Foreign Policy 2015-03-04

(Someexpertsevenbelievethatbythetime	environment simply failed to keep pace.	guardsthenuclearindustrycouldrelyonto
ofits1967warwithEgypt,Israelalreadyhad	Notonlywerethequalitycontrolsforcom-	maintaintheintegrityofitsstocks:financial
atleastonenuclearweapon.)Inonedaring	panieslikeNUMECpoorlyenforcedornon-	penaltiesformissingnuclearmaterialsand,
1968 operation, Mossad agents allegedly	existent,butfewprotectionswereinplace.	when it came to commercial plant opera-
bought roughly 200 tons of yellowcake, a	TheAEC,whichoversawshipmentsofura-	tors, a “presumption of honesty.” Without
pre-enriched form of uranium ore, from	nium and plutonium to and from private	the latter, Brown said, the accountability
a Belgian company. Operation Plumbat	plants,didnotrequiresecurityclearances	system “did not present itself in the most
occurredwhenacargovessel,theScheers-	for all personnel handling nuclear mate-	crediblelight.”
berg,leftAntwerp,headingforGenoa,Italy,	rial, according to former AEC chairman	SomeAECo cialswantedtopursuethe
withtheuraniumonboard.Theshipnever	Seaborg, who documented the loose reg-	Apollo mystery further, particularly the
arrivedattheItalianport,insteaddocking	ulatoryenvironmentinhis1993book,The	Israelconnection,butmoresenioro cials
in Turkey, but without the material. Intel-	Atomic Energy Commission Under Nixon:	prevailed,namelySeaborg.Heimpressed
ligence experts agree that Mossad agents	Adjusting to Troubled Times. There were	uponhisfellowcommissionerstheimpor-
conductedadangerousship-to-shiptrans-	international consequences as well: The	tanceofmaintainingtheNUMEClossesas
ferintheMediterranean.	AEC,hewrote,alsolackedarobustsystem	anin-housematter—inotherwords,keep-
Israel never admitted to the act, which	toindependentlyverifyhowmuchmaterial	ing FBI investigators away. While a diver-
was investigated by the European Atomic	wasgettingshippedoverseas.Nevertheless,	sion of uranium to Israel was possible, it
Energy Community and the CIA. But	NUMECmanagedtocatchtheAEC’satten-	was unlikely, Seaborg wrote in a letter to
assumingtheuraniumdidarriveinIsrael,it	tion, and not in a good way. By the early	the chairman of the Joint Committee on
likelywouldhavegonetoDimona,anuclear	1960s, the commission had begun eyeing	Atomic Energy. Thus, when the AEC did
reactor purchased from France in the late	the Apollo facility because of the plant’s	investigate the matter in 1966, the e ort
1950sandbuiltintheNegevDesert.Inthe	poorrecord-keeping.	was anemic at best. AEC o cials visited
nextdecade,accordingtoAvnerCohen,an	According to declassified documents,	NUMEC,forexample,buttheydidnottake
expertonIsrael’snuclearhistoryandapro-	even though the AEC had frequently	any formal statements or pursue possible
fessorattheMiddleburyInstituteofInter-	requested that Shapiro provide data on	leads, according to recently declassified
nationalStudiesatMonterey,Israelsaidfor	NUMEC’s stocks of highly enriched ura-	documentsanalyzedbyVictorGilinsky,a
a brief time that Dimona was being used	nium, the corporation had repeatedly	physicistandformercommissioneratthe
for peaceful purposes, but then switched	failed to do so. By 1966, Shapiro’s com-	Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),
its policy to one of opacity. (To date, Israel	panyhadalreadypaid$1.1millioninfines	a successor to the AEC. The FBI briefly
hasneveradmittedtopossessinganuclear	for uranium losses that NUMEC had will-	considered Shapiro’s involvement with
arsenal;itiswidelybelievedthatthecoun-	ingly acknowledged. The previous year,	ISORAD, but the inquiries led nowhere.
tryhasatleast75,andperhapsasmanyas	the AEC had conducted an inventory of	TheJusticeDepartmentdeclinedtoinves-
400,nuclearwarheads.)	highlyenricheduraniumstocksatNUMEC	tigate.Littlebylittle,thedocumentsshow,
ItwasthecombinationofIsrael’snuclear	andfoundthatroughly200poundscould	the AEC’s lobbying e orts succeeded in
mission and Shapiro’s established profes-	notbeaccountedfor.(Toputthisintoper-	stymieingquestionsaboutwhatwashap-
sional dealings with its government that	spective,bytoday’sstandardsitonlytakes	pening at NUMEC.
arousedsuspicionswhen,mysteriously,ura-	35poundsofuranium-235tomakeanuclear	Gilinsky and other longtime observers
niumstarteddisappearingfromNUMEC.	bombthatworks.)	of the NUMEC a air think the AEC may
	Tobesure,NUMECwasn’tfullytoblame.	have deliberately stifled the investiga-
AS COLD WAR TENSIONS ramped up in the	IntheAEC’so cialsummaryofaFebruary	tion because it didn’t want a controversy
1950s, America’s nuclear arsenal was	1966 briefing with its commissioners, the	toderailitsbroaderambitionsofdevelop-
expanding and so too was NUMEC’s busi-	AEC’s assistant general manager, Howard	ingarobust,nationwidenetworkofnuclear
ness—so quickly that the U.S. regulatory	Brown, said there were two powerful safe-	businesses. “The AEC’s interest in damp-

