The
government of radiation is predicated upon the idea that “low levels” of
contamination produced by the nuclear-industrial-military complex pose
relatively few and predictable risks to impacted human populations and
ecologies. Consequently, using cost-benefit analyses of radiation risks and
benefits, government agencies in nuclear nations allow routine contamination by
radionuclides, although each nation sets official limits and deploys government
bureaucracies to monitor and evaluate exposure levels.
Decades ago, authorities from governmental regulatory
agencies and from nongovernmental organizations such as the International
Committee for Radiation Protection created permissible exposure for human
populations levels based on uniform, mathematical models of dose effects.
However, most extant models for governing radiation flows and exposures fail to
incorporate salient bodies of knowledge about radiation ecology and genetic
mutagenesis carved out scientifically during the Cold War, primarily by
authorities whose research was funded by the nuclear complex. Radiation has
operated as a “privileged pollutant” and the current trend in some countries, such
as the US, has been to raise
allowable exposure levels, rather than to decrease them.
The biological effects of radiation are disputed, but no
one disagrees on the basic fact that the environment is becoming more
contaminated with radioactive elements and their decay products. Radioactive elements
freed from their matrices or created through fission increasingly contaminate
Earth’s environment. The assault began in earnest with atmospheric testing,
although the practice of burning coal had already increased environmental
contamination by radionuclides and other toxic elements. Disasters such as
Hanford, Chernobyl, and Fukushima contributed to the production and circulation
of vast volumes of radioisotopes, such as Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, previously
unknown on Earth’s surface. Scientists and policy makers were well aware that
they were creating a radioactive Earth. They studied how radionuclides
circulate and concentrate in the environment, as illustrated by Project
Sunshine that was secretly published in 1953.
The growing
radioactivity of planet Earth was rhetorically managed in the concept of the
permissible dose, the history of which has been well documented. The
permissible dose was formulated in abstraction. The recipient of the
permissible dose was formulated universally, usually as an adult male, who was
conceptualized as free from any biological vulnerabilities, including previous
exposures to toxins.[i]
However, the construct of the
de-contextualized, single-nuclide exposure was belied by empirical findings in
the scientific research areas of of radiation ecology and genetic mosaicism,
often in research sponsored by the nuclear complex. These bodies of knowledge
disclosed that radionuclides concentrate and magnify in human bodies across
time, with detrimental effects for human health and reproduction because
radionuclides are often mutagenic through both chemical and radioactive
processes. This chapter critiques the thanatopolitics inherent within the
government of radiation focusing on the US as an example. Critique uses
documents funded or influenced by the nuclear complex to demonstrate that
radiation protection was compromised from its inception and continues to
prioritize the sectional interests of the nuclear complex, among others, over
the health and genetic integrity of the biosphere, despite decades of reform
movements by dissident scientists, doctors, and concerned citizens. The epic failures of the radiation protection
paradigm are illustrated using the governance of Fukushima fallout in the US as
an exemplar....
[i]
A. Makhijani (April 2009) ‘The Use of Reference Man in Radiation
Protection Standards and Guidance with Recommendations for Change’, Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research, http://ieer.org/downloads/53.
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