How the USA gave up on protecting its citizens against nuclear attack, and settled for just elite shelters
How the U.S. Government Might Have Survived a Nuclear War, Yes, this is the real Deep State, National Interest,
THERE WERE 3 RADIATION FALLOUT RELEASES AT SANTA SUSANA NOT 1
History Channel – ROCKETDYNE
THEY OCCURRED IN 1959, 1964, 1969, Doug Carrol 19 Nov 18
“Until 2006, the site was operated by private corporations for federal agencies — chiefly NASA. The problems there began in 1959, when a nuclear reactor partially melted down, contaminating portions of the hilltop facility and spewing radioactive gases into the atmosphere. That incident wasn’t publicly disclosed until 1979. By then, more mishaps had followed, including reactor accidents in 1964 and 1969. The worst contamination is thought to be in a parcel known as Area IV, where the meltdown occurred”
20 years of the worst radioactive shit in the universe accumulated in simi valley, where the horrendous fire occured this past week. The place has not been cleaned up. The fires, that englufed Ventura county and Malibu. 3 nuclear meltdowns occured at Santa susana in a 10 year period. Multiple ignitions of shitty nuclear reactor engines, that just spewed radioactive shit into the valley, everytime they fired it off. The recent fires in ventura county, picked up that cesium 137, plutonium yada yada yada, and suspended it in the air all over so cal. Everyone there is breathing it.
I knew a Doctor raised south of Santa Susana. His one and only child, was born deaf and blind with deformities. His three siblings died of cancer, at relatively young ages.
Frank Zappa was from lancaster, and went to High School close to there. His father was affiliated with government research close to santa susana. FRANK may not have been in Lancaster when the first meltdown occured, but there was nuclear research there in the early 50s.
Watch for a massive uptick in the incidence of Reactive airway disease, intractable respiratory infections in children this winter. Watch for a large spike cancer, in the next few years in socal.
Pediatric Cancers Near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory
Frank Zappa died of the most hideous, fast growing metastatic-prostate cancer possible. That was at age 53. Continue reading
Nuclear meltdown at Santa Susana Lab and the government cover-up
L.A.’s Secret Meltdown; Simi Valley, CA(1959)Largest Nuclear Incident in U.S. history.
LA’s Nuclear Secret: Part 1 link https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/LA-Nuclear-Secret-327896591.html– Sep 22, 2015 Tucked away in the hills above the San Fernando and Simi valleys was a 2,800-acre laboratory with a mission that was a mystery to the thousands of people who lived in its shadow, By Joel Grover and Matthew Glasser The U.S. government secretly allowed radiation from a damaged reactor to be released into air over the San Fernando and Simi valleys in the wake of a major nuclear meltdown in Southern California more than 50 years ago — fallout that nearby residents contend continues to cause serious health consequences and, in some cases, death. LA’s Nuclear Secret: Timelines, Documents, FAQ
Those are the findings of a yearlong NBC4 I-Team investigation into “Area Four,” which is part of the once-secret Santa Susana Field Lab. Founded in 1947 to test experimental nuclear reactors and rocket systems, the research facility was built in the hills above the two valleys. In 1959, Area Four was the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history. But the federal government still hasn’t told the public that radiation was released into the atmosphere as a result of the partial nuclear meltdown.
Now, whistleblowers interviewed on camera by NBC4 have recounted how during and after that accident they were ordered to release dangerous radioactive gases into the air above Los Angeles and Ventura counties, often under cover of night, and how their bosses swore them to secrecy.
In addition, the I-Team reviewed over 15,000 pages of studies and government documents, and interviewed other insiders, uncovering that for years starting in 1959, workers at Area Four were routinely instructed to release radioactive materials into the air above neighboring communities, through the exhaust stacks of nuclear reactors, open doors, and by burning radioactive waste.
How It Began
On July 13, 1959, the day of the meltdown, John Pace was working as a reactor operator for Atomics International at Area Four’s largest reactor, under the watch of the U.S. government’s Atomic Energy Commission.
“Nobody knows the truth of what actually happened,” Pace told the I-Team.
In fact, Pace said, the meltdown was verging on a major radioactive explosion.
“The radiation in that building got so high, it went clear off the scale,” he said.
To prevent a potentially devastating explosion, one that in hindsight the 76-year-old Pace believes would have been “just like Chernobyl,” he and other workers were instructed to open the exhaust stacks and release massive amounts of radiation into the sky.
“This was very dangerous radioactive material,” he said. “It went straight out into the atmosphere and went straight to Simi Valley, to Chatsworth, to Canoga Park.”
Pace and his co-workers frantically tried to repair the damaged reactor. Instead, he said they realized, their efforts were only generating more radioactive gas. So for weeks, often in the dark of night, Pace and other workers were ordered to open the large door in the reactor building and vent the radiation into the air.
“It was getting out towards the public,” he said. “The public would be bombarded by it.”
Pace said he and his co-workers knew they were venting dangerous radiation over populated areas, but they were following orders.
“They felt terrible that it had to be done,” he said. “They had to let it out over their own families.”
Area Four workers “were sworn to secrecy that they would not tell anyone what they had done,” Pace explained.
He remembered his boss getting right in his face and saying, “You will not say a word. Not one word.”
That was more than five decades ago, but radioactive contamination didn’t just vanish. It remains in the soil and water of Area Four and in some areas off-site, according to state and federal records obtained by the I-Team. And, evidence suggests that the fallout could be linked to illnesses, including cancer, among residents living nearby.
Arline Mathews lived with her family in Chatsworth, downwind of Area Four during some of the radiation releases. Her middle son, Bobby, was a champion runner on the Chatsworth High School track team for three years, running to the Santa Susana Field Lab and back to school every day. Bobby died of glioblastoma, a rare brain cancer often linked to radiation exposure. Mathews said there is no known family history of cancer and she blames the radiation from Area Four for her son’s illness.
“He was exposed to the chemical hazardous waste and radioactivity up there,” Mathews said. “There’s no getting over the loss of son.”
The Government Cover-up
Six weeks after the meltdown, the Atomic Energy Commission issued a press release saying that there had been a minor “fuel element failure” at Area Four’s largest reactor in July. But they said there had been “no release of radioactive materials” to the environment.
“What they had written in that report is not even close to what actually happened,” Pace said. “To see our government talk that way and lie about those things that happened, it was very disappointing.”
In 1979, NBC4 first broke the story that there was a partial meltdown at Area Four’s largest reactor, called the Sodium Reactor Experiment. But at the time, the U.S. government was still saying no radiation was released into the air over LA.
But during its current yearlong investigation, the I-Team found a NASA report that confirmed “the 1959 meltdown… led to a release of radioactive contaminants.”
For years, NASA used part of the site for rocket testing and research.
More Radioactive Releases
After filing a Freedom of Information request, the I-Team obtained more than 200 pages of government interviews with former Santa Susana workers. One of those workers, Dan Parks, was a health physicist at Area Four in the 1960s.
In the early 60s, Parks said, he often witnessed workers releasing radiation into the sky through the exhaust stacks of at least three of Area Four’s ten nuclear reactors.
“They would vent it to the atmosphere,” he said. “The release was done with the flick of a switch.”
Radioactive Waste Up in Smoke
Parks said he often witnessed workers releasing radioactive smoke into the air when they disposed of barrels of radioactive waste from Area Four’s 10 nuclear reactors.
“We were all workers,” he said. “Just taking orders.”
Workers would often take those barrels of waste to a pond called “the burn pits” and proceed to shoot the barrels with a high-powered rifle causing an explosion. The radioactive smoke would drift into the air over nearby suburbs and toward a summer camp for children.
“It was a volatile explosion, beyond belief,” Parks said.
Whatever direction the wind was blowing, the radioactive smoke would travel that way.
“If the wind was blowing to the Valley, it would blow it in the Valley,” he said.
Ralph Powell, who worked as a security officer at Area Four in the mid-60s, recalled being blanketed by that radioactive smoke.
“I saw clouds of smoke that was engulfing my friends, that are dying now,” Powell said.
Powell believes it wasn’t just his friends who suffered the consequences. He fears he may have exposed his own family to radiation, tracking it home on his clothes and car.
While Powell was working at Area Four, his son Michael was diagnosed with leukemia — a cancer linked to radiation exposure — and died at age 11.
“I suspect it caused the death of my son,” he said. “I’ve never gotten that out of my mind.”
Toxic Chemical Contamination
In addition to the radiation, dozens of toxic chemicals, including TCE and Perchlorate, were also released into the air and dumped on the soil and into ground and surface water from thousands of rocket tests conducted at the Santa Susana Field lab from the 1950s to 80s. The tests were conducted by NASA, and by Rocketdyne, a government aerospace contractor.
According to a federally funded study obtained by the I-Team, “emissions associated with rocket engine testing” could have been inhaled by residents of “West Hills, Bell Canyon, Dayton Canyon, Simi Valley, Canoga Park, Chatsworth, Woodland Hills, and Hidden Hills.”
Contamination Moves into Neighborhoods
Radiation released at Area Four continues to contaminate the soil and water of the Santa Susana Field Lab.
In 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed a $40 million soil test of the site and found 423 hot spots — places contaminated with high levels of man-made radiation.
Other studies and government documents obtained by the I-Team show that radiation has moved off-site, and has been found in the ground and water in suburbs to the south, northeast and northwest of the Field Lab.
“Radiation doesn’t know any boundaries,” said Dr. Robert Dodge, a national board member of the Nobel Prize-winning nonprofit Physicians For Social Responsibility, which studies the health effects of radiation.
Dodge, who has reviewed numerous government and academic studies about the contamination at Santa Susana, said he believes the contamination has spread far beyond the facility’s borders.
“If the wind is blowing and carrying radiation from Santa Susana, it doesn’t stop because there’s a fence,” he said.
One of the places radiation has been found, in a 1995 study overseen by the U.S. EPA, was the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley. The Institute is a nationally-known center of Jewish learning, and the home to Camp Alonim, a beloved summer sleepaway camp that has hosted some 30,000 children.
In December 1995, The Brandeis-Bardin Institute filed a federal lawsuit against the present and past owners of the Santa Susana Field Lab, alleging that toxic chemicals and radiation from the field lab “have subsequently seeped into and come to be located in the soil and groundwater” of Brandeis “is injurious to the environment” and “will cause great and irreparable injury.”
Brandeis settled the lawsuit in a confidential agreement in 1997.
A spokesman for the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Rabbi Jay Strear, told NBC4 that the groundwater and soil is “tested routinely,” and the results have shown the “the site is safe.”
The I-Team asked Brandeis-Bardin to provide NBC4 with those test results showing the site is safe and free of hazardous substances. The Institute refused, and in an email said “we are not in a position to devote the required staff time to respond to your more detailed inquiries, nor do we see the necessity for doing so.”
A government scientist who has studied the contamination at Santa Susana told the I-Team he thinks there’s a continued threat of radiation and toxic chemicals flowing from the field lab to places like Brandeis-Bardin, via groundwater and airborne dust.
Clusters of Cancer
Researchers inside and out of government have contended that the radiation and toxic chemicals from Santa Susana might have caused many cancer cases.
“The radiation that was released in 1959 and thereafter from Santa Susana is still a danger today,” Dr.Dodge said. “There is absolutely a link between radiation and cancer.”
The I-Team tracked down dozens of people diagnosed with cancer and other illnesses who grew up in the shadow of Santa Susana — in Canoga Park, West Hills, Chatsworth, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley. Many of them believe their cancers were caused by radiation and chemicals from the field lab.
Kathryn Seltzer Carlson, 56, and her sisters, Judy and Jennifer, all grew up in Canoga Park around the time of the nuclear meltdown and for years after, and all have battled cancer.
“I played in the water, I swam in the water, I drank the water” that ran off the Santa Susana Field Lab, said Carlson, who finished treatment for ovarian cancer earlier this year and is now undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma. “I’ve had, I don’t know how many cancers.”
Bonnie Klea, a former Santa Susana employee who has lived in West Hills since the 60s, also battled bladder cancer, which is frequently linked to radiation exposure.
“Every single house on my street had cancer,” Klea said.
A 2007 Centers for Disease Control study found that people living within two miles of the Santa Susana site had a 60 percent higher rate of some cancers.
“There’s some provocative evidence,” said Dr. Hal Morgenstern, an epidemiologist who oversaw the study. “It’s like circumstantial evidence, suggesting there’s a link” between the contamination from Santa Susana and the higher cancer rates.
Silence From the Government
For more than two months, the I-Team asked to speak with someone from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the federal agency that’s responsible for all nuclear testing, to ask why workers were ordered to release dangerous radiation over Los Angeles, why the DOE has never publicly admitted this happened, and what it plans to do to help get the site cleaned up.
The DOE emailed the I-Team, “We will not have anyone available for this segment.”
So the I-Team showed up at a public meeting this month about Santa Susana and asked the DOE’s project manager for the site, Jon Jones, to speak with us. He walked away and wouldn’t speak.
Will the Contamination Ever Be Cleaned Up?
Community residents, many stricken with cancer and other radiation-related illnesses, have been fighting for years to get the government and the private owners of the Santa Susana Field Lab to clean up the contamination that remains on the site.
But efforts in the state legislature and state agencies that oversee toxic sites have, so far, stalled.
But residents, with the support of some lawmakers, continue to fight for a full cleanup.
“People are continuing to breathe that (radiation) in and to die,” Chatsworth resident Arline Mathews said.
“See that this is done immediately, before more lives are lost.”
In 1966 USA lost a hydrogen nuclear bomb over Spain – environmental and health repercussions continue
When America lost a nuclear bomb, Fosters.com, By D. Allan Kerr news@seacoastonline.com 11 Nov 18, In January 1966, an American B-52 bomber collided mid-air with a refueling tanker off the coast of Spain. The resulting fiery crash claimed the lives of seven crew members.
While the loss of life was devastating, there was potential for even greater catastrophe – the B-52 was carrying four fully-loaded hydrogen bombs.
Three of the bombs were located within 24 hours, in the vicinity of a Spanish fishing village called Palomares. The fourth was nowhere to be found.
With the Cold War mired in a deep chill, the United States dispatched an entire Navy armada to try to locate the missing bomb, which was believed to have gone into the Atlantic Ocean. Among those involved in the search was a 23-year-old Navy officer named Donald Craig.
Craig was an ensign at the time, having graduated the previous year from Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island. He was serving aboard his first vessel, the minesweeper USS Sagacity (MSO 469).
As it happened, Sagacity was near Barcelona, Spain, on a Mediterranean cruise when the tragedy occurred. The minesweeper was dispatched to the scene and over the next several weeks took part in the massive search for the missing nuke.
Craig is now 76 years old, retired, and a longtime resident of Kittery Point, Maine. He still recalls the hunt for the missing nuclear bomb, and the race to get to it before the Soviet Union.
He also remains frustrated on behalf of fellow veterans who say they are dealing with adverse health effects from radiation exposure during the incident – with no assistance from the government that sent them there.
“We knew nothing,” Craig said recently of the possible aftereffects. “We were just out there doing our job.”
A disaster begins
It should have been a routine operation…………
At one point the Navy lost the bomb again in the process of bringing it to the surface, and it sank even deeper into the ravine. Eventually, the bomb and an unmanned vehicle, which had become entangled in its parachute lines, were hauled onto the deck of the submarine rescue ship USS Petrel nearly three months after the initial tragedy.
But then the United States government had to deal with a whole separate controversy – the environmental repercussions of an unleashed hydrogen bomb.
Plutonium blowing in the wind
Members of the U.S. Air Force and residents of Palomares were all exposed to radioactivity from the two bombs that had broken apart on land. Craig recalls winds of about 30 knots at the time.
“Plutonium was blowing in the wind, it was all over the place there,” he said. “They (Air Force personnel) were sitting on the edge of the crater eating their lunches.”
An area of about one square mile was contaminated, including the village’s tomato crop. American servicemen removed this soil and brought it back to South Carolina for disposal.
But in a rather bizarre attempt to show there was no danger, the U.S. government fed the contaminated tomatoes to our troops for “breakfast, lunch and dinner,” according to a June 2016 New York Times article. The U.S. ambassador to Spain and the Spanish minister of tourism swam at a nearby beach in front of a crowd of reporters to prove the waters were safe.
“If this is radioactivity, I love it!” Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke told the media.
Somehow, no civilians on the ground were seriously harmed by falling debris from the aircraft collision. America pledged to the Spanish government the site would be cleared of contamination.
“The main objective here is to leave Spain as we found it,” Duke told LIFE magazine back in 1966.
But as recently as 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry and Spain’s foreign minister agreed to negotiate a binding agreement to resume cleanup efforts and further removal of contaminated soil from the site. While no substantive findings have verified serious health issues among the villagers, studies of wildlife such as snails have turned up high radioactive levels.
Craig, however, is particularly outraged by the treatment of Air Force veterans who took part in cleanup efforts at Palomares and now say they are suffering ill health effects as a result. The 2016 Times article featured several former servicemen now suffering from cancer and other ailments.
The Air Force has long insisted there were no serious adverse effects from the incident, so these conditions are not covered under Veterans Administration benefits. An estimated 1,600 veterans took part in the cleanup.
“That shouldn’t happen. They should absolutely be taken care of,” Craig said. ”(The government) did not look after their safety, and there are a lot of people suffering for it now.”
Last year, a number of veterans filed a lawsuit in Connecticut over disability benefits they were denied because the Pentagon refused to release records and reports related to the incident………….
D. Allan Kerr is the author of “Silent Strength,” a book about the 1963 loss of the nuclear Navy submarine USS Thresher. http://www.fosters.com/news/20181111/when-america-lost-nuclear-bomb
USA was close to using nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war
HOW CLOSE DID THE UNITED STATES ACTUALLY GET TO USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN VIETNAM IN 1968? WAR ON THE ROCKS
OCTOBER 24, 2018.”…….The publication of Michael Beschloss’ new book, Presidents of War, shined light on declassified documents describing the efforts that President Lyndon Johnson’s senior military officers undertook without presidential authorization in early 1968 to prepare for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam.How close did the United States actually get to deploying nuclear weapons in Vietnam in 1968? Who initiated this plan, codenamed “Fracture Jaw,” and when did the president become aware of it? What can today’s leaders learn from this incident, and what implications does this episode have for command and control of nuclear weapons during wartime and the so-called “nuclear taboo” that purportedly dissuades their use?
