The Mysteries of the USS Ronald Reagan...and Godzilla!

As I promote CounterPunch’s release of the offprint on my article concerning contamination of the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan by Fukushima fallout (link to purchase here; please buy many, many copies), there is a plethora of radiation-related news that highlight and illuminate the questions discussed in the piece.

First, Godzilla!  The creature design for the new reboot looks like it turns its back on the fleet, buff, raptor-ripoff of Roland Emmerich’s disastrous 1986 version (which offended fanboys to the extent that the two planned sequels never made it to the screen; rights-holder Toho Pictures subsequently denied the monster true “Godzilla” status and reassigned it the secondary role of “Zilla” in the as-yet embryonic Godzilla canon).  The new Godzilla faithfully cleaves to the template of the lumbering, obese, murderously irate but somehow lovable pseudoallosaur of the 60s and 70s.

However, the trailer holds out the possibility of some major revisionism on the issue of Godzilla's origin (he was unleashed by nuclear testing in the Pacific), declaring “Not tests.  They were trying to kill it.”

Ahem.  A major reason for the cultural reasonance of Godzilla, especially in Japan, was the big guy’s role as a stand-in for Japanese fears and resentment concerning the nuclear havoc released by the United States, both over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and in post-war atomic testing in the Pacific during the 1950s.

One of the most notorious instances was the surprise of the Castle Bravo H bomb test in 1954 in the Marshall Islands.  Surprise because the planned yield was 5 megatons (300 times the Hiroshima bomb) but the scientists, the atoll, the observers, and the west Pacific got 15 megatons  (1000 times) instead.  It was a pretty big bang, the biggest the US ever pulled off.

Castle Bravo produced an oversized fireball over four miles in diameter, vaporized the test site atoll, and created a lot of radioactive fallout.  Because of a wind shift, a considerable amount of fallout landed on inhabited islands, and also irradiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No. 5.  The crew members became sick and one died “of a secondary infection”, a distinction that is very much in keeping with the strong desire of the nuclear industry to draw a bright line between statistically and scientifically unambiguous direct radiation-related mortality and radiation-related health impacts, exemplified by the WHO finding, much disputed by activists, that only 50 people died as a result of Chernobyl radiation (including 28 from acute radiation exposure and 15 from thyroid cancer).

Also typical was the government’s inclination to minimize the true extent of the radiation released in the fallout from Castle Bravo, a problem which also figures in my discussion of the purported radiation exposure of the crew of the Ronald Reagan.

Take it away, Wikipedia!

The official U.S. position had been that the growth in the strength of atomic bombs was not accompanied by an equivalent growth in radiation released. Japanese scientists who had collected data from the fishing vessel disagreed with this. Sir Joseph Rotblat, working at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, demonstrated that the contamination caused by the fallout from the test was far greater than that stated officially. Rotblat was able to deduce that the bomb had three stages and showed that the fission phase at the end of the explosion increased the amount of radioactivity a thousandfold. Rotblat's paper was taken up by the media, and the outcry in Japan reached such a level that diplomatic relations became strained and the incident was even dubbed by some as "a second Hiroshima".

More Wikipedia:

The sky in the west lit up like a sunrise. Eight minutes later the sound of the explosion arrived, with fallout several hours later. The fallout, fine white flaky dust of calcinated Bikini Island coral, had absorbed highly radioactive fission products, and fell on the ship for three hours. The fishermen scooped it into bags with their bare hands. With one fisherman, Matashichi Oishi, reporting that he "took a lick" of the dust that fell on his ship, describing it as gritty but with no taste. The dust stuck to surfaces, bodies and hair; after the radiation sickness symptoms appeared, the fishermen called it shi no hai (死の灰, death ash).

The US government refused to disclose the fallout's composition due to "national security", as the isotopic ratios, namely a percentage of uranium-237, could, through a radio-chemical analysis of the fallout, reveal the nature of the device to the Soviet Union, which had, as of 1954 not been successful with thermonuclear staging. Lewis Strauss, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), issued a series of denials; he also hypothesized that the lesions on the fishermen's bodies were not caused by radiation but by the chemical action of the caustic burnt lime that is produced when coral is calcined, that they were inside the danger zone (while they were 40 miles away), and told President Eisenhower's press secretary that the Lucky Dragon #5 may have been a "Red spy outfit", commanded by a Soviet agent intentionally exposing the ship's crew and catch to embarrass the USA and gain intelligence on the tests device. He also denied the extent of the claimed contamination of the fish caught by Daigo Fukuryu Maru and other ships. The FDA however later imposed rigid restrictions on tuna imports. The United States dispatched two medical scientists to Japan to study the effects of fallout on the ship's crew and to assist their doctors. 

