Oak Ridge TN Keeps Its Secrets

2008 SECRET CITY FESTIVAL PROUDLY CELEBRATES THE BOMB

Attention: this is not a stray page from the satirical publication "The Onion". No, the fact is that the City of Oak Ridge's Secret City Festival is now in the fifth year of celebrating - if not exactly the death of 220,000 Japanese in August of 1945 - then certainly its key role in producing the enriched Uranium for the original celebration in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operating under the gung ho tag line "From the 40's to the Future", the Secret City played host an Enola Gay pilor for the 2005 celebration, and is now offering a full line of excellent commemorative gifts and souvenirs. Get yer own here.

IRONICALLY, OAK RIDGE ITSELF IS NOW A CESSPOOL OF TOXIC CONTAMINATION

The history of Oak Ridge is a study in the human propensity to ignore wrongness when there are jobs to be had. It's no accident that so many military and chemical plants are located in poor areas. In the case of Oak Ridge, the citizens traded toxicity for employment.

After decades of delay and coverups, experts remain uncertain as to the true extent of the contamination on the 55 square mile nuke reservation. What is clear, however, is that funds for the cleanup have been cut. Money must be made availabe for new wars - such is price of empire. The cost of empire is paid disproportionately by the grunts, while the benefits of empire are enjoyed by the Bush League, but that's off topic (not really). We do know the reservation is among the most contaminated places in the country. They have so far identified 711 contaminated sites, among them:

247 buildings, some the size of auto plants, are contaminated with radiation or other toxic substances that can be dangerous if absorbed by the skin or inhaled.

56 waste burial grounds hold hundreds of poisons. Some are leaking into the groundwater toxic solvents, lubricants, chemicals and an array of metals like uranium, lead, mercury, strontium, thorium -- even tritium, which scientists do not know how to clean up. Some also contain contaminants still classified as secret.

52 settlement ponds were built over the years to catch chemicals, metals and cancer-causing PCBs from reservation laboratories. Some of these are leaking, too, and are considered among the worst polluters on the Oak Ridge reservation. Further: one group of underground storage tanks hold radioactive sludge so dangerous that robots, not people, must remove it. White Oak Creek, once called the most radioactively contaminated waterway in the free world, flows along the southern edge of the reservation. The creek collects and carries radioactive strontium and tritium into the Clinch River. The Clinch flows into Watts Bar Lake, a popular swimming, boating and fishing spot. Watts Bar is part of the Tennessee River, a source of drinking water for several communities downstream. Eighteen buildings, including several the government wants to lease to private industry, have a risk of a spontaneous nuclear reaction from leftover nuclear fuel.

MORE FUN FACTS FROM THE SECRET CITY

The "Secret City" moniker is kind of whimsical in an downhome ironic way, but it also carries a double meaning. The war secret aspect was understandable. Hiding the toxic danger from the guinea pig workers is perhaps less so. Did you know about the secret city?

More than five times the amount of uranium than previously estimated leaked from vents and windows at the Y-12 complex, where radioactive fuel was machined into warhead components. Nearly 80,000 pounds has escaped since 1944, an amount scientists say creates a higher-then-normal cancer risk for nearby residents.

At the K-25 uranium enrichment facility, uranium release estimates have doubled.

Although large-scale mercury releases from Y-12 during the 1950s and 1960s were thought to be well understood, scientists now believe 50% more was released to the environment than originally calculated.
None of this information is secret (although we can assume that there is plenty more we don't know about). It is contained in public government documents. But the full scope of the contamination on the reservation has not been widely reported and its magnitude is not widely known. And, repeating a well known pattern, evidence is overwhelming that far more radiation escaped the reservation that was previously reported. Read more here.

Read about how the U.S. Government knowlyly exposed "low use segments" of the population to radiation poisoning. Return to the Nuclear Map.