West Coast Radiation Crisis - Hanford Site: Part 3

The radioactive particles billowing out of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant caught the officers and crew of the USS Ronald Reagan unawares. The gargantuan vessel is equipped with radiation sensors that can identify the spectrum of isotopes from civilian accidents up to all-out nuclear warfare. Although the vessel was cruising at a presumably safe 80 nautical miles from the meltdowns, the shipboard alarms started to buzz wildly.

Carrier Row, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, where 
the Fukushima-contaminated USS Ronald Reagan 
was refitted over an 18-month period.

Reconnaissance helicopters roared back to the mother ship, which then carved an arc through the chill waters of the Liman Current. The pride of the U.S. Navy was fleeing the coast of Japan like a wounded whale from a shiver of hungry sharks.

The USS Reagan’s support role for Operation Tomodachi sustained far more injuries than any of the 9thCarrier Group’s exercises off the Korean Peninsula. The crews of three helicopter suffered high exposure levels, and sailors operating the ventilation controls have since come down with severe radiation-related symptoms.

A railroad bridge crossing the Columbia River was traversed by 
the train that transported radioactive waste from the 
USS Ronald Reagan to the Hanford Site.

Fukushima radiation seeped beyond soft tissue into hard steel. Below the flight deck, nuclear isotopes in the air flowed into the air vents and below-deck ducts, while radioactive seawater surged through its turbine pumps and tubes that suck in seawater for the desalination system and to cool the vessel’s twin nuclear-power reactors. The artificially produced freshwater for washing and drinking aboard ship was soon toxic.

The detection of war-grade plutonium residues sparked rumors of a nuclear strike on Fukushima in undeclared war by an unidentified power. Meanwhile a blanket of censorship was imposed over the condition and whereabouts of the USS Ronald Reagan, which at that moment could have possibly been the first casualty of World War III. Not until months later did confidential leaks emerge from U.S. nonproliferation experts disclosing secret transfers of highly enriched plutonium from Texas blended into mixed-oxide fuel rods for Fukushima Reactors 3 and 4.

Wanapum Hydropower Dam, 30 miles upstream from Hanford, 
was mysteriously dusted with radioactive isotopes

Over the two years since the March 2011 meltdowns, the radiation-stricken carrier vanished from the sailing schedule, leaving other naval behemoths to take over its missions in the South China Sea, Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Then this spring, the vessel reappeared in San Diego as if nothing had happened.

Casey Jones, Watch Your Speed

The story behind the USS Ronald Reagan’s long absence from active duty was revealed by a Navy long-timer perched at a bar outside the Bremerton Naval Shipyard in Seattle.

A guard post at Hanford Site keeps out uninvited visitors.

After flushing its pipes while transporting sailors’ cars to Alaska, the carrier was docked for decontamination and refitting along Bremerton’s “Carrier Row”. From early autumn 2011 until mid-March 2013, a period of 18 months, shipyard workers replaced irradiated air ducts, pumps, pipes, gaskets, hoses and electronic controls sensitive to radiation. The work gangs were ordered to prevent release of any contaminated liquid into Puget Sound in compliance with a prior Environmental Agency pollution complaint issued in 2010.

(My dosimeter readings at Bremerton and at several points in Puget Sound confirmed the absence of radiation leakage from the USS Reagan. Frequent sightings of dead Dungeness crabs with floppy legs, however, suggested mortality caused by chemical toxins, probably surfactants used for cleaning the carrier and possibly heavy-metal compounds, possibly chrome, to deter barnacles from the hull.)