Blowing in the Wind [1]
Submitted by Bob Burton [2] on
A five-year long study into the 1959 meltdown of a nuclear reactor near Simi Valley in California has concluded that it could have caused between 260 and 1,800 cases of cancer. The report could not be more specific because the U.S. Department of Energy [3] and Boeing [4], the parent company of Rocketdyne, refused to provide the weather data crucial to modelling where the radioactive pollution went. The report states that Boeing officials told the researchers that the wind data was proprietary information. "How can you possibly declare a trade secret which way the wind blew on a certain day?" Dan Hirsch, the co-chairman of the advisory panel that oversaw the study, told the Los Angeles Times. At the time of the accident, the lab issued a media statement claiming, "No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred, and operating personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions."