Tag: Nuclear Radiation

Yuba City B52 Crash with two Hydrogen Bombs on board 14 March 1961

B-52 Crash, Yuba City CA “Broken Arrow” (1961) 12:40


Editor’s Note: This is the correspondence of officials for the crash of a B-52 bomber just outside of Yuba City California with two hydrogen bombs on board. Note that in the beginning of this they did not know if the bombs had detonated on the crash site. Directly below is the link to a video of the crash site which shows that the destruction of the airplane was complete and that all the hopeful thinking and initial reporting by news agencies was just speculation. You will see that as the information came in you see panic on the part of the local fire department where they had a wreck on the way to the crash site resulting in the death of a fireman. As with any disaster people hope for the best but they really cannot determine what happened until they get to the scene.
Also this shows you the documentation of each of these events. The military writes down everything even when they are covering up information such as the plutonium injections in San Francisco, Chicago, Rochester, Oak Ridge and New York. It is all written down even when they are conspiring to keep the information classified so it will not get out to the public. All of it is written down, you just have to know where to look.
Note there is no information on whether the area was decontaminated. No superfund site, no state site, nothing. This is symptomatic of the disconnect between the DOD and the EPA.

B-52 Crash, Yuba City CA “Broken Arrow” (1961) Video of the crash site.

Joint Nuclear Accident Coordinating Center Record of Events:

“1150 MST 15 March 1961. Lt Col Sweenam, SAC Liaison Officer, to Lt Col Schuyler, Chief JNACC
Col S: This is Col Sweetnam, SAC. We had another North Carolina type incident. It’s B-52F on a cover all mission, carrying two (redacted) (redacted) And it went in 15 miles SW of Yuba City, California Time was 1807Z on the 14th. Just about an hour ago. And the aircraft was out of the 5134 Strategic Wing, Mather AFB. They come under our 15th AF. And the only other information we have is that they sent a airplane for refueling. Somehow the B-52 went out of control. The Aircraft commander notified control room that they were bailing out and there has been a report that the aircraft was burning, but there been no evidence of detonation of any type. And that was the information that was phoned in from the SAC control room. They’ll keep us posted and we’ll let you know if there are further developments.” Continue reading “Yuba City B52 Crash with two Hydrogen Bombs on board 14 March 1961” →

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Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste sites

The Navy dumped over 47,000 barrels of nuclear waste off the coast of San Francisco near the Farallon Islands. This is a map of their locations. Unfortunately they were supposed to bury it in deep water but it can be found in water 300 meters deep .

John L. Chin and Allan Ota,”Disposal of Dredged Material and Other Waste on the Continental Shelf and Slope” U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia: 2001 Circular 1198 (full-length technical version) p 201

The USS Independence which according to Navy Records was sunk at the approximate location of this map was actually found farther south in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. USS Independence Irradiated in Nuclear Tests found in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
E/V Nautilus explores the Flight Deck of the USS Independence

Most of that 47000 barrels of nuclear waste were stored on the ship when they sunk the Air Craft Carrier. So the amounts sunk in the Farallon Islands must be adjusted.
Continue reading “Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste sites” →

North Hollywood High School Nuclear Radiation Test to see how far gamma rays penetrates a school which is still in use to this day!

EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF THE FALLOUT-RADIATION PROTECTION PROVIDED BY SELECTED STRUCTURES IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA February 26, 1963

“An experimental study designed to provide a basis for estimating protection against fallout radiation was conducted on four diversified structures in the Los Angeles, Calif., area. This study was sponsored by the Civil Effects Test Operations (CETO), Division of Biology and Medicine, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. The four buildings studied were (1) the Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); (2) a family fallout shelter; (3) the communications section of the Los Angeles Police Department building; and (4) a typical classroom located at North Hollywood High School.

A fallout radiation field was simulated by the Mobile Radiological Measuring Unit. The unit employed a single radioactive Co 60 source, which was pumped at a uniform speed through a long length of tubing evenly distributed over the area of interest. Measurements of the radiation levels at selected points inside the structures were made with highly sensitive ionization chamber detectors. Protection factors ranged from 10 to 2000 in the UCLA building, up to 10,000 in the family fallout shelter, from 50 to 150 in the communications section of the police building, and from less than 10 to approximately 20 in the high school classroom.”

Continue reading “North Hollywood High School Nuclear Radiation Test to see how far gamma rays penetrates a school which is still in use to this day!” →

LEGACY OF CONTAMINATION. A California Naval base shutters, and contamination lingers decades later/ Reuters

Article Link
Reuters looks into the nuclear contamination of the EPA Superfund site, Treasure Island which is in San Francisco Bay and it is being developed by contractors with close ties to Bay Area politicians. The City put low income housing on the former barracks and houses on the site. People are getting sick. The Navy and the city are trying to cover this up but kids are finding radioactive materials all over the island.

