The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag
Page 9
It is on this basis that we can say that local and repeated radiation is damaging and leads to the development of necrosis. No matter how small, if an area has been subjected to intense ionisation for a sufficient time, cancer will proliferate throughout the whole body. It is in fact the body’s reaction to the exhaustion it experiences from trying to repair one very specific site that has been destroyed innumerable times.
The phenomenon we are considering is, in reality, completely different from the case of total radiation (brief and intense, resulting from the explosion of an atomic bomb or from accidental exposure to a significant amount of radioactive material through inadequate protection) when all regenerative ability is exhausted (100% mortality) which occurs if the human body receives more than 600 roentgens.
Yet even today we still hear experts quoting figures that relate specifically to the brief intense total radiation (experienced at Hiroshima, and based on old military statistics) when talking about the dangers of nuclear power stations. The radioactive contamination of food and of the atmosphere by the nuclear industry, as well as the global fallout that has resulted from peaceful (or otherwise) nuclear tests, has a completely different effect on the body.
We are being exposed to intense localised radiation, chronic and internal, sometimes damaging a specific organ (localised effect) where certain radioactive elements concentrate (for example iodine in the thyroid gland) and sometimes damaging the whole body and originating in the pulmonary area (through the inhalation of dust from the atmosphere into the lungs or through a wound). The familiar tables of statistics, varying from 25 to 600 roentgens, cannot be applied in the case of this type of chronic radiation. The threat to the public today from the nuclear industry comes from this insidious contamination, constant, permanent, cumulative, chronic and generalised. The wind can carry radioactive dust 1000 kilometres in twenty four hours, and no-one can be sure they will not breathe in “their” speck of plutonium or some other radioactive gift. This attack, and it really is an attack—a serious act of aggression, is, as I have said, extremely insidious because it is painless and consequently undetectable. It is therefore an attack on every one of us, wherever we are, and whatever we are doing. The nuclear industry’s war against the human race began several years ago and urgent measures are needed to rid ourselves of it for ever, or we are condemning ourselves to death. Some people will find what I am saying hard to take, but we have to be realistic. We will act because we will be forced to. Can the truth really be swept under the carpet just because those in charge of these huge capital sums have no thought for future generations or even, for that matter, for their own real interests in the here and now?17
17 Maurice E. André, Études et Expansion—Trimestrial, N°276, May-June 1978.
3. ORIGINS IN THE MILITARY
The ignorance that is described in this chapter was not deliberately conceived as such in the beginning. It resulted from the outcome of the Second World War and the balance of terror between the two Cold War superpowers. In July 1945, the US acquired nuclear weapons (the Manhattan Project), spurred on by the fear that Nazi Germany would develop them first. Three bombs were conceived: the first was used as a test to confirm all the principles of the atom, and the other two were unleashed on Japan. The USSR began their own identical nuclear programme to match the military might of Washington, and on 29th August 1949 to the great surprise of the Americans, revealed their nuclear strength, with an atmospheric test18. And so the arms race was set in motion, based largely on reciprocal feelings of extreme threat. It is no coincidence then, that five years after the first nuclear massacre in history, the Americans began to reconstruct and study the doses received by survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the moment of the explosion. To ensure their supremacy, they needed to perfect their arms and understand the effect on the enemy and the risks posed by nuclear testing. But the Americans only did half of the scientific work needed to assess the effects of an atomic explosion on life. They focused exclusively on the military point of view: virtually all their research is limited to the consequences of a war scenario. They did not concern themselves with what happened in the hours and days following an explosion, nor with the fate of people far away who were subjected to the supposedly “low level” global fallout. Rosalie Bertell notes:
18 See Jean-Marie Collin, “ L’atome militaire ”.
They wanted to know how many people would be killed rapidly and how many would be disabled from fighting. These were the main thoughts of the people who did the research, and these were the main calculations that they made. They were not concerned with miscarriages, nor foetal deaths, neonatal deaths; they were not concerned by sick people or children, nor by many of the long term effects which were not tabulated. They were very selective in their research, and in the damage they admitted.19
19 Rosalie Bertell—Permanent People’s Tribunal on Chernobyl, ECODIF, 1996. Epidemiologist and researcher specialising in radiation, Rosalie Bertell is Coordinator of the International Medical Commission on Chernobyl (IMC—Chernobyl) Toronto.
“The Permanent People’s Tribunal (successor to the Russell Tribunal) is part of a legal tradition intended to give a voice to those who have never been allowed to speak. For 50 years, victims of radiation have been forced to remain silent: those from Hiroshima, from Bikini, just like those from Mururoa, the soldiers forced to watch the nuclear tests, and then dying a slow death, like “human guinea pigs”, made to absorb plutonium so that its effect on the body could be studied...” Excerpt from the Preface of the Proceedings of the session on “Chernobyl” (Ed. ECODIF, 1996). This session was held in Vienna in April 1996, when the International Atomic Energy Agency ended its negationist conference, “One decade after Chernobyl”, on the other bank of the Danube.