As Cold War tensions ramped up, America’s nuclear arsenal

was expanding and so too was NUMEC’s business—so quickly that the U.S. regulatory environment simply failed to keep pace.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 39

ingitdowninitiallywasbasicallytoprotect	as a “chemist,” while two others said they	totheFBI,describinga1969interviewwith
theindustry,”Gilinskysaid.“Theyhadall	werefromthe“DepartmentofElectronics.”	Shapiro, says NUMEC’s founder “noted
this future lined up,” he added, “and they	(The fourth man on the team was a scien-	that a number of Israeli national o cials
didn’t want a public impression that this	tific counselor, an o cial from the Israeli	had visited his facility under authoriza-
would lead to dangers of losing material,	EmbassyinWashington.)Theyclaimedto	tionoftheAECforthepurposeofdiscuss-
so they were just protecting their enter-	bevisitingNUMECtoobtainplutonium-238	ing nuclear activities, particularly power
prise mainly.”	fornon-nuclearprojects.	sources and irradiation.”)
In April 1968, however, CIA Director	Inreality,the“chemist”wasnoneother	Stockton said Eitan laughed his way
Richard Helms requested that the FBI	than Rafi Eitan, one of Israel’s top spies. A	through the questioning. “He denied that
once again scrutinize NUMEC and Shap-	short, gregarious man with a passion for	herippedo theuranium,buthejustdidn’t
iro.Unbeknownsttothepublicatthetime,	sculpture and exotic fish, Eitan had been	sound very convincing to me.” Stockton
Helmshadlearnedsomethingthatwould	involvedinsomeofhiscountry’smosthigh-	added: “He went from zero knowledge of
prompt him to approach President Lyn-	risk espionage for decades. In 1960, he led	the thing and no role to play, and then all
don B. Johnson. The exact content of this	thesecretMossadoperationtokidnapNazi	ofasuddenheadmitshehadbeenthere.It
exchange remains classified, but in the	warcriminalAdolfEichmannfromArgen-	waskindofbullshitthewholeway.”
months preceding the briefing, CIA oper-	tina and return him to Israel to stand trial	Other skeptics sco at Eitan’s account
ativesonthegroundinIsraelhadcovertly	for war crimes. (Eitan would later be fin-	as well. “What did Rafi Eitan know about
taken and tested environmental samples	geredasthehandlerforJonathanPollard,	batteries?Notadamnthing,”saidMattson.
around the Dimona reactor. The results	an American civilian analyst for the Navy	“Why [would you send] three guys of that
were disturbing. They showed the pres-	who spied for Israel for about a year and a	caliberwithnotechnicalbackground…to
ence of a type of very rare uranium used	half before he was caught in 1985.) Two of	talk to Shapiro about plutonium-powered
in naval fuels that had been enriched to	the other men visiting NUMEC, Avraham	batteries?Giveme[a]break.It’sabsurd.”
97.7percent.AccordingtoRogerMattson,a	Bendor (who later went by the surname	Mattsonaddedthatstealinguraniumout
physicistandformerAECandNRCsta er,	Shalom) and Ephraim Biegun, also had	from under the noses of the U.S. govern-
it was the purest stu around, and there	covert connections. Bendor was an agent	ment would have been precisely the kind
was only one place in the world that was	forShinBet,Israel’sdomesticintelligence	of high-stakes covert operation at which
producingitinthe1960s—anenrichment	service, while Biegun headed up the Mos-	theseparticularmenexcelled.
plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, that had one	sad’stechnicaldivision.Avisitbyoneofthe
customer:NUMEC.TheDimonasamples,	menalonewouldhaveraisedquestions;the	AROUND THE TIME EitanshowedupinApollo,
inotherwords,seemedtoindicateadirect	presenceof allfourtogetherwascause for	accordingtoStockton,Gilinsky,andothers,
through-line from Portsmouth to Israel,	immediateconcern.	someCIAo cialshadgrownveryinsistent
via Apollo. Declassified documents show	Peter Stockton, a former senior investi-	aboutthediversiontheory.JohnHadden,a
that when Helms alerted Johnson to the	gatorfortheHouseEnergyandCommerce	formerstationchiefinTelAviv,wouldeven
CIA’sintelligencethatApril,thepresident	Committee’sOversightandInvestigations	suggestthatNUMECwasanIsraeliopera-
reportedlyresponded:“Don’ttellanybody	Subcommittee who spent decades prying	tion“fromthebeginning,”adetailreported
else. Don’t even tell [Secretary of State]	intoNUMEC,saidhebroughttheincident	inDangerousLiaison,a1991bookaboutthe
Dean Rusk or [Secretary of Defense] Rob-	upwithEitan,inthelate1980s,aftertrack-	U.S.-Israel relationship. (Hadden died in
ert McNamara.”	ing him down in East Germany through a	2013.)However,theAEC’se ortstoquash
TheFBIsoonplacedShapiroundersur-	friend. When the two met, Eitan regaled	investigations had largely succeeded, and
veillance at the request of Attorney Gen-	Stockton with “a blow-by-blow account”	noconclusiveevidenceofwrongdoinghad
eral Ramsey Clark, who wanted to know	of the Eichmann operation. Stockton was	come to light. Even as a few strident indi-
whether the Pennsylvania scientist was	captivated by the Israeli’s flair for story-	vidualstriedtopushthecaseforward,from
“acting as an agent for the Israeli Govern-	telling. But when Stockton asked about	thelate1960stothemid-1970s,theNUMEC
ment,”accordingtoa1968FBIdocument.	NUMEC, Eitan grew quiet, before saying,	controversylostmomentum.
Just two months later, the bureau tapped	“I’ve never been to NUMEC. I don’t know	It wasn’t until February 1976, in fact,
Shapiro’s phones.	what you’re talking about.” Stockton kept	when the newly created NRC was review-
No sooner had the surveillance begun	pushing.“Isaid,‘That’sbullshit;youknow,	ing its licensing processes for private
than suspicious activity at NUMEC	wehaveyoursignature[ontheAECdocu-	nuclear-fuelcompanies,thatApolloreap-
started to surface. In September 1968,	ments].’Andthenhesaid,‘Well,OK,Iwas	peared on Washington’s radar. James
four Israelis visited NUMEC after Shapiro	there ... but I was getting batteries for lis-	Conran, an NRC engineer investigating
requested facility access from the AEC on	tening devices.’” (It wasn’t the first time	safeguards against theft at U.S. nuclear
theirbehalf.TheIsraelisclaimedtobesci-	batteries had come up in connection to	facilities, urged the commission to look
entists;inNUMEC’srequest,onewaslisted	NUMEC and Israel: A letter from the AEC	more closely at NUMEC, insisting that he

40 MARCH | APRIL 2015

THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS’ CLEANUP IN PARKS TOWNSHIP IS CURRENTLY IDLE. IT IS EXPECTED TO RESTART IN 2017 AND COST ABOUT HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.

couldn’t issue his complete findings until itdidso.SotheNRCrequestedaconfidential CIA briefing.

Gilinsky, then an NRC commissioner, remembersthemeetingwell.About15men satinablandconferenceroomatthecommission’sheadquartersinWashingtonand questionedCarlDuckett,theCIA’sdeputy director for science and technology. NRC Chairman William Anders asked Duckett point-blankwhethertherewasanythingto therumorsaboutNUMEC’smissingmaterials.Whateverthegroupwasexpecting,it almostcertainlywasn’twhatDuckettsaid next: that the CIA believed Israel did have the uranium from Apollo and was using it to make bombs. “The room just went sort

of quiet,” Gilinsky said. “Some of them were inspectors and focused on reactors and stu , so I don’t know that they fully graspedthesignificanceofit,thoughsome did.”(Duckettdiedin1992.)

Morerevelationsfollowed.InJuly1977, evidencesuggeststhatTedShackley,then CIA associate deputy director for covert operations, briefed senior energy o cials about the environmental samples from Dimona. For many, this was the key piece of missing evidence against Shapiro and NUMEC.Hadden,oftheCIA,toldtheBBC in a 1978 interview, after news about the samples broke, “Just imagine to yourself how much easier it would be to remove a poundortwoofthisorthat[inertmaterial]

atanyonetime…asopposedtoremoving, all at one blow, 150 pounds of [a] shouting andkickingEichmann.Yousee,[theIsraelis] are pretty good at removing things.” (Stockton said he met Hadden in the late 1970s and early 1980s in safe houses in Washington’sGeorgetownneighborhood. The CIA o cial would pull out a 2.5-foot makeshiftscrollofpaperthatcontainedhis caseagainstNUMEC.“Thiswasbeforecomputers,andthethingwaslongandpasted together,andthatwashisevidence,”Stockton said. “We’d sit there in the safe house, and he’d read me portions of it.”)

TheWhiteHousewasinformedofallthe informationgathered onNUMECtodate. In April 1976, Attorney General Edward

