tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/nuclear-tests-6525/articles
Nuclear tests – The Conversation
2024-02-07T19:17:46Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222500
2024-02-07T19:17:46Z
2024-02-07T19:17:46Z
Underground nuclear tests are hard to detect. A new method can spot them 99% of the time
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573342/original/file-20240205-18-173q39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C0%2C1967%2C1047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Bravo_nuclear_test.jpg">US Department of Energy via Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the first detonation of an atomic bomb in 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have been conducted by eight countries: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. </p>
<p>Groups such as the <a href="https://www.ctbto.org">Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization</a> are constantly on the lookout for new tests. However, for reasons of safety and secrecy, modern nuclear tests are carried out underground – which makes them difficult to detect. Often, the only indication they have occurred is from the seismic waves they generate.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gji/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/gji/ggae011">paper published in Geophysical Journal International</a>, my colleagues and I have developed a way to distinguish between underground nuclear tests and natural earthquakes with around 99% accuracy.</p>
<h2>Fallout</h2>
<p>The invention of nuclear weapons sparked an international arms race, as the Soviet Union, the UK and France developed and tested increasingly larger and more sophisticated devices in an attempt to keep up with the US.</p>
<p>Many early tests caused serious environmental and societal damage. For example, the US’s 1954 Castle Bravo test, conducted in secret at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, delivered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/13/marshall-islands-pacific-us-nuclear-bomb-test-payment">large volumes of radioactive fallout</a> to several nearby islands and their inhabitants.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909">315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific</a>
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<p>Between 1952 and 1957, the UK conducted several tests in Australia, scattering long-lived radioactive material over wide areas of South Australian bushland, with <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/maralinga">devastating consequences</a> for local Indigenous communities. </p>
<p>In 1963, the US, the UK and the USSR agreed to carry out future tests underground to limit fallout. Nevertheless, testing continued unabated as China, India, Pakistan and North Korea also entered the fray over the following decades.</p>
<h2>How to spot an atom bomb</h2>
<p>During this period there were substantial international efforts to figure out how to monitor nuclear testing. The competitive nature of weapons development means much research and testing is conducted in secret. </p>
<p>Groups such as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization today run global networks of instruments specifically designed to <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/our-work/international-monitoring-system">identify any potential tests</a>. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>air-testing stations to detect minute quantities of radioactive elements in the atmosphere</li>
<li>aquatic listening posts to hear underwater tests</li>
<li>infrasound detectors to catch the low-frequency booms and rumbles of explosions in the atmosphere</li>
<li>seismometers to record the shaking of Earth caused by underground tests. </li>
</ul>
<h2>A needle in a haystack</h2>
<p>Seismometers are designed to measure seismic waves: tiny vibrations of the ground surface generated when large amounts of energy are suddenly released underground, such as during earthquakes or nuclear explosions.</p>
<p>There are two main kinds of seismic waves. First are body waves, which travel outwards in all directions, including down into the deep Earth, before returning to the surface. Second are surface waves, which travel along Earth’s surface like ripples spreading out on a pond. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Comprehensive Test-Ban-Treaty Organization uses seismic stations to monitor the globe for underground nuclear explosions.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The difficulty in using seismic waves to monitor underground nuclear tests is distinguishing between explosions and naturally occurring earthquakes. A core goal of monitoring is never to miss an explosion, but there are thousands of sizeable natural quakes around the world every day. </p>
<p>As a result, monitoring underground tests is like searching for a potentially non-existent needle in a haystack the size of a planet.</p>
<h2>Nukes vs quakes</h2>
<p>Many different methods have been developed to aid this search over the past 60 years. </p>
<p>Some of the simplest include analysing the location or depth of the source. If an event occurs far from volcanoes and plate tectonic boundaries, it might be considered more suspicious. Alternatively, if it occurs at a depth greater than say three kilometres, it is unlikely to have been a nuclear test.</p>
<p>However, these simple methods are not foolproof. Tests might be carried out in earthquake-prone areas for camouflage, for example, and shallow earthquakes are also possible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-tests-not-just-a-bomb-but-the-global-nuclear-monitoring-system-83715">North Korea tests not just a bomb but the global nuclear monitoring system</a>
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<p>A more sophisticated monitoring approach involves calculating the ratio of the amount of the energy transmitted in body waves to the amount carried in surface waves. Earthquakes tend to expend more of their energy in surface waves than explosions do. </p>
<p>This method has proven highly effective for identifying underground nuclear tests, but it too is imperfect. It failed to effectively classify the 2017 North Korean nuclear test, which generated substantial surface waves because it was carried out <a href="https://doi.org/10.1785/0220180099">inside a tunnel in a mountain</a>.</p>
<p>This outcome underlines the importance of using multiple independent discrimination techniques during monitoring – no single method is likely to prove reliable for all events.</p>
<h2>An alternative method</h2>
<p>In 2023, my colleagues and I from the Australian National University and Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US got together to re-examine the problem of determining the source of seismic waves.</p>
<p>We used a recently developed approach to represent how rocks are displaced at the source of a seismic event, and combined it with a more advanced statistical model to describe different types of event. As a result, we were able to take advantage of fundamental differences between the sources of explosions and earthquakes to develop an <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gji/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/gji/ggae011">improved method of classifying these events</a>.</p>
<p>We tested our approach on catalogues of known explosions and earthquakes from the western United States, and found that the method gets it right around 99% of the time. This makes it a useful new tool in efforts to monitor underground nuclear tests.</p>
<p>Robust techniques for identification of nuclear tests will continue to be a key component of global monitoring programs. They are critical for ensuring governments are held accountable for the environmental and societal impacts of nuclear weapons testing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Hoggard works for the Australian National University. He receives funding from Geoscience Australia and the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
Listening for underground nuclear explosions amid the constant rumble of earthquakes is like looking for a needle that may not exist in a haystack the size of a planet.
Mark Hoggard, DECRA Research Fellow, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210115
2023-07-31T12:23:52Z
2023-07-31T12:23:52Z
Hiroshima attack marks its 78th anniversary – its lessons of unnecessary mass destruction could help guide future nuclear arms talks
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539797/original/file-20230727-15-m7op1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima view a large-scale panoramic photograph of the destruction following the 1945 bombing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitors-to-hiroshima-peace-memorial-museum-view-a-large-news-photo/1227916055?adppopup=true">Carl Court/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was 8:15 on a Monday morning, Aug. 6, 1945. World War II was raging in Japan.</p>
<p>An American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/news-and-events/news/6-and-9-august-1945-hiroshima-nagasaki#:%7E:text=On%206%20August%201945%2C%20at,were%20confident%20it%20would%20work">Hiroshima, Japan</a> – an important military center with a civilian population close to 300,000 people. </p>
<p>The U.S. wanted to end the war, and Japan was unwilling to <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/decision-drop-atomic-bomb">surrender unconditionally</a>. </p>
<p>The bomber plane was called the Enola Gay, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, <a href="https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/hiroshima.htm">the mother of the pilot</a>. </p>
<p>Its passenger was “Little Boy” – an atomic bomb that quickly killed <a href="https://www.icanw.org/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_bombings">80,000 people in Hiroshima</a>. Tens of thousands more would later die of the excruciating effects of radiation exposure. </p>
<p>Three days later, U.S. soldiers in a second B-29 bomber plane dropped another <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki">atomic bomb on Nagasaki</a>, killing an estimated 40,000 people. </p>
<p>It was the first – and so far, only – time atomic bombs were used against civilians. But U.S. scientists were confident it would work, because they <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-manhattan-project-and-its-cold-war-legacy?gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtO-kBhDIARIsAL6LorcawhIylSgwAJ1ta5ttJ0OYLVVmSsYKK7Ti3vG9MXUHix5jhCkH_q8aAtgxEALw_wcB">had tested one just like it in New Mexico</a> a month before. This was part of the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-was-the-manhattan-project/">Manhattan Project</a>, a secret, federally funded science effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>What might have been a single year of nuclear weapons development ushered in decades and decades of <a href="https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-proliferation-treaty">nuclear proliferation</a> – a challenge across countries and professions.</p>
<p>Having worked on nuclear weapons both as a journalist covering the Pentagon and then as a White House special assistant on the National Security Council and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, <a href="https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/faculty/tara-sonenshine">I understand how critical it is</a> to educate and inform citizens about the dangers of nuclear war and how to control the development of nuclear weapons. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows a massive cloud of smoke in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539641/original/file-20230726-17-h4r1mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An aerial photograph shows the mushroom cloud that ballooned after U.S. soldiers dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb over Hiroshima in 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-aerial-photograph-of-hiroshima-japan-shortly-after-the-news-photo/513666223?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The man who started it all</h2>
<p>Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein warned then-President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that the Nazis might be <a href="https://time.com/5641891/einstein-szilard-letter/#">developing nuclear weapons</a>. Einstein urged the U.S. to stockpile uranium and begin developing an atomic bomb – a warning he would later regret.</p>
<p>Einstein <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/ive-created-a-monster-on-the-regrets-of-inventors/249044/">wrote a letter</a> to Newsweek, published in 1947, headlined “The Man Who Started It All.” In it, he made a confession. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger,” Einstein wrote. </p>
<p>Einstein repeated <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/einstein-regret-video">his regret in 1954</a>, writing that the letter to Roosevelt was his “one great mistake in life.”</p>
<p>But by then it was too late. </p>
<p>The Soviet Union began its own <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950/">bomb development program in the late 1940s</a>, partly in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also as a response to the Nazi invasion of their country in the 1940s. The Soviet Union secretly conducted its first atomic <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946/">weapons test in 1949</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. responded by <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950/">testing more advanced nuclear weapons</a> in November 1952. The result was a hydrogen bomb explosion with approximately 700 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. </p>
<p>A nuclear arms race had begun.</p>
<h2>Arms control</h2>
<p>The U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Japan remain the only military use of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>But today <a href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2023/states-invest-nuclear-arsenals-geopolitical-relations-deteriorate-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now">there are nine countries</a> that have nuclear weapons – the U.S., Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. The U.S. and Russia jointly have about <a href="https://rb.gy/gbfq7">90% of the nuclear warheads</a> in the world. </p>
<p>There has been progress over the past few decades in <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/experts-assess-the-nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty-50-years-after-it-went-into-effect/">reducing the global stockpile of nuclear weapons</a> while preventing the development of new ones. But that momentum has been uneven and oftentimes rocky. </p>
<p>The U.S. and the Soviet Union first agreed to limit their respective countries’ nuclear weapons stockpile and to prevent further development of <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty">new weapons in 1986</a>.</p>
<p>And in 1991 the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed on to another <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/reagan-and-gorbachev-reykjavik-summit/">legally binding international treaty</a> that required the countries to destroy 2,693 nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of about 300 to more than 3,400 miles (500-5,500 kilometers). </p>
<p>The two countries signed another well-known <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/start1">international agreement called START I</a> in 1994, not long after the fall of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>That treaty is <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/strategic-arms-reduction-treaty-start-i/#:%7E:text=The%20treaty%20is%20considered%20one,eight%20years%20after%20full%20implementation.">considered by experts one of the most successful</a> arms control agreements. It resulted in the U.S. and Russia’s dismantling 80% of all the world’s <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/strategic-arms-reduction-treaty-start-i/">strategic nuclear weapons</a> by 2001.</p>
<p>Russia and the U.S. signed on to a new START treaty in 2011, restricting the countries to each keep 1,550 nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>START II, as it is known, will expire in February 2026. There are no <a href="https://www.state.gov/new-start/">current plans</a> for the countries to renew the deal, and it is not clear what comes next. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two men toasting each other, surrounded by other men at a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539813/original/file-20230727-23-o73a1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev toast following nuclear nonproliferation talks in 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-statesman-gerald-ford-the-38th-president-of-the-news-photo/3277304?adppopup=true">Keystone/CNP/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Complicating factors</h2>
<p>Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine – and Russian President <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-nuclear-weapons-threat-real-biden-warns-rcna90114">Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats</a> to strike Ukraine and Western countries with nuclear weapons – has complicated plans to renew the new START deal. </p>
<p>Although Putin has not formally ended Russian adherence to the START II agreement, Russia has <a href="https://geneva.usmission.gov/2023/05/16/cessation-of-the-nuclear-arms-race-and-nuclear-disarmament/">stopped participating</a> in the nuclear inspection checks that the deal requires. This lack of transparency makes <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/politics/us-russia-nuclear-arms-control-treaty/index.html">diplomacy over the deal more difficult</a>.</p>
<p>Another complicating factor is that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/china-russia-nuclear-weapons/622089/">China has made it clear</a> that it is not interested in an arms control agreement until it has the same number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia have. </p>
<p>Indeed, since 2019, China has increased the size, readiness, accuracy and <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-01/news/pentagon-chinese-nuclear-arsenal-exceeds-400-warheads#:%7E:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20China,timeline%2C%22%20the%20report%20states">diversity of its nuclear arsenal</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Defense reported in 2022 that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/does-the-pentagon-report-on-chinas-military-correctly-judge-the-threat/">China was on course to have 1,500 nuclear weapons</a> within the next decade – roughly matching the stockpile that the U.S. and Russia each have. In 2015, China had an estimated <a href="https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/china-nuclear">260 nuclear warheads</a>, and by 2023 that number rose to <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-01/news/pentagon-chinese-nuclear-arsenal-exceeds-400-warheads#:%7E:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20China,timeline%2C%22%20the%20report%20states">more than 400.</a> </p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169878514/north-korea-missile-test-solid-fuel">North Korea continues testing</a> its ballistic nuclear missiles. </p>
<p>Iran is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-enriching-uranium-weapons-grade-nuclear-iaea-rcna72753">enriching uranium</a> to near-weapons-grade levels. Some observers have voiced concern that Iran could soon reach <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-enriching-uranium-weapons-grade-nuclear-iaea-rcna72753">90% enrichment levels</a>, meaning it would then just be a few months before Iran develops a nuclear bomb. </p>
<p>In a world of potential nuclear terrorism and conflicts that risk the unthinkable use of nuclear weapons, I think that the need to control proliferation and double down on arms control is a useful starting point.</p>
<p>So, what else can be done to contain the real threat of nuclear war?</p>
<h2>Diplomacy is the way forward</h2>
<p>Diplomacy matters, as was clear in the early years of U.S.-Soviet agreements. </p>
<p>In my view, a formal agreement between the U.S. and Iran to slow down its nuclear development would be valuable. Creating a better relationship between the U.S. and China might reduce the chances of a confrontation over Taiwan with the potential for a nuclear conflagration. </p>
<p>The U.S. can also use public diplomacy tools – everything from official speeches to international educational exchanges – to warn the world of the escalating dangers of unchecked nuclear weapons use. This is one way to get ordinary citizens to put pressure on their governments to work on disarmament, similar to how young activists have moved public opinion on climate change. </p>
<p>The U.S. could potentially <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15250.doc.htm">use its global podium</a> to underscore the horrific nature of threats that come with the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/politics/biden-russia-dirty-bomb/index.html">use of nuclear weapons</a> and make clear such use is inadmissible. </p>
<p>Remembering Aug. 6, 1945, is painful. But the best way to honor history is not to repeat it. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to correct where World War II fighting continued on August 6, 1945.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tara Sonenshine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The United States and Russia, the two biggest nuclear powers, have no imminent plans for talks on a nuclear deal. That should change, writes a former US diplomat.
