650 Chemical and Rad-Waste Dumping Expeditions off the Northeast US Coast, 1946-1958

This obscure find from the pages of Readers Digest and the Saturday Evening Post is a curiously open and honest report from 1958 on the dumping of radioactive waste at sea in the US Northeast. It appeared at the emergence of widespread environmental consciousness, and the dumping was not yet illegal or banned by international treaties. In this article, the reporter writes nonchalantly on what would, in a few years, be seen as an outrageous crime against nature. He seems to have written it without fear of government officials or editors who would have sensed the topic was too hot to handle. The contractor interviewed in the report, the person responsible for hauling the nuclear waste, also seemed unconcerned about any negative consequences that could come from the public becoming aware of his activities. Today he would be very aware of the non-disclosure clause in his contract.

Perhaps there were some officials in the Atomic Energy Commission who kept a closer eye on left wing radicals and didn’t suspect Readers Digest would give the game away. There must have been some sensitivity about letting such information get out to the public, but this story seems to have got out before security was tightened and public vigilance was aroused. Thus this unusual report from 1958 provides a rare glimpse into the candid thoughts of people who earned their living in the nuclear industry. Soon after this time they became aware of the need to say as little as possible.

The report also offers some insight into just how well they understood the problem even back then. For example, the journalist learned of the problems of latent heat in radioactive waste, which could cause underground fires and leaks into the environment, and the other problem of corrosion of containment vessels. These problems have not been solved in the last seventy years, but contemporary media reports on nuclear waste plans usually fail to mention them. The experts interviewed on the topic don’t offer this information, and the journalists don’t know enough about the issue to ask the right questions. It is ironic that one has to go back to Readers Digest of 1958 to find the frank, unguarded comments of insiders who were still oblivious to the risks of public disclosure.

From Readers Digest, April 1958:

Gang Way for the Atomic Garbage Man!

Saturday Evening Post, January 25, 1958, Vol. 230 Issue 30, p. 36

Condensed from the Saturday Evening Post
John Kobler
Readers Digest, April 1958

ABSTRACT

Focuses on the job of skipper George Perry to tow and dispose toxic wastes that were collected from atomic research centers and industrial plants in the U.S. Use by his crew of photographic film to measure the amount of radiation they may have been exposed too; Efforts of Perry to administer the disposal of a batch of cans of zirconium which have the tendency to explode; Disagreeable experience of Perry with metallic sodium.

He holds one of the world’s newest, riskiest jobs: getting rid of radioactive waste that is almost too hot to handle.

As dawn broke over Boston harbor one day last fall the tug boat Irene-Mae waddled out into the Atlantic on a strange mission. Forward of her wheel house rose a tall crane and at the end of her tow line rose a huge scow. Her destination lay 27 miles due northeast, marked on the coast and geodetic navigation charts “foul area explosives.” Her owner and captain, George Perry, had delayed departure two days until the weather bureau forecast clear skies and calm seas, for her cargo demanded smooth passage. Aboard the scow were hundreds of tons of reinforced concrete block, each encasing a steel drum full of radioactive waste. Collected from atomic research centers and atomic energy using industry plants all over the United States, this toxic rubbish included decaying radioisotopes, contaminated tools and clothing, and partly depleted fissionable raw material. 

When the dowdy craft reached its destination, Perry, a bull-lung, 51 year old salt, slowed the engines and Jim Nuss, his brother-in-law and foreman, drew the scow closer. Joe Cronin, a twenty-one-year old hand, boarded her and using a forklift truck, jettisoned the concrete blocks over the side. 

The depth at that spot, which US army engineers designated as a dumping ground, averages 250 feet, and the mud on the bottom is so thick that concrete will not shatter on landing. The mud also provides an additional sealer against radiation. By noon the last block had been jettisoned and the tug boat headed back to Boston. 

It was the Irene-Mae’s 650th such expedition since 1946, when Perry, then a marine salvage operator, and John Santangelo, a young safety technician, founded Cross Roads Marine disposal. Named after operation Cross Road, the Bikini test explosion, this is the only private outfit on the east coast licensed by the US Atomic Energy Commission to unload radioactive garbage at sea. There are three west coast civilian agencies which occasionally sink some in the Pacific.

