On Dec. 20,1982, an oil-fired power plant in Tacoa, Venezuela, caught fire. There were 200 dead, 500 injured, 1,000 made home-less, and 40,000 evacuated [AtE Feb 83]. Little or no attention was paid to the disaster by the US press.
On September 13,1987, two men entered an abandoned clinic in Goiania, state Goia, Brazil, in search of scrap metal. They dis- mantled an irradiation machine used to treat cancer, and extracted a stainless steel cylinder, which they took to a junkyard and broke it open with a sledge hammer, then sawed open the little (1 cubic inch) capsule inside. It contained about ½ oz of a glittering pow- der
¾with about 1250 Ci of cesium 137. Children playing in the junk yard began to play with it, and the workers took some of it home with them. Soon a number of people became ill, and after two weeks the cause was traced. In the end, four people died, one had to have his arm amputated, and seven major grafting operations had to be performed. The total toll, then, was small, as has been the case in all nuclear accidents so far. But the media reaction was very different from the Tacoa disaster. Science, for example, which had not devoted one comma to it, brought a headline stretching all across its page (11/20/87): "Radiation Accident Grips Goiania"Nor was what followed usual for an accident with four dead. The wholesale value of the agricultural production in the entire state fell by 50%. The occupancy of hotels during the tourist season dropped from 100% to 60%; conventions scheduled in Goiania were canceled or relocated to other states; hotels in other parts of the country refused to register Goiania residents; airline pilots and bus drivers refused to carry them; cars with Goiania license plates were in some cases stoned; in spite of government pleas that it was unnecessary, 125,800 individuals insisted on a Geiger scan; 8,000 requested and received certifications that they were not con-taminated. Of the first 60,000 monitored, 5.000, or 8.3%, showed signs of acute stress (rashes on upper body and round neck, vomit-ing, diarrhea); yet not a single one of these was found con-taminated.
The hearse carrying the first fatality, a six-year old girl, to be buried ("with her radioactive dolls") in a local cemetery was block-aded and stoned; police had to be called in to complete the burial.
Congratulations, Ralph.
[More: J.S. Petterson, "Perception vs. reality of radiological impact: the Goiania model," Nuclear News, Nov. 1988.]
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Vol. 16, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 16, No. 6 Date: December 01, 2004 02:26 PM Title: Shell, Chevron, and shenanigans
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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