Environmental nuclear disaster made in USA
By Heather Cottin
U.S. charges that others illegally produce "Weapons of Mass
Destruction" rings false when the Pentagon has the
preponderance of the nuclear weapons that menace the rest of
the nations on Earth.
The weapons themselves, as well as the storage facilities
and laboratories for them, threaten residents of nearly every
state in the Union.
According to a 2002 report by the Educational Foundation for
Nuclear Science, the United States has produced 67,500 nuclear
missiles since 1951. The cost: $5.5 trillion.
A Brookings Institution study, the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost
Study Project, reveals that as of August 2002 some 10 million
acres of land around the globe housed U.S. nuclear weapons.
Almost all that land, 15,654 square miles of it, is in the
United States.
In Montana alone there are 50 of the W62/Minuteman III
warheads, 400 of the W78/Minuteman III warheads, and a missile
field that covers an additional 24,000 square miles in that
state.
Missouri has a missile field that covers 10,000 square
miles.
At the Georgia Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base/Strategic
Weapons Facility Atlantic there are 1,600 of the W76/Trident I
warheads, 400 of the W88/Trident II warheads and 160 of the
W80-0/Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles.
New Mexico is filled with every imaginable nuclear device
and installation. Kirt land Air Force Base and the Kirtland
Underground Munitions Storage Com plex hold 85 of the B61-7
gravity bombs, 600 of the B61-3, -4, -10 gravity bombs, 365 of
the W80-1/Air-Launched Cruise Missiles, 450 of the
W56/Minuteman II warheads, 60 of the W78/Minuteman III
warheads, 550 of the W69/Short-Range Attack Missiles, and 400
of the W84/ Ground-Launched Cruise Missile warheads.
The Natural Resources Defense Coun cil's Nuclear Weapons
Databook Project reports that 43 metric tons of plutonium are
in weapons stored in the United States.
Some 12,067 dismantled plutonium "pits" are stored at the
Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to the U.S.
Department of Energy.
The states with the most nuclear weapons are: New Mexico,
with 2,450; Georgia, with 2,000; Washington, with 1,685;
Nevada, with 1,350; and North Dakota, with 1,140. (Washington,
D.C.: Natural Resources Defense Council, March 1998)
Costs money and lives
The cost of maintaining this nuclear arsenal in the United
States is $35 billion per year, the Brooking study shows. (U.S.
Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project.) These funds could be used
for food stamp programs or urban schools, Medicaid or
libraries.
The cost is also in human lives.
From 1946 to 1970 approximately 90,000 canisters of
radioactive waste were jettisoned in 50 ocean dumps up and down
the East and West Coasts of the United States.
The Critical Mass Energy Project of Ralph Nader's Public
Citizen, Inc., tabulated 122 accidents involving the transport
of nuclear material in 1979, including 17 involving radioactive
contamination.
In 1979 a dam holding radioactive uranium mill tailings
broke, sending an estimated 100 million gallons of radioactive
liquids and 1,100 tons of solid wastes downstream at Church
Rock, N.M.
The Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Com ponents Plant at Oak Ridge,
Tenn., has reportedly released 1,200 tons of mercury, as well
as PCBs and heavy metals into the region's air, soil and
streams.
Between 1944 and 1966, the Hanford reactors in Washington
state discharged billions of gallons of liquids and billions of
cubic meters of gases containing plutonium and other
radioactive contaminants into the Columbia River. The cost of
clean ing up was estimated to be $48.5 billion.
In 1997 a 40-gallon tank of toxic chemicals (stored
illegally at the U.S. government's Hanford Engineer works)
exploded, causing the release of 20,000-30,000 gallons of
plutonium-contaminated water. (www.ratical.org)
Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the
Southwest contained uranium and the continent's richest
supplies of mineral wealth. With the complicity of the U.S.
government the energy companies formed tribal councils,
controlled by their corporation lawyers, whose main purpose was
to sign leases for the mineral-rich land of the Hopi and Dineh
people.
The Native people who then worked in the uranium mines are
now dying of uranium poisoning and cancer at rates much higher
than the general population.
Uranium mining pollutes and irradiates the Southwest's
water. In 1984 a flash flood washed four tons of high-grade
uranium ore into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. A
September 1990 flood carried water from uranium mines on the
canyon's rims to the floor below, destroying the homes and
farms of the Havasupai and Hualapai people. (Uranium Mining at
the Grand Canyon, Southwest Research and Information
Center)
U.S. tests and nuclear weapon transport have led to nuclear
accidents in Panama, the Marshall Islands, France, Germany, and
England. U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons has coincided
with an increase in cancer and birth defects in Iraq, the
former Yugoslavia, and Vieques, Puerto Rico.
The Bush administration has been pressuring for a renewal of
the nuclear power industry and for upgrades of the U.S. nu
clear arsenal. This means more profits for the uranium mining
and milling industry, as well as the nuclear weapons
manufacturers and the nuclear power industry.
Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
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