Kiwis fear cancer after working near leaky US nuclear reactor in Antarctica

Wednesday, 9 May 2018

New Zealand soldiers who served in Antarctica in the 1960s-1970s fear they may get cancer because an American nuclear power plant at McMurdo Station leaked. US servicemen have already died. Will Harvie reports.

Paul Williscroft was a cargo handler with the New Zealand Army. He served in Antarctica four times between 1973 and 1985, but it was his 10-week tour in 1978-79 that stands out now.

In early 1979, he was ordered to load an American ship at McMurdo port.

The ship was taking soil from the vicinity of a shuttered American nuclear power plant that had operated at McMurdo from 1962 to 1973. There were 438 documented safety problems with the plant, nicknamed 'nukey poo'. The most notable was a leak from a cooling unit. Within about a month of finding that leak, the US Navy decommissioned the plant.

Summers in Antarctica are short and it took some years for the reactor to be dismantled and shipped out.

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The navy also decided soil from under the power plant had to be sent away. The plant sat on Observation Hill, overlooking McMurdo. Soil downhill from the site had to be removed as well. More than 9000 cubic metres of potentially contaminated soil was scraped away.

In 1979, Williscroft had to shovel the contaminated soil.

'All of the truck traffic came down from the [nuclear power] site and drove through what we called [McMurdo] town to the wharf,' he wrote in evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal in 2016. The tribunal was hearing claims on kaupapa or thematic matters that dealt with nationally significant issues affecting Māori as a whole.

'The soil was carried on open dump trucks,' he wrote. It was stockpiled at the wharf and then dropped into the open hold of the ship with a big bucket.

'Our role was within the hold of the ship,' he wrote. 'As the soil was dropped, it sat in the centre of the ship's hold. Our task was to shovel the soil toward the side of the cargo hold, to get the ship more stable for rough seas.'

'We had zero [protective gear],' he said in an interview. 'I mean absolutely zero. I would swear that on a stack of bibles.' They had cold weather gear.

'In terms of being briefed and made aware of threats and hazards and so on, there was nothing.'

There was a device, probably a Geiger counter, on the ship's deck. After a shift, a US guy waved it over Williscroft and he always passed the test.

There were at least three other NZ Army guys in the hold, but Williscroft can't remember their names. He vividly recalls a 'Pasifika bloke from Auckland'. Kiwi soldiers were also working on the wharf while the ship was loaded.

'There was no getting out of this duty. It was our job and that much was made known to us,' he told the tribunal.

The nuclear reactor had supplied electricity to McMurdo and ran a desalination plant. It was similar to the reactors the US navy was putting into its submarines in the 1960s.

MONITORING KIWIS AT MCMURDO

New Zealanders were all over McMurdo Station in the '78-'79 summer and indeed during the 1960s and 1970s. Scott Base, the Kiwi polar station, is three kilometres away, just the other side of Observation Hill.

Kiwi soldiers lived at McMurdo, they visited for work and they often drank in bars at the American base. New Zealand scientists, contractors and staffers did the same. Personnel moved between the bases daily.

Meanwhile, winds in the area were strong, said Williscroft. 'Those winds were kick-ass, they just blew everywhere.'

If there was nuclear contamination at McMurdo, including in the soil, the winds took it to Scott Base, said Peter Breen.

He served at Scott Base during the 1981-82 summer as an assistant base mechanic. He was NZ Army but on secondment to the Antarctic division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), the forerunner of today's Antarctica NZ.

After leaving the army, he became an advocate for NZ veterans who served in Antarctica. In 2011-12, he wrote a 64-page report and letters that argued NZ vets of Antarctica deserved 'medallic recognition' for their 'military service in this hostile, barren environment'. Among the dangers these vets faced was McMurdo's nuclear plant.

His report wound up at Veterans' Affairs, the NZ ministry charged with caring for veterans.

In August 2012, the Secretary for War Pensions Rick Ottaway replied to lobbying by the Returned and Services' Association about the plant. 'I am monitoring the US Government's response to the [nuclear] matter so that any new information or findings can be evaluated,' he wrote.

