October | 2012 |

By Eve Andrée Laramée

A whole class of basically undocumented workers who travel the US, from plant to plant. When they exceed their RAD limit at one, they move on to another plant. A practice tacitly accepted by the industry. This has been going on as long as the nuclear industry. Warnings have been issued, suggestions have been made, but the industry couldn’t function without them. So, nothing has been done. Laws exist, but they are not enforced. Records could be kept, but they are not. In a tragic version of “don’t ask, don’t tell”- few questions are raised & the workers, in dire need of money, have no incentive to come forward.

Posted 3/1/12: New hour long film featuring footage on Fukushima “Glow Boys” workers who would go into the reactor for just a few minutes before reaching critical dosage to try to stabilize the reactors during meltdown and melt-through.

INSIDE JAPAN’S NUCLEAR MELTDOWN – PBS Frontline

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/japans-nuclear-meltdown/

NUCLEAR GINZA (1995) DOCUMENTARY FILM, Directed by Nicholas Rohl

Part 1

Part 2

JAPAN’S NUCLEAR GYPSIES FACE RADIOACTIVE PERIL AT POWER PLANTS, Los Angeles Time, Dec. 4, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-nuclear-gypsies-20111204,0,347252.story?page=1

JAPAN OUTSOURCES NUCLEAR CLEANUP RISKS TO SUBCONTRACTORS, Engineering News Record, Dec. 4, 2011

http://enr.construction.com/yb/enr/article.aspx?story_id=166602281&mid=546

JAPAN’S NUCLEAR GYPSIES, Al Jazeera, English

WHO COUNTS THE NUMBER OF DEAD WORKERS AT FUKUSHIMA? Not TEPCO or the Government, IWJ Independent Web Journal

NUCLEAR NOMADS IN GERMAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: TEMPORARY WORKERS ARE EXPOSED TO HIGHER RADIATION, Economics Newspaper, Daniel Karmann

http://economicsnewspaper.com/policy/german/nuclear-nomads-in-german-nuclear-power-plants-temporary-workers-are-exposed-to-higher-radiation-apparently-31309.html

ACE HOFFMAN’S NUCLEAR FAILURES: GAMMA SPONGES, GLOW BOYS, SUICIDE SQUADS, JUMPERS, BIO-ROBOTS., Ace Hoffman’s Nuclear Failures Blog

http://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2011/04/gamma-sponges-glow-boys-suicide-squads.html

NUCLEAR JANITORS RISK HEALTH AND SAFETY, Nuclear Free Planet

http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/articles/nuclear-janitors-risk-health-and-safety.html

NUCLEAR JANITORS RISK HEALTH AND SAFETY, Multinational Monitor, by Veta Christie, Feb. 1984, Vol 5 No 3

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1984/02/christy.html

THE GLOW BOYS: HOW DESPERATE WORKERS ARE MOPPING UP AMERICA’S NUCLEAR MESS, Mother Jones Magazine, article by Paul Bagne, Nov. 1982

http://books.google.com/books?id=eeYDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT26&ots=veRpCe-Dif&dq=glow%20boys%20mother%20jones&pg=PT23#v=onepage&q=glow%20boys%20mother%20jones&f=false

GLOW BOYS AND GAMMA SPONGES: FUKUSHIMA SUICIDE SQUADS, Counter Punch, by Russell D. Hoffman, April 4, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/hoffman04042011.html

AMAZING CHERNOBYL BIO-ROBOTS IN NUCLEAR FALL OUT: Newly uncovered footage from the Russian State Media Archive, RTR Worldwide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeamRWOgqdI

INTO THE BOWELS OF A NUCLEAR REACTOR: They’re called Jumpers and they go where no one else will., New Times San Luis Obispo, by Shawna Galassi, Jan 21, 2004

http://archive.newtimesslo.com/archive/2004-01-21/archives/cov_stories_2003/cov_07242003.html

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR JAPAN’S EMBATTLED NUCLEAR WORKERS?, Time, by Krista Mahr, March 31, 2011

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/03/31/whats-in-store-for-japan’s-embattled-nuclear-workers/

WANTED: U.S. WORKERS FOR CRIPPLED JAPAN NUKE PLANT, Investment Watch, April 1, 2011

http://investmentwatchblog.com/wanted-u-s-workers-for-crippled-japan-nuke-plant/

FILM REVIEW – GLOW BOYS, By Mark Aerial Waller, 1999, 14 min, video, Lux Online, MUTE, Issue 11, by Pauline van Mourik Broekmann (This link has clips, stills, and info on the filmmaker)

http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/mark_aerial_waller/glow_boys.html

NUCLEAR GYPSY FROM HAMAOKA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT RELATES EXPERIENCES, Enformable/Enformed/Enforming Nuclear News Blog

http://enformable.com/2011/08/nuclear-gypsy-from-hamaoka-nuclear-power-plant-relates-experiences/