At present Cross Roads has almost 70 steady customers. The firm grossed about a hundred thousand dollars in 1957, and the prospects for 1958 look so bright that Perry is seeking a second boat and more scows. 

Besides radioactive waste, the captain and his hearties fetch and carry a variety of chemical leftovers, any of which could blast them into eternity. Perry still winces at the memory of a barrel of overage metallic sodium that a Cambridge Lab wanted to be rid of. The Lab was in a basement. While his truck waited, the captain and Santangello rolled the barrel onto an elevator. As the elevator started up, the compound emitted a hissing sound. “The ascent lasted less than a minute,” Santangello relays, “but to me it was a century. I prayed in English and Italian.” 

Gritting their teeth, they dragged the barrel to the roadway. The hissing grew louder. Santangello yelled a warning and backed off. The captain hesitated, calculating that the chances of getting the barrel to an open field. Santangello yelled again and Perry skedaddled. His plight was not premature. The barrel burst with a bang that shattered windows a block away. 

Perry’s curious enterprise owes its beginning to one of the most formidable problems of the nuclear era. If atomic projects are to progress, storage will have to be found for mountains of tainted litter. A recent report by the AEC says: “Disposal will be a factor in determining the extent of the use of power reactors.” Of the methods adapted so far, none offers more than a stop gap solution, and all are expensive. At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, pits dug in the earth receive the less dangerous waste. The hottest waste, much of it liquid, whose radioactivity may last for eons, goes into underground, steel lined concrete tanks. “But we are merely sweeping the problem under the carpet,” says an AEC engineer. “The radioactivity is sure to outlive the tanks.” 

Now under study is the feasibility of pumping liquid nuclear waste down abandoned oil wells or mines thousands of feet below the water table. The sites must be such that the liquids must not pollute natural resources. It must also be ascertained whether by their heat they could boil up a radioactive geyser.
The ocean floor seems a comparatively secure suppository. Yet its use raises posers to which the experts have no definitive answers. 

Despite steel and concrete, seepages of radiation may occur. If unlimited amounts are dumped in the same spots, will they build up noxious rays, saturating marine life and turning one of man’s cheap sources of food into poison. Can the containers resist erosion until all radioactivity has declined? These are the questions the AEC is continuously pondering. No imminent peril threatened, however, for analysis of specimens of foul area water has thus far shown no significant radiation.

Blind chance led Perry into his present business. One of 14 children of a Brookline, Massachusetts, carpenter, he ended his formal education after 3 years at Northeastern University because his father needed his help. In 1929, he set up his own building contractor firm. While building a wharf he accidently dropped his tool in 20 feet of water, and to recover them he rented a divers suit. What he saw, sloughing around the river bed, so bemused him that he took up deep sea diving for the sport. His skill at it proved valuable to the coast guard, which he served as a Chief Boatswain during the war. Upon his discharge Perry organized Atlantic Marine Salvage Inc. It still functions as a minor adjunct to Crossroads. From the army he bought the Irene-Mae, a 65 foot former mine tender. 

One morning in 1945 Perry was repainting his vessel when John Santangello, a tall intense youth, turned up on the wharf. Though only 20, he held a responsible position in a nuclear physics laboratory. The accumulation of radioactive debris there was growing critical. Two or three local boatmen had made the run to the foul area but were not eager to repeat it. The coastguard told Santangello, “Ask Perry. He will tackle anything.”

Without divulging the nature of the unwanted material, Santangello asked the captain if he cared to haul 5 tons. “It was nice weather for a boat ride,” Perry recalled, “so I figured what the hell.” Santangello went along. Toiling side by side, they became fast friends.

*for the story how Canada disposes of her atomic waste, see “Fighting the Wild Atoms At Chalk River,” Readers Digest March 1955*

Re-published here non-commercially with intent of fair use for historical research, public education and public right to know.  

(Thanks, Ray, for passing it along.)

Chernobyl, the Endless Cloud

Chernobyl, the Endless Cloud, the Graphic Novel that Accuses French Authorities of Having Knowingly Lied to the People

by Lucile Berland, Slate.fr   April 14, 2016

A translation of:

«Tchernobyl, le nuage sans fin», la BD qui accuse les autorités d’avoir sciemment menti aux Français

The French Association of Thyroid Disease Sufferers (L’Association française des malades de la thyroïde, AFMT) has published a graphic novel based on the trial records of the case it brought against the French state. The storyboard tells how the government minimized the consequences of Chernobyl on the national territory, with a disregard for the health of citizens.