Reportedly, the sailors were held incommunicado by the US to keep the story from getting out (I guess this was a by-product of U.S. powers under the ongoing occupation [Correction: Nope occupation ended in 1952.  Tks to alert reader MS]).

The case of the Lucky Dragon No. 5—and the radiation scare that prompted the dumping of several hundred tons of tuna—helped ignite the anti-nuke movement in Japan.  32 million Japanese signed a petition calling for the banning of the hydrogen bomb.

The Lucky Dragon No. 5, presumably satisfactorily decontaminated, is currently on display in an exhibition hall in Tokyo.

Castle Bravo also had a big role in igniting the movie career of Godzilla.  Hopefully when the movie comes out, Godzilla will still be true to his anti-nuke roots, and not fall prey to historical revisionism.

Off the nuclear theme for the moment, here is the Wikipedia entry for the most unlikely Godzilla manifestation:

Pulgasari

In 1985, North Korea released Pulgasari, a kaiju movie similar to Godzilla. To make the film, North Korea used kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok. The special effects department from Toho was hired to produce the special effects.^[9] Kenpachiro Satsuma, the stunt performer who played Godzilla from 1984 to 1995, portrayed Pulgasari.^[10]

Here’s the trailer.  The whole movie is also available on the Internet.  I suppose that’s another reason we can thank sanctions for isolating North Korea from the whole IP/copyright regime.

Next up, Chernobyl.  April 26 was the 28^th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe.  Chernobyl figures heavily in my piece, as a cautionary tale of government coverup, proof of concept for the disastrous consequences of washouts a.k.a. precipitation bringing the contents of radioactive plumes down to the surface, and also for the multi-decade search for an alternate scientific and social narrative for the health aftereffects that acknowledges the radiation link to ailments similar to those experienced by some of the sailors on the Reagan.

April 26 was also the anniversary of the little-known Capital Region washout of 1953, a rainstorm which dumped a significant amount of radiation on Albany and its environs from the Simon nuclear test in Nevada.  It offers an illustration of the contamination problems created by local washouts such as the one the Ronald Reagan experienced.  It also recapitulates the government pattern of understating the magnitude of radioactive fallout in dealings with the general public.

Third, the government of the Marshall Islands—the Pacific atolls subjected to 62 nuclear tests—symbolically sued the governments of the United States, Russia, and all the other nuclear powers last week, in order to get them to live up to their nuclear obligations.

Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was also the site, in 1946, of the only other known instance of radioactive contamination of a US aircraft carrier—and it was intentional.  The Baker shot was designed as an investigation as to whether naval vessels could be decontaminated while serving in a nuclear battle zone.  The answer was negative (see here for my discussion of the test, with a picture of the legendary Baker blast layer cake) at least for the derelict aircraft carrier USS Independence—which was subjected to a post-Baker sequence of unsuccessful decontamination exercises before the Navy gave up, turned it into a floating laboratory for more nuclear contamination experiments, and finally sank it off San Francisco’s Golden Gate with a cargo of nuclear waste.  Presumably, the Ronald Reagan fared better--though how much better is still something of a mystery, a mystery I'm trying to help unravel. 

CounterPunch Magazine article on Radioactive Contamination of USS Ronald Reagan at Fukushima Now Available for Purchase as Offprint

For the nuclear bureaucrat, lying seems to be as essential and continuous a human process as breathing.

I am not averse to the argument that a greater reliance on nuclear energy, despite its massive risks, might provide an alternative future preferable to being cooked to death by greenhouse gases.

But I must say that I do not think that nuclear energy should be in the hands of the current crew under the current system.

The nuclear agenda is largely in control of the legacy nuclear powers, whose dominance is enshrined in the imbalanced arrangement of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its creature, the IAEA.  The United States and Russia, in particular, are nuclear horror shows when it comes to the waste, haste, shortcuts, and accidents inseparable from the birth of nuclear science in the crisis atmosphere of a world war and ensuing Cold War.

Neither of these nations, I would aver, is particularly interested in a new, more conservative model of radiation risk baselining that might impose onerous economic, political, and public health costs on their governments.  

The Japanese government (which, under Prime Minister Abe is set on nuclear power as a strategic national initiative) and Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO) are pretty much cut from the same cloth.

Prime Minister Abe, in order to secure a key Japanese government priority, the 2020 Olympics, had this exchange with the IOC in September 2013 about the situation at the crippled nuclear power station at Fukushima:

"Let me assure you the situation is under control," [Abe] said.