Drawing on declassified “eyes only” materials housed at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, I seek to situate the revelations in Beschloss’ book in the broader historical context to provide a more detailed account of the military’s planning for Fracture Jaw and just how far Pentagon and White House officials allowed these preparations to progress without the president’s full knowledge………….
The “Nuclear Taboo” and Command and Control Nuclear Weapons During Wartime
From the perspective of the so-called “nuclear taboo,” which dissuades the use of nuclear weapons because of their devastating destructive potential, the Fracture Jaw episode is something of a success story. Johnson consistently made clear to his advisors that he did not want to be put in a position where he would be asked for authority to launch tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Although he did not explicitly rule out the use of these weapons categorically, Johnson’s fury in discovering on Feb. 10 that planning had persisted in spite of his earlier directive only reinforces the notion that the president was committed to avoiding their use.
From the vantage point of command and control of the nuclear arsenal, however, this episode is more harrowing. Although the president’s regional and theater commanders expeditiously complied with the commander-in-chief’s directive to shut down Fracture Jaw, their planning had progressed with seemingly little presidential understanding of just how far along Pacific Command had advanced in preparing its tactical nuclear arsenal for possible use……….
In his role as commander-in-chief, the president retains ultimate (and effectively unchecked) authority over whether to deploy nuclear weapons, a choice Johnson described as “one of the most awesome and grave decisions any president could be called upon to make.” In this instance, Johnson did not hesitate to exercise this authority, but only after media speculation made him aware of how far preparations for their use in Vietnam had actually progressed. That the president and the White House staff was insufficiently aware of how far along this contingency planning had progressed rightfully raises important questions about the integrity of the country’s nuclear command and control infrastructure, particularly as the United States contemplates a greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons in its deterrence posture. And it gives rise to speculation, however remote, about the decision Johnson would have had to confront in weighing a full-fledged nuclear option in Vietnam should Fracture Jaw have come to fruition. In his role as commander-in-chief, the president retains ultimate (and effectively unchecked) authority over whether to deploy nuclear weapons, a choice Johnson described as “one of the most awesome and grave decisions any president could be called upon to make.” In this instance, Johnson did not hesitate to exercise this authority, but only after media speculation made him aware of how far preparations for their use in Vietnam had actually progressed. That the president and the White House staff was insufficiently aware of how far along this contingency planning had progressed rightfully raises important questions about the integrity of the country’s nuclear command and control infrastructure, particularly as the United States contemplates a greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons in its deterrence posture. And it gives rise to speculation, however remote, about the decision Johnson would have had to confront in weighing a full-fledged nuclear option in Vietnam should Fracture Jaw have come to fruition. ……
5 things to know about threatened US-Russia nuclear weapons deal
 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/5-threatened-russia-nuclear-weapons-deal-181021140208661.html
Trump wants to withdraw from the INF treaty that was signed over three decades ago by the US and Soviet leaders. US President Donald Trump has said Washington will withdraw from a 31-year-old nuclear weaponsagreement with Moscow, accusing Russia of violating the treaty and demanding the inclusion of China. Here are five things to know about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (also known as the INF treaty: 1. How did the agreement come about? The INF treaty was signed in December 1987 by the then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It resolved a crisis that had begun in the 1980s with the deployment of Soviet SS-20 nuclear-tipped, intermediate-range ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals. By signing the agreement, Washington and Moscow swore off from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range between 500 and 5,500km. 2. Why is the US withdrawing from the treaty?US officials believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation. Trump said on Saturday that it was only fair for US to develop the weapons since Russia and China (not a signatory of the treaty) were already doing it. 3. How does Russia feel about the INF deal?Moscow has long been accusing the US of violating the nuclear agreement, pointing to a NATO missile shield in Romania that could launch nuclear missiles at any time. In 2007, Russia even threatened to withdraw from the INF treaty. On Sunday, an unnamed Russian foreign ministry official told state news agencies that Washington has been “deliberately and step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement” for many years. 4. What can the US withdrawal from the nuclear treaty lead to?The move will end the prospect of the renewal of the New Start agreement between Moscow and Washington which is set to expire in 2021, as the INF treaty is its backbone. Signed in 2010, New Start requires both nations to cut their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550. Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was “the second powerful blow against the whole system of strategic stability in the world” after Washington’s 2001 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Gorbachev, the co-signatory of the INF treaty, said on Sunday it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the deal, and that it would undermine work he and US counterparts did to end the arms race. 5. Can the nuclear deal be saved? John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, is scheduled to meet Russian leaders, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, this week in Moscow. The trip is likely to show whether there is a chance for the deal to be saved. Trump’s announcement on Saturday suggested that he hoped for the re-negotiation of the terms. Last week, The Guardian reported Bolton, a long-standing opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for the US withdrawal over alleged Russian violations. US Defence Secretary James Mattis has previously suggested that a Trump administration proposal to add a sea-launched cruise missile to Washington’s nuclear arsenal could provide the US with leverage to try to persuade Russia to come back in line on the arms treaty.
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65 years later, the toxic legacy continues – of British nuclear bomb tests in Australia
Menzies “immediately agreed to the proposal,” without consulting any of his cabinet colleagues or the Australian parliament. Indeed, until weeks before the first test was carried out, only three government ministers knew about it.
The most devastating effects were suffered by two groups: Australian and British soldiers working on the tests themselves, and the Indigenous populations local to Emu Field and the later testing site of Maralinga.
One prominent member of the testing team, Sir Ernest Titterton, later said that if Indigenous people had a problem with the government, they should vote it out, ignoring that Indigenous Australians did not have full political rights until 1967.
an Australian defense ministry report was leaked to the press, warning that large amounts of plutonium left at Maralinga could potentially be a target of terrorists.
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Australia is still dealing with the legacy of the UK’s nuclear bomb tests, 65 years on https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/14/australia/australia-uk-nuclear-tests-anniversary-intl/index.html By James Griffiths, CNN October 15, 2018 (
Yami Lester was 12 years old when the black mist came to Walatinna.