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 41

Levi wrote a memo to President Gerald	railroaded by overzealous CIA spies who	todevelopanewtypeofnuclearreactorthat
FordinwhichhesaidhethoughtNUMEC	judged him to be guilty without su cient	wouldcreatemorefissionablematerialthan
should be investigated further. Levi also	evidence. Hersh argued, like Shapiro had	itconsumed.(AsSeaborgrelatedinhis2001
laidoutaseriesoffederalcrimesthatcould	before, that when the plant was being	memoir,AdventuresintheAtomicAge:From
be applied to anyone, including peoplein	decommissioned beginning in 1978, the	Watts to Washington, the AEC chairman,
government,whomayhavehadahandin	governmentrecoveredroughly200pounds	shortlybeforehisresignation,helpedSha-
coveringuptheallegeddiversion.Hewrote	ofmissinguranium.AccordingtoGilinsky,	pirogetthejobatWestinghouse,whichdid
that if there were even a remote possibil-	government agencies extracted the radio-	notrequireasecurityclearanceupgrade.)
ity that federal o cials “may have partic-	activematerialfromtherubbleoftheplant	By the 1990s, Shapiro was still living in
ipated in or concealed an o ense,” it was	and shipped it o to a safe burial site. But	Pittsburgh, and according to friends and
necessarytoconductaninvestigation.The	thatwasn’ttheendofthestory.	neighbors,hewasdeeplyengagedwithhis
investigation never came.	In2001,theEnergyDepartmentdrafted	community. “He was a nice man, sort of
In March 1980, according to a declassi-	a report that revealed new details about	like a fatherly figure,” said Seth Corey, an
fied document, FBI agents interviewed a	NUMEC’s missing uranium. The study	oncologistwhometShapirothroughaJew-
formerNUMECemployeewhoclaimedto	found that in addition to anticipated	ishcommunitynetwork.Theywenttothe
be an eyewitness to suspicious activities	industrial losses through air and water,	symphony together; Shapiro, Corey said,
at the factory sometime in 1965 or 1966.	593 pounds of highly enriched uranium	loved classical music. While Corey, who
The worker alleged that one night he and	were unaccounted for in Apollo between	has since moved out of Pittsburgh, knew
an acquaintance came across a group of	1957and1968—lessthanhalfofwhichwas	hisfriendhadonceownedacompany,the
unidentifiedpeople“loadingcansintosome	recoveredinthedecommissioningprocess.	controversy around NUMEC never came
equipment” in NUMEC’s loading bay. (At	By contrast, over the next nine years, only	up.“Ijustknewhewasanuclearengineer,”
thetime,canistersabout6incheslongwere	about168poundsdisappeared,eventhough	Coreysaid.“Ididn’tknowanythingabout
commonforstoringvariouskindsofradio-	the amount of uranium being processed	this enriched-uranium stu .”
activematerials,Gilinskysaid:“Youstoreit	increased.“Acertainamountoflossisrea-	In 2009, at age 89, Shapiro was still
insmallcansbecauseifyougettoomuch,	sonable;evenahighestimateisreasonable,”	inventing. That year, he filed his 15th
it’sabomb.”)Themansaidthathealsosaw	Gilinsky said. “But this is over and above	patent, a new way of synthesizing dia-
shippingpapersindicatingthematerialwas	everyestimateofreasonableloss.”	monds,andhisfamilynominatedhimfor
boundforIsraelandthatagun-totingguard	The change in the loss rate happened	aNationalMedalofTechnologyandInno-
orderedtheworkerandtheacquaintanceto	to overlap with shifts in NUMEC’s owner-	vation,theUnitedStates’highestawardfor
leavethearea.InthesameFBIdocument,	ship. In 1967, Shapiro sold NUMEC stock	science. Shapiro received dozens of rec-
anotherNUMECemployeesaidthathighly	toAtlanticRichfield,butkeptrunningthe	ommendation letters, but he wasn’t rec-
enricheduraniumwasalwaystransported	plantforafewyears.Theengineeringcom-	ognized. It’s unclear why; the committee
ina“silver-coloredcan…approximatelythe	pany Babcock & Wilcox acquired NUMEC	declinedtocommentforthisarticle.After
sizeofaone-quartpaintcan.”	in 1971. Shapiro told Hersh that the diver-	theawarddenial,Shapiro’sdaughter,Deb-
Throughoutthe1980sand1990s,docu-	sion controversy essentially forced him to	orah, reached out to then-Pennsylvania
mentsdetailingthegovernment’sconcerns	give up his business. “I was a smelly dead	Sen.ArlenSpectertohelpinhere ortsto
about an alleged diversion continued to	fish,”hesaid.“Contractswerepulledaway	exonerate her father. Specter agreed and
trickle out. In 1991, investigative journal-	andgiventoothers.”	lobbied the NRC on Shapiro’s behalf. But
ist Seymour Hersh dedicated a chapter to		in a November 2009 letter to the senator,
Shapiro’sactivitiesinhisbookTheSamson	THE ACCUSATIONS against him, however,	the NRC said it was unable at that time
Option,whichrecountsIsrael’snuclearpro-	didn’t prevent Shapiro from getting new,	to “unequivocally conclude that nuclear
gramandU.S.-Israelrelations.Init,Hersh	prestigious work. In 1970, he returned to	material was not diverted from [NUMEC]
concluded that Shapiro had been unfairly	Westinghouse,wherehefocusedonaproject	nor that all previously unaccounted for

Today, many people in the nuclear and intelligence communities are still convinced that a diversion occurred. “I tend to think

it happened,” Stockton said. “In fact, I’m damn sure it happened.”

42 MARCH | APRIL 2015

MANY PEOPLE IN APOLLO ARE GRAPPLING WITH FEARS THAT NUMEC POISONED THEIR TOWN AND GAVE RESIDENTS BREAST, THYROID, AND OTHER CANCERS.

material was accounted for during the decommissioning of the site.”

Today, many people in the nuclear and intelligence communities are still convinced that a diversion occurred. “I tend to think it happened,” Stockton told me. “In fact, I’m damn sure it happened.” But the believers also concede that the evidence against Shapiro remains largely circumstantial; the nail in the co n, they say, would be a confession from the aging founder of NUMEC or the release of a yet- to-be-identifieddocumentthatwouldshow definitiveproof.Neither,however,appears forthcoming.Sensitivedocumentsaregenerally declassified in the United States within 50 years (though this timeframe is uptothepresident’sdiscretion).The1954 AtomicEnergyAct,however,providesfor anexemptionconcerninganythingrelated

to“atomicinformation”andgivesgovernmentagenciesbroadleewaytokeepinformation classified indefinitely if it could potentially harm U.S national security.

Others argue that Shapiro has been unfairly maligned. “Shapiro would like to haverehabilitation,”saidMonterey’sAvner Cohen.“Alotofpeoplebelieveagreatdeal of injustice was done to him. I don’t think there’sanydefinitive,clearsmokinggun.”

