Australia’s early nuclear history – a scandalously crooked co-operation with Britain
The British also deliberately spread plutonium dust over the outback in so called safety tests. Although a number of Australians had knowledge they desperately wanted to share with the Australian people, the Australian government threatened these people with many years jail if they spoke out.
Australian service personnel and their health status records were treated and kept at the Maralinga Hospital. John Hutton was the only involved person to ever see his Maralinga file and actually get to retain a page from it. (He nicked it).
Australia and Britain perfected a medical regime in which medical responses to radiation induced syndromes were solved without documenting the actual diagnosis. The afflicted personnel, with the exception of Mr. Hutton, never got to read their own medical records, all of which disappeared when the British Bombardiers left Australia in the 1960s. And some say they took the Maralinga medical records with them. That’s very close collaboration, isn’t it?
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Part 1 of A Study of the “Report of the inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia” Australian Parliamentary Committee 2020. Nuclear History, 29 Feb 2020 “………..Australia cooperated with the United Kingdom in that nations’ successful attempt to duplicate the Manhattan’s Project plutonium bomb. Prime Minister Menzies, without the approval of ordinary Australians, agreed to the British request to detonate atomic bombs over and on Australia. This involved excluding the Australian Sir Mark Oliphant from participating in the Atomic Weapons Safety Committee (AWTSC). Instead following British desires, Australia appointed the Englishman Professor Titterton, a radar and timing expert, to that committee. Even though the Committee was not a British Committee, but one which was paid for by Australians, and which reported to, and was subordinate to, the Australian government. Titterton rose quickly to head the committee. Justice Jim McClelland, during the Royal Commission into the British Nuclear Bombing of Australia, concluded that Titterton deliberately with held important safety information from the safety committee, the Australian government and the Australian people. Justice McClelland found that Titterton was acting under security protocols imposed by Britain and the United States. And that this was counter to Australian interests and to the safety and security of Australians. The results of this deception against Australia continue to resonant in Australia today.
Britain was one of the first customers for Australian uranium. From the Rum Jungle mine, the uranium was processed processed at Port Pirie, where a tailings pond still remains. For many years it was poorly fenced off and local children swam in it at least until the 1970s. The SA government denied any problem, but the children have not been followed up. Uranium samples was taken to the Amdel laboratory on West Thebarton Road, near Adelaide for testing and analysis. Regular shipments of uranium were sent to England – some being used at the Windscale nuclear reactor. From this fission of Australian natural uranium in the reactor, weapons grade plutonium was produced. This plutonium became the fuel for the British atomic bombs named “Blue Danube”. The British detonated such a weapon in the Monte Bello Islands of Western Australia. From that time on British and Australian cooperation continued through the 1950s. The last British bombs detonated over and on Australia were in 1957. The British also deliberately spread plutonium dust over the outback in so called safety tests. Although a number of Australians had knowledge they desperately wanted to share with the Australian people, the Australian government threatened these people with many years jail if they spoke out. The Australian government issued notices which compelled newspapers not to disclose specific details. There was more than one “Black Mist Incident”. Even after the Royal Commission of the 1980s finished, and found that the Australian sites nuked by Britain with Australian government help were dangerously contaminated, various involved veterans were harassed by officials for many years after. Ric Johnson had his mail intercepted, steam open and sent on to him. That was as late as the 1990s. In the 1950s Australian CSIRO scientists were harassed by British and Australian intelligence services. Dr Hedley Marsden’s harassment by ASIO is a matter of official record.
Today the former Amdel site which monitored the quality of the Australian uranium sent to England in the 1950s remains in the news. It has been known for decades by those involved that Amdel disposed of a lot of refined uranium after testing by throwing the stuff down a well. The Amdel site also produced a lot of fumes from its smoke stack, such that locals did not do washing on certain days of the week. The late State MP John Scott knew that dust from the Amdel plant in 50s had deposited on the roofs of local houses and had, from there, been washed into the rain water tanks of local residents. The former Amdel site created consequences due totally to Menzies “All the Way with HRH” attitude in regard to nuclear energy in the 1950s. For example, on 4 July 2019 the ABC reported that “Uranium among contaminants sparking proposed bore water ban in Thebarton…..”About 1,500 Adelaide residents and businesses have been told not to use groundwater because of contamination from uranium and degreasing chemicals….”The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) is proposing a permanent groundwater ban for the area, which includes most of Thebarton and a small part of Mile End, just west of Adelaide’s CBD.
