Greenpeace delivers nuclear waste to Bremer

Baghdad Bulletin ^ | July 20, 2003 | Seb Walker

[cc2k]

Greenpeace delivers nuclear waste to Bremer

By: Seb Walker

Published date: 20/7/2003


The controversy over possible risks of radioactive contamination for communities living around the huge Tuwaitha nuclear complex near Baghdad has been dragging on for weeks now. While facilities like oil pipelines and museum artefacts were immediately secured following the ceasefire, the Tuwaitha nuclear storage facility was left unguarded.
Consequently, it was heavily looted by locals and radioactive material has been dispersed around the area.

At the beginning of June, a US official stated that there were no health risks for the local population or soldiers now guarding the site. Greenpeace, the international environmental organization, surveyed the villages in the area for a period of three weeks and found: a huge uranium mixing canister abandoned in a field with about 4 or 5 kilograms of powder left inside, radioactivity in houses up to 10,000 times above normal, radioactive barrels being stored in houses, and consistent and repeated stories of “unusual sickness” after coming into contact with material from the Tuwaitha plant.

On July 4, the charity delivered a container of ‘yellowcake’ – radioactive uranium – found in the region to the office of the Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer. The sample was safely contained, unlike the canister left open and unattended near the Tuwaitha plant with significant quantities of radioactive uranium inside.

“What we have brought for Bremer is just a fraction of what the people of Tuwaitha have had to live with for months,” said Mike Townsley, a spokesman for Greenpeace.

Contaminated containers were looted from the Tuwaitha plant by local people who wanted them for water storage. Greenpeace has been taking new water storage barrels into the villages to try to get people to swap their radioactive containers, but for many water storage overrides the threat of radioactivity.

According to Greenpeace, the current situation is nothing short of a nuclear disaster, and even the US Army’s own radiation expert has recommended that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation should conduct an immediate assessment of the risks.

However, the subsequent IAEA report released on July 16 has come up short of expectations, with the agency finding that only 10 kilograms of radioactive uranium has been dispersed in the communities around Tuwaitha. But the US authority only allowed the IAEA to check for missing uranium, denying permission to look into highly radioactive “industrial isotopes” which can also be deadly.
Greenpeace estimates that the site contains as any as 400 of these industrial isotope sources. The charity is shocked by the brevity of the report which they say fails to reflect the problems facing the communities around Tuwaitha.

[cc2k]

Who let these guys into Iraq anyway?

[Darksheare]

Yeah, and how the devil did they find the Yellowcake, when everyone else couldn't?!

[steplock]

"What we have brought for Bremer is just a fraction of what the people of Tuwaitha have had to live with for months, said Mike Townsley, a spokesman for Greenpeace."

Arrest and try townsley for attempted murder and terroristic threatning!

[mtbopfuyn]

But, but, the dims have told us there was no uranium!

[bedolido]

Whoa!!! Green-Piece (of crap). Now that is strange

[.cnI redruM]

Perhaps they should mail a few barrels to the idiots that the "Democrats" are bruiting about as Presidential "candidates."

[darkwing104]

This story smells...If Green Peace did find any Yellow-cake uranium they would of hidden it in order to embarass a popular Republican President

[Darksheare]

Yeah, implied in my #2.
I'm highly suspicious of these clowns.
Weren't there some GreenPiece clowns acting as human shields prior to Saddam's army crumbling?

[neb52]

LOL I was thinking the same that they were probably already there before the war.

[finnman69]

Hope fully the greenpeace morons sterlized themselves with radiation exposure. The wold is polluted enough withouth them polluting the gene pool with their defective DNA.

[Consort]

Now we can take a preemptive strike against Greenpiece.

[Darksheare]

Seems to me that GreenPiece had some protestors there as Hyooo-mon sheeee-illdz for a bit.
One has to wonder how GreenPiece got a hold of that stuff when Hans Blix and his crew had no idea it was even there.