"Exposure: Radiation Victims Speak Out" Web Series Reveals Personal Struggles, Triumphs

Over 20 years ago, the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shimbun sent a team of reporters to 15 nations around the world to gather personal accounts of people affected by radiation - from reactor accidents, accidental contamination, to nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing. The interviews were initially published as a series of eight newspaper features titled "Sekai no Hibakusha," or "Hibakusha (figuratively, "atomic bomb survivors") Around the World." This monumental series won a Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association award in 1990, and was subsequently published in book form the following year. Executive Director of the Chugoku Shimbun Yukio Ogata explains,

"Largely as a result of the articles' success in bringing the public's attention to the dangers of radiation, a number of victims of radioactive contamination from areas as far-flung as Chernobyl and Bikini Atoll were able to participate in the world convention held in Hiroshima by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in October 1989...[T]he convention heard details concerning the damage caused by nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, which until then had been shrouded in secrecy. In turn, this disclosure of widespread destruction of the environment prompted the Chugoku Shimbun to instigate the first-ever investigation of the testing area.

At the same time, the articles served to emphasize the role that Japan could play to help radiation victims around the world. The fact that the articles have prompted the exchange of information concerning the treatment of radiation victims in Japan to help those in a similar plight in other countries is a great source of satisfaction to us at the Chugoku Shimbun. We hope that, in the future, Japan will become known as an information center for radiation victims and the treatment of their illnesses."

In March 2013, the Hiroshima Peace Media Center re-released the entire series of 134 interviews free online as "EXPOSURE: Victims of Radiation Speak Out". From the English-language introduction by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at the CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice notes,

"There is compelling appropriateness in the project's being undertaken by concerned journalists from Hiroshima. From the time the bomb was dropped, the Chugoku Shimbun, as Hiroshima's leading newspaper, has been a prime source of information about the experiences and feelings of the people of that city over subsequent decades. Its editors and writers have taken on what I call a 'survivor mission' on behalf of the city's victims, a commitment to transforming the fear, conflict, and pain of the survivors into an active exploratory enterprise of profound significance.

Their contribution goes even beyond their descriptions of the human effects of radiation. In the way they have approached their study, they have demonstrated what I call a species mentality, a commitment that transcends immediate group or nationality and extends to all of humankind. They evoke in us a sense of shared fate, of universal susceptibility to a technology that knows no boundaries, geographical or temporal. We are all in this together, as potential victims and potential perpetrators as well.

Among the regions and incidents covered in these interviews are Chernobyl, the 1987 Goiânia Accident in Brazil, contamination from the Cold War weapons program at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site in Washington State.

[Image courtesy Hiroshima Peace Media Center: "The mushroom cloud as seen from Kure, approximately 18 kilometers southeast of Hiroshima. This photo was taken by Masami Oki about 40 minutes after the bomb exploded."]

More:

• Peace Seeds: A virtual museum of photos, videos, essays and art by Hiroshima teens
• John Jay College Center on Terrorism: "Hiroshima in America," a book by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell

Nevada's Historic BREN Atomic Test Tower Demolished

[Image and YouTube video from the NNSA. Thanks to James Stover (tweeting at @JamesStoverAPR) for the story!]

Yesterday, in the Nevada desert, demolition crews from New York and Maryland felled a legendary piece of America's atomic history.

At 1,527 feet tall, the former Nevada Test Site's BREN tower was the "tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River," and also the "tallest structure of its kind ever demolished," according to the National Nuclear Safety Administration. Originally built in 1962 in Yucca Flats, from fifty-one 30-foot sections of steel and two and a half miles of steel cable, the tower was moved to its latest location in Jackass Flats in 1966 after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banned open-air nuclear testing.

From CNN: The tower stood taller than the Empire State Building (1,454 feet) and the Eiffel Tower (1,063 feet). It was also taller than the iconic Stratosphere (1,148 feet) on the Las Vegas strip...[T]he BREN Tower took its name from the nuclear radiation experiment for which it was built: Bare Reactor Experiment - Nevada. BREN Tower was designed to provide a way for scientists to accurately estimate radiation doses received by survivors of the atomic bombs detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The tower stood 1,527 feet tall because that was the height at which "Little Boy," the first atomic bomb used in warfare, was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

At one time, a mock Japanese village was built near the tower's base to give researchers better modeling of the effects of a nuclear explosion on inhabited areas. Officials from the NNSA said the tower, which stopped being used in 1999, was too costly to maintain and restore, and posed a hazard to passing aircraft.

• A vertiginous view down (and from) the BREN tower during a re-lamping operation
• NNSA Blog: "BREN Tower comes tumbling down as world record is set"
• DOE's collection of historical photos from the NNSA Nevada Field Office
• "The Japanese Village at the Nevada Test Site: A Relic of Nuclear War," by William Gray Johnson, Nancy G. Goldenberg, and Susan R. Edwards (National Park Service's Cultural Resource Management site)
• Demolition video from KNTV ABC-13 Las Vegas
• Video from the Las Vegas Review-Journal

The "Chernobyl Diaries" Movie: Cultural Amnesia?

