In 1957, a massive nuclear accident took place at the top secret Mayak
nuclear station in the Soviet Union. At the time, it was the largest
nuclear disaster in history. So why has no one heard of it?
Sixty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a B-52 bomber disintegrated
over a small Southern town. An eyewitness recalls what happened next…
This week marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. The events of early August 1945, which changed the course of
human history, might have been prevented had the Truman administration
heeded the advice offered by seven prominent and prescient Manhattan
Project scientists…
It was a late winter night in 1966 and a fully loaded B-52 bomber on a Cold
War nuclear patrol had collided with a refueling jet high over the Spanish
coast, freeing four hydrogen bombs that went tumbling toward a farming
village called Palomares…
As Japan commemorates the 9th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster,
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges the authorities to let journalists
freely report on the topic.
Attached are non-illustrated versions of Jim Morris’ series for the
Houston Chronicle entitled “Clamp Down: The Silencing of Nuclear Industry
Workers" from 1993. Fairewinds hopes these PDFs will assist viewers that
seek to better understand how the nuclear industry silences whistleblowers.
Soviet doctors treating Chernobyl-exposed suddenly had an unwelcome crash
course in this medical problem. They found that radioactive contaminants,
even at relatively low levels, infiltrated the bodies of their patients,
who grew sicker each year. Gradually, health officials understood they had
a public health disaster on their hands. Thousands of archival records
document the catastrophe. Ukrainian doctors registered in the most
contaminated regions of Kiev province an increase between 1985 and 1988 in
Nearly everyone who’s seen it and lived to tell the tale describes it the
same way: a horrifying, otherworldly thing of ghastly beauty that has
haunted their life ever since.
“The colors were beautiful,” remembers a man in Morgan Knibbe’s short
documentary The Atomic Soldiers. “I hate to say that.”
“It was completely daylight at midnight—brighter than the brightest day you
ever saw,” says another.
Much of what’s known about the health impacts of radiation comes from
studies of acute exposure — for example, the atomic blasts that leveled
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan or the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in
Ukraine. Studies of those events provided grim lessons on the effects of
high-level exposure, as well as the lingering impacts on the environment
and people who were exposed. Such work, however, has found little evidence
that the health effects are passed on across generations.
The head of Tokyo Electric Power Co. apologized Tuesday over his
predecessor’s order to not use the term “core meltdown” to describe the
situation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the early days of the
March 2011 crisis.
