• Nuclear Explosions: Weapons Testing and War
• Nuclear Exposure and Experiments: Secret, Illegal, Unethical
• Resources

Nuclear Explosions: Weapons Testing and War

"Even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as occurred during all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, impacting nearly everyone on Earth: 'For a regional-scale nuclear conflict, fatality estimates range from 2.6 million to 16.7 million,' said Richard Turco, professor at UCLA and expert on the environmental effects of nuclear war. He continued, 'Megacities attacked with nuclear devices, through war or terrorism, would likely be abandoned indefinitely, inducing mass migration and long-term economic decline.' Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers, said, 'A cooling of several degrees would occur over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. As was the case with earlier nuclear winter calculations, large climatic effects would occur in regions far removed from the target areas or the countries involved in the conflict.'" - UCLA News Release

For a low altitude atmospheric detonation of a moderate sized weapon in the kiloton range, the energy is distributed roughly as follows:

• 50% as blast;
• 35% as thermal radiation; made up of a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light and some soft x-ray emitted at the time of the explosion; and
• 15% as nuclear radiation; including 5% as initial ionizing radiation consisting chiefly of neutrons and gamma rays emitted within the first minute after detonation, and 10% as residual nuclear radiation. Residual nuclear radiation is the hazard in fallout.

Considerable variation from this distribution will occur with changes in yield or location of the detonation.

1 Megaton Surface Blast: Pressure Damage
The fission bomb detonated over Hiroshima had an explosive blast equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT. A 1 megaton hydrogen bomb, hypothetically detonated on the earth’s surface, has about 80 times the blast power of that 1945 explosion.

Radius of destructive circle: 1.7 miles
12 pounds per square inch
At the center lies a crater 200 feet deep and 1000 feet in diameter. The rim of this crater is 1,000 feet wide and is composed of highly radioactive soil and debris. Nothing recognizable remains within about 3,200 feet (0.6 miles) from the center, except, perhaps, the remains of some buildings’ foundations. At 1.7 miles, only some of the strongest buildings—those made of reinforced, poured concrete—are still standing. Ninety-eight percent of the population in this area are dead.

Radius: 2.7 miles
5 psi
Virtually everything is destroyed between the 12 and 5 psi rings. The walls of typical multi-story buildings, including apartment buildings, have been completely blown out. The bare, structural skeletons of more and more buildings rise above the debris as you approach the 5 psi ring. Single-family residences within this this area have been completely blown away—only their foundations remain. Fifty percent of the population between the 12 and 5 psi rings are dead. Forty percent are injured.

Radius: 4.7 miles
2 psi
Any single-family residences that have not been completely destroyed are heavily damaged. The windows of office buildings have been blown away, as have some of their walls. The contents of these buildings’ upper floors, including the people who were working there, are scattered on the street. A substantial amount of debris clutters the entire area. Five percent of the population between the 5 and 2 psi rings are dead. Forty-five percent are injured.

Radius: 7.4 miles
1 psi
Residences are moderately damaged. Commercial buildings have sustained minimal damage. Twenty-five percent of the population between the 2 and 1 psi rings have been injured, mainly by flying glass and debris. Many others have been injured from thermal radiation—the heat generated by the blast. The remaining seventy-five percent are unhurt.1

Megaton Surface Blast: Fallout
One of the effects of nuclear weapons detonated on or near the earth’s surface is the resulting radioactive fallout. Immediately after the detonation, a great deal of earth and debris, made radioactive by the blast, is carried high into the atmosphere, forming a mushroom cloud. The material drifts downwind and gradually falls back to earth, contaminating thousands of square miles. This page describes the fallout pattern over a seven-day period.

Assumptions:
Wind speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: due east
Time frame: 7 days

3,000 Rem
Distance: 30 miles
Much more than a lethal dose of radiation. Death can occur within hours of exposure. About 10 years will need to pass before levels of radioactivity in this area drop low enough to be considered safe, by U.S. peacetime standards.

