OCR Text |
Show Sunday. September 5. 2004 DAILY HEIALD AC Death rides tho V7ind Test plume trajectories from The National Cancer Institute estimated the trajectories ofalkutplum including these four. Vifinds higher in the atrrwiphert at timet took pamrf the ctou nortnn Jury HVJIO Wffl SWMI April 14, MSs abovt twVi Ma levef Caneberry ScStOOQAT Dec a 1968 Palanquin 1965 6, 1962 Mk above sm Matt above sea 1mm 1 2 2.7 35 1 2 Health at the University of Utah, had Nuclear taken a group of students to Big Cot- tonwood Canyon, southeast of Salt Lake City, to measure background of various rock formations. They saw a dust cloud approaching not unusual during a Utah summer. They soon learned it was no ordinary cloud, however, when their Geiger counters shot up to 100 times the background radiation readings. The Sedan shot was not the first nor worst time nuclear weapons testing in Nevada had rained fallout on Utah and the rest of the country. Continued from Al testing started. He was diagnosed with lymphoma, linked to fallout, while still in high school His cancer has been in remission since then and he now lives in Malad, Idaho. No one has proposed building any new nuclear weapons yet. But President Bush has asked for nearly $500 million over the next five years for weapons research and improvements at the Test Site that would allow test' ing to resume within 18 months. It now takes 36 months to hire and train workers, to drill test holes and prepare test monitoring equipment. New weapons Administration officials also back research into new weapons. The best way to protect the country against future despots like ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would be to build a nuclear warhead that could penetrate a few feet of rock before exploding, says Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. He backs the development of a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" that would destroy enemy chemical and biological weapons caches, production facilities, or command and communications centers hidden underground, beyond the reach of conventional weapons. Such an weapon is among the research projects approved by Congress earlier this year. But it would not involve any new nuclear warheads, Brooks said. In an interview with the Dairy Herald, Brooks asserted that the Bush administration has no plans to resume nuclear weapons tests in the next few years. That doesn't mean testing won't resume, however. The administration still may test nuclear weapons should it become necessary to ensure the viability of the nuclear weapons stockpile or to test a new design, Brooks , said. Legislation in 1993 had outlawed any research that would lead to nuclear bombs with a yield of 5 kilotons or less. The bomb that demolished Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 was about 13 kilotons. The prohibition, seen by the administration as an impediment to research into "advanced nuclear weapons concepts," was repealed by Congress last year. This year, Congress approved funding for research that would have fallen under the prohibition. Projects could include adapting existing nuclear warheads to new uses; developing weapons with the ability to destroy an enemy's biological weapons without spreading them; and improved warhead designs that would eliminate the need for testing. d Critics suggest that weapons may be just as likely to spread the chemical or biological agent they are designed to destroy in addition to the radioactive fallout from the bomb itself . But the country already has had d weapons, since the 1950s and has no plans to build more new ones, Brooks said. His agency has no specific plans for any such weapons, but he wants the weapons labs to have the freedom to research possible new uses and new weapons and ways to make weapons more secure. But to Truman, the research is the first step on the path to testing. "If they're going to go after the Penetrator, sooner or later they're going to have to test it to see if it punches through and blows," Truman earth-penetrati- low-yiel- low-yiel- tkh dot () equals one day. "3.5 "mini-nukes- ," Radiation doses Darlene Phillips watched in awe as the nuclear genie was uncorked while i she was working in Southern Utah as a teenager in the 1950s. "I am a survivor of the Cold War," the Bountiful resident said recently at a Downwinders gathering in Salt Lake City. On Jan. 27, 1951, the government started testing bombs in the air above VI V T the Nevada Test Site. Over the next 10 years, about 100 tests were conducted at the site. Together they released more than 12 billion curies of radioactivity. A curie is a measure of radioactivity. A single curie can be lethaL Winds carried the radioactive fallout over Nevada, Utah and across the country. In the 1950s and 1960s, Eastman Kodak noticed radioactivity was -- U.S. Department of Energy fogging film at its production facility in Rochester, N.Y. The Sedan test on Jury 6, 1962, at the Nevada Test Site was part of the Plowshare program, looking for peaceful uses n Then one day in 1959, as Phillips device displaced 12 million tons of desert soil, creating a crater, below, that is for nuclear weapons. This was brushing her hair it fell out in big 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet in diameter. clumps. Radiation exposure had destroyed her immune system, she later learned. Today she survives with regular medication and now has greatgrandchildren. "They have never had to drink radioactive milk," she said. She wants to make sure they never do. Fallout settles as dust, and falls with rain or snow. Radioactive iodine is concentrated in the milk of cows that graze in areas contaminated by fallout. People