“The EPA said the Thebarton contamination came from the former Amdel laboratory on West Thebarton Road where uranium mineral samples were tested from the 1950s until 2008, as well as six other industrial sites. “Waste from testing was disposed of in a nearby pughole— a hole originally dug for clay mining for bricks — in the 1950s……”an EPA report released yesterday stated that testing found “elevated uranium and lead within the pughole and within onsite soils”. …… Source: New release, ABC, Australia 4 July 2019 at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-04/uranium-among-contaminants-leading-to-thebarton-bore-water-ban/11277300
Britain helped Australia build its first reactor at Lucas Heights in the 1950s. It was based on a British heavy water reactor design, and so can be considered, loosely, to be Gen III+ . It was in operation from 1958 to 2007. Originally it was located a fair way away from any built up area. However, houses had, by the late 60s and early 70s, crept ever closer to the reactor.
In the late 1960s, scientists from the reactor discovered the housing land was contaminated with radio nuclides, emitted for years by the reactor vent stack. The contaminated soil was removed and replaced with uncontaminated soil. The contaminated soil was placed into many 44 gallon drums and stored at the Lucas Heights facility until the advent of the Howard government. After declaring the area behind the firing range of the Woomera Rocket Range to be Australia’s interim low level radioactive waste storage site, the first truck loads of radioactive waste taken to the Woomera were the back yard (and front yards) of those contaminated houses back in Sutherland Shire, Sydney. So the collaboration with England in regard to the Mk 1 Lucas Heights reactor did not turn out to well for ordinary Australians either. It’s amazing what Trainee Baker and China Expert Ted O’Brien has forgotten about Australia’s record of nuclear collaborations.
Australia worked in close collaboration with Britain to build the first research and nuclear medicine production reactor. In terms of radiological safety research, Australia also worked in close collaboration with Britain. Prof. Titterton guaranteed that happened. Australian service personnel and their health status records were treated and kept at the Maralinga Hospital. John Hutton was the only involved person to ever see his Maralinga file and actually get to retain a page from it. (He nicked it). Mr Hutton wrote the following to the Australian government: “In August 1957 a number of the troop became ill with persistent vomiting but were . I attach a copy of my in- patient “Over the years I have worked very hard to make sure that the grave injustice to these The clinical notes written on John Hutton’s condition are as follows: “…history of persistent vomiting. No cause found on full examination. Not controlled by 50mg of Largactil tds. Three day intragastric milk drip successful.” The notes were written by a Captain in the RAMC. Largactil is also known as chlorpromazine. A bried look at studies of the drug turns up the following: The clinical notes written on John Hutton’s condition are as follows: “…history of persistent vomiting. No cause found on full examination. Not controlled by 50mg of Largactil tds. Three day intragastric milk drip successful.” The notes were written by a Captain in the RAMC. Largactil is also known as chlorpromazine. A bried look at studies of the drug turns up the following: Australia and Britain perfected a medical regime in which medical responses to radiation induced syndromes were solved without documenting the actual diagnosis. The afflicted personnel, with the exception of Mr. Hutton, never got to read their own medical records, all of which disappeared when the British Bombardiers left Australia in the 1960s. And some say they took the Maralinga medical records with them. That’s very close collaboration, isn’t it? One would have thought the decades long request of the involved personnel to have their medical records back would be an easy thing. No. Hasn’t happened yet. I wonder why. Luckily for Australia the British reactor which turned Australian uranium into British plutonium for British bombs targeted at places in WA and SA caught fire. The British ran out of bomb fuel and the bombing stopped in 1957. By the turn of the 21 centuries the nuclear waste at Maralinga was scraped up again and again reburied at the cost of over $90 million dollars. They were going to use on site vitrification to seal the plutonium into glass. But the process caused a rather nasty explosion. So it was abandoned in favour of shallow graves. Meanwhile, in