Effects of Nuclear Weapons Testing
Following the end of the second world war, the US began a series of tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. As well as finding out more about the weapons themselves, the tests also looked at things like the effects on personnel and equipment and whether troops could continue to fight after a nuclear bomb had been used. Other countries were soon pushing to join the nuclear club as the Soviet Union (1949 in Kazakhstan), Britain (1952 in Australia), France (1960 in the Algerian desert) and China (1964 in Lop Nor) carried out their first nuclear weapons test. Each country carried out a series of tests, most of which took place out in the open although a few were conducted underground.
Eventually all US testing was moved to the Nevada desert. After increased protests from the Australian public, British testing was moved to Christmas Island in the Pacific until 1962 when they also transferred to the Nevada site. Following the independence of Algeria in 1962, France established test sites at Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls in the Pacific Ocean.
In 1950 the US began to develop a hydrogen bomb under the leadership of Edward Teller. The world’s first test of a hydrogen bomb took place in 1952 at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It was 700 times more powerful than the Nagasaki blast.
There was widespread opposition to ‘atmospheric’ testing. Concern was raised about radioactive clouds being blown round the world as changes in wind direction had led to radioactive material being blown over inhabited areas and some people had been covered by nuclear fallout. There was also the problem of the test sites themselves as they became increasingly radioactive. In the Pacific in particular, the worry was about how much radiation had got into the food chain.
So, in 1963, the US, Soviet Union and Britain signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty. This treaty only allowed underground nuclear testing and banned testing out in the open. However, France and China refused to sign and held out until 1974 and 1980 respectively.
It is thought that 1968 was the year that Israel began production of nuclear weapons.
India carried out its first nuclear test in 1974 and later in the 1970s South Africa was suspected of developing a nuclear programme. There was a nuclear explosion in 1979 in the South Indian Ocean that was thought to have been conducted by Israel with the assistance of South Africa.
China began testing again at Lop Nor in 1993 and conducted its last test in July 1996. France carried out a series of tests at Mururoa in 1995 that caused widespread outrage.
In September 1996 the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was finally signed.
Two countries who did not sign the CTBT because they felt it did not go far enough to disarmament, carried out tests in 1998. First, 1998, India began a series of nuclear tests at Pokharan in the Rajasthan desert. Then Pakistan responded with tests of its own at Chagai in Baluchistan.
Effects of nuclear testing on troops
Most of the troops ordered to take part in the testing programme were not equipped with any specialised protective clothing. They were simply ordered to turn their backs or cover their eyes to avoid being blinded by the flash of the explosion. One former soldier remembers having his hands over his eyes but the flash was so bright that it acted like an x-ray and he could see all the bones in his hands.
Old warships were anchored in the test zone. Immediately after the explosions, planes flew through the dust clouds to take samples. Troops were positioned as close as was thought safe to the site. Decontamination techniques, often as crude as scrubbing down decks, were tried out.
Many military personnel were exposed to several tests – at one stage the British and Americans were testing every three or four days.
Exposure to radioactivity frequently leads to various forms of cancer, including leukaemia. The troops involved have suffered much higher cancer rates than normal. However since cancer may take years to develop, it is difficult to prove that a particular case is linked to a particular cause.
Test veterans in several countries including Britain have been fighting for years to get compensation but the British government, anxious to avoid having to pay large sums of money, has always refused to make army medical records available. Without the records it is impossible for anyone to prove in court that they were exposed to radiation.
In 1997 it was announced that many of the records were actually to be destroyed. However after protests they were saved and transferred for safe keeping and research to the Universities of Glasgow and Dundee. Having failed to win any compensation through the British courts, the test veterans took their case to the European Court of Human Rights but in June 1998 this ruled against them, again largely on the grounds that since they had not been issued with radiation badges, individually they could not prove their degree of exposure.
Other countries, including the United States and New Zealand have now accepted liability and begun to pay compensation to their own veterans.
Effects of nuclear testing on animals
Even closer were the animals. Several thousand rats, pigs, goats and monkeys were actually on board the target ships or tethered on shore. In later experiments pigs were dressed in clothing to measure the effects of burns on protected and unprotected skin and monkeys were crammed into tubes and placed around the site. In addition there have been extensive laboratory tests on animals, particularly to gather information on the effects of radiation. Most of these experiments are kept secret but there are reports, for instance, of hundreds of dead beagles being delivered for burial at a radioactive waste dump in the US. British experiments have been conducted at Porton Down near Salisbury.
Apart from deliberate experiments, there have been many other animal casualties. The survivors of the Hiroshima bomb often describe the number of horses they saw burning in the devastated streets.
A journalist observing one of the Bikini tests, described how their ship was escorted into the lagoon by dolphins. When they left after being shown the preparations, the dolphins stayed behind. That test was underwater. The explosion blew a column of boiling water half a mile across, 6,000 feet into the air before it dissolved into a mushroom cloud of gas and spray. The dolphins would have been vaporised. Seabirds were seen with their wings on fire. They were blinded and hideously contorted.
Effects of nuclear testing on the environment
French testing had so damaged Moruroa Atoll that it was crumbling away and radioactive coral was polluting the sea. Although the local islanders had been moved away, they still caught and ate fish from the area. There are repeated reports of severe birth defects but as the French have stopped collecting medical statistics, it has been difficult to prove anything conclusively.
Even underground tests do environmental damage. Every test creates a highly radioactive underground cavern that is in effect a large nuclear waste dump and impossible to monitor effectively. Radioactive gas and dust escapes into the air.
The rights of local peoples near the testing sites have been consistently ignored. The US Nevada site is on tribal land sacred to the Western Shoshone. There is an organisation in the US, Downwinders, that works to get official acknowledgement of the widespread cases of cancer they say came from the Nevada tests. The fallout from the tests covered large areas of states such as Nevada and Utah and it could well be the case that tens of thousands of people contracted thyroid cancer as a result. Islanders close to the French and US Pacific sites were simply deported.
