Last week, Greenpeace announced some of its activists had done something no one has ever done before. They visited a nuclear test site without permission from the country that conducted the tests. That meant no government officials peering over their shoulders, steering them toward this or away from that.
The Greenpeace activists visited the Cannikin test site on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain off Alaska. On November 6, 1971, the U.S. government detonated its largest underground nuclear device there. Cannikin was a five megaton blast – or 385 times as powerful as the bomb dropped at Hiroshima. In 1971, people around the world were protesting this bad idea – this detonation of 385 Hiroshimas underground in the volcanic Pacific Rim. But the U.S. government was not to be denied. “Don’t be alarmed, we know what we’re doing,” they said. You’ve all heard that kind of reassurance before. We were promised no radiation would leak from the site.
As Greenpeace discovered, everything did not go according to plan. First, the bomb was not buried deep enough. If you’re going to light up 385 Hiroshimas, you can’t just throw the bomb down a gopher hole.
That mistake led to the collapse of land above the bomb shaft, which created a crater. The blast also fractured water tables on the island, causing the crater to fill with water. Now it’s called Cannikin Lake.
The third problem, and this is a biggie, is radiation – particularly plutonium and americum – are leaking from the bomb shaft, into the lake and from there into the Bering Sea. Greenpeace announced all this last week in Washington, DC and the Department of Energy said, “Don’t be alarmed, we know what we’re doing.” Sound familiar?
In researching the incident, Greenpeace activists reviewed over one thousand declassified documents, miles of film, and eight by ten glossy color photographs with the circles and the arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.
One photo is my favorite. About 50 people are standing on the tundra, watching the nuclear warhead swinging from a crane, ready to be lowered into the shaft. Each of the 50 people is wearing a white hard hat and there’s an ambulance in the background.
Heaven forbid, but if you find yourself on an Aleutian island and a nuclear warhead – 385 Hiroshimas – falls on your head, you’d better be wearing your white hard hat and have an ambulance standing by. Where it would take you, I don’t know.
In a strange way, it makes me nostalgic for an earlier time, those simple days of duck and cover. But now it’s 1996 and we’re just beginning our centuries of radioactive contamination.
But don’t be alarmed – they know what they’re doing.
Ambulance at Amchitka
Last week, Greenpeace announced some of its activists had done something no one has ever done before. They visited a nuclear test site without permission from the country that conducted the tests. That meant no government officials peering over their shoulders, steering them toward this or away from that.
The Greenpeace activists visited the Cannikin test site on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain off Alaska. On November 6, 1971, the U.S. government detonated its largest underground nuclear device there. Cannikin was a five megaton blast – or 385 times as powerful as the bomb dropped at Hiroshima. In 1971, people around the world were protesting this bad idea – this detonation of 385 Hiroshimas underground in the volcanic Pacific Rim. But the U.S. government was not to be denied. “Don’t be alarmed, we know what we’re doing,” they said. You’ve all heard that kind of reassurance before. We were promised no radiation would leak from the site.
As Greenpeace discovered, everything did not go according to plan. First, the bomb was not buried deep enough. If you’re going to light up 385 Hiroshimas, you can’t just throw the bomb down a gopher hole.
That mistake led to the collapse of land above the bomb shaft, which created a crater. The blast also fractured water tables on the island, causing the crater to fill with water. Now it’s called Cannikin Lake.
The third problem, and this is a biggie, is radiation – particularly plutonium and americum – are leaking from the bomb shaft, into the lake and from there into the Bering Sea. Greenpeace announced all this last week in Washington, DC and the Department of Energy said, “Don’t be alarmed, we know what we’re doing.” Sound familiar?
In researching the incident, Greenpeace activists reviewed over one thousand declassified documents, miles of film, and eight by ten glossy color photographs with the circles and the arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.
One photo is my favorite. About 50 people are standing on the tundra, watching the nuclear warhead swinging from a crane, ready to be lowered into the shaft. Each of the 50 people is wearing a white hard hat and there’s an ambulance in the background.
Heaven forbid, but if you find yourself on an Aleutian island and a nuclear warhead – 385 Hiroshimas – falls on your head, you’d better be wearing your white hard hat and have an ambulance standing by. Where it would take you, I don’t know.
In a strange way, it makes me nostalgic for an earlier time, those simple days of duck and cover. But now it’s 1996 and we’re just beginning our centuries of radioactive contamination.
But don’t be alarmed – they know what they’re doing.