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December 27, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Court Orders Veterans Affairs Department to Replace Flawed Science Used to Deny Benefits to Vets Poisoned in 1966 Plutonium Disaster

In a major class action ruling issued December 17, the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in Washington, DC has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to re-examine how it evaluates disability claims from veterans exposed to deadly alpha radiation during cleanup operations following a disastrous nuclear weapons accident at Palomares, Spain.

The Veterans Legal Services Clinic of Yale Law School, which since 2016 has assisted in litigating the case, Skaar v. Wilkie, along with the New York Legal Assistance Group, announced the decision. The ruling follows oral arguments made September 2, 2020, and comes one year after the Court’s historic decision to certify “class action” status for the veterans of the disaster.

On Jan. 17, 1966, during an airborne refueling gone wrong, an Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares. Seven crewmembers were killed and four hydrogen bombs were thrown to the Earth. Upon impact, conventional explosives inside two of the H-bombs detonated, blasting two giant craters and spreading as much as 22 pounds highly radioactive, carcinogenic pulverized plutonium across the Spanish village and countryside. (See Dec. 18 report, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/air-force-veterans-of-plutonium-dust-disaster-win-class-action-standing)

In its new decision, the Court said the VA violated federal law requiring that its assessment of veterans’ radiation exposures be based on sound science. The VA has so far relied on faulty methods to deny disability benefits to veterans for radiation-related illnesses caused by the nuclear weapon disaster, the legal services clinic said, calling the decision “a long-awaited step toward recognizing the Palomares veterans’ service and ensuring they have access to the benefits they earned,” it said. Even a single particle of plutonium if inhaled or ingested can cause cancer.

The injured veterans are led by Chief Master Sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Ret.) of Nixa, Missouri, who participated in the clean-up. Skaar and the class argue that the VA’s radiation exposure methodology “ignored 98 percent of the radiation measurements taken from veterans after the incident,” an error so grave that, “Dr. von Hippel and even the VA’s own consultant have faulted the method,” the law clinic said.

Skaar and at least 1,500 others were sent to clean up plutonium-contaminated debris and lived amidst the wreckage and the plutonium dust for weeks — handling it, cleaning it from clothes, washing it off of village surfaces, placing contaminated soil in barrels, and even incinerating truckloads of poisoned debris. Now, “many of the veterans of have radiation-related illnesses that require medical treatment. Others have died from these conditions…” the law clinic said.

Referring to a December 2017 report by Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel about 26 GIs who were identified in 1966 as having received the highest exposures, the Court wrote: “Dr. von Hippel concluded that ‘The Air Force’s dose estimates have huge uncertainties and the maximum doses incurred by those not in the “High 26” could be hundreds of times higher than those that the Air Force has recommended to the VA for determination of benefits.’”

The Court said that the VA never explained why it adopted the flawed methodology.” The Court’s opinion written by Judge Michael Allen admonished the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, declaring that it may not “abdicate its responsibility to assess whether the evidence before it is ‘sound.’” The Court ordered the VA to review the parties’ evidence and provide considered analysis of the methodology to ensure that only sound scientific evidence is used to determine veterans’ eligibility for disability benefits.

In a statement to the law clinic, John Rowan, Air Force Veteran and National President of Vietnam Veterans of America said, “Thanks to the Court’s decision and the continuing advocacy of Mr. Skaar and other class members, the VA must now justify its practice of arbitrarily dismissing the exceedingly high levels of radiation these veterans encountered and continue to suffer from … [and] fulfill its duty under law to assist these veterans and ensure their claims are evaluated using methods that are both scientifically and legally sound.”

Startlingly, the Air Force has never included the weeks-long Palomares plutonium cleanup on its list of “radiation risk activities” which it uses to rule on disability claims, in spite of the its own 1967 determination that service members’ “health is in no jeopardy from retention of radioactive materials as a result of participation in the [Palomares] operation.” Asked how the Air Force can keep such a radiation-heavy clean-up operation off the list, the law clinic’s Molly Petchnik told me list was drawn up long ago and the military is reluctant to expand it.