HEALTH EFFECTS OF CHERNOBYL: 25 YEARS AFTER THE REACTOR CATASTROPHE, by German Affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Section on the Chernobyl “Liquidators” begins on page 17)

http://www.chernobylcongress.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/chernob_report_2011_en_web.pdf

GENPATSU GYPSIES: HIDDEN TRAGEDY OF JAPAN’S NUCLEAR LABOR FORCE by Nagamitsu Miura

https://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox&action=read&tid=71a6ad25e05a4d90914ea1f2c467b42e

SYSTEM OF DISPOSABLE LABORERS, by Sonni Efron, Los Angeles Times, Column One, December 30, 1999

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/30/news/mn-49042

THE TRUTH ABOUT FUKUSHIMA ‘NUCLEAR SAMURAI’ by Suzanne Goldenberg March 21, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/nuclear-samurai-fukushima-japan-reactor?CMP=twt_gu

INTERVIEW WITH ADI ROCHE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF IRELAND-BASED “CHERNOBYL CHILDREN’S PROJECT” by John Lekay, Part three mentions the Chernobyl “liquidators”, and includes photographs by Paul Fusco, Elena Filatova, Igor Kostin, Adi Roche, Defend The Blackhills and others. Heyoka Magazine

http://heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.9.AdiRoche.1.htm

Contracted Worker San Onofre Fell Into Reactor Spent Fuel Pool

http://enformable.com/2012/02/san-onofre-contract-worker-fell-inside-reactor-pool/

U.S. Acknowledges Radiation Killed Weapons Workers, New York TImes, 1/29/2000

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/29/us/us-acknowledges-radiation-killed-weapons-workers.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon

http://www.nucleardemolition.com/Killing_Our_Own.pdf

Faces of and statements by the workers at Fukushima

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqwCrARb0Do&feature=youtu.be

Chernobyl Bio-Robots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsG8m4hH5Ck&feature=plcp

Swimming on the Hot Side

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/swimming-hot-side?page=all

Nuclear Divers

by JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD

Do Governments and Corporations lie, cover-up and maintain secrecy as they harm our planet and us? Joe Mangano’s new book Mad Science – The Nuclear Power Experiment clearly lays it out that they have done so for more than half a century.This book is a page-turner, filled with useful information that many of us don’t know or have forgot. His chapter “Tiny Atoms, Big Risks” explains the various forms of nuclear energy in terms that anyone can understand, and details the harm that has come to all life on our planet as a result of nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants.

Among the many nuclear catastrophes that Mangano chronicles – from Three Mile Island, the Nevada and Marshall Island nuclear bomb tests to Chernobyl and Fukushima- is the nuclear accident at the Santa Susana site in Ventura County, close to Los Angeles, CA. Santa Susana is one of the best-kept secrets in the history of nuclear power. The Santa Susana site had 10 sodium-cooled reactors the 1959 accident spewed radioactivity, tetralin – toxic naphthalene, and other chemicals into Simi Valley, the Pacific Ocean and eastward that are still detected over a half-century later.

A near meltdown of the Fermi-1 nuclear reactor nearly destroyed Detroit in 1968. It was a sodium-cooled reactor, as were the ones at Santa Susana. Located at the western end of Lake Erie, a Fermi meltdown would have crippled or destroyed much of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River as well. As has occurred since the Chernobyl meltdown, in the southern lake areas of Belarus, fish and boats travel upstream as well as down-stream.

As many as 16,000 workers were employed at Santa Susana by corporations that included, North
American Aviation (a spin-of of General Motors), Rocketdyne, Atomics international and finally Boeing. Santa Susana was closed by 1980, but never fully decontaminated.

Everyone in the Los Angeles area who has had a family member with cancer, a low birth-weight child, death of an infant, or thyroid disease should read the book. So should those who live down-
wind of a nuclear test area or a nuclear power plant – which includes practically everyone in the United States and Canada.

It was Lewis Strauss, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who in 1954 touted nuclear power as “too cheap to meter.” Today we learn it is too costly to bury waste, clean up contaminated land and buildings, and too costly to build and maintain aging nuclear power and bomb plants.

Mangano observes: “Nuclear war, like any war, is not an inevitable force of nature, bit a conscious choice of leaders.” (p. 66) So too is any decision to build of maintain a nuclear site.

Since the Fukushima releases began, Japanese citizens are marching and protesting the continuation of nuclear power as they observe the obvious reality of contamination. How long will it take for U. S. citizens to demand a stop to nuclear power and its’ twin nuclear war weapons?

The book ($20 paperback, $10 ebook) is available at: www.orbooks.com.

Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease, and is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She edited the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, written by A. V. Yablokov, V. B., Nesterenko and A. V. Nesterenko, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education. She can be reached at: toxdoc.js@verizon.net and www.janettesherman.com

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Nuclear Nomads, Glow Boys, Atomic Gypsies, Gamma Sponges, Liquidators, Jumpers, and Bio-Robots: The Disposable Migrant Workers of the Nuclear Energy Industry

By Eve Andrée Laramée

Nuclear Lies, Cover-Ups and Secrecy