One girl who became ill had a jewelry box her “Treasure Box” with radium painted dials and radioactive beads. [Editors note: Fallout beads]

Disaster Area Editor:
Why would these be on Treasure Island? Treasure Island was the Navy’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical training school. They are exactly the thing you need to train sailors on how to detect radiation and so they buried these things in the ground for the sailors to find. And that is the only way they could have been dug up by this little girl in her yard or on the playground at her school on Treasure Island.

Most military bases who operated ships and airplanes had radium painted dials and markers used to operate machines, engines etc in no-light situations. When they realized that these markers were radioactive and that they were dangerous, these bases removed them and buried them in the ground, with no care that it might spread the contamination into the water table.

Most EPA superfund sites for military bases have the radium dial markers as one of the things that make it a federal cleanup site. Usually there are others like PCBs (dioxin) and Trichloroethylene (TCE), unexploded ordinance (which is quite common in the Bay Area). You can search for these specific chemicals on the Envirostor website which is the State of California’s Toxic Waste site or on the GeoTracker site which covers California and federal cleanup sites. The Geotracker map shows little squares that indicate a toxic waste location and if you click on them it will show the name of the site.

The Navy Nuked Itself in Operation Crossroads Baker Test

Operation Crossroads (1946) was two atomic bomb tests where the second one was exploded under water creating a radioactive steam cloud that spread over all of the ships, including the support ships thus irradiating about 80% of the US Pacific Fleet at the time. The Navy had set up a set of Target Ships including the Saratoga and Independence Aircraft Carriers to see what effect a nuclear explosion would have on the ships. The explosion irradiated the water in the lagoon the equivalent of 5000 tons of radium.

Unfortunately they miscalculated and thus irradiated all of the ships present which had to be cleaned immediately to be put back in action. Thus the ships had to go to US Ports and be cleaned by sandblasting and the Navy decided to dump the contaminated sandblast sands directly into the harbors of the Navy Bases. 145 out of 207 ships were sent to be decontaminated, the others were scuttled. Airplanes were sent to their respective bases to be washed down.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Navy entered the Lagoon with the support ships but had to retreat when the radiation levels exceeded the fatal level and the ships ran out, some went out to sea to escape. One hour after the blast the Battleship “New York” had a reading of 1200 r/hr which is 3 times the fatal dose. Here is a video of the scene, showing the support ships wash down the decks of the target ships like it was a carwash, the sailors completely unaware of the danger of a nuclear blast. https://youtu.be/BKH437o14vA

145 out of 207 ships were sent to be decontaminated, the others were scuttled. There were also airplanes that were affected and they had to return to their bases to be decontaminated. The ships were sent to the following ports to be cleaned:

  • Bremerton and Puget Sound
  • Guam/Marianas
  • Hunters Point Shipyard – San Francisco
  • Kwajalein
  • Mare Island
  • New Orleans
  • Norfolk
  • Los Angeles
  • Pearl Harbor
  • San Diego
  • San Pedro
  • Terminal Island
  • The Caroline Islands
  • The Philippines
  • Treasure Island – San Francisco

The ships had to be sandblasted to remove the paint in order to clean the ships. Because the non target ships used their pumps and hoses to clean the other ships or operated inside the lagoon, their water lines, pumps and evaporators (used to produce clean water) were contaminated and in most cases they could clean them with acid which was also dumped directly into these harbors. At the time the Navy was only concerned with the effects of the acids dumped into the harbors and they really didn’t care about dumping radiation into the water where civilians fish. One thing they found out fast was that copper piping tends to hold the radiation directly in the copper and so those systems had to be scrapped and all the copper piping had to be replaced.

In 1989 the EPA put out a report on the cleanup of Mare Island, Alameda Air station and Hunters Point and they state that they used samples that dug in 4 inches deep to determine radiation. They cleared all of these bases for nuclear radiation. Problem is that in order to fool a geiger counter all you need is a few feet of dirt. You can cover it up all you want, the radiation is still there. Also to test for Alpha and Beta Particles you have drill down and bring up a core of the materials which are them chemically separated to isolate the radioactive elements and then determine the radioactivity based on the contents, not a geiger counter.

Here is the official video of the project: https://archive.org/details/MISC1323OperationCrossroads1948
No description at the National Archives. Castle Films produced this film for the U.S. military — “Operation Crossroads” US Army film # MISC-1323 and US Navy film # MN 5345. Description from Armed Forces Films for Public and Television Use: “A documentary of the Able and Baker blasts of the Atomic Bomb Test at Bikini, produced by Joint Army-Navy Task Force One.”
National Archives Identifier: 88210 source file isn’t in the greatest shape.

Video detailing the Nuclear safety at the blast. Notice the officers checking the status of their geiger counters using a radiation source. Similar sources were found buried at San Francisco’s Treasure Island thus causing the site to become an EPA Superfund Nuclear Radiation Site.