Tara Sonenshine, Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in Public Diplomacy, Tufts University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204604
2023-04-27T12:50:58Z
2023-04-27T12:50:58Z
US-South Korea nuclear weapons deal – what you need to know
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523089/original/file-20230426-20-xe77sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C0%2C3546%2C2330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Korea's Yoon Suk Yeol is only the second leader to travel to the U.S. for a state visit during the Biden administration.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenUSSouthKorea/d77d19187b24453d8e374f6d8a4e80ec/photo?Query=Yoon%20Suk%20Yeol&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1237&currentItemNo=2">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The United States and South Korea have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/us/politics/biden-south-korea-state-visit.html">unveiled an agreement</a> under which leaders in Seoul will be handed an enhanced role in planning any nuclear response to a strike in the region by North Korea.</em></p>
<p><em>Announced at a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-korea-us-presidents-to-meet-in-washington-amid-wary-glances-in-the-direction-of-pyongyang-beijing-and-moscow-204418">state visit to Washington</a> by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on April 26, 2023, the so-called “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/26/washington-declaration-2/">Washington Declaration</a>” will see U.S. deployments of “strategic assets” around the Korean Peninsula, including an upcoming visit by a nuclear submarine. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/10/19/us-decides-to-withdraw-a-weapons-from-s-korea/3759ee3f-e9bf-4944-bfdf-2f9ea727b546/">last time the U.S. had nuclear weapons</a> in South Korea was 1991</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation asked Sung-Yoon Lee, an <a href="https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/faculty/sung-yoon-lee">expert on U.S.-Korean relations</a> at Tufts University, to explain what the decision to revamp nuclear relations means and why it has come now.</em></p>
<h2>What is in the ‘Washington Declaration’?</h2>
<p>Well, there’s strong language. Whereas the U.S. has repeatedly “reaffirmed” its commitment in the past to the defense of South Korea, the wording in the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/26/washington-declaration-2/">Washington Declaration</a> is more robust. It builds on the language contained in the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/21/united-states-republic-of-korea-leaders-joint-statement/">joint statement released during Biden’s visit</a> to Seoul soon after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/world/asia/south-korea-yoon-president.html">Yoon assumed office</a> in May 2022. On that occasion, the U.S. pledged its “extended deterrence commitment to the (Republic of Korea) using the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, including nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities.”</p>
<p><iframe id="lQGDz" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lQGDz/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>This time, lest there be doubt, that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/26/washington-declaration-2/">affirmation is made</a> “in the strongest words possible.” </p>
<p>But what does that mean in real terms? First, the U.S. “commits to make every effort to consult with the (Republic of Korea) on any possible nuclear weapons employment on the Korean Peninsula.”</p>
<p>More substantively, the two sides commit “to engage in deeper, cooperative decision-making on nuclear deterrence,” including through “enhanced dialogue and information sharing regarding growing nuclear threats” to South Korea.</p>
<p>It will come as a welcome development to decision-makers in South Korea, although it raises questions about just how much intel on North Korea’s threat and capabilities the U.S. – and Japan, with its advanced signal intelligence systems – did not share with previous administrations in Seoul.</p>
<p>Second, the two allies will establish a new nuclear consultative group to “strengthen extended deterrence, discuss nuclear and strategic planning and manage” the growing threat posed by Pyongyang. This means Seoul now will have a seat at the table when it comes to planning any nuclear response strategy and in readying its “conventional support to U.S. nuclear operations in a contingency.”</p>
<p>In sum, Seoul will now have a much greater say in intel-sharing and planning for a joint long-term nuclear strategy, with a focus on its own role in any future flare-up in the Korean Peninsula.</p>
<p>It is a big step forward.</p>
<h2>Why are the US and South Korea announcing this now?</h2>
<p>The international security environment has drastically changed over the past year, necessitating credible countermeasures from the two allies, in cooperation with Japan. North Korea has <a href="https://time.com/6266737/north-korea-ballistic-missile-tests-2023/">fired well over 100 missiles</a> since January 2022. Meanwhile, Russia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/ukraine-invasion-2022-117045">invasion of Ukraine</a> and its many <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60690688">alleged war crimes</a> have only pulled <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/21/russia-and-china-are-becoming-ever-closer-and-the-west-should-worry.html">China and</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-north-korea-forge-closer-ties-amid-shared-isolation-2022-11-04/">North Korea closer</a> into its sphere. And China has gone beyond its usual “<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2023/04/china-big-stick-diplomacy-is-pushing-closer-russia">wolf-warrior diplomacy</a>” rhetoric by conducting threatening military drills around Taiwan last August and, again, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-taiwan-us-mccarthy-military-exercises-992440661295869bc2b02455093cf4d2">this April</a>.</p>
<p>The Washington Declaration comes on the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/26/leaders-joint-statement-in-commemoration-of-the-70th-anniversary-of-the-alliance-between-the-united-states-of-america-and-the-republic-of-korea/">70th anniversary of the alliance</a> between Washington and Seoul. The timing serves as an opportunity to reflect on and reassess the relationship. But, no doubt, the main drivers in this strongly worded reaffirmation of the alliance are the recent actions taken by the governments in Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing.</p>
<h2>How has South Korea’s position on nuclear options evolved?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nti.org/countries/south-korea/">Korean Peninsula</a> has been through two periods of actual “denuclearization” since the 1953 armistice that ended combat during the Korean War.</p>
<p>The first was <a href="https://keia.org/the-peninsula/comparing-contexts-south-koreas-potential-nuclear-armament-in-the-1970s-2020s/">in the 1970s</a> when the U.S., <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-united-states-and-south-koreas-nuclear-weapons-program-1974-1976">catching wind of South Korea’s secret nuclear weapons program</a>, threatened to withdraw all U.S. troops from the South unless Seoul completely dismantled the program. And, so, the government abandoned its nuclear ambitions.</p>
<p>The second came in 1991 when the U.S. and South Korea – perhaps anticipating the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union#:%7E:text=On%20December%2025%2C%201991%2C%20the,the%20newly%20independent%20Russian%20state.">coming collapse of the Soviet empire</a> and a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/how-did-the-north-korean-famine-happen">severely debilitated North Korea</a> – agreed to withdraw all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from the South, even as the North was <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/revisiting-history-north-korea-and-nuclear-weapons">working on its own nuclear program</a> while <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/north-korean-nuclear-negotiations">vigorously talking “denuclearization.</a>”</p>
<p>But in recent years, public opinion in South Korea has <a href="https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/thinking-nuclear-south-korean-attitudes-nuclear-weapons">strongly shifted toward self-nuclearization</a> rather than rely on the U.S. stockpile off South Korea’s shores. North Korea’s relentless pursuit of more powerful nuclear and missile capabilities, starting with the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2019-05-16/why-north-korea-testing-missiles-again">resumption of ballistic missiles tests</a> in May 2019 after an 18-month lull, has stiffened views in the South.</p>
<p>President Yoon himself <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/world/asia/south-korea-nuclear-weapons.html">floated the idea of self-nuclearization</a> earlier this year. But the Washington Declaration appears to have tempered down such sentiment. In it, Yoon “reaffirmed the (Republic of Korea’s) longstanding commitment” to the <a href="https://www.state.gov/nuclear-nonproliferation-treaty/">Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty</a>, which would prevent the country from building up its own nuclear weapons stockpile.</p>
<h2>How will the declaration affect regional tensions?</h2>
<p>A staple of North Korean propaganda is that its arms program is a response to <a href="https://beyondparallel.csis.org/hostile-policy-north-korean-views-united-states/">U.S. “hostile policy”</a> – which Pyongyang defines as anything from Washington raising concerns about its <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/north-korea">egregious human rights record</a> to the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-usa-alliance/factbox-u-s-and-south-koreas-security-arrangement-cost-of-troops-idUSKBN2AZ0S0">stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/south-north-korea-us-drills-nuclear-66f94a64982e255b23ae6ac7860a5e2c">joint U.S.-South Korea military drills</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People walk in front of a TV screen showing a missile taking off." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523193/original/file-20230427-27-c80jv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">North Korea has launched more than 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-watch-a-television-screen-showing-a-news-broadcast-news-photo/1251763562?adppopup=true">Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As such, it is reasonable to assume that Pyongyang will respond with a threatening act or two in the coming days. Using the Washington Declaration as cover, expect North Korea to embark on another brazen act of defiance. Last December, Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and deputy, threatened an intercontinental ballistic missile test on a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-north-8c77f7b14bf07a1fee8d05da8a30a850">normal trajectory</a>, rather than the steep angle launches that avoid threatening nearby countries. And in 2017, North Korea’s former foreign minister Ri Yong Ho suggested that Kim Jong Un was considering testing a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-atmospheric-test/a-north-korea-nuclear-test-over-the-pacific-logical-terrifying-idUSKCN1BX0W5">hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific</a>. Either would represent a ratcheting up of North Korea’s provocations.</p>
<p>China, meanwhile, is likely to fall back on its decades-old mantra that issues on the Korean Peninsula need to be <a href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/c36100/201903/ba8ff1d273bb472fb6ebd390ca63d114.shtml">resolved “through dialogue</a>” – a position that not only fails to penalize Pyongyang but indirectly empowers the isolationist state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sung-Yoon Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The ‘Washington Declaration’ unveiled during the state visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol gives Seoul a greater role in coordinating a nuclear response strategy.
Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor in Korean Studies, Tufts University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200398
2023-02-21T19:35:08Z
2023-02-21T19:35:08Z
Russia announces its suspension from last nuclear arms agreement with the US, escalating nuclear tension
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511465/original/file-20230221-24-6sg9ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman in Crimea watches a TV broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech on Feb. 21, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1247345395/photo/crimea-russia-ukraine-conflict-politics.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=UqQnoifQCfSbPhe_nmZuOHXBei9wh71hD85x_jRii8M=">Stringer/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After decades of progress on limiting the buildup of nuclear weapons, Russia’s war on Ukraine has prompted renewed <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-nato-europe-6d1e374e77504838ba9ca78dd8bce46c">nuclear tensions</a> between Russia and the United States.</p>
<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual State of the Nation address on Feb. 21, 2023, that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/21/putin-speech-ukraine-state-of-nation/">Russia is “suspending</a>” its participation in the U.S. and Russia’s last remaining nuclear arms agreement – known as New START.</p>
<p>“Our relations have degraded, and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” said Putin, who stopped short of entirely withdrawing Russia from the deal that aims to limit nuclear arms expansion.</p>
<p>In the same speech, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-update-russias-elite-ukraine-war-major-speech-2023-02-21/">Putin threatened to resume nuclear</a> testing if the U.S. does the same, claiming that the U.S. is considering renewed nuclear testing. The U.S. has <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjspdTanKf9AhV-I0QIHaE1AcoQFnoECA0QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrsreports.congress.gov%2Fproduct%2Fpdf%2FIF%2FIF12266&usg=AOvVaw2z1O_4wAm5IACeGogd2O7B">repeatedly reaffirmed</a> that it can modernize and certify the reliability of its nuclear weapons without resorting to testing.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/21/blinken-putin-nuclear-treaty-00083740">quickly condemned</a> Putin’s announcement, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stolenberg said that Russia’s suspension from the deal makes the world a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-update-russias-elite-ukraine-war-major-speech-2023-02-21/">more dangerous place</a>.</p>
<p>Putin’s announcement greatly weakens the last remaining arms control agreement but does not immediately terminate it. By “suspending” rather than withdrawing from the treaty, Putin retains the possibility of reactiving the agreement – without having to renegotiate it or have the U.S. Congress ratify it once more.</p>
<p>The New START is the only remaining agreement between the U.S. and Russia limiting the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. It allows both countries to regularly, and with limited advance notice, inspect each other’s nuclear weapons arsenals.</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1022718">worked on</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/price-of-peace-motivated-reasoning-and-costly-signaling-in-international-relations/931AC830FEB7D24D26800E22558D9F9D">researched nuclear</a> nonproliferation for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90978-3">two decades</a>. </p>
<p>Convincing countries <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/USRussiaNuclearAgreements">to reduce</a> their nuclear weapons stockpiles <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/north-korea-south-africa/539265/">or renounce</a> the pursuit of this ultimate weapon has always been extremely difficult. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young students hide under their desks and look out in a black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456693/original/file-20220406-20442-bd5h6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students at a school in Brooklyn, N.Y., conduct a nuclear attack drill in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/students-at-a-brooklyn-middle-school-have-a-duck-and-cover-practice-picture-id566420175?s=2048x2048">GraphicaArtis/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>A history of nonproliferation</h2>
<p>The Soviet Union, U.S., United Kingdom, France, Israel and China <a href="https://doi.org/10.2968/066004008">had active nuclear</a> weapons programs in the 1960s. </p>
<p>Countries recognized the risk of a nuclear war in the future. </p>
<p>Sixty-two countries initially agreed to what’s been called the “<a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Weiss">Grand Bargain</a>” in 1967, an essential element of the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/">Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons</a>. One hundred and ninety-one countries eventually signed this treaty. </p>
<p>The agreement prevented the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that didn’t already have them <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/timeline/timeline1960.html">by 1967</a>. Countries with nuclear weapons, like the U.S. and the U.K., agreed to end their nuclear arms race and work toward eventual disarmament, meaning the destruction of all nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>This landmark agreement laid the groundwork for agreements between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to further reduce their nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. It also stopped other countries from developing and <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/test-ban-treaty-at-a-glance">testing</a> nuclear weapons until the end of the Cold War. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nti.org/countries/israel/">Israel</a>, <a href="https://fas.org/blogs/security/2021/12/indias-nuclear-arsenal-takes-a-big-step-forward/">India</a> and <a href="https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-09/nuclear-notebook-how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-pakistan-have-in-2021/">Pakistan</a> never joined the agreement because of regional security concerns. They all now possess nuclear weapons. North Korea <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005-05/features/npt-withdrawal-time-security-council-step">withdrew</a> from the agreement and developed nuclear <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41174689">weapons</a>. </p>
<h2>Some successes</h2>
<p>There have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/25751654.2020.1824500">major achievements</a> in preventing countries from gaining nuclear weapons and dramatically reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles since the Cold War. </p>
<p>The global nuclear stockpile has been reduced by 82% since 1986, from a peak of 70,300, with nearly all of the reductions in the U.S. and Russia, who held the largest stockpiles at the time.</p>
<p><a href="https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/">Globally</a> there are now <a href="https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/">around 12,700 nuclear weapons,</a> with about 90% held by <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat">Russia and the U.S.</a> – or between 5,000 to 6,000 weapons each.</p>
<p>Several other countries have nuclear weapons, and most of them have a few hundred weapons each, including the United Kingdom, France and China – though China has been building up its nuclear stockpile. <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/nuclear-warheads-by-country-1945-2022/">Newer nuclear countries</a> like India, Pakistan and Israel have around 100 each, while North Korea has around 20. </p>
<p>Starting in the late 1960s, countries agreed to more <a href="https://nuke.fas.org/control/index.html">than a dozen</a> legally binding agreements, or treaties, that limited new countries from getting nuclear weapons and prohibited nuclear weapons testing, among other measures.</p>
<p>But they have not reduced the number of <a href="https://armscontrolcenter.org/u-s-nonstrategic-nuclear-weapons/">nuclear weapons</a> with <a href="https://www.heritage.org/missile-defense/commentary/russias-small-nukes-are-big-problem">short-range</a> missiles.</p>
<p>No agreements cover <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00794-y">these weapons</a>, which <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/limited-tactical-nuclear-weapons-would-be-catastrophic/">could also cause</a> widespread destruction and deaths. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people wearing suits and large cut out faces of Putin and Biden hold fake ballistic missiles high above their heads." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456664/original/file-20220406-14533-6aj5iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peace protesters in Berlin call for more nuclear disarmament in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/peace-activists-wearing-masks-of-russian-president-vladimir-putin-and-picture-id1230850574?s=2048x2048">John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>U.S.-Russia cooperation declines</h2>
<p>U.S.-Russia engagement on nuclear weapons changed when Russia forcibly <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/03/17/crimea-six-years-after-illegal-annexation/">annexed Crimea</a> from Ukraine in 2014. </p>
<p>Russia <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/russias-controversial-9m729-missile-system-a-not-so-secret-secret/a-46606193">built up land missiles</a> in <a href="https://baltic-review.com/defence-lithuania-is-preparing-for-a-russian-invasion/kaliningrad-map/">Kaliningrad</a>, an enclave of Russia in the middle of Eastern Europe, in 2014.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2014-09/news/russia-breaches-inf-treaty-us-says">U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46443672">NATO</a> then accused Russia of violating a <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty">1987 nuclear agreement</a> on short- and intermediate-range land missiles. From Russia, these could travel from 311 to 3,418 miles (500 to 5,500 kilometers), hitting targets as far as London. </p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://2017-2021.state.gov/u-s-withdrawal-from-the-inf-treaty-on-august-2-2019/index.html">also terminated</a> this agreement in 2019 because of reported Russian violations. Now, there are no international nuclear agreements in Europe. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.state.gov/new-start/">New START</a> agreement, signed by Russia and the U.S., remains the one main strategic nuclear weapons agreement in place. </p>
<p>It was to continue <a href="https://www.state.gov/on-the-extension-of-the-new-start-treaty-with-the-russian-federation/">until at least 2026</a>. </p>
<p>The U.S. and Russia halted all inspections of each other’s nuclear weapon sites and operations in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/74a5d3f6-7e41-40e5-bc8e-ba22a93e2cf4">hundreds of notifications</a> were still exchanged between the two states, reducing the likelihood of miscalculations and misunderstandings. In November 2022, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-01-31/russia-not-complying-with-inspection-obligation-under-nuclear-arms-treaty-u-s-says">Russia canceled</a> talks to resume inspections. The U.S. considers these violations of the agreement, but <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8063d76b-ed19-4fc0-b162-cc27a225ebec">not an altogether outright material breach</a> of the treaty.</p>
<h2>Impact of Ukraine war</h2>
<p>Putin has repeatedly ignited concern <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2023-01-03/russian-setbacks-in-ukraine-set-tone-for-2023">that Russia’s setbacks during</a> its nearly year-old war with Ukraine – as well <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64404928">as Western involvement</a> in the conflict – <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/03/29/would-russia-really-launch-nuclear-weapons">could result</a> in Russia’s launching a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/24/putins-nuclear-threats-move-doomsday-clock-closest-ever-to-armageddon-atomic-scientists-say.html">nuclear attack</a> on Ukraine or another country in the West.</p>
<p>A single nuclear weapon today in a major city <a href="https://www.icanw.org/modeling_the_effects_on_cities">could immediately kill</a> anywhere from 52,000 to several million people, depending on the weapon’s size.</p>
<p>The U.S. and Russia’s arms control regime was successful in the Cold War because it included significant verification mechanisms – direct inspections of each party’s nuclear arsenal with <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/new-start">less than 24 hours’ notice</a>.</p>
<p>Russia and the U.S. have <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/new-start">conducted 306 inspections</a> since New START took effect in 2011. Without New START, all inspections of nuclear bases and support facilities will end. </p>
<p>During nuclear talks in 1987, President Ronald Reagan translated a Russian maxim, saying, “<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4757483/user-clip-trust-verify">trust, but verify</a>,” the foundation of the nuclear arms control regime. </p>
<p>If the U.S. and Russia are no longer transparent about their nuclear arsenals and developments, pressure for both countries to develop new nuclear weapons and delivery systems will increase, along with the risk of miscalculations. </p>
<p>The U.S. State Department already told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/politics/us-russia-nuclear-treat.html">Congress in January 2023</a> that Russia is not complying with New START. Russia has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8063d76b-ed19-4fc0-b162-cc27a225ebec">denied these accusations and accused</a> the U.S. of violating the agreement as well. Putin reiterated <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-business/ap-putin-suspends-russias-involvement-in-key-nuclear-arms-pact/">these accusations</a> on Feb. 21, 2023. </p>
<p>While Putin has not followed through on <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/no-russian-muscle-movements-after-putins-nuclear-readiness-alert-us-says-2022-02-28/">his threat</a> of a nuclear strike, the potential for a nuclear attack has <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/13/22975269/ukraine-poland-us-mig-fighter-jets-military-aid-escalation">meant the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18023383">NATO have responded to Russia’s attack on Ukraine</a> with this lingering threat in mind.</p>
<p>The U.S. and NATO members <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3866266-biden-announces-500m-in-new-military-aid-to-ukraine-during-surprise-visit/">announced in</a> January and February <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uk-will-help-other-countries-willing-send-aircraft-ukraine-sunak-says-2023-02-18/">2023 plans</a> to increase their <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-receive-120-140-tanks-first-wave-deliveries-minister-2023-01-31/">military assistance</a>) to Ukraine. This might signal a change to the United States’ and NATO countries’ strategy, so far, of limiting their direct support to Ukraine and avoiding further escalation with Russia in the conflict.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-is-sparking-new-nuclear-threats-understanding-nonproliferation-history-helps-place-this-in-context-180533">article originally published on April 8, 2022</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina Srinivasan Rathbun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Putin’s announcement to Russia will no longer participate in the New START pauses the last remaining nuclear weapons agreement between the U.S. and Russia.
Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198870
2023-02-01T04:21:06Z
2023-02-01T04:21:06Z
I study how radiation interacts with the environment – and the capsule lost in WA is a whole new ballgame
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507273/original/file-20230131-125-wacbvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C4525%2C3021&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>By now, you’ve probably heard about a tiny radioactive capsule that went missing from the back of a truck somewhere in Western Australia. Inside is a small but dangerous amount of Caesium-137, a radioactive chemical element that can harm both people and nature.</p>
<p>My research <a href="https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/science/research/school-centres/centre-for-marine-ecosystems-research/research-themes/marine-radioactivity-and-tracers2/related-content/lists/reconstruction-of-environmental-change-using-natural-archives">focuses on</a> detecting human-caused radioactive elements in the Australian environment. </p>
<p>These chemicals can <a href="https://www.irsn.fr/EN/publications/technical-publications/Documents/long_term_environmental_behaviour_of_radionuclides.pdf">persist</a> in water, soil, sediments, plants and animals, and even travel up food chains. But the situation of the lost capsule is unique. That makes it hard to predict the environmental damage it might cause.</p>
<p>Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long-term system of surveys and sampling will be needed, across a broad area, to monitor for radiation and protect humans and the environment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="rocky hills at sunset" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507275/original/file-20230131-24-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The landscape near Newman in remote WA, where the capsule began its journey. The environmental effects of the accident are unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stay well away</h2>
<p>The radioactive capsule fell from a truck somewhere along a 1,400-kilometre stretch of road between Newman and Perth. Authorities are now searching for it.</p>
<p>The device was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/rio-tinto-apologises-after-radioactive-capsule-lost-australia-2023-01-29/">part of a gauge</a> being used at a Rio Tinto mine in the Kimberley region and was being transported by a contractor.</p>
<p>It contained Caesium-137, a nuclear fission product used in high-tech equipment. The radioactive element is also a byproduct of nuclear weapons and reactors.</p>
<p>The lost device is tiny – just 6mm by 8mm. The Caesium-137 is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/abcperth/videos/dfes-are-providing-a-live-update-about-a-current-hazmat-incident/1366569623917214/">contained</a> in ceramic material, which is then encased in a steel outer shell.</p>
<p>The capsule could eventually corrode when exposed to the elements.</p>
<p>People who come across the capsule could become seriously unwell, including developing burns, radiation sickness and, in the longer term, cancer. But plants, animals and ecosystems are at risk, too.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1618912394968981512"}"></div></p>
<h2>How might nature be harmed?</h2>
<p>It’s <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0265931X96892769">well-documented</a> that caesium can accumulate in food webs. </p>
<p>The capsule was lost in a remote outback area. There, small animals such as insects and rodents could ingest all or part of the capsule, and suffer ill-effects. Plants can also absorb radiation.</p>
<p>If those animals or plants are then eaten by other animals, the radioactive caesium may travel up the food chain.</p>
<p>Research has found lower animal population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas. Radioactive caesium from Chernobyl, for example, can <a href="https://theconversation.com/at-chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife-57030">still be detected</a> in some food products today.</p>
<p>The damage caused by radiation varies depending on the type of radiation emitted, the amount of radiation present, and the ways a person or organism interacts with it. An animal that ingests the capsule, for instance, would suffer more harm than one that briefly walked past it.</p>
<p>My PhD research involves testing for radioactivity in the marine environment of the Montebello Islands off WA, where Britain conducted nuclear tests in the 1950s. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I discovered human-caused radioactive elements including Caesium-137. The elements exceeded “background” levels – in other words, the levels you could expect in the soil in a suburban backyard or in sand at your local beach. </p>
<p>We are currently seeking to understand if these levels pose a risk to people and nature, and how the radioactive elements move around the environment.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tiny-radioactive-capsule-is-lost-on-a-highway-in-western-australia-heres-what-you-need-to-know-198761">A tiny radioactive capsule is lost on a highway in Western Australia. Here's what you need to know</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="woman stands in coastal landscape with pipes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507276/original/file-20230131-24-kpf32l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author at the Montebello Islands where she and her team tested for radioactivity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn McMahon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The great unknown</h2>
<p>WA authorities are searching for the lost capsule by trying to detect radiation from Caesium-137 in the environment. But this will not be easy. </p>
<p>The radiation was not dispersed over a large area, such as in a mushroom cloud following a weapons test. It was encased and condensed – though it may eventually escape the casing. </p>
<p>Working out what harm the radiation may cause is also difficult. The two most notable releases of Caesium-137 to date have occurred overseas, at <a href="https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_28292/chernobyl-chapter-ii-the-release-dispersion-deposition-and-behaviour-of-radionuclides">Chernobyl</a> in Ukraine and <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-9404-2_1">Fukushima</a> in Japan. Both were large-scale releases from nuclear power plants – very different to the current situation in WA.</p>
<p>There have been smaller radioactive releases around the world. But most occurred in environments very different to Australia’s. We don’t have a great deal of information about how Caesium-137, and other radioactive elements, move through hot, arid environments such as ours.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="damaged nuclear power plant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507277/original/file-20230131-16-8nj0xi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most Caaesium-137 releases to date have occurred overseas at places such as Fukushima.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/KYDPL KYODO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How long will the radiation last?</h2>
<p>This lost capsule is an entirely different ballgame to Caesium-137 releases in the past. Its radiation is currently 19 billion becquerels (a unit used to measure radioactivity). That is many orders of magnitude greater than what I’m dealing with at the Montebello Islands, for example.</p>
<p>If we apply what’s known as the <a href="https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ExponentialDecay.html">exponential decay equation</a>, in 100 years’ time the capsule’s radiation level will have fallen to about 1.9 billion becquerels. But even then it might still pose a risk to people or the environment. </p>
<p>Using the same equation, in 1,000 years, the radiation level will be about 1.9 becquerels. This might be too low for our current instruments to detect, and might not necessarily pose a significant safety hazard. However, the risk would still depend on many variables.</p>
<h2>The long game</h2>
<p>At the moment, the search for the lost capsule is in the acute phase. Let’s hope authorities find it soon. </p>
<p>If that doesn’t happen, the next step will be determining how to best keep looking for it. </p>
<p>The current resource-intensive searching – such as scouring highways on foot or slowly by vehicle – can’t go on forever. But if the capsule remains lost, ongoing sampling, surveys and monitoring is needed to protect people and the environment over the longer term. </p>
<p>Understandably, headlines about radiation accidents evoke public concern. But it’s important to stress that, if the device remains on the side of the road, the probability of a person stumbling across it by accident is very small. </p>
<p>Although unfortunately, the same can’t be said for wildlife.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-bananas-really-radioactive-an-expert-clears-up-common-misunderstandings-about-radiation-193211">Are bananas really 'radioactive'? An expert clears up common misunderstandings about radiation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madison Williams-Hoffman receives funding from the federal government RTP Scholarship program, Her PhD has also been partially funded by Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).</span></em></p>
Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long term system of monitoring is needed to protect humans and the environment.
Madison Williams-Hoffman, PhD Candidate in Environmental Radioactivity, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163280
2021-07-22T13:42:41Z
2021-07-22T13:42:41Z
From Crossroads to Godzilla: the cinematic legacies of the first postwar nuclear tests
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412623/original/file-20210722-19-1xbqhc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=332%2C4%2C2389%2C1562&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Baker test of Operation Crossroads, July 25 1946.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/baker-test-operation-crossroads-july-25-339956981">Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I sat in a darkened cinema in 1998, mesmerised and unnerved by the opening nuclear bomb explosions that framed the beginning of Roland Emmerich’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/">Godzilla</a>, it felt like I was watching the most expensive special effect in history.</p>
<p>Vast expanding clouds and fireballs eclipsed their surroundings and smothered everything in their path, dropping radioactive material that gave rise to the title monster. I had never encountered anything like this. I appreciated the creativity of those 90s films that tried to push visual boundaries through emerging computer technology, but this was on a different scale. I later discovered that there was a good reason for this – the footage was real.</p>
<p>The film did win <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/awards">awards</a> for its special effects, although that was for the giant lizard itself and scenes of New York landmarks being shattered by its rampage, not the precise origin or significance of those fleeting mushroom clouds.</p>
<p>I kept coming back to those images and the accompaniment of haunting, almost other-worldly, choral music. It sent shivers down my spine, and still does every time I re-watch it.</p>
<p>It was that footage which started my journey towards research into nuclear history, and which led to me becoming a visiting fellow at the British Library’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/eccles-centre">Eccles Centre for American Studies</a>, where I study their collections, including the early pictorial history of nuclear testing.</p>
<p>Many of those iconic images which originally stunned me came from the aptly named <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/operation-crossroads">Operation Crossroads</a> – an exercise 75 years ago involving the first postwar nuclear weapons tests in July 1946, conducted by a joint US army-navy task force in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It involved 42,000 people, around 150 support vessels and over 90 target ships and submarines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A rapidly expanding cloud of spray from an explosion (nuclear) detonated underwater, framed by small clouds in the air and small black dots around it on the ocean surface which were large naval ships." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409657/original/file-20210705-42341-1fmjk04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crossroads baker nuclear explosion and the target ships around it, as seen from an aircraft camera, 25 July 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Army Signal Corps</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also used over half the world’s supply of film footage and hundreds of cameras to capture the nuclear detonations. Officially, this extensive filming was driven by military policy and scientific considerations, US political and military leaders wanting to understand the effects of this new weapon. At the same time, the demonstration of these weapons on film also served to showcase US power to a global audience.</p>
<p>The literal and psychological shock waves of that event were significant in the early cold war and in shaping the modern world, from setting precedents for thousands of subsequent bomb tests and accelerating the arms race to long-lasting radioactive <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/bombs-and-the-bikini-atoll/">environmental damage</a> in locations where these tests occurred. </p>
<p>Crossroads even led to the invention of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/15/bruce-conner-crossroads-1976-nuclear-test-film-rapture">language</a> of terms to describe nuclear testing (through over two months of negotiation). Some terms agreed on are perhaps less familiar, including “cauliflower cloud” and “base surge”, while others (like “fallout”) have become ubiquitous since.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/75-years-after-nuclear-testing-in-the-pacific-began-the-fallout-continues-to-wreak-havoc-158208">75 years after nuclear testing in the Pacific began, the fallout continues to wreak havoc</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Crossroads had such an impact because it was almost a blockbuster movie production in its filmic scale and focus – a military-scientific cinematic spectacle, unique among over 2,000 nuclear tests conducted worldwide by all nations since.</p>
<p>Even as much of its cold war origins and significance lie forgotten, Crossroads’ cinematic legacies have lived on over the last 75 years. Photos and footage from it have been used widely, from propaganda to popular culture: from Godzilla movies to internet <a href="https://youtu.be/f37K0hIv3zk?t=136">memes</a>. It has been employed to inform, to protest, as cultural symbols, and in ways which have obscured or re-framed aspects of nuclear history, shifting away from legacies of US testing, or even making the bomb a monster-destroying weapon (seen not least through Godzilla), much like a mushroom cloud enveloping everything in its path.</p>
<h2>The world’s most expensive film shoot</h2>
<p>Crossroads fundamentally changed the film profile of atom bombs. Still images of those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had appeared in many newspapers, but there was limited camera footage of these. There were also only a few thousand TVs in the US in 1946, so for many the Crossroads footage would be watched in cinema newsreels (whether in the US or other countries). </p>
<p>The Crossroads plan was large in scale and complexity, but underpinned by one central concept: assembling a fleet of around 90 decommissioned US naval ships (including three captured German and Japanese vessels), anchoring them in a remote lagoon in the Pacific (Bikini Atoll) and setting off atom bombs against them. A truly blockbuster plan.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GcWGT8_vvo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Operation Crossroads. Underwater atomic blast again rocks Bikini Atoll’, British Pathé newsreel, 1946.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The stated goal was to test how atomic bombs would affect naval vessels, better to improve the design of future ships and such defensive arrangements as anchoring them in harbours, in the event that America faced the atom bombs of other nations in the future – though only the US had the bomb at this time. But Crossroads was later widened to test damage to other types of material and equipment, as well as measuring various effects of the weapons, such as (rather unsettlingly) the biological impact on thousands of animals present on target ships, including pigs, goats and rats.</p>
<p>Crossroads has been described as one of the most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/15/bruce-conner-crossroads-1976-nuclear-test-film-rapture">photographed</a> events in history, and this had had several practical effects for moviemakers, even before the first weapon had been exploded. As more than half the world’s available stock of film footage was bought up for cameras to record the tests, there were months of shortages in Hollywood and other major studios around the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white image showing anchored ships." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412627/original/file-20210722-27-1p3qvuz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prospective target and support ships for Operation Crossroads anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, February 27 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Target_and_support_ships_for_Operation_Crossroads_at_Pearl_Harbor,_Hawaii_(USA),_in_February_1946_(80-G-702126).jpg">© Naval History & Heritage Command</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New high-speed cameras were used to capture even the first fractions of a second after detonation (although these didn’t always go to <a href="https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/view/10328/11419">plan</a>). Subsequent nuclear tests prompted <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/high-speed-photography">further</a> developments of these technologies, some of which would later make their way into fields from commercial cinematography to medicine.</p>
<p>Some of the first drone cameras – a concept evoking images of 21st-century movie-making – were also significantly developed and <a href="https://dronecenter.bard.edu/the-drones-of-the-atomic-age/">used</a> in Crossroads. Large four-propeller engine B-17 bombers were rigged with TV cameras and transmitters so that they could be flown remotely as drone aircraft, to film the explosions and to collect radioactive samples from clouds. Similar arrangements were made for small, un-crewed boats. While a far cry from modern military and civil drones, such experiments were groundbreaking, leading to shots that would previously have been impossible, and laying foundations for future developments in both drones and in remote-controlled photography.</p>
<p>Development of the atomic bomb had been shrouded in the utmost secrecy throughout the second world war, to the point that the public and most members of Congress didn’t know about it until after Hiroshima was bombed. Even Harry Truman – as vice president – hadn’t known of its existence until he succeeded President Roosevelt in April 1945. This made the widespread publicity of Crossroads as a global media event one year later even more remarkable. Observers were invited to attend the tests from such unlikely places as the Soviet Union. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This story is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>While the visuals of nuclear tests may be well recognised, the sound adds another dimension to their impact. The orchestras of the US Armed Forces provided custom music for films of the tests, whether for <a href="https://youtu.be/2HkLZekOZLU?t=1342">classified</a> or <a href="https://youtu.be/B8JrnU-9SMM?t=130">public</a> consumption, akin to the dramatic soundtracks of action or superhero adventures, or the eerie music of horror movies that creates the atmosphere. </p>
<p>The music was usually reserved as rousing chords for the opening and ending, or particularly poignant moments, such as observing damage to ships, though not for the detonations themselves. By contrast, all cinematic and documentary uses of Crossroads almost always overlay detonation footage with dramatic music.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gy6-ZKWCoH0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Crossroads Baker detonation, with added music and with commentary by William Shatner, as featured in the revised version of the 1995 documentary ‘Trinity and Beyond’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>One of a kind</h2>
<p>“Those black dots are battleships? But they’re so tiny,” was the amazed reaction of one student when I showed their class footage from Crossroads – it was by no means an isolated response. The iconic nature of those images partly stems from Crossroads being distinctive among nuclear tests, particularly the second detonation, Crossroads Baker, on July 25 1946. </p>
<p>Almost all nuclear weapons tested have either been detonated within the atmosphere (ground or air, sometimes on the verge of space), in which case the first sign of the explosion has involved a blinding flash obscuring everything, or underground, in which there was often much less to see, except eerie <a href="https://youtu.be/u1Xe1TUQrpY?t=4">videos</a> of the earth slowly giving way to form a crater before kicking up dust. Underground testing could, of course, still lead to dramatic (and disturbing) footage, such as the ground rising up before exploding, a particularly notable example being the Operation Storax <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZbL_uKBQzY">Sedan</a> detonation in 1962, which was testing (almost unbelievably) ways of using nuclear weapons for civil construction in large excavation projects.</p>
<p>Crossroads Baker, meanwhile, was detonated just underwater, meaning it could be observed from the moment the explosion reached the surface. The visual effect was also made all the more powerful by the surrounding lagoon, the rapidly expanding blast hurling what were later estimated to be over two million tonnes of water and spray high into the air. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gm79CUjqcZ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Silent footage from a ground angle with a clear view of the Crossroads Baker detonation, showing the growth of the explosion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The scale of subsequent test series was different. While the bombs increased in power hundreds of times after Crossroads (and tests grew from using two weapons to sometimes up to 30 or 40 in a single operation), never again was there such a fleet assembled to be bombed.</p>
<p>Filming of tests became an industry in its own right, with subsequent tests having an entire US Air Force <a href="https://www.lookoutamerica.org/about">studio</a> at Lookout Mountain Laboratory being dedicated to them. But there was rarely the same gathering of news media or scale of filming as at Crossroads. Footage of later tests, while still released in some propaganda and news films, also became less public for various reasons, including security.</p>
<p>There were no further underwater tests until 1955 with Operation <a href="https://youtu.be/9PQ_Kpsn5Ss?t=80">Wigwam</a>, which examined a concept originally planned for the cancelled third Crossroads test, Charlie, on the effects of deep ocean nuclear explosions against submarines. Wigwam similarly saw no repeat of the Crossroads fleet – only three miniature submarines anchored to the bomb for taking damage measurements, alongside a modest number of support vessels.</p>
<h2>Other stories</h2>
<p>For all the effort of being so widely photographed, much of the footage captured remained classified. Some was released in 1946 newsreel and public information films, more appeared in the 1960s, and <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/environmental-diplomacy-nuclear-vault/2016-07-01/70th-anniversary-operation-crossroads">further</a> photographs and footage were released in 2016. </p>
<p>Crossroads had a book as well: an “Official Pictorial Report”, something not repeated in any other test series and publicly available with around 200 photographs and captions. It has been a very valuable and often-overlooked time capsule of how the test was recorded and presented, but is also only a drop in the lagoon of 50,000 still images captured. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People swimming in a lagoon, with some sunbathing on a beach, ships in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412649/original/file-20210722-19-t6e879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photo from <em>The Official Pictorial Record</em> captioned: ‘On the beach at Bikini, men of the Task Force try out the swimming facilities’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Operation Crossroads: The Official Pictorial Record</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many photos are of the people involved rather than the bombs themselves. In the Official Report, for instance, I discovered that only a fifth of the images show mushroom clouds; the rest charting things like scientific preparations or the aftermath of tests, but also everyday life for the task-force members conducting them. The more I saw them, the more <a href="https://blogs.bl.uk/americas/2020/07/atomic-holiday-snaps-depictions-of-normality-in-the-official-photography-of-postwar-atomic-bomb-tests.html">I became fascinated</a> with how these people were adapting to living through such events. It was like seeing “behind the scenes” footage.</p>
<p>And then there are the people who are only represented briefly in these images, often in a particular light, or excluded entirely – such as the existing population of 167 people at Bikini Atoll. These people ostensibly “agreed” to give up their homes for science, but, in reality, felt that they didn’t have a choice, and also assumed that the move would only be temporary. </p>
<p>This was one of the first examples of nuclear colonialism. They were relocated to Rongerik Atoll, where food sources turned out not to be sustainable, and relocated further times after that. About 150 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2002/aug/06/travelnews.nuclearindustry.environment">returned</a> to Bikini in the 1970s, but the health dangers from radioactivity left behind by subsequent tests meant they had to leave again in 1978 and have never been able to return. Their story only received the greater attention it deserves <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/environmental-diplomacy-nuclear-vault/2016-07-01/70th-anniversary-operation-crossroads">in recent years</a>.</p>
