What is Idealist.ws? 

Idealist is a grassroots organization that endeavors to slow and ultimately reverse the tide of global corporate and governmental suppression and cover-up of the environmental and health effects of human-made radiation that now contaminates every place on Earth.  

Our philosophy at Idealist is that unburying and disseminating this 'inconvenient' public knowledge will be the key to unlocking a nuclear-free world.

More here

Read Today's NRC Event Notification Report

March 30, 1955

NEW YORK (U.P.) - An atomic sleuth reported Tuesday that mysterious radioactive fallouts have rained down on New York City this year from sources other than the nuclear explosions in Nevada. The radioactivity was slight enough to be considered harmless to humans but large enough to indicate nuclear activity somewhere in the world, he said.

Physicist M. Reiss said he would need much more information before he could tell whether the several unexplained fallouts resulted from harmless leaks in atomic piles, seepage from improperly burned radioactive waste or atomic explosions in Russia or other countries.

Reiss keeps his highly sensitive equipment on window sills of his office atop a building at Fifth Ave. and 42nd St. and carries several recording devices in his car. They have recorded fallouts after every known nuclear explosion since 1949, as well as after the still undisclosed atomic activities early this year.

Top News:  

PRESS RELEASE:

For immediate release -

July 8, 2010

For further information, contact:
Andrew Kishner, info@idealist.ws

NTS, You Can't Have Your Nuke-Readiness and Solar Farm Too

The DOE announced today that after consulting with a wide range of stakeholders, it and the Interior Department will be building an expansive research facility called the 'Solar Demonstration Zone' in a southwest portion of the Nevada Test Site.  The new research center, whose ground will be broken in 2011, will be tasked with developing cutting edge solar power technology and presumably will be home to dozens of football fields, or more, of solar panels (more below on why that's important).

To put into context what the heck this is all about, we must go back to October of 2009 when Senator Harry Reid introduced - and convinced a slam-dunk majority of the Senate to pass - a resolution that called for an expanded vision and 'modernized mission' of the Nevada Test Site.  In addition to suggesting a name change to the Nevada Test Site (Idealist has some ideas...), the resolution called for a new mission for the NTS that would contain many seemingly hypocritical facets, such as 'developing methods to verify treaties and reduce nuclear security threats.'  Another of Reid's ideas was to site a global center for non-proliferation studies at the NTS.  Idealist finds all of this laughable because subcritical tests, which are proliferation-problematic, are conducted periodically in tunnels under the NTS, and, also, the NTS has arguably the worst radiation monitoring network that would never be used to verify test ban treaties.  Does it occur to anyone that these subcrits undermine proliferation efforts?  Or treaties?  Or faith in test ban agreements?  Perhaps China (and others; N.K.?) doesn't trust us and they don't know if we are conducting genuine subcritical experiments or fission pops, aka tiny nuclear explosions.  Think about it.
 
So this is about Mr. Reid mostly, in our opinion, and his enthusiasm for 'rebranding' the site, a potentially huge employer in the future [read: more jobs, elect me, jobs, elect me].  The fed's press release includes a disturbing passage that we assume Reid inserted: 'The Nevada Test Site can and should be a proving ground for new ideas and for attracting new clean energy industries that will help our state and country compete globally.'  A proving ground for new ideas?  Really!?  What about the idea of cleaning up the damn place first?  It is the uncleanest place on Earth.

There are a number of legal issues regarding this new park: Who will own this land?  How will it be approved vis-a-vis federal 'land use'?  The land of the 'great solar park,' like 99% of the NTS, is still technically owned by the BLM.  It all was withdrawn from the public domain for the purpose of 'weapons testing' and never returned, except for a parcel of just over 700 acres that, under a sneaky, unpublicized move completed last year, the DOE managed to acquire full title for a new mixed-rad-waste facility in the eastern part of the NTS.  The permit for the waste dump is still pending, but the DOE's got the land title.
 
The answers:  A legal memo forged between the Dept. of Interior and the DOE makes this 'energy park' possible.  The memo states that a section of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act 'established a process whereby the Secretary of the Interior may withdraw public lands or modify the withdrawal of public lands for a specific use by another Federal agency.' In this case, the DOI would withdraw the lands withdrawn for "weapons testing" and modify the use for 'generation of electric energy.'  This modification would entail a re-withdrawal, which the memo elucidates further: 'The Participants will cooperate in the pursuit of a withdrawal for the demonstration area or such other land status adjustments as may be deemed appropriate.'
 
Next legal question: How will this solar park will be addressed by NEPA, or by the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement that is already undergoing a multi-year completion process?  Regarding NEPA-related issues, the memo states 'The Participants will coordinate, as necessary, in a timely fashion in the preparation of any NEPA documents that may be associated with demonstration projects at the area or areas.'  Perhaps this will be streamlined into the current EIS process, or perhaps another NEPA process.
 
But all of these concerns and questions pale when one asks the million dollar question, and a quite commonsensical one: won't nuclear tests crack solar panels?  How can you detonate nukes under the NTS without destroying square miles and square miles and square miles of solar panels??  (Apparently, the solar research park will be 25 square miles large; bigger than Manhattan.)  Will the dark cloud of testing resumption that has been hovering over the test site for years be finally lifted?  Or will they remove the solar farm - temporarily, panel by panel - when nuclear testing is ever resumed?  You can't have your nuclear bomb proving range and your solar proving range too.