On May 25th, Warner Brothers will release a science fiction/supernatural horror film set in Pripyat, the abandoned "ghost town" adjacent to the ruins of Chernobyl's reactor complex. The crumbling town, seen for years on sites like "Kidd of Speed," seems a perfect backdrop for fright flicks. Let me say at the outset that I'm a huge movie fan: cheesy, gory horror flicks are some of my favorites. That said, as someone who was profoundly affected as a college freshman by live unfolding news accounts of Chernobyl (in fact, those memories are one of the main reasons I started this blog back in 2004) I have to admit I find the film's concept a bit troubling and distasteful.

I suspect the primary target audience, if not the filmmakers themselves, probably view the Chernobyl tragedy as just another creepy historical footnote, something awful that happened a long time ago in a country far away. With popular video games like "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl," and the film's central premise of "extreme tourism" into the Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl's legacy has mushroomed (if you'll forgive the expression) into a booming cottage industry of curiosities for the "zombie apocalypse" crowd.

Since the nuclear strikes on Japan in World War II, popular culture from 50's Pulp and Godzilla to the Hulk and Spiderman have conflated nuclear mishaps with Bug Eyed Monsters. But I wonder: would movie executives and audiences respond favorably to a zombie apocalypse tale set in a different contemporary locale - say, the Japanese Tsunami of 2011 and the Fukushima Disaster? The Union Carbide Disaster in Bhopal, India? Hurricane Katrina? The terrorist attacks of 9/11?

The passage of time always seems to be an insulator against troubling memories; the human race couldn't survive otherwise. What's sad is that if nothing else, "Chernobyl Diaries" highlights how a mere two-and-a-half decades can generate cultural amnesia of the immense sacrifice and suffering that occurred in Europe and that continues to this day. Thinking charitably, maybe any kind of attention to the Chernobyl tragedy could generate a resurgence of interest in the continuing human need there; after all, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Perhaps the least the makers of "Chernobyl Diaries" could do is donate a portion of their profits to one of the many charitable organizations that provide ongoing support to Chernobyl's victims, many born decades later. Those who were there and survived live with scarred minds, hearts, and/or bodies: every living being born in the afflicted region since April 26, 1986 will carry Chernobyl's memory into the far distant future.

[UPDATE: At least one other film, "Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis" was purportedly set in the Chernobyl area; but marketing was fairly low-key and the studios seemed to end up downplaying the Chernobyl connection.]

Surfing the Nuclear Web: from Australia to Argonne

Looking for more radiation related sites? There's the informative and descriptively-named Radioactive Waste blog from Australia:

Being an environmental scientist of the disorganised type, and also overwhelmed by the quantity of sites of relevance to my interest in safety of radioactive waste, my hope is that this blog will bring some order to my life (this part at least)! All views & irreverent commentary expressed here are entirely my personal opinion, of course. In Australia, after cleaning up the mess at Maralinga (former UK nuclear weapons test site), we are now in process of building a national radwaste repository.

Jef's Web Files has a section focusing on nuclear safety, with recent posts about the development of detectors that can "smell" nukes, and the U.S. government's recent revival of a lost Cold War art - fallout analysis.

Atom Central is an intriguing portal with sections on the atom bomb, the Trinity site and video releases on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American bomb tests and more.

Of special interest is the Argonne National Laboratory's engineering research website:

Argonne's rich heritage in the development of nuclear reactors began with CP-1, the world's first nuclear reactor brought to life by Enrico Fermi and his team on December 2, 1942, under the West stands at Stagg Field on the campus of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Walter H. Zinn, one of Fermi's close colleagues working on CP-1, became Argonne National Laboratory's first director in July 1946. In 1948, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) transferred the major portion of the nation's nuclear reactor development program to Argonne. Under Dr. Zinn's vision and leadership, Argonne established a vigorous and far-reaching program to develop nuclear reactors of virtually all types.

You can see some of Argonne's history in video: Argonne's pioneering nuclear research is prominently featured in the documentary Atoms for Peace (1994, VHS), hosted by Bill Kurtis (whom we met as the host of the program NOVA: Back to Chernobyl). This one-hour feature details the history of the American peacetime nuclear program with its focus on energy production (and the U.S. fast-breeder reactor program, now on indefinite hiatus), as well as its linkage back to the early weapons development initiatives at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Arco, Idaho (the first town to be powered by nuclear energy) and the now-defunct Hanford site power plant in Washington state. While Atoms for Peace is a bit hard to track down, you'll probably be able to find a copy at larger public libraries with video collections.