I made repeated attempts to speak to Shapiro, including several hours spent on the phone with Deborah, all of which she insisted be o the record. In the end, I showed up on Shapiro’s doorstep in Pittsburgh in January, but Deborah said her father and mother were both ill and couldnotspeaktome.In2012,Shapiro,in a roundabout way, hinted to a Pittsburgh news website, Trib Live, that the missing

uraniummightstillbeburiedintheground aroundParksTownship:“Thereisfarmore material there than the Atomic Energy Commission inspectors had estimated,” hesaid.Inlate2013,ShapirotalkedtoaWall Street Journal reporter and again denied havinganythingtodowithadiversion.

THERE IS A CHANCE thatwhenthespadeshit thegroundagainatParksTownshipin2017, thequantityoftheextractedmaterialsthere could erase any lingering doubts about a diversion.Thisisunlikely,inpartbecauseof thenearimpossibilityofprovingthatwhatever is there didn’t come from some other nuclear site that happened to use the area as a dumping ground. And as long as key nationalsecuritydocuments,inparticular CIAfiles,remainredactedandunavailable for the public, questions about what they proveordisprovewillfester.

Meanwhile,ApolloMayorJe Heldjust wants the whole sorry tale to go away. As wedrovebackintohistownonthatrecent January day, Held took me to see some local highlights—a multi-million-dollar high school football field, the town’s first log cabin, a big park where families spend lazysummerafternoons.“Therewasatime when all anybody around here could talk aboutwasNUMEC,”hetoldme.“Butwe’re tryingtomoveintothefuturenow.”

A few years back, Hollywood scouted Apollo as the setting for the movie PromisedLand,starringMattDamonandFrances McDormand.Inthefilm,activistsconcerned abouthowfrackingoperationsmightravage thelocalenvironmentfendo acorporation eyeingtheirsmalltown.Thestoryhaseerie parallelstoApollo,exceptthatinthereal-life case, residents welcomed the arrival of an energycompanyandhavesinceseentheir town’s land and, in some cases, their own healthdestroyed.Still,toHeld,hishomeis a promised land. That’s why he never left. “Thatwholenuclearindustrythingispart ofourlegacy.Wedon’tdenyit,”hesaid.“But we’renotallowingittodefineus.” Θ

SCOTT C. JOHNSON (@scott_c_johnson) was

Newsweek’s bureau chief in Africa and is theauthorofTheWolfandtheWatchman: AFather,aSon,andtheCIA.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 43

Is low-dose radiation deadly? Scientists still don’t know. Why it might take more than 1 million people and a lot of mice to find the answer.

By SARAH LASKOW

At 6:45 a.m. on March 1, 1954, the earth rumbled beneath 10-year-old Jalel John’s feet as she stood on Ailuk Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Above her, half the sky turned strange colors. She remembers, in particular, the reds—the uncanny shades of red. ¶ Within six minutes, a mushroom cloud reached 130,000 feet overhead, pulling with it the pulverized coral of islands. Left behind was a crater that measured more than a mile wide and 250 feet deep, vast enough to be visible from space. Some 350 miles away from the blast, John experienced the largest thermonuclear explosion that the U.S. military would ever detonate, a test known as Castle Bravo. (It reached a yield of 15 megatons; in layman’s terms, that’s 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Hiroshima.) ¶ Then came the fallout. ¶ At around noon, a white, powdery substance began to drift down from the sky—first onto Rongelap Atoll, some 100 miles east of the explosion, and then onto Utirik Atoll, 300 miles away from the blast. On Ailuk, where John lived, a fine fog filled the air, finally settling on the earth and the atoll’s enclosed lagoon.

44 MARCH | APRIL 2015

The following day, U.S. military planes flew over theseislands,measuringradiationlevelsintheatmosphere.Intheevening,anAirForceseaplanelandedon Rongelap.Thetwomenwhogotoutoftheaircraftwere therefornomorethan20minutesanddidn’tspeakto anyone. They recorded high levels of radiation: The islanders’totaldosewasestimatedtobebetween110 roentgens—enough to induce vomiting and cause muscle aches—and 340 roentgens, which could kill aperson.Bythenextmorning,theUSSPhilip,aslim, gray battleship, had arrived to evacuate all 65 people on Rongelap. Shortly after, the U.S. Navy moved 154 people o Utirik.

But John and some 400 other residents remained onAiluk.Thetotaldoseofradiationtheyhadreceived, estimatedatamaximumof20roentgens,“wouldnot beamedicalproblem,”anAirForcelieutenantcolonel reportedtocommandthatweek.

In 1994, 40 years after Bravo, Holly Barker, an advisor to the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the United States, was assigned to document the stories

of so-called “unexposed” communities, including those on Ailuk. Scoresofwomen,shesays,sharedpersonalstoriesofstillbirthsand malformed “grape” babies. Jalel John, by then about 50 years old, was one of them: Two of her children had died, and one of them “was born defective,” she told Barker: “It didn’t look like a human. It looked just like the inside of a giant clam.”