Here's a one thousand dollar question: how much of the land is contaminated by nuclear testing legacy fallout?  And how bad?  (The 25 sq. miles hasn't yet been selected, but will be in a few months.) 

In the final analysis, there are many convincing reasons why a solar park, or treaty verification center, or anything on the NTS other than a cleanup-related-building or trailer, is a really bad idea: 

Legally speaking, the land that the NTS sits on is BLM land that should be cleaned up and returned to the BLM, if it can.  If it can, the land should be ours - the public - to decide its use.  If it can't be cleaned up, then it should sit there, off limits, and be dubbed a national sacrifice zone.  Off limits.
 
Ethically speaking, if we aim to set up anything unrelated to clean-up on the NTS, we think it should be one thing: a downwinder research institute.  Anything else is a moral slap in the face of all the people who are dead or dying from downwinder diseases that were the result of nuclear weapons testing and who are witnesses to a federal government that doesn't do a damn thing about or for them and their suffering.   As you may notice, we don't have a downwinder institute.  But we will have a solar farm on the NTS??
 
Finally, practically speaking, a solar demo zone, or any other non-clean-up related venture at the NTS, will be impacted in a bad way by all the radionuclides sifting about on the NTS, and certainly will be impacted badly from the physical damage resulting from nuclear tests or DTRA's ongoing Divine Strake babies.  Even now, when companies are testing their radiation monitoring equipment at the NTS, they get tons of "false positives" - yes, the sensors go off when they're not supposed to because alpha particles are floating about. 
 
Long story short, clean up the NTS.  Then let the public decide what to do with it.  What Reid is doing is akin to proposing raising chickens in a feral Doberman Pincher dog-run, or putting a jackhammer training school in the basement of a library.  It is folly.  And it is a moral outrage considering what we should be setting up at the NTS: a state-of-the-art cleanup facility and downwinder memorial and institute.

DOI/DE MEMO: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/solar_demonstration_mou.pdf

Test site will get name change: Revision to reflect its 'expanded mission, Las Vegas Review Journal 
http://www.lvrj.com/news/test-site-will-get-name-change-63659772.html
 
DOE/DOI/Sen Reid press release
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/news_detail.html?news_id=16146
 

July 1, 2010 - NPR lies about fallout in their story on 'Starfish Prime' (updates made to HANE page)

July 1, 2010 - Colorado appeals court restores right of residents to request hearings on drilling applications in thorny Rulison district- see end of 'Low-tritium strategy backfires' section here

June 25, 2010 - The six U.S. Senators, who in April 2010 introduced S. 3224, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Amendments of 2010, today sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee requesting a hearing on the introduced bill.  

Read their press release and letter here. 

Please visit our RECA page. Also contact your senators to thank them for requesting this hearing.   

June 7, 2010 - Soviets used nukes to put out runaway gas wells.... but on one occasion created hell on Earth

Don't believe a damn word from any nuclear power about their professed triumphs with peacetime nuclear explosions, including the former Soviet Union, which - via its surviving nuclear 'scientists' - claims to have had successes using nukes to extinguish natural gas calamities.  It was - and still is - in the respective federal interests of Russia and the U.S. to withhold any information (especially radiation and accident data) about their atomic testing programs that could be damaging to their reputations and their treasuries.  So, we don't know the whole picture - we are only given pieces of the puzzle.  It is foolhardy to believe anything the United States or the former Soviet Union has said about their nuclear test programs - it is probably safer to assume the worst rather than the best.

When it comes to information on atomic testing in the former Soviet Union, much of this information must to be taken with a grain of salt.  Data about Soviet 'peacetime' tests is meager and often contradictory.  We do know - or maybe not! - that one of the Soviet peacetime nuke attempts to extinguish natural gas calamities came with a mushroom cloud.  According to a recent article in Oil and Gas Eurasia titled "Remembering a Nuclear Explosion to Close a Gas Well in the USSR", an accident occurred when a new gas well was being drilled in Ukraine's Krasnograd district in July 1971 but the gas shot through to the surface, fanning a fire of flames tens of meters high.  The gas-fire was resistant to conventional extinguishing techniques and so the decision was made to use a nuke, which was placed in a shaft drilled about two kilometers beneath the surface.  According to the article 'About 400 people lived just 400-500 meters from the well in Pershotravneve village...but they knew nothing of the planned nuclear blast.'  The nuke test, dubbed 'Fakel,' took place on July 10, 1972, and the article states that 'A huge, dirty radioactive mushroom cloud arose over a kilometer high and then quietly floated off towards Sanzhar (Poltava Region, Ukraine). Eye-witnesses recall that as the shadow passed everyone felt as if the world was ending.   And then there was a deathly silence.'  

It turns out the nuke test's shockwave and rock debris from a volcanic eruption of gas (a kilometer high!) turned the village partly into a ruin. 'It took a year to rebuild, and still the villagers did not know what exactly had happened.  People living in other villages nearby said no-one ever warned them of the danger of radiation or told them not to eat their fruits or vegetables or drink their cows' milk. But they learned later - apparently someone in the village was tuning in to the Voice of America.'