900 Rem
Distance: 90 miles
A lethal dose of radiation. Death occurs from two to fourteen days.

300 Rem
Distance: 160 miles
Causes extensive internal damage, including harm to nerve cells and the cells that line the digestive tract, and results in a loss of white blood cells. Temporary hair loss is another result.

90 Rem
Distance: 250 miles
Causes a temporary decrease in white blood cells, although there are no immediate harmful effects. Two to three years will need to pass before radioactivity levels in this area drop low enough to be considered safe, by U.S. peacetime standards.

NOTE: This information has been drawn mainly from “The Effects of Nuclear War” (Washington: Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States, 1979) and the PBS Special “Race For The Superbomb”. The zones of destruction described on this page are broad generalizations and do not take into account factors such as weather and geography of the target.

Nuclear Exposure and Experiments: Secret, Illegal, Unethical

After the Manhattan Project successfully developed the first atomic bombs, the US engaged in the large scale production of nuclear weapons in various, secret 'atomic cities', or massive nuclear complexes in Oakridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington State. The bomb project was a public unknown, a classified government secret. As scientists and workers continued to use and manufacture elements such as plutonium to develop the bomb, there ensued a certain fear that not enough was known about these new radioactive elements, and the biological hazards that they might present.

In the 1940's, the US government began a regime of human radiological testing that remained secret well into the 1990's. Ordinary citizens were unwittingly injected with plutonium in public hospitals of San Francisco and New York State. Prisoners in Oregon underwent testicular radiation experiments. Workers at Hanford were fed radioactive fish, while at Los Alamos the chosen fare was small spheres of uranium-235 and manganese-54. These and other such procedures were carried out in a deeply clandestine manner, in order to better discover the health effects of radiation on biological systems. Surprisingly, not a lot was learned. The experiments had varying effects and no overall report was produced from decades of secret human tests. However, evidence today clearly suggests that exposure to radiation impacts human health and the well being of all life.

The Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments established by US President Bill Clinton in 1994 found that between 1944 and 1974 the US conducted or sponsored about 4000 experiments involving up to 20 000 people. In 1996, the federal government announced that it would pay $4.8 million in compensation to survivors of secret cold war experiments in which patients were injected with radioactive isotopes without their consent.

The experiments were an offshoot of the Manhattan Project and were developed to gain an understanding of the biological consequences of nuclear warfare. They violated the Nuremberg code, as in most cases patients were unaware that they were experimental subjects and were not only unlikely to derive any therapeutic benefit from their participation but were also subjected to potential harm.

The experiments were performed under the auspices of the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the Atomic Energy Commission. They were conducted by both military officials and civilian physicians and scientists.

The experiments were intended to study the short and long term effects of radiation exposure, establish "safe" exposure limits, and develop accurate radioactivity monitoring assays. The monitoring assays developed are still standard today. Although much of the research advanced biomedical science, many studies were performed in the pursuit of national defense and in the interests of space exploration.

Populations and individuals around the world have been affected by the increase of radioactive materials in the global ecosystem. Cancers, birth defects, genetic damage, lowered immunity to diseases: these are only some of the potential effects of nuclear testing, uranium mining, radioactive waste burial and all the phases of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy production.

The United States government has finally acknowledged the link between nuclear weapons production facilities and elevated levels of at least 22 kinds of cancers in workers. Compensation for those who have been adversely affected is the focus of current negotiations.

These negotiations are the result of an admission from Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, in January 2000, that the health of nuclear weapons workers may have suffered due to exposure to radiation. He stated that:

"This is the first time that the government is acknowledging that people got cancer from radiation exposure in the plants….In the past, the role of government was to take a hike, and I think that was wrong."