Early on the morning of October 15, 1953, Lester heard a “big bang” in the distance. This was followed by a dark, ominous-looking cloud which drifted low over the ground like a slow-moving dust storm, bringing with it an unpleasant smell.
A tiny speck in the vast South Australian outback, the area around Walatinna was regarded as “depressingly inhospitable to Europeans” by early colonizers, few of whom settled there. But Indigenous people had a long history in the region, including Lester’s tribe.
As the dark cloud settled over the Walatinna camp, the tribal elders attempted to ward it off, thinking it was a malevolent spirit. In many ways they were right.
As those exposed to it later told investigators, the black mist caused their eyes to sting and their skin to break out in rashes. Others vomited and suffered from diarrhea.
It took almost three decades until the cause of the mist was acknowledged as the Totem I nuclear bomb test, as Indigenous people had been claiming for years.
That test was one of a number conducted in the 1950s and ’60s, not by the Australian government, but by its former colonial master, the UK. Today, 65 years after the Totem I test, the effects are still being felt in South Australia and beyond.
British bombAustralia was not the UK’s first choice of nuclear testing site. British scientists had been intimately involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II, and fully expected to be able to follow the US in testing their own nuclear weapon on American soil.
“Ultimately, they settled on Australia, which had many benefits,” said Elizabeth Tynan, author of “Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story,” a book about the tests. These includes a sympathetic, compliant government under the recently elected Anglophile Prime Minister Robert Menzies, and wide open spaces in which to carry out the detonations themselves.
In September 1950, British leader Clement Attlee sent Menzies a secret message asking whether his government “would be prepared in principle to agree that the first United Kingdom atomic weapon should be tested in Australian territory.”
According to a later Australian Royal Commission investigation, Menzies “immediately agreed to the proposal,” without consulting any of his cabinet colleagues or the Australian parliament. Indeed, until weeks before the first test was carried out, only three government ministers knew about it.
Menzies’ enthusiasm for the British bomb “wasn’t all sycophantism, it wasn’t all sucking up to his colonial masters,” said Tynan, though this was definitely a factor. The Australian leader also saw in the atomic age an advantage for his country, which was one of the few to have large stocks of uranium, a previously largely unwanted material.
The UK’s first atomic bomb was detonated in the waters off the Montebello Islands, a small archipelago in north western Australia, in the early hours of October 3, 1952, officially making London the third member of the nuclear club, after the US and the Soviet Union.
Emu FieldWhile the Montebello Islands were used for the first test, British planners were never totally happy with the location, and even before the bomb was set off they began looking for a site on the Australian mainland where they could be granted greater secrecy and autonomy.
They settled on a location in the Great Victoria Desert, about 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the nearest town, Woomera, which they named Emu Field.
Plans were soon set in motion for a second test, and on October 15, 1953, the first of the Totem devices was detonated.
Unlike the Montebello test, which went off largely as planned, the 9.1 kiloton Totem I sent a cloud of debris and smoke some 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) into the air, spreading fallout far higher and farther than originally expected.
The Royal Commission later found the test was carried out in inappropriate wind conditions and without proper consideration for people living nearby, examples of the often staggering lack of care taken by British officials overseeing the nuclear program, who frequently ignored or did not bother to seek out vital information about the potential effects of their tests on the host country.
Black mistThe most devastating effects were suffered by two groups: Australian and British soldiers working on the tests themselves, and the Indigenous populations local to Emu Field and the later testing site of Maralinga.
While some concern was paid to their safety during the tests, it was often cursory at best. A single “native patrol officer” given the thankless task of having to try and inform Indigenous residents of the potential dangers had a 100,000 square kilometer (38,610 square mile) region to cover.
Nor did the British much seem to care. One prominent member of the testing team, Sir Ernest Titterton, later said that if Indigenous people had a problem with the government, they should vote it out, ignoring that Indigenous Australians did not have full political rights until 1967.
Another senior official, in a letter to his superiors, complained that W. B. MacDougall, the man with the dubious task of trying to protect the local Indigenous populations, was “placing the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
“The harm done to the Aboriginal people is one of the most shameful aspects (of the tests),” Tynan said. “Nowhere in the British records is there a sign of even the slightest concern for the Aboriginal people.”
This lack of concern is likely what led to the situation at Walatinna. Around 40 people were in the camp when the Totem I blast sent clouds of radiated material miles into the sky.
“It rumbled, the ground shook, it was frightening,” Lalli Lennon told investigators. Some time later, a large black cloud passed low over the settlement. Her husband Stan described it as “sort of hazy, like a fog or something.” Lalli and her children developed fevers, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea, and two of them suffered rashes and sore eyes from the smoke.
But just as they had paid little attention to the wellbeing of Indigenous people prior to the test, the British and Australian authorities did not concern themselves with such matters afterwards.
This was reflected by and large by Australian public opinion, which Tynan said was initially “quite jubilant” about the tests, and remained broadly supportive until the 1970s and ’80s, when a host of revelations about the British nuclear program exposed its lackluster safety procedures — even by the standards of the time — and the disdain of those overseeing it for Australian democratic oversight.
Maralinga messThis shift began when an Australian defense ministry report was leaked to the press, warning that large amounts of plutonium left at Maralinga could potentially be a target of terrorists.
This ran contrary to a 1968 report prepared by British official Noah Pearce which assured the Australian government the plutonium had been properly buried and did not present a significant risk.
Indeed, that year the Australians agreed to release the UK from nearly all “liabilities and responsibilities” regarding the tests, in the belief the British had “completed decontamination and debris clearance … to the satisfaction of the Australian government.”
When Canberra finally carried out its own survey of the site, scientists were shocked by what they found.
“They still thought the Pearce Report was accurate until their geiger counter went crazy,” said Tynan, who has interviewed several of the inspectors. “They weren’t wearing protective gear (and) were kicking plutonium soaked rocks with their boots.”
The Royal Commission report said later that there were between “25,000 and 50,000 plutonium- contaminated fragments in the (Maralinga) area, although the number might need to be doubled if missed and buried fragments were included.” Emu Field and the Montebello Islands were also found to be more dangerous than expected.