The battle lasted ten years. In March 2001, the AFMT, the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CriiRAD), and fifty-one patients with thyroid disease filed a criminal complaint against “X” for involuntary injury (coups et blessures involontaires). They blame the state for having minimized the impact on French territory of the radioactive fallout from the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant on April 26th, 1986, and they also blame it for having taken no precautionary measures. On September 7th, 2011, the Paris Court of Appeal pronounced a “general dismissal” (un non-lieu général), which was confirmed by the Supreme Court in November 2012. Professor Pellerin, the head of the Central Agency for Protection from Ionizing Radiation (Service central de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants, SCPRI) at the time had his name definitively cleared, at the age of 87. The next year, a last recourse was rejected at the European Court of Human Rights  (ECHR).

André Couzet, an active member of the AFMT for thirteen years, asked, “After that, what was left for us? Our frustration and several dozen boxes of documents. In the court records, we found information that shows unambiguously the role played by French authorities. We thought a graphic novel would be an original way to make people understand what really happened.” He hopes also that the work will help the sufferers to “mourn” their status as victims, which was never previously recognized. “Many people find it absurd that the nation was told that the Chernobyl cloud stopped at the French border… but few people know what really came down and what effect it had on the health of French people.”

The graphic novel entitled Chernobyl, the Endless Cloud, will be officially released on April 23, 2016. It covers close to 900 files in the court record. It required the work of ten people over a year, primarily members of the AFMT organization (Chantal L’Hoir, the founder, Marc Saint Aroman and André Crozet). The work was supported by financial help from Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire and 300 donors who provided 24,000 Euros in a crowdfunding drive.

Along with the graphic novel there is a website, www.nuagesansfin.info that will provide dozens of files from the trial. This will allow readers to have access to the sources. The sixty-four pages of illustrations were based on the most striking of the files. One can discover, for example, the sales trend for Levothyrox in pharmacies since the start of the 1980s—a document from the laboratories of pharmaceutical companies that was very hard to obtain. “Sales of this drug just took off after 1986,” says judge Bertell-Geffroy, “to the point where today one French person out of eight or ten needs thyroid hormone therapy.” A few pages later, a page compares two maps of France: the “official” one distributed in the 1990s by the the authorities showing “no notable contamination,” and the other one made by citizens during the same period.

Rather than being fantastical allegations, these measurements conform with more recent assessments which constitute a sort of admission on the part of the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (IRSN, formerly the SCPRI). In 2005, the IRSN published a new map showing levels of cesium 137 up to 1,000 times higher, in the same places, than was admitted twenty years earlier. Chantal L’Hoir, founder of the AFMT, says, “This file exists due to the determined efforts of judge Bertella-Geffroy.”

Marc Saint-Aman, a volunteer for the AFMT and administrator for Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire, adds, “The court record is full of documents like this.” For over a year he sorted through thousands of pages in the record to select the ones which would be put on the internet site www.nuagesansfin.info. 

Motive for the Crime

According to the authors, in the spring of 1986, the state committed at best mistakes, at worst, denial. Professor Pellerin declared on television, two days after the catastrophe, that it “presented no threat to public health, … except perhaps in the immediate vicinity of the power plant, and still it is especially only inside the plant where the Russians have admitted that people were injured.” A few days later, on May 6th, the Minister of Agriculture, François Guillaume, confirmed, “The French territory, because it is so far away, was totally spared from the successive fallout of radionuclides coming from the power plant in Chernobyl.”

The episode of the spinach contaminated with 2,600 Bq/kg is instructive. The prefect of Haut-Rhin, Madhi Hacène, wanted to ban the distribution of spinach. Marc Saint-Aroman, a member of AFMT, said, “Ten days later, Charles Pasqua, then Minister of the Interior, reacted by saying no change in eating habits was required. He added that there was no need to follow the recommendations that the WHO announced on May 6th, and thus products were clear for export.” Alain Madelin, then Minister of Industry, also stressed that there was no health risk from the passing clouds:

“I already had the occasion to say that we could start to worry and go to the doctor, if by chance we found—but we haven’t found—in the products shipped three tons of irradiated spinach and we had the intention to not wash them and then ingest them in the coming days.”