"It has never done or will do any damage to Tokyo."

Abe replied decisively when pressed by veteran Norwegian IOC member Gerhard Heiberg over Fukushima.

"You should read past the headlines and look at the facts," he said.

"The contaminated water has been contained in an area of the harbour only 0.3 square kilometres big.

"There have been no health problems and nor will there be. I will be taking responsibility for all the programmes with regard to the plant and the leaks."

Fast-forward to April 20, 2014, courtesy of Japan Times:

“It’s embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where we don’t have full control,” Akira Ono told reporters touring the plant last week.…

It appears that Abe’s “under control” assurances were based, at worst, on shaky assurances from TEPCO that the Japanese government was in no mood to question in the crucial run up to the awarding of the Olympic bid, or at best upon the rather unsophisticated idea that TEPCO would contain the contaminated water in tanks, so it wouldn’t reach the harbor, until some other more permanent solution got worked out.

Lots and lots of tanks.  

The 1,000 tanks [already “approaching capacity”] hold 440,000 tons of contaminated water. Some 4,500 to 5,000 workers, about 1,500 more than a half year ago, are trying to double the capacity by 2016.

The permanent solution has been slow in coming.

Add to the burgeoning storage tank farm the problems of radiation-averse contract workers hastily constructing and piping tanks and the inevitable problems of leaks, mis-routing, and overflows.   Add the difficulty in getting the balky liquid processing system up and running.  Add the challenges of trying out the new science of freezing a gigantic underground wall of ice to keep water from the ocean.  Add the fact that 400 tons of groundwater flow through the site every day, and after TEPCO struck a deal with the local fishermen to dump 100 TPD into the ocean, it turns out that the water might be too contaminated to dump, anyway.

There are many ways to describe the contaminated water situation at Fukushima.  “Under control” is not the most accurate.  “Fighting a holding action for the next 30-40 years” as the physics of radionucleide decay ineluctably reduces the danger (and Abe and his promises to take responsibility have entered LDP Valhalla) is perhaps a better description.

“Abe lied Tokyo’s way in the 2020 Olympics” is also not complete hyperbole.

With this context, it is not terribly surprising that lawyers for sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan consider TEPCO a target-rich environment for the lawsuits they are filing to claim redress for TEPCO’s alleged negligence in the matter of the plume of radioactive material that the Ronald Reagan sailed under and, thanks to the unfortunate circumstance of the downwash of a snowstorm, into, while conducting relief operations off the east coast of Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.

Their claims have been shrugged off and under-reported in the US and Japan on the grounds that the radiation exposure was so minor it could not have caused any health problems.  I don’t buy it, and not just because there is a predisposition in the nuclear industry to shade the truth.  

There are good reasons to believe that radiation doses were not—could not be-- accurately measured, and that valuable science on the extensive negative health outcomes for radiation workers, derived particularly study of the vast army of Chernobyl liquidators, has not been properly addressed, and a thoroughgoing rethinking of the scientific orthodoxy of radiation sickness and of the global nuclear regulatory apparatus should precede any new wave of nuclear power plant construction.

I addressed the issue of radioactive contamination of the USS Ronald Reagan and its crew in an article for the CounterPunch monthly magazine, “Fukushima’s Nuclear Shadow: Fallout Over the USS Reagan.”  To illustrate the USS Reagan situation, I also discusses little-known elements of the Chernobyl disaster, and the story behind one of the most serious episodes of radioactive contamination from nuclear testing in the United States—in Albany, NY, of all places.

It is, I can say with some confidence, an eye-opening read.

CounterPunch has kindly made it available as an inexpensive offprint.  The link for purchase is here.

Contamination of USS Ronald Reagan Potentially a Big Deal for Japan as well as US

[Update: In 2013, Japan Focus published two superb pieces by investigative reporter Roger Witherspoon on the US military's response to radioactive contamination during Operation Tomodachi: http://japanfocus.org/-Roger-Witherspoon/3918 & http://japanfocus.org/-Roger-Witherspoon/3919.  His interviews with servicemen and women who served on the Reagan--and in many other locations and capacities during the relief operation, describe the harrowing circumstances of trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to predict and dodge the Fukushima plume and deal with onboard contamination of people as well as equipment.  Witherspoon's account 

- See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Roger-Witherspoon/3919#sthash.vTn18AEA.dpuf