During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government conducted several 'peacetime' atomic experiments in a smattering of U.S. states under the banner of the "Plowshare Program" that offered the promise of harnessing the power of the atomic bomb to overcome some of America's greatest engineering problems.  The A-bomb, according to the 'bomb-men,' could be used to excavate harbors, build a new Panama Canal, blast highway passes through mountains, and even tap into untouchable oil and gas formations.  It was in the gas fields of western Colorado that the flame of the Plowshare Project burned its brightest until her citizens helped put it out for good.  Atomic bombs several times the power of the one that destroyed Hiroshima were used in the underground explosion experiments dubbed 'Rulison' (1969) and 'Rio Blanco' (1973) that were intended to 'liberate' natural gas trapped in tight rock formations.  The Rulison project was a success, according to the feds, however local city councils ruled that the gas was too radioactive to use.   The feds, rashly, burned (flared) the contaminated gas into the atmosphere, releasing nuclear contaminants into Colorado's food and water supplies.  The test dubbed 'Rio Blanco,' which comprised three 33-kiloton nuclear bombs, failed to create the desired effect and resulted in significant surface contamination at the site.  Although Coloradans were lucky that these explosions didn't cause earthquakes, or horribly vent, or contaminate the Colorado River system, they were fed up - so much so that they voted in the mid-1970s to amend their state constitution to stipulate that the voters will have the final say, should the federal government wish to explode nuclear bombs in Colorado for the 'public good.'    

No nuclear bomb has ever done any good for humanity, nor will it ever.  Should a nuclear bomb miraculously succeed in stopping BP's gusher, it will come with great unknown and unanticipated costs (i.e., seismic-wave induced liquifaction of unstable, unconsolidated sediments on the Gulf floor that could trigger landslides and wreck nearby underwater structures such as pipes and other well heads and other BOPs!), and ultimately be a Giant Leap Backwards For Humankind.

Sadly, the only way for 'the people' to quickly take control of the situation in the Gulf that is being made worse by absent leadership, corporate greediness, media kowtowing to a corporation that's too big to !*#$ with, and psychopathic problem-solving means (dispersants, potentially 'nukes') is through the federal courts. One group has already served BP with a notice of intent to sue over the dispersant's impact on wildlife: more here.  But what is needed is injunctive relief to stop application/dumping of hazardous chemicals into the oceans.  And then another injunction to stop the imminent deployment of a nuke. 

June 4, 2010 - A CNN iReporter from Northern Utah is questioning the startling incidence of thyroid anomalies in her family and blames her kin's health problems on radioactive fallout she suspects lurks in her family's water well.  She came to this conclusion after ruling out other radiation exposure routes she was convinced couldn't possibly relate to her.  Why?  The iReporter is confident that since her family's home was not in the current RECA boundaries ('one county too far North for "downwinder syndrome"') and that she and her sisters "are too young for direct exposure to the radioactive fallout," that she is not a 'downwinder' in the classical sense.  

Although many of Utah's water sources are contaminated from weapons testing fallout, the iReporter ignored a more likely culprit for the thyroid diseases that plagues her family and thousands like hers: direct nuclear test fallout exposure, such as breathing iodine-131 in air and drinking iodine 131-contaminated milk.  Fallout from nuclear weapons testing - including thyroid-damaging radioiodines - was deposited throughout the Northern Hemisphere and especially in Northern Utah at dangerous levels even through the mid-1990s!  Aboveground testing at the Nevada Test Site ended in late 1962, but notoriously bad 'ventings' in 1970, 1986 and a slew of other years released millions of Curies of radioactivity across the nation.  Up until about 15 years ago, Iodine-131 regularly contaminated our nation's food chain (and that of the entire globe) as underground nuclear tests by the U.S., the former Soviet Union, China, France, etc...vented and spewed their poisons across our agricultural landscape.  

Read more in The Black and White World of RECA.

May 23, 2010 - The Legacy of U.S. Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands by Robert Alvarez.  

'In 1982, a policy was secretly established by the Energy department during the closing phase of negotiations between the United States and the nascent Republic of the Marshall Islands over the Compact of Free Association to eliminate radiation protection standards, so as to not interfere with the potential resumption of weapons testing. This resulted in a sudden and alarming increase in radiation doses to the Rongelap people eating local food.'

Read Idealist's (more detailed) analysis on Rongelap's imminent doomsday-ic resettlement issue here

May 22, 2010 - 'Obama's Oil Gusher Science Team Has "One Good Idea" ', OpEd News, by Andrew Kishner 

Using a nuke on the gulf oil gusher would violate a number of international treaties, obviously.  However, all the treaties are 'breakable,' and the soonest 'they' could nuke the gusher -without gaining special permission by the UNSC - would be 3 months from now.  These treaties include:

• Seabed Arms Control Treaty - entered into force in 1972; prohibits placement of nukes on the ocean floor.  Article I of the treaty states: 'The States Parties to this Treaty undertake not to emplant or emplace on the seabed and the ocean floor and in the subsoil thereof beyond the outer limit of a seabed zone, as defined in article II [twelve-mile outer limit of the coastal zone], any nuclear weapons or any other types of weapons of mass destruction...'  However, Article VIII states that 'Each State Party to this Treaty shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other States Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it considers to have jeopardized its supreme interests.'  

