NuclearCrimes.org - Article - 'KA-BOOM! This is just a test'

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NuclearCrimes.org

Article - 'KA-BOOM! This is just a test'

Jul 9th, 2007

By H. Lukas Green, Pridedepot.com

Idaho wildlife may need to duck for cover or find another place to live because the may just find themselves blown to bits out at the Idaho National Laboratory in the Arco desert area.

INL researchers plan to blow up car bombs and other terrorist-like contraptions in the 890-square-mile patch of desert to test the stability of structures hit by fanatics with bombs.

According to the INL website, the lab is constructing a “new multipurpose research and development explosives test range” that can handle “explosive events with a maximum charge weight of up to 20,000 pounds TNT, inert projectiles with a maximum flight of 8,000 meters and shoulder-fired rockets.”

The Associated Press reports that INL spokesman Ethan Huffman said regular tests would occur weekly and monthly. The AP quotes Huffman as saying, “This is purely defensive research.”

The idea is to test the stability of various U.S. infrastructures, such as power stations, dams and so-called “soft targets” such as shopping malls and sports complexes.

Not everyone is thrilled about blowing up the desert, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes expressed concerns about wildlife habitat, as well as potential damage to cultural resources in the east Idaho desert. The Tribes land is located nearby at the Fort Hall Reservation.

Although the leopard lizard and whipsnake have habitat in the area, Marilyn Manguba, the Nature Conservancy’s protections specialist for Idaho told the AP that INL has “set it up so that it will have a specific direction that the explosions go. They’ll be able to contain it.”

The area is also close to a sage grouse mating area and a nesting site for ferruginous hawks.

The AP also noted that Manguba is “a former INL contract worker who helped draft her group’s response to the DOE’s explosives plan.”

Human habitat is said to be about 60 miles from the blasting area.

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'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.'
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Tips for arguing with radiation PR people
When they belittle your claims...	by comparing any exposure from their facilities to...	You say or ask...
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	....background radiation...	'Background radiation doesn't mean it is harmless - it probably does cause a small portion of cancers. If you are adding to the background radiation, you are adding to someone's risk.' 'How many more defective children will be born and how many cancers will be induced by this increase in 'background radiation'?
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...flying in a airplane...	'That is not a realistic comparison. Radionuclides in fallout are incorporated into our bodies (tissue, bones). Most of the radiation from cosmic rays is external.'
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	... a chest x-ray...	'You don't ingest or inhale the radiation source from x-rays. An x-ray lasts for a millisecond. Fallout lingers in body tissue and bones for decades .'
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...eating a banana	'Potassium-40 is a naturally occurring radioisotope that has been present in foods and the environment on Earth for billions of years. Potassium 40, which at normal body levels delivers an annual internal dose to the soft tissue of 20 millirem and 5 millirem to the bone, is not as hazardous as many forms of anthropogenic (meaning: artificial; manmade) radiation for several reasons. One main reason is, unlike many types of manmade fission products, its environmental levels rarely peak to hundreds or thousands of times normal levels. Since 1945, we've seen a cycle of drastic rising and falling of levels of environmental anthropogenic radiation with nuclear accidents, non-accident releases, radioactivity blowing around, etc... Another reason: some forms of anthropogenic radiation in the body do much more damage than potassium-40 for the same quantity of radiation. Dose tables printed in a 1970s document (NUREG 1.109 rev. 1 Oct. '77) by the NRC paint a spooky, yet realistic, picture for what happens to a radiation sensitive organ, the thyroid, when iodine-131 is consumed. A NRC formula indicates that 1,000 picocuries of iodine-131 gives a dose of 80 millirems to the adult thyroid and 140 millirems to the thyroid of an infant. Consider: one liter of 'Sunrise Dairy' (Kansas) milk in April 2011 had 1,518 pCi/L of Iodine-131. That was from Fukushima.
...about your exposure to fallout from nuke plants or weapons testing fallout...	...standing next to a smoke alarm....	'You don't ingest or inhale the Americium-241 from smoke alarms. You're talking about the small gamma component of Am-241. That's external exposure.'