Britain, British Nuclear Fuel Ltd was stealing body parts from deceased British nuclear veterans, reactor workers and school children for a further twenty years after the rest of the world had ceased that barbaric practice. (British Nuclear Fuels continued the practice into the 1990s, the rest of the world ceased doing it in the 1970s. See the UK government’s Redfern Report https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/redfern-inquiry Although British Nuclear Fuels Ltd is total bankrupt, Australia’s close collaboration with British in nuclear matters demonstrates that the routine and perfected modus operandi of nuclear industry is alive and well in Australia. Nothing has changed. Nor will it change. They can rename their hardware Gen this or Gen that, it doesn’t matter. They are promoted the same old nuclear culture. For instance, I have a letter sent to me by the CEO of ARPANSA in which he writes to tell me that the collaboration between Britain and Australia, manifest on 14 October 1953, at Emu Field, SA, caused no harm to anyone. I have an email from solicitor Andrew Collett informing me that he was the solicitor who was the legal representative of Ms. Lallie Lennon, who, on the basis of the medical evidence presented to the Federal Court of Australia, won her case against the Commonwealth of Australia. The case was won because on 14 October 1953 Lallie and her children and her companions were engulfed in a ground level nuclear cloud created by the Emu Field bomb. Lallie and her party were at Mable Creek at the time. Lallie has suffered severe skin conditions ever since. I am further informed that, on completion of the court case, the record of the legal proceedings were promptly suppressed from the legal record. You can read Lallie’s book on the experiences of the Black Mist and the events which followed. The book is entitled “Maralinga Dust”. You can also read the report Lallie Lennon, Sister Michelle Madigan and I wrote entitled “Lallie’s Story – The Black Mist Incident and it’s Aftermath” available here: https://www.academia.edu/7446972/Lallies_Story_- _The_Black_Mist_Incident_and_its_Aftermath You can also read the evidence presented in the report here: https://www.academia.edu/7498785/Evidence_in_Support_of_Lallies_Story_-_The_Black_Mist_Incident_and_the_Aftermath . This matter is current era . The situation is one which continues to this very day. It is not in the past. In the course of my research, I spoke to a journalist named Andrew Bolt. I did this because of Mr. Bolt’s incorrect views and opinions about the health consequences of Australia’s nuclear collaboration with Britain. I told him his written and broadcast views on the impacts of that collaboration were wrong, cruel and insulting. I asked him where he got his views. He told me he got them speaking a person in a pub. A person made a range officer at Maralinga at the time. Suffice to say that at the time, such people were only told what Britain and the USA wanted them to know. Based on the Testimony of Titterton to the Royal Commission. Lots of safety information was with held from Australians by the British agent Titterton. And that’s what the Royal Commission essentially found Titterton to be. And I asked Mr Bolt how much schooling in radiological safety his informant had. And did Mr. Bolt really think his written piece which demeaned the funeral of Mrs Milpuddie, a First Australian of the Maralinga Lands, was edifying to anyone. For it is my view that if anyone on Anzac Day broke from the crowd and pissed on the road in front of the survivors of Australia’s wars in any year, the book would be thrown at the obscene hoon. I think Mr. Bolt would agree with me on that one. The First Australians who witnessed hundreds of trucks roll through their encampments in the 1950s, on the way to the nuclear test sites. And they thought there was a war. And there was. Mrs Milpuddie’s funeral was that of a Maralinga Veterans. Of the type deliberately excluded from the health survey of nuclear veterans conducted by the Howard Government. This was the third such occasion in which First Australians were excluded from consideration. When that Health Survey was completed and the report written, the government paid experts were at a loss. For they could account for the very great vulnerability Australia’s nuclear veterans suffered and suffer still to various forms of disease, particularly the cancers. In the 2006 report’s own words: “Of the 26 mesothelioma cases in test participants, 16 occurred in RAN personnel, which was nearly three times the number expected in RAAF personnel, there was nearly double the expected number of deaths from