Excerpt from 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age'-
"Manhattan Project and Army staff, although they were in even greater danger from
Trinity's intense radiation at close range, apparently largely escaped
harmful exposures. How? They were instructed by their superiors to...
follow 'protective measures' such as closing windows, staying indoors,
and even breathing through a slice of bread!"more
'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age' is our six-year effort and free web-based book. Click to read the book here
What you can learn in the book: Every cancer and leukemia
since 1945 can be fractionally blamed on one thing: nuclear testing fallout. 'Chernobyl fallout' was 90-95% from Chernobyl and the rest from a covered-up U.S. nuclear release. There are dozens of nuclear reactors orbiting us - many have crashed on Earth. The U.S. may have replicated a 'Hiroshima' inferno on actual humans (in cages in Nevada). Your cremated remains mixed into water would be undrinkable per the EPA because of its strontium-90 levels.
MORE
April 30, 2013 - While LaScram
LaSalle Falls Apart, Operator Asks NRC If They Can Put a Hemi
In It- Exelon is proceeding with a formal request to the NRC for a mega-power boost (aka
'uprate') at the LaSalle plant to increase thermal output by a whopping 12.5%. Also, it has
been learned that the culprit of the technical shutdown of LaSalle Unit 1 reactor on
April 27th was the same exact valve that failed
following a scram in February 2011 due to a welding defect. The recommended fix (buy a new one, duh!) was apparently not heeded;
Status: LaSalle 1 is being restarted (at 22%). LaSalle 2 is at 1% power.
April 29, 2013 - Map of eastern U.S. nuclear plants that
have no containment vent filters (which is a 'Fukushima lessons learned'
that 'wasn't implemented')- enlarge image
April 25-27, 2013 - April 25: LaSalle Unit 2 restart attempt results in a
scram - reason: condenser leak. April 26: NRC
announces 'Special Investigation'
into April 17th events; April 27: during Unit 1 startup process, operators
were forced to shut reactor down after leak was detected in the primary containment
April 17, 2013 - LaSalle County
Nuclear Generating Station is hit by lightning - both reactors scram - pressure
builds in containment - radioactive gases vented from containment - monitoring fails -
vents from Unit 2 not filtered - leaks and other problems not reported until days later - our initial report
and our analysis of the types of radioactive gases released
in unfiltered vent
You are reading from a free online e-book titled 'Deception, Cover-up and Murder in the Nuclear Age.'
The book discusses the Trinity test, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hydrogen bomb testing fallout,
U.S. experiments done on Marshall Islanders (Project 4.1), the Irene Allen trial, Cosmos 954, the Fukushima meltdowns,
Three Mile Island updates, and so much
more. Visit the Table of Contents to find this free content.
Footnotes are located at the end of each chapter - press the (right facing) 'PAGE' button icon until you reach
the footnotes page, or locate it via the table of contents
Chapter 8 - Mighty Oak
8-1
1 of 4
Sixteen days before Chernobyl (April 26, 1986)
the biggest nuclear accident and containment failure since Three Mile Island occurred in the U.S. Critics, including
'Project Censored,' the author of 'American Ground Zero: the Secret Nuclear War' and
Gore Vital have alleged that the U.S. government lied to cover up the radiation release of 'Mighty Oak.'
In this chapter, we discuss how the U.S. government's
tactic of deceptive environmental data collection
allowed it to cover up this massive radioactive release, which remains one of the greatest in
the past 35 years.
One
day before Halley's Comet made its closest approach to Earth and five days after
the West Berlin disco bombing that killed three persons including U.S.
servicemen, an accident occurred about 1,300 feet below Rainier Mesa,
a volcanic, flat-topped mountain on the expansive Department
of Energy Nevada Test Site located northwest of Las Vegas. The Nevada
Test Site was the location of choice by the U.S. government for the underground
testing of nuclear bombs from 1962 to 1992 during the Cold War. The 'Might Oak'
test involved one of the smaller nuclear devices detonated at the site
but resulted in one of the worst nuclear testing accidents in the latter Cold War.