• Partial/Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) - entered into force in 1963; prohibits nuke testing in the atmosphere, underwater and  in outer space.  Article IV states, however, that 'Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty three months in advance.'

• Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET) - entered into force in 1990 (but signed in Washington and Moscow in 1976), prohibits any single nuclear explosion with a yield over 150 kilotons and prohibits 'group' explosions having an aggregate yield over 150 kilotons unless 'the Parties agree on specific procedures to implement appropriate provisions of this Protocol so as to permit identification of each individual explosion and determination of the yield of each individual explosion in the group' in which case they can blow up bombs totaling 1.5 MEGATONS (1,500 kilotons).  The treaty states that 'Each Party undertakes to prohibit, to prevent and not to carry out at any place under its jurisdiction or control, and further undertakes not to carry out, participate or assist in carrying out anywhere...any explosion except in compliance with the provisions of the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and other international agreements entered into by that Party.'

 May 6, 2010 - Radiation vibe - A series of supposed spikes in local radioactivity pits activists against scientists and federal officials - By Jason Whited @ Las Vegas CityLife 

More about the March gamma spiking in Las Vegas here.  

April 30, 2010 - 'The Downwinders,' a full-length indy feature film by Lance Brittan (now in post-production), which we critically discuss on Idealist here, now has a trailer, a DVD cover (wow, I didn't know there's grass LIKE THAT in Dixie) and a Facebook page.

April 29, 2010 - Senators now have compassion, for downwinders, now what? @ OpedNews

April 29, 2010 - Robert Celestial of the Pacific Association of Radiation Survivors told Radio New Zealand Int'l that the RECA timeframes are misleading:

“I think we should bring up the fact that the dates they indicated in the bill are detonation dates instead of exposure dates. So that’s something interesting that I think I will bring up in Congress when we ever get up to the committee, is that radiation doesn’t stop just because you stop detonating.”  - article

April 25, 2010 - The Black and White World of RECA @ OpedNews

April 20, 2010 - Bipartisan bill introduced to expand RECA to help victims of nuclear weapons and uranium development

Matheson, unlike Hatch, supports downwinder bill (Deseret News)

April 2010- Stop the mixed low-level nuclear waste facility from being built at the NTS on over 700 acres of land that the DOE sneakily took from perpetual-public-ownership to become DOE-titled land.  Trucks, with their gamma and neutron ray emitting cargo, will be traveling through small towns all over the American West and converge on Yucca Flat.  These trucks will be hauling not only low-level rad waste, like plutonium-contaminated booties, but also low-level rad waste with hazardous materials, like aspestos-contaminated plutonium-contaminated booties.  MLLW (mixed low level waste) means radioactive and hazardous materials on your roads .  SAY NO!  More here. The DOE held a public meeting in Pahrump, NV, to take comments on their idea for the mixed low-level radioactive waste dump on Monday, April 26, 2010.  

April 7, 2010 - Las Vegas radiation levels spike AGAIN and IT GETS CENSORED - In mid-March 2010, gamma radiation values recorded by a Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) station outside the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, yielded strange-looking patterns on software-generated graphs and on March 18, at 10 A.M. local time, average gamma levels - which rarely ever fluctuate in Vegas from the background level of 10 microRem/hour - shot up to 84 microRem/hour, which is over 8 times background levels, for at least one 10 minute period.   More on that episode here.  

But on April 7th, average gamma values again shot up, this time to 10 times background levels for one ten-minute period at around 3pm.  What was it?  The CEMP station - located outside the Atomic Testing Museum - has a brand new gamma detector (PIC), which was installed on March 22, 2010, and the Desert Research Institute (DRI), which maintains these CEMP stations, certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to not put the plugs all the way in this time (mid-March episode: here).  So what was it???  Unfortunately, the DOE, which is responsible for CEMP, doesn't care or else they would look into the reason why these spikes keep happening in Las Vegas!  (How about a secondary radiation monitor to verify the data?  Or the results of past and future air filter analyses?  Gamma, alpha and beta spectrometry??) 

So, here's the spike:  and....

Then, not more than a week later, in the 2nd week of April, the DRI ERASED the ABOVE SPIKE WITH NO EXPLANATION!!!    

THIS IS NOT A MONITORING NETWORK, FRIENDS.  

THE CEMP NETWORK CANNOT DETECT IN REAL TIME, OR NEAR REAL TIME, OR IN ANY DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME, ALPHAS OR BETAS (LIKE TRITIUM GAS, TRITIUM WATER VAPOR, STRONTIUM-90, AMERICIUM-241, PLUTONIUMS, URANIUMS, ETC...) . 

SO, WE BASICALLY WON'T FIND OUT IF A DIRTY BOMB OR A NUCLEAR RADIATION ACCIDENT OCCURRED IN NEVADA, OR UTAH, OR ARIZONA, OR IDAHO FOR PROBABLY TWO-WHOLE-WEEKS.  

AND BY THEN THEY MIGHT JUST NOT TELL US WHAT THEY FOUND.   THE EPA RADNET, A NATIONWIDE 'RADIATION MONITORING' NETWORK, HAS JUST ONE STATION IN LAS VEGAS AND RENO THAT CAN DETECT ONLY REAL TIME BETA.  EPA ALSO SUBJECTS ITS DATA TO 'TIERED DATA REVIEW'.  