<p>In the world of box office films, the predominant cinematic uses of Crossroads’ historic footage remains the mushroom cloud, inescapable in its iconic and instantly recognisable form. But the ways in which it has been used out of context in such films as Godzilla can create new meanings for how others depicted nuclear history, while further obscuring the original ones.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mushroom cloud cake is cut." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412629/original/file-20210722-17-1k2bqg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Admiral William Blandy, who led Operation Crossroads, and his wife cut a mushroom cloud cake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Admiral_Blandy_Mushroom_Cloud_Cake.jpg">Harris & Ewing Studio/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>(Mis)appropriation of Crossroads</h2>
<p>Crossroads’ footage has been used in a wide variety of settings, from the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove to YouTube memes. But the Godzilla uses stand out, both in my own personal experience, but also because of their significance of wider trends in how nuclear history has been re-interpreted cinematically. </p>
<p>Even in 1998, I saw Godzilla as an allegory for the effects of nuclear tests and radiation. It was only when reading about the 1954 original that I learned the wider history: in the original (Japanese) story, Godzilla is an embodiment of the harm from nuclear weapons themselves and particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 1954 Godzilla was a peaceful ancient dinosaur, sent on a rampage by the effects of radiation from an atomic explosion. But this narrative became distorted in some later <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/godzilla-king-monsters-sequel-hollywood-japan-origins-atomic-bomb-a8932921.html">remakes</a>, whether aimed at Japanese or western audiences. </p>
<p>A particular <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/6/13856652/godzilla-japan-america-gojira">criticism</a> of US adaptations, right from US re-cuts of the 1954 original that were sold back to Japan, has been the removal of overt references within the movies to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or indeed to any of the problematic aspects of US nuclear history.</p>
<p>The 1998 film begins by focusing on Godzilla as being created by French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Such detonations did indeed happen, although the footage used is entirely that of American Pacific nuclear testing (Crossroads Baker featuring prominently from different angles alongside a few shots of other tests). Little visual and audio cues reinforce this fiction by superimposing over a montage of test preparations a map of French Polynesia, a countdown in French, and <em>La Marseillaise</em> playing in the background. </p>
<p>There are other hints later in the film which – as subtle as the presence of Godzilla itself – include Jean Reno as leader of a “French Secret Service” team who signals their job is to clean up the problems created by their country’s tests in the Pacific, and a US TV station helpfully putting up a map of Godzilla’s origins alongside a big sign “French Nuke Testing”.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/">2014 film</a> goes even further in its repainting of nuclear testing history. The opening also starts with Pacific tests, although framed as being the 1954 US thermonuclear weapons test, Castle Bravo. This time, instead of starting with a Godzilla created by atom bomb radiation, the nuclear tests are portrayed as a weapon used to try to kill Godzilla.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NBQJjqnG1iI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Opening shots of Godzilla (2014), prominently featuring footage of the Crossroads Baker detonation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, it’s ironic that the film starts with an attempt to kill the embodiment of the effects of nuclear weapons, Godzilla, with nuclear weapons. And that the real-life 1954 Castle Bravo test went out of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge865CR9pN8">control</a> because of an unexpected reaction, spreading radiation much further than planned, severely <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2013_03/No-Promised-Land-The-Shared-Legacy-of-the-Castle-Bravo-Nuclear-Test">affecting</a> the population of the Rongelap and Utirik Atolls with radiation poisoning, as well as sailors on a Japanese fishing trawler, one of whom later died. This story of the fishermen ignited protests in Japan over nuclear testing, resonating with the still fresh wounds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and acting as a major inspiration for the original Japanese Godzilla film that same year.</p>
<p>For all the advancements in special effects technology, at the crucial moment of detonation, the iconic footage of Crossroads Baker still appears as the centrepiece in the 2014 Godzilla. It is interspersed with a more computer-generated mushroom cloud and the mimicking of shock waves hitting island beaches, but the continued usage shows its cinematic longevity. </p>
<p>It is not that there weren’t videos of Castle Bravo available. On the contrary, <a href="https://youtu.be/tURi2xVlr7w?t=64">footage</a> of it has been iconic, and terrifying, in its own right in documentaries and films, and that bomb itself was over 700 times more powerful than Crossroads Baker. It is possible that these films, taken from a greater distance, didn’t have quite the same, seemingly close-up, unobscured, and immediate feeling of scale as Baker, flanked by full-sized naval ships that appear as mere toys against the mushroom cloud.</p>
<p>To stunned moviegoers like myself, Crossroads may well have been the most expensive special effects in history. Adjusted for inflation, the operation would have cost over US$800 million in 1998, possibly even more with added technical and safety complexities (fortunately, US and Soviet atmospheric nuclear testing had ended in 1962). As such, those few seconds of nuclear explosion opening shots in Godzilla alone required more than 6.5 times the entire budget of the monster movie they ended up in.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of men brushing and cleaning the deck of a ship to try to remove the radiation fallout from an atomic explosion." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409666/original/file-20210705-27-jjmbh6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sailors scrubbing down the German cruiser Prinz Eugen with brushes, water, soap, and lye. Five months later, the ship was still too radioactive to permit repairs to a leak, and she sank.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anonymous Military Photographer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the cost which can never be calculated is the power of those images upon the human imagination and fear, as well as their effect on the nuclear arms race. Many target ships, while damaged, survived Crossroads Baker, but were enveloped in so much radioactive seawater that decontamination became almost impossible, except for a few vessels.</p>
<p>Plans to sail the remaining ships back to the US triumphantly gave way to sinking most of them, albeit without the same fanfare as the operation itself. A forgotten end credits scene on which the cameras never rolled, but the fallout from which fogs the films to this day. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/billionaire-space-race-the-ultimate-symbol-of-capitalisms-flawed-obsession-with-growth-164511?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Billionaire space race: the ultimate symbol of capitalism’s flawed obsession with growth</a></em></p></li>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-soviet-miner-from-the-1930s-helped-create-todays-intense-corporate-workplace-culture-155814?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">How a Soviet miner from the 1930s helped create today’s intense corporate workplace culture</a></em></p></li>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Noël Peacock is a Visiting Fellow at the British Library Eccles Centre for American Studies. </span></em></p>
The cinematic legacies of Operation Crossroads, the first peacetime nuclear tests, fundamentally shaped how we view the mushroom cloud.
Timothy Noël Peacock, Lecturer in History, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161934
2021-06-02T14:27:04Z
2021-06-02T14:27:04Z
Geometrically baffling ‘quasicrystals’ found in the debris of the first-ever nuclear blast
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404021/original/file-20210602-23-j7l21n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C1614%2C945&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The heat and pressure generated by a nuclear explosion can produce unusual chemical curiosities. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Trinity_Detonation_T%26B.jpg">United States Department of Energy/wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nuclear detonations unleash an astonishing amount of destructive force. But the extreme <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B012227410500315X">pressure</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128013007/materials-under-extreme-conditions">temperature</a> that they generate also makes nuclear blasts a cauldron of chemical creation, capable of delivering new and surprising scientific discoveries.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, for instance, scientists examining debris from US <a href="https://time.com/4096424/ivy-mike-history/">hydrogen bomb tests</a> found two new elements, which now occupy numbers 99 and 100 in the periodic table. They named them after prominent nuclear scientists: <a href="https://theconversation.com/einsteinium-100-years-after-einsteins-nobel-prize-researchers-reveal-chemical-secrets-of-element-that-bears-his-name-154447">einsteinium</a> for Albert Einstein, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/fermium">fermium</a> for Enrico Fermi.</p>
<p>Now, scientists sifting through debris at the site of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-what-happened-the-morning-the-first-atomic-bomb-created-a-new-world-142184">first-ever nuclear bomb detonation</a> – held in New Mexico in July 1945 and named <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945">the Trinity test</a> – have unearthed a different chemical oddity. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/118/22/e2101350118">In their paper</a>, the researchers report the discovery of a previously unknown type of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/quasicrystal">quasicrystal</a>” – a crystal formation once thought impossible due to its irregular geometric structure.</p>
<h2>What are quasicrystals?</h2>
<p>Quasicrystals were <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.1951">first discovered</a> by material scientist Dan Schechtman in 1984, but were initially seen as highly controversial – even impossible – because their unique form is not allowed by the rules defining crystal structures.</p>
<p>Crystals are composed of units that repeat periodically in three dimensions. A good way to think of this is to picture them in two dimensions. You can tile a floor with certain geometric shapes – like squares, triangles and hexagons – because they tessellate, meaning that they can be slotted together in a repeating pattern with no overlaps or gaps. You can’t do this with pentagonal or heptagonal tiles. They can’t be tessellated, so they’d leave irregular gaps on your floor.</p>
<p>Three dimensional crystal structures adhere to the same rule. The repeating units naturally arrange themselves in a regular pattern – filling up all the available space. A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/simple-hexagonal-crystal-system">hexagonal arrangement</a>, for instance, is a typical crystal structure.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hexagonal pattern of bonded spheres" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404044/original/file-20210602-25-6j3u08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crystals of ice arrange to form a hexagonal structure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ice_XI_View_along_c_axis.png">Danski14/wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The general rule is that crystals must have repeating units with 2-fold, 3-fold, 4-fold or 6-fold axes. Here, “fold” means how many times you can rotate the three-dimensional crystal unit so that it looks the same as its starting position – enabling tessellation. The rule means that crystal units with a 5-fold axis (pentagonal) or anything 7-fold and above (heptagonal and beyond) won’t tessellate, and therefore cannot exist.</p>
<h2>Penrose tiling</h2>
<p>This rule held until 1974, when the British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose found a way to cover a two dimensional space like a floor with shapes that <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11224-020-01669-8">do not repeat periodically</a> – a form of tessellation now called “<a href="https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/865">Penrose tiling</a>”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yxlEojkVJ0c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Penrose tiling uses just two shapes: a kite and a dart.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These ideas were soon applied to <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.2477">three-dimensional structures</a>, and it was in 1984 that Schechtman published his experimental work on quasicrystals. His discovery won him the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2011/shechtman/facts/">Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011</a>. </p>
<p>Over 100 types of quasicrystal have been discovered since, though nearly all of them have been produced in the lab. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2115570-third-ever-natural-quasicrystal-found-in-siberian-meteorite/">Three exceptions</a>, found <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/109/5/1396">within the Khatyrka meteorite</a> in north-eastern Russia, may date back to the beginning of our solar system. And now there’s another, which is the oldest existing quasicrystal to have been produced – albeit accidentally – as a result of human activity.</p>
<h2>New quasicrystal</h2>
<p>The new quasicrystal was found within a glassy material called red trinitite, which the scientists sourced from the site of the 1945 nuclear blast. The trinitite was formed at the moment of the Trinity test’s detonation, when the desert sands of New Mexico were thrown up into the air and heated to 8,000°C before raining down as newly synthesised trinitite.</p>
<p>This new quasicrystal is <a href="https://math.wikia.org/wiki/Icosahedron">icosahedral</a> – possessing 20 faces – and is structured with 2-fold, 3-fold and 5-fold symmetry axes. This means that there are three specific perspectives of this complex 3D structure that are repeated identically when it’s rotated: one is repeated twice, one three times, and the other five times. It’s the 5-fold axis – like the two dimensional pentagon we know can’t tessellate – that means the sample is a quasicrystal.</p>
<p>It’s also a unique sample, because the quasicrystal has silicon, calcium and copper in its composition. The copper, which gives the trinitite its red hue, is likely to have found its way into the quasicrystal via a set of transmission lines that ran close to the site of the bomb test and were vaporised along with the sand upon detonation.</p>
<h2>Learning from quasicrystals</h2>
<p>Practically, material scientists are exploring the <a href="http://mcs.open.ac.uk/ugg2/quasi_intro6.shtml">application of quasicrystals</a> to exploit their poor heat conductivity, which is possibly related to their non-periodic structures. They’ve already been used as coatings in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00026-y">non-stick frying pans</a>, for example. Other suggested applications include <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-capture-polymeric-quasicrystal.html">LED lights</a> and surgical instruments, but their development is at an early stage. </p>
<p>But if more of these crystallographic and chemical curiosities are found in the debris left behind by nuclear bomb tests, studying their composition could also help scientists understand the ferocious forces at play in the heart of nuclear blasts – a place no scientific instrument has yet measured directly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert A Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The quasicrystals were ‘accidentally’ synthesised during the first test of a nuclear bomb in July 1945.
Robert A Jackson, Reader, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/146760
2020-10-27T03:37:44Z
2020-10-27T03:37:44Z
Climate explained: did atomic bomb tests damage our upper atmosphere?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363888/original/file-20201016-13-sbk0wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=487%2C121%2C3770%2C2422&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/CUTWORLD</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287622/original/file-20190811-144878-bvgm9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/nz/topics/climate-explained-74664">Climate Explained</a></strong> is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.</em> </p>
<p><em>If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to <a href="mailto:climate.change@stuff.co.nz">climate.change@stuff.co.nz</a></em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>I recently read an <a href="http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1964IAUS...18...47O/0000047.000.html" title="Upper atmospheric disturbances due to high altitude nuclear explosions">article</a> stating the atomic bomb testing in the Pacific destroyed so much of the upper atmosphere that the US could no longer bounce communications off the atmosphere and had to deploy artificial satellites for communication. Is this true? And just how much damage did they do?</strong> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The article the question refers to doesn’t mention satellites, so let’s focus on the atmospheric damage part of the question. Indeed, surface and atmospheric (high-altitude) detonations of nuclear weapons can have short-term and long-term effects.</p>
<p>One short-term effect was a temporary blackout of long-distance high-frequency (HF) radio communication over the surrounding area. But this radio communication blackout was not a result of the nuclear explosions destroying the ionosphere.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-sunspots-do-affect-our-weather-a-bit-but-not-as-much-as-other-things-145101">Climate explained: Sunspots do affect our weather, a bit, but not as much as other things</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>On the contrary, the nuclear detonations temporarily increased the natural level of ionisation in the upper atmosphere.</p>
<h2>The ionosphere and radio communication</h2>
<p>The Earth’s ionosphere is a natural layer of charged particles at approximately 80-1,000km altitude. This ionised portion of the Earth’s upper atmosphere largely owes its existence to solar radiation, which strips electrons from neutral atoms and molecules.</p>
<p>The ionosphere consists of three major layers, known as D, E and F layers. The lower D and E layers typically exist only during daylight hours, while the highest F layer always exists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graphic showing the various layers of the ionosphere." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365482/original/file-20201026-17-17mocan.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ionosphere showing the approximate levels of the D, E and F layers. The D and E layers are much weaker at night time. The two yellow arrows show example ray paths of high-frequency radio waves from transmitters at ground level. Encounters with the D layer will result in some absorption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These layers have distinct characteristics. The E and F layers are very reflective to HF radio waves. The D layer, on the other hand, is more like a sponge and absorbs HF waves.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Category/Educational/Other%20Topics/Radio%20Communication/Intro_HF_Radio.pdf">long-distance HF radio communications</a>, the radio waves are bounced back and forth between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface. This means you don’t need to establish a line of sight for HF radio communication.</p>
<p>Many applications, such as <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/shared-resources-shares-high-frequency-hf-radio-program">emergency services</a> and <a href="https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/key-enablers/4076-next-gen-hf-radar-technology-to-be-developed-in-sa-lab">aircraft/maritime surveillance</a>, rely on this mode of HF radio propagation.</p>
<p>But this radio communication scheme only works well when there is a reflective E or F layer, and when the absorbing D layer is not dominant.</p>
<p>During regular daytime hours, the D layer often becomes a nuisance because it weakens radio wave intensity in the lower HF spectrum. However, by changing to higher frequencies you can regain broken communication links.</p>
<p>The D layer may become even more dominant when intense X-ray emissions from <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-blackouts">solar flares</a> or energetic particles are impacting the atmosphere. The absorbing D layer then breaks any HF communication links that traverse it.</p>
<h2>Bomb blasts and the ionosphere</h2>
<p>Nuclear detonations also produce X-ray radiation, which leads to additional ionisation in all layers of the ionosphere. This makes the F layer more reflective to HF radio waves, but, alas, the D layer also becomes more absorptive.</p>
<p>This makes it difficult to bounce radio waves off the ionosphere for long-distance communication soon after a nuclear explosion, even though the ionosphere stays intact.</p>
<p>Beyond additional ionisation, shock waves from nuclear detonations <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/196024b0" title="Widespread Ionospheric Disturbances due to Nuclear Explosions During October 1961">produce waves and ripples</a> in the upper atmosphere called “atmospheric gravity waves” (AGWs). </p>
<p>These waves travel in all directions, even reaching the ionosphere where they cause what are known as “travelling ionospheric disturbances” (TIDs), which can be observed for thousands of kilometres.</p>
<h2>Other atmospheric disturbances</h2>
<p>Bomb blasts are not the only things that cause disturbances in the atmosphere.</p>
<p>In September 1979, there were reports of bright flashes of light off the South African coast, igniting theories South Africa had nuclear weapon capabilities.</p>
<p><a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/10.pdf">Analysis of ionospheric data</a> from the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, confirmed the presence of waves in the ionosphere that corroborated the theory of an atmospheric detonation. But whether the detonation was artificial or natural could not be determined.</p>
<p>The reason for the ambiguity is that meteor explosions and nuclear detonations in the atmosphere both generate AGWs with similar characteristics.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Atmospheric Gravity Waves (AGW) and Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TID)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362392/original/file-20201008-16-1jj5rov.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Common sources of atmospheric gravity waves (AGW) that could cause travelling ionospheric disturbances (TID).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rezy Pradipta</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2013 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/15/hundreds-injured-meteorite-russian-city-chelyabinsk">Chelyabinsk meteor explosion</a> in Russia generated waves in the ionosphere that were <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2015JA021767" title="Ionosonde observations of ionospheric disturbances due to the 15 February 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion">detected all across Europe</a>, and as far away as the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Volcanic eruptions, such at the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/JA087iA08p06291" title="A large‐amplitude traveling ionospheric disturbance produced by the May 18, 1980, explosion of Mount St. Helens">1980 Mount St Helens eruption</a> in the US, and large earthquakes, such as the <a href="https://earth-planets-space.springeropen.com/articles/10.5047/eps.2011.06.035">2011 Tohoku earthquake</a> in Japan, are other examples of energetic processes at the ground impacting the upper atmosphere.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/avxucheErk4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Waves observed in the ionosphere above Japan during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another well-known source of ionospheric disturbances is the geomagnetic storm, typically caused by <a href="https://theconversation.com/massive-sunspots-and-huge-solar-flares-mean-unexpected-space-weather-for-earth-83677" title="Ionospheric disturbances detected by GPS total electron content observation after the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake">coronal mass ejections from the Sun or solar wind disturbances</a> impacting Earth’s magnetosphere.</p>
<h2>Satellites as backup</h2>
<p>In summary, nuclear detonations can impact the upper atmosphere in many ways, as do many other non-nuclear terrestrial and solar events that carry enormous energy. But the damage (so to speak) isn’t permanent.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-how-volcanoes-influence-climate-and-how-their-emissions-compare-to-what-we-produce-125490">Climate explained: how volcanoes influence climate and how their emissions compare to what we produce</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Did the impact of these nuclear tests on the ionosphere specifically lead to the immediate launch of communications satellites? Not directly, because the impacts were temporary.</p>
<p>But in the Cold War setting, the potential for adversaries to even briefly interrupt over-the-horizon communications would certainly have been a motivating factor in developing communications satellites as backup.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Carter receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also affiliated with the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) and currently serves as the Chair of the AIP's Solar-Terrestrial and Space Physics Group. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rezy Pradipta receives funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). He is affiliated with the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the International Indonesian Scholars Association (Ikatan Ilmuwan Indonesia Internasional - I4). </span></em></p>
It’s not only nuclear bomb tests that disrupt the atmosphere, there are a number of natural events that can do the same. But how long does any damage last?
