Tulsa Peace Fellowship

There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin

Guinea Pig Fleet - Bikini Atoll Atomic Bombs Contaminate Fleet Docked at Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay - 1946

Nuclear fallout showers ships

The U.S. Navy exploded nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll, deliberately destroying navy ships, some of which sank to the bottom of the Pacific ocean. Water infused with radioactive fallout coated the remaining ships with radioactive calcium, which could never be properly decontaminated after the Bikini tests. Some ships nonetheless returned to the San Francisco Bay Area.

A damaged radioactive Bikini test ship was used as a classroom for sailors, some of whom later expressed concern about radiation exposure.

summary: Nicholas Kane, then an Air Force lieutenant colonel, attended the radiological training school on Treasure Island (San Francisco Bay) in 1948. He described the training ship, the USS Independence, in a letter to his family: "It was scarred and twisted and misshapen from the atomic bomb tests at Bikini."

title of video on YouTube: Training ship "scarred" by tests

Also see this slide show, from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
http://thebulletin.org/multimedia/treasure-island-nuclear-timeline

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Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 26, 2018 at 7:17am

Are you an atomic veteran?

"Currently, there are approximately 195,000 Atomic Veterans across America who either do not know their oath-of-secrecy has been rescinded, and who are not aware of the potential monetary benefits due them for ( service connected ) radiation-induced illnesses.  The VA is offering them (at no cost ) Ionizing Radiation Register examinations, including complete blood and urine testing.  Additionally, as an Atomic Veteran, they qualify for VA prescription drugs ( for a minor co-pay fee ) which,  in most cases, is a meaningful  benefit of  itself."

Further information: https://www.naav.com/

Comment by Tony Nuspl on April 19, 2015 at 9:50am

Radioactive Hulk of Aircraft Carrier USS Independence Located Off San Francisco Coast

Independence-sonar-aircraft-1200

Sixty years after it was scuttled off the coast of San Francisco, the bomb-scarred, radioactive hulk of the World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Independence (CVL-22) has been located on the seafloor near the Farallon Islands.

NOAA, working with private industry partners and the U.S. Navy, has confirmed the location and condition of the USS Independence.

Resting in 2,600 feet of water off California's Farallon Islands, the carrier is "amazingly intact," said NOAA scientists, with its hull and flight deck clearly visible, and what appears to be a plane in the carrier's hangar bay.

Independence (CVL 22) operated in the central and western Pacific from November 1943 through August 1945 and later was one of more than 90 vessels assembled as a target fleet for the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946. Damaged by shock waves, heat and radiation, Independence survived the Bikini Atoll tests and, like dozens of other Operation Crossroads ships, returned to the United States.

While moored at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, Independence was the primary focus of the Navy's studies on decontamination until age and the possibility of its sinking led the Navy to tow the blast-damaged carrier to sea for scuttling on Jan. 26, 1951

Here's how the ship looked while still smoldering in the immediate aftermath of the Operation Crossroads nuclear detonation experiments :

Indyblasted1

A closeup look at the blast damage to her stern:

Indysterndamage

Much of the effort focused on the use of sandblasting techniques to decontaminate the major components of exposed ships. By and large, this effort was deemed a failure. However, the Navy generated significant amounts of contaminated sand along the way, and much of this sand was collected and stored on metal barrels. In turn, many of those barrels were loaded onto the hulk of the Independence, which effectively turned the battered ship into a floating nuclear waste repository.


In January 1951, loaded with its radioactive cargo, Independence was towed out to a point near the Farallons for use as a gunnery target...

http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2015/04/radioa...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on August 30, 2014 at 12:30am

"We filed a 'friend of the court' [amicus curiae] brief to support the Marshall Island's litigation in Federal Court against the U.S. for failing to comply with its nuclear disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Our brief supports their case by demonstrating why venue in the Northern District of California, where Livermore Lab is located, is proper."

TVC Supports Marshall Islands Lawsuit Against US with Legal Brief

http://www.trivalleycares.org/new/RMI_Amicus_brief.html

Tony de Brum, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Marshall Islands, emphasizes that the Marshallese people "have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities."

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