'I'd love to know what they've been monitoring,' said Breen in a recent interview.

'There's been absolutely no information come back from them about any of this … I don't believe they've monitored anything.'

'I believe that's just a fabrication,' Breen said.

AMERICAN CANCERS

Americans who served at McMurdo in the 1960s and 1970s have got cancers and some have died.

Jim Landy was an aviation flight engineer with the US Air Force and served eight tours at McMurdo between 1970 and 1981.

In Christchurch, he met Pam Hepenstall. She was working at the White Heron Hotel, now the Sudima, next to the American facilities at Christchurch airport. They fell in love and married, in 1972.

Jim's military career took the couple all over the states and to Spain. They retired to Florida.

Jim got cancer and died, in 2012. Pam Landy spent long years fighting the US Department of Veterans Affairs to acknowledge Jim's cancers and get survivor benefits. In November 2017, an appeal body within the department called the Board of Veterans Appeals ruled in her favour.

The board ruled Jim Landy had 'esophageal, stomach, liver, and brain cancers due to exposure to ionising radiation'. McMurdo was identified as the only likely source and given that he didn't work in the nuclear power plant, the exposure must have been 'by virtue of merely serving there'.

'The US gaffed the whole thing,' said Pam Landy in a phone interview from Florida. 'It was wrong. I'll say that to my dying day.'

Thomas Wilborn served in the US Navy and was stationed at McMurdo for five months in 1971-72. He got colon cancer, cirrhosis of the liver and gallstones. After a long fight, the board ruled in 2015 that he was 'exposed to low-dose ionising radiation while he was stationed at McMurdo'. He won.

The applications by both veterans were opposed by lawyers for Veterans Affairs, who argued that while the men had been exposed to ionising radiation, their exposure was too low to cause cancer. Both veterans provided expert evidence to the contrary. By law the board is required to resolve 'all reasonable doubt in favour of the veteran'.

In other words, when there's contradictory evidence, the case is decided for the veteran, not the department.

This doesn't make the board a pushover. In 2015, it ruled against a US vet with prostate cancer who was exposed to radiation while at McMurdo between 1963 and 1980. A report showed it was 'unlikely (with a 0.24 per cent probability)' that the cancer was caused by his time at McMurdo.

Pam Landy knows of 67 former US servicemen who served at McMurdo who got cancer.

WHAT THE NZ GOVERNMENT KNOWS

The NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimates about 600 Kiwis visited Scott Base-McMurdo Station 'during this time period,' according to a 2017 document released under the Official Information Act.

Although Veterans' Affairs was supposedly 'monitoring', the document makes clear that Mfat was 'unaware of' two key documents published by the Pentagon in 2013 and 2014 until they were 'brought to our attention by a concerned New Zealander earlier this year'.

The Pentagon documents analyse radiation doses and skin doses for US personnel who served at McMurdo between 1962 and 1979. They conclude the risk of disease from exposure was 'low'.

Relying on that, Mfat recommended to the prime minister and the ministers for health, ACC and veterans to publish an advisory notice on five official websites, including Antarctica NZ and NZDF.

The notices were posted in January with no fanfare. Concerned readers were advised to contact the NZ Office of Radiation Safety. Alternatively, 'we recommend you contact your doctor in the first instance'. Three Kiwis have been in touch since then.

Pressed whether these five notice were sufficient, Antarctica NZ replied, 'It is important to us that this information reaches as many people as possible who worked at Scott Base'.

The agency, speaking on behalf of Mfat, repeated that the risk was low. It said about 100 people were at Scott Base a season but its records were 40 to 50 years old and it couldn't contact them. 

Going further than the public notices, the Antarctica NZ offered a 'personalised assessment of radiation exposure', via the Office of Radiation Safety.

The NZDF and Veterans' Affairs did not respond to questions put to them two weeks ago.

WAITANGI TRIBUNAL CONNECTION

In 2015, Waitangi Tribunal announced it would hear claims on kaupapa or thematic matters. These deal with nationally significant issues affecting Māori as a whole.

Māori military veterans were the first kaupapa and those who served in the military from 1946 to the present were invited to give evidence in 2016.

