A New Arms Race Threatens to Bring the U.S. and Russia Back to the Nuclear Brink

 

By Joe Cirincione
President, Ploughshares Fund; Author, ‘Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late’

The horror and reactions to the Paris massacre have overshadowed a troubling new twist in the U.S.-Russian rivalry that could prove even more terrifying. Russian state media recently “accidentally” revealed plans for a bizarre new nuclear torpedo. More of an underwater drone, it is designed to swim 6,000 miles — enough to span the oceans underwater just as long-range missiles do in the air.
It would detonate a huge warhead, a hydrogen bomb equal to a million tons of TNT or more but “salted” with special metals to vastly increase the amount of radiation it would pour into a U.S. port city.

The explosion would create a radioactive tsunami. The purpose, according to Russian TV, would be to devastate “the important components of the adversary’s economy in a coastal area and [inflict] unacceptable damage to a country’s territory by creating areas of wide radioactive contamination that would be unsuitable for military, economic or other activity for long periods of time.”

This is an insane, inhumane weapon that deliberately targets civilians. It deliberately seeks to turn a city into a radioactive wasteland that would last for decades. It is a throwback to the worse designs of the Cold War, long since abandoned.

Russia’s nuclear torpedo deliberately seeks to turn a city into a radioactive wasteland that would last for decades.
In the early 1950s, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop dozens of enhanced radiation “cobalt bombs” on the Korean border to create a poisonous barrier to advancing Chinese troops. In the 1970s, U.S. nuclear scientists designed a”neutron bomb” with intense bursts of radiation to increase the number of people killed but lessen the number of buildings destroyed by blast and heat. Then-Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger hoped it would make it more likely we would use nuclear weapons in a European war, thus theoretically adding to their deterrent value.

American presidents rejected these weapons. None were ever constructed. We thought that such grotesque concepts had been buried with the Cold War, along with notions of doomsday machines, featured in various sci-fi movies and at least one of which was actually built.

Well, they’re back. Indeed, that may have been the point of the Russian reveal. As Dr. Strangelove said in Stanley Kubrick’s epic film, “The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.”

We thought that such grotesque concepts had been buried with the Cold War.
The Russians want us to know about it. The new Russian “dirty” H-bomb is the latest move in a new arms race that could bring Russia and America back to the nuclear brink.

The Russians are building new nuclear-armed missiles, bombers and submarines to replace those built in the 1980s and now reaching the end of their operational lives. They claim that they must modernize their arsenal and increase the role of nuclear weapons in their military doctrine to counter U.S. missile interceptors being deployed in Europe. These, they say, could “neutralize” their nuclear deterrent, allowing the U.S. and NATO to dominate Russia.

The U.S. is rearming as well. The Obama administration is planning to spend over $1 trillion in the next 30 years on an entire new generation of nuclear bombs, bombers, missiles and submarines to replace those built during the Reagan years. This is a staggering turn around for a president who promised “to put an end to Cold War thinking, [by reducing] the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

The Obama administration is planning to spend over $1 trillion in the next 30 years on an entire new generation of nuclear bombs, bombers, missiles and submarines to replace those built during the Reagan years.
First up, the U.S. will deploy almost 200 new nuclear bombs in Europe. More accurate than the current bombs, proponents argue they are more usable in battles.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is developing 12 new submarines to prowl the world’s oceans, carrying over 1,000 warheads on missiles that can hit any spot on earth. The U.S. Air Force is developing a new strategic bomber and wants 1,000 new cruise missiles to go with them, plus a new fleet of almost 650 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Individually, none carry a warhead as big at the Russian nuclear torpedo, but collectively they would unleash death and destruction on a massive scale. All of these systems deliver hydrogen bombs — weapons that are 10, 20, even 30 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We don’t know if the Russians think they can afford this new arms race, but we do know that there is great concern in the defense department. Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord told Inside Defense last week that the price tag for all these new nuclear weapons “is the biggest acquisition problem that we don’t know how to solve yet.”

All of these systems deliver hydrogen bombs — weapons that are 10, 20, even 30 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For example, when the Navy’s new nuclear sub goes into production, it will devour almost half of the Navy’s annual shipbuilding budget. These nuclear terror weapons threaten to siphon away funds needed for the conventional weapons actually used by troops in combat, to fight the self-described Islamic State for example.

This is a dangerous situation. In his new book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry warns “far from continuing the nuclear disarmament that has been underway for the last two decades, we are starting a new nuclear arms race.”

What should we do about this new Russian weapon, for example? It won’t be long before someone calls for a massive new program to deploy underwater anti-torpedo drones to counter Russia’s concept.

Rather than build more weapons, Perry wants President Obama to build fewer. In a recent op-ed with former Director of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council Andy Weber, the two urge Obama to kill the new cruise missile. Instead, they say we should champion a new effort to ban these “extremely destabilizing” weapons.

These nuclear terror weapons threaten to siphon away funds needed for the conventional weapons actually used by troops in combat, to fight ISIS for example.
A similar push could be made to ban weapons like the Russian torpedo. The U.S. could take the lead in denouncing these weapons as inhumane and incompatible with modern civilization.