Brett Carter, Senior lecturer, RMIT University
Rezy Pradipta, Research scientist, Boston College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/141168
2020-07-14T12:39:02Z
2020-07-14T12:39:02Z
A restart of nuclear testing offers little scientific value to the US and would benefit other countries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347164/original/file-20200713-30-onkfai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C42%2C2352%2C1634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hundreds of nuclear weapons have been tested by the U.S. since WWII, but newer science has replaced the need for live detonations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/soldiers-and-cameramen-near-the-small-boy-nuclear-test-part-news-photo/568877143?adppopup=true&uiloc=thumbnail_more_search_results_adp"> Galerie Bilderwelt / Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than seventy five years ago, on August 6, 1945, a U.S. plane dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. This happened only a few short weeks after scientists in the U.S. conducted the world’s first successful nuclear test. The Trinity Test, in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert, proved that the design of the bomb worked and <a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945">started the nuclear era</a>.</p>
<p>The U.S. tested nuclear bombs for decades after World War II. But at the end of the Cold War in 1992, the U.S. government <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/97-1007.pdf">imposed a moratorium on U.S. testing</a>. This was strengthened by the Clinton administration’s decision to sign the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/ctbt">Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty</a>. Although the Senate never ratified the treaty and it never entered into force, all 184 countries that signed the test ban, including the U.S., have followed its rules. </p>
<p>But in recent weeks, the Trump administration and Congress have begun debating whether to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/499275-trump-admin-has-looked-at-conducting-first-us-nuclear-test-since-90s">restart active testing of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil</a>. </p>
<p>Some conservative Republicans have long expressed concerns over the reliability of aging U.S. warheads and believe that <a href="https://www.heritage.org/military-strength/assessment-us-military-power/us-nuclear-weapons-capability">testing is a way to address this problem</a>. Additionally, the U.S., Russia and China are producing novel types of nuclear missiles or other delivery systems and replacing existing nuclear weapons – some of which date to the Cold War – with updated ones. Some politicians in the U.S. are concerned about the reliability of these untested modern weapons as well.</p>
<p>We are two nuclear weapons researchers – <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FmbhtZQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">a physicist</a> and an <a href="https://www.nonproliferation.org/experts/miles-pomper/">arms control expert</a> – and we believe that there is no value, from either the scientific nor diplomatic perspective, to be gained from resuming testing. In fact, all the evidence suggests that such a move would threaten U.S. national security. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347166/original/file-20200713-30-11nm23d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As the Cold War came to an end, the U.S. and the Soviet Union both began reducing their numbers of nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the testing ban.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan_and_Gorbachev_signing.jpg">White House Photographic Office</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why did the US stop testing?</h2>
<p>Since the Trinity Test in July 1945, the U.S. has detonated <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally">215 warheads above ground and 815 underground</a>. These were done to test new weapon designs and also to ensure the reliability of older ones.</p>
<p>When the Cold War ended, the U.S. pledged to stop doing such tests and a group within the United Nations began <a href="https://www.nato.int/docu/review/1996/9606-7.htm">putting together the CTBT</a>. The goal of the test ban treaty was to hinder new nations from developing nuclear arsenals and limit the capabilities of nations that already had them.</p>
<h2>Subcritical testing to maintain the arsenal</h2>
<p>After the U.S moratorium went into effect, the U.S. Department of Energy created a massive program called the <a href="https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/missions/maintaining-stockpile">Stockpile Stewardship Program</a> to maintain the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. Instead of crudely blowing up weapons to produce a nuclear explosion, scientists at facilities like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site">U1A in Nevada</a> began conducting what are called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4406">subcritical tests</a>.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<p>In these tests, the plutonium that drives the nuclear chain reactions is replaced by a similar-acting but non-nuclear explosive material such as tungsten or a modified plutonium shell. There is still a big bang, but no nuclear chain reaction. </p>
<p>Rather, these experiments produce data that researchers feed into elaborate supercomputer programs built using the massive amounts of information collected from earlier live tests. Using these subcritical tests and earlier data, scientists can simulate full-scale detonations with incredible accuracy and monitor the current arsenal <a href="https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2014-august/_assets/docs/1663_22_sub.pdf">without blowing up nuclear warheads</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347167/original/file-20200713-42-1mfk4d3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plutonium pits are one of the only pieces of a nuclear warhead that can’t be replaced.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Partially-reflected-plutonium-sphere.jpeg">Los Alamos National Security LLC</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What could be going wrong in the bombs?</h2>
<p>All nuclear weapons currently in the U.S. stockpile are two-stage nuclear weapons called <a href="http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr15.pdf">hydrogen bombs</a>. Put simply, hydrogen bombs work by using a smaller nuclear bomb – akin to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki – to detonate a second, much more powerful bomb. </p>
<p>Nearly all the components of a nuclear weapon can be replaced and updated except for one piece – the explosive plutonium core known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon)">pit</a>. These pits are what trigger the second, larger explosion. </p>
<p>The weapons in the U.S. arsenal are, on average, about <a href="https://fas.org/blogs/security/2017/11/ssmp2017/">25 years old</a>. The main concern of people pushing to resume testing is that the plutonium pits may have deteriorated from their own radiation in the time since they were made and will not properly trigger the second fusion stage of the explosion.</p>
<p>Since most of the previous tests were done on much younger bombs with newer plutonium pits, supporters of testing claim that the subcritical tests <a href="https://issues.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Hopkins-Sharp-The-Scientific-Foundation-23-25-Winter-2019.pdf">cannot accurately test this part of the process</a>.</p>
<p>The deterioration of the plutonium pit is a valid concern. To study this, researchers at <a href="https://www.llnl.gov/">Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory</a> used a far more radioactive type of plutonium and artificially aged the metal to simulate the effects of what would be equivalent to 150 years of radiation on a normal plutonium pit. They found that the aged plutonium pits “will retain their size, shape, and strength despite increasing damage from self-irradiation,” and concluded that “the pits will function as designed up to <a href="https://www.llnl.gov/news/plutonium-150-years">150 years after they have been manufactured.</a>” </p>
<p>This isn’t to say that scientists can stop worrying about the aging of U.S. nuclear weapons. It’s important to continue “to assess and, if necessary mitigate threats to primary performance caused by plutonium aging”, as the <a href="https://www.lasg.org/MPF2/documents/JASONs-pit-aging_23Nov2019.pdf">JASON group</a> – a group of elite scientists that advises the U.S. government – says.</p>
<p>However, these scientists do <a href="https://www.amacad.org/news/comprehensive-nuclear-test-ban-treaty-20">not suggest that it is necessary to conduct live nuclear tests</a>. Decades of experimental studies by nuclear weapons laboratories have led experts to believe that the U.S. can maintain the nuclear arsenal without testing. And in fact, as the former director of Los Alamos National Labs, Dr. Sigfried Hecker said recently, many believe that by resuming testing, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/politics/trump-russia-china-nuclear.html">we would lose more than we gain</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347168/original/file-20200713-18-3qhjao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The last nuclear test ever conducted by the U.S. was done on Sept. 23, 1992, at an underground test facility in Colorado, and was described as a ‘test to ensure safety of deterrent forces.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Julin#/media/File:Equipment_being_lowered_for_Operation_Julin,_1992.jpg">Los Alamos National Laboratories</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Little to gain, much to lose</h2>
<p>Nuclear weapons are intricately tied to the world of geopolitics. So if there isn’t a scientific need to resume testing, is there some political or economic reason?</p>
<p>The U.S. has already spent tens of billions of dollars on the infrastructure needed to conduct subcritical tests. Additionally, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4406">a new, billion-dollar facility</a> is currently being built in Nevada that will provide even finer detail to the data from subcritical test explosions. Once subcritical test facilities are up and running, it is relatively inexpensive to run experiments. Nuclear testing won’t save the U.S. money.</p>
<p>So is it politics? </p>
<p>Currently, nuclear powers around the world are all improving the missiles that carry nuclear warheads, but not yet the warheads themselves.</p>
<p>With little evidence, the Trump administration has sought to sow suspicion that Russia and China may be secretly conducting very low-yield nuclear tests, implying that the countries are <a href="https://www.state.gov/2020-adherence-to-and-compliance-with-arms-control-nonproliferation-and-disarmament-agreements-and-commitments-compliance-report">trying to build better nuclear warheads</a>. In response, movement towards testing in the U.S. has already begun. </p>
<p>The Senate Armed Services Committee recently approved an amendment to spend US$10 million to cut the time it would take <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/502825-senate-panel-approves-10m-to-prepare-for-nuclear-test-if-necessary">to conduct a test if the president ordered one</a>. Some officials seem to believe that a resumption of U.S. testing – or the threat of it – could give Washington <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-administration-discussed-conducting-first-us-nuclear-test-in-decades/2020/05/22/a805c904-9c5b-11ea-b60c-3be060a4f8e1_story.html">an upper hand in future arms control negotiations</a>. </p>
<p>But we believe the opposite to be true. Even though the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered into force, nearly every nuclear power on earth has more or less followed its rules. But if the U.S. were to resume nuclear testing, it would be a green light for all other nations to start their own testing. </p>
<p>The U.S. already has the ability to perform subcritical tests and data from over 1,000 test detonations that scientists can use to modernize, improve and maintain the current arsenal. No other country, aside from Russia, has as robust a foundation. If the ban were broken, it would give other countries like Iran, India, Pakistan and China a chance to gather huge amounts of information and improve their weapons while the U.S. would gain next to nothing. </p>
<p>When it comes to the U.S nuclear testing ban, our view is, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. </p>
<p><em>This story was updated on August 3, 2020 to refer to the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Seventy-five years after the first nuclear detonation and nearly 30 years since testing was banned, the US is considering resuming live nuclear testing.
Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Scientist-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor, Middlebury
Miles A. Pomper, Senior Fellow, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/139313
2020-06-04T04:01:05Z
2020-06-04T04:01:05Z
Sixty years on, two TV programs revisit Australia’s nuclear history at Maralinga
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339057/original/file-20200602-95018-o4mad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C2%2C978%2C531&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjY3ZjYzMWMtNzlhMy00YTg4LWI3MDktMWM3YzNmOTA5YWFmXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTk2MjUxNjA@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over successive Sunday nights, the ABC has premiered two important television programs recounting the history of nuclear testing in Australia – the documentary <a href="https://about.abc.net.au/press-releases/when-the-atomic-dust-settles-culture-remains-maralinga-tjarutja-premieres-on-abc/">Maralinga Tjuratja</a> and a six-drama series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11853364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Operation Buffalo</a>. Both explore the ramifications of the Anglo-Australian nuclear venture conducted at Maralinga during the cold war – but in very different ways. </p>
<p>Interest in exploring Australia’s atomic history has lingered long after the 1980s <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/first-australians/publications-and-other-resources-about-first-australians/british-nuclear-tests-maralinga">Royal Commission</a> into the British nuclear tests in regional South Australia between 1953 and 1963. The new programs seek to add to our understanding of the traumatic and bizarre nature of this time. </p>
<h2>Familiar ground</h2>
<p>Recent books by <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/frank-walker/maralinga-the-chilling-expose-of-our-secret-nuclear-shame-and-betrayal-of-our-troops-and-country">Frank Walker</a>, <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/atomic-thunder/">Elizabeth Tynan</a> and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/childrens/childrens-non-fiction/Maralingas-Long-Shadow-Christobel-Mattingley-9781760290177">Christobel Mattingley</a> reappraise the official record or draw further from eyewitness accounts. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://nuclearfutures.org/about/">Nuclear Futures</a> community arts project facilitated a number of Australian and international collaborative art undertakings during 2014-16. </p>
<p>A major travelling exhibition, <a href="https://blackmistburntcountry.com.au">Black Mist Burnt Country</a> (2016-19), toured galleries and museums across Australia showcasing Indigenous and non-Indigenous artworks featuring our nuclear history.</p>
<p>There is an important back catalogue of documentary making on the subject, including <a href="https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/backs-blast/">Backs to the Blast</a> (1981), <a href="http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-secret-country-the-first-australians-fight-back">The Secret Country</a> (1985), <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/fortress-australia-2001/4030/">Fortress Australia</a> (2001), <a href="http://shop.nfsa.gov.au/silent-storm">Silent Storm</a> (2003) and <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/australian-atomic-confessions-gregory-young">Australian Atomic Confessions</a> (2005). </p>
<p>By contrast, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439685.2015.1134109?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=chjf20">Australian film and television drama</a> has made rare ventures into the domain, most notably with Michael Pattinson’s <a href="http://www.michaelpattinson.com.au/ground-zero.php">Ground Zero</a> (1987). Clearly, there is still more to say about the events at Maralinga and the other test sites. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-silence-of-ediacara-the-shadow-of-uranium-72058">Friday essay: the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Maralinga Tjarutja: listening to Indigenous voices</h2>
<p>I’ve met with <a href="http://unlikely.net.au/issue-05/the-global-hibakusha-project">displaced indigenous populations, military veterans and downwind communities</a> affected by cold war nuclear testing and heard their testimony over the years. It was refreshing to encounter a local documentary on the subject produced and narrated by Indigenous Australians. </p>
<p>Written and directed by Larissa Behrendt, <a href="https://about.abc.net.au/press-releases/when-the-atomic-dust-settles-culture-remains-maralinga-tjarutja-premieres-on-abc/">Maralinga Tjarutja</a> stresses that the Indigenous people of this area should not be solely defined by their displacement and exposure to the nuclear tests, but by <a href="https://www.adelaidereview.com.au/latest/2020/05/22/maralinga-tjarutja/">millennia of being in-country, where culture, knowledge and country are indivisible</a>. The Indigenous elders interviewed for the documentary reveal a perspective of deep time and an understanding of place that generates respect for the sacredness of both.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339060/original/file-20200602-95042-167dnlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sadness and loss is expressed in Maralinga Tjarutja by the land’s traditional owners.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZTkzMTRkYTQtNjI5MC00Y2IyLWFmZDYtMmYyODljODYxY2E5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTY1MTcxMzc@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Importantly, the documentary foregrounds a genuine hunger for knowledge and “truth” alongside the desire to reconcile two at times conflicting narratives, black and white. </p>
<p>It reveals the uncertainty that some Maralinga lands remain problematic for habitation, especially for traditional cooking. Elders, children and grandchildren describe the sadness and loss still affecting them, tinged with a hope for the future through the regeneration of the bush overseen by local Oak Valley rangers.</p>
<p>The profound and often tragic legacy of British nuclear testing in Australia will continue to have a long cultural and environmental half-life impacting flora, fauna and families for many generations to come. With people gagged by the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7422/">UK Official Secrets Act</a> and missing, inconclusive or disputed findings about the impacts from exposure to radiation, intergenerational trauma will linger due to uncertainty and anxiety.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/virtual-reality-film-collisions-is-part-disaster-movie-part-travelogue-and-completely-immersive-66563">Virtual reality film Collisions is part disaster movie, part travelogue and completely immersive</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Operation Buffalo: new fiction, bad history</h2>
<p>Last Sunday’s introductory credits to the new six-part ABC series, Operation Buffalo, declares it “a work of historical fiction”, a point immediately qualified with the proviso “but a lot of the really bad history actually happened”. </p>
<p>Viewers expecting a serious docudrama forensically recounting the major controversies surrounding the British atomic tests in Australia will be disappointed.</p>
<p>An incongruous melange of satire, nostalgia and drama, Operation Buffalo functions akin to the traditions of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062552/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Dad’s Army</a> or <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/mash-oral-history-untold-stories-one-tvs-important-shows-1086322">M*A*S*H*</a> rather than the deliberately grotesque and absurdist black comedy of Stanley Kubrick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Dr Strangelove</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Catch-22</a>. </p>
<p>Longstanding larrikin and ocker tropes are paraded for parody alongside colonial tensions. </p>
<p>In the first episode men are mostly depicted as boozy, randy philanderers, unidentified rapists, lisping British boffins, or pompous and imperial patricians. The few women encountered are wily sex workers or world-weary nurses. Against this bumbling and corrupt assembly of miscreants, the initial representation of Indigenous characters is curiously played straight. Future episodes hint at a broadening of these stereotypes to include female scientists, spies and thuggish ASIO agents. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339059/original/file-20200602-95059-13xetta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attraction and nuclear physics meet in Operation Buffalo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODExNTdiMTktMWYxNS00YmUwLThiYmYtNjVmMDQ0Mzc2M2YyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTk2MjUxNjA@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Operation Buffalo occasionally lapses from satire to farce, sprayed with scattergun effect, missing as much as hitting its comedic or political targets. Overall, the idea that such buffoons would be in charge of the nuclear testing enterprise is, of course, ludicrous. But the <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22library/lcatalog/10022171%22;src1=sm1">historical record</a> remembers ethically odious British and Australian personnel, who ignored their own safety protocols to proceed with nuclear detonations.</p>
<p>The narrative economy dictated by a historical drama format often results in the conflation of characters and events, as evident is the 2019 HBO series <a href="https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl">Chernobyl</a>. So, what obligation if any do the series creators have to accurately present these events?</p>
<p>In the weeks to come, Operation Buffalo will likely touch on matters still raw in the national psyche. They include Britain’s unilateral abandonment of major military and scientific joint-ventures in Australia, secret human radiation experiments, the mistreatment of Indigenous populations and service personnel, and the compounded denials and deceit over the contamination of the Maralinga lands. The scattergun approach may yet find its target. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/operation-buffalo">Operation Buffalo</a> is screening over six weeks on ABC and is available to stream on iView. <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/maralinga-tjarutja">Maralinga Tjarutja</a> can still be watched via iView.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mick Broderick received funding from The Australian Research Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Australia Council for the Arts. </span></em></p>
Two ABC television premieres – both about the mid-century British nuclear testing at Maralinga in regional South Australia – approach tricky territory in very different ways.