While countries neighboring France began dumping irradiated products (meat, milk, vegetables), France did not protect its own citizens and it continued to export, putting neighboring populations equally at risk. The book explains that on May 10th, the European Commission suspended imports of meat of cattle and pork from the USSR and neighboring countries. These were simple preventive measures that would be applied throughout Europe, except in France where only one order was given: do nothing. Even in the USSR, a civil defense colonel sounded the alarm:

“Inhabitants have absorbed in one day fifty times the amount of radiation permitted in one year for nuclear workers. At this rate, a fatal dose would be reached in four days.”

The graphic novel does historical research to uncover why France acted against the grain. Marc Saint-Aroman explains ironically, “What must be understood is that in 1986 there were more than fifteen reactors still under construction in France. So this is the motive for the crime. Thirty years later, France is in second place in electricity generated by nuclear, behind the United States. France produces half of the gigawatts on the European continent.

Zone of No Rights

In spite of the evidence, the legal case went nowhere. Everyone has an explanation:

“We have to understand that under the law, one is obliged to prove a link between damage (such as thyroid cancer) and that which caused it. If the judge cannot establish a causal link that is direct and certain, it’s a case of ‘move along, nothing to see here.’”

At the office of Benoît Busson, lawyer for Réseau Sortir du nucléaire, it is understood that this type of case is difficult to deal with in the justice system. “The acts of hiding data, misinforming or underestimating are not in themselves crimes. They are better understood as political mistakes or mistakes liable to civil action. The people who had thyroid diseases could have launched a civil trial and seen better results, but first they would have had to pay for experts, which is extremely costly. Second, such trials face many delays and take up to ten years to take account of all the evidence.

The judge (juge d’instruction) Bertella-Geffroy knew all these constraints. Aware that it would be extremely difficult to establish a causal link between the passage of the cloud and the rise in thyroid pathologies, she bet on a charge of “aggravated deception” more than “injury.” Yet after multiple warrants sent to the Ministry of Health, the Interior, and Agriculture, and to the national weather agency, all the confidential documents gathered were not sufficient to establish a solid case. The precautionary principle was obvious by its absence in the case. She declares regretfully, “Health has no value in the economy.” And, actually, neither does justice have a value in the economy. The judge was abruptly taken off the case fifteen days before the closed-door session which led finally to a dismissal.

For Michèle Rivasi, Green Party representative in the European Parliament since 2009, the influence of the nuclear lobby is still very powerful today. The “lies of state” post-Chernobyl, denounced by the AFMT, could be told again if a nuclear catastrophe happened in France. She says regretfully, “Still today in the nuclear industry decisions are not made in the ministries or by commissions, but directly at the executive level. Nuclear is a domain unto itself, undemocratic, a sort of zone where there are no rights.**

The title Chernobyl, the Endless Cloud designates a fog that still lingers over this entire affair, thirty years later. It also refers to the millennial time span of the radiation that escaped from the nuclear power plant on April 26th, 1986.

Translator’s Notes

*

In France a juge d’instruction is responsible for conducting the investigative hearing that precedes a criminal trial. In order for the judge to recommend a criminal trial, he or she must find not just probable cause (as in an American grand jury trial) but sufficient evidence of guilt to warrant a criminal trial.

**

Ms. Rivasi’s comments apply equally well to any nation that possesses nuclear weapons or power plants.

Japan’s nuclear disaster drills: the modern version of duck-and-cover

Japan’s nuclear disaster drills: the modern version of duck-and-cover

(revised November 8, 2017)

One of the more famous aspects of American cold war culture of the 1950s was the propaganda campaign for civil defense planning, consisting of duck-and-cover drills at schools, tests of the emergency broadcasting system,[1] and sales promotions for backyard fallout shelters.

The nuclear arms race presented a dilemma for planners. The public would feel terrified of a nuclear attack if the government did nothing to teach them how to defend themselves. Yet if the government attempted to teach the public how to survive a nuclear war, they would be all the more terrified by the realization that most people wouldn’t survive a nuclear war and the survivors would envy the dead. Many people of the time fell for the government propaganda and bought fallout shelters, but not everyone. Looking back on the era, we find it easy to laugh at the absurdity of the “duck-and-cover” drills, but most people probably had a jaded view of it even at the time, just as they did toward the color-coded terror alerts that followed the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York in 2001.

