(These reflections are reprinted from Devil’s
Tango: How I Learned The Fukushima Step By Step which I published on the first anniversary of the Fukushima
catastrophe, an Hiroshima-Nagasaki under a different name.)
Ever since
1945 when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
much has been written and spoken about August 6. The gist of those remarks can
be summed up as “Never Again.” Most Americans are not aware that the U.S. is
conducting a nuclear war right now, and has been conducting nuclear war since
1999.
In Kosovo, in Iraq,
in Libya, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia, the United States and its dark proxy,
NATO, have made use of depleted uranium ordnance. It is used in Abrams tanks,
A-10 warplanes, and Bradley fighting vehicles, in bombshells, tank armor
plating, aircraft ballast in Boeings 747s, Bunker Busters, and fragmentation
mines (otherwise referred to as “anti-personnel devices”). At least 15 other
countries hold supplies of DU. In all, 320 tons were used in the 1991 Gulf War;
an appalling 90 tons were used in only the first 24 hours of the “shock and
awe” carpet bombing of Baghdad when uranium aerosols were widely dispersed in
the atmosphere and blown across Europe so that 9 days later, on March 28,
elevated levels of uranium exceeding Environmental Agency thresholds were
picked up in various areas in Great Britain, a clear-cut case of the chickens
coming home to roost.
WHAT is DU?
Depleted uranium (DU)
is an alloy of the radioactive, heavy metal uranium, with a lower content of
the fissile isotope U-235 than naturally-occurring uranium. It is a byproduct of
the uranium enrichment process that isolates the more radioactive U-235 isotope
for use in nuclear bombs and in nuclear reactors as fuel. It has a typical
isotopic content of 99.75% U-238 by weight, 0.25% U-235, and 0.005% U-234 with
a half life of 4.5 billion, 700 million and 245,500 years respectively (see
Wikipedia. “Depleted uranium”).
Its highly ignitable
properties allow the DU penetrator to ignite on impact, generating extremely
high temperatures. As it pierces its target, it leaves burned-off material
behind, dispersing DU dust into the environment. The quantity of aerosol
production is proportional to the DU mass within the projectile and the
strength of the impact. Up to 70% of DU contained in the projectiles is
aerosolized on impact when the DU catches fire. The explosion generates
temperatures of between 3,000° and 6,000° Celsius. Nanoparticles so generated
are smaller than 10 microns in size and act more like a gas than a particle.
Because they remain air and windborne for long periods of time, they constitute
the most serious threat to any human population close to battle areas. Marion
Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20
years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, identified DU weapons as “dirty bombs in every
way.” (Dipnote. Official blog of the U.S. Department of State).
WHY is DU USED?
DU is used by both
the US and UK military for four main reasons:
• it solves the problem of disposal of the
nation’s huge stockpile of radioactive waste. it gets rid of anywhere from
200,000 to 300,000 tons of death ash the nuclear industry has so far
accumulated on earth.
• it’s cheap and in
plentiful supply;
• it’s effective in
military engagement because its high density and self-sharpening qualities
enable it to penetrate hard targets easily; it burns on impact, increasing its
ability to destroy enemy targets.
It contaminates
countries we don’t like. But it’s not out of our backyard: returning troops
from various theaters of war bring it home—to the United States (and other NATO
countries), in the form of radiation sickness (otherwise known as Gulf
Disease), cancers, a high incidence of leukemia and birth defects among their
offspring.
A COUPLE of DU LINKS
As early as 1953,
Monsanto’s then-vice president, Dr. Charles Thomas, pointed out that nuclear
plants could not be a profitable undertaking unless they provided bomb-grade
plutonium to the atomic weapons industry. He advocated creating a dual-purpose
plutonium reactor, one which could produce plutonium for weapons and
electricity for commercial use.
Depleted uranium, as
the by-product of the refinement process necessary to create both nuclear fuel and
nuclear bombs provides the deadly component of DU-tipped ordnance used by the
U.S. and NATO in its on-going nuclear wars. Thus it links the nuclear
industry’s two arms, the energy and war making arms. It links both arms of the
nuclear war-making industry as well: Low profile use of DU, and high profile
atomic weapons.