“In addition to British scientific and military personnel, thousands of Australians were exposed to radiation produced by the tests,” according to a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology. “These included not only those involved in supporting the British testing program, but also Aboriginal people living downwind of the test sites, and other Australians more distant who came into contact with airborne radioactivity.”
Final hearingThe Royal Commission hearings marked the end to any lingering approval of the tests among the Australian public, exposing fully the ongoing harm done to the local environment, Indigenous people, and the soldiers who worked on the tests.
While many disorders are difficult to link directly to the nuclear tests, veterans of the program have complained of numerous cancers, autoimmune diseases, and other ailments — including among their children — which they put down to their lack of protective clothing and other precautions at the time.
Last year, the Australian government expanded medical benefits for members of the nuclear testing program, but most are now in their late 80s and one told the ABC the move was “too bloody late.”
The harm done to Indigenous people has also been recognized in the decades since the Royal Commission, including by the black mist — which a British official once said investigating would be a “complete waste of money and time.”
In 1993, the British agreed to pay the Australian government and the traditional owners of the Maralinga lands around 46 million AUD ($30 million). The Australian authorities also paid Indigenous Maralinga communities a settlement of 13.5 million AUD ($9 million).
“Everyone became friends again after that,” said Tynan, adding that the issue, which had dominated Australian media and public attention for years, slowly slipped away, becoming a “great Australian secret.”
Today, she said she often meets young Australians who are unaware of the tests, and even many people who were alive at the time of the Royal Commission who only have a hazy idea of the issues.
“It was one of those things that, because it was not really written into the history books … just dropped off the radar,” she said, even as veterans and Indigenous people affected by the tests continue to suffer health repercussions and shortened lifespans because of their exposure to radiation.
Yami Lester died on July 21, 2017. He was remembered in parliament by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as a “man of wonderful intelligence and insight, as an elder of great standing and as a champion of Aboriginal rights and dignity.”
“He will be revered for rising from personal tragedy to serve his community and to lead his people to ensure that they were recognized and their wrongs addressed,” Turnbull added.
But as Tynan and others have pointed out, those wrongs have not been fully addressed. Health problems stemming from the tests continue for those still living, and while the veracity of Lester and other victims’ stories has been acknowledged, what exactly happened to them remains unclear, the details of the nuclear test still kept top secret.
“To this day we don’t know what Totem I did, those records are still classified by the British,” Tynan said. “It remains one of the great mysteries.”
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Anniversary of UK’s Windscale nuclear accident
serious fire developed in the core of a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works,
Sellafield, northwest England, which led to the release of significant
quantities of radioactive material into the environment over a wide area
including but not exclusively Cumbria. This release of radioactive
materials including polonium, led to an increase in radiation linked
diseases and conditions from cancers to Downs Syndrome.
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/remembering-windscale-outside-the-gates-where-nuclearmudness-is-made/
USA came near to using nuclear bombs in Vietnam war
U.S. General Considered Nuclear Response in Vietnam War, Cables Show, By David E. Sanger, NYT, Oct. 6, 2018 WASHINGTON — In one of the darkest moments of the Vietnam War, the top American military commander in Saigon activated a plan in 1968 to move nuclear weapons to South Vietnam until he was overruled by President Lyndon B. Johnson, according to recently declassified documents cited in a new history of wartime presidential decisions.
The documents reveal a long-secret set of preparations by the commander, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, to have nuclear weapons at hand should American forces find themselves on the brink of defeat at Khe Sanh, one of the fiercest battles of the war.
With the approval of the American commander in the Pacific, General Westmoreland had put together a secret operation, code-named Fracture Jaw, that included moving nuclear weapons into South Vietnam so that they could be used on short notice against North Vietnamese troops.
Johnson’s national security adviser, Walt W. Rostow, alerted the president in a memorandum on White House stationery.
The president rejected the plan, and ordered a turnaround, according to Tom Johnson, then a young special assistant to the president and note-taker at the meetings on the issue, which were held in the family dining room on the second floor of the White House………..
Had the weapons been used, it would have added to the horrors of one of the most tumultuous and violent years in modern American history. Johnson announced weeks later that he would not run for re-election. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated shortly thereafter.
The story of how close the United States came to reaching for nuclear weapons in Vietnam, 23 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender, is contained in “Presidents of War,” a coming book by Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian.
……….The incident has echoes for modern times. It was only 14 months ago that President Trump was threatening the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea — which, unlike North Vietnam at the time, possesses its own small nuclear arsenal.
………And before he was dismissed in 1951 by President Harry S. Truman, Gen. Douglas MacArthur explored with his superiors the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean War. Truman had feared that MacArthur’s aggressive strategy would set off a larger war with China, but at one point did move atomic warheads to bases in the Pacific, though not to Korea itself…….
