DU'ers need help debunking a McLoon statement he made today. "No Naval Nuclear Accidents".

[nc4bo]

It doesn't sound 100% right for some reason or another. He tried to be specific by saying the Navy but with anything nuclear, can we afford to be so specific and neglect all the other near misses and accidents?

McLoon is talking big sh*t in York, Pa and that is what he told the audience. No transcript available yet as the TH is still going on.

Back to the meaty bits

(forgot to add the wiki link)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

I did a quick search on wikipedia says otherwise but I'm hoping some one might have saved some information or found something interesting in the travels around the internet.

From wiki from the 70's there are earlier ones:

* December 12, 1971 – In the Thames River near New London, Connecticut, radioactive coolant water was being transferred from the submarine USS Dace to the submarine tender USS Fulton when 500 US gallons (1,900 l/420 imp gal) were spilled into the river.


* 1975 – The American Sturgeon-class submarine USS Guardfish attempted to dump the depleted resin from its purification system (used to remove dissolved radioactive minerals and particles from the primary coolant loops of submarines). The ship was contaminated when the wind blew resin back onto the ship. This type of accident was fairly common; however, U.S. Navy nuclear vessels no longer discharge resin at sea.


October–November 1975 – While disabled, the submarine tender USS Proteus discharged radioactive coolant water into Apra Harbor, Guam. A Geiger counter at two of the harbor's public beaches showed 100 millirems/hour, fifty times the allowable dose.

* May 22, 1978 – Aboard the submarine USS Puffer near Puget Sound, Washington, a valve was mistakenly opened, releasing up to 500 US gallons (1,900 l/420 imp gal) of radioactive water.

that's just Naval but there are others cited from the Soviets, accidents on U.S. soil, etc.

More from http://www.cdi.org/Issues/NukeAccidents/Accidents.htm:

*April 9, 1981, Aboard the USS George Washington (SSBN-598) in the South China Sea

The nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine USS George Washington collided with a Japanese freighter in the East China Sea, causing slight damage to the submarine's sail and sinking the freighter. The submarine carried up to 160 nuclear warheads on its 16 Poseidon C-3 sea-launched ballistic missiles.


*March 12, 1984, Aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)

The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk collided with a Victor-class Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarine in the Sea of Japan. At the time of the collision, the USS Kitty Hawk was carrying up to several dozen nuclear weapons, and the Soviet submarine probably carried two nuclear torpedoes.

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Any one game to help me here because I can smell a lie but putting together something in an intelligent manner to dispel the lies is not my specialty.

[Ian David]

1. Why, here is a story from YESTERDAY! (Nuke leak improperly handled)

August 11
Nuke leak improperly handled

THE GOVERNMENT’S response to the possible leak of radiation from a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine that stopped at Japanese ports earlier this year was surprisingly lukewarm. ...

Cooling water that may have been slightly radioactive leaked within the USS Houston. The U.S. Navy discovered the leak while the submarine was in dry dock for routine maintenance in Hawaii and alerted the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo ... because the vessel had called at ports in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, and Okinawa Prefecture in March and April.

But the Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately relay the information to the local governments concerned on the grounds that it was a minor accident. The ministry notified Nagasaki Prefecture and the other local governments of the leak only on Saturday after CNN reported the accident. ...

According to the U.S. Navy, the estimated total amount of radioactivity released into the environment from the USS Houston during its recent operations in the Pacific was about the same as the radioactivity contained in a common bag of fertilizer. Such an amount is too small to affect the human body or the environment, according to the Navy.

Still, the United States, which was responsible for the leak, notified the Japanese government of the accident for the sake of transparency. It is hard to think of any good reason for the Japanese government to keep the facts from the public. ...

More:
http://www.timesleader.com/opinion/Nuke_leak_improperly_handled_08-10-2008.html

[nc4bo]

3. OMG!! This recent? Thank-you!

I need the transcript for his quote - I hope they'll have it printed somewhere.

Take the incidents + the quote and we'll be good to go.

Thanks again!

[Supersedeas]

6. well the Corporate Media fact checkers are all over this one...not so much

[madokie]

2. Well with mcCain't facts be damned

he and his ilk have no need of facts, they only get in the way of a good lie.

[nc4bo]

4. He gets away with this sh*t . CNN only broadcasted the beginning of this

but he said it before they stopped the coverage so I know it's on tape somewhere.

If anyone runs across it (tape or transcript), please post the link here!

[nc4bo]

5. I missed this. He's been saying this all along!!! Why hasn't this been picked up yet?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/516/

Found this from some of his previous statements.

Navy’s record unblemished
True

In making his pitch for more nuclear power plants as one way to address global warming, Sen. John McCain is fond of citing a military statistic.