John invited Barker into her home, where she insisted that the young advisortake a picture of her granddaughter—a moment that sticks with Barker, even years later. A young girl wearing a colorful patterned dress stood in the middle of a rough, empty floor. The girl’s big, dark eyes stared into the camera. Her right arm reached toherkneecapandroundedintoafleshynubatherwrist,whileher left arm was a stump. Her legs, covered mostly by the dress, were uneven, and one twisted outward. What John was trying to convey, Barker remembers, was, “This is it: I’m exposed, and this is what we’re dealing with.” But such visceral images had not altered the U.S. government’s o cial position that the only people a ected by radiation were those who were originally evacuated.

Inthe1950s,theU.S.governmentmayhavehadthebestofintentions when it told the residents of Ailuk that they were safe, but technicallyspeaking,authoritiesweren’tinapositiontoo erthose

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 45

assurances.WhatU.S.governmentscientistssaidatthetimewasthat below25roentgens,theycouldnotseeanye ectsonaperson’sbody. But they allowed for the possibility that, over time, small amounts of radiation exposure might cause genetic damage. In other words, the most reliable science of the era could not measure the e ects of the relatively low levels of radiation that reached Ailuk.

Today,despitethe2,053nuclearweaponstestedaroundtheworld during the Cold War, the more than 430 nuclear power plants currentlyoperatingin31countries,andtheskyrocketinguseofradiation inmedicine—annually,thereare20millionnuclear-medicineproce- duresin the United Statesalone—scientists are still uncertainabout thoserisks.TheestimatedtotallevelsofradiationthatreachedAiluk were ultimately determined to be less than 10 roentgens. By today’s safetystandards,suchlevelswouldbelessthanwhatisreferredtoas “lowdose,”whichisanythingbelow100millisieverts(mSv),themetricmeasurenowused,orroughlyequalto10roentgens.

Overthepast17years,theU.S.EnergyDepartmenthasinvestedin morethan240projects,atacostofover$130million,todiscoverthe e ectsoflow-doseradiationonhumansandtheenvironment,tono avail.ThisJanuary,theHouseofRepresentativespassedabillcalling for a new road map for low-dose research to find a science-backed reason to end what are—in the words of House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican—“overly restrictive regulations” on nuclear industries. Although the bill appears on its face benign, calling for coordinated e orts by scientists to finallygettothebottomoflow-doseexposurerisks,itsgoalistodis- credit the so-called “linear no-threshold” (LNT) model, which has formed the basis for radiation safety policy for decades. This model assumes that radiation at any dose is harmful—an approach used by regulatory bodies, both in the United States and internationally. While most scientists agree that the LNT model o ers a reasonably conservative guide for establishing standards, they know it’s based on an estimate—and they understand that, eventually, studies will pinpoint the exact e ects of radiation at low doses.

Clarifying uncertainty over a long period of time is normal and necessary in science, where consensus can come at a glacial pace, but in the hands of U.S. policymakers, scientific examination can quickly get amped up and politicized. The legislative calls for more research could be discounted as political minutiae, but not having the answer to the LNT puzzle could already be having tangible— even deadly—consequences.

Those,likeLamarSmith,whoopposetheLNTmodel,believethere is a threshold of exposure below which harm is either nonexistent orofnoconsequence.Butevenasitstands,America’soccupational radiationdoselimitsaremorethantwicethoseofinternationalstandards and are notably high among nuclear countries’ safety regulations. To make matters worse, government o cials have avoided setting strict standards for resettlement and compensation plans for victims of a nuclear attack or accident. Stunningly, children’s greater sensitivity to radiation is not even accounted for in nuclear safety regulations.

Toputitsimply:Thenewbillplacesscientificinquiryintheservice ofaderegulationagendathatcouldmakepeoplelesssafe—notmore.

BEFORE 1945, WHEN THE UNITED STATES DROPPED LITTLE BOY

over Hiroshima and Fat Man over Nagasaki, no one knew much about the dangers of radiation. Today, those nuclear bombs aren’t just the only ones ever usedinwar;they’realsothesourcesformuchofwhat isknownabouthowradiationa ectsthehumanbody. In 1950, scientists began the Life Span Study, an epidemiologicalexaminationthatcontinuestodayofthe tens of thousands of people who were within about a six-mile radius of the points directly below the detonations. The project tracks the radiation-exposure outcomes over a person’s lifetime. The results haven’tbeen good: The greater the dose of radiation, the greater the risk of death, period.

There are limits, however, to what scientists can learn from this one group of people. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki populations were exposed to an externalblastofradiationoverarelativelyshortamountof time;theresultsinthatcasecannotbeappliedtoother situations, such as people eating radioactive food or working for decades in a nuclear weapons plant. But after a couple of decades, the study found that the people who had been exposed to lower doses—and who had not shown signs of health e ects before— starteddevelopingcancersthatwereonceconnected only to high exposures, such as thyroid, breast, and lung cancers.

In 1979, scientists working on the National AcademyofSciences’thirdBEIR(BiologicalE ectsofIonizingRadiation)reportweredividedsharplyoverhow to estimate these low-dose cancer risks. Some scientists thought there was still a “safe” threshold of exposure; others asserted that the risks of low-dose radiation were exponentially smaller than those of higherdoses.ButBEIRCommitteeChairmanEdward Radford argued heatedly that, proportionately, the risks were the same at high and low doses. He said that the best solution was to extrapolate, all the way down to zero, the linear relationship between dose and e ect observed at higher doses. Although the report ultimately presented all sides of the debate, by the next BEIR report, in 1990, Radford’s view had won out. The LNT model has remained in the report ever since and has guided decisions not only in the United States, but around the world.