Peter Breen isn't Māori but he knew some Māori soldiers who served in Antarctica in the '70s.

Here was an opportunity to raise 'medallic recognition' and the McMurdo nuclear power plant in a formal forum that would force a response from the Crown.

Paul Williscroft's story in the hold of the ship has been told.

Chaddy Chadwick handled cargo in Antarctica in six-week stints from 1973-76. In 1973, he met some guys clearing away contaminated soil. The nuclear reactor must still have been in place.

'This was the first [time] I had ever even heard about the reactor,' he said in written evidence to the tribunal. 'These guys where white Americans but they looked whiter than paper.'

'We were not told that the site was still contaminated and no information was passed on to the teams about the reactor. We only heard by word of mouth … we just took it for granted that it was safe,' he said.

His accommodation that year was about 600 metres away from the nuclear plant.

Apiha Whakahawea Papuni was primarily based at McMurdo for six weeks in 1977 and handled cargo.

'I had no idea that there had been a nuclear plant stationed there. We were simply completely uninformed … I have no idea where the site of the nuclear plant even was in relation to our accommodation and worksite but it is safe to say we walked the whole area of McMurdo Station.'

The 'oral phase' of the military veterans' kaupapa was a chance for vets to tell their stories. The Crown listened.

Later this year, the Crown will have to show its hand – that is, fight the claims about the power plant, concede, or take some position in between.

Breen and his fellow advocates want medallic recognition. They want a proper assessment of which Kiwis went to the Ice in the '60s and '70s. They want follow-up. They want the New Zealand Government to get better answers from Washington.

'Successive governments – be they Labour, be they National – have failed to look after veterans for four or five decades,' said Williscroft. 'It's in the too-hard basket.'

And it's not just military vets potentially exposed in Antarctica. It's scientists. It's the people who went down to service the diggers, the dog handlers, the caterers, the cleaners.

'These guys are probably outside the loop' unless they've joined the Facebook group, said Dennis Mardle, a advocate for vets.

THE KIWI WITH CANCER

Ray Vincent wintered over at Scott Base in 1978-79. He's had two rare types of cancer, one cured years ago, a second being treated now.

Vincent was often near the site of the former American nuclear reactor at McMurdo Station, but his tale is even more extraordinary.

Vincent was a DSIR science technician and one job was working with a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) that was powering an American experiment into 'auroral infrasonics'.

An RTG converts the heat released by the decay of a radioactive material into electricity. RTGs powered remote lighthouses, weather stations and a number are still on the moon. They were maintenance-free and suitable for places where batteries, solar panels and so forth won't work. One such place was Windless Bight, about a 25-minute drive from Scott Base, Antarctica.

Vincent worked with a Snap 21 model RTG, which was powered by Strontium 90, and allowed antennae to collect atmospheric data. It was about half the size of an oil drum and housed in a little orange hut that Vincent visited from time to time.

Years after Vincent got back to New Zealand, he found a 5 millimetre bubble on his abdomen. It was a rare type of skin cancer that he can't remember the name of now. It was cut out.

After the Christchurch earthquakes, Vincent left for Adelaide and last year learned he has Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, a rare cancer of the lymphatic system.

He said doctors in Adelaide had never seen the disease before and are 'reading the medical journals' to figure out treatment for the incurable disease.

Vincent has been desperately trying to learn if the Strontium 90 caused his disease. RTGs were 'semi secret … in those days', he said in an interview, and the US military is not forthcoming about them even now.

He wants to find the other DSIR technicians who serviced the auroral infrasonic data collection in the 1970s. Do they have health problems?

Vincent approached Antarctica NZ, the successor to DSIR, for help finding them. Antarctica NZ turned him down on privacy grounds.

He also approached the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He's the person who alerted the ministry to the potential problem, which led to public notices being posted on five official websites.

Vincent also says RTGs were shipped through New Zealand. He recalls leaving the Ice in October 1979. The plane was delayed because the American cargo handlers had trouble unloading RTGs from the plane.

He saw and recognised the devices. The plane had departed Christchurch earlier that day. 

* If you know more about this story, contact will.harvie@stuff.co.nz