“The Department of
Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Pentagon
together plan to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize: all
aspects of the nuclear weapons stockpile: The bombs, and warheads, the
production facilities, the delivery systems, and command and control systems.”
according to Tri-Valley Cares Spring 2016 newsletter. The 1,000 nuclear-tipped Long Range Stand Off
(LRSO) the Air Force plans to field. Indistinguishable from a conventional
warhead, it is designed as a first-strike
weapon.
As the U.S. moves
into the next selection cycle, either corporate candidate when selected will
have a finger on the nuclear trigger. Whereas Trump’s nuclear track record is
unknown, the Democratic option is known to be trigger happy, the author of two
failed states, namely Libya and Honduras, the country with the highest homicide
rate in the world. As a great friend of Israel, she has gone on record saying
Iran must be obliterated. Never since the
Cuban Missile Crisis has the U.S. been closer to experiencing a nuclear war. I
like to remember that Hitler (kill record upwards of 6 million), compared to
Stalin (kill record over 21 million) was the lesser of two evils.
BIRTH DEFECTS
At the heart of the DU
nuclear nightmare is something no one wants to talk about: birth defects, a
whitewash word for children born without the attributes we recognize as human.
They are the hidden casualties of irradiation in the womb. Thousands of these
beings draw breath in the darkened rooms and corridors of orphanages, state
institutions, and in families brave enough—or poor enough—to have to keep them,
these constant reminders of a man-made tragedy that can never be undone. These
beings live in concealment in the Ukraine as the result of Chernobyl—and in
Kosovo and Iraq, and wherever else NATO’s occupying armies have irradiated the
soil by dropping DU-tipped bunker busters and firing tank-piercing ordnance.
Almost every documentary
film made of Chernobyl allows the viewer their full moment to recognize the
image content, sufficient light to make it out—with one exception: birth
defects, beings born with horrifying malformations: three heads, no eyes,
lifeless limbs twisting out of rag-doll torsos. These are the images mankind
strives to keep itself from seeing—these, and images of death and dying. These
are the dark secrets kept in the subterranean vaults buried beneath the bright
and lying surfaces of living. (No other writer that I know of has dealt with
buried horror more truthfully than Ursula LeGuin, in her short story titled
“Those Who Walk Away from Omelos.”) Yet every day, in our children’s toys,
these images abound: the face of swamp man; Mr. Potato Head (minus the popping
Disney eyes that make it ‘cute’). Picture these images now but with your own
astonished eyes. Recognize in them the misshapen, grotesque beings that live in
the hundreds of thousands, shut away in orphanages where none but the merciful
with their forgiving eyes and hands manage to find it in their hearts to care
for them.
How might a woman
feel giving birth to a child with such deformities? In 2011 a Bay Area
newspaper described one such woman, a woman accused of leading her
four-year-old, severely handicapped child up four storeys in a garage elevator
and pushing him off the roof into the street below. He suffered from
torticolis, a twisting of the neck, and a condition resulting in a severely
misshapen head. To reporters, her weeping husband said his wife should not be
held responsible. She did not want this child. After his birth she suffered
severe postpartum depression. He said how much he loved her, and that he could
not find it in his heart to blame her.
Now imagine
appointing one woman whose tragedy it was to be caught pregnant, especially in
her first trimester, when Chernobyl blew, or when Fukushima blew, or during the
years of massive Pacific weapons
“testing.” Imagine appointing her to join the panel of engineers charged with
designing the “new generation of reactors” trumpeted by the Obama
Administration, or the board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). What effect would it have on all
those men sitting on their boards— the suited hijackers of our planet—to be met
with these silent women, holding their atrociously deformed children in their
arms? Imagine these women forcing that child into the arms of each board member
to examine and caress.
What does it mean for
me today, the one hundred sixty-fourth day following our planetary nuclear
catastrophe, to plumb the darkened dungeon of my own imagination, the place I
have resisted from the beginning, to reach its darkest heart? What do I feel,
I, a young-bearing animal, a woman, a mother? At my deepest heart, I feel rage
boiling up, a cyclone which, if I let it, would explode, vaporize the walls
that contain me. How can I possibly meet this rage without dying of it? How can
I stop it from tearing me apart?
(reprinted in part
from my book Devi’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by tap, published on
the first anniversary of the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi.
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