Not for Public Release: a Nuclear Incident in Lock Haven

USA, 2010, 73 min, English
Documentary
Latin American Premiere

Yellow Oscar Best Feature Film 2012

For much of the twentieth century the United States Department of Defense was a major producer of radioactive waste. The Pentagon not only produced its own nuclear waste. For years, the Pentagon depended on an unknown number of private defense contractors to supply countless radioactive parts and equipment. In the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. government actually gave some of these defense contractors permission to dump radioactive waste on their private properties.

The Pentagon seldom, if ever, disclosed the whereabouts of these dangerous nuclear dumps. The problem becomes one for the ages: many of these radioactive isotopes remain dangerous and "hot" for thousands of years, even as the radiation is invisible to unsuspecting victims.

This carelessness caught up with college students in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. One day the students woke up to find environmental officials dressed in protective "moonsuits" searching their apartment building for tell-tale signs of radioactive waste.

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