We would be in good company. Pope Francis called for a ban on all nuclear weapons at the United Nations this September, saying their “threat of mutual destruction” was “an affront to the entire framework of the United Nations.”

Analyst Jeffrey Lewis argues passionately for just such an approach. The levels of destruction in the U.S. and Russian arsenals are far beyond anything needed for deterrence. “Why not admit that nuclear weapons are awful?” he asks. “And that it would be a humanitarian catastrophe if even a single bomb were ever dropped.”

It would be a powerful move. But unless Obama acts soon, his nuclear policy legacy may be the launch of a terrifying arms race that threatens destruction far beyond the horrors committed by ISIS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-cirincione/arms-race-us-russia-nuclear_b_8557526.html

Questioning Official Standards for Permissible Exposure to Radiation

Official standards for permissible exposure to radiation mislead people. They are not just imprecise; they are inaccurate. In fact, they deny reality. Established to protect people exposed to radiation – nuclear workers as well as the general public – these standards provide false assurance that makes it possible for a harmful industry to operate. We have been told time and again that the standards exist to protect us, and government officials never tire of telling us we are safe, but the protection these standards provide is only partial. They do not for example protect us from exposure to plutonium-239, the exposure most likely to happen to people in the vicinity of Rocky Flats.

 

I learned about the Rocky Flats plutonium pit mass production plant in 1979 and soon realized that exposure to plutonium endangered plant workers and people in nearby communities, especially those downwind of the facility. My primary focus over the next 35+ years was to learn what I could about adverse health effects from exposure to plutonium. I attended a seminar on this topic by the late Dr. Jock Cobb of the CU medical faculty. And I paid close attention to the work of radiochemist Edward Martell, PhD, of NCAR, the foremost student of radiation health effects in this part of the country. I also closely followed the Rocky Flats related work of Carl Johnson, MD, then head of the Jefferson County Health Department. I participated in public meetings during the decade of the Rocky Flats dose reconstruction study and was actively involved in various advisory and oversight bodies, especially those related to the cleanup of Rocky Flats, a major task of which was establishment of radiation exposure standards that supposedly would protect the public from harmful exposure to plutonium left in the environment after completion of the cleanup. For four years I served on two committees of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the major U.S. organization that studies radiation health effects and recommends exposure standards to government and industry. In addition, I studied the work of specialists like Alice Stewart, Karl Morgan, John Gofman, Thomas Cochran, Helen Caldicott, Arjun Makhijani, Steve Wing and others. I carefully read the National Academy of Sciences BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) V and VII studies on low-dose radiation exposure.

 

Based on all this, I concluded that, though radiation exposure standards provide some protection by setting limits that make high-dose exposures less likely, they provide insufficient protection from low-dose exposure, especially from tiny plutonium particles taken into the body. The BEIR studies mentioned above affirm that any exposure to ionizing radiation is potentially harmful. There is, in other words, no such thing as a safe exposure. Though this view is accepted by the National Academy of Sciences, the agencies that recommend and set radiation exposure standards allow some exposure. They create a legal framework that allows some people to be harmed, some to die. Also, despite the fact that there will be some exposures, government officials often call contaminated sites “safe.” This has happened and continues to happen with Rocky Flats. In what follows, I explain some of the problems with official standards.

 

1. Failure to protect the most vulnerable. All radiation exposure standards to date have been based on studies of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. In these attacks, the most vulnerable people died. Those who ended up being studied were thus the stronger survivors. This has been referred to as the healthy survivor effect. The resultant standards, based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, are biased in favor of a population of healthier survivors.

 

2. Bomb survivor studies were unrealistic: Data was not collected until five years after the bombing. Thus, studies depended primarily on the memories of the exposed people who were interviewed rather than on actual exposure data. Much guesswork went into determining the doses these people had received. Add to this the fact that these studies were carried out by the victorious investigators from the U.S., not by Japanese medical personnel or advocates who had observed the suffering of their people at close range for a long time.

 

3. Organizations that study and recommend exposure standards are closed to those exposed: After World War II national and international bodies were created to study radiation health effects and recommend standards for permissible exposure to radiation for nuclear workers and the general public. These agencies decide behind closed doors how much radiation other humans may legally be exposed to. Those exposed have no voice in the setting of these exposure standards. The principal organizations that perform this role are the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). These bodies are like a medieval priesthood, a closed society that decides the fate of the excluded.

