Feature story - 4 July, 2003
The "yellowcake" sample we delivered to Paul Bremer, head of the US civil administration in Iraq, is safely contained - but who knows how much is still left unsecured and unsafe in the local community. We brought Mr Bremer a container of the radioactive uranium found abandoned near the Tuwaitha nuclear facility and urged him to allow the return of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to carry out a full survey and decontamination of Iraq.
Greenpeace delivers a container of radioactive uranium'yellow cake found abandoned in the community outside the Tuwaitha nuclear facility, to Mr Bremmer, head of US civil administration in Baghdad.
After arriving outside the Office of Rehabilitation and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) - now located in one of Saddam
Hussein's palaces in Baghdad - we challenged Mr Bremer to accept
responsibility for the "yellowcake" and for the rest of the
radioactive material that is contaminating the environment and
threatening public health.
The US Administration insists there is no danger or health risk
to the villages, despite evidence of widespread radioactive
contamination in the area, after the facility was left unsecured at
the end of the war and was subsequently looted. Authorities allowed
the IAEA into Tuwaitha last month, but only to make an inventory of
uranium inside part of the nuclear facility, not in the surrounding
communities. They were refused permission to inventory any of the
400 highly radioactive sources known to have been at Tuwaitha
before the conflict.
Greenpeace has been surveying the villages around Tuwaitha for
the past three weeks and has found frightening levels of
radioactivity including:
- a huge uranium "yellowcake" mixing canister with about 4-5
kilos of powder still inside, left open and abandoned on a field
near a village
- radioactivity in a series of houses, including one source
measuring 10,000 times above normal
- another source outside a 900 pupil primary school measuring
3,000 times above normal
- locals who are still storing radioactive barrels and lids in
their houses
- a smaller radioactive source abandoned in a nearby field
- consistent and repeated stories of unusual sickness after
coming into contact with material from the Tuwaitha plant
- numerous objects, carrying radioactive symbols, discarded in
the community
None of this nuclear material is prohibited by UN resolutions or is
usable for nuclear weapons.
The community near Tuwaitha is suffering a nuclear disaster that
would be tolerated nowhere else in the world. Even the US
military's own radiation expert in Iraq agrees that a major
decontamination and health screening programme is urgently
needed.
"I would recommend the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and the World Health Organisation get involved and do an
assessment. They've got involved in other instances like in Brazil
where sources have ended up being distributed in the community and
they actually assessed the risks from that. The faster it happens
the better," said Lt. Col Mark Melanson, radiation expert and head
of the US Military Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine unit in
Iraq, in a Greenpeace interview.
When we we spoke with Dr Emad Aldin, Health Physicist, Iraq
Atomic Energy Commission, he agreed: "To deal with this crisis and
to solve this problem and pass through this mess we need all the
help from the United States as the occupying force, and the
international organisations like the IAEA and the WHO. If these
efforts are united that will solve the problem as quickly as we
hope."