This is how the “Hiroshima model” was established and limited to the effects of an instantaneous nuclear flash. For sixty years it has been the only official model in existence to recognise pathologies caused by radiation. It only takes into account the flash of gamma rays, followed a fraction of a second later by intense heat and a violent wind, which in themselves have nothing to do with radioactivity. At the same time, we remain in the dark about the effects of inhaling and ingesting the tonnes of radioactive material dispersed around the planet, initially by the two bombs dropped on Japan, then by the 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, by Chernobyl (where more than 400 artificial radioactive elements were expelled during the fire at the power station) and finally by the so called “depleted” uranium weapons (with a half-life of four and a half billion years) used in modern warfare.
I tried to indicate that the number of radiation victims is now conservatively estimated at 32 million people. We are talking about workers, we are talking about the Japanese population, we are talking about the victims of above-ground nuclear weapons testing and the various accidents and incidents that have occurred. Chief among them is the Chernobyl accident, which was a huge disaster.20
20 Rosalie Bertell, op. cit.
The bomb at Hiroshima and the fire at Chernobyl are not comparable. One does not explain the other. The first case involves the very high external exposure to the flash of immaterial gamma rays, and the second involves the proximity effects of microscopic particles incorporated into living tissue. But the second case does not exist for “science”. It is not part of the approved science. It is not published in validated reports. It falls outside the parameters of the “Hiroshima dogma” and thus the worldwide nuclear consortium that unites the Pentagon, the Security Council, the IAEA, UNSCEAR, WHO, CEA, AREVA COGEMA, CEPN and SIEMENS, can claim that at Chernobyl “there is no correlation between the pathologies observed and radioactivity” (Gentner—UNSCEAR, Conference at Kiev 2001). For the experts who uphold the “accepted scientific view”, only the very high doses of gamma radiation during the flash are pathogenic. According to them, at Chernobyl, a priori, there can be no correlation because the levels ar
e too low.
Today the Cold War cannot be used as a justification. With the evidence of the health catastrophe at Chernobyl, ignorance has become a criminal strategy and a lie by omission on the part of the civil and military nuclear lobby that has subjugated the UN agencies responsible for the atom and the health, for its own ends. As for the nuclear states, whose ministers are not necessarily experts, they find, within the UN agencies, the scientific backing they need to legitimise their suicidal political decisions.
Chapter VI
INSTITUTIONS OF IGNORANCE AT CHERNOBYL
The ICRP has its origins in the International Committee on X-Ray and Radium Protection, set up in 1928 to develop regulations for radiologists and technicians to ensure the safety of both doctors and patients during examinations. It was only in 1950 that this committee became the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) that we know today.
The current mission of the ICRP is defined as follows on its website: “The recommendations of the ICRP are not mandatory but provide a benchmark at an international level, because of their scientific value, and their cautious and realistic approach to the problems of radioprotection. As a result, the ICRP’s recommendations have provided guidance for the establishment of regulations adopted by large international organisations, such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as to the European Community and many other countries. The authority of the ICRP explains the international character of radioprotection measures, which, because they are based on the same recommendations, are similar in Europe, in the United States, in Russia, in China, etc […] The methodological approach was initially based mainly on health data, but today needs to consider also technical, economic and social issues: it has become multi dimensional”. (ICRP Publication 60)
But we must not forget that the origins of the ICRP are not medical but military and American. Set up in 1950, little is known about the history of this “non-governmental organisation, though recognised by the United Nations” [sic], behind the façade of independence that it presents. Its history also begins with the bomb. It dates from the era of American research at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This organisation was born out of the secrecy of the atomic weapons and national security, therefore secrecy is embedded in the formation of this organisation. ICRP consists of a main committee which elaborates all the definitions and takes all the decisions. From 1954 to 1991 the members of this committee were 13 men, since then one woman (Professor A.K Guskova) joined21. They are self appointed and self perpetuated. They are the ones who make the recommendations for radiation protection standards, which have then to be adopted by every nation. They are the source of the regulations applied by the IAEA, indeed applied in a very cruel way after the Chernobyl accident and elsewhere.
21 See Part Six, Chapter II, page 417, the Kiev Conference, filmed in June 2001
It is very important to look in detail at the documents of the ICRP. I was very taken aback that in their 1990 report, they actually talked about “transient effects of radiation”, effects that they didn’t consider serious enough to receive compensation or to be recognised. But these are exactly the kinds of problems that people experience which they are trying to present to the world’s opinion. The existence of these problems is continually denied by the IAEA.
Meanwhile the ICRP who recognised them as “transient effects”, has stayed very quiet in the background, because their professional credibility is on the line: they can’t honestly say that these effects do not occur and are not related to radiation. The engineers and physicists at the IAEA are the ones who are mandated to talk about health effects.[…] the IAEA, which acts like a police force irrationally enforcing mechanisms which were already in place.[…] Chernobyl is presented as a scientific problem, but this is not so. It is fundamentally about repression, about political decisions that are causing the appalling problems that we are seeing now. […]
Since 1951, the myth that you can’t study low level radiation has prevailed. 1951 represents a very significant date: that of the opening of the above ground nuclear weapons test site in Nevada.[…] At that time there was a concerted effort to declare that low level radiation wasn’t harmful and that there was no way to prove that any effects were connected with them22.