who drink the milk absorb ifSiiil the iodine, which is taken up by the thyroid gland, where it can cause cancer. Children who drink a lot of milk are especially vulnerable to radiation. Like other Downwinders, Phillips is skeptical of government assurances that resumed underground weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site would be ,. safe. .., The government knew as early as 1953 that radiation in fallout might dehuman immune systems, as it stroy 4 '1 did in Phillips. But that warning was not released to the public at the time. Phillips drank powdered milk, thinking it was safer than fresh milk. Though radioactive iodine in the milk had mostly dissipated, the milk also contained the radioactive elements and stronrhim-9- 0 from the said. "You can't build 'em if you don't sive force, of the bomb. fallout, which both stay radioactive Dairy Herald. Brooks said he could not discuss the As an example of what 100 kilotons for many years. Cesium typically is test 'em." can do, on Jury 6, 1962, a test named taken up by soft tissue in the body. Besides, skeptics ask, what military yield of the warheads. n Strontium is taken up like calchir i Some experts say the B61 can be Sedan (pictured above) blew 12 leader would trust a weapon that had and deposited in bones and teeth. Both tons of dirt into the atmosphere, never been field tested? configured for yields that vary from have been linked to various cancers, Brooks argues that the Robust Penless than 1 kiloton to more than 340 leaving a crater 320 feet deep and L280 feet in diameter. The etrator would adapt existing B61 or kilotons. The B83 can vary from 20 including leukemia and breast cancer. B83 nuclear warheads, staples of the device was buried under 635 feet of kilotons to 12 megatons. Phillips has been a patient with the National Cancer Institute and National desert soil at the Nevada Test Site A kiloton is the explosive equivanuclear stockpile, and thus would not far deeper than the Robust Penetrator Institute of Health as part of a study require testing. No one in the adminis- lent of 1,000 tons of TNT; a megaton since 1973, she said. is 1 million tons. could reach. tration would propose using such a Sedan was a cratering test, part of weapon, he said. It would be meant as a deterrent, a way to threaten deeply a program to explore practical uses of Iodine study Radioactive clouds buried enemy assets, he said. nuclear explosions, such as excavatThe most likely size for the Robust Such a weapon would penetrate Atmospheric tests continued at the ing a second Panama CanaL The reNevada Test Site until October 1958, Penetrator would be 100 or more kilodeeply before exploding to destroy sulting cloud dropped radioactive fallwhen the United States joined Russia tons, said Daryl Kimball executive di- out on Salt Lake and Utah counties, targets 20 or 30 feet below the ' in voluntary moratoria on testing. The rector of the nonprofit Washington, and was tracked across the country ground. But it would also release a d cloud of radioactive debris and send ' ban was short lived. Testing resumed Arms Control Association. to the East Coast. But 20 to 30 feet of rock would not in Sept. 1, 1961, in Russia, and on Sept. radioactive fallout high into the atBy coincidence, the day after the contain a 100 kiloton bomb, Kimball test, Robert C Pendleton, director of mosphere. How high and how much Se NUCLEAR, A7 said in a recent interview with the would depend on the yield, or explo the Department of Radiological .. mil-lio- 100-kilot- , D.C-base- A history of nuclear testing July 16, 1945. The Unit- ed States conducts the world's first nuclear exo plosion test at Test Range in New Mexico. 1954. Prime Minister Jawaharial Nehru first proposes a test-ba- n Oct 31, 1958. The Geneva Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons Tests weapons. Aug. 9, 1945. The United States drops a sec- nUAssociated Press A movia theater in Hiroshima after the 1945 blast. Feb. 13, 1960. France performs Its first nuclear explosion test In in Kazakhstan. Great Britain explodes a nuclear device at the Monte Bello Islands off Australia. Aug. 6, 1945. The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, revealing the amazing destructive capacity of nuclear ond atomic bomb on toriums. site Oct 3, 1952. Alam-agord- K test at its Semipalatinsk Na- opens between the United States, Soviet Union gasaki. Aug. 29, 1949. The Soviet Union conducts Its first nuclear explosion and Great Britain. All three nations declare temporary testing mora t : the Sahara Desert Sept 2, 1961. The viet Union resumes Sonu- clear weapons testing. treaty negotiations failed after the three nuclear powers . could not agree upon Test-ba- n verification provisions regarding the nature and Infrequency of on-site spections. Sept 15, 1961. The United States resumes underground testing, Oct, 1648, 1962. The , , . Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of nuclear destruction and prompts a renewed Interest in test ban negotiations. Aug. 5, 1963. The United States, Soviet Union arid Great Britain sign the Umited Test Ban Treaty prohibiting nuclear explosions in the . hibiting states from building or acquiring nuclear weapons and obligating nuclear powers to work on arms control and dis- sea, atmosphere and outer space. October 16, 1964. China conducts Its first poses. nuclear explosion test July 1,1968. The Nu. clear Treaty Is signed, pro non-nucle- armament May 18, 1974. India conducts a nuclear explosion test in the Desert, claiming it was for peaceful pur- ' ' July 3, 1974. The Threshold Test Ban Treaty Is signed, prohibiting underground nu-- . clear weapons tests with yields greater than 150 kilotons. a |