------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ENVIRONMENTAL NUCLEAR DISASTER MADE IN USA By Heather Cottin U.S. charges that others illegally produce "Weapons of Mass Destruction" rings false when the Pentagon has the preponderance of the nuclear weapons that menace the rest of the nations on Earth. The weapons themselves, as well as the storage facilities and laboratories for them, threaten residents of nearly every state in the Union. According to a 2002 report by the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, the United States has produced 67,500 nuclear missiles since 1951. The cost: $5.5 trillion. A Brookings Institution study, the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project, reveals that as of August 2002 some 10 million acres of land around the globe housed U.S. nuclear weapons. Almost all that land, 15,654 square miles of it, is in the United States. In Montana alone there are 50 of the W62/Minuteman III warheads, 400 of the W78/Minuteman III warheads, and a missile field that covers an additional 24,000 square miles in that state. Missouri has a missile field that covers 10,000 square miles. At the Georgia Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base/Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic there are 1,600 of the W76/Trident I warheads, 400 of the W88/Trident II warheads and 160 of the W80-0/Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles. New Mexico is filled with every imaginable nuclear device and installation. Kirt land Air Force Base and the Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Com plex hold 85 of the B61-7 gravity bombs, 600 of the B61-3, -4, -10 gravity bombs, 365 of the W80-1/Air-Launched Cruise Missiles, 450 of the W56/Minuteman II warheads, 60 of the W78/Minuteman III warheads, 550 of the W69/Short-Range Attack Missiles, and 400 of the W84/ Ground-Launched Cruise Missile warheads. The Natural Resources Defense Council's Nuclear Weapons Databook Project reports that 43 metric tons of plutonium are in weapons stored in the United States. Some 12,067 dismantled plutonium "pits" are stored at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The states with the most nuclear weapons are: New Mexico, with 2,450; Georgia, with 2,000; Washington, with 1,685; Nevada, with 1,350; and North Dakota, with 1,140. (Washington, D.C.: Natural Resources Defense Council, March 1998) COSTS MONEY AND LIVES The cost of maintaining this nuclear arsenal in the United States is $35 billion per year, the Brooking study shows. (U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project.) These funds could be used for food stamp programs or urban schools, Medicaid or libraries. The cost is also in human lives. >From 1946 to 1970 approximately 90,000 canisters of radioactive waste were jettisoned in 50 ocean dumps up and down the East and West Coasts of the United States. The Critical Mass Energy Project of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, Inc., tabulated 122 accidents involving the transport of nuclear material in 1979, including 17 involving radioactive contamination. In 1979 a dam holding radioactive uranium mill tailings broke, sending an estimated 100 million gallons of radioactive liquids and 1,100 tons of solid wastes downstream at Church Rock, N.M. The Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Components Plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., has reportedly released 1,200 tons of mercury, as well as PCBs and heavy metals into the region's air, soil and streams. Between 1944 and 1966, the Hanford reactors in Washington state discharged billions of gallons of liquids and billions of cubic meters of gases containing plutonium and other radioactive contaminants into the Columbia River. The cost of clean ing up was estimated to be $48.5 billion. In 1997 a 40-gallon tank of toxic chemicals (stored illegally at the U.S. government's Hanford Engineer works) exploded, causing the release of 20,000-30,000 gallons of plutonium-contaminated water. (www.ratical.org) Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the Southwest contained uranium and the continent's richest supplies of mineral wealth. With the complicity of the U.S. government the energy companies formed tribal councils, controlled by their corporation lawyers, whose main purpose was to sign leases for the mineral-rich land of the Hopi and Dineh people. The Native people who then worked in the uranium mines are now dying of uranium poisoning and cancer at rates much higher than the general population. Uranium mining pollutes and irradiates the Southwest's water. In 1984 a flash flood washed four tons of high-grade uranium ore into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. A September 1990 flood carried water from uranium mines on the canyon's rims to the floor below, destroying the homes and farms of the Havasupai and Hualapai people. (Uranium Mining at the Grand Canyon, Southwest Research and Information Center) U.S. tests and nuclear weapon transport have led to nuclear accidents in Panama, the Marshall Islands, France, Germany, and England. U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons has coincided with an increase in cancer and birth defects in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Vieques, Puerto Rico. The Bush administration has been pressuring for a renewal of the nuclear power industry and for upgrades of the U.S. nu clear arsenal. This means more profits for the uranium mining and milling industry, as well as the nuclear weapons manufacturers and the nuclear power industry. n - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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