Upon the explosion of Mighty Oak's atomic device in an underground cavity on April 10, 1986,
the next to worst-case scenario happened. The explosion overwhelmed closure systems and resulted in the contamination of a miles-long
technologically-enhanced tunnel beneath the mesa. But the nature of the accident was as closely-guarded as the test's purpose was to the U.S. government.
Mighty
Oak was a product of President Ronald Reagan's obsession with the idea of space
defense. Reagan thought that it was necessary - and possible - to construct a
defense 'shield' in space that could flawlessly destroy Soviet ICBMs in their
boost phase as they strove to destroy America's cities and nuclear silos. The Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency
(DNA) was tasked with carrying out overly-ambitious experiments to determine a
SDI technology that could both flawlessly work, and meet certain objectives (such as cost). The DNA sponsored several experiments of a nuclear blast-pumped X-ray laser in tunnel
structures under the Nevada Test Site.
These tests simulated the
radiation-effects (such as an X-ray pulse) of a
nuclear
blast on a 'target' in space (i.e., an orbiting satellite or other space equipment). In
order to see how a nuclear 'x-ray gun' would work in space, test planners needed
to simulate space on Earth by creating an airless 'medium' to test their new
weapon. Thus, they came up with the
idea of extremely long (and bizarrely-shaped) airless steel pipe. At one end would be the nuclear device and
at the other end would be several 'targets' (i.e., warheads and
satellites). The pipe - more like a very long enclosed funnel - was
air-tight and airless. Since the X-ray pulse would diffuse - it would enlarge
like the beam of a flashlight on a distant object (whether on Earth or in space)
- the steel
pipe was tapered so that the 'target end' had a diameter of 25 feet.
The
reason for this airless funnel is simple: explosions in space don't create shock waves - because there is no air -
yet an explosion on Earth would create a shock wave. But
testing such an x-ray gun even with the airless funnel on Earth had challenges;
a shock wave may nevertheless ensue through the metal or air surrounding the pipe.
In order to rule out any damage to the targets caused by a shock wave (which could send debris
into the target), huge blast doors in the pipe were installed to allow the X-ray radiation to pass through; milliseconds
after the blast, the doors would
slam shut to prevent any unexpected form of shock-related damage as well radioactive gases and debris from reaching
the 'targets.'1 This challenge of preventing
non-radiation damage from harming the targets, however, proved too big to overcome. As
happened in a previous test ('Misty Rain'), the blast doors failed for the 'Mighty Oak' test...
It all started on April 10, sixteen days before Chernobyl...
April
10
On April 10, 1986, beneath Rainier Mesa, Mighty Oak
detonated and the blast doors failed.2 The
intense pressure and thousand-degree heat had caused two
blast doors to reopen 50 or 60 seconds after they had closed. A combination of
damaging shock waves, fire and pressurized gas and debris compromised the airless
steel pipe and contamination and fire
traveled throughout underground tunnel complex.3
The test chamber and the rest of the tunnel was supposed to be spared from this
contamination and inferno but it was all turned into a scene of destruction - a 20-foot section of tunnel
went 'missing' and the radioactive storm finally stopped at a final 6-foot thick door leading to the
outside air. Had that last door failed, it would have caused an extremely radioactive cloud to be released
into Nevada's air.
The
tunnel complex - the 'T-Tunnel' - was now 'off-limits.' Dangerous
levels of airborne radiation throughout the tunnel
surpassed federal guidelines for workers exposure and test site workers would need to wait for radiation levels to subside. These levels would subside both
naturally and as test site workers slowly discharged
the radiation into the outside air through vents. That would take a while - several
weeks or months. (As we will learn, that was too long to wait
and when an opportunity arose to quickly 'dump' radioactive air, the test site officials
jumped at the chance. The reason for the rush to 'air out' the tunnel was that the preoccupation
of U.S. nuclear policy experts was not with warheads but with 'Star Wars' and the federal government cared more about
their 'experimental equipment' for SDI and its data than any environmental costs.4
Actually, there were several 'Star Wars' tests in the 1980s, like 'Misty Rain' in 1985,
that failed and whose radioactive air was rather quickly vented from tunnels into the outside air
simply to access 'data' and millions of dollars of equipment.5 According to the books
written by the late statistitian and nuclear expert Jay Gould, some of the greatest radioactive releases in America since 1970 came from these
failed Star Wars tests.)