Aboutthatsametime,inthe1990s,scientistswere finding new, large populations to examine, groups thatcouldfillinsomeofthegapsleftbytheLifeSpan Study.AstheColdWarended,scientistsintheUnited StatesandWesternEuropegainedaccesstotheTecha River cohort—29,800 people who lived on a small riverthatpassedbytheSovietUnion’sMayaknuclear weapons complex. After the plant began producing

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plutonium, its waste was dumped from 1949 to 1956	theIARC’s,anydramaticoutlierdemandsfurtherinvestigation—that’s
intotheriver,whereitseepeddownstream,wentinto	part of good science. (And independent academics are working to
the water table, and contaminated the population’s	salvage the Canadian data set, so it may still be used in the future.)
drinking and bathing water, as well as its food crops.	The real problem, some scientists say, is not that this one data set
IncontrasttoJapan’sbombsurvivors,thisgroupwas	was thrown out. It’s that, with doses and risks this small, scientists
exposed to radiation in dribs and drabs—exactly the	need to study more than hundreds of thousands of people, as in the
sort of exposure that had been assumed, previously,	IARCstudy.Theyneedontheorderofatleast1milliontonaildown
toposelittlethreat.Butoverthepastdecade,aninter-	preciseresults.(That’sjusthowstatisticswork:Real-worlddatadon’t
nationalteam,connectingscientistsinRussiaandthe	come perfectly fit to a model. If only one out of 1,000 exposed peo-
United States, has found that these low doses, even if	ple are expected to develop cancer attributable to radiation, small
theywerespreadoutoveryears,didincreasetheriskof	discrepancies can have a meaningful impact on a best-fit curve.)
developingcancer.Thenumberofcancerswassmall:	With that in mind, John Boice, head of the U.S. National Council
In one study, the researchers found that 3 percent, or	on Radiation Protection and Measurements—and an expert who’s
55outof1,836,ofsolidcancersthatappearedinthose	notnecessarilyconvincedthattheLNTmodelisthebestrepresenta-
tensofthousandsofpeopleneartheTechaRiverwere	tionofriskforverylowdoses—iscobblingtogetherthelargestradia-
attributabletoradiation.Butitissignificantthatthey	tioncohortever:morethan1millionAmericansexposedtoradiation
		while working at nuclear plants, with the military,or
		inotherradiologicalindustries.Hehasbeenplanning
NOT HAVING		thisprojectsincehefirstpushedtheNuclearRegula-
		tory Commission (NRC) to start a registry of nuclear
		workersnearlythreedecadesago.Itcouldtakeanother
THE ANSWER TO THE		seven years—plus about $25 million on top of the
LNT PUZZLE COULD		$10 million or so he has already received from the
		Energy Department, the National Cancer Institute,
ALREADY BE HAVING		theNRC,andotherfunders—beforeheisdone.“When
		wefinishthisinvestigation,”hesays,“we’llbeableto
TANGIBLE EVEN DEADLY		addressdirectlythee ectsoflow-doserateradiation.”
CONSEQUENCES.		While Boice was busy jump-starting his study, lab
		researchers enabled by new technology in the late
		1990s were making headway on how low-dose radi-
		ation a ects human cells and animals. By zapping a
		singlecell with a microbeam of radiation,the lab sci-
		entists were able to look at radiation’s e ects on cells
showed up in the results at all—and that the relation-	atlowerdosesthaneverbefore.Andwhattheyfoundsurprisedthem.
shipbetweendoseande ectlookedtobelinear.	“Itwasalwaysassumed—Ialwaysassumed—thatwhathappened
In 1988, another study, by the French-based Inter-	when you went to lower doses was that less and less cells got dam-
national Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC),	aged,”saysDavidBrenner,thedirectorofColumbiaUniversity’sCen-
begantopooldataaboutnuclearworkers,ultimately	terforRadiologicalResearch.“Sotherewaslessandlessprobability
almost 600,000 from 15 countries. It was hoped that	that any cell would produce cancer.” But when researchers hit just
this group, one of the biggest samples ever studied,	onecellwithradiation,notonlythatcell,butthosenearit,werealso
wouldreflectmoreclearlythetruee ectsoflowdoses.	damaged. This became known as the bystander e ect.
And,indeed,theIARC’sestimatesoftheworkers’can-	“Because cells talk to each other, they send out signals,” Brenner
cerrisk,firstpublishedin2005,notonlyshowedthat	explains. “We don’t understand how those mechanisms work, but
chronic, low doses posed threats, but also that they	there’s no doubt whatsoever that a cell that’s una ected by radia-
were notably higher than those predicted using the	tion can have DNA damage in it if it’s near to a cell that is a ected
LNT model. The problem was that the results were	by radiation.”
influencedheavilybyonedatasetfromCanada:With-	ThisideasuggeststhattheLNTmodelunderestimatesrisks.If,say,
outit,theincreasedrisksthatthestudyshowedwere	twice as many cells are damaged by a hit of radiation than assumed,
no longer statistically significant from zero. Almost	it’s a fair guess that the health risk would be twice as high. Certainly,
immediately, the study was criticized, most vocally	this discovery eventually meant that, as Brenner puts it, “all bets are
byscientistswho’dworkedinthenuclearindustry.In	o ”ontheaccuracyoftheLNTmodelatlowdoses.
2013, the Canadian data set was thrown out.	Indeed, by the late 1990s there was enough evidence calling into
Thatcertainlydoesn’tlookgood.Butinastudylike	questiontheLNTmodelthatthecracksinitsfoundationinterestedthe