HOW WILL EPA'S SPOTTY COVERAGE HELP NEVADANS AND UTAHNS FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN AN EMERGENCY?  THE SLEW OF EPA MONITORING STATIONS IN THE U.S. HAVE HUGE RADIATION DETECTION CAPABILITY GAPS AND ARE RUN 100% BY VOLUNTEERS - HOW WILL THOSE PROTECT US? 

IF BY SOME CHANCE THERE WAS A GAMMA EMITTING COMPONENT IN PLUMES ENCROACHING ON LAS VEGAS THAT WAS STRONG ENOUGH TO CAUSE GAMMA SPIKES ON THE CEMP MONITORS, GOOD LUCK TO YOU BECAUSE 1. EITHER THE STATIONS WILL BE 'DOWN' BECAUSE PLUGS WEREN'T PROPERLY INSERTED OR 2. THE DRI/DOE WILL WITHIN A WEEK OR SO ERASE THE GAMMA SPIKES WITHOUT EXPLANATION.  

THEY WON'T EVEN GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF TELLING YOU WHAT THEY'RE BLAMING IT ON.  THEY'LL JUST ERASE THE DATA.  THEY'LL ERASE ANY AND ALL SPIKES LIKE THEY ALWAYS HAVE DONE.  THEY WILL NOT SHOW THE ORIGINAL DATASET. 

THEN THEY WILL HOPE YOU DIDN'T SAVE THE SPIKING GRAPHS TO YOUR HARDDRIVE BEFORE THEY GOT TO THE DATA.  THEY WILL ERASE THE DATA AND HOPE NO ONE TAKES NOTICE AND CARES TO ASK.  

AND, IF YOU ARE PARANOID ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT HUMANMADE RADIATION IN OUR ENVIRONMENT (WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU? REALLY? ) AND YOU DO ASK WHAT'S GOING ON, THEY WILL BLAME SOMETHING ELSE.  RADON, COSMOGENIC RADIONUCLIDES, A BROKEN WHATCHAMACALLIT (WINK WINK) ON THE MONITORING STATION AND RENDER A 'CHARACTERIZATION' ANALYSIS THAT TAKES THREE LONG WEEKS AND ONLY LOOKS AT GAMMA ENERGIES AND NOT ALPHA OR BETA (LIKE THEY DID WITH MILFORD FLAT FIRE).

WHY, WHY, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO PUT YOUR SECURITY IN A BROKEN FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST A RADIOACTIVE DUST STORM FROM CHINA OR FROM NEVADA, OR ESCAPING KRYPTON-85 GAS FROM NTS SHAFTS, A ROLLED OVER SEMI CARRYING NUCLEAR WASTE TO NTS, A LOS ANGELES REACTOR GONE WILD, A DIRTY BOMB, ETC...

GO AHEAD.  CLOSE THE BROWSER.  THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.  DELUDE YOURSELF INTO BELIEVING SOMEONE IS TAKING CARE OF THE PROBLEM.  AND THEN WONDER WHY 30-YEAR OLDS IN UTAH ARE GETTING LUPUS AND CANCER...

read more on our Gamma Hall of Fame page

milford spike

April 5, 2010 - Two dozen arrested at NTS.  NDE's 62-mile, annual pilgrimage to the Nevada Test Site began on March 29 with an orientation in Las Vegas and preparation for a six-day walk starting on March 30.  Learn more via above link.

APRIL 2010 - RECA expansion bill for Guam - A public hearing by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law on H.R. 1630, introduced by Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo, was planned in Congress for April 15, 2010.  (See list of members of this committee.) According to a recent article by Marianas Variety, 'Those expected to attend and provide testimony are former District Court Judge John Unpingco, Gov. Felix Camacho, Dr. Chris Perez, Speaker Judy Won Pat, and Sen. Ben Pangelinan.'  

However, on April 5th, it was announced that the hearing was postponed until further notice.   More here.  One day, when they hold the hearing, here's the location: map.

• The Three Mile Island (TMI) radiation release in 1979 was blamed for a number of bizarre health impacts in Pennsylvania including mutant flowers, a surge in rare muscle cancers and the sudden death of more than a dozen cows at one farm.  Thirty-one years later a cattle farmer in Montana is experiencing something similar.  Learn more in our latest listserv post
  

March 6, 2010 - SELF-EXILED MARSHALL ISLANDERS FEAR RETURN TO RADIOACTIVE ATOLL - The U.S. government recently made an ultimatum to former residents of Rongelap Island of the Rongelap Atoll: move back home by 2011 or we'll refuse to fund support for your exiled community.  continued

February 14, 2010 - In 1970, the fallout clouds from the leaked 'Baneberry' underground nuclear explosion in Nevada deposited radioactive snow over skiers in northern Utah.  In 2010, a similar thing could happen to skiers at the resorts at Vail , Copper Mountain, Keystone, Steamboat, Powderhorn, Winter Park, and Breckenridge.  Upwind of these resorts in the Western Colorado gas fields, exploration companies are drilling closer and closer into subterranean areas where they may find deposits of natural gas but may also tap into bottled-up radioactive gases from historic nuclear tests.   These radioactive gases could easily escape and loft hundreds of miles east and meet resistance on the slopes as skiers fill their lungs with the cold, radioactive mountain air.   Read more

