Nuclear riddles radiate
By: Robert Howk
The conclusion of Robert Howk’s exploration of Alaska’s nuclear legacy.
Pentagon officials in the past have acknowledged the presence of nuclear weapons in the 49th state, without disclosing details. But as one may expect, in the interest of national security, top military brass in Alaska these days don’t say much.
“To answer your question, I can tell you categorically we neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons here,” Major James Law, director of public relations with the U.S. Air Force at Elmendorf AFB said.
Between 1965 and 1971 it was no secret where to find one.
During that period, the Pentagon and the AEC conducted three nuclear tests on far-flung Amchitka Island, near the tip of the Aleutian Chain, about 1,400 miles southwest of Anchorage and about 90 miles from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
The tests began with the “Long Shot” 80-kiloton underground device in 1965, supervised by the Pentagon. Four years later the one-megaton “Milrow” bomb, buried approximately 4,000 feet into the island, was detonated by the AEC as a “calibration test” to determine if the site was suitable for a larger explosion.
In 1971 the government announced it was gearing up for the largest underground nuclear test ever conducted by the United States: The five-megaton, 300 foot long “Cannikin” bomb, with an estimated strength of 385 Hiroshima explosions. The news touched off international opposition, drawing Canadian and American environmental activists to the site. It became the unofficial birthplace of the Greenpeace organization.
Opponents filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the test, claiming it violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the National Environmental Policy Act. On November 6, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 4 to 3 decision declining to cancel the test. Later that day, “Project Cannikin” was detonated a mile beneath Cannikin Lake, generating a shock equivalent to a 7.0 earthquake that caused the surrounding ground to rise, then fall about 20 feet.
The blast created a mile-wide, 40-foot deep crater as the ground settled. It took another three decades before worker compensation claims from radiation exposure at the site began to settle.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced May 31 this year that the U.S. Department of Labor had finished and published the final regulations for the newest nuclear worker compensation program.
“This clears the way for the agency to begin paying compensation to workers injured by radiation during work on nuclear energy programs, such as three Amchitka Island nuclear bomb tests in Alaska decades ago,” the Senator’s office said in a press release.
Murkowski said the Labor Department hopes to start mailing checks to workers this year.
“It has been a really long road for so many workers affected by radiation. Finally there is real movement toward getting workers the help they need and certainly deserve after laboring on government nuclear projects,” Murkowski said.
“In Alaska, the compensation plan is open to about 2,000 workers who helped with site preparation for the Amchitka nuclear weapons tests from 1965 to 1971,” the press release stated.
“So far, 614 claims have been received, of which 296 have been approved and 201 denied. A total of 267 claims have been awarded, totaling $28.84 million. With the release of the new regulations other claims can be processed more quickly and some of the claimants will now be able to actually receive their payments.”
Meanwhile, Amchitka Island remains a hot spot.
Groundwater samples taken in 1993 near the test sites by researchers for the Environmental Protection Agency showed high levels of radioactive tritium, and more recent tests conducted by a non-profit environmental advocacy group revealed similar results.
“We went out there in 1996, and again in 1998,” said Pam Miller, Executive Director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics in a June 2005 interview with Alaska Humanity News.
“We have evidence and reports that show there is radioactive leakage from those sites,” she said. “Given the high level of volcanic activity in that region, and the prevalence of cracks and fissures, leakage [into the Bering Sea] is inevitable, and that’s a serious issue that is not being addressed by the Department of Energy.
“There are commercial fisheries offshore, the Aleut people use the area for subsistence and we really need to do something to ensure that those resources are protected,” Miller said.
As of press time for this issue of AHN, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy had not returned requests for interviews regarding the current status of Amchitka Island leakage. But it seems researchers with the University of Alaska Fairbanks may have the latest word.
A team of scientists, including Stephan Jewett, a professor at UAF’s Institute of Marine Science, and colleagues from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Pittsburgh, conducted extensive diving tests on sites off Amchitka in the summer of 2004, and found no evidence of radioactive leakage.
The group tested a wide variety of water samples and sea life specimens. “We had no readings above zero the whole time,” Jewett reported in an article published by UAF’s Geophysical Institute.
However, Jewett wrote: “Even if the current level of testing turns up nothing, Amchitka should be monitored on some level over the long term.”
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