Eldred

To the editor:

Oppenheimer’s Cold War legacy lives on Staten Island, which is an exciting movie but very disappointing from a New York perspective. In many respects, other than mentioning the Army Corps of Engineers, the Manhattan district and its location missed a critical aspect of the Building of the Atomic Bomb. The Movie did not mention the thousands of people involved in the development of the bomb; its 44 sites spread out throughout the Northeast. Given my time working on the Department of Energy’s Formerly Utilized Site Remediation Program, it is still amazing how nuclear information is parceled to the public, creating an environment of mistrust. Cold War Insanity and nuclear secrecy for the ages. Why is it that during the atomic bomb creation and subsequent espionage by its scientists and engineers to ensure the enemies of the United States were given an unabridged version of how to build an atomic bomb, treated the American public with contempt regarding radiation effects and environmental contamination? 

One would not think that the USA of today and countless atomic age movies and books written getting a clear answer to the legacy of nuclear weapons programs and low-level contamination would be treated as it was classified or need-to-know information, and clean-up of these sites debatable. Is it crazy to realize that a foreign adversary could get the plans to build a bomb, but residents living within 500 feet of recently found uranium ore contamination on Staten Island is a mystery?  The material has a low level of contamination, but the messaging and optics counter the reality that we need to move on from our Cold War past. If and when we have an actual nuclear or radiological event, will we have another NJ Governor Whitman moment where no one is listening and understanding the real risk and minimizing any safety and health issues that may arise, as we found from the debris from the WTC Towers?