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War on the Earth!

War on the Earth!. Environmental Impact: Atomic Appalachia and the Militarized Southeast U.S. The Military Industrial Complex. Military, Global Corporate & US Government. “The problem in defense ….

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War on the Earth!

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  1. War on the Earth! Environmental Impact: Atomic Appalachia and the Militarized Southeast U.S.

  2. The Military Industrial Complex Military, Global Corporate & US Government

  3. “The problem in defense… is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

  4. Is This National Defense? The Military Industrial Complex: • Acts with impunity • Violates International Treaties and Law • Consumes the majority of oil and petroleum • Pollutes physical, cultural & political environment • Leaves a toxic legacy for endless generations • Drives Global Warming and Climate Change • Determines, pushes & profits from US War Policy • Supports & exports Capitalism—a voracious and polluting economic force

  5. Hiroshima after the atomic bombing Militarism defiles the sacred Earth, the air…

  6. …the Rivers and Springs Uranium from Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tennessee contaminates the beautiful Nolichucky River

  7. …the Oceans & Seas WWII (1939-1945) - Every ocean and sea bears the hazardous effect of over 9,000 sunken military, auxiliary, and merchant marine vessels.

  8. …and the very Heavens. The U.S. Air Force tracks more than 18,000 objects in orbit—bolts, broken satellites, fuel tanks, rocket motors and other junk.

  9. National Defense or “Full Spectrum Dominance?” Full-spectrum dominance is a military concept whereby a joint military structure achieves control over all elements of the battlespace using land, air, maritime and space based assets.

  10. Alabama: Redstone Arsenal “The south is vital to this plan for the weaponization & Nuclearization of space.” Bruce Gagnon, Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

  11. US Recruits Nazi Scientists • In 1945 Operation Paperclip brought SS officer Werner von Braun and more than 700 other Nazi Scientists to the US to exploit Germany’s expertise with supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armor. • Von Braun was soon installed at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama

  12. Contaminated with Rocket Science Perchlorate from rocket fuel has been found in drinking water, groundwater or soil in at least 43 states. The most common and most significant perchlorate contamination is from the manufacture, testing, and disposal of solid rocket fuel, explosives, and fireworks. Perchlorate disrupts the thyroid’s production of hormones critical to developing fetuses and infants. 5 – 17 million people may be served drinking water contaminated by rocket fuel.

  13. “We Take Care of Our Own?” Camp Lejeune, NC (1957-87): For 30 years Marines and their families drank and bathed in contaminated water.

  14. Bases, Bases, We all fall down FDR’s “Deal with the Devil “to Seed the Jim Crow South with Military Bases in exchange for Congress’ Approval of his New Deal Legislation

  15. Military Oil Consumption The U.S. military uses enough oil in one year to run all U.S. transit systems for the next 14-22 Yrs. Civilian use ~ 1.3 gals/day Deployed soldier uses ~ 15 gals/day

  16. The Awful Truth • “…Even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be heading head first and full speed towards total disaster for one major reason.  The military...produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all of it’s inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction." • Barry Sanders, The Green Zone

  17. Alabama: Anniston Army Depot • Toxins were disposed in trenches, lagoons, landfills, or other holding vessels. • 1997: The U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty for the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007, extended to 2012.

  18. Pine Bluff: “America’s Arsenal” Pine Bluff Arsenal released 721,364 pounds of chemicals into the air, water and land and was listed in a DOD report as a top polluter. 2010: completed disposal of 12 % of the US chemical weapons stockpile. Arsenal “recycled” 6.5 million pounds of “decontaminated” steel chemical weapons tanks as part of “the Army’s commitment to protect the environment.”

  19. West Tennessee: Milan Arsenal American Ordnance Systems, Inc. loads, assembles, packs, reconditions and disposes of munitions, including weaponized uranium ordnance.

  20. East Tennessee: Holston Army Ammunition Plant • Produces explosives and propellants for the Trident Nuclear Submarines • Explosives manufacture requires the use of concentrated nitric acid and anhydrous ammonia 2011: Breaking ground near Kingsport, Tennessee for new High Explosive plant

  21. Lethal Advance of the Atomic Age “The most severe and enduring” impact on human health & the environment Radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests caused 86,000 birth defects and 150,000 premature deaths—World Watch Institute

  22. Atomic Soldiers & Downwind Civilians Sacrificed 210,000 US Soldiers exposed to U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests US conducted nearly 200 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from 1945-1962.

  23. Mississippi: Project SalmonUnderground Nuclear Detonations 5.3 KILOTON NUCLEAR DEVICE detonated underground U.S. government officials erected a large stone monument at the site, with a brass plaque warning future generations not to drill or dig in the vicinity of this test site. Ground Zero is marked by a headstone-like monument

  24. Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant enriched uranium for Hiroshima Bomb Atomic “Secret City” 2010 Resistance to Bomb Factory

  25. Life Extension or Generations of Genocide? • In 2011, Obama approved an additional $7.5 billion dollars for a Uranium Processing Facility able to produce 80 thermonuclear “secondaries” every year, assuring a stockpile of death for generations to come.

