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Rocks and Reactors: an Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979

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Rocks and Reactors: an Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979 AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Linda Marie Richards for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Science presented on May 1, 2014. Title: Rocks and Reactors: An Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979. Abstract approved: ______________________________________________________ Jacob Darwin Hamblin The atomic age was enacted by many scientists as a way to realize health and human rights. Human rights were conceived in this context as rights to economic development, science education, and nuclear medicine. The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) acted hand in hand with UN agencies and educators to spread nuclear knowledge and technology as a tool to advance health and human rights for peace and prosperity. UN agencies such as UNESCO, IAEA, and WHO standardized AEC interpretations of radiation exposure. Academics served as the glue to promote nuclear and health physics, research reactors and uranium prospecting. Technical experts traveled the globe to build nuclear infrastructure and institute ideas of radiation exposure that originated from the AEC. Trust in the ability of scientific experts to provide radiation health safety was central to the expansion and acceptance of nuclear technology worldwide. Willard E. Libby of the US Atomic Energy Agency, while admitting uncertainty, believed that under a certain threshold, radiation would not be dangerous. The international field of health physics, dominated by the AEC trained scientists, interpreted radiation danger with one particular and lasting trope: artificial radiation below natural background radiation levels was safe and acceptable. The construction of background radiation as “safe” by American and international agencies was a speculative and exclusive process. Radioactive accidents were interpreted by agencies and nuclear scientists as experiments to improve technology. The AEC created unethical human radiation experiments and disregarded democracy and individual human rights. The expansion of nuclear technology created impingements on human rights, health and peace of mind. This history calls for a meta-analysis based on both heath and human rights aims and impingements. Contaminated communities access radioactive contamination as a permanent and irrevocable bodily and intergenerational taint that violates human rights. Claims were made after the first use of nuclear weapons that pre-existing international law and rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” should protect people worldwide from dangerous, intergenerational radiation exposure. This can be seen in the experiences of the Navajo Nation with uranium mining and in anguished letters sent to Noble Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling during the fallout controversy. This history when transposed with the utopian hopes of nuclear scientists, questions the relationship between rationality, human rights, scientific ideology, regulations, ethics, and knowledge production during the Cold War. The exclusion from nuclear regulatory regimes of those who live contaminated by the nuclear fuel chain and in fear of nuclear pollution and weapons is a result of the lack of recognition of the integrity and sovereignty of one’s body as an inalienable human right. ©Copyright by Linda Marie Richards May 1, 2014 All Rights Reserved Rocks and Reactors: An Atomic Interpretation of Human Rights, 1941-1979 by Linda Marie Richards A DISSERTATION Submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Presented May 1, 2014 Commencement June 2014 Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation of Linda Marie Richards presented on May 1, 2014 APPROVED: Major Professor, representing History of Science Director of the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion Dean of the Graduate School I understand that my dissertation will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my dissertation to any reader upon request. Linda Marie Richards, Author ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My experience at OSU has been phenomenal. My Major Professor, Jacob Darwin Hamblin, was an inspiration to me everyday in his writing, teaching and living. He is an embodiment of my favorite Wendell Berry quote “Be joyful, despite the facts.” He patiently, time after time, and with persistent good humor, helped me to articulate the ideas in this dissertation. He saw what I needed to do and he pushed me to stretch to accomplish more much than I ever thought possible. I am honored to have the good fortune to hold the proud distinction of being Prof Hamblin’s first student to earn their doctorate. I am also deeply grateful to