Mr. Beschloss’s book, which will be published on Tuesday by Crown, examines challenges facing presidents from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/asia/vietnam-war-nuclear-weapons.html
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world
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35 years ago today, one man saved us from world-ending nuclear war https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stanislav-petrov-soviet-union
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world. By On September 26, 1983, the planet came terrifyingly close to a nuclear holocaust. The Soviet Union’s missile attack early warning system displayed, in large red letters, the word “LAUNCH”; a computer screen stated to the officer on duty, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, that it could say with “high reliability” that an American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) had been launched and was headed toward the Soviet Union. First, it was just one missile, but then another, and another, until the system reported that a total of five Minuteman ICBMshad been launched. “Petrov had to make a decision: Would he report an incoming American strike?” my colleague Max Fisher explained. “If he did, Soviet nuclear doctrine called for a full nuclear retaliation; there would be no time to double-check the warning system, much less seek negotiations with the US.” Reporting it would have made a certain degree of sense. The Reagan administration had a far more hardline stance against the Soviets than the Carter, Ford, or Nixon administrations before it. Months earlier President Reagan had announced the Strategic Defense Initiative(mockingly dubbed “Star Wars,” a plan to shoot down ballistic missiles before they reached the US), and his administration was in the process of deploying Pershing II nuclear-armed missiles to West Germany and Great Britain, which were capable of striking the Soviet Union. There were reasons for Petrov to think Reagan’s brinkmanship had escalated to an actual nuclear exchange. But Petrov did not report the incoming strike. He and others on his staff concluded that what they were seeing was a false alarm. And it was; the system mistook the sun’s reflection off clouds for a missile. Petrov prevented a nuclear war between the Soviets, who had 35,804 nuclear warheads in 1983, and the US, which had 23,305. A 1979 report by Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment estimated that a full-scale Soviet assault on the US would kill 35 to 77 percent of the US population — or between 82 million and 180 million people in 1983. The inevitable US counterstrike would kill 20 to 40 percent of the Soviet population, or between 54 million and 108 million people. The combined death toll there (between 136 million and 288 million) swamps the death toll of any war, genocide, or other violent catastrophe in human history. Proportional to world population, it would be rivaled only by the An Lushan rebellion in eighth-century China and the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. And it’s likely hundreds of millions more would have died once the conflict disrupted global temperatures and severely hampered agriculture. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War put the potential death toll from starvation at about 2 billion. Petrov, almost single-handedly, prevented those deaths. Preventing the deaths of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people was a costly decision for Petrov. If he had been wrong, and he somehow survived the American nuclear strike, he likely would’ve been executed for treason. Even though he was right, he was, according to the Washington Post’s David Hoffman, “relentlessly interrogated afterward [and] never rewarded for his decision.” After the Cold War, Petrov would receive a number of commendations for saving the world. He was honored at the United Nations, received the Dresden Peace Prize, and was profiled in the documentary The Man Who Saved the World. “I was just at the right place at the right time,” he told the filmmakers. He died in May 2017, at the age of 77. Two new books about the Petrov incident and other nuclear close calls in 1983 (related to the NATO exercise Able Archer) came out just this year: Taylor Downing’s 1983 and Marc Ambinder’s The Brink. Petrov isn’t the only man who’s prevented nuclear warPetrov was not the only Russian official who’s saved the world. On October 27, 1962, Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet navy officer, was in a nuclear submarine near Cuba when US naval forces started dropping depth charges (a kind of explosive targeting submarines) on him. Two senior officers on the submarine thought that a nuclear war could’ve already begun and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at a US vessel. But all three senior officers had to agree for the missile to fire, and Arkhipov dissented, preventing a nuclear exchange and potentially preventing the end of the world. Even more recently, on January 25, 1995, Russian early warning radars suggested that an American first strike was incoming. President Boris Yeltsin was alerted and given a suitcase with instructions for launching a nuclear strike at the US. Russian nuclear forces were given an alert to increase combat readiness. Yeltsin eventually declined to launch a counterstrike — which is good, because this was another false alarm. It turns out that Russian early warning systems had picked up a Norwegian-US joint research rocket, launched by scientists studying the northern lights. But September 26, Stanislav Petrov Day, is as good a time as any to celebrate the ordinary officers who took a stand when it counted to prevent hundreds of millions of deaths. And it’s as good a time as any to remember that as long as the US and Russia retain massive nuclear arsenals, these kinds of close calls will remain possible — and in the future, a false alarm could result in an accidental first strike. |
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New documentary claims that Hitler had nuclear weapons ambitions, only thwarted by an accident
NUCLEAR NAZI How Adolf Hitler’s plan to build an atomic bomb and destroy London was only thwarted when ferry carrying key ingredients sunk https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7150860/how-adolf-hitler-atomic-bomb-london-only-thwarted-by-ferry-ride/
The discovery shines light on Hitler’s ambitions to become a nuclear power and nuke Britain,By Harvey Solomon-Brady 1st September 2018
Strange thought processes that resulted in the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki
The Nagasaki bombing mission: excused by “just NOT following orders” http://www.litbyimagination.com/2018/08/the-nagasaki-bombing-mission-excused-by.html The thought process that never happened on August 9, 1945:
“Well, let’s see here. The reserve fuel tank pump was broken before take-off, and we knew it, so we were supposed to call off the mission then. Next, we failed to rendezvous over Yakushima with one of the crucial planes in the mission. At the primary target of Kokura we encountered cloud cover and flak. Now we are so dangerously low on fuel that there’s a good chance we’re going to lose the bomb and our lives by ditching in the Pacific. If we carry out the mission at the secondary target, and survive, there’s a good chance we’ll be court-martialed for not following orders to abort the mission if troubles like these arose. Hmmm. Let’s just spare Nagasaki, get back to base safely, and hope this war is over soon before we have to drop the second bomb.”
Unfortunately, the commanding officers of Bockscar, the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, were eager to not look like failures after the “success” of the Enola Gay over Hiroshima three days earlier. The full story is told in the article “The harrowing story of the Nagasaki bombing mission“ (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, August 4, 2015). After encountering the many troubles listed above, the plane went to the secondary target, Nagasaki, and the pilot determined to drop the bomb by radar through the cloud cover, against specific orders to drop it only with a clear view of the target. “Fortunately,” there was an opening in the clouds over the Urakami district, which was not the intended target over the center of the city. They hastily decided to drop the bomb there, then headed toward Okinawa for an emergency landing. They approached Okinawa with empty fuel tanks, expecting they would have to ditch in the ocean and die. The crew was literally willing to die rather than return as “failures” compared to their colleagues who had flown on the Enola Gay. In this regard, they were much like the fictional Major T.J. King Kong in Dr. Strangelove who carried out a suicide mission in order to start WWIII.
Hiroshima survivors tell of that day on 6th August 1945
‘I still hate the glow of the sun’: Hiroshima survivors’ tales, https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/31704344/i-still-hate-the-glow-of-the-sun-hiroshima-suvivors-tales/ May 26, 2016, Hiroshima (Japan) (AFP) – For survivors of the world’s first nuclear attack, the day America unleashed a terrible bomb over the city of Hiroshima remains seared forever in their minds.
Though their numbers are dwindling and the advancing years are taking a toll, their haunting memories are undimmed by the passage of more than seven decades.
On the occasion of Barack Obama’s offering of a floral tribute on Friday at the cenotaph in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park — the first ever visit by a sitting US president — some of them share their stories with AFP.
Emiko Okada
Emiko Okada, now 79, was about 2.8 kilometres (1.7 miles) from ground zero and suffered severe injuries in the blast. Her sister was killed.