  26. Oak Ridge: Toxic Tennessee Town 711 contaminated sites identified— 247 buildings, 56 waste burial grounds, some leaking toxic solvents, lubricants, chemicals and metals like uranium, lead, mercury, strontium, thorium and tritium, into the groundwater. Some contaminants are still classified as secret

  27. 32 “Broken Arrows” 1950-2000 Nuclear Weapons Accidents Goldsboro, NC: "The bombs' arming mechanism had six or seven steps to go through to detonate, and it went through all but one…" Robert McNamara

  28. Nuclear Industry Workers Irradiated US Sailors & Soldiers are Lab Rats Over 300,000 people, or half of those who ever worked in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, have been affected by exposure to radiation.

  29. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace”Ike’s Not Right this time! "Atoms for peace and atoms for war have a marriage made in hell.” Ann Harris, TVA Whistleblower

  30. The Evil Twins: Nuclear Weapons & Nuclear Power “Interchangeable and Interdependent”

  31. Nuclear Power USA has over 70,000 tons of nuclear waste—deadly for tens of thousands of years—with no place for permanent storage. 104 USA nuclear reactors add 2000 tons each year of high level radioactive waste.

  32. Wasting the Future • 95% of high- level radioactive waste comes from irradiated fuel in the core of nuclear power reactors. • Each 1000 megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 500 pounds of plutonium a year and about 30 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste. • “All six of the nation’s licensed nuclear waste dumps have or are leaking” –Nuclear Information Resource Services

  33. South as Sacrifice Zone? “Environmental risks were offered as unavoidable trade-offs for jobs and a broadened tax base in economically depressed communities.” -Dr. Robert D. Bullard

  34. South Carolina: Barnwell Radioactive Waste Dump For 35 years, Barnwell was the only “low-level” radioactive waste dump east of the Rockies. Rad Waste is stored in steel drums, encased in concrete vaults and buried.

  35. Yucca Mountain, NV? Big Sandy Mush, NC? Rad Waste:Move it? Where? Who Will Decide?

  36. North Carolina: Asheville At the Nuclear Crossroads Three Fatal Flaws of Nuclear Waste Transportation Inadequate Emergency Response Risk of Terrorism and Sabotage Radiation Exposure from Routine Shipments ….all of which endanger public health and safety.

  37. South Carolina: Savannah River SiteMost Contaminated in the World

  38. TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Reactor & Tritium Production Plant Educate, Organize, Agitate, Activate Local Activist giving the NRC Hell

  39. Mississippi: Grand Gulf Nuclear Station The first two years after Grand Gulf startup resulted in significant increases in local rates of fetal deaths After the 2011 floods, plant workers pumped water containing radioactive tritium into the Mississippi River for days before they realized it and shut off the pumps.

  40. Deadly Nuclear Radiation Hazards USA

  41. Middle Point Landfill Rutherford County, 75% of U.S. low-level radioactive waste—41 million pounds per year—comes to Tennessee. Coming soon to Oak Ridge: 1,000 tons of German Radioactive Waste Energy Solutions, Inc. has applied to import 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste for processing, including burning, melting and compaction Tennessee is the only state that allows commercial burning of radioactive waste, licensing six incinerators. Dumping & Burning in Tennessee

  42. Round & Round & Round We Go

  43. Tennessee: US Army Defense Depot Memphis “The way they have treated people of color throughout the U.S. is the way they are treating countries of color throughout the world.” – Doris Bradshaw, Memphis neighborhood activist

  44. Studsvik Memphis Nuclear Waste Processing African Americans exclusively assigned the most hazardous work—to cut apart a damaged and highly-radioactive reactor. Dosimeters were manipulated to mask the actual exposure levels workers received.

  45. Tennessee: Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin Responsible for years of nuclear contamination, radiation exposure, countless code and safety violations, property damage, cancers, brain tumors, mysterious illnesses, and wrongful deaths. Since 1954. Supplies nuclear fuel to the U. S. Navy Trident Submarine fleet. Converts weapons-grade uranium into commercial reactor fuel. The East Tennessee plant discharges enriched uranium into the Nolichucky River.

  46. Georgia: Trident II Nuclear Submarine Base • There is no weapon system in the U.S. arsenal with the operational risks of a Trident submarine. No weapon has as much explosive material, in the form of solid rocket propellant, and the number of nuclear warheads tightly packed in a confined vessel.

  47. Florida: Radioactive Baby Teeth The highest levels of radioactive Strontium-90 were found in the six S.E. Florida counties closest to the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear reactors. Strontium in baby teeth increased 37% from mid-1980s to mid 1990s.

  48. Virginia: North Anna Nuclear Generating Station 20l1: The 5.8-magnitude earthquake shifted 25 massive concrete containers holding high-level nuclear waste. Nuclear plant is 12 miles from the epicenter.

  49. Earthquake Zones with US Nuclear Power Reactors

  50. Jonesborough: Aerojet Ordnance Tenn, Inc. produces uranium weapons coated with the radioactive waste from fuel production for nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. Hundreds of tons of exploded uranium weapons create genetic damage for generations. Genocide for Generation after Generation after Generation after…

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