so many others. Mary Jo Nye, for giving me this chance of a lifetime to study History of Science at OSU with her and in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at the Special Collections & Archives Research Center (SCARC). I thank her, my supportive SHPR chair, Ben Mutschler, and my committee members, Anita Guerrini, Michael Osborne, and Marisa Chappell, for their help, skill, support, warmth, guidance, wisdom, and encouragement. They taught me how to be a scholar. The archivists and staff at SCARC created a sacred space for research that I love to share with others. Anne Bahde, Cliff Mead, Trevor Sandgathe, Chris Petersen, Tiah Edmunson-Morton, Larry Landis, Elizabeth Nielsen, Natalia Fernández, Karl McCreary, and Ruth Vondracek led me to the documents that would speak to me and gave me a home. I am in debt to them and to the many helpful archivists stretching from the Navajo Nation to the Chemical Heritage Foundation to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The National Science Foundation, the Tokyo Foundation Sasakawa Young Leadership Fellowship Fund, the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation made it possible for me to travel and learn. Because of their support, I met with many awe-inspiring people in the process of this work, who were generous in sharing their work, lives, feelings and ideas with me: Perry H. Charley, the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque NM, Lorraine Rekmans, Jamie Kneen and his family, Miningwatch Canada in Toronto, Elsie Mae Begay, Jeff Spitz of Groundswell Films, Oliver Tapaha, Charmaine White- Face, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Koko Kondo, Sakue Shimohira, Sumiteru Tanguchi, and the many other atomic survivors who testified during American University’s Hiroshima Nagasaki Nuclear Studies course. They, like so many of the students, staff and faculty at OSU, and our visiting lecturers, ignited my thinking with their work and lives. I am grateful to the many people whose support and help was essential, especially Mary Braun, Mina Carson, Christopher McKnight Nichols, Nancy Langston, Dwanee Howard, Steve Shay, Leopold Kammerhofer, Stephen Lawson, Greg Good, Laura Cray, Carol Urner, Doug Strain, Ronald Brashear, Toshihiro Higuchi, Stephanie Jenkins, Ron Doel, Kristine Harper, Laurel MacDowell, Kara Ritzheimer, Rodney Madison, Sharyn Clough, Jonathan Katz, Jody Roberts, Michal Meyer, Carin Berkowitz, Elsa Atson, Bruce Gagnon, Samantha Chisholm Hatfield, Jeffrey Sklansky, Gary Ferngren, Robert Fox, Paul Kopperman, Robert Peckyno, Ray Acheson, Heather Stinger, Paul Wanke, James Fleming, Allison Davis White Eyes, Steve Lawson, Peter Kuznick, and the OSU Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics Department. I am appreciative of each of my co-graduate students and my undergraduate students who encouraged me. This dissertation likely could never have been written if it were not for the Graduate Writing Center and Meghann Rhynard-Geil who translated my feelings and research into readable text. I still marvel that I ever even had this opportunity. This was only possible because of so many people who believed in me, from Southern Oregon University’s Master in Management program, to Betty LaDuke, to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to my friends and family. My gratitude to my loving family is far beyond words. My heart is heavy that many of the Diné, Hopi and Lakota elders who shared with me their experiences and life ways are now gone. Anthropology Professor Deanna Kingston, who made such an impression on me with her leadership and the need for this work, also died of cancer. I felt her spirit and others beyond this realm must have looked out for me and sent swooping red tail hawks to remind me of what is important. I offer my dissertation tempered by this quotation from Lawrence Alan Rosenwald: “A deeper consolation is my certain sense that the problem is so acute that the solutions will probably start out by looking petty or awkward or peculiar.” For this, I apologize in advance. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 1. Of Rights, Radiation and Reactors………………………………………………13 2. The Hidden Guns of the Atomic Frontier………………………………………..53 3. Pauling vs. Libby………………………………………………………………...90 4. The Circulation of Safety………………………………………………………...142 5. The Deciders……………………………………………………………………..184 6. In the Mundane………………………………………………………………......229 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….276 Archives…………………………………………………………………………….282 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..284 1 Introduction “Mr. Kennedy, Mr. MacMillon, WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO TEST” protest placard held by Linus Pauling, April, 1961 On April 24, 2014 the Republic of the Marshall Islands filed separate cases against each of the nine nuclear weapon states (U.S., Russia,
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