Click to Zoom. Source: US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. A Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences to the American Population from Nuclear Weapons Tests Conducted by the United States and Other Nations.
Predecisional Draft. Vol. 1. Technical Report. 2001. URL: www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/default.htm

The Plutonium Autopsy Project

Carolina Peace Resource Center's membership is striking out in a new and powerful direction by participating in scientific projects that examine the impact of nuclear weapons production on the public health, environment and economy of South Carolina.

Testing Remains of 901 Civilians for Plutonium.

Our first project, The Plutonium Autopsy Project, is funded with a grant from the Citizens Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund, which is administered by the Resolve Foundation of Washington, D.C. This Project re-evaluates an intriguing dataset describing radioassays of plutonium conducted on organ remains of 901 American civilians who died in the 1960's and 1970's. These radioassays revealed the extent to which atmospheric nuclear weaponstesting during the Cold War had succeeded in contaminating Americans' internal organs with plutonium. In effect, we were preparing for a nuclear war that never came by wrapping our own citizens in a continent-wide radioactive cloud of varying densities.

The findings of the original Autopsy Project were published in the in the journal Health Physics, in the article by McInroy et al.(1979), described below. The plutonium fallout distribution map from Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute, reproduced above, depicts the best reconstruction of plutonium dose resulting from weapons testing at the principal US bombing grounds, the Nevada Test Site. The atmospheric weapons test dose reconstruction studies were coordinated from the Radiation Studies Branch of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's headquarters research center in Atlanta, Georgia. See the URL in the map's footnote for the entire report, as well as additional information on dose reconstruction at most of the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories and production factories.

The Next Generation of Nuclear Weapons - Bush's Nuclear Posture Review and Advanced Concepts Initiatives

These data reveal how fallout can impact human health should the Savannah River Site resume production of nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration has been planning the next generation of nuclear weapons, which it calls the Advanced Concepts Initiatives.

See also the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review Report at:
www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.

SRS is one of five weapons factories on the list for locating new production facilities for nuclear weapons:

www.ananuclear.org/MPF%20DC%20Days%2004c.pdf.

SRS' Massive Restructuring: the Facilities and Infrastructure Recapitalization Program (FIRP)

SRS is already undergoing massive restructuring to ready itself for possible changes in mission. $316.2 million of the $24.3 billion in FY 2005 funding for DOE is earmarked for the overhaul called the Facilities and Infrastructure Recapitalization Program (FIRP). For more details, see Energy Secretary SpencerAbraham's address to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 23, 2004, in which he made the largest budget request for DOE in its history:

Spencer Abraham's address to Senate Armed Services Committee

The Trigger That Keeps On Killing.The tiniest plutonium particles can be unimaginably destructive when people inhale them because these bombs are being tested or produced, which activities emit "hot"particles from factory smokestacks. Properly placed, each particle can be a death sentence, not only to "enemy combatants", but also to downwinder civilians, to neutral parties in neighboring countries, and to future generations for thousands of years. Used to set off the fission reaction in nuclear bombs, it is truly "the trigger that keeps on killing."