Décadas de pruebas de armas nucleares y otros experimentos radiactivos han herido o matado a científicos, soldados y transeúntes inocentes. Muchos de ellos y sus familiares nunca han recibido compensación, pero nuevas iniciativas pueden cambiar eso. Un ex miembro del personal del Senado y experto en el programa nuclear estadounidense analiza sus efectos nocivos y cómo el gobierno los abordó (o no). “En busca de justicia para las víctimas de la radiación del programa nuclear estadounidense”.
There was an important vote coming up that day in June 1992 on the floor of the US Senate. My boss, Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), was offering an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that would terminate the Safeguard C readiness program. Safeguard C was meant to enable the United States to quickly resume atmospheric nuclear weapons testing if necessary, whether in the Pacific or at the country’s nuclear test site in Nevada. Glenn’s amendment followed a year-long investigation I had conducted as a staff member for the US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs regarding the conduct of the US nuclear weapons program in the Marshall Islands.
The radiological legacy of US nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands remains today and will persist for many years to come. The most severe effects were visited upon the people of the Rongelap atoll in 1954, following a very large thermonuclear explosion in the Bravo test series that deposited life-threatening quantities of radioactive fallout on their homeland. They received more than three times the estimated external dose delivered to the most heavily exposed people living near the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
Many Rongelap residents suffered from tissue-destructive effects of radiation and subsequent radiation-induced diseases. After being evacuated for a time, in 1957, they were returned to their homeland—even though officials and scientists working for the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had determined that radiation doses would significantly exceed those allowed for citizens of the United States. The desire to study humans living in a radiation-contaminated environment appeared to be a major element of the decision to allow the Rongelap people to return home. In a transcript of a previously secret meeting where it was decided to return the Rongelap people to their atoll, a scientist stated that an island contaminated by the 1954 H-Bomb tests (apparently a reference to the Rongelap atoll) was “by far the most contaminated place in the world.”
He further concluded that, “it would be very interesting to go back and get good environmental data … so as to get a measure of the human uptake, when people live in a contaminated environment… Now, data of this type has never been available. While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do, civilized people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.” [Emphasis added.]
In 1985, the people of Rongelap fled their atoll after discovering a suppressed Energy Department study done in 1978 that found that the levels of contamination in their homeland were comparable to the Bikini atoll, where numerous nuclear devices had detonated. The Bikini people were returned home in 1969 but had to evacuate again in 1978 after radiation exposures were found to be excessive.
The Rongelap people fled for good reason. In 1982, during the closing phase of negotiations between the United States and the nascent Republic of the Marshall Islands over a Compact of Free Association, the Energy Department secretly established a policy to eliminate radiation protection standards, so as to not interfere with the potential resumption of weapons testing in the Marshalls.
In the fall of 1982, the US Energy Department placed the Marshall Islands health and environmental research program under the direct control of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program. At the time, the United States nuclear arsenal was undergoing a steep buildup. As part of this effort, the readiness capability established in 1963 to resume atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific region, known as Safeguard C, was given a high priority. In this regard, the Marshall Islands medical and environmental programs became part of the Safeguard C readiness program.[1]
Once under the control of the Safeguard C program in the Department of Energy’s Office of Defense programs, key policies and practices were quietly terminated—most notably the adherence to previously adopted radiation exposure standards for the cleanup of the atolls and restrictions on the consumption of contaminated foods. Instead, the Energy Department advised that radiation protection should be based on choices made by the people of the Marshall Islands about the risks and benefits of eating local food—as explained by the Energy Department.
Without radiation exposure standards, Rongelap people began eating local food—and receiving sudden and alarming increases in radiation. These circumstances were uncovered in 1991 by the Committee on Governmental Affairs, which was chaired by Senator Glenn and where I served as senior investigator.[2]
Glenn was particularly interested in our findings, since his first combat as a young Marine fighter pilot was over Rongelap during World War II, providing air support for troops and natives fighting the Japanese. Before the vote on an amendment to eliminate the United States’ preparations for new atmospheric nuclear testing, he convinced the Energy Department to reinstate the food restrictions and to establish the same radiation protection standards on Rongelap as for Americans.
That afternoon, I briefed Glenn ahead of the vote. As I sat in front of his desk, he pulled out a personal note from a fellow senator and read it out loud. “It’s time to rein in that Alvarez guy,” it said. “John, he’s going way beyond your headlights.” His face then lit up in a grin, as he crumpled the note and tossed it in the trash can. “Let’s go do this,” he said.
But in my haste to get to work that day, I left the house wearing my usual coat and tie but absent-mindedly also wearing my running shoes. Very soon after taking my seat with staff on the Senate floor, a person working for the sargeant at arms came up in a state of distress. “You have to leave immediately,” he declared in a polite southern drawl. “Running shoes are forbidden on the senate floor.”
After I protested, he replied matter-of-factly, “If we let you wear running shoes, then the next thing you know, the gals will do the same, and this will destroy the decorum.” I reminded him of the era when spittoons were everywhere on the floor of this august body. He then dropped his polite tone and threatened to summon the Capitol Police.
I relented and ran back to my office in the Dirksen Building and confiscated a pair of well-worn, over-sized brown loafers from an EPA detailee. When I rushed back, it was all for naught. The managers of the Defense Authorization bill accepted Senator Glenn’s amendment without debate. After 45 years, the program that aimed to keep the United States ready to resume atmospheric nuclear weapons testing was finally stricken from the books. The ban on running shoes was lifted some 25 years later, after women senators brought about this change.
Fuente: https://thebulletin.org
