The monster movie “On The Beach,” released in 1959 with an HBO TV remake released in 2000, featured the most fearsome “non planet-sized asteroid” monster ever fantasized by Hollywood. The monster was a huge radioactive cloud, or radcloud, created in the aftermath of a massive nuclear war. Radcloud rampage in this movie ultimately caused total depopulation of planet earth. Other entertainment industry radcloud freaks and monsters include various giant insects, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Incredible Hulk, Godzilla and on and on and on.
The Basalt Waste Isolation Project (BWIP) broke ground at Hanford in 1976, and in 1982 the Hanford Site was selected as a candidate area for study as a potential repository site for high level nuclear waste. Excitement was high. Geology schools were drained of graduates and tens of millions of words were written reporting on the project and geological factors related to storing high level nuclear wastes at Hanford. BWIP designs were actually overkill. The public was definitely not at risk, but the radcloudophobes would have none of it. By 1987 they had pushed hard enough politically to eliminate Hanford from consideration. They had seen the movies. They knew what we were dealing with. At least they didn’t demand guided tours so visitors could view the giant insects up close.
Unfortunately, all this fear mongering from the radcloudophobes doesn’t change the fact that life evolved on planet earth in a sea of radioactivity. The air we breath, the food we eat and the liquids we drink have always contained some level of radioactivity, as do all our bodies. But the radcloudophobes refuse to acknowledge natural sources of radioactivity or that these natural sources are the same as what you get from nuclear bombs and reactors. They refuse to acknowledge that our oceans contain over 5 billion tons of dissolved radioactive Uranium, and sea salt could reasonably be classified as low level nuclear waste. They refuse to acknowledge that one of the primary sources of energy keeping the core of our planet molten is radioactivity. They won’t even acknowledge the hard betas from bananas.
Yes, the DNA in any cell can be altered through environmental exposure to certain chemicals, ultraviolet radiation, other genetic insults including radioactivity or even errors that occur during the process of replication. But these are risks and factors the human race has always had to deal with. They have always been there, and the only really effective way to escape is to blast the whole dangerous mess into the sun.
But, back to the entertainment industry. The most enduring of all radcloud monsters is Godzilla. There were variations in the various releases, but the most popular depicted Godzilla as a prehistoric monster awakened from slumber by atomic testing in the early ’50s. The latest Godzilla movie, “Godzilla Minus One,” was released in 2023. So entertainment industry fascination with radcloud nonsense is still with us.
Robert Crocker
Chehalis