Video link and information from Internet Archive. Uploaded by Periscope Films: https://archive.org/details/73862RadiologicalSafety

 

Navy calls Treasure Island safe, but radiological and chemical toxins announced on Prop 65 signs

Carol Harvey’s reported YouTube Video Link Jul 2, 2019
According to the landlords, the notice that the land the buildings are built upon is an ongoing cleanup effort. But the tenants do not have that information in their leases. It is all BS. The landlords claim they have provided the information but it is not there. They never got around to telling the tenants that they are living on a nuclear site.

Treasure Island cleanup exposes Navy’s mishandling of its nuclear past

Article Link
By Matt Smith, Katharine Mieszkowski, The Center for Investigative Reporting, February 24, 2014 . Published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

“And by then, hundreds of San Franciscans were living in modest townhouses on Treasure Island and neighboring Yerba Buena Island–with the Navy’s assurances that doing so was perfectly safe.

Then, the sensor needle hopped.

“We picked up readings from inside the truck, without even getting out of the vehicle,” said McLean, speaking publicly about his discovery for the first time. That first detection was not the last.
“We found radiation, contaminated materials, in playgrounds and in areas that had previously been playgrounds,” said McLean, 52, who lives in North Carolina. “We found it in front yards. We found it underneath sidewalks and along the roadways.”

 

 

San Bruno, CA Radiation Experiment, the Navy spread Radioactive Isotopes onto the former San Bruno Navy base now the home of YouTube and Walmart E-commerce Headquarters

The former San Bruno Navy Base which is currently the site of YouTube Headquarters was irradiated with Radio-Tantalum which decays into Radio Tungsten and so the people who work there are subject to alpha contamination to this day!. I highly recommend YouTube and Walmart leave this site and not build on a toxic waste site. Google Headquarters is located on an EPA Superfund site and I recommend they leave the property as fast as they can. How can you hire people to work on an EPA superfund site knowing it is a toxic waste site? Do the employees know?

The site of the San Bruno Navy Base is bounded by San Bruno Avenue, El Camino Real, Sneath Lane, and I-280. Fallout” By Lisa Davis SF Weekly Wednesday, May 2 2001

The following are references and chronologies of the Navy’s testing where they purposely contaminated areas to radiation levels of between 1000 and 10,000 rads to simulate the effect of an atomic bomb blast and how they cleaned up the area. The problem here is that the dose rates reported are of the clean up crews, but there are people who set up these situations, spreading the contaminated material onto the streets, buildings and yards. What happened to them?
Operation Supersweep is still classified, probably for the exact reasons written above. Spreading radioactive contaminates directly onto grounds is not good for real estate values. Continue reading “San Bruno, CA Radiation Experiment, the Navy spread Radioactive Isotopes onto the former San Bruno Navy base now the home of YouTube and Walmart E-commerce Headquarters” →

Fallout How nuclear researchers handled — and grossly mishandled — the Cold War’s most dangerous radioactive substances at a top-secret lab inside the Hunters Point Shipyard. The same shipyard the city wants to remake as San Francisco’s newest neighborhood.

Link: Fallout” By Lisa Davis SF Weekly Wednesday, May 2 2001

Human experiments on San Francisco. What they did at The Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at Hunters Point Shipyard including Human Experiments conducted on the unsuspecting public of San Francisco:

“Oversaw the dumping of huge amounts of contaminated sand and acid into San Francisco Bay after they were used in attempts to clean irradiated ships.

– Spread radioactive material on- and off-base, as if it were fertilizer, to practice decontamination. – Burned radioactive fuel oil in a boiler, discharging the smoke into the atmosphere.

– Sold radioactive ships as scrap metal to a private company in Alameda.

– Hung a source of cobalt-60, a nuclear isotope that emits high-energy electromagnetic radiation similar to X-rays, in San Francisco Bay for two weeks, apparently just to see what would happen.

– Conducted human experiments that included requiring people to drink radioactive elements.

– Experimented with significant amounts of a wide variety of long-lived radiological poisons, including plutonium, cesium, uranium, thorium and radium.

– Studied and disposed of thousands of irradiated mice, rats, dogs, goats, mules, and pigs, among other animals. At one point, the lab owned a ranch in Contra Costa County used specifically to raise animals for radiation testing.

– Sought permission to dump 1,000 gallons of liquid waste containing “small amounts of fission products” into San Francisco Bay, as an experiment to study how tidal action would dilute the radioactivity. The experiment was meant as a precursor to the disposal of 1,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste in the bay every day. (The documents do not say whether the experiment or the daily dumping occurred.)”

The return of nine truckloads of radioactive asphalt was not mentioned by county health officials in their Feb. 23, 2015, inspection report filed with CalRecycle.

“County to host public forum answering questions on radioactive soil at Keller Canyon Landfill,”

East BayTimes
By AARON DAVIS | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: June 15, 2018 at 8:56 am | UPDATED: June 15, 2018 at 3:16 pm

“”Allegations over falsified data and samples at the Hunter’s Point Superfund site go back years, but recent developments have thrust the issue back into the spotlight. The former shipyard hosted the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, which decontaminated ships that were exposed during atomic weapons tests and also researched the effects of radiation.”