The official list in the Code of Federal Regulations (38 CFR § 3.309) does recognize four radiation activities since 1966, including service at H-bomb production sites in Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. in 1991; and underground H-bomb test service on Amchitka Island, Alaska in 1974. ###

–John LaForge (a version of this report was published by CounterPunch online, Jan. 1, 2021)

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste, War, Weekly Column

December 18, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Air Force Veterans of Plutonium Dust Disaster Win Class Action Standing

Air force veterans exposed to plutonium after a first-ever US nuclear weapons disaster in Spain have won extremely rare recognition as a class in a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.

On Jan. 17, 1966, an air force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares, Spain during a routine airborne refueling. Seven airmen were killed and the bomber’s four hydrogen bombs were thrown to the earth. Conventional explosives (not the nuclear warheads) in two of the bombs detonated in massive explosions, one right in the village, gouging massive, plutonium-covered craters and spewing as much as 22 pounds of pulverized plutonium dust over houses, streets and farm fields.

On June 19, 2016, the New York Times published a 4,500-word investigative report about the lawsuit filed in the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims by chief master sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Rt.). Skaar, who was 30 at the time, was part of a clean-up team, dubbed Operation Moist Mop, assigned to the disaster response. A throng of some 1,700 soldiers were put to surveying 400 acres and washing the inside and outside of village buildings. Over a period of 80 days they filled 4,810 barrels with plutonium-contaminated soil and loaded the drums aboard a ship bound for disposal stateside.

Two years after Skaar retired in 1981, he came down with a blood disorder called leukopenia. He’s been trying ever since to have the illness recognized as service-related. In a phone interview, Skaar told Nukewatch that dozens of the veterans contaminated during the clean-up are also sick. If their claims can be established in court, they would be eligible for free health care and a disability pension. Sometimes “clean-up” amounted to hosing the plutonium dust. It was hosed off houses, streets and even a school, leaving the toxic runoff to contaminate downstream surface waters. When the barrels of collected soil had excessive radiation readings, troops blew the dust off using air compressors. When testing the troops’ clothing, radiation meters regularly went off-scale.

After the 2016 exposé in the Times, Michael Wishnie, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School who runs the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, called Skaar and offered the aide of the clinic in the case. It’s been a David and Goliath battle from the beginning. Skaar told the Times, “First they told me there were no records, which I knew was a lie because I helped make them.” The air force seems determined to keep denying responsibility until the surviving vets die off and the lawsuit becomes moot. Meghan Brooks, a former Yale clinic member, told the Times, “The bunk science the air force was using was not just harming Mr. Skaar, but all the other Palomares veterans. Mr. Skaar really wanted to fight on behalf of others,” she said.

After Sgt. Skaar’s three decades of relentlessly filing Freedom of Information Act requests and repeatedly appealing FOIA denials, he and the Yale team finally broke through. In a Dec. 6, 2019 decision the appeals court granted class action status for some but not all the Palomares veterans. The court also found that Skaar could serve as “class representative” for as-yet-unnamed class members.

Class action status for Skaar and the other appellants “represents a major step forward for veterans with long-term health issues linked to toxic exposure in the service,” the Times reported on Feb. 11, 2020. Then on Sept. 2, 2020, the court heard oral arguments in the case and accepted new evidence including a declaration by Dr. Murry Watnick, a former Strategic Air Command Medical Officer. (Full disclosure: Dr. Watnick is a longtime Nukewatch supporter and alerted us to the class action.) Part of Watnick’s affidavit notes that, “The amount of plutonium-239 released was estimated to be approximately 10 kilograms [22 lbs]. One microgram of plutonium-239 is extremely toxic. The estimated release was three billion micrograms.”

