In the Shadow of the Bomb

Ever since the clandestine Manhattan Project began in 1942, when America's brightest scientists were recruited by the U.S. government to design and build the first nuclear bomb, the nation's nuclear weapons program has been cloaked in secrecy. And as the Iran-contra scandal reminded us, secrecy in the name of national security usually leads to wholesale deception of the American people.

The weapons industry recently found itself in the midst of a national scandal. A string of accidents and health and safety violations at the nation's four largest weapons plants has led to the shutdown of several reactors that produce raw materials for the bombs. Suddenly the national media had discovered what has been going on for years--the U. S. government, specifically the Department of Energy (DOE) which oversees the weapons production program, has been putting production and profit above human life and the environment, and has been lying about it.

Things really peaked when Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington admitted that DOE had known for decades about the release of thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the environment around the Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald, Ohio, and that it ignored repeated warnings about the health and safety risks at the plant. Herrington's confession was not part of any conversion experience; it was an attempt to remove any liability for environmental contamination from the Fernald plant's original operator, NLO Inc., which is facing a class-action suit filed in 1985 by more than 14,000 Fernald residents. The plant has been closed in recent months because of a strike by workers for better safety and health conditions and higher wages.

The case of Fernald is just one of many horror stories involving the weapons production industry. Increased cancer rates and radioactive contamination of the environment and local residents have been reported in other communities that host the bomb plants, reflecting the reckless and unaccountable manner in which DOE has managed the weapons production industry. Safety violations and maintenance problems have closed aging reactors at three other major weapons plants--Rocky Flats near Golden, Colorado; the Hanford Reservation near Richland, Washington; and Savannah River near Aiken, South Carolina.

The closing of three Savannah River Plant (SRP) reactors, which produce tritium to boost the power of nuclear weapons, has prompted some government officials to warn that an extended shutdown of the weapons production facilities would threaten our "national security." DOE hopes these warnings, along with the revelations about the risks posed by a decaying industry, will build its case to modernize the weapons facilities, including construction of three proposed reactors.

In the short term, DOE is planning to restart one of the SRP tritium-producing reactors. But three environmental groups--the Washington, D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Research Foundation near SRP, and Greenpeace, U. S. A.--told DOE in October that they were prepared to file a joint lawsuit unless it files the legally required environmental impact statement. The groups were negotiating with DOE at press time.

Other national groups have mobilized as well. Responding to what it termed a "national public health and safety emergency," Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has called for the immediate creation of an independent board of health professionals to monitor the health and safety practices at DOE's weapons production facilities. PSR also recommends that the Nuclear Defense Safety Board, created by Congress this past year to oversee DOE's weapons production, be strengthened and given the authority to shut down any nuclear weapons facility that is not meeting "rigorous standards of occupational and public safety."

These would be significant steps toward greater accountability on the part of DOE for the safety and health of the plant workers and people living adjacent to the bomb plants, as well as for preservation of the environment. But we need to look beyond these short-term measures.

WE HAVE REACHED a critical stage at which we must decide whether we as a nation can continue producing weapons that threaten our security. As Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) has said, "We are poisoning our own people in the name of national security."

It is not enough to hope and pray that the unthinkable never happens--the bomb has already been dropped by the government in a "slow motion nuclear war" against those who paid for and supported it. Official policies that make life expendable have become a reality in the shadows of the bomb plants and all across nuclear America.

This is not news to those communities who were lured by the promise of prosperity but have discovered that hosting a bomb plant means contamination of local ground-water supplies and crop lands, the increased possibility of contracting leukemia or lymph cancer, and economic dependency on an industry over which they have no control. Nor is it news for those local citizens groups whose ongoing efforts to raise the awareness of their neighbors and the nation have largely gone unnoticed, until recently.

Now that the legacy of the government's deception and ambivalence to human and environmental life has been exposed to the American people, it is time to renew our commitment to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. The denuclearization of our society will require serious consideration of alternative means of regional and national economic security, disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union, and a massive public works project to clean up and dispose of the waste at the bomb plants (an effort now estimated to cost $130 billion).

The solutions will not be easy. But the weapons industry scandal has reminded us that there is no real security in an industry--and policy--that places prosperity above human and environmental life.

Brian Jaudon was editorial assistant at Sojourners when this article appeared.