Remembering the March 11th Disaster

This guest blog comes from former NAPF intern Olivia Wong, who is now living, working and studying in Japan.

On the bottom of the ocean floor, offshore from the Oshika Peninsula, Miyagi Prefecture, a massive uninhibited force rippled through the depths of the ocean. Thousands of kilometers away, at that exact same moment, I was sitting in a classroom taking a final exam in Japanese at my university in Santa Barbara. The range of the seismic epicenter was colossal, measuring about 500 kilometers from north to south and spanning roughly 200 km from east to west. Immediately after the tectonic plates began to shift, waves began to form, and the tsunami was born.

The voices of different news stations overlapping each other echoed throughout the wing of the Japanese Language and Studies department. I stood in the doorway of my professor’s office and watched the numbers “9.0” flash violently across the screen. Nano-seconds later, images of a thrashing wave engulfing the coast of Northeast Japan replaced the reports of the earthquake. The creature took on a life of its own, indiscriminately consuming everything in its path into a deep malevolent abyss. Beset by the pandemonium erupting on the television, my teachers and I observed in silence, as we were too horrified to even make a gesture of disbelief.

Accidents Happen?

"Accidents happen. That's what they say."
-- Grover

My two year-old daughter is in full potty training mode, and right now her favorite video is Sesame Street's "Elmo's Potty Time." Unfortunately this means that the soundtrack plays over and over in my head. One of the catchiest songs is "Accidents Happen" (quoted above). The conclusion of the song is that accidents happen, and that's ok.

The other world in which I reside, where I work every day for the abolition of nuclear weapons, is full of examples where accidents are not ok. One such example is the Palomares accident, which happened on this day in 1966.

On this day in the middle of the Cold War, a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear weapons collided in mid-air with a KC-135 refueling tanker plane, causing both planes to crash. One of the B-52's nuclear weapons was recovered on the ground and another was found after a months-long search in the sea. The other two nuclear weapons have never been found.

Nevada Test Site: Ho-Hum

A great example of the trivialization
of what has gone on at the Test Site.

The Nevada Test Site tour was an eye-opening endeavor in many ways. Seeing the remnants of our nuclear testing regime was shocking. What struck me over and over from the moment we left Las Vegas on the bus early in the morning was the "ho-hum" attitude of our tour guides, the nonchalance with which they presented a selected set of facts and other statements about the test site and the long-term effects of radiation and nuclear waste.

I suppose that to live with yourself as a NTS lifer, you must force yourself to believe that what has gone on there over the past 60 years has been of great benefit to the country, or at least not particularly damaging. I will give some examples of how this attitude came across.

Chemistry & Metallurgy Research Replacement Project

While CMRR stands for Chemistry & Metallurgy Research Replacement project, I think a more appropriate title would be the Costing Massive Resources and Redundancy project. The Department of Energy’s proposal to build a new large scale nuclear facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is not only ten times costlier than originally announced, but it’s also planned to be constructed on the side of a dormant volcano. Now I’m no seismologist, but I am almost positive that a plutonium facility sitting on top of an earthquake-prone area is not a recipe for success.

According to the Department of Energy’s proposal, the CMRR project will be carried out in a three phase assignment which will ultimately replace the fifty-year old facility responsible for building plutonium pits. The plutonium pit refers to the core of an implosion weapon that is responsible for detonation when compressed by explosives. Because of the radiation emitted from these pits, over half of the former facility has been shut down due to severe contamination, yet another warning sign that makes one question the safety and practicality of the project.

Currently, construction costs for the CMRR project total around $5.86 billion and operations are expected to begin in Fiscal Year 2023. That being said, it is important to note that this same project has been in the works for over a decade. Scheduling delays have wasted valuable resources, time, and manpower on a project that continues to be vulnerable to natural disasters as years pass. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability finds that $3 billion have already been added to program costs since 2008 due to increasing concerns over seismic activity.

Another cause of concern for the Chemistry & Metallurgy Research Replacement Project is the issue of nuclear waste. As it stands, the new site is planned to be 32,000 square feet larger than the current facility. Such a vast expansion is excessive and increases the risk for improper waste disposal and nuclear proliferation. Need a second opinion?

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, sums up the Chemistry & Metallurgy Research Replacement Project quite nicely. He says, “We should be cleaning up, not building up new production plants that will produce yet more radioactive and toxic wastes. We should be following a conservative curatorship program that prudently maintains the stockpile, saves American taxpayers dollars, and demonstrates leadership toward the nuclear weapons-free world that global security truly needs.” Well put Jay, well put.