Plutonium’s chief danger is from inhalation, because its deadly alpha particles lodge in the lungs “bombarding the adjacent cells with highly toxic ionizing radiation,” Watnick wrote. Troops involved were exposed to “plutonium dust six to eight hours daily in an environment highly conducive to inhalation of alpha particles.”

The class action is focused on the VA’s denial of Mr. Skaar’s claim of service-related illness, and the military’s “arbitrary and capricious” use of inadequate radiation data which is based on shoddy methods of recording and maintaining urine samples taken from clean-up crew members. The veterans also challenge the VA’s omission of Palomares cleanup operations from its list of radiation risk activities. The appeal is currently ongoing.

–John LaForge (LA Progressive online published this report Dec. 13, & CounterPunch Dec. 18)

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste, War, Weekly Column

October 27, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

White House Gangster Wants to Avoid Nuclear-Armed Stigma

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is about to won its 50th state ratification on Saturday, October 24th, the golden number needed for the treaty to enter into force. The list of 50 signatories can be seen at ICANw.org, website of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning coalition that helped navigate the treaty.

Formal ratification of the new law — TPNW for short — is a nation’s binding promise “never under any circumstances … develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” The United Nations opened the TPNW for consideration by a vote of 122 to 2 in July 2017.

On January 22, 2021, a mere 90 days after the 50th nation state ratification, the TPNW will enter into force as international law, binding on countries that have seen it ratified.

Now, in a fashion reminiscent of lawless dictatorships the world over, the Trump White House has written to countries that have adopted the treaty urging them to withdraw their ratifications.

According to the Associated Press, which obtained the U.S. letter, the Trump Administration claims that the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France and all 30 NATO allies “stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions” of the treaty.

The AP reported that Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, said several diplomatic sources had confirmed to her that they and other states that ratified the TPNW had been sent letters by the U.S. requesting their withdrawal.

Fihn told the AP that the “increasing nervousness, and maybe straightforward panic, with some of the nuclear-armed states and particularly the Trump administration,” shows that they “really seem to understand that this is a reality: Nuclear weapons are going to be banned under international law soon.”

So, while the US and the other nuclear-armed countries have opposed the ban treaty, they do recognize the stigma of violating a civilized prohibition that is coming into force. Like a drug cartel with the terroristic muscle and political connections to operate outside the law, the White House wants to pressure its lesser associates.

The absurdity of the White House letter is flabbergasting. It’s like imagining that President Lincoln had urged countries to reinstate slavery.

Ray Acheson, director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom disarmament program, said in a tweet: “It’s incredible that a nuclear-armed state is demanding other countries withdraw from a treaty banning nuclear weapons.”

Back on March 27, 2017 when negotiations for the treaty ban began, Governor Nikki Haley, then US Ambassador to the UN, led a 40-state boycott of the proceedings. Speaking at the UN, Haley made two verbal slips that spoke the truth.

Haley said, “We would love to have a ban on nuclear treat….” She caught herself and said “weapons” instead of “treaties.”

Later, Haley flubbed her claim that: “… one day we will hope that we are standing here saying, ‘We no longer need nuclear weapons.'”

Evidently, the Trump administration doesn’t hope for a ban on nuclear weapons but instead would love to have that ban on nuclear treaties.

An earlier version of this article was published at Counterpunch.org on October 23, 2020.

Filed Under: Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side, Weekly Column

October 22, 2019 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Trial of Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Started in Georgia

Illustration by Chrissy Nesbitt of supporters watching a closed-circuit television from a courtroom used for the overflow crowd of supporters during the first day of the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. Little else than pen and paper are allowed in the courthouse.

BRUNSWICK, Georgia — The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 federal court trial got started here, Monday Sept. 21, with the judge reading out the four charges against the seven defendants and then she began the tedious process of jury selection. The defendants in the nuclear weapons protest case are charged with three felonies and misdemeanor trespass for their April 4, 2018 protest conducted on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

That day, the seven snuck into the Kings Bay Georgia Navy Trident submarine base and conducted a nonviolent, symbolic disarmament action modeled after roughly 100 previous “Plowshares” actions in the US and Europe. The dramatic actions take their name from the original “Plowshares Eight” of 1980, when eight radical Christian pacifists hammered and poured their blood on nuclear weapons components in a GE plant in Pennsylvania.