22 R. Bertell, op. cit., statement to the Permanent People’s Tribunal, during its hearing on the Chernobyl disaster, in 1996.
1. AMERICAN ORIGINS OF THE ICRP
Below is an abridged version of a text by ECRR (European Committee on Radiation Risk) that details the origins of the ICRP in the American military23.
23 ECRR, Ed. Green Audit, 2003. ISBN:1 897761 24 4, p. 29 and following pages.
http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf
In 1946 the US government, having tested the bomb and used it on Japan, clearly recognized the sensitive nature of nuclear science. It outlawed the private ownership of nuclear materials and set up the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to administer the area. At the same time, it established the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP), immediate forerunner of the ICRP.
There is now ample evidence that the NCRP was under pressure from the AEC to fix exposure limits which would not cause blocks to research and development.
The NCRP was formed by reviving the US Advisory Committee on X-ray and Radium Protection that the medical profession had originally established to provide itself with advice on radiation protection. Now that there was a new source of risk involving the military, government, and private companies with research contracts, it was clearly necessary to rapidly set up a body with sufficient credibility to claim to be the ultimate authority on radiation risk. There was a pressing need to revise the existing limits for exposure to X-rays and extend these to the new risks from external gamma rays which resulted from weapons development research and nuclear bomb test exposures. There was also a need to develop exposure limits to internal radiation from the host of novel radioisotopes which were being discovered, produced and handled by workers, and discharged into the environment.
The NCRP had eight sub-committees looking at various aspects of nuclear risk, but the two most important ones were Committee One, on external radiation limits chaired by G. Failla, and Committee Two, on internal radiation risks chaired by Karl Z. Morgan. Despite the fact that the NCRP had set an acceptable limit for external exposure in 1947 (at a level 20 times higher than that accepted for workers today), it was not until 1953 that the full report from the NCRP was published. The reason for this delay was that Morgan’s Committee Two was finding it very difficult to agree on values and methods which could be easily applied to determining the doses and risks from the many radioisotopes which could become sources of internal irradiation to organs and cells within the body. Part of this difficulty had to do with lack of knowledge at the time of the concentrations and affinities of the radioisotopes for the various organs and their constituent cells. (This was subject of nine years of research by Professor Bandazhevsky in the contaminated the territories of Chernobyl24; author’s note.) The NCRP became tired of waiting for a resolution of these problems and in 1951, its executive committee summarily ended Committee Two’s deliberations and insisted that its report on internal emitters be prepared for publication, possibly on the basis that some guidance on risk was necessary. (At this moment, the Nevada atmospheric test site was opened, Author’s note.)
24 See Part Three, chapters I, II and following, p. 164.
This was the time when the radiation-risk black box was sealed up. Its internal workings had been constructed under pressure for the rapid development of some convenient methodology for defining exposure. The model cannot deal with small volumes and inhomogeneities of dose25 and for this reason, is unsafe to apply to internal irradiation.
25 Yury Bandazhevsky carried out research at a cellular level (small volumes) and
has shown that the concentration of radionuclides differs from one organ to another (inhomogeneities of dose).
But the problem today is that this is the black box for radiation risk which represents the model used by the ICRP. It developed out of the NCRP. The Chair of the NCRP, Lauriston Taylor, was instrumental in setting up an international version of the NCRP, perhaps to divert attention from the clear evidence that the NCRP was associated with the development of nuclear technology in the US and also perhaps to suggest that there was some independent international agreement over the risk factors for radiation. The new body was named the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
So the circle was complete. It is this sealed black box—the Hiroshima dogma—in which remain imprisoned the independent researchers and victims of the cover up. The ICRP, which in 1928, acted exclusively and uncompromisingly on behalf of doctors and patients, with human health as its absolute imperative, was subverted during the fifties by the political and economic constraints of war and the nuclear industry. It became multi dimensional. Its independence was no longer credible.
Taylor was a member of the ICRP committee and the NCRP Chairman at the same time. The NCRP committees One and Two were duplicated on the ICRP with the identical chairmen, Failla and Morgan. The interpenetration of personnel between these two bodies was a precedent to a similar movement of personnel between the risk agencies of the present day. The present Chair of the ICRP is also the Director of the UK National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB). The two organizations have other personnel in common and there are also overlaps between them and UNSCEAR and the BEIR VII (Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation). This has not prevented the NRPB from telling the UK’s regulator, the Environment Agency, that UNSCEAR and ICRP are “constituted entirely separately”, a statement which the Environment Agency accepted. Thus credibility for statements on risk is spuriously acquired by organisations citing other organisations, but it can be seen as a consequence of the fact that they all have their origins in the same development and same model: the NCRP/ICRP post-war process. This black box has never been properly opened or examined. A full and reliable history26 of the development of radiation risk standards is to be found in Caulfield 1989. Taylor himself has described these developments in some detail (Taylor, 1971) and in an interview on the development of radiation risk in the post-war period, Morgan, who left both the NCRP and ICRP said of these organizations and their satellites, “I feel like a father who is ashamed of his children”. 27