February 13, 2010 - Obama's serious about nuclear power.  Peruse his nebulous public comments on nuclear energy prior to being elected President.   More importantly, read up on reactor radiotoxic emissions and the 'vicious circle' on our newly edited nuclear power page here

January 27, 2010 (DOWNWINDER DAY) - Over the past several years, U.S. 'downwinder' groups representing fallout victims of Nevada nuclear testing have pushed for their own 'box' on the calendar. If we have Memorial Day to honor fallen military personnel, one could argue, then the 'downwinders' should have a day of their own.  The day chosen for 'Downwinder Day' is January 27 for the simple reason that it is the anniversary date of the first atomic explosion in Nevada (January 27, 1951).  More

January 24, 2010 - Gas developers now want to drill in ALL nuclear test sites in Colorado here.   

January 18, 2010 - "4,000 or 500,000 CHERNOBYL CASUALITIES" @ 'No Incinerator For Croydon' blog

January 12, 2010 - NPR's Morning Edition intended to air a piece on Tuesday (January 12, 2010) titled 'Mohave Downwinders Fight County's Exclusion From Compensation.'  Snippets of the article appeared on the internet but there was no audio link or full article.   We wrote the NPR-affiliate station that supposedly authored the piece (KNAU) and they only pointed us to a story they did in early November. (On Jan. 12, there was a free workshop from the Radiation Exposure Screening & Education Program in Flagstaff, AZ, scheduled for 5-7:30pm; more here.) Then on Saturday, January 17, 2010, NPR actually aired the piece, retitling it "'Downwinders' Make One Last Push For Money"  - link is here - but it re-aired the same piece from EARLY NOVEMBER (HERE).

FYI - We are all downwinders.  Not just in the West.  See the maps on this page and learn about 'global fallout' and RECA.

January 7, 2010 - Aided with stimulus money, the DOE is demolishing a key facility at the Nevada Test Site used to test nuclear rockets during the Cold War (more about them here).  Is the demolishment creating a radioactive-dust problem?  Keep tabs on the 'situation' on our gamma page.

click pic to expand

In Australia, major nuclear test sites were blocked by a 100-mile radius security zone.  Why don't we do the same, to protect the public from lofting plutonium dust from the Nevada Test Site?  More

January 5, 2010 - If the (airport) scanner doesn't get you, the lightning just might, or the fallout here

January 1, 2010 - New Youtube video

A new year of gamma spiking in the Southwest!!  Visit the 'January' chart array on our gamma page

December 15, 2009 - A bittersweet NPR story of one woman's use of humor to cope with the impacts of surgeries from multiple cancers may be inspiring to listeners, but could Linda Hill be a 'downwinder,' or a victim of radiation poisoning from nuclear testing fallout by the U.S. during the 'Cold War'?   More

December 4, 2009 - The U.S. is conducting one hundred "backdoor" subcritical nuclear tests yearly with plutonium isotopes at a new X-ray imaging facility.  The DOE snuck past any criticism of the global community by claiming they weren't going to use weapons-use plutonium for high explosive hydro-tests, but the DOE is actually using a 'weaker' type of plutonium that can still be used in nuclear weapons and using more of it than in past subcritical tests.  Read more 

November 27, 2009 - True or false question: do nuclear power plants leak radiation?  

True, but don't take our word for it.  Hear it from the utterly-wise cartoon celebrity 'Donkey Cow.'  Nuclear Power: Bad to the Bone

November 11, 2009 - Idealist mourns the passing of Eleanore Fanire-Lindquist, co-founder of Mohave Downwinders. Eleanore tirelessly crusaded for the rights of downwinders in her community of Mohave County, Arizona, which noticeably suffered from the hand of radioactive fallout that crossed over from Nevada during nuclear tests of the 1950s and 1960s.  Eleanore strove to put Mohave County back on the map of "RECA," a compensation scheme set up by the federal government for radiation victims, known as 'downwinders.'  Eleanore fought to bring dignity to those affected and endeavored to raise awareness globally of the impacts of nuclear testing too often hidden from world view.  Idealist is dedicated to the memory of Eleanore and radiation victims everywhere.  Obituary; piece by KNAU (Arizona NPR); RECA page

October 29, 2009 - Decades ago we banned the stuff.   After Katrina drained our stashes of building materials, we let it in through our borders.  What is it?  It's radioactive-rich drywall.  The EPA did a really really comprehensive study consisting of seven overseas samples and, alas, found no problem.   Sure!  So, then why are people complaining of health problems from 'Chinese Drywall'?  Are these health complaints similar to symptoms of 9/11 survivors? What's the connection?    What is up with the radioactivity in imported AND domestic drywall?  Read more 

October 20, 2009 - Nuclear fallout in the U.S.?   Children got sick from radiation?  Fallout built up in their teeth!?  Study finds we nuked ourselves pretty bad.  

About the project; St. Louis fallout chart (see upper right quadrant); Read the study. more. even more.