 

4. Exposure standards are based on analysis of radiation that passes through the body, not on radiation lodged in the body. The studies done on the Japanese survivors were of radiation exposure from a one-time bomb blast that emitted penetrating radiation to the whole body. This approach locked in a precedent still followed by organizations responsible for exposure standards. Penetrating radiation exposure may be severe, but it passes through the body and thus is temporary. This is very different from the internal chronic exposure that happens if plutonium particles from Rocky Flats enter the body. Plutonium is harmful only if inhaled or otherwise internalized. Columbia University scientists have shown that a single plutonium particle taken into the body can be harmful. Once inside the body, the plutonium migrates to a specific location where it lodges – a lung, a bone, the liver, the brain, the gonads or elsewhere. Thereafter, typically for the rest of one’s life, the plutonium repeatedly bombards nearby cells with radioactive alpha particles. Alpha radiation is not like gamma and beta radiation, which pass through the body and generally prove harmful only in doses large enough to kill many cells. Plutonium, by contrast, is harmful not because it kills cells but because it damages them, and it is the replication of these injured cells that produces a cancer. Plutonium may also compromise one’s immune system or cause genetic harm that gets passed on to offspring and future generations. One plutonium particle may prove harmful, not instantly but slowly. A cancer may take 30 years before it manifests. Harm from plutonium exposure is best addressed not at the bodily level but at the cellular level. The only sure form of protection from exposure to alpha radiation is to allow no exposure.

 

5. Very low doses from internalized radiation are more harmful than larger doses of radiation passing through the body. Internal alpha emitters like plutonium 239, cesium 137, and strontium 90, to name a few, are much more harmful than the equivalent dose from penetrating gamma or x-ray radiation, because, as noted above, alpha particles lodge at a specific location in the body and continually irradiate nearby cells, while penetrating radiation passes through the body and is gone. To account for the difference, the ICRP refers to the “relative biological effectiveness” (RBE) of alpha emitters (This has also been called the “weighting factor”). Looking at the potential harm to different organs and for different disease end-points, ICRP concludes that the average RBE for alpha emitters is 20. This means that, on average, internalized plutonium is 20 times more harmful than penetrating radiation of the same dose. But because 20 is an average, for some body organs and certain cancers as well as for particular individuals the actual RBE can be higher, sometimes much higher. For example, the RBE for bone cancer ranges as high as 320, 16 times 20. But agencies that set standards use in their calculations the RBE of 20. This is one more way that radiation exposure standards fail to protect the most vulnerable.

 

6. Reference man: Almost all radiation exposure standards have been calculated to protect “Reference man,” a Caucasian male 20 to 30 years of age, 5 feet and 7 inches tall, weighing 154 pounds, and living in a mild climate, such as in Western Europe or North America. Again, the standards have not been designed to protect those who are more vulnerable – females, infants, the elderly and the infirm.

 

7. Distinct character of standards for nuclear workers. The foregoing points apply to the general public as well as to nuclear workers. The latter are noteworthy in that they are the only people who wear dosimeters to collect real-time data on their exposures. Also, official radiation exposure standards for them are much higher than those for the general public. In 1990 ICRP recommended that standards for U.S. nuclear workers be reduced 150%. This recommendation was not followed. Standards for nuclear workers remain at the level established in 1968.

 

8. Excess cancers have been found among Rocky Flats workers who were exposed to plutonium well below official standards. In 1987 Gregg S. Wilkinson of DOE’s Los Alamos Lab published in the American Journal of Epidemiology results of a study on Rocky Flats workers, comparing those exposed to plutonium to those not exposed. Some of the exposed workers had internal plutonium deposits as low as 5% of DOE’s permissible lifetime body burden. The study showed that even these workers developed cancers in excess of what was normal for unexposed workers. Wilkinson was ordered by his supervisor to alter the results to “please the customer” (namely, the DOE), but he refused and published his study without change. A physician at Los Alamos told him that if his study was correct, it would shut down the nuclear industry. Rocky Flats workers I interviewed had not been told about this study.

9. Follow-up study points to inadequacy of worker exposure standards. James Rutttenber of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center spent a decade studying records of 16,000 Rocky Flats workers at the plant between 1952 and 1989. His conclusions, published in 2003, were similar to Wilkinson’s. They call into question, he said, whether current standards are sufficiently protective. However, Doug Benevento, then head of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, called the results “reassuring,” since they don’t conclusively prove that cancer increases came from workplace exposures. Thus the State of Colorado’s leading public health administrator dismissed a central conclusion from years of research that his agency had supported.

 

10. Those exposed often have no remedy: Nuclear workers exposed at DOE production sites like Rocky Flats often find it impossible to get medical coverage available from the federal government for which they helped produce nuclear weapons. With very few exceptions, neighbors downwind of nuclear facilities, whose health has been compromised, were never monitored and have received no medical attention or compensation.

 

Conclusion: Standards for permissible exposure to radiation rest on a questionable foundation. They are misleading and inadequate. They do not protect the most vulnerable. They downplay and sometimes altogether ignore the effects of radiation emitted internally, and they are established with no participation of those most likely to be exposed. Though it has been recognized for decades that low levels of exposure to ionizing radiation are potentially harmful, we are repeatedly told that official radiation exposure standards have been protecting us. These standards are not simply misleading; they are not merely inadequate; they are in fact a sham.

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For more details on this topic, see Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators’ Edition (ECRR, 2003) http://www.euradcom.org/2003/ecrr2003.htm This is dense technical reading, but worth the effort.