Another aspect of the dilemma was in the fear of the enemy’s reaction to government efforts to prepare citizens for nuclear attack. It seemed like it would be a good idea for the president to order a nation-wide week of drills so the country could be ready for the real thing. But doing so might have made the Soviets think an attack was imminent, and they might have decided to pre-empt this plan with their own first strike. What to do? The only solution, obviously, was disarmament, but when people rule out doing the obvious thing, they feel they are confronted with a “dilemma.”

In 1994, Guy Oakes revealed in his book The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture that the effort to prepare the public to survive a nuclear war was a conscious and entirely cynical ploy to keep the American public from objecting to the nuclear arms build-up and the policy of deterrence. He wrote in his conclusion:

In the 1950s, no one in government was more ruthlessly clear-sighted than Vice President Richard Nixon in his understanding of the connection between a civil defense policy of deception and mendacity and the higher moral exigencies of the Cold War. In the NSC meeting on March 27, 1958, Nixon dissected with brutal consistency the rationale and limits of government support for fallout shelters. Speculative calculations concerning how many millions of Americans would die in a nuclear war, Nixon observed coolly, were beside the point. From the perspective of national survival, did it really matter whether the casualties numbered 30 million or 50 million? According to Nixon, this was a distinction without a difference. If 30 million Americans failed to survive a nuclear attack, “there would be no hope of the United States surviving.”

American security rested not on the passive defenses of civil defense, but on the active defense provided by the American nuclear deterrent. Therefore, why waste any money at all on civil defense? Nixon’s answer was that the government had to make some gesture in the direction of a shelter program “because the country demands it.” It was necessary to maintain the public illusion of security through civil defense. Otherwise, the tolerance for deterrence would collapse. Accordingly, the government’s civil defense policy was clear: The state should spend whatever was necessary, but not a penny more, to sustain this illusion. Because a shelter program could produce only the appearance of security and not security itself, “we should do as little as we can to satisfy this demand.” On these grounds, civil defense was marketed to American people as self-protection for survival. It was a necessary illusion: indispensable to the moral underpinning of national security, but ultimately irrelevant to survival under nuclear attack.[2]

This is all history, and perhaps it seems irrelevant, but if we look carefully, we can see that a similar dilemma and a similarly cynical policy of necessary illusions has been maintained for much longer by the nuclear energy industry.

The premature, rapid decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP caused a crisis in the global nuclear industry. When the presumed impossible event proved possible, no one had developed procedures for evacuation or for the distribution of potassium iodide (KI) pills to protect thyroid glands from radioactive iodine. Thus, after the catastrophe, nuclear regulators and energy utilities throughout the world decided they had to convince the public that they would learn the lessons from the “accident” and carry out measures to protect the public during an emergency. Now they were going to develop evacuation plans, carrying out drills involving thousands of citizens in some places, and creating a system for timely delivery of potassium iodide at the local level.

Of course, the reason this had never been taken too seriously before was the same reason President Eisenhower had for being ambivalent about alarming the public with civil defense drills. If residents near a nuclear power plant are put through evacuation drills and taught the importance of having access to potassium iodide, they might start to learn too much about this hazardous industry that operates in their neighborhood, and they might start to call for its abolition.

Response to a nuclear power plant accident is similar to the civil defense dilemma in another important way. The people in charge are just as cynical as Richard Nixon was. They know that the evacuation plans and the KI pills will be useless, or even harmful, in a real emergency. It is impossible to evacuate everyone in a timely manner, and no one knows how the weather, time of day, triggering natural disaster or organizational failings would affect the best-laid plans. If a leak of radiation seemed imminent, operators would continue to hope that it could be contained until it was too late to tell people to take their pills or run away. Critical hours or days of denial would pass, then they would be just as well protected by leaving the area or consuming uncontaminated food and water. There would be those who would get injured or killed in the evacuation, or those whose health would be damaged by the dose of potassium iodide itself.[3]