Mick Broderick, Associate Professor of Media Analysis, Murdoch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138532
2020-05-14T09:06:15Z
2020-05-14T09:06:15Z
Cold war nuclear tests changed rainfall thousands of miles away
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334997/original/file-20200514-77235-lskgw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lerwick in Shetland, off the north coast of Scotland, received more rainfall than normal as a result of nuclear testing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/city-centre-lerwick-capital-shetlands-scotland-1516637228">John Dowling/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s difficult to imagine quite how alarming it would have been for the world’s meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere during the nuclear tests in the 1950s and early 60s. The radioactivity released in the Arctic and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-atomic-history-of-kiritimati-a-tiny-island-where-humanity-realised-its-most-lethal-potential-114870">South Pacific test sites</a> caused patterns of electrical disturbance that were apparent thousands of miles away, from Japan to the UK.</p>
<p>Diligent observers would have seen their regular measurements, which had been reliably similar every day, suddenly show catastrophic change or even become impossible to record. They couldn’t have known what any potential impact on the world’s weather might be.</p>
<p>Sixty years later, my colleagues and I have used their historical records <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.198701">to demonstrate</a> that the tests may indeed have changed rainfall patterns far from the test sites. This knowledge could prove useful for geoengineering research, which is exploring how electric charge could influence rain, or even relieve droughts or prevent floods, without the use of chemicals.</p>
<p>The nuclear bomb detonations of the cold war, when east and west vied to produce ever bigger bangs under the banner of “testing”, must have been a disturbing time for anyone to live through. The remoteness of the nuclear test sites did not prevent the radioactivity released from being transported widely, through the upper level winds of the atmosphere and rainfall to the surface. Even London rainwater, regularly sampled for radioactivity, was <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/203617a0">imprinted</a> with the sequence of American and Russian test explosions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-a-nuclear-legacy-16637">Out of sight, out of mind: a nuclear legacy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The actual patterns of transport were put to good use by meteorologists, as the radioactivity provided a detectable marker with which to trace the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/tellusa.v18i2-3.9390">atmospheric circulation</a>. But another consequence of radioactivity in the air is that it releases electric charge. This was confirmed following the radioactivity released by the Chernobyl and <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2011GL048511">Fukushima</a> reactor accidents.</p>
<p>We knew that electric charge can affect water droplets in clouds. These grow by colliding with other droplets until they are large enough to fall as rain. When these droplets are small, electric charge can make them more inclined to stick to each other rather than bounce off. Whether this has any meteorological application has been difficult to test, but the weapons test period presents a serendipitous opportunity to do so.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334978/original/file-20200514-77276-17hajcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Castle Bravo nuclear test, 1954.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the meteorological observations made at the time were particularly thorough and of high quality, perhaps motivated by the <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/goossen/year-of-the-earth">International Geophysical Year of 1958</a>, which had encouraged an expansion in scientific observations. We chose to analyse Met Office measurements from Kew (near London) and from Lerwick (in Shetland, Scotland), comparing rainfall characteristics during the period when radioactivity was at its greatest to times with less radioactivity. These two sites are far enough away from each other to experience different weather but close enough to encounter similar levels of radioactivity from the clouds high above them.</p>
<p>Using a statistical analysis, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.198701">we found</a> 24% more rainfall at Lerwick on the days with increased radioactivity than on days with less radioactivity from 1962 to 1964. This difference vanished in later years after the radioactivity had declined. We also found that the clouds, as observed with automatic sunlight sensors, were thicker when the radioactivity was greater.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-began-in-1965-according-to-signs-left-in-the-worlds-loneliest-tree-91993">Anthropocene began in 1965, according to signs left in the world's 'loneliest tree'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Demonstrating how charge is linked to non-thunderstorm clouds has particular relevance for our efforts to model clouds as part of the <a href="http://www.uaerep.ae/en/app/3">UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science</a>. This international project ultimately hopes to find new ways of increasing rainfall in places where water is scarce. </p>
<p><a href="https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/weather-and-climate-at-reading/2018/image-conscious-atmospheric-science">Our research</a> has involved designing and engineering small robotic aircraft to help gather new atmospheric data. We’ve already found that charge is remarkably abundant in desert regions, which we can use to improve our models and predictions. </p>
<p>Our particular application also underlines the enduring value of high quality past measurements, such as those of the nuclear weapons era. In this case, records made in unusual and disquieting circumstances are helping answer a scientific question for our own time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The University of Reading receives funding from the UAE Program for Rain Enhancement Science. </span></em></p>
Finding could be useful for attempts to manipulate the weather using technology.
Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, University of Reading
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/135429
2020-04-06T20:06:21Z
2020-04-06T20:06:21Z
The mushroom cloud’s silver lining: how the Cold War is helping the biggest fish in the sea
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325563/original/file-20200406-196131-1rarj4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5121%2C2683&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Department of Defense/Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It might surprise you to learn that nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War are now helping conserve whale sharks, the largest living fish. </p>
<p>Growing up to 18 metres – longer than the average bus – whale sharks live in all tropical oceans. In Australia, they are found off tropical coasts in the north, particularly in Western Australia.</p>
<p>Whale sharks face a number of threats. Globally they are <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/19488/2365291">listed as endangered</a>, and their numbers continue to decline.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whale-shark-mugshots-reveal-teenage-males-hang-around-was-coast-68823">Whale shark mugshots reveal teenage males hang around WA's coast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Until recently, key information about the life history of whale sharks was missing, which prevented informed choices about how they were managed. In particular, scientists were not able to accurately assess their age and growth patterns.</p>
<p>Our research, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00188/abstract">published today</a> in Frontiers in Marine Science, changes that. We examined the skeleton of whale sharks, using carbon from Cold War atomic bomb testing as a “time stamp” to reveal their true age. The findings will help protect these beautiful animals into the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325401/original/file-20200404-74279-lm9pjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Until now, it’s been difficult to assess the age of whale sharks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wayne Osborn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gentle giants</h2>
<p>Whale sharks are placid “filter feeders”, which basically means they eat by opening their massive mouths and straining small fish and plankton that pass through the gills.</p>
<p>They are covered in a pattern of stripes and spots that provide camouflage as they bask at the surface. Whale sharks’ gentle nature and striking appearance has made them a drawcard for tourists who pay to snorkel or dive with the animals. </p>
<p>Whale shark ecotourism is big business. At Ningaloo Reef off Western Australia, the industry is worth an <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11160-017-9486-x">estimated A$12.5 million per year</a>. </p>
<p>The industry is also valuable for small island nations such as the Maldives and developing countries including the Philippines and Indonesia. It has lifted thousands of villagers from poverty and provided an impetus for governments to protect whale sharks.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poor-filipino-fishermen-are-making-millions-protecting-whale-sharks-122451">Poor Filipino fishermen are making millions protecting whale sharks</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But all is not plain sailing for these animals. In some parts of the world they are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-05/an-hundreds-of-sharks-killed-annually-in-illegal-trade-in-china/5239568">hunted</a> for their fins, meat, oil and skin. The flesh resembles tofu when cooked, and is a popular menu item in parts of Asia, particularly China. </p>
<p>When shipping lanes are established near whale shark habitat, the animals are frequently struck by vessels and either die or suffer <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200123152549.htm">propeller injuries</a> such as fin amputation. Their habit of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whale-sharks-swim-near-surface-to-keep-warm-10249">basking at the surface of the ocean</a> during the day puts whale sharks at particular risk of ship strike.</p>
<p>This combined with other threats – such as warming sea surface temperatures <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.12343">due to climate change</a> – has created an uncertain future for these charismatic and valuable animals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325564/original/file-20200406-74216-111wnoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A whale shark carcass on the shore of Teluk Betung beach in West Sumatra, Indonesia, last year. The animal is considered endangered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">RAJO BATUAH/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The silver lining on the mushroom cloud</h2>
<p>Just how vulnerable whale shark populations are to these threats is not clear. Growth rates of fish species – or how many years they take to reach a certain size - determine their resilience, and how fast populations are likely to recover if severely damaged.</p>
<p>But determining the age of whale sharks has, to date, been very difficult. Their vertebrae feature distinct bands, similar to the rings of a tree trunk, which increase in number as the animal grows older. But the bands could not conclusively be used to determine age because some scientists believed a ring formed every year, but others suggested one formed every six months.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325566/original/file-20200406-79380-rhoqqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cross section of a whale shark vertebra from Pakistan, showing 50 growth bands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Fanning/ Pakistan node of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To settle the debate, we turned to the radioactive legacy of the Cold War’s nuclear arms race - specifically, carbon-14.</p>
<p>Carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioactive element. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, nuclear weapons tests by the US, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China released enormous amounts of carbon-14 into the air.</p>
<p>It travelled into the world’s oceans, and into every living organism on the planet – including the skeletons and shells of animals.</p>
<p>We analysed the vertebrae of two whale sharks collected many years ago in Taiwan and Pakistan. By counting back from the peak carbon-14 level, we concluded the rings were formed once per year. This meant that for the first time, the age and growth rate of a whale shark could accurately be determined; a 10-metre shark was 50 years old. </p>
<p>We know whale sharks can grow to almost twice the length of the animals we analysed, and have been estimated to live as long as <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023/A:1026564707027.pdf">100 years</a>. The results of our study makes that prediction now seem more likely. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325565/original/file-20200406-74279-1876l9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whale sharks can live as long as 100 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wayne Osborn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What does this mean for whale sharks?</h2>
<p>Slow-growing species with long lifespans are typically very susceptible to threats such as fishing. This is because it takes many years for animals to reach reproduction age, and the rate at which individuals are replaced is very slow. </p>
<p>Our study explains why fisheries targeting whale sharks almost immediately collapse: the species is not built to cope with the added pressures of human harvests.</p>
<p>Whale sharks populations take a very long time to recover from over-harvesting. Governments and management agencies must work together to ensure this iconic animal persists in tropical oceans - for both the future of the species, and the many communities whose livelihoods depend on whale shark ecotourism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whale-sharks-swim-near-surface-to-keep-warm-10249">Whale sharks swim near surface to keep warm</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Meekan receives funding from Santos Energy and the Save Our Seas Foundation.</span></em></p>
The findings will help determine the age of whale sharks, protecting the endangered animals into the future.
Mark Meekan, Senior Principal Research Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121966
2019-08-16T19:41:17Z
2019-08-16T19:41:17Z
‘Nuclear-powered’ missile accident in Russia – what really happened?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288376/original/file-20190816-192246-ccuvjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Severodvinsk, Russia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kuleshov Oleg / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A missile engine exploded at a naval test range, west of the city of Severodvinsk on Russia’s northern coast at 9am on August 8. At least <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49301438">five people were killed</a> and several others injured. As it is associated with Russia’s defence programme, the incident is shrouded in mystery. But shortly after the explosion the state weather monitoring agency, Roshydromet, reported a <a href="http://www.meteorf.ru/product/infomaterials/91/19630/?referer=%2Fproduct%2Finfomaterials%2F91%2F">spike in radiation</a> 40 km away. </p>
<p>At first, the Russian authorities <a href="https://www.polygraph.info/a/russian-defense-ministry-initially-denied-radiation-leak-after-rocket-engine-explosion/30106227.html">denied the radiation leak</a>, then later confirmed it. There were conflicting reports of the source of the explosion and a <a href="https://29.ru/text/incidents/66196021/">planned, then later cancelled evacuation of a nearby village</a>. Unsurprisingly, tabloid media speculation followed that the Russian authorities may be <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9715988/chernobyl-radiation-russia-blast-evacuation/">hiding a Chernobyl-like accident</a>.</p>
<p>Missile tests don’t usually involve radioactive materials, unless the missile in question is carrying a nuclear warhead (which is prohibited under the UN’s <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/">Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons</a>). So what is going on? No one outside of the Russian government and military can yet be entirely certain but, as an <a href="https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/materials/about/staff/academic/corkhillc">academic researcher in nuclear materials</a>, I can do my best to piece together the available evidence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288346/original/file-20190816-192250-1jhlfuy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Severodvinsk (red dot) is on the coast of the White Sea, just below the Arctic Circle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rs-map.png">CIA/wiki</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Russian authorities have confirmed that the explosion involved “<a href="http://rosatom.ru/journalist/news/zayavlenie-departamenta-kommunikatsiy-goskorporatsii-rosatom/">an isotope power source in a liquid propulsion system</a>”. There’s nothing particularly new about the propulsion system – early ballistic missiles used a pressurised stream of liquid fuel and oxygen which, when ignited, expanded and rushed out of the bottom of the missile, propelling it in the opposite direction. </p>
<p>The “isotope power source” part is new though. Radioactive isotopes are unstable atoms that release excess energy by emitting radiation. So if the missile is powered by isotopes this indicates the Russians have developed a mini-nuclear reactor – able to fit inside a missile – that is capable of using radiation to heat the liquid fuel for propulsion. This has never been achieved before. </p>
<p>This admission prompted <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/12/russia-mysterious-explosion-arctic-putin-chernobyl/">American</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/russia-indicates-rocket-engine-exploded-in-test-of-mini-nuclear-reactor">UK</a> experts to conclude the source of the radiation leak must be a type of long-range missile that Russia has previously claimed would be nuclear powered. It is known by the Russians as 9M730 Burevestnik, and by NATO as the SCC-X-9 Skyfall.</p>
<p>The exact details of the mini-nuclear reactor that may have been developed to power a Russian missile are not known, but there are a few potential types that may be used. The key difference between a nuclear reactor used to generate energy and one that might be used to power a missile is the quantity of material required. The RBMK reactor that blew up at Chernobyl contained 200 tonnes of uranium dioxide fuel. A significantly smaller amount of fuel would be required — perhaps a few kilos at most — to lift a missile.</p>
<p>One possibility is what’s known as a <a href="https://rps.nasa.gov/power-and-thermal-systems/power-systems/current/">radioisotope thermoelectric generator</a> (RTG). This converts heat from radioactive decay into electricity. Potential candidates for the fuel are plutonium-238, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/604332main_APP%20MSL%20Launch%20Nuclear%20Safety%20FS%203-2-11.pdf">4.8kg of which powered the Curiosity Rover on Mars</a>, americium-241 – widely used to power smoke detectors – and polonium-210, infamously used in the poisoning of Russian spy <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/493860/The-Litvinenko-Inquiry-H-C-695-web.pdf">Alexander Litvinenko</a>. Strontium-90, which emits both beta and gamma radiation in its radioactive decay, has been used in both <a href="http://www.wmsym.org/archives/2009/pdfs/9415.pdf">American</a> and Russian applications of RTGs in the past, including inside <a href="https://englishrussia.com/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-nuclear-lighthouses/">Russian lighthouses</a>. Given the measured increase in gamma activity at nearby Severodvinsk, the latter is certainly plausible.</p>
<p>The second possibility is that the missile was powered by a nuclear thermal reactor. This is perhaps more likely given the authorities’ description of the accident. These reactors could use the heat generated from radioactive decay to heat liquid hydrogen fuel. Such a system could theoretically use a solid uranium core, a liquid radioisotope core, or even gaseous uranium to power a missile in flight for long distances. However, none of these technologies have been proven, at least with regard to missiles, and it is not possible to guess the fuel type with any certainty, making the radiation in Severodvinsk difficult to explain.</p>
<p>Whatever the source of radiation, the release seems to be relatively small. To the layperson, 16 times above background rate may sound like a lot, but that background rate is tiny and relatively harmless – for instance the English county of <a href="https://www.phe-protectionservices.org.uk/radiationandyou/">Cornwall has three times the background rate</a> thanks to naturally-occuring uranium-bearing rocks in the earth there. Compare this with the Chernobyl accident, which released radioactivity 7,000 times above background. </p>
<p>Norwegian and Finnish authorities are <a href="https://www.dsa.no/en/news/94877/radioactive-incident-in-arkhangelsk-in-the-federation-of-russia">monitoring the air</a> but have not yet reported anything abnormal. Western scientists are even asking residents of Severodvinsk <a href="https://twitter.com/MKaltofen/status/1161071642023538691">to donate their car air filters</a>, so that, at some point, we may understand more about what was released and how harmful it might be. That should give some indication as to the threat posed by the testing of such weapons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Corkhill receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, The European Union, Radioactive Waste Management Limited, Sellafield Limited, the National Nuclear Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for research on the safe disposal of legacy nuclear waste. </span></em></p>
Russia appears to have developed a revolutionary mini-reactor able to power a missile.