As had been the protocol for
decades, deliberate releases of radiation at the test site was conducted at the mercy of the
winds. Areas
to the north and east - sections of Utah and
northern Nevada, once dubbed 'low-use segments of the population' in a
memo of the Energy Department's predecessor - were expendable. When the winds would cooperate, the radiation pent
up in underground test tunnels would be sent 'their' way. But
the winds don't always cooperate. Winds at the test site in some seasons
would flow north over the nighttime hours and south during the day. And
sometimes the winds
could really howl. "March through June," at Yucca Flat, which is to the south of Rainier Mesa,"tends to experience the
fastest average wind speeds ...with the faster wind speeds occurring at the higher elevations."(DOE EA-1550). In fact, on
average, something like 30% of the time the winds are blowing from the test site
to the east or north. So, purging T-Tunnel would take place, on average,
on 'every-other-other' day, when the wind direction was flowing to the north or east.
April
22
On
April 21, American reporter and talk show host Geraldo Rivera presided over the
opening of the newly discovered vault of Al Capone, which, anticlimactically,
revealed a more or less treasureless trove.
No
one knew that the next day another mobster's vault opened with something that
would take Americans' breath away. Twelve days after Mighty Oak, on April
22nd, Energy Department
employees first started purging the air from the tunnel as the
winds blew to the north-northeast. Mechanized 'gas seal plugs'6
had sequestered the tunnel into three sections and on this day the two sections closest to the
tunnel aperture were 'purged' (from 10:00am to 9:30am on the following day).
The
gases easily poured out as air would blow out a balloon; a
more accurate analogy is a car tire tube. The April
10 nuclear explosion spontaneously created radioactive gases compressed
at billions of times normal atmospheric pressures - as these gases spread throughout the tunnel immediately after
Mighty Oak's detonation,
the tunnel pressure dropped, but was still intense
and would remain highly elevated until the first purgings..
Radioactive
gases like Iodine-131 and Xenon-133, which are heavier than normal air7, shot out
of the tunnel like air from a punctured tire.
April
25
After a
two day hiatus, on
April 25, the winds again were right and the Energy Department released the
third and final seal, allowing almost the entire contents of the tunnel to
'breathe' into Nevada's air. The tunnel's aperture was opened between
10:30am and 4:00 pm on April 258 and, as would be expected, the 'wind' coming out of the tunnel
on this day contained highest concentrated amounts of contamination, including xenon-133
gas.9 This radioactive gas was detected later that day by EPA radiation equipment
arrayed around the Nevada Test Site, some at distances tens of miles away. EPA
monitoring stations installed in the town of Hiko, Nevada and at 'Medlin Ranch' had readings of 270 'xenon units' (full
day average) and 550
'xenon units,' respectively.10
The
Medlin Ranch reading was the highest radio-xenon level recorded that month by
the EPA, which kept its 'noble gas' monitoring equipment around the test site
through May 10. It was one of the highest such levels recorded in
Nevada in over a decade.
April
26
On
April 26, 1986, Unit 4 reactor of the Chernobyl power station in
Ukraine experienced an unprecedented
accident and released a tremendous radioactive plume that would disperse radioactive gases
like xenon and iodine and dozens of radio-chemicals - similarly found in
'nuclear fallout' - across the world and the United States. It
was, however, a meteorological miracle for someone who wanted to dump radiation into the
air.
Wanting
their precious data and equipment, the Defense Department was losing patience
with the 'conventional' method of waiting for the winds to be right in order to
vent. But something could allow test site managers to promptly get rid of waste
without anyone knowing. They could use the cover of the
Chernobyl clouds to vent continuously, regardless of the winds.11