October 6, 2006 - U.S. nuclear experiments raises ire globally.   Map of the global conversation about the U.S.'s subcritical experiment program; See our subcritical page

October 4, 2009 - The first nation to drop nuclear bombs on the U.S. was....itself:  'Yucca Flat: The Most Bombed Place on Earth'

September 25, 2009 - Britain nuked Australia.  Then cleaned some of it up.  Then Australia has the worst dust storm in 70 years, and you got radioactive dust storm worries mate! 

September 22, 2009 - Will the DOE become the largest landholder in Nevada?  A new 'mixed' low-level radioactive dump is planned for the Nevada Test Site, which is also where Yucca was planned.  This time the DOE wants its nuke dump and the title to the land too!   More

September 21, 2009 -  It is a fact that what happens at the Nevada Test Site doesn't stay at the Nevada Test Site, the most radioactive piece of Earth in North America.  Plutonium leaves the Nevada Test Site on regular cross-country flights called air currents.  As long as the NTS isn't cleaned up, we must be remain concerned.    Learn about the 2009-2011 process for the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site.  More here.

September 20, 2009 -U.S. to conduct subcrits this fall

August 21, 2009 - Saul Landau, co-producer of the 1980 documentary 'Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang,' airs his own views on nuclear power in the op-ed piece 'The nuclear gang rides again,' which was published in progreso weekly on August 19, 2009.

August 9, 2009 -  Nagasaki Day 2009-   Where did all the radiation from the Japan bomb attacks go?   In Hiroshima?  Not really.  In Nagasaki?  Not really.   Read more.

July 24, 2009 - New EIS announced - The DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today made an official announcement in the form of a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register that it will complete an EIS for the NTS and off-site areas (only) in Nevada.  The notice of intent (NOI) can be found at this link.  Read more about the new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

July 20, 2009 - NASA's Stupidity Remembered - On July 20, 1969, NASA astronauts landed and walked on the moon.  What also landed on the moon that historic day was over 60 grams of Plutonium 238, THE most toxic substance.  Used simply for the purpose of creating heat, NASA still relies on plutonium in exploratory spacecraft even though a significant breakthrough was made in the 1990s on an alternative (high performance silicon solar-cells) AND some of ours and some of Russia's spacecraft burnt up in Earth's atmosphere exposing billions of Earthlings to the most lethal substance known to man.  Are we plain old stupid?  Is space exploration worth the price of all of our heads?  Do you know there are nuclear reactors in space, in Earth, orbit right now?  Does anyone give a crap that a nuclear reactor can land on their home at anytime?  More our nuclear-power in space page.

June 25, 2009 - Senators move to add states to RECA

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At the insistence of the downwinder groups in Idaho and throughout the Intermountain West, all of the senators from Idaho and Montana today, on June 25, 2009, reintroduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to add their respective states to the RECA program.   Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho introduced and read the bill the first and second times by unanimous consent, and referred it to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  This is the third time the bill has been  introduced over the past several years.  

The astute above senators, as with just about any person familiar with government studies on Nevada testing fallout, know that every state in the U.S., and most current and former territories, was hit by fallout and should be included in RECA.   

Read the senators' joint press release and let your very own senators know that you want this bill passed!  

More on our RECA page  

House members Jim Matheson, Mike Simpson, and Walt Minnick sent a letter on 2/18/2009 to the House Judiciary Committee asking for RECA expansion hearings.  Read their letter.   

Contact your elected leaders to insist they support hearings on RECA.

June 2009 - What if North Korea did a 'Baneberry'?

What would happen if a North Korean underground nuclear bomb test behaved (leaked) exactly like 'Baneberry,' which was the name given to a 1970 U.S. 10-kiloton 'underground nuclear' explosion whose containment failed?   

When Baneberry blew through the surface of the Nevada Test Site, over 6% of the test's radiation leaked, entrained in a 7,000 foot high mushroom cloud.  After NUCLEAR WORKERS FLED [the] TESTING SITE, and RADIOACTIVE DUST ESCAPED, Baneberry's plumes of radioactivity traveled across the globe, coming down with air currents or the rain in the U.S., Canada, and probably parts of Europe.  In the U.S. states worst hit by fallout from Baneberry - and, to repeat, Baneberry was an UNDERGROUND nuclear test that horribly leaked - infant mortality also rose sharply during the first three months after the test.  

If North Korea did a 'Baneberry,' the radiation would fall-out extensively over extremely heavily populated areas of China, and parts of Japan and Russia's Maritime Province.  See our Youtube video and read our article How to Squash the Baneberry of the East a la Dorothy Gale.

The long-range radioactive fallout will be NO different than the fallout from a deliberate nuclear attack.   Leaked fallout from a peacetime nuclear test is NO different than fallout from a wartime nuclear test!  

Our calculations indicate that a North Korean 5-kiloton underground blast - if all gases leaked - will produce, and introduce into the environment, about 1,500 Curies of radioactive Cesium and Strontium.   The 5 grams of Strontium-90 produced by the test, if distributed evenly in the bodies of all peoples, would kill the world's population of 1950 or about one-third of today's world population.   Read more about the unspoken dangers of global radioactive poisoning by North Korea's 2009 underground nuclear test and future testing.  