Claire Corkhill, Research Fellow in nuclear waste disposal, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114870
2019-07-04T10:56:46Z
2019-07-04T10:56:46Z
The atomic history of Kiritimati – a tiny island where humanity realised its most lethal potential
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280184/original/file-20190619-171208-rdi213.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/christmas-island-kiribati-1231236874?src=Ub2U_xIHD2oLMwu5OFR0Ag-1-0&studio=1">Kyung Muk Lim/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ron Watson was just 17 when he experienced his first nuclear weapon blast. A British soldier from Cambridgeshire, he had completed his training in the summer of 1957 before departing on that fated tour with the Army Royal Engineers on Boxing Day. </p>
<p>After the excitement of leaving on a specially chartered train, “all thousand of us”, and then sailing across the oceans, he was wholly unprepared for what awaited him in the tropics.</p>
<p>The now 79-year-old told me, over a cup of tea in my office, that the first thing to strike him was an unbelievably bright light. “I had my back to the explosion,” he continued. “My eyes closed with my hands covering them. I clearly saw the bones in my hand, just like you see them if you look at the results of an X-ray.”</p>
<p>This was April 28 1958, and he had witnessed the British army’s Operation Grapple Y H-bomb test. He had been posted to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Kiritimati-Atoll">Kiritimati</a> (Ki-ris-i-mas or Christmas) Island, one of 33 low-lying islands that constitute the nation state of <a href="https://gadebate.un.org/en/72/kiribati">Kiribati</a> in the Pacific. It’s a stunning <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/atoll/">coral atoll</a> with crystal-clear waters, blue skies – and a shocking legacy of British military occupation.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4AlUJUWoIzY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kiritimati was far away, out of sight and out of mind - except when the media reported successful tests with pride.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>This article is part of Conversation Insights</strong></em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/introducing-conversation-insights-a-new-team-that-seeks-scoops-from-interdisciplinary-research-107119">Insights team</a> generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges. In generating these narratives, we hope to bring areas of interdisciplinary research to a wider audience.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read more Insights stories <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Kiritimati was deemed a “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474474012463664">pristine</a>” place by the military when it was used for nuclear weapon tests during the Cold War. While South Pacific islands like Kiritimati were often described as <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315435855/chapters/10.4324/9781315435855-10">uninhabitable wilderness</a> by the military officers who chose them, this was often far from the truth. Local people were forced from their homes, at best; or were left in place potentially to be exposed to ionising radiation, at worst.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279993/original/file-20190618-118505-iddo8l.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The tiny atoll of Kiritamati in the centre of the Pacific Ocean.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kiritimati/@4.9491044,-168.16646,3z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x79f877ccabf42611:0x6e779e786ea0b443!8m2!3d1.8721347!4d-157.4278119">Google Maps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/pacific/grappling-bomb">May 1957 and September 1958</a>, the British government tested nine thermonuclear weapons on Kiritimati for <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/pacific/grappling-bomb">Operation Grapple</a>. Then, in 1962, the UK cooperated with the US on <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA136820">Operation Dominic</a>, undertaking a further 31 detonations on Kiritimati.</p>
<p>About 20,000 British servicemen, 524 New Zealand soldiers and 300 Fijian soldiers were deployed to “Christmas Island” from 1956 to 1962. These men were unwittingly placed in <a href="http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/it-was-blast-camp-life-christmas-island-1956-1958">harsh conditions</a> with limited resources, while undertaking the work that would cement Britain’s place in history as a thermonuclear power. </p>
<p>The long-term impact on their lives and families largely has been ignored. So has that on <a href="https://savageminds.org/wp-content/image-upload/our-sea-of-islands-epeli-hauofa.pdf">local people</a> who lived, and still live, across the islands of the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gec3.12325">Pacific Proving Grounds</a> (the name given by the US government to sites of nuclear testing), where humanity realised its most lethal potential, and whose tiny homeland is once again placed in peril by foreign powers – this time <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-migration-cannot-be-the-only-option-for-people-living-on-drowning-islands-117122">by climate change</a>.</p>
<p>For the last few years, I have been <a href="https://www.nucleargeography.com/nuclear-families--atomic-atolls.html">researching</a> the intertwined lives of both British nuclear test veterans and Kiritimati communities, as they continue to try to make sense of their experiences. These are their stories.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-migration-cannot-be-the-only-option-for-people-living-on-drowning-islands-117122">Climate crisis: migration cannot be the only option for people living on 'drowning' islands</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274426/original/file-20190514-60560-zwqim4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of Kiritimati island, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kiritimati_island_77.jpg">US government</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Atomic atolls</h2>
<p>Teeua Tetua was just three when she was blindfolded with a rough cloth by her mother. They then braced themselves for the <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2018/07/19/book-review-grappling-with-the-bomb-britains-pacific-h-bomb-tests-by-nic-maclellan/">Grapple Y</a> explosion. She was very young, but still recalls being frightened in her mother’s arms during the deafening blast.</p>
<p>Last year, Teeua – now 64 and the chairwoman of the Association of Nuclear Victims in Kiritimati – welcomed me into her home, which is strung with cowrie shells collected from the beach, and also serves as a local children’s nursery. Her friends and I rested on our stomachs on woven palm mats on her veranda and chatted about their experiences. </p>
<p>Teeua told me that she worries about the long-term health effects faced by the islanders following the nuclear weapon tests. “There has been no compensation,” she said. “I worry about cancer and other effects to health – this is why I campaign.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273638/original/file-20190509-183109-6ypqt2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teeua (right) and a friend, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Alexis-Martin, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Philomena Lawrence, another islander from Kiritimati who now lives in the UK, told a similar story. She is too young to remember the nuclear weapon tests, but recalls the impact of British military occupation. Kiritmati was still a British colony at this time, and this presence had a particularly profound effect on her life as she met her British husband, a development officer for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, on the island in 1970. They lived together on the island for 15 years, before moving to the UK.</p>
<p>I met her at her home in Kent before travelling to Kiritimati. She talked to me about island life, put me in contact with some of her friends, and gave me packages of books to take to the island’s children.</p>
<p>“There was little understanding of harmful effects,” she said. She recalled how islanders were taken to a boat to watch a Disney film to distract them during one test and how they were also told to gather on a tennis court covered by a tarpaulin for another. “The locals were terrified,” she added.</p>
<p>She described how she knew of two women who were born with birth defects after the tests, and how their father, Tonga Fou, who died in 2009, had worked with the British as an unrecognised nuclear test veteran. Tonga Fou had recorded data from the tests in red notebooks. “He shared the notebooks with his grandchildren like a bedtime story,” she said.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274424/original/file-20190514-60567-hgq8jh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flying over Kiritimati in 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiritimati#/media/File:Hastings_TG_582_over_London,_Xmas_Island_Aug_1956.jpg">Photo by Dennis Hobbs</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Island life disrupted</h2>
<p>I went on to speak to a further 14 <a href="https://www.nucleargeography.com/nuclear-families--atomic-atolls.html">Kiritimati islanders</a> to learn about their lives and experiences of nuclear weapon testing. All of the islanders that I spoke to who recalled the tests also remember being frightened and uncomfortable. They described the tests in terms of confusing events, crowds, megaphone countdowns and deafening noises.</p>
<p>Taabui Teatata was 11 at the time of the first test. She described to me how her community was unexpectedly moved at midnight by a military commander beforehand. She was frightened, but remembers the army commander who moved her and her family telling her: “Don’t worry, you’re safe – this is the British military.”</p>
<p>She described being loaded onto a ship and taken offshore before the tests, and being too frightened to talk. She said: “It was very crowded, it was meant for cargo and there was no room for children like me to play. There was no space, we were treated like animals.”</p>
<p>Kimaere Kiiba, 73, was also 11 when the first Grapple H-bomb was detonated. As we sat on the raised wooden platform of his corrugated iron home on Kiritimati, discussing the nuclear tests, he told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was surprised to see what was happening, because we had never experienced it before … When we heard that the British were coming to Christmas Island, when the ship anchored, we all went to the beach to watch and wonder what would happen.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273626/original/file-20190509-183109-98igdo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chatting with Kiritimati islanders at Teeua Tetoa’s home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Alexis-Martin, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He did not understand what was happening, and over the years has questioned whether or not the island elders truly grasped what the British were planning, prior to their arrival. He said: “Perhaps they understood, but they had no choice … We were afraid and very innocent. We didn’t understand how dangerous and bad for our environment the situation was.”</p>
<p>He also described the conditions that military servicemen lived in. “They had no kitchens, and ate out of cans,” he said. “The soldiers were nice to me, I gave them some fish. We were allowed to talk to them on the road, but forbidden to talk to them if we were at their camp.”</p>
<p>I also spoke to a 90-year-old woman called Buburenga Iotebwa. She was the oldest person I interviewed. She had migrated to Kiritimati with her husband from another island before the tests. She vividly recalled being corralled under a tarpaulin on a tennis court with many others during one early test. She developed sight and hearing impairments shortly afterwards. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273659/original/file-20190509-183077-1of2vvz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buburenga Iotebwa, who welcomed me to her home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Alexis-Martin, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She also described how local food was contaminated by the bombs: “You would get food poisoning, even drinking from fresh coconut. All fish except shark gave us cramps … We were given some medicine from the soldiers.”</p>
<p>While the islanders continued to eat and became unwell, the servicemen were ordered not to eat the local foods, because of these contamination concerns.</p>
<h2>Military life</h2>
<p>Many of the British servicemen who worked on the operation – and their families – were also left scarred for life, in some way, by their experience on the island. Men were traumatised by what they had seen, and by the culture of secrecy that surrounded their work. And after they returned home, they were damaged by the apathy that they received from the government.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://toxicnews.org/2016/08/03/grapple-slings-and-moonshine-conversations-with-the-men-who-tested-atomic-weapons-on-christmas-island/">experiences</a> of the servicemen who were posted to Kiritimati were shaped by the conditions, risks and consequences of military life. Although they believe that it was the nuclear weapons that posed the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Between-Heaven-Hell-Alan-Rimmer/dp/129120928X">greatest risk</a>, their work presented many other hazards, including sunburn, sunstroke, accident, exposure to carcinogenic <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status">DDT</a>, poor sanitation, dysentery and inadequate rations. Morale was low and several servicemen <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234466/">killed themselves</a>.</p>
<p>Veteran <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Christmas-Island-Cracker-Execution-Thermonuclear/dp/0948807040/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=christmas+island+cracker&qid=1555494773&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr">descriptions</a> of minimal protective clothing, line-up drills, and radiation sampling provide a vivid narrative of the realities of their work on Kiritimati.</p>
<p>Terry Quinlan, 79, who now lives in Kent, was 19 when he was deployed to Christmas Island for Operation Grapple. He told me how they lived in tents in intense heat and were “eaten alive by mosquitoes”. He continued: “People caught ringworm, some swelled up like balloons.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271285/original/file-20190428-194633-1yjxclh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photos of nuclear test veteran life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Alexis-Martin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His experiences of lax health and safety echo those of many nuclear test veterans interviewed during my <a href="https://www.nucleargeography.com/nuclear-families--atomic-atolls.html">research</a>. He said that his section “witnessed five blasts, two A-bombs and three H-bombs on the beach in 1958”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We had no protective clothing, I wasn’t even issued a pair of sunglasses. We were just told to assemble, sit down and to put our fists in our eyes. The officers were not with us, they had protective clothing and bunkers elsewhere. We were sworn to secrecy for life, and told that we must not discuss it with anyone. We received no medical examination when we left the island in 1962.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Terry went on to describe an injury that he received while witnessing a nuclear weapon test.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were pushed along the beach by the blast and people’s backs were scorched. I was hit by something, I thought it was a bit of coral or something. Years later in hospital, I discovered that it was a foreign body. The doctors discovered a piece of shrapnel from the blast in my chest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was also limited interaction between servicemen and islanders. Robert McCann, 80, from Hampshire, talked to me about how the two communities were isolated, saying: “I never mixed with locals the first time I was there, I saw them, but only from a distance.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273545/original/file-20190509-183106-zew74f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ron Watson and Robert McCann proudly hold their standard in front of a mural of Kiritimati Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">B.Alexis-Martin, 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This segregation meant that many of the young servicemen had no chance to get to know islanders, and this hid the impacts of the tests to local people from them. Many have since been dismayed to discover the consequences of their work.</p>
<p>The way that risks were managed has affected the veteran community’s understanding of their experiences. Despite assurances that the nuclear tests posed little risk of radiation exposure, they have had diverse repercussions. The true costs of the tests are only just beginning to emerge.</p>
<h2>Understanding exposure</h2>
<p>The general public first <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1948.9921761?journalCode=vsoc20">became aware</a> of the health effects of ionising radiation after the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima">Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings</a>, which killed <a href="http://atomicbombmuseum.org/3_health.shtml">225,000 people</a>. The <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/95/10/5426">Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission</a> was then established to undertake <a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jea1991/6/3sup/6_3sup_95/_pdf">epidemiological</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KAqotXZLUeUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=hiroshima+and+nagasaki+long+term+genetic+study&ots=dnM7yDZDzU&sig=pERKHwLA0GZa4G4JTWi6bJ-XQcI#v=onepage&q=hiroshima%20and%20nagasaki%20long%20term%20genetic%20study&f=false">genetic</a> studies of survivors. Approximately <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/61689AD5A1AA4A684B84DFA4F9E5D1D3/S1935789300003839a.pdf/longterm_radiationrelated_health_effects_in_a_unique_human_population_lessons_learned_from_the_atomic_bomb_survivors_of_hiroshima_and_nagasaki.pdf">200,000</a> people have been followed for 74 years, in the world’s <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/95/10/5426">longest public health study</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273665/original/file-20190509-183089-fjexvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hiroshima blast and fire damage, US Strategic Bombing Survey map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Military secrecy has meant that there was no equivalent long-term health study for nuclear test veterans. But in 1983, a study of 21,357 veterans was commissioned by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-weapons-test-participants-study/nuclear-weapons-test-participants-study-information-sheet">Ministry of Defence (MoD)</a>, conducted by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-radiological-protection-board-nrpb-report-series">National Radiological Protection Board</a> and <a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/our-research-history/our-research-history-1990-1940-and-before">Imperial Cancer Research Fund</a>. This work discovered a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15511015">slightly elevated risk of leukaemia</a> and the presence of a “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104727970800286X">healthy soldier effect</a>” – meaning that they were in some ways healthier than a control group. </p>
<p>But the results of state-commissioned studies are <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-nuclear-test-heroes-given-13433832">sometimes mistrusted</a>. These studies also do not take into account the lived experiences and difficulties that are part of many nuclear test veterans’ lives. And to date, no long-term public health study has been undertaken for the people of Kiritimati.</p>
<h2>Generations of harm</h2>
<p>This is why I set out to explore their lives, and those of <a href="https://thenccf.org/nuclear-families/">veterans’ families</a>, exploring the lives of 67 nuclear test veterans, and 162 children and grandchildren. I discovered challenges of specialised aged veteran care, evidence of heightened perception of risk of radiation effects and impacts on well-being and mental health.</p>
<p>Concerns were raised by descendants about <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo40060712.html">reproductive risks</a>. Some daughters of nuclear test veterans had chosen not to have children due to their heritage. This attitude is usually only observed in families where there is a risk of <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8d60/f396f407bb2d9adec61b5417d5ee383a6fad.pdf">severe hereditary health effects</a>, such as cystic fibrosis. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274425/original/file-20190514-60570-wghk02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Operation Grapple X, Kiritimati, November 8 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OperationGrappleXmasIslandHbomb.jpg">Royal Air Force</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nuclear test veteran daughter, Susan Musselwhite, is one of many of the descendants I spoke to who attributes her health challenges to her father’s work on <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205163888">HMS Narvik</a>, a control ship for <a href="http://www.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/semaphore-operations-hurricane-and-mosaic">Montebello Island</a> and <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/8-november-1957-grapple-x">Grapple</a> nuclear tests. He was a navy diver near Kiritimati at the time.</p>
<p>Susan, 39, from Devon, suffers from numerous conditions, including chronic migraine, thyroid issues, nerve damage, bowel and bladder issues and Grave’s disease and depression. She also had fertility and other women’s health issues from an early age. Over a cup of tea at her home, she told me: “I truly believe that I have these health issues because my father was at the nuclear weapon tests.”</p>
<p>Another interviewee, who wished to remain anonymous, described how she felt disconnected from her father’s experiences after his death at 41 from multiple organ failure. She said: “It feels difficult to know how describe my experiences … I’ve always been a daughter to the story about a nuclear test veteran. My dad.”</p>
<p>She told me how her early understanding was fused with grief and loss – and how as her understanding of the world grew, so did her understanding of the significance of working on the nuclear weapons programme.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have recently watched footage of the Grapple tests in astonished horror. I cannot help but wonder: did he see this? Where was he? What did he see? What was it like? And what did he do aside from turning his back from the blast? Did this cause his death?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Coming together</h2>
<p>These stories demonstrate the need for recognition and reparation for the injustices that the British state perpetuated against both veterans and Kiritimati communities during the Cold War. Both communities have sought such recognition – with limited success. Yet the voices of those affected are becoming louder.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bntva.com/">British Nuclear Test Veterans Association</a> (BNTVA) is campaigning for medals for nuclear test veterans, to try to help them to gain state recognition. The scope of the BNTVA’s work has since expanded to include support for the people of Kiritimati who have been affected by the tests.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/ctbt/">Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty</a> has outlawed all nuclear weapon testing since 1996. Kiritimati is also part of the <a href="https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/south-pacific-nuclear-free-zone-spnfz-treaty-rarotonga/">South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone</a>. This means that nuclear warfare should never encroach on island life again. But the people of Kiritimati have not forgotten their experiences of <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3350-nuclear-imperialism-and-extended-deterrence">nuclear imperialism</a> and hope that the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/">UN Nuclear Ban Treaty</a> will be successful. </p>
<p>Healing can happen in quieter ways, too. In 2018, a group of five nuclear test veterans returned to Kiritimati to memorialise the 60th anniversary of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230599772_12">Grapple Y</a>. I documented <a href="https://www.nuclearvets.com/post/sixtieth-anniversary-memorialisation-in-kirimati-2018">this ceremony</a>, which included a speech on pacifism from a local pastor and a talk by <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/56127/devastating-legacy-british-american-nuclear-testing-kiritimati-christmas-malden-islands/">Teeua Tetua</a> herself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267904/original/file-20190406-115797-12d5zyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The British nuclear test veterans undertake their memorial ceremony in Kiritimati, in 2018.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was the first time that veteran and islander communities were able to connect, share their experiences, and look to the future.</p>
<p>While I was there, I discovered that in Kiribati, there is a tradition of collective responsibility. This is denoted by the phrase <em>“<a href="https://www.unicef.org/pacificislands/150729_UNICEF_Pacific_GIF_Report_Kiribati_Preview.pdf">bubuti</a>”</em>, which means a request from a friend that cannot be refused. This highlighted to me how much we can learn from these communities. The concept of <em>bubuti</em> deserves an international extension. Because globally, we must accept and respond to the long-term effects of nuclear weapons testing – and other impending threats, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-migration-cannot-be-the-only-option-for-people-living-on-drowning-islands-117122">climate change</a>.</p>
<p>There is a long road ahead before <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-crisis-migration-cannot-be-the-only-option-for-people-living-on-drowning-islands-117122">parity, social and environmental justice are reached</a>. We must provide adequate support, reparations and adaptations to both Kiritimati islander and nuclear test veteran communities, and provide them with the dignity and grace that they deserve.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/they-put-a-few-coins-in-your-hands-to-drop-a-baby-in-you-265-stories-of-haitian-children-abandoned-by-un-fathers-114854?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">‘They put a few coins in your hands to drop a baby in you’ – 265 stories of Haitian children abandoned by UN fathers</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-world-a-history-of-how-a-silent-cosmos-led-humans-to-fear-the-worst-120193?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The end of the world: a history of how a silent cosmos led humans to fear the worst</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-stress-is-already-causing-death-this-chaos-map-shows-where-123796?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Environmental stress is already causing death – this chaos map shows where
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<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Becky Alexis-Martin receives funding from the BNTVA, Aged Veterans Fund and NCCF. She is the Principal Investigator of "Nuclear Families: A Social Study of Nuclear Test Veteran Families and Atomic Atolls" and the author of "Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons Since Hiroshima".</span></em></p>
The British nuclear weapon tests on Kiritimati (or Christmas) Island had profound and lasting cultural consequences for both atomic veterans and local islanders.