The nuclear engineers and scientists who work in the nuclear industry-regulatory complex know all of this, and they also know that the evacuation zone radius and the tolerable limits of contamination will be set according to the size of the population affected. The smaller the population, the more “generous” they can afford to be with precautions. In spite of all this knowledge, they now cynically go along with the need to carry out a nuclear energy civil defense plan “because the country demands it,” as Richard Nixon said. It’s a bureaucratic requirement now, a performance for public consumption only. Just as we knew about a nuclear attack, if it really happens all bets are off and there is no way to stay safe. Substituting a few words from Guy Oakes’ description of civil defense policy during the Cold War, we could say it’s a necessary illusion: indispensable to the moral underpinning of continuing to operate nuclear reactors, but ultimately irrelevant to survival under a nuclear meltdown.

In Japan, one of the regulatory hurdles for the nuclear reactor restarts is that operators and local authorities have to have an evacuation plan and a plan for distributing potassium iodide, and they have to carry out drills involving the local communities. Reports on these drills have revealed what a desultory exercise they are.[4] Few people come out for them, and the ones who do could be compared to the suckers who bought fallout shelters for their backyard in the 1950s.

In the event of an accident, residents living north of the nuclear fuel reprocessing
facility in Rokkasho would supposedly be able to evacuate southward.

As the drills are conducted, their flaws become readily apparent to all participants. In many cases, residents would be stuck on peninsulas where the only land-based evacuation route would be past the damaged nuclear plant. The hopeful plan is to evacuate residents before “allowing” the broken reactor to release radioactive substances into the atmosphere. The plans are also ridiculously hopeful in that they assume there will be no landslides, snowstorms or shortage of personnel at the power plant. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen pointed out that the Fukushima disaster happened during the 9-5 working day when the plant was fully staffed. If it had happened at night, it is doubtful that, in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the brave “Fukushima fifty” would have been able to go to the plant from their homes, even if they had wanted to go there instead of fleeing toward safety.

Landslide and highway collapse after the earthquakes in Kyushu, April 2016. After a nuclear disaster, probably triggered by an earthquake, emergency responses and evacuations depend on transportation routes being passable.

