TL: HUMAN EXPOSURE FROM ATOMIC POWER: THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES SO: Harvey Wasserman, Greenpeace USA, (GP) DT: January 25, 1994 Keywords: environment nuclear weapons power safety health military / HUMAN EXPOSURE FROM ATOMIC POWER: THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES By Harvey Wasserman The human radiation experiments conducted from the 1940s through the 1970s have shaken our faith in the government that sponsored them. One radiation biologist warned in the 1950s that they reeked of "the Buchenwald touch," a backhand reference to experiments done at Nazi concentration camps. They have "appalled, shocked and deeply saddened" Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, who has bravely made them public. We all share in the outrage over such horrors. But today we must also ask parallel questions about the biggest on-goinghuman radiation experiment of all )) commercial atomic power. A reactor has raged since the first one went on line at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1958. "Peaceful Atom" advocates told doubters the inevitable emissions could do no harm. But those reassurances had no more scientific basis than the ones given unfortunate victims of radiation experiments done in the laboratories. Knowledge of the killing power of radiation was minimal, based on sketchy, flawed studies of A-Bomb survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was also based on some of those very experiments we now find so abhorrent. T that would total some $500 billion. Reactors were proposed near some of our largest cities, including one spot --eventually blocked by local opponents )) a mile from the heart of Manhattan. In the late 1960s, a University of Pittsburgh radiology professor named Dr. Ernest Sternglass discovered dangerous emission levels emanating from Shippingport. And the Atomic Energy Commission's Dr. John Gofman unearthed something even more disturbing. Gffman was a nuclear chemist with unsurpassed credentials. He was also the AEC's top medical researcher, a member of the legendary Manhattan Project, a co- discoverer of key isotopes of uranium and plutonium. A supporter of the weapons program, Gofman had even done duty on the AEC's "Truth Squad", which travelled the nation to counter assertions by testing opponents -- such as Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling -- about the health effects of radioactive fallout. But working with Arthur Tamplin of the Rand Corporation, Gofman discovered that, given standards then current, some 32,000 Americans could die each year from commercial reactor emissions. He and Tamplin urged the AEC to cut allowable exposure levels by a factor of ten. The AEC responded by demanding that Gofman and Tamplin alter their findings. They refused. Their staff and funding were then slashed and they were forced out of their jobs. T Sternglass "non-credible" mavericks. And it claims nuclear power has harmed no one. But the reactor makers have played a now-familiar game of "see no evil." Despite all the billions spent, the health of complete surrounding populations has not been tracked from Day One, though it could have easily been done at reactors everywhere. Instead, the industry argues that not enough radiation escapes to harm anyone, so such basic monitoring is unnecessary. Retrospective studies are thus far mixed. Some exonerate the industry. But critics looking at the same data have come to opposite conclusions, as have other independent studies. All future research will suffer from a lack of definitive "ground zero" data. And any study finding serious health problems will automatically be attacked as "non-credible" by the reactor operators. Today we are outraged that citizens experimented on in decades past were either left totally in the dark, or were falsely told no harm could come to them. But imagine the outcry if we now learned that many of those unfortunate subjects had strongly objected, but were forced to serve as guinea pigs anyway. Today's atomic power industry is exposing people who vehemently oppose what is being done to them. It is justifying the act with a profoundly flawed data base. T proven to be an economic disaster. These cold war horror stories of human experimentation pollute the core of our commitments to full disclosure and fair play. Today, commercial atomic power casts a similar cloud over our belief in democracy itself, and in the right of the individual to protect one's own life and health. Just as surely as we have stopped doing human radiation exposure experiments in the laboratory, these reactors must be shut. ####