It is not only the worker population that has experienced the maligning effects of nuclear technology. Accidents at civilian nuclear power facilities have leaked cancerous and mutagenic isotopes into the environment for more than 50 years. Nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have spread radiation across Europe and North America. Due to the long-lived nature of the radioactive contaminants from these two occurrences, the effects continue to be felt. In the contaminated regions around Chernobyl, for example, there has been a sharp increase in thyroid cancer, severe mental retardation due to prenatal exposure, and genetic damage in human, animal and plant life.

The most recent nuclear accident in Japan at the Toki-mura uranium facility has raised the specter of radiation poisoning for urban populations. The unfortunate criticality event also highlighted a lax approach to health and safety practice, which, with recent indictments against British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) appears to be endemic in the international nuclear fraternity. BNFL is presently under review by the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate for falsifying safety checks of MOX fuel it cleared to ship to Japan. The falsification was revealed after the plutonium fuel arrived in Japan from the UK, a sea going journey of approximately 20,000 miles. It later emerged that BNFL had also falsified safety checks for fuel elements sent to Germany and Switzerland over the last three years.

It is now clear that: health problems can be linked to radiation exposure; nuclear accidents have prolonged effects on human health and ecological integrity; and health and safety regulations within nuclear facilities across the globe are not being applied with the rigor that is an essential requirement for long-lived radioactive materials.

Facts and Figures

• Over the past 60 years, the standards set for occupational exposure has dropped from 30 rems per year in 1934 to 5 rems per year in 1987. These changes in the exposure limits were dramatically altered, as the health effects of radiation became further understood.

• Single radiation doses of over about 1 gray can cause radiation sickness. Acute effects include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, sometimes accompanied by malaise, fever, and hemorrhage. The victim may die in a few hours, days or weeks. Other acute effects can include sterility and radiation burns, depending on the absorbed dose and the rate of the exposure.

• For radiation doses less than about 1 sievert, stochastic, or random, effects are of the greatest concern. Cancer and inheritable genetic damage may appear many years or decades after exposure. Estimates of the magnitude of low-dose radiation effects have tended to rise over the years, but remain the subject of controversy. That Chernobyl is giving rise to a new range of deformations and that cancer in the United States is becoming an epidemic, provides new opportunities to assess the health risks of routine exposure from leaks in commercial power plants, nuclear weapons production facilities, uranium mines and test sites.

• The largest source of radioactive waste threatening human health and genomes is the tailings resulting from uranium mining. These mines are often in indigenous communities with lower than adequate public health monitoring and medical facilities.

• Approximately 2,051 nuclear weapons were detonated in the pursuit of 'security' between 1945 - 1995, an average of one every 9 days during a 50 year period. The 423 above ground tests are estimated to have put 11-13 million curies of strontium-90, 17-21 million curies of cesium-137, 10 million curies of carbon-14 and 225,000 curies of plutonium into the environment.

• The US National Cancer Institute released a report in 1997 revealing that iodine-131 from nuclear testing was found in every single county of the United States.

• Temporary sterility in men can occur with a single absorbed dose, of about 0.15 grays, to the testis. In children, the threshold for congenital (existing at or dating from birth) malformation and other developmental abnormalities has been estimated to be 0.25 grays of radiation exposure up to 28 days of gestation.

• The dose at which half the exposed population would die in 60 days without medical treatment is called the LD50 dose (LD for lethal dose, and 50 for 50 percent). It is about 4 seiverts for adults.

Federation of American Scientists

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

NoNukes.org

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

References Cited/Further Reading

Makhijani, Arjun, Howard Hu, Katherine Yih, editors. Nuclear Wastelands: a Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects (written in association with the Special Commission of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.

Permanent People’s Tribunal International Medical Commission on Chernobyl. Chernobyl: Environmental, Health and Human Rights Implications. Vienna, Austria, 12-15 April 1996.

Shapiro, Jacob (editor). Radiation Protection: A Guide for Scientists and Physicians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Wald, Matthew L. ‘US Acknowledges Radiation Killed Weapons Workers’. New York Times. 29 January 2000.

Welsome, Eileen. The Plutonium Files New York: Dial Press, 1999.

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