51 Sailors from USS Ronald Reagan Suffering Thyroid Cancer, Leukemia, Brain Tumors
 

Looks like the number will go up to at least 70 or more, according to the story. The mand and women bathed in and drank radiated water from the desalination system.

51 Sailors from USS Ronald Reagan Suffering Thyroid Cancer, Leukemia, Brain Tumors After Participating in Fukushima Nuclear Rescue Efforts

I guess they need to dust off the old cold war/nuclear war manuals you know they had printed up to fight the Russians.

They Navy did extensive Nuclear testing after WW2 they should know how to handle this...

Holy crap, that's unconscionable. If true, the captain and engineering officer and medical officer should be court martialed for dereliction, at least.

I knew a Navy officer/physicist who was involved in a nuke explosion that was far greater than predicted and essentially dumped fallout all over his ship. He was an observer on a weather deck. I think a Japanese fishing vessel was likewise doused and one fisherman died from undeniable radiation sickness.

Anyway, the guy I knew was dying from a cancer in the early 1980's. He was certain it was related to the nuke but the VA denied it. My guy was still working on gathering evidence when the cancer killed him. End of story. Hoffman was his surname. Don't recall his given name.

I remeber watching a program on the history channel about ten years ago on the us gov. Injecting soldiers with plutonium to test the effects of it.

Holy crap indeed! :(

I guess I'm surprised to hear that the desalination/water system isn't monitored, at least to the point that it's not immediately known that there is contamination. You'd think it'd be a given on a nuke powered ship. Maybe it is?

I doubt it. The desalination system is probably low pressure evaporator type. It takes seawater in and flashes it at low pressure then condenses it. IIRC it's a 3 stage system. Anyway, radiation sensor gear is notoriously finicky and requires frequent recalibration. A long-term stream of false positives from an alarm system is not a good thing. It would be giving many thousands of hours of false positives and sailors would be tempted to disarm it.

OTOH, the captain, engineering officer and medical officer would all be in positions to prevent contamination. They knew where they were going and what was happening. IMO they would have no excuse, under these circumstances, of not taking mitigating precautions.

All they had to do was fill the ships tanks and close the sea chests upon entering the irradiated area.

No different then we do with the water maker in the sailboat when entering the harbor.

Its pretty common knowledge that water makers are not magic.

Gotcha. Thanks, Bot.

ex-nuclear navy here - I'm slightly suspicious. We routinely did radiation surveys of non-engineering spaces *just to be sure* but IIRC they were only performed every week? or month?. You need a lot of radiation to get sick from it though.
I'm suspicious of the aviators that never saw radiation before - every nuclear vessel has a workcenter of guys specially trained to detect, measure, and mitigate/cleanup contaminated stuff. All the skittles had to do was call down a few decks (I agree with Bot that the CO/staff are 100% responsible for this if its true.)

-works at a fossil plant now, because I'm lazy and dont miss the pay of the nuclear world

Are you sure they were aware of the radiation risk specifically? That the reactors had blown and sprayed radiation all over the ocean?

If so it does seem bizarre that precautions were not taken.

- Peter.

Not certain. Thinking back, the carrier was en route to Korean waters and was diverted to Fukushima. I don't know the dates and times. It's plausible that the ship was in contaminated waters before people knew it was a serious danger.

One would think that the CO would be a bit cautious. This wasn't a war zone, there was no reason to enter potential mortal danger to his crew.

You raise a good point.


On another subject, I wonder if the vessel went into the yards after Fukushima. I'd sure want the ventilation system scrupulously checked and the FW systems thoroughly flushed.

Well this one's not Bush's fault. It's Reagans fault.

Navy Lieutenant: Power Plant Mission Ruined My Health « CBS Baltimore

The article is a bit cryptic. At first they attribute the contamination to desalinated water and later state the boat passed through a plume of radiation. Another point suggests that the Japanese .gov knew a lot of radiation had leaked and the .gov did not disclose it. Likely the entire crew will be killed by cancers, along with potentially up to millions of Japanese people.

Makes one wonder how many have consumed sea food that has been similarly irradiated.

This story reveals terrible, negligence on many levels. Given the circumstances it appears to have been entirely foreseeable if not entirely predictable. It reads as if the coming year will show very high numbers of people with cancers.