Past Nuclear Tests May Damage Marine Life Today
Chive Mynde
Researchers worry that radiation from nuclear test decades ago may be
damaging marine life today
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Monday, December 17, 2001
A 30-year-old legacy from the Cold War has surfaced on a remote
Alaskan island, where scientists and Aleutian natives are concerned
that radiation from the largest nuclear weapons blast ever conducted
in America could now be leaking into the marine environment.
At precisely 11 a.m. on Nov. 6, 1971, weapons specialists from the
Atomic Energy Commission exploded a 5-megaton bomb -- a prototype for
a ballistic missile warhead -- inside a mile-deep shaft drilled
beneath Amchitka Island only 87 miles from Petropavlovsk, Russia's
Siberian naval base.
The thermonuclear blast was almost 400 times more powerful than the
weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. Code-named Cannikin, the weapon
shattered the shaft's walls and blasted a huge cavern lined with
glasslike molten rock. It triggered a rockfall of jagged boulders from
a nearby cliff, created a mile- wide crater atop ground zero that
filled with water now known as Cannikin Lake,
uplifted a mile of the nearby ground by 20 feet, and vented
groundwater through cracks and old seismic faults throughout the site.
The blast was felt throughout Alaska, and it registered as a
magnitude-7 earthquake recorded by seismographs around the world.
At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last week,
John C. Eichelberger of the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute
and his colleagues reported evidence that tectonic forces moving deep
beneath the seabed have been splitting Amchitka apart and creating
fresh underground fissures in the island's rocky coast.
They voiced their growing concern that for 22 years neither the Energy
Department nor any other government agency has monitored Amchitka's
foggy rockbound coast or its nearby waters to learn whether
radioactive elements might be leaking from the island into the marine
environment.
Thirty years ago, the phenomenon known as plate tectonics was
virtually unknown, so scientists did not realize that a vast slab of
the Earth's crust called the Pacific plate has been diving ponderously
down beneath North America's continental plate for millions upon
millions of years, Eichelberger said.
DOWNWARD TO WESTWARD
Recent geophysical evidence shows that along the Aleutian island chain
where Amchitka lies, the downward motion -- called subduction -- has
shifted more into a westward-sliding motion of the Pacific Plate that
has been tearing the chain apart at a rate of about 2 centimeters --
more than three-quarters of an inch -- a year.
As a result, Eichelberger said at the geophysics meeting, the Amchitka
site "was -- unknowingly at the time -- like having a nuclear test
site right next to the San Andreas fault."
Because the island itself may be splitting in the inexorable grip of
the tectonic forces, it is quite possible that new seismic faults and
new fissures in Amchitka's rocks have opened up around the Cannikin
blast site, allowing hazardous radioactive elements to escape into the
sea around the island, Eichelberger said.
Five years ago, Greenpeace, the environmental activist organization,
tested the waters around the island and said its experts had found
dangerous plutonium there, as well as americium, a nuclear fission
byproduct.
But they found no trace of tritium, the radioactive form of hydrogen,
which is the telltale sign of a hydrogen bomb blast's residue, and
Alaskan environmental watchdogs as well as the Department of Energy
determined that the radioactive pollution came from fallout from
Chinese nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere.
RELYING ON COMPUTER MODELS
Energy Department experts have created computer models of the Cannikin
blast's aftermath and have concluded that radioactive elements from
the explosion are effectively contained within the cavity created by
the test.
But the Departments of Energy and Defense have never monitored the
waters offshore from Amchitka, nor have they tested coastal rocks,
kelp beds or marine animals for radiation.
"Some computer models suggest that the Cannikin cavity could in fact
leak," Eichelberger said in an interview. "So the questions remain:
First, is there a significant risk, and second, if there is, what
should we do about it?"
After his group's presentation of the Amchitka issue, Eichelberger
held an informal evening meeting of experts to discuss the possibility
of an independent investigation. The session included several
specialists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
David Smith, a Livermore nuclear chemist who has followed up on the
weapons test effects at the Nevada test site, agreed that the best
science possible is essential to ascertain the status of Amchitka
today.
"Over the best 30 years," Eichelberger said, "the world of geophysics
has been literally turned upside down. Our knowledge of plate
tectonics has become solid, and our measurement techniques have vastly
improved. This is not a call to arms. It is a call to thinking."
ON-SITE STUDIES DEMANDED
Both the state of Alaska and its native organizations remain strongly
concerned about the Defense Department's failure to conduct an on-site
investigation of the radiation issue in Amchitka's marine environment,
according to Douglas H. Dasher, a specialist on radiation contaminants
for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, who attended
the geophysics meeting.
"The DOE likes to make computer models, but what's really happening
out there inside the fissures and faults on the island no one knows,"
Dasher said in an interview.
Native members of the Aleutian/Pribiloff Islands Association rely on
the marine life of the islands for their living, and have long called
for on-site studies of the radiation issue at Amchitka.
According the Dasher, commercial fishermen -- including Americans,
Japanese and Russians -- work the waters of the Aleutian island chain.
