SCURATGUNS

Nuclear Accidents are Inevitable

...AND OUR COMPANY HOPES THAT NO

ONE TAKES THOSE

SILLY RUMORS ABOUT RADIATION SERIOUSLY

Is the Nuclear Industry Accident-Prone?

Chalk River, Canada (1952) An explosion destroyed the core and leaked 4 million liters of radioactive coolant water.

Idaho Falls (1955) The first experimental breeder reactor suffered a core meltdown and came within a half-second of exploding. Given the size of the breeder, its explosion would have been equivalent to 100 pounds of TNT.

Idaho Falls (1961) The reactor at the Atomic Energy Commission's testing ground went out of control and killed three men-one impaled by part of a control rod. It was never clear what went wrong.

Rocky Flats, Denver Two serious fires gave workers up to 17 times the maximum exposure.

The twin cooling towers of the damaged nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island dominated pictures in the news media for over a week. They stand like gigantic pottery behind the houses of Middleton, strangely beautiful even though they are symbols only of death. No longer is nuclear holocaust dependent upon the vagueness of international politics. Now they sit quietly, even graciously, in the midst of our countryside. We see cows grazing, and behind them rises the alien horrors of the cooling towers. There are nuclear reactors everywhere. The nearest to us are the Davis-Besse plant in Port Clinton and the plant under construction at Perry.

Fven if we argue that our federal government "of the people and by the people" would never have a reason to deliberately blow up one of these plants, the "incident" at Three Mile Island should convince us that a serious nuclear accident, a meltdown or an cxplosion, will inevitably happen in the next ten years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, even after all the horrible publicity, still intends to "substantially increase" the use of nuclear power in the near. future. There is no place in this country, and increasingly around the world, where a person can be safe from radiation. Which reactor will kill which million people first is a matter of chance, a horrible game of Russian roulette. But it is not the Russians, not the conimunists, who have set these terrible bombs among us.

Unlike many people, Karen Silkwood did not try to hide from the problem. She did not quit her job at the Kerr-McGee plant and run away. She stayed and she fought hard and well. She died because she cared about life and other people mattered to her.

Karen Silkwood died for me. And you. She died for all of us.

One person in an anti-nuke demonstration in Germany held a sign saying, "We All Live in Pennsylvania." The plant at Three Mile Island vented radioactive steam into the atmosphere, as well as dumping four hundred thousand gallons of radioactive water into the Susquehanna River. If we don't stop nuclear power, all other political and humanist concerns will be academic. We have been lied to. We have been denied adequate access to the facts. We have been forced to accept nuclear power as necessary. Actually, I am told by an engineer at CEI that he could get as much power from two tons of garbage as from one ton of coal. The technology for using the methane gas from sewage to generate electricity has been known for a long time. Milwaukee has powered the city for nearly thirty years this way. We don't need nuclear reactors. If you want to help, contact someone in the list below. Remember Karen Silkwood.

North Shore Alert Box 5636

-Barbara Louise

Cleveland, Ohio 44101

861-6945 (days) 321-4416 (evenings) Western Reserve Alliance Legal Aid Society 1223 West Sixth Street Cleveland, Ohio 44113 621-4139

Task Force Against Nuclear Pollution Box 1817 Washington, D.C. 20013

Detroit (1966) The cooling system for the Fermi reactor jammed and the core melted. The radiation was so intense it took a team of scientists and engineers more than a year to open the reactor, which at any time could have detonated a low-yield nuclear.explosion. Estimates show that the Fermi reactor would have gone off with a force equal to 1,000 pounds of TNT and released tons of radioative materials into the air.

Morris, Illinois Radioactive iodine was released into the containment vessel at Commonwealth Edison's Dresden II Nuclear Power Plant after a meter gave a false signal and a monitor got its pen stuck. The amount released was 100 times the permissible level.

Vernon, Vermont A faulty valve at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant caused 83,000 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive tritium to be spilled into the Connecticut River.

Hanford, Washington (1970) The water cooling system failed and all 87 control rods failed to drop into the reactor to slow the runaway chain reaction. Luckily, a backup system prevented total disaster.

Decatur, Alabama (1975) An electrician using a candle to search for air leaks in the cable spreading room started a fire at the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Plant. After the fire was put out, it took 16 harrowing hours to bring the reactor itself under control. All the "fail-safe" systems had failed.

Sources: Seven Days, March 30, 1979 LNS, April 6, 1979

Silkwood Trial Exposes Kerr-McGee

The Karen Silkwood trial moved into its fourth week March 27 with continuing stories of industrial callousness toward worker safety. The $11.5 million suit is being heard in Oklahoma City. The Silkwood estate is alleging wanton and willful negligence on the part of Kerr-McGee in connection with the union activist's plutonium contamination the week before she died in a mysterious car crash.

Testimony two weeks ago from Ron Hammock, a former Kerr-McGee worker now an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman, indicated the lack of training given workers handling plutonium. Harnmock, who said he had never been told that cancer was a possible result of radiation work, testified that he and others had cleaned up a plutonium spill without respirators, had thrown radioactive rocks over the fence to dispose of them, and had buried contaminated fish from the nearby river.

Trying to refute Hammock's charges, chief counsel for Kerr-McGee, Bill Paul, produced signed documents indicating that workers had undergone training. Presented with a document allegedly signed by him, Hammock said he had never seen the document before and pointed out that his name was misspelled in the signature. Silkwood lawyers have requisitioned Kerr-McGee personnel records and have already uncovered two other examples of falsified signatures.

In other worker testimony, Landy Snodgrass, who was employed at the plant when he was 19, said he had once been ordered to clean out, with a wire brush, a bucket carrying radioactive debris. The brush disintegrated but not before part of it became lodged in Snodgrass' hand. Snodgrass also testified that he had been splashed with liquid waste. Snodgrass said he learned about the danger of plutonium-related cancer a week before the Silkwood trial from an article in the newspaper.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs also presented Ken Plowman, who worked in the Health Division at the plant but later resigned out of frustration with the standards there. Plowman testified there was no overall safety plan and that he was constantly going from one emergency to another.

Recalling one incident, Plowman said he had protested when a contaminated truck was constantly being driven into town and washed at a public carwash. Plowman also said that bags of uranium were hidden from Atomic Energy Commission inspectors.

Kerr-McGee's main defense in the current case is that Silkwood contaminated herself either accidentally or to dramatize her accusations. However, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union vice-president Tony Mazzocchi testified that Silkwood was part of a union plan to document and publicize cancer risks and safety violations at the plant. He said that Silk wood would not have contaminated herself and ruined the union's strategy.

In the first week of the trial, radiation experts Drs. John Goffman, Karl Morgan, and Charles Martell all testified on the hazards of plutonium and the lack of adequate safety standards at the plant. In addition, Morgan and Goffman asserted that there were no certified health physicists in the plant on a regular basis.

Kee-McGee's Cimarron plutonium plant where Silkwood was employed was forced to close in 1975.

Member of the Silkwood litigation team, pleased with the progress of the trial to date, estimate that the trial will end in the first or second week of May.

Excerpted from Dede Feldman Guardian, April 11, 1979

May, 1979/What She Wants/Page 9