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 9 - Subcritical Nuclear Testing by the U.S.
Subcritical
nuclear experiments have been the closest thing to full-scale nuclear tests that
any Western nation has conducted since the
end of the Cold War. These
experiments subject tiny amounts of plutonium to the force
of the detonation of mining explosives. According to the U.S.
Energy Department, which conducts these tests underground at the Nevada National Security Site's U1A
complex, a vast 'warren' of roughly a mile of mined tunnels that were first excavated during the
1960s, the purpose of these tests is to study the aging properties
of plutonium, which is the bomb fuel used in nuclear warheads.
Most subcritical tests subject weapons grade plutonium (Pu-239) to extreme
compression, also called implosion, via high explosives or other shock-methods.6
The DOE no longer provides technical details on the subcritical
tests but
it does say that these 'hydrodynamic tests' involving small amounts of plutonium
bombarded using conventional explosives are designed to create some of the physical
conditions that fissile materials (i.e. plutonium) experience at the onset of a nuclear blast.
CTBT ban on
subcritical tests
In 1995 several countries
in the East
voiced their opposition to 'stockpile stewardship' experiments - the categorical
umbrella over modern-day subcritical
tests - and further suggested that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
include language to ban these activities.4 In the end, the CTBT
negotiating parties settled on language that bans all "nuclear explosions" but,
curiously, no formal definition of that term exists in the treaty's text.
As it turns
out, even when White House officials in the U.S. attempted to wrap their heads
around the term, they were stumped. Officials in the Clinton Administration
eventually decided
that arriving at definition of that term was "unnecessary and would be
problematic."
There have been 27
subcritical
experiments since 1997, when
President Bill Clinton first gave the Energy Department the authorization1
for their conduct, and nearly all of these tests have met with opposition from legislators in the
nation's capital, leaders of other nations, and environmental and peace groups
in the U.S. and even in Japan. Opponents of
subcritical experiments have criticized the implications of the policy2 behind
these tests more than any other environmental, fiscal or legal consideration.
There is no question that a policy of conducting underground
experiments on plutonium material without independent monitoring or verification
and absent any establishment of the scientific importance and the
arms control treaty and proliferation impacts of the tests makes subcritical
testing activities dubious, controversial and provocative. There is also no
question that the Energy Department's real purpose for carrying out these tests
has little to do with a physics
study. We believe
these tests are conducted primarily because the U.S. government wants to prime both its
personnel's skill-sets and its key test facilities at the Nevada National
Security Site to prepare for the possibility of treaty breakout and resumption
of underground nuclear testing.3
The site is one of the globe's last
remaining active nuclear proving grounds.
But there is some
'deeper' controversy about subcritical testing that goes beyond bad policy and
hidden motives.
That 'something' goes
to the heart of the debate of the post-Cold War: how do we curb proliferation
and if banning 'nuclear explosions' significantly advances this goal, what is a
'nuclear explosion'?
Certainly if
subcritical nuclear tests were judged to be nuclear explosions, then that would
obviously be a significant discovery and pose serious problems for China, the U.K., the
U.S., France and Russia, all of whom infrequently conduct these experiments.
What is a nuclear
explosion
It is generally known that when countries carry out subcritical
experiments the amount of plutonium that is bombarded by a small chemical
explosion
is
so small that the 'fissile' material doesn't reach a 'supercritical' state.
Supercriticality, in layman's terms, means that something 'goes
nuclear.' But just because subcritical tests don't
reach supercriticality doesn't mean that small amounts of the plutonium don't
release 'nuclear energy.' Two authors of a 1996 article
titled 'Take a hard look at subcritical tests' calculated that some of
the plutonium in a subcritical nuclear experiment releases 'nuclear energy' equivalent to the explosion of about 100 billionths of a gram of TNT.
Compare this to 'Fat Man,' the bomb device that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945,
producing a 'yield' of 15,000 tons of TNT.
We tend to think of a
'nuclear explosion' as anything from a big, fiery, earth-quaking, mushroom-cloud forming bomb
blast to a very small blast, like the ones North Korea has conducted in underground
tunnels in 2006 and
2009. But could a nuclear
explosion be anything smaller?
Could the
lowest peg on the scale of a 'nuclear explosion' be a 'pop' or 'fizzle'
like the puny breath of fire from one of the dragon babies in a Shrek movie
sequel born to the character 'Donkey?'
Could a 0.0000001 gram TNT-equivalent explosion of plutonium constitute a 'nuclear
explosion'?
If so, would a
subcritical test be a 'nuclear explosion' too?
To explore this
question, let's examine a metaphor to nuclear physics....boiling water.
Let's say that we live in a
world where only coffeehouses can boil water. No civilian can
boil water. It is against the law.
A new law is passed
making boiling water a crime. Lawmakers and criminologists - with little
knowledge and background in physics - believe that visible steam is the proof that water has
been boiled. Thus, generation of steam is 'arrestable' - if steam is seen
pouring out of a kettle, an iron, or a chimney, that person goes to jail.
But, as you probably
have guessed, this 'law' is based on flawed knowledge. The presence of steam
is one hallmark of boiling water. As soon as a container of water is
heated, several
molecules of water immediately reach the boiling point although to the human
senses that water vapor isn't detectable. Only when a preponderance of
water molecules reach the boiling point and a cloud of steam pours out of a kettle do we 'think'
the water is boiling. But, in fact, when we see steam from a kettle the water is simply boiling
a
lot more than when we first turned on the heating element.8
So, if one wants to
outlaw the boiling of water, he/she needs to outlaw any
effort to heat water or induce extra molecules of water to
evaporate. The
presence of heat applied to a water source is what needs to be
prohibited.
If an international
community convenes to seek a ban on 'nuclear explosions' and its lawmakers and experts
think that the release of radioactive gases, seismic shock and a visible flash is proof that an explosion has
occurred, they are making a mistake. A nuclear
explosion occurs the instant we induce even the smallest amount of plutonium or weapons-grade uranium to
'fission' (to split) and release energy.
The basic nature of
the energy release during the Hiroshima blast is no different than the
nature of the microscopic energy release when several plutonium atoms split as
a small chemical blast compresses a small quantity of the fissile material. When just a
single plutonium atom splits apart, that is a 'nuclear explosion.' It doesn't
matter if a trillion-billion atoms split in one nanosecond or if one plutonium
atom splits
in a nanosecond. It is the same. It is the textbook definition of a nuclear energy
release from the splitting of
an atom. Just
because you can't see the microscopic explosions occurring in tiny specks of
plutonium atoms - each spewing neutrons to split the others - doesn't mean
'nothing happens.'
So, the post-Cold War
emphasis on prohibition on nuclear explosions must include subcritical nuclear
experiments. Actually, the prohibition must include every instance when
someone induces even a single atom to split. Whenever
someone bundles, pools,
assembles or forms a collection of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, they increase
the 'events' of atomic fissioning in the material and thus increase total release of nuclear
energy. Similarly, when someone bombards fissile materials with compression,
or by conventional
explosives, or shock waves, they induce 'nuclear explosions.'
The 'threshold'
of a nuclear explosion is not defined by what we see, hear or smell, but rather
what occurs at the atomic level.
