a. For every event but one, this column displays the risk of excess cancer fatalities. For I -131 released during "Hanford early operations," it displays the risk of excess cases of thyroid cancer.

b. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiations (New York: United Nations, 1993), 114, basing findings on L. A. Ilyin et al., "Recontamination Patterns and Possible Health Consequences of the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station," Journal of Radiological Protection 10 (1990): 3-29. The radioactivity released in the Chernobyl accident would include other fission products, particularly long-lived ones, but isotopes of cesium and iodine posed the greatest health hazard.

c. Lynn R. Anspaugh, Robert J. Catlin, and Marvin Goldman, "The Global Impact of the Chernobyl Reactor Accident," Science 242 (1988): 1516.

d. Environmental Protection Agency, Public Health Service, A Citizen's Guide to Radon, (Washington, D.C.: GPO, May 1992), 2.

e. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, Ionizing Radiation: Sources and Biological Effects (New York: United Nations, 1982), 212-226. While the list of fission products released is incomplete, other products do not contribute much in the way of effective doses.

f. This is the rough level of radioactivity remaining one day after each of the explosions, including biologically active and relatively active isotopes. Samuel Glasstone, ed., The Effects of Atomic Weapons (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1950), 220. The level of radioactivity diminished rapidly thereafter. Prompt neutron and gamma radiation from the nuclear explosion, rather than fallout, was responsible for most of the radiation exposures.

g. "Life Span Study," in Hiroshima Radiation Effects Research Foundation [electronic bulletin board] (cited 31 May 1995); available from www.rerf.or.jp; World Wide Web. This is the number of excess cancer fatalities between 1950 and 1985 among the 76,000 for whom doses have been calculated.

h. Sara Cate, A. James Ruttenber, and Allen W. Conklin, "Feasibility of an Epidemiologic Study of Thyroid Neoplasia in Persons Exposed to Radionuclides from the Hanford Nuclear Facility between 1944 and 1956," Health Physics 59 (1990): 169.

i. Kenneth Kopecky et al., "Clarification of Hanford Thyroid Disease Study," HPS Newsletter, July 1995, 24-25.

j. UNSCEAR, Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, 114.

k. Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island: The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), 12.

l. This is an upper estimate based upon a preliminary dose reconstruction by staff of the Los Alamos National Laboratory of 1.1 mSV (1.1 rem). "Assuming an individual had been at the Los Alamos site continuously throughout the experiments, the total dose from the 18 year RaLa series was estimated to have been approximately 1.1 mSv." Using the average dose of 0.6 mSv (0.6 rem), the excess cancer risk falls to 0.24. Los Alamos notes, "A somewhat abbreviated approach could be used wherein a static population of 10,000 is assumed to be uniformly distributed across the Los Alamos of the 1950s. The dose as a function of distance could be used to estimate approximate population doses." D. H. Kraig, Human Studies Project Team, Los Alamos National Laboratory, fax to Gilbert Whittemore (ACHRE staff), 14 September 1995 ("Dose Reconstruction for Experiments Involving La140 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1944-1962") (ACHRE No. DOE-091495-A).

m. Maurice Robkin, "Experimental Release of I-131: The Green Run," Health Physics 62, no. 6 (July 1992): 487-495.

n. See, for example Chemical Corps, 1952 ("Explosive Munitions for RW Agents") (ACHRE No. NARA-112294-A-10); Chemical Corps, 1952 ("Testing of RW Agents") (ACHRE No. NARA-112294-A-7); George Milly, Chemical Corps, 27 June 1952 ("Report of Field Tests 623 and 624 Airburst Test of Two 1,000 Lb. Radiological Bombs") (ACHRE No. DOD-062494-A-16); E. Campagna, Chemical Corps, 18 September 1953 ("Static Test of Full Diameter Sectional Munitions, E83") (ACHRE No. DOD-062494-A-15).

o. The Advisory Committee knows of no dose reconstructions for these releases.

GREEN RUN 2

In February 1986, officials at the Department of Energy responded to requests from activists by releasing 19,000 pages of documents on the early operations of the world's first plutonium factory, at Hanford, Washington. Combing through these documents, reporters and citizens found references to an event cryptically named the "Green Run," in which radioactive material was deliberately released into the air at Hanford in December 1949.[1]

In the aftermath of the public discovery of the Green Run, Senator John Glenn asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to find out if there were other instances in which radioactivity had been intentionally released into the environment without informing the surrounding community. In 1993, the GAO reported twelve more instances of such secret intentional releases.[2]

Following additonal research by the DOD and DOE, the number of secret intentional releases has expanded to several hundred, conducted between 1944 and the 1960s. At the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, dozens of intentional releases were conducted in an effort to develop radiological weapons, some in tests of prototype cluster bombs, others using different means of dispersal; at Bayo Canyon in New Mexico, on the AEC's Los Alamos site, researchers detonated nearly 250 devices, which contained radiolanthanum (RaLa) as a source of radiation to measure the degree of compression and symmetry of the implosion used to trigger the atomic bomb. Other intentional releases were not classified, although not all were made known to the public in advance. At AEC sites in Nevada and Idaho, radioactive materials were released in tests of the safety of bombs, nuclear reactors, and proposed nuclear rockets and airplanes; in still other cases, small quantities of radioactive material were released in and around AEC facilities and in the Alaskan wilderness to determine the pathways such material follows in the environment.[3] Public witnesses from several of these communities told the Committee that they remain deeply disturbed by these releases, wondering whether there is still more information about the secret releases in their communities that they do not know and how much will, at this late date, be impossible to reconstruct.