating ourselves and others serves Life’s needs here on Earth and gives significance and purpose to our days. It enables us to use our intelligence to act with clarity and coherence. A treaty banning nuclear weapons is a global humanitarian imperative of the highest order. It is achievable and increasingly urgent. The DPNE’s What To Do section contains significant means to further the work of implementing a treaty banning nuclear weapons as well as to increase consciousness of the overriding necessity to do so. Once nuclear weapons are banned, there will still be the challenge of solving the problem of nuclear waste that continues to grow as long as nuclear reactors operate and that will be the most lasting and significant legacy our epoch leaves to the future. However dealing with the threat of extinction from nuclear weapons will buy more time to actually address the nuclear waste problem.[16]

Going through old bookmarks, I just re-visited the site of Chris Jordan photographic arts. Quoting from the Contact page, “Chris Jordan’s work explores the collective shadow of contemporary mass culture from a variety of photographic and conceptual perspectives. Edge-walking the lines between beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, Jordan’s images confront the enormous power of humanity’s collective will. His works are exhibited and published worldwide.” Re-exploring the site, where there are many extremely provocative and profound visual representations of our mass culture reality, I was especially struck by E Pluribus Unum as an indicator—as of 5 years ago—of how many people on Earth are engaged in engendering a world of inclusion where everyone and everything belongs. You must visit the page itself to apprehend the magnitude of what is being represented by zooming out from within this visualization.

E Pluribus Unum, 2010      24x24 feet, laser etched onto aluminum panels Depicts the names of one million organizations around the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of diverse and indigenous culture. The actual number of such organizations is unknown, but estimates range between one and two million, and growing.

To be sure, there are a wealth of disturbing facts visualized by Jordan. Still, as with all eternal opposites, forever joined like two sides of a coin, there is also the life-affirming expression of the “enormous power of humanity’s collective will” to understand and be informed by. This power is what we must ALL engage, direct, and focus, to close the book on the possibility of extinction by nuclear weapons, for the sake of the children, all we share Earth with, and all that is yet to be born and live out lives here long, long, long after we are gone.