The authorities have acknowledged that it may not be possible to evacuate residents past a nuclear reactor undergoing a meltdown, so they promise that rescue boats and helicopters will come. These plans are also overly hopeful because they involve the mobilization of civil servants and military personnel. Even if they were able to get to the area in time, this would consist of moving additional people into the danger zone, so there would be an increase in overall endangerment of human life. And it would be painfully obvious through the whole exercise that everyone fleeing or coming to the rescue would already be contaminated, and residents would be saying sayonara to their homes on two hours’ notice. All of the planning for these drills is done with utmost cynicism. The people who planned this charade know the drills are meaningless and they are content to devote the nation's resources to them, and waste the time and energy of thousands of citizens and civil servants.
     Another element of nuclear disaster planning is a step that may come before evacuation: an order to “shelter in place” (something we already do every day anyway, in a certain sense, as we've lost contact with nature). This sounds simple enough, until you think through what doing so actually entails. Sheltering in place means closing all the doors and windows and sealing off a building from outside air that would be contaminated with Iodine 131 and other harmful radionuclides. This would only work in ideal, comfortable weather, and only for a limited time, as people would soon want to ventilate their living spaces, or go home, or check on their relatives. 
     In places that experience cold winters or very hot summers, people could shelter in place only for at most a few hours. In the cold climates, most buildings are heated by oil or gas-burning furnaces which require a supply of oxygen coming into the house. I think nuclear engineers understand this aspect of chemistry, but there is a reason they prefer not to talk about it. If you live in a city like Chicago or Toronto (two major cities with nearby nuclear power plants) sheltering in place without heat in winter in is not something you want to think about too deeply.
     Likewise, if it’s very hot outdoors, homes will be sealed and heating up like greenhouses, and if people use air conditioning to cool off, that will also require an exchange of outdoor air containing Iodine 131. Some air conditioners merely exchange heat, but not air; however, many modern buildings are designed and required to have constant ventilation so that they won’t become “sick buildings.”
     Another consideration seldom talked about is the legal framework of a mandatory evacuation or an order to shelter in place. Do the authorities, not to mention the less informed citizenry, even know what the law allows regarding mandatory evacuations? What about people who refuse to go? If they want to go, what can they demand for compensation and alternative accommodation and transportation costs? This isn't a natural disaster that is no one's fault. Human agency was involved in creating the hazard, and some people profited from it. 
     When the tsunami hit Japan in 2011, one lucky town, Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, saved many lives by ordering citizens to leave immediately. They were warned over loud speakers that this was no drill, no minor little wave. This was a big one coming. Everyone was ordered to leave, with language that clearly signaled this was not the usual routine warning after an earthquake. The word order (meirei 命令) clearly implied penalty for disobedience. "Do not return home. Do not go to the pier to look for family members. You must leave right now!" The town came out of the tragedy with no fatalities, but the mayor who made the decision to announce a "mandatory" evacuation admitted later, “I knew the order was completely illegal. It had no legal basis.” Fortunately, he improvised by making announcements that went above and beyond the pre-recorded warnings.
     So during an evacuation after a nuclear accident, will people obey orders? Will mayors know whether to announce an advisory or an order? And while some people will be ordered to leave, others will be ordered (asked nicely?) to go toward to the disaster to fetch more KI pills, or to take supplies to the nuclear plant workers who will, one must assume, be gladly risking their own civilian lives to save the citizenry. 
     As people start leaving, traffic jams will form immediately. There will be more collisions than usual. Some people will realize that their gas tanks are almost empty. Who is going to deliver extra gas to the gas stations? How many truck drivers will balk at the evacuation zone perimeter saying, “I didn’t sign up for this” (this is what actually happened in Fukushima in March 2011). You want cash from an ATM? Forget about it. What if it’s snowing or raining hard, or the earthquake or dam break or tornado has made transportation routes impassible? 
     What if the nuclear disaster disobeys orders by not occurring during working hours on a fine spring day?
     Finally, most disturbing of all is the degree to which the powerful and the dis-empowered have internalized and normalized the idea that people in rural areas must live with these dangers and be inconvenienced with evacuation drills so that city folk can have electricity that could be produced by safer means. However, we can see something positive in the fact that most people in the affected communities see through the absurdity of evacuation drills, whether they participate in them or not. 
     Those who refuse to participate understand the situation the way Bob Dylan understood the futility of fallout shelters in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote in his autobiography [6] that he recalled many people from his hometown shutting the door on the fallout shelter salesmen who came around in the 1950s. This memory inspired one of the first songs he wrote, Let Me Die in my Footsteps, in which he sang of his refusal go along with the fallout shelter craze. Anyone watching the evacuation drills in Fukushima this year would agree with Bob: “I don’t know if I’m smart, but I think I can see when someone is pullin’ the wool over me.”

Let Me Die in My Footsteps

Bob Dylan, 1961

I will not go down under the ground

Cause somebody tells me that death’s comin’ ‘round

An’ I will not carry myself down to die

When I go to my grave my head will be high

Let me die in my footsteps

Before I go down under the ground

There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been

The meaning of life has been lost in the wind

And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by

Stead of learnin’ to live they are learnin’ to die

Let me die in my footsteps

Before I go down under the ground

I don’t know if I’m smart but I think I can see

When someone is pullin’ the wool over me

And if this war comes and death’s all around

Let me die on this land ‘fore I die underground

Let me die in my footsteps

Before I go down under the ground

Notes

[1] Mike Anderson, The Great Accidental Test Broadcast of 1971, http://ebstest.stlmedia.net/

This article is an account of what it was like for a small town radio station operator to deal with a false alarm of the EBS in 1971. It would have launched a national panic over an impending nuclear attack if national broadcasters hadn’t been so confused and ignorant about how to respond to a message that was emphatically telling them (in error) “this is not a test.” See the archived copy of the UPI wire story that was sent out shortly after the confusion was cleared up.

[2] Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 166.

[3] Government of Canada warning on Potassium Iodide:

“Oral consumption of KI may result in allergic reactions including hives, difficulty breathing, swelling around the eyes and throat, or joint aches and pains. It can also result in “iodism” in some people which can include salivation, sneezing, headache, fever, laryngitis, bronchitis and various skin rashes. It may also cause nausea and vomiting in some people… there are potential risks to your health from taking it when it’s not necessary*… a small fraction of the population may have an adverse reaction to KI and may need medical supervision… KI tablets can present a danger to people with allergies to iodine, or who have thyroid problems.”