The Reagan’s crew had been assured that there was no radiation to worry about over the open ocean and, as the ship’s navigator, Enis had been led to believe that the radiation was a distinct plume that they could avoid. It was now apparent that the radiation cloud was everywhere, and avoiding it would not always be possible.
On the quarter mile long deck there was another alarming note.
“I had a digital watch,” said quartermaster Jaime Plym, “and it suddenly stopped working. Somebody made a crack that radiation would do that. There were five or six of us on deck and everyone looked at their watches – and all the digital watches had stopped. There was one that was real expensive, and it wasn’t working either.
“We were laughing at first. But then that petered out and we just sort of looked at each other because it wasn’t funny anymore.”
- See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Roger-Witherspoon/3919#sthash.hn4SMz6v.dpuf

The Reagan’s crew had been assured that there was no radiation to worry about over the open ocean and, as the ship’s navigator, Enis had been led to believe that the radiation was a distinct plume that they could avoid. It was now apparent that the radiation cloud was everywhere, and avoiding it would not always be possible.
On the quarter mile long deck there was another alarming note.
“I had a digital watch,” said quartermaster Jaime Plym, “and it suddenly stopped working. Somebody made a crack that radiation would do that. There were five or six of us on deck and everyone looked at their watches – and all the digital watches had stopped. There was one that was real expensive, and it wasn’t working either.
“We were laughing at first. But then that petered out and we just sort of looked at each other because it wasn’t funny anymore.”
- See more at: http://japanfocus.org/-Roger-Witherspoon/3919#sthash.hn4SMz6v.dpuf

begs the question of why the Department of Defense saw fit to discontinue the Todomachi Medical Registry, which would have established baseline data for exposed personnel and monitored them for health problems.  CH 2/5/14]

As was reported in 2011, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was exposed to radiation contamination from Fukushima during its earthquake/tsunami rescue operations—“Operation Tomodachi”--off the Japan coast.

The original coverage minimized the significance of the contamination, saying it was equivalent to an extra month’s background radiation.

This narrative was called into question as sailors who had served on the Reagan at that time filed suit, first in San Diego court and then against the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation or TEPCO, for damages relating to health problems they blamed on the contamination.  Currently, there are more than 50 plaintiffs and their attorney says he expects the number to grow.

Congress recently directed the Department of Defense to look into potential health impacts from exposure during Operation Tomodachi.

Stars & Stripes reported the story with this arresting image of a line of sailors pushing soapy water across the Reagan’s flight deck:

The picture is captioned “Sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan scrub the aircraft carrier’s deck to remove potential radiation contamination during Operatiion Tomodachi …

First off, the adjective “potential” perhaps conveys a false idea of the level of confirmation that the Reagan was contaminated.  The Reagan is nuclear-powered, and chock-a-block with radiation detectors.  Indeed, the CBS report at the time acknowledged that the radiation detectors were triggered.  So the radiation contamination was “actual” not “potential” unless one wants to engage in word-parsing that there were no radiation detectors on the surface of the flight deck, so there was no confirmation of radiation contamination in the particular locations where the sailors were pushing their brooms at that time.

But it looks pretty likely that there was contamination, for a key and dire reason: the Reagan had experienced a snow storm while it was near the Fukushima reactor, raising the possibility that the plume of radioactive material, instead of dispersing in the higher atmosphere, had been washed down—and all over the Reagan—by the precipitation.

Indeed, a sailor who is suing for health-related issues stated that the snow “tasted metallic”.  Not exactly a good sign.

Which meant it is likely that radioactive particulate was all over the ship, and available to be inhaled.  So it’s not like the crew simply experienced an increase in background radiation one might associate with a stay on the space shuttle or by standing next to a poorly shielded microwave; it is possible they were exposed to and inhaled radioactive particulate, which is universally acknowledged to be very bad for you.

The Stars & Stripes photograph confirms that there was a concern over particulate contamination; otherwise they don’t send out the guys with the brooms.

The likely contamination of the Reagan by particulate radioactive material raising another extremely expensive, difficult, and perhaps insoluble problem.

I am not aware of current advances in decontamination but, unless revolutionary breakthroughs have occurred, complete decontamination of a vessel exposed to particulate radiation is impossible.

In fact, the inability to decontaminate navy vessels guided the evolution of US military strategy.

Faced with the threat to its mission and relevance in the atomic age, in 1946 the US Navy conceived an experiment in decontamination, Operation Crossroads.  We know it as the Bikini Atoll atomic test.  A flotilla of derelict ships were anchored around the atoll and two nuclear devices were detonated—one, Able, an airburst, the second, Baker, under water—to see how the ships and a few head of livestock would do.

