As a citizen activist in the late 1970s and 1980s working at the Environmental Policy Institute, Robert Alvarez was among the first to document the extreme hazards of managing high concentrations of nuclear waste derived from nuclear weapons production, and as a senior appointee at the Department of Energy, he worked to prevent the department’s vast holdings of contaminated materials from entering the civilian metal supply. In the following vignettes, Alvarez recalls his encounters with the nuclear age and the often mind-numbing indifference with which government and industry have viewed both public health and safety concerns and the protection of the environment.
A few days after Ronald Reagan was elected President in November 1980, I met with activists and scientists at a resort near Asheville, North Carolina – knowing that a major nuclear arms buildup was on the horizon. We believed the public living near nuclear weapons sites should know what’s in store and were determined to shine a light on the Savannah River Plant (SRP) in South Carolina – the nation’s main producer of nuclear explosives.