With between 75 and 100 supporters and family members crowding the over-flow room equipped with a television view of the proceedings, and vigiling on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, Federal District Judge Lisa Wood slogged methodically through the questioning of the large jury pool. Ostensibly trying to weed out bias and prejudice against the opposing parties in the case, the otherwise boring monotony was broken by a moment of striking revelation.

Judge Wood was explaining the “presumption of innocence” that is granted to defendants in criminal trials. Judge Wood said that the burden of proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” is on the government alone. Then the judge asked, “Does anyone here believe the defendants are guilty?”

An eye-popping nine prospective jurors raised their hands and said “yes.” This caused an audible gasp among the observers in the over-flow TV room. In following up, the judge asked how many had seen or read anything about the case. Seven of the nine had heard of the case, but two thought the defendants were guilty without knowing anything of the case beyond the government’s allegations. It was Vice President Dick Cheney who said “they wouldn’t be suspects if they weren’t guilty.”

Out of about 78 prospective jurors, a total of 24 answered they had worked on the Kings Bay Navy base themselves or had relatives who worked there. None admitted to having a “strong opinion about nuclear weapons,” and none answered that they had “any moral or philosophical opposition to nuclear weapons.”

By late afternoon 12 jurors and 12 alternates were chosen, and opening statements were made by the assistant US District Attorney Carl Kanoke for the government, and by attorney Bill Quigley representing Elizabeth McAlister, and by Clare Grady representing herself. The other five defendants will present their opening statements after the government case has been finished and just before they present their defense case.

Mr. Kanoke said he’d bring several witnesses from the security services who arrested and detained the defendants. He pointed out that two of the protesters wore GoPro video cameras and recorded 75 minutes of their go-in action, and said that the jury would get to watch the video themselves. He said it would be a simple, straightforward case to prove and that they would find all seven guilty.

Mr. Quigley said in his opening that the defendants won’t deny that they did what was on the video tape but that they were enacting their religious faith in Christian nonviolence. Quigley said in part that the seven used hammers to symbolically carry out the Biblical prophecy to “turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” The seven take the Bible and the Commandments very seriously, he said, particularly the rule against killing, while the nuclear weapons present at Kings Bay Naval Base have the explosive force of 3,600 Hiroshima events.  He reminded the jury that a manager of security at the base had said publicly that the defendants threatened no one.

Clare Grady spoke briefly about her work caring for the elderly. Activist Ralph Hutchison reports that “Clare spoke of the responsibility to do justice—‘only you can render a verdict,’ she told the jury. The most important virtue you bring to this is being human. ‘Our actions were not criminal,’ she said. ‘We’re saying we were there and we did this. It was a nonviolent, symbolic act of disarmament. The evidence will show that we acted to uphold the law.’”

The trial continues Tuesday with the prosecution’s case, and is expected to last through Friday.

The seven Kings Bay Plowshares defendants are Elizabeth McAlister, 79, of Jonah House, Baltimore; Fr. Steve Kelly, 69, of the Bay Area, California; Carmen Trotta, 55, of the New York Catholic Worker; Clare Grady, 59, of the Ithaca Catholic Worker; Martha Hennessy, 62, of the New York Catholic Worker; Mark Colville, 55, of the Amistad Catholic Worker, New Haven, Connecticut; and Patrick O’Neill, 61, of the Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker, Garner, North Carolina.

– John LaForge, for Nukewatch

Filed Under: Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, On The Bright Side, War, Weekly Column

May 13, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Is Emergency Evacuation from Seabrook Reactor Even Possible? Public Hearings Demanded

By John LaForge

Ever wonder if the nuclear reactor near you has an evacuation plan that would work in an emergency? Have you ever been stuck in barely moving traffic on an interstate highway even when there was no crisis, no sirens, and no panic?