Other recent news:

• What happens when nuclear testing fallout lands on the ground?  Cows eat it, humans drink the milk, and then a good percentage of us get cancer, lupus, neurological disorders, genetic defects, etc... What happens when nuclear testing fallout lands on the ocean?  It impacts the weather and creates more hell.  Read Rosalie Bertell's explanation for increased cyclone activity in the Pacific following French nuclear testing!
  

• In late June 2009, mainstream media outlets took bits and pieces of a quote about N. Korea *threatening* (sorry but that wasn't one of the words in the quote!) to 'wipe out' (yes, those were) the U.S. (no, that wasn't).Idealist will give you the quote, for full context: KCNA website, June 24, 2009: 'If the US imperialists start another war, ignorant of the ignominious defeat they had sustained in the past Korean war, the army and people of Korea will determinedly answer "sanctions" with retaliation and "confrontation" with all-out confrontation, the counter-measure based on the songun [military-first] idea, wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all and achieve the cause of national reunification without fail.’

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'Believe it or not' Radiation Events in History

Cesium and the alarm bells that never rang

Charting the Isotopes of Fallout  

Comments to the NNSA on their Divine Strake Environmental Assessment

Critique of NAS National Research Committee Report on Assessment of Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program

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Divine Misgivings, December 16, 2006

Divine Strake for Thanksgiving, November 20, 2006

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Divine Strake: A Warning of Things to Come

Divine Strake: Size Matters, Jan. 20, 2007

DOE saying it's protecting us is a hard pill to swallow, October 4, 2008

DOE's new NTS EIS

Downwinders concerned about Milford Flat Fire radiation

Downwinder Day

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DTRA's Divine Strake Public Meetings Concluded, December 20, 2006

Early quotes on nuclear energy from Barack Obama 

Fallout maps

Fallout, Swine Flu, And A Pandemic Of Awareness article and epilogue

Foiling A 'Lottery Of Death', July 11, 2008

Gamma Hall of Fame 

GI Joe vs Albert Schweitzer, October 17, 2006

Global fallout  

Going subcritical: a nuclear test is a nuclear test is a nuclear test, May 16, 2008

Government studies - impacts of nuclear testing on health and life

Guest Blog: Divine Strake and the Rebirth of Democracy,
September 22, 2006

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High-Altitude Nuke Experiments

How to Squash the Baneberry of the East a la Dorothy Gale

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LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory

Las Vegas Radiation Monitors Going Haywire, March 22, 2010

Letter to Utah Radiation Control Board, May 29, 2008

Living in a Nuclear World: Half-lives

Looking Down DTRA's Barrell

Mighty Oak

Milford Flat Fire 

Millstone's nuke's radioactive 'banner year'

Mitchell Quarry

NCI testimony of Dr. F. Owen Hoffman

Navigating the rocky shallows of radiation monitoring...don't rely on this lighthouse

Nevada Test Site

New studies

Newton's First Law of Motion, Amendment One – poem

Night at the Museum 3: Atomic Testing Museum Nukes Itself

North Korea's nuclear ambitions provoked by U.S. nuclear experiments, October 5, 2006

North Korea's underground test probably leaked, how much radiation might have leaked, and think twice if you think you're safe from underground nuclear tests

Nuclear power, Bad to the Bone

Nuclear Waste Transport Incidents to and from the Nevada Test Site for fiscal years 2001-2008

nukesINspace

Our nuclear future

Our problems with the Salt Lake Tribune article

Pacific nuclear testing

Peace Clock and the fallout from Japan A-Bomb attacks

Phosphogypsum and imported drywall

Please God Can My Son Survive Acute Myaloid Leukaemia?, August 15, 2008

Poemovie - A nuclear war has come and gone.

Radiation issues

RECA - Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

Project Rulison

Second activist in two months sued by Alternate Energy Holdings, August 25, 2008

Sermon for the downtrodden activist, October 14, 2008

Speak now or for the next five years hold your peace, May 7, 2008

Say No to the Divine Strake, December 28, 2006

Senators now have compassion, for downwinders, now what?, April 19, 2010

Set of Axioms for the Closure of the Nevada Test Site

'Show me the defamation!' - AEHI's stock

Stairway to Divine Strake, November 5, 2006

Survive the Demise, October 21, 2006

Statement on Divine Strake Cancellation

StopDivineStrake.com

Subcritical nuclear experiments

That radiation monitoring station in Milford, Utah, is acting up again, June 20, 2008

The Black and White World of RECA, April 25, 2010

The Buzz About The S-Word 

'The Downwinders' Movie 

The Forgotten Guinea Pigs: A Report on Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation Sustained As a Result of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program Conducted by the United States Government 

The Iran-Divine Strake Connection, June 26, 2008

The Plutonium Plume That Fell On Utah, May 28, 2008

The Remedy for an Unjust World, December 5, 2008

The Un-killable Nevada Bomb Test, December 13, 2008

That radiation monitoring station in Milford, Utah, is acting up again

Today's Forecast: Sunny with a Chance of Nuclear Reactor, March 1, 2009

Trivia quiz

Top 10 Reasons Why Divine Strake Shouldn't Take Place, February 19, 2007

Was Divine Strake Safe?  

Why would The Public Ever Believe Me?, October 10, 2008

WSMR - White Sands Missile Range

Your Own Island of Humanity, October 29, 2006