And the native peoples regularly use "subsistance foods" -- the meat
of stellar sea lions, harbor seals and ptarmigan, as well as fish --
for a diet much healthier than the fast-food chains that are
encroaching on their traditional lifestyle.
"The DOE's models and risk assessments of the effects of Cannikin and
the other two nuclear tests of 30 years ago say there's essentially no
risk of radiation contamination," Dasher said. "But that doesn't
provide much confidence for the native populations up there, and like
them, we say, 'How do you really know?' We need actual hard facts, not
just smoke and mirrors."
UNEARTHING A NUCLEAR LEGACY
The most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested in the United States -- a
5- megaton warhead code-named Cannikin -- exploded underground on the
Alaskan island of Amchitka in 1971. Scientists have raised concern
that tectonic forces may have opened fissures that could allow
radioactivity to leak into the marine environment.
-- Tectonic forces
Huge slabs of the earth's crust drift and grind against each other,
causing the Pacific plate to dive beneath Alaska and the Aleutian
islands. But as the arrows show, the plate's grinding movement is
shifting toward the west and may be causing fresh fractures in the
former weapons test site on Amchitka.
-- Bomb test site
This diagram shows the cavity created by the thermonuclear explsion a
mile underground with the force of a large earthquake. It melted rocks
into glass, filled the shaft with rubble, and the crater that formed
above the shaft filled with water to become Cannikin Lake.
E-mail David Perlman at dper...@sfchronicle.com.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 4
-
Science is not belief, but the will to find out.
Roger Coppock
expert has divined the truth for us!
backwater wrote:
>
> chyve...@yahoo.com (Chive Mynde) wrote:
>
> >BLAST FROM THE PAST
> >Researchers worry that radiation from nuclear test decades ago may be
> >damaging marine life today ...
>
> I'm sure there will be continuing damage ... but
> the ocean is BIG and the hostile areas are -small-
> so there's no reason to get bent out of shape.
> Given the volcanism around the pacific rim, fish
> get roasted and ecosystems get disrupted all of
> the time anyway. Radiation or magma & toxic
> chemicals, the fish don't know the difference.
--
A man didn't understand how televisions work, and was convinced that
there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at
high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency
modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and
receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines
moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the
engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the
argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now
understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few
little men in there, aren't there?"
- Douglas Adams, as retold by Richard Dawkins in "Lament for Douglas"
Anonymous
Radiation is easily absorbed by the ocean.
Furthermore any radioactive by-products will
be diluted substantially by ocean currents
which will simply diffuse radioactive material
throughout the world's oceans.
The events of September 11, 2001 demonstrate that
nuclear weapons testing must continue and efforts
to design higher yield nuclear weapons must not be
halted so that future nuclear retaliatory strikes
may be used to combat terrorist nations.
The next terrorist act may be orders of magnitude
more horrific than the WTC disaster. The United
States must be prepared for the worst and act
accordingly with a massive nuclear retaliatory strike.
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Ian St. John
news:9q2qpd$2747$1...@news.tht.net..
It takes years of higher education and decades of field work to understand
the issues of science and technology. It is not to be picked up at the
supermarket tabloid rack or with a few well chosen sound bites. Those who
understand the issues do so based on reason and experience. Others claim
knowledge but show only irrational and stupid arguments based on politics or
an ignorance of higher learning. They can often be discerned as such because
they base their 'knowledge' of the writings of even greater fools such as
Daly, who use political motives to attack real science.
Those who fall into this category are listed here as a warning to new
subscribers to dig deeper, and filter out the nonsense of the fools.
I like Robert Grumbines term "_permanently uninformed_ criticism"
"James" <jra...@dcr.net>
"dwhite1" <dwh...@erols.com>
"jubal" (har...@utopia.com)
"quasar" <rig...@outer.space>
"hanson" <han...@quick.net>
"Anonymous" <anon...@anonymous.anonymous>
"Anonymous" <anon...@anonymous.anonymous> wrote in message
news:3C2F23FE...@optonline.net...
> There is no need for concern.
Obviously false.
>
> Radiation is easily absorbed by the ocean.
Obviously false.
>
> Furthermore any radioactive by-products will
> be diluted substantially by ocean currents
> which will simply diffuse radioactive material
> throughout the world's oceans.
Leading to a larger area of contamination, and spreading the effects
globally.
>
> The events of September 11, 2001 demonstrate that
> nuclear weapons testing must continue and efforts
> to design higher yield nuclear weapons must not be
> halted so that future nuclear retaliatory strikes
> may be used to combat terrorist nations.
What good is a nuclear weapon against a suicide bomber????
>
> The next terrorist act may be orders of magnitude
> more horrific than the WTC disaster. The United
> States must be prepared for the worst and act
> accordingly with a massive nuclear retaliatory strike.
Hmmm.... I think I have a solution to the most damaging idiocy. If Anonymous
will just give us his exact latitude and longitude....