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 47

EnergyDepartment,whichdevotedresourcestowiggling	Science prioritizes the research necessary
thosecracksevenwider.Startingin1998,thedepartment’s	to understand what that level actually is.”
low-dose lab studies involved irradiating single layers of	He points to medical innovations, such as
cells, tissue-like cell groups, and mice, with doses under	X-rays, as things that have benefited the
100 mSv. The results showed a plethora of “non-targeted	publicgoodwhilealsorelyingonlow-dose
e ects,”where,asinthebystandere ect,cellsotherthan	radiationtodoso.“Itisessentialwehavethe
theonethatwasirradiatedrespondedtothedose.Butifthe	scienceandfactsstraightbeforetakingany
epidemiologicalstudiessupporttheideaofextrapolating	potentiallyburdensomeregulatoryactions
from high to low doses, this body of work shows that the	that could hamper future innovation,” he
relationshipbetweenhigh-andlow-doserisksisprobably	saidinaJanuarystatement.
more complicated than that. And it’s still unclear what,	EdwinLyman,aseniorresearcheratthe
exactly,anyofthismeansforhumanhealth.	UnionofConcernedScientistswhospecial-
Scientists,includingthosemostcloselyassociatedwith	izesinnuclearproliferation,isn’tsooptimis-
the Energy Department’s program, are focused on lab	ticthingswillchangefortheUnitedStatesin
studiesthatshowthatsomeofthesecell-levelresponses	thesamewaytheycouldforEurope.Atthe
areprotective,ratherthandamaging—thatis,theneigh-	NRCandEnergyDepartment,hecharges,
boring cells are merely gearing up to fix minor damage.	institutionalbias“motivatesthegrantselec-
For these reasons, Tony Brooks, who worked as the pro-	tion of the people who are directing the
gram’s chief scientist for years, is matter-of-fact: “I per-	grants, so they’re self-selecting a popula-
sonally don’t think that low doses are important at all in	tionofstudiesthatsupporttheirownview.”
cancer-risk assessment.” The program has also funded
scientists who believe in radiation hormesis—the idea	GREGORY JACZKO, WHO CHAIRED THE NRC UNTIL
that low doses of radiation might actually be beneficial.	2012, doesn’t discount that “there is an
SomeofBrooks’scolleagueswillsay,politely,thatthese	industry-influence piece” to this partic-
conclusionsabouttheLNTmodel’soverestimationofrisk	ular scientific debate. In short, changes
are going much too far. Their doubts about hormesis are	cost money.
evenmoreprofound.Toconclusivelyproveradiationrisks,	Those who oppose the LNT model
thesetwolinesofresearch—theepidemiologyandthelab	argue that low, allowable dose levelskeep
work—willlikelyneedtocometogether.Thismeansthat	the business of nuclear cleanup thriving.
thelabmodelswillhavetoshowwhatthecomplexrelation-	Cleaningupasiteto0.15mSvperyear,the
ship of dose and e ect does indeed look like, if it doesn’t	EnvironmentalProtectionAgency’sstan-
look like a straight line, and this relationship will have to	dard,ratherthan0.25mSv,theNRC’s,can
matchwiththereal-worlddatafromhumanpopulations.	cost millions of extra dollars. And when
Thissituationisn’tsounlikethatinEurope,wherethe	considering decommissioning nuclear
LNT model also has caused quite a kerfu e among sci-	plants,theNRChasbeenmoreconcerned
entists. Most notably, the French Academy of Sciences’	with that cost di erential than with the
position, since 2005, has been that the LNT model may	di erential in human health. The Energy
overestimate risks (though that hasn’t changed France’s	Department already spends $5 billion
safety policies). But, compared with the United States,	each year on environmental cleanup for
there’s a stronger inclination across the Atlantic toward	its atomic defense work. (Almost half of
the view that the risks might actually be higher than	that goes to just two nuclear production
previously assumed. In 2009, an association of govern-	sites now being decommissioned, Han-
ment agencies and research institutes in Europe, called	fordandSavannahRiver.)Asanexample,
MELODI,startedadecades-longprogramthataimstonail	cleaningupNewYorkCitytothat0.15mSv
down,onceandforall,thetrueimpactsoflow-doseradi-	standard—after a hypothetical nuclear
ation, with the aim of assessing and improving Europe’s	event, that is—could cost approximately
currentsystemofradiationprotection.Thisisslow-going	$4 trillion; to clean it up to 50 mSv would
work,andrigorandpatiencemayyetprevailoverpolitics.Gcost less than $1 trillion.
Meanwhile,inWashington,theHousebillonlow-dose	Over the past 15 years, the NRC has dis-
researchawaitsSenateapproval.Accordingtoitsleadspon-	cussedupdatingtheUnitedStates’occupa-
sor,Rep.RandyHultgren,aRepublicanfromIllinois,the	tionaldoselimit,whichgovernshowmuch
goal of the act isn’t to challenge that a threshold exists,	radiation people who work in industries
but to “ensure that the Department of Energy’s O ce of	like nuclear power and nuclear medicine

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