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.

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