RE: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:31:39 -0700

Hi, Natalia,

 

I stand corrected. Thank you.

 

Re. post-mining clean-up: “Superfund” clean-up sites have included the worst uranium mine tailings in Colorado, .e.g Naturita. Superfund is the program in which the chemical industry pays money into a central fund which is then applied to cleaning up hazardous waste sites which have been abandoned by the corporations that created them. You can think of it as today’s chemical industry paying for the sins of its ancestors. It works fairly well, but there is always a need for more money as more and more sites are identified.  The Naturita mine has been reopened thanks for an increase in the price of uranium, but I understand from a friend who lives there that the waste handling processes are now supervised by EPA, etc.

 

Another site near Naturita is interesting: it is the mine where Marie Curie got her milled nuclear materials. There is a chain link fence around it as the ground is still contaminated, but no clean-up is going on. I’ll have to find out more about it.

 

Again, thanks for the data and the correction re. the nuclear test sites. I wonder whether the tests were carried out in Colorado.

 

Cheers,

 

Lawry

 

From: Darryl and Natalia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 7:30 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

 

 

All mail scanned by NAV

 

Hi Lawry,

 

Colorado was indeed a nuclear test site on Sept. 10/69 at 21:00. It was an underground explosion.

New Mexico has had 3, one in July/45, then in Dec/61 and Dec/67

Mississippi had two, Dec/66 and Oct/64

Alaska had three; Nov/71, Nov/69, Oct/65

 

The website where you can get the horrific numbers of testing performed is:

 

 

From '45-'63 the US performed 215 atmospheric tests, mostly in Nevada, and allegedly 0 after '63. 815 total underground tests took place, again mostly in Nevada, from '45-96, and from 70-96 the average was 15-20 per annum.

 

Atmospheric favorite test sites, apart from Nevada, were Johnson Is., Christmas Is.(with UK), Pacific Ocean (also included underwater), S. Atlantic, Enewetak and Bikini Islands. The late 40's and early to mid '50's were especially popular for Nevada's atmospheric type. '62 was a popular year for both. The fallout, particularly from the disproportionate Nevada numbers, would have hit pretty much everywhere since testing was done year round, but most of it was done in warmer months when winds would carry it to the east--neighboring Utah and Colorado...

 

Also, it seems that on Navajo Nation in Arizona there were an estimated 1100 abandoned uranium mines after the crash of the uranium boom in the 80's. There wasn't much effort to clean up.

 

A N. Arizona University biochemist, Diane Sterns, has shown that uranium sticks to DNA, and that its binding triggers a whole slew of protein replication errors, some of which lead to various cancers. Findings were published in Mutagenisis and Molecular Carcinogenesis journals.  http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060307010324data_

 

A Dr. Rosalie Bertell, in The Ecologist, Nov.99, v.29, no.7 estimated 376 million cancers, 235 genetic defects, and 587 teratogenic effects from nuclear testing. She also claimed there had to be at least 1 million others adversely affected by electricity production from nuclear plants, 20% of which caused premature cancer deaths. All conjecture on her part, no doubt....

 

That we all live in dangerous times seems unfortunately to coincide with the unchecked greed of the previous and present centuries. Industrialism was bad enough. The point at which nuclear testing began seriously undermined our remaining sense of safety to be found on this earth. It is imperative that the world disarm. It does not have to be an unsafe world for any good reason. We are on the same page if what you call the common myth is that living with unnatural threats is now supposed to be acceptable.

 

Natalia

 

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 9:09 PM

Subject: RE: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

 

Hi, Natalia,

 

Rocky Mountain Flats affects the area between Denver and Boulder – not the whole state by any means. Uranium mining is carried out in the western part of the state, and does represent a danger to miners and those who live close to tailings. But the bulk of the state is not exposed. There have never been nuclear bombs detonated in Colorado. People live and work in those areas where there may be an environmental hazard for the same reason that people work in steel mills, or in a bureaucracy, or as advertising hacks: they can earn income and sustain their families.

 

Most people, I suppose, want what the Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi calls the ‘quiet miracle of a peaceful life.’  Few of us have the privilege of living lives without compromise, without dangers and discomforts.  Few of us have the ability to see beyond the common myth.

 

Cheers,

Lawry

 

From: Darryl and Natalia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 6:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

 

 

All mail scanned by NAV

 

Actually I was implying the opposite: that people do know, but continue to settle down in Colorado anywhere, anyhow.

 

People keep trying to move there, many from Canada. It's not just about the Rocky Flats though; a lot of nuclear testing and manufacturing has and still takes place in the state; some major bombs were allowed to be detonated there (and in Nevada) in past decades, and I doubt that activity has altogether stopped because of the terrain that it is. Drinking the water let alone breathing the air would negate for me any sane reason to set foot in either state, yet folks claim its dry air is good for their lungs. To live there, one risks becoming a casualty of experimentation in that nasty, slow death kind of way as a diurnal experience, coupled with the hovering threat of catastrophic accidents that would really, really hurt.

 

Not like deciding on Florida, where you can always drink bottled water from Colorado springs, right???

 

Speaking from the lovely fault line island that is worth the risk because unlike the rest of the continent, it will stay afloat!

 

Natalia 

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 3:51 PM

Subject: RE: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

 

Why in the world, Natalia, do you assert that people are ‘totally oblivious’ to Rocky Flats?

 

Cheers,

Lawry

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Darryl and Natalia
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 6:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Nuclear Fallout in Colorado

 

 

All mail scanned by NAV

 

People may like Colorado weather, but really, are they totally oblivious to its extremely hazardous corporate/government activity? For decades, it's been on the list to avoid for its nuclear wasteland. What gives?

 

Natalia

 

 

A.V. KREBS, PROGRESSIVE POPULIST - On February 14 some 12,000
homeowners downwind from the shut down Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons
Plant, near Denver, Colorado won a $553.9 million judgment from a
federal jury after a four-month trial that charged the plant's former
operators --- Rockwell International Corp. and The Dow Chemical
Company --- of contaminating their land with plutonium released from
the plant. However, the defendants who operated the plant for the U.S.
Department of Energy from 1952 to 1989 will be indemnified by the
federal government, meaning that the DOE will pay any judgment and has
been paying the companies' legal fees. . . Rocky Flats opened in 1953,
and before it was shut down in 1989 it produced more than 60,000
nuclear weapon parts. Its closing came after the Federal Bureau of
Investigation raided the site, fearing that radioactive materials were
being illegally discharged.

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