Legacy of Radiation Illness Stirs Objection to Nevada Bomb Test

[dogday]

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- When the baby boomers of St. George were children, radioactive ash from nuclear test explosions in Nevada regularly drifted toward the red bluffs of their town and fell like snow. They played in it and wrote their names in it on car windows.

The federal government reassured the townspeople they were in no danger as it detonated 952 bombs in Nevada over four decades. But thousands of people who lived downwind of the test site got radiation-related cancer, and the town of 50,000 has its own cancer-treatment center today.

So when word got out recently that the government wants to test a huge conventional bomb in Nevada, sending a mushroom cloud thousands of feet in the air, people in St. George felt an unwelcome blast from the past.

At a series of emotional meetings last month in Las Vegas, St. George, Salt Lake City and the Idaho capital of Boise, people who live downwind of the Nevada Test Site expressed fear that if the government goes ahead with its code-named Divine Strake test, radioactive dust from previous tests will blow their way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601606_pf.html

[eleny]

1. A relevant thread from yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x145175

[dogday]

2. Thanks, great information.. nt