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/ed-ud/respond/nuclea/potassium-eng.php

*Author’s comment: We can assume the same risks would exist from taking it when it is necessary during a nuclear emergency, so a good question is whether the KI pills would do more harm than good. As far as I know, there is no case in which a large population was given KI pills in a timely manner during a nuclear emergency, and then studied to learn what positive and negative effects arose. All plans to use them on a population seem to be purely hypothetical solutions at this stage. The Toronto-Oshawa area of Canada would certainly be a large enough sample to learn from. It is one of the few, if not the only, large city situated so close to a nuclear power plant.

[4] In a single endnote I list a few related articles that appeared in the Japanese media, and one in the Canadian media, in 2015:

• Eric Johnston, “No plan best plan in Kansai nuclear disaster,” The Japan Times, January 26, 2014. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/26/national/no-plan-best-plan-in-kansai-nuclear-disaster/#.Voj_pFR9673
• Jeff Kingston, “Is it safe? Ruling party pushes nuclear village agenda,” The Japan Times, May 26, 2013, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/05/26/commentary/is-it-safe-ruling-party-pushes-nuclear-village-agenda/#.VokBplR9672
• “The utility further concedes that it did not manage risk properly because it feared that any measures to improve safety at the Fukushima plant, or to conduct evacuation drills, would stoke the anti-nuclear movement, interfere with operations, raise costs and create legal and political problems.”
• “2,000 people join nuclear disaster drill in Fukushima,” The Mainichi, August 31, 2015, http://www.mainichi.jp/english/articles/20150831/p2a/00m/0na/002000c
• “Evacuation drill held around Ikata Nuclear Power Plant,” The Mainichi, November 9, 2015, http://www.mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151109/p2a/00m/0na/021000c
• “Community near Fukui nuke plant could be trapped if quake strikes,” The Mainichi, May 25, 2015, http://www.mainichi.jp/english/articles/20150525/p2a/00m/0na/018000c
• “Editorial: Evacuation measures insufficient to approve restart of Ikata nuclear plant,”The Mainichi, October 22, 2015, http://www.mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151022/p2a/00m/0na/026000c
• Daniel Otis, “East end given iodine pills as nuclear disaster precaution,” The Toronto Star, November 10, 2015, http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/11/10/east-end-given-iodine-pills-as-nuclear-disaster-precaution.html

[6] Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume 1, (Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 270-271.

"Eventually, though, while not trying to reweave the world, I did compose a slightly ironic song called “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.” I based it on an old Roy Acuff ballad. The song I wrote was inspired by the fallout shelter craze that had blossomed out of the Cold War. I suppose some considered it radical to come up with a song like that, but to me it wasn’t radical at all. In Northern Minnesota fallout shelters didn’t catch on, had no effect whatsoever on the Iron Range. As far as communists went, there wasn’t any paranoia about them. People weren’t scared of them, seemed to be a big to-do over nothing. Commies were symbolic of travelers from outer space. Mine owners were more to be feared, more of an enemy, anyway. Salesmen peddling fallout shelters had been turned away. Stores didn’t sell them and nobody built them. Houses had thick-walled basements, anyway. Besides no one liked thinking that someone else might have one and you didn’t. Or if you had one and someone else didn’t, that might not be too good, either. It could turn neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend. You couldn’t imagine having to confront some neighbor banging on your door saying something like, “Hey, look. It’s a matter of life and death and our friendship ain’t worth a bo-diddley. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” How you could respond to a friend who was acting like a tyrant trying to force his way in, saying, “Listen I have young kids. My daughter’s only three and my son is two. Before I let you close them out, I’ll come to you with a gun. Now, quit the scam.” There wasn’t any honorable way out. Bomb shelters divided families and could create mutiny. Not that people weren’t concerned about the mushroom cloud— they were. But salesmen hawking the bomb shelters were met with expressionless faces. Besides that, the general opinion was, in case of nuclear attack all you really needed was a surplus Geiger counter. It might become your most prized possession, would tell you what’s safe to eat and what’s dangerous. Geiger counters were easy to get. In fact, I even had one in my New York apartment, so writing the song about the futility of fallout shelters was not that radical. It’s not like I had to conform to any doctrine to do it. The song was personal and social at the same time, though. That was different."