People driving Interstate-95 near the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire have, and they have reason to worry, especially after the nonprofit group We the People and its founder Stephen Comley produced “No Evacuation Possible,” a public service video of routine summertime traffic jams on I-95 — Seabrook’s disaster escape route, and warning of the impossibility of an evacuation in the event of an accident at Seabrook.

One wonders how many other nuclear reactors have a single evacuation route that is frequently, even routinely, rendered nonfunctional. Commercial reactors are required by law to have a workable escape plan.

In January 2018, the town of Merrimac, Mass. joined half a dozen other communities calling on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold a hearing on whether Seabrook’s evacuation plan can be effectively implemented.

Reactor owner NextEra Energy Resources issued a Jan. 20, 2018 response/nonresponse in which it failed to address evacuation issues: “We have extensive emergency response systems in place,” the firm said, “including numerous back-up safety systems that provide our plants with layer upon layer of both automated and manual protection….”

Right. And—as with other catastrophic commercial nuclear power accidents, what if those back-ups fail and emergency evacuation is required?

NextEra’s dismissive position has helped We the People’s public warnings gain traction. Major state politicians and municipalities that are within what Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has called — in a Feb. 26, 2019 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — “the 50-mile Ingestion Exposure Pathway Emergency Planning Zone” have begun raising their own alarms.

Massachusetts State Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and State Representative Brad Hill wrote to State Attorney General Maura Healey October 10, 2018, complaining of “constituent inquiries” about Seabrook’s evacuation plan. The lawmakers reported that the public “has become increasingly concerned about effectively evacuating the area in the event [of] a nuclear emergency,” and noted that “drone-recorded video of the Hampton Beach during the summer tourist season … shows the heavy traffic congestion on the seacoast.”

We the People has also won resolutions from half a dozen local towns and city councils in Massachusetts and New Hampshire calling on state and federal agencies to convene a public hearing where emergency first responders could try and explain the Seabrook emergency evacuation plan.

Last September 25, New Hampshire State Representative Peter Schmidt wrote to AG Healey about the “urgency” of having first responders “testify as to the plans and possibilities for safely, effectively and expeditiously evacuating the seacoast in the event of a nuclear emergency.” Several municipalities within the evacuation zone have “strongly endorsed We the People’s call for this first responder hearing,” Schmidt wrote.

Representative Schmidt’s letter raised two additional issues that We The People has brought to light. What Schmidt called “some sort of gag order” has allegedly been imposed on Massachusetts State Police officers and the New Hampshire National Guard members, forbidding them from speaking about evacuation issues.

Mr. Comley personally made a formal, recorded presentation regarding the question of the alleged gag order to the Massachusetts State Police on September 2, 2016. Then, according to a February 14, 2018 letter by Christina Lucin of the State Patrol’s Fraud Identification Unit, the record of the proceedings were “lost.” Consequently, Representative Schmidt complained to AG Healey: “[T]he disappearance of the record is very troubling.”

Seabrook is 13 miles south of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and 40 miles north of Boston, large cities within the “ingestion exposure” zone. In March 2011, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommended the evacuation of all US residents from within 50 miles of the three Fukushima reactor meltdowns in Japan.

The Seabrook reactor is set between the towns of Seabrook and Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, a mere 1.2 miles east of Interstate 95. Hampton Beach and its popular state park are only 1.6 miles to the east.

So far, AG Healey has still not agreed to schedule a public hearing for first responders to speak about their concerns over the plausibility of emergency evacuation. We the People and seven local municipalities in the Emergency Planning Zone are still waiting to hear from the Attorney General’s office.

There are 98 commercial nuclear power reactors in the US. How many would effectively become weapons of mass destruction if an accident or a terrorist bomb made emergency evacuation both necessary and impossible?

Filed Under: Nuclear Power, Weekly Column

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