melanoma, and cases of melanoma were increased by two–thirds. “The increases in cancer rates do not appear to have been caused by exposure to radiation. No relationship could be found between overall cancer incidence or mortality and exposure to radiation. …….” quote. Source: Australian participants in British nuclear tests in Australia Vol 1: Dosimetry May 2006, Michael Carter, Francis (Rob) Robotham, Keith Wise, Geoffrey Williams and Philip Crouch© Commonwealth of Australia 2006 ISBN 1 920720 38 3 The publication quoted above is one of two volumes which resulted from the Health Survey of Australian Veterans announced by the Howard Government in 2001. Even a drover’s dog, tied, drunk, outside the Ettamogah Pub, knows how dosimetry was obtained at Maralinga under the tender collaboration of the Head of the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee. At the end of each day the men were instructed to throw their film badges (which could not monitor alpha exposure) into a communal container. The badges did not have the wearer’s name on them. No one knows who got what. The learned scientists employed by the government from 2001 to 2006 to study the health of veterans cannot account for the vastly increased health risks confronted by Australia’s nuclear veterans compared to non involved and distant Australians.
And instead of questioning the given data provided to the scientists by Britain and Australia, the scientists chose to speculate that Benzene from army vehicles caused the high rate of disease and death these veterans suffer. Is a person highly skilled in studying the head of pin really a genius ? Or rather, are they so stupid that they cannot, due to their nature and blinkered perceptions, see beyond the end of their own noses? In any event, regardless of what the Benzene exposure was at Maralinga, tests have been conducted on the cancer causing thresholds related to diesel exhaust, and on the combined effects of Benzene and gamma radiation as follows: Submission to the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission “The combined effect of ionizing radiation and benzene on immunoreactivity indices in the spleen and lymph nodes”, Sharetskiĭ
AN, Abramova MR, Zamulaeva IA, Kulish IuS. Radiats Biol Radioecol. 1997 May- Jun;37(3):387-94. The authors report: “Under the influence of the combined action of gamma irradiation (1 Gy, 1,15 Gy/min) and benzene the synergistic reduction of proportion and absolute content of B-cells and less expressed reduction of absolute content T-cells in spleen and lymph nodes was observed. In spleen the thymus-dependent humoral immune response was resistant to combined effect of irradiation and benzene, while in lymph nodes it was highly sensitive. The profound suppression of antibody formation in lymph nodes was characterized by synergism. It was accompanied by the block of specific recruitment of antigen sensitive cells within drained lymph nodes from migrating stream. The suppression of local immune response resulting from the combined effect of radiation and toxicants may be the cause of protective immunity disturbance.” end quote.
For many decades, since at least 1945, nuclear authorities have tended to present reality as consisting purely of binary choices. “Either, Or.” However, reality exists as it is. A plain reading of the reality of nuclear veterans and their great vulnerability to disease compared to other Australians not involved in the same locality says this: the veteran cohort die young. The aging survivors continue to suffer and die more often than their non involved aging peers. Yet the learned experts paid by the government conclude that service at Maralinga must have present other hazards totally unrelated to radiation exposure. For that is the political imperative. “It’s not radiation, the radiation was innocent. It must be something else.” ……..
I consider the 2006 report on the health of nuclear veterans to be a political document. Shortly after its completion Prime Minister Howard promoted the idea of locating nuclear reactors in South Australia, among other places. Once the veterans had been shuffled off to die quietly with the luxury of free cancer treatment, the way was clear to promote nuclear power in Australia. Which the Australian government has been doing ever since……. https://nonuclearpowerinaustralia.wordpress.com/2020/02/29/part-1-of-a-study-of-the-report-of-the-inquiry-into-the-prerequisites-for-nuclear-energy-in-australia-australian-parliamentary-committee-2020/
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The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 
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