“My friends, the U.S. Navy has sailed ships around the world for 60 years with nuclear power plants on them and we’ve never had an accident,” McCain said in Nashville, Tenn., on June 2, 2008. “That’s because we have well-trained and capable people.”

Indeed, the U.S. Navy turned to nuclear power in the 1950s to make its submarines faster and able to stay submerged longer. They are also quieter, more stealth. Since commissioning the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, in 1954, the Navy has steamed 139-million miles around the world on various nuclear-powered vessels. Currently, there are 102 nuclear reactors aboard 80 Navy combat vessels, mainly submarines and aircraft carriers.

“We have never had an accident or release of radioactivity which has had an adverse effect on human health or the environment,” said Lukas McMichael, a public affairs officer for Naval Reactors, the U.S. government office that oversees the operation of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. “His (McCain’s) statement is correct.”

Now, two nuclear subs still sit on the Atlantic floor, having sunk in the 1960s.

Am I getting something confused here or misreading or misunderstanding something?

In a CNN article:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/broken.arrows/intro.html

The Navy, following repeated requests for comment, issued the following statement by Cmdr. Frank Thorp shortly before publication:

"It is disingenuous and perhaps misleading to describe these events as 'nuclear incidents.' The list appears to be partially researched, incomplete and alarmist in nature. I have nothing to add to the Department of Defense's narrative summaries of accidents involving U.S. nuclear weapons from 1950-1980."

To me it seems like there's some deception going on. I'm out of my element here but I'm getting the idea that any accidents is being keep quietly and I wonder if our government would tell us the entire truth.

[bdf]

7. It is simple

Compare what was stated:

We have never had an accident or release of radioactivity which has had an adverse effect on human health or the environment,

With how you're reading it (and which is what McFalseClaim is implying):

We have never had an accident or release of radioactivity

The navy has had several accidents and/or releases of radioctivity. In the estimation of those who have most to gain by adopting the attitude, none of those incidents has had an adverse effect on human health or the environment. The truth is that any release of radioactivity has an adverse effect on human health and the environment but the amount of such harm is roughly proportional to the amount of release. A few atoms of radon won't make any significant difference because radon is being released from basaltic rocks all the time. But living in an area with granite as the main bedrock can increase the amount of radon in the atmosphere in your home to significantly increase your risk of developing lung cancer.

If the naval spokesman has said "never had any significant adverse effect" I might find it believable, without that qualifier it is completely untrue. The adverse effect may be negligible (or it may not) but it's there. The weasel-wording tells me it's a lie.

[nc4bo]

8. I like that phrase, "weasel-wording".

that's what it strikes me as too, I find it to be a deception, a lie. He's full of it and is slip sliding around the facts by not revealing all of the facts.

I'm still googling and ran into similar arguments and lack of interest due mostly to the wording.

The Times Leader article's title says the leak was improperly handled and the government treated it as such but Japan .

OT of the maritime accidents and onto the powerplants:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1167105,00.html

"These are at levels of radioactivity that you may be exposed to by simply walking the face of the earth," said Exelon spokesman Craig Nesbit, who added that the company welcomes any federal or state inspections. "But the 1998 spill was, clearly, improperly handled and it was a large wakeup call and kicked us into gear. Our sensitivity to the environmental effects of what we do and our sensitivity to the public's need to know, and right away, has evolved tremendously over the last couple of months."

But the delays in disclosure, according to David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, "raises serious red flags. That's not the way it's supposed to work. The leaks should be stopped immediately and the public should be alerted. But the companies, and I'd say the federal government, have been so distracted with putting up new reactors and new opportunities. The Bush Administration wants an expanded role for nuclear power without first properly expanding the capacity for the nuclear regulators."

--------

So if we're not even told of incidents or accidents by the nuclear powerplants or the NRC, how can we trust what our military/government says at all?

Thanks again bdf, I'm going to compose a letter and send it to the O campaign as a concerned voter. Maybe it's something they'll think about and take seriously.

I'll also keep my eyes open more information I can add to it.

[bdf]

9. They did it again

When he said "These are at levels of radioactivity that you may be exposed to by simply walking the face of the earth," Well, yes. But what he really means is that you are exposed to those levels of radiation in addition to the normal background radiation. So you are being exposed to twice the normal background.

Oh and he says that you may be exposed to those levels by walking the face of the earth, not that you are. Which means that he's not talking about the average background level but the background level in some hotspots - like areas with granite bedrock which give off more radon than the background.

So what he really means is that the spill would have been enough to double the background radiation if it had occurred at a natural hotspot where the background radiation was already high enough to be a health concern. Where it actually occurred it would have more than doubled the normal background count.

There was a British civil servant accused in an Australian court of lying. He claimed that he'd merely been "economical with the truth" (which you or I would call "lying by omission"). These bastards are being very economical with the truth.

[nc4bo]

10. point taken and I'm running with it. nt