Candor in All Things Nuclear : Hanford Coverup Raises Anew the Credibility Issue

The nuclear age dawned with virtually no indication of how deadly some of the byproducts of making bombs can be. Time taught the nuclear industry better, and even though building safeguards was a sloppier process than it should have been, managers and workers learned to respect the lethal power of nuclear byproducts.

So did the federal government in its role as regulator. Unfortunately, government still underestimates the danger of either lying to people about nuclear accidents and health threats or, just as bad, of hiding what it knows.

The importance of candor in all things nuclear was emphasized this week with the release of data assembled during an unfinished study of leaks of radioactive iodine from a plant at Hanford in western Washington state that manufactured plutonium for nuclear warheads.

The data, which was pried loose from secret government files by an environmental lawsuit, shows that 13,500 residents in the vicinity of the plant were exposed to levels of radioactivity high enough to damage their thyroid glands and perhaps cause cancer. The air was contaminated between 1944 and 1947, and although the government had known this for years, it denied any threat to health virtually right up to the moment the results of the study were released.

Energy Secretary James D. Watkins, who has had the good sense to throw open the books on the nuclear past since he took over the department, says Hanford’s only mission now is to clean up the mess it made during the nuclear arms race. In fact, residents around Hanford have not been at risk from leakage of radioactive iodine for some years. But except for the example Watkins has set in recent months, it can hardly be said that residents are at no risk of being misled by their government. Washington can ride out almost unlimited numbers of dumb decisions as long as its credibility is good. Without credibility, even wise decisions can be made to look bad.