“All of a sudden a flash of light brightened the sky and I was slammed to the ground. I didn’t know what on earth had happened. There were fires everywhere. We rushed away as the blaze roared toward us.
“The people I saw looked nothing like human beings. Their skin and flesh hung loose. Some children’s eyeballs were popping out of their sockets.
“I still hate to see the glow of the setting sun. It reminds me of that day and brings pain to my heart.
“In the aftermath, many children who had evacuated during the war came back here, orphaned by the bomb. Many gangsters came to Hiroshima from around the country and gave them food and guns.
“President Obama is a person who can influence the world. I hope that this year will be the beginning of knowing what actually happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the mushroom clouds.”
Keiko Ogura
Keiko Ogura, now 78, has devoted her life to keeping alive the memory of the devastating day. Continue reading
Japanese children will pass on the history of Nagasaki’s horror nuclear bombing on 9 Aug 1945
Mini-storytellers’: Japanese children pass on horror of Nagasaki bombings, As more and more survivors who directly witnessed the nuclear attack die, students are taking on responsibility for telling their stories, Guardian Daniel Hurst in Nagasaki, 2 August 18
The 500 students at Shiroyama Elementary School gather in the assembly hall on the ninth day of every month to sing a song. This is no ordinary school anthem, however.
Dear Children’s Souls deals with the most traumatic chapter in the school’s long history: the moment 1,400 students and 28 staff members died when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the second world war.
Nearly 73 years have passed since the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 – and Hiroshima three days earlier – but the school feels a special responsibility to keep the memories alive.
“Shiroyama Elementary School is situated closest to the ground zero of the A-bombing compared to other municipal elementary schools in Nagasaki,” explains the softly spoken principal, Hiroaki Takemura, adding that the hypo-centre was just 500m away.
“The feelings for peace are very strong here.”The task is becoming increasingly vital as more and more of the survivors who directly witnessed the events pass away. The ranks of these survivors, known as hibakusha, have halved over the past two decades and their average age is now 82. As they become less mobile, they find it more difficult to travel and give first-hand accounts of the horrors of nuclear war in the hope of preventing any repeat amid growing global tensions. Continue reading
USA’s history of accidental dropping of nuclear bombs
Remembering A Near Disaster: U.S. Accidently Drops Nuclear Bombs On Itself And Its Allies WUNC91.5, By JAY PRICE 24 May 18
In 1968, the Pentagon halted a program that kept military bombers in the air, loaded with nuclear weapons to deter a Soviet attack.
The problem was the jets kept having near-catastrophic accidents.
“If you go through some of the archival evidence publicly available, it seems like once a week or so, there was some kind of significant noteworthy accident that was being reported to the Department of Defense or the Atomic Energy Commission or members of Congress,” said Stephen Schwartz, a long-time nuclear weapons analyst.
Schwartz singled out 1958 as a particularly notorious year.
“We’re actually celebrating − celebrating is probably the wrong word − but we’re marking the 60th anniversary of no fewer than eight nuclear weapons accidents this year,” Schwartz said.
Every couple of weeks, Maurice Sanders gets a reminder of one of those 1958 accidents when a car with out-of-state tags parks in front of his house just outside Florence, South Carolina. Strangers pile out and tromp around to the scrub oak forest just behind his back yard to gaze down at an odd tourist attraction.
“It’s the hole from where the bomb had dropped, years ago,” Sanders said. “I think it’s on some kind of map or something.”
The circular pit is as big around as a small house, with a pond of tea-colored water at the bottom. A fading plywood cutout that someone put up − apparently to lure more tourists − is the size and shape of the Mark 6 nuclear bomb that was dropped there by accident.
The core containing the nuclear material was stored separately on the B-47 bomber it fell from, but the high explosives that were used to trigger the nuclear reaction exploded on impact, digging the crater estimated at 35 feet deep. The blast injured six members of a nearby family and damaged their home beyond repair.
Earlier that same year, just one state farther south, a jet fighter collided with a bomber during a training exercise, and the crew jettisoned a bomb into coastal waters near Savannah, Georgia.
Two years later, in 1961, a B-52 bomber flying out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro came apart in the sky, and the two armed nuclear bombs it was carrying fell into a farming community northeast of the base. One buried itself so deeply into a tobacco field that some of its parts were never found. The other floated down on a parachute, planting its nose in the ground beside a tree.
The parachute bomb came startlingly close to detonating. A secret government document said three of its four safety mechanisms failed, and only a simple electrical switch prevented catastrophe. It was 260 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and could have instantly killed thousands of people. The radioactive fallout could have endangered millions more as far north as New York City.
Safety takes back seat to readiness
The military’s name for serious nuclear weapons mishaps is “broken arrow.” The Pentagon has only officially acknowledged 32 broken arrows, but evidence compiled by the government shows there were thousands more accidents involving nuclear weapons, Schwartz said.
“Most of which were not that as serious as the 32 we know about, but some of them were quite bad,” he said.
Schwartz said a wave of serious accidents in the late 1950s through 1968 was partly due to programs that kept the U.S. on a war footing. A few planes were kept aloft 24 hours a day, ready to drop bombs on Russia.
And then there was the sheer number of weapons being made, which created more opportunities for things to go wrong.
Schwartz said by the year after the bomb fell on South Carolina, the U.S. was making almost 20 nuclear weapons a day……..
“Everything associated with nuclear weapons the nuclear weapons delivery system, the command-and-control systems that make sure they go off when they’re supposed to and most importantly that they don’t go off when they’re not supposed to − all of these things are designed, built, operated, and maintained by human beings,” Schwartz said. “And human beings are fallible.”
Overseas accidents bring program’s end
It wasn’t the bombs the U.S. dropped on itself that finally ended the program. Rather, it was two accidents over friendly nations.
In 1966, a B-52 bomber – also flying out of Seymour Johnson – broke apart in the sky near the coast of Spain. One of its bombs dropped into the sea, and three fell on land where conventional explosives scattered radioactive material.
Then, in 1968, the burning-seat-cushion crash spread plutonium and uranium onto sea ice and into the sea off the coast of Greenland……..http://wunc.org/post/remembering-near-disaster-us-accidently-drops-nuclear-bombs-itself-and-its-allies#stream/0
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