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Blind Faith: The Nuclear History of Port Hope, Ontario

January 15, 2015 By Dennis Riches 2 Comments

Radiation is invisible, and it has always been imbued with a diverse range of magical powers in science fiction. Ironically, in a very real sense, radiation does make people invisible. Once groups of people have become victims of a radiological contamination, they are, in addition to being poisoned (or being traumatized by the possibility that they have been poisoned), marginalized and forgotten. Their traditions and communities are fragmented, and they are shamed into concealing their trauma. When contamination occurs, there is a strong impulse even among many victims to not admit that they have been harmed, for they know the fate that awaits them if they do.

Thus it is that hibakusha (the Japanese word for radiation victims) become invisible. When a new group of people become victims, such as in Fukushima in 2011, they feel that they have experienced a unique new kind of horror. For them, for their generation, it is new, but for those who know the historical record, it is a familiar replay of an old story. The people of Fukushima should know by now that they are bit players who have been handed down a tattered script from the past.

A case in point is “Blind Faith,” the superb 1981 book by journalist Penny Sanger, about the small irradiated Canadian town of Port Hope on the shores of Lake Ontario. In the 1970s, it faced (and more often failed to face) the toxic legacy of processing first radium, then uranium for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

Filed Under: Environment, Foreign Affairs, Health & Lifestyle Tagged With: Blind Faith: The Nuclear Industry In One Small Town, Blind River, Cameco, Canada, Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, cancer, Chernobyl, Cold War, Congo, Czechoslovakia, Darlington Nuclear Plant, Eldorado Mining and Refining, energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Farley Mowat, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi, Great Bear Lake, health, hibakusha, history, Lake Ontario, Lung cancer, Manhattan Project, Marie Curie, mining, nuclear bomb, nuclear energy, nuclear power, Ontario, Penny Sanger, Pickering Nuclear Plant, Port Hope, Port Radium mine, radiation, radium, radium mining, Robert Jacobs, taxes, United States Department of Energy, uranium, uranium mining, Workmen’s Compensation Board, World War II, yellowcake uranium

Nuclear Horror Stories From Fukushima Daiichi to Kazakhstan

December 11, 2014 By Dennis Riches 13 Comments

I’ve been living in the Tokyo area since the time of the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe (2011/03), and for the most part it has been good to see the international concern and increased support for the anti-nuclear movement. Yet some of the reactions haven’t been helpful at all. There has been a lot of alarmism and hyperbole over the tragedy arising from a failure to see it in the historical context of similar industrial accidents and atrocities.

There have been many disasters which have had devastating impacts on vulnerable populations, yet most of them have received less international recognition and sympathy than Fukushima. Much of the outrage over Fukushima has implied, unintentionally perhaps, an outrage that it happened to people in an advanced nation, or that it threatens the west coast of North America with what some believe to be an apocalyptic wave of radiation. There has never been this much concern for the fallout that affected the inhabitants of the Bikini Islands, Christmas Island, Fangataufa, Lop Nor, or “The Polygon” in Kazakhstan—some of the sites where the US, the UK, France, China and the USSR tested nuclear weapons. One could add to the list dozens of eco-disaster zones where forgotten people have had to live with the imposed risks of chemical pollution.

In order to put Fukushima in a global and historical context of ecological disasters, the rest of this article will discuss the humanitarian and environmental catastrophes in Kazakhstan and the Southern Urals of Russia. These Central Asian catastrophes have never received the level of attention given to the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, even though the environmental, health and social impacts have been far worse.

Filed Under: Foreign Affairs, Health & Lifestyle Tagged With: 2020 Olympics, anti-nuclear, Aral Sea, Bikini Islands, California, Chernobyl, Chris Busby, Christmas Island, Colorado, Fangataufa, Fukushima, Fukushima Daiichi, Hanford, history, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lop Nor, Los Angeles, Maiak factory, Marshall Island, Marshall Islands, Navruz Project, Nevada Test Site, nuclear, nuclear energy, Polygon test site, Rocketdyne meltdown, Rocky Flats, Russia, Semipalatinsk, Tajikistan, Techa River, Tokyo, Totsk nuclear test site, USSR, Uzbekistan, Washington

The Manhattan Project And The Nuclear Uncanny, Part 2

September 30, 2014 By Dennis Riches 1 Comment

Previously: Part 1: “The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico,” & Breaking Bad And The New Mexican Nuclear Uncanny Uncanny #3. Contested narratives At the end of the Cold War, a great deal of information was de-classified, and this gave rise to a strong anti-nuclear movement which was now armed with information about […]

Filed Under: Media & Culture Tagged With: Albuquerque, Bradbury Science Museum, Canada, Cerro Grande forest fire, Chernobyl, Climate change, Fukshima, Hiroshima, Joseph Masco, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Manhattan Project, Mt. Polley mine, Nagasaki, NASA, New Mexico, nuclear, nuclear power, Nuclear Safety Commission, Nuclear Uncanny, Pueblo Indians, sacrifice zones, Sigmund Freud, Smithsonian Institution, Three Mile Island, UN Security Council, WIPP

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