As expected, the livestock did not do well, but the ships did, riding out the shock wave with limited damage and raising hopes that, in a wartime situation, US Navy ships could be experience a nuclear attack, survive, be decontaminated, get a fresh crew, and return to action.

However, the decontamination exercise simply didn’t work.  Months were spent trying to scrub down the ships and obtain an acceptable radiation level, but the contaminate (particularly from Baker, which was a spectacularly dirty underwater shot and perhaps analogous to the messy meltdown and explosion at Fukushima) proved far too tenacious.  On the military level, the takeaway was that surface vessels did not have a viable survivable role in a nuclear exchange.  On the scientific level, the Bikini test—and the revelation that the radiation aftereffects of a nuclear attack could not be adequately remediated, no matter how much time and energy were expended—was an important factory in the growing anti-nuke orientation of many scientists who had willingly worked on the bomb during WWII.

In an indication of trends in decontamination technology, here is a photograph from 1946 of sailors trying to decontaminate one of the test vessels, the Prinz Eugen.  Pushbrooms and soapy water seem to be a universal element in decontamination strategy, and it is unlikely that today there is any magic bullet that will allow a ship to be completely decontaminated.

A plaintiff in the TEPCO case claimed that the USS Reagan had been denied approval to dock in Japan or South Korea after contamination and had spent over two months at sea before returning to San Diego.  I would expect those two months were spent in extensive and laborious decontamination efforts that got most of the radiation; but with particulate radiation you can never get it all, and there’s a chance that it can be ingested and cause serious illness.

There are some strikingly significant consequences to the probability that the USS Reagan can never be completely and demonstrably decontaminated.

First, sailors may not be particularly enthusiastic about serving on the Reagan, especially since dozens of the crew are blaming their time on the ship for serious health problems.

Second, if the contamination story gains legs in the popular media, the US disposition of forces in the Pacific is vulnerable to serious disruption.  The Navy has announced that the Reagan will replace the USS George Washington at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan.  Post-tsunami, polls in Japan have demonstrated a predominant dislike for nuclear power in general and Fukushima radiation in particular, and it is unlikely to welcome it into a Japanese port aboard the Reagan.  

This is a matter of concern to the Abe government, not for public hygiene reasons—the regime’s foot soldiers are busy trying to sell the local population on the lack of peril and even the health benefits of Fukushima radiation—but because the unconditional welcome that the Japanese government offers to US forces is a key component of its strategy to use an unbreakable alliance between the US and Japan to confront the PRC.

Abe already has enough problems trying to shove the Futenma base relocation down the throats of the resisting Okinawans; he does not need the additional headache of having to rebut the argument that the US alliance brings with it additional nuclear contamination.

That is probably why, as CNN put it, “specific timelines are yet to be announced” for when the Reagan will actually show up at Yokosuka.

Third, the most logical way to deal with this issue once and for all would be to scuttle the USS Reagan in some conveniently deep marine trench and hope that the radioactive particulate will disperse sufficiently on the seabed and in the food chain to make the risk acceptable (the contamination issue, I imagine, would make the financial and political cost of scrapping the ship unsupportable).  However, I imagine the US Navy is loath to scuttle a $6 billion ship that is also the symbol and instrument of US military hegemony in the Pacific in order to prevent a few dozen potential premature cancer deaths.

Instead, as noted above, instead of shunting the Reagan off to some US base, the US government announced in January 2014 it would station it at Yokosuka.  Maybe the Defense Department has decided that the best defense is a good offense, and instead of giving credibility to Japanese nuclear anxieties, it’s just going to say The ship is clean, here’s the ship, it’s not going anywhere else.

However, nuclear fears are notoriously difficult to allay and it will be a challenge for the US Navy and the Abe government to use scientific, statistical, and University of Chicago-style cost/benefit analyses to reconcile the Japanese citizenry to the presence of the USS Reagan.   

So I predict that the preferred strategy of the US Defense Department and the Abe government will be: first, don’t acknowledge there’s a problem, followed by the usual stonewalling, modified hangout, and suppression of negative information—information like this from Stars & Stripes:

Sailors who were onboard the Reagan have claimed that they were drinking contaminated desalinated seawater and bathing in it until the ship’s leadership came over the public address system and told them to stop because it was contaminated. They claim the ventilation system was also contaminated. Furthermore, some claim they were pressured into signing forms confirming they had been given iodine pills when none had been provided.

Given the stakes involved—not just the $6 billion aircraft carrier and the health of its crew, but also the implications for the Abe government and the US-Japan alliance if the Ronald Reagan story gets out of hand—it will be interesting to see how the media covers this story.