Becky Alexis-Martin, Lecturer in Political and Cultural Geographies, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114055
2019-05-07T11:22:18Z
2019-05-07T11:22:18Z
What geology reveals about North Korea’s nuclear weapons – and what it obscures
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272792/original/file-20190506-103057-o9joev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pedestrians in Tokyo pass a television screen broadcasting a report on May 4, 2019 that North Korea has fired several unidentified short-range projectiles into the sea off its eastern coast.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Japan-North-Korea-Missile/1c5b528c87434184abfb8e89886b92c3/15/0">AP Photo/Koji Sasahara</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>North Korea’s leader, Chairman Kim Jong Un, clearly is in no hurry to demilitarize his country. In the wake of two historic yet unproductive summits with President Trump, Kim made a state visit in April to Moscow, where he made clear that his country will not give up its nuclear weapons <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-arrives-in-russian-far-east-ahead-of-first-ever-summit-with-kim-jong-un/2019/04/24/a2d941f8-65c6-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html?utm_term=.520ded083162">without international security guarantees</a>. North Korea also tested what appeared to be short-range missiles on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/world/asia/north-korea-weapons-test.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">April 18</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-fires-several-short-range-projectiles-south-korean-military-says/2019/05/03/511efe92-6e0f-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html?utm_term=.2b75e21a2a13">May 4</a>.</p>
<p>These tests are reminders that North Korea’s military forces, particularly its nuclear arsenal, pose a serious threat to the United States and its Asian allies. This reclusive nation is a high-priority U.S. intelligence target, but there are still large uncertainties about the power of its nuclear weapons. North Korean scientists <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/2944/what-science-is-like-in-north-korea?zd=1&zi=l3tyywxr">work in isolation from the rest of the world</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/us/north-korea-refugees-defectors-usa-utah.html">defectors are far and few between</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogersma/">My research</a> focuses on improving techniques for estimating the yield, or size, of underground nuclear explosions by using physics-based simulations. Science and technology give us a lot of tools for assessing the nuclear capabilities of countries like North Korea, but it’s still difficult to track and accurately measure the size and power of their nuclear arsenals. Here’s a look at some of the challenges.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoWABYMlhBs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Experts say the US and North Korea are closer to nuclear war than many Americans believe.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A nation in the dark</h2>
<p>For an isolated nation like North Korea, developing a functional nuclear weapons program is a historic feat. Just eight other sovereign states have accomplished this goal – the five declared nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China) plus Israel, India and Pakistan.</p>
<p>North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s. Paradoxically, in 1985 it also joined the <a href="http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt">Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT</a>, under which it pledged not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons. But by 2002, U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that North Korea was producing enriched uranium – a technological milestone that can yield explosive material to power nuclear weapons. In response the U.S. suspended fuel oil shipments to North Korea, which prompted the North to leave the NPT in 2003.</p>
<p>Then the North resumed a previously shuttered program to extract plutonium from spent uranium fuel. Plutonium-based nuclear weapons are more energy-dense than uranium-based designs, so they can be smaller and more mobile without sacrificing yield.</p>
<p>North Korea <a href="http://eqinfo.ucsd.edu/special_events/nuclear_tests/north_korea/">conducted its first nuclear test</a> on Oct. 6, 2006. Many experts <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2006/10/north-korean-bomb-may-be-bust-science">considered the test to be unsuccessful</a> because the size of the explosion, as determined from seismograms, was relatively small. However, that conclusion was based on incomplete information. And the test still served as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2011.554992">powerful domestic propaganda tool and international display of might.</a></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1122893306839486469"}"></div></p>
<h2>More tests, more uncertainty</h2>
<p>Since 2006 North Korea has conducted five more nuclear tests, each one larger than the last. Scientists are still working to measure their yield accurately. This question is important, because it reveals how advanced the North Korean nuclear program is, which has implications for global security.</p>
<p>Estimates of the size of North Korea’s most recent test in September 2017 place it between 70 and 280 kilotons of TNT equivalent. For reference, that’s five to 20 times stronger than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. In fact, the explosion was so strong that it caused the mountain under which it was detonated to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL077649">collapse by several meters.</a> </p>
<p>We have a variety of tools for gaining knowledge about these events, ranging from satellite imagery to radar and seismograms. These methods give us an idea of North Korea’s capabilities, but they all have drawbacks. One difficulty common to all of them is uncertainty about geological conditions at the test site. Without a good understanding of the geology, it’s difficult to accurately model the explosions and replicate observations. It is even harder to constrain the error associated with those estimates. </p>
<p>Another, less understood phenomenon is the effect of fracture damage at the test site. North Korea has conducted all of its nuclear tests <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punggye-ri_Nuclear_Test_Site">at the same location</a>. Field experiments have shown that such repeat tests dampen the outgoing seismic and infrasound waves, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1785/0120130206">making the explosion appear weaker than it actually is</a>. This happens because the rock that was fractured by the first explosion is more loosely held together and acts like a giant muffler. These processes are poorly understood and contribute to even more uncertainty.</p>
<p>Additionally, <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017AGUFM.S12B..04R">my research</a> and work by <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017AGUFM.S43H2960S">other scientists</a> have shown that many types of rock enhance the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1785/0120110204">production of earthquake-like seismic waves</a> by underground explosions. The more energy from an explosion that gets converted into these earthquake-like waves, the more difficult it becomes to estimate the size of the explosion. </p>
<iframe title="Estimated Explosion Yield of North Korean Nuclear Tests" aria-label="Dot Plot" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Mow9V/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="240"></iframe>
<h2>What do we know?</h2>
<p>What U.S. officials do know is that North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program, and any such program poses an existential threat to the United States and the world at large. Intelligence experts in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/north-korea-believed-have-60-nuclear-weapons-south-korea-says-n915721">South Korea</a> and nuclear scientists in the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-nuclear-study/north-korea-may-have-made-more-nuclear-bombs-but-threat-reduced-study-idUSKCN1Q10EL">United States</a> estimate that North Korea has between 30 and 60 nuclear weapons in reserve, with the ability to produce more in the future. </p>
<p>It’s still unclear how far North Korea can deliver nuclear weapons. However, their ability to produce plutonium enables them to make small, easily transportable nuclear bombs, which increase the threat.</p>
<p>In the face of such developments, one course of action available to the U.S. that would serve our country’s national security interests is to negotiate with North Korea in good faith, but accept nothing less than complete nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula. And any such agreement will have to be verified through disclosures and inspections to ensure that North Korea doesn’t cheat.</p>
<p>That’s impossible if U.S. experts don’t have an accurate accounting of what the North has achieved so far. The more that Americans negotiators know about Pyongyang’s nuclear activities to date, the better prepared they will be to set realistic terms if and when North Korea decides – as other nations have – that its future is brighter without nuclear weapons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marshall Rogers-Martinez has received funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He previously worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Global Security division.</span></em></p>
North Korea is a major military threat to the US and its Asian allies, but exactly how powerful are its nuclear weapons? An earth scientist explains why it’s hard to answer this question.
Marshall Rogers-Martinez, PhD Candidate, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96700
2018-05-29T10:41:14Z
2018-05-29T10:41:14Z
The federal government has long treated Nevada as a dumping ground, and it’s not just Yucca Mountain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220671/original/file-20180528-80653-cnqrmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 2015 tour of an entryway into the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Yucca-Mountain/fb26da9be78c4d2c854f991aa053ff45/3/0">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nevadans can be forgiven for thinking they are in an endless loop of “The Walking Dead” TV series. Their least favorite zombie federal project refuses to die.</p>
<p>In 2010, Congress had abandoned plans to turn <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125740818">Yucca Mountain</a>, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into the nation’s only federal dump for <a href="https://www.oecd-nea.org/brief/brief-03.html">nuclear waste so radioactive</a> it requires permanent isolation. And the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3053/all-actions?overview=closed&q=%7B%22roll-call-vote%22%3A%22all%22%7D">House recently voted by a wide margin</a> to resume these efforts.</p>
<p>Nevada’s U.S. Senators <a href="https://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=526CDC21-D0DB-40ED-AF19-7A3A737E9B98">Dean Heller</a>, a Republican, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPlEUm7WeXI">Catherine Cortez Masto</a>, a Democrat, have made <a href="https://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/3/heller-and-cortez-masto-administration-s-yucca-request-is-dead-on-arrival">their determination to block the latest Yucca proposal</a> clear since <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/yucca-mountain-trump/519972/">the Trump administration</a> first proposed resurrecting the project in early 2017.</p>
<p>While teaching and <a href="http://www.unevadapress.com/books/?view=series&seriesid=5956">writing about the state’s history</a> for more than 30 years, I have followed the Yucca Mountain fight from the beginning – as well as how Nevadans’ views have evolved on all things nuclear. The project could well go forward, but I believe that it probably won’t as long as there are political benefits to stopping it.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VPlEUm7WeXI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto expresses her concerns about the storing nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The roots of statewide resentment</h2>
<p><a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/independent-poll-yucca-stadium-taxes-unpopular-voters">Two-thirds of Nevadans oppose this plan</a>, according to a 2017 poll. The state’s experience with federal actions, including nuclear weapons and waste, may help explain the proposed repository’s <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevadas-congressional-group-unites-against-yucca-mountain-bill/">long-standing unpopularity</a>.</p>
<p>When Nevada became a state in 1864, it had to <a href="http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/nevada-statehood">cede all claims to federal land within its boundaries</a>. This left the federal government owning more than 85 percent of the state, reducing its potential tax base, and angering ranchers who have <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/19397/reviews/121467/garone-carr-childers-size-risk-histories-multiple-use-great-basin">chafed at federal controls and fees for grazing their livestock</a> ever since.</p>
<p>In 1873, the U.S. adopted the gold standard, reducing the value of silver – large amounts of which came from Nevada, known as the “The Silver State.” After the “Crime of ’73,” Nevadan state leaders dedicated themselves to restoring silver as <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/mint-history-crime-of-1873">an anchor of monetary policy</a>, to no avail.</p>
<p>A series of boom-and-bust cycles ensued. Nevadans sought other means of prosperity, including some that other states shunned. In 1897, for example, <a href="http://unevadapress.com/books/?isbn=9780874179286">Nevada hosted a world heavyweight boxing championship</a> when other states refused.</p>
<p>That decision and the state’s declining population prompted the <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1897/05/22/101105383.html">Chicago Tribune to suggest revoking Nevada’s statehood</a>. Similar calls cropped up over Nevada’s <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/legalizing-casino-gambling-helped-revive-nevada-80-years-ago/">permissive divorce and gambling</a> laws.</p>
<h2>A magnet for federal projects</h2>
<p>Tourism, however, became central to Nevada’s economy. So did federal projects, like <a href="https://www.snwa.com/where-southern-nevada-gets-its-water/the-colorado-river/index.html">Hoover Dam</a>, which enabled southern Nevada to obtain most of the water it needs to survive. </p>
<p>World War II and the Cold War prompted numerous federal projects that benefited southern Nevada. A wartime gunnery school evolved into <a href="http://www.nellis.af.mil/">Nellis Air Force Base</a>, and a magnesium plant led to the founding of the <a href="http://www.cityofhenderson.com/news/city-history">city of Henderson</a>.</p>
<p>In 1951, seeking a cheaper domestic location for nuclear tests and research, the Atomic Energy Commission chose part of Nellis. Until 1963, the Nevada Test Site was the scene of about 100 aboveground atomic tests, with more than 800 additional underground tests to follow until <a href="http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/">nuclear testing ceased in 1992</a>.</p>
<p>When aboveground testing began, Nevada cashed in. The governor welcomed the chance to see the desert “<a href="http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/blasts-from-the-past">blooming with atoms</a>.” Las Vegas marketed the mushroom cloud as a tourist attraction, as well as <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2004/jun/23/titus-discusses-nuclear-symbolism/">an atomic hairdo and cocktail</a>. Atomic Energy Commission pamphlets and videos declared the tests to be harmless to those living nearby. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An official atomic testing video cautioned Nevadans to keep their homes tidy as a precaution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distrusting government</h2>
<p>After learning more about the <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/18-december-1970-the-baneberry-incident/">health dangers associated with nuclear fallout</a>, Nevadans began to trust the government less. Repeated leaks and safety issues at the nation’s first <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/waste.html">low-level</a> nuclear waste dump, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-waste-dump-fire-reveals-nevada-troubled-past">opened in 1962 in Beatty, Nevada</a>, eventually led to its closure in 1992.</p>
<p>Distant nuclear incidents also stoked concerns. The nation’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/30/530708793/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-to-shut-down-in-2019">worst nuclear accident</a> to date at the <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html">Three Mile Island</a> plant in Pennsylvania, as well as <a href="http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/what-is-chernobyl/">the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl meltdown</a>, rang alarm bells.</p>
<p>Separately, some rural Nevadans came to resent federal regulations overall, especially after the federal government increased the Bureau of Land Management’s regulatory powers in the mid-1970s. Their <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion">Sagebrush Rebellion</a> sought state control over almost all federal lands within Nevada’s borders and spread throughout the rural West.</p>
<h2>The ‘Screw Nevada’ bill</h2>
<p>As nuclear testing waned, the federal government scrambled to find somewhere to stow the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-moves-to-revive-the-mothballed-nuclear-waste-dump-at-yucca-mountain/">spent fuel from nuclear power plants that had piled up in 39 states</a>. In 1982, Congress approved a plan for the consideration of sites in <a href="https://www.energy.gov/downloads/nuclear-waste-policy-act">Washington, Texas and Nevada</a>.</p>
<p>But five years later, without getting conclusive findings based on those studies, lawmakers voted to consider only one site – <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/twenty-five-years-later-screw-nevada-bill-elicits-strong-feelings/">Yucca Mountain</a>, about 20 miles west of the dump for less- radioactive nuclear waste in Beatty. The state’s leaders and pundits protested this “Screw Nevada” bill, which they ascribed to the state’s lack of political clout.</p>
<p>Around that time, Nevada created <a href="http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/about.htm">a new state agency to deal with nuclear issues</a> and a state commission charged with warding off nuclear waste. A bevy of new state laws made it harder for federal officials and private contractors to obtain and pay for licenses needed for work on Yucca Mountain, and the state filed numerous lawsuits.</p>
<p>Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat first elected in 1986, crusaded against the measure. So did his Nevada colleagues in Congress.</p>
<p>To make their case, Nevadans pointed out the safety risks in moving nuclear waste along highways and railroads to their state, and how terrorists might take advantage of that opportunity. They cheered when a <a href="http://www.westwingepguide.com/S3/Episodes/62_STIRRED.html">“West Wing” episode zeroed in on these dangers</a>. </p>
<p>Reid eventually moved up through Senate ranks as one of the nation’s most powerful lawmakers, serving as the majority and minority leader. When former President Barack Obama took office and had to depend on Reid’s help, he <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101689489">ended funding for Yucca Mountain</a>.</p>
<h2>What to expect this time</h2>
<p>Obama and Reid are no longer calling any shots, and Nevada’s congressional delegation is more junior than it’s been in decades. The overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House suggests that Democrats may be less interested in protecting Nevada than they were when Reid had so much power in the Senate.</p>
<p>But Heller is up for re-election this year, and his is one of the few Republican Senate seats that Democrats feel confident that they can win in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/2/17303554/senate-elections-2018-midterms-democrats-beto-orourke-kyrsten-sinema-dean-heller-jacky-rosen">2018 mid-terms</a>.</p>
<p>If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decides that enabling Heller to claim that he saved Nevada from hosting the nation’s nuclear waste will help re-elect him, protecting the GOP’s slim majority, I think Yucca Mountain will be dead again. At least for the moment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Green is affiliated with the Institute for a Progressive Nevada.</span></em></p>
If recent history repeats itself, the proposed repository for extremely dangerous nuclear waste will stay dead.
Michael Green, Associate Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96378
2018-05-14T11:25:19Z
2018-05-14T11:25:19Z
Earthquake science could have predicted North Korea’s nuclear climbdown
<p>Just days after <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles/north-korea-says-will-stop-nuclear-tests-scrap-test-site-idUSKBN1HR37J">North Korea announced</a> it was suspending its testing programme, <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL077649">scientists revealed</a> that the country’s underground nuclear test site had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/north-korea-nuclear-test-site-collapse-may-be-out-of-action-china">partially collapsed</a>. This assessment was based on data gathered from smaller earthquakes that followed North Korea’s biggest nuclear test in 2017. <a href="https://eurekalert.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=394dac0d2e831bfd2ca7fc3b5&id=f009a9c627&e=7bcb5ee039">A new study</a> published in Science has now confirmed the collapse using satellite radar imaging.</p>
<p>The collapse may have played a role in North Korea’s change in policy. If correct, and with the hindsight of this research, we might have speculated that the North Koreans would want to make such an offer of peace. This shows how scientific analysis normally reserved for studying natural earthquakes can be a powerful tool in deciphering political decisions and predicting future policy across the globe. </p>
<p>In fact, another unusual earthquake in South Korea in 2017 also has the potential to affect geo-politics, this time by changing energy policy. “Seismic shift” may be a cliche often used by journalists and policymakers to describe changing political landscapes, but these recent earthquakes along the Korean Peninsula remind us there can really be authentic links between seismic events and global affairs.</p>
<p>On November 3 2017, North Korea announced that it had successfully tested a thermo-nuclear hydrogen bomb. Global monitoring networks of the <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/">Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO)</a> detected this explosion within minutes of it happening, classifying it as a magnitude 6 seismic event. We knew that this event was caused by an explosion because all the fastest-travelling seismic waves (“<a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/glossary/?term=P%20wave">P-waves</a>”) detected on seismometer instruments around the world caused the ground to initially move in an upwards motion. The energy released by the test was equivalent to up to 300 kilotonnes of TNT explosive.</p>
<p>While this H-bomb test sent diplomatic shudders around the world, it is what happened in the minutes to weeks after the explosion that might have determined the future of nuclear testing on the Korean peninsula. The recent studies revealed the mechanism of a magnitude 4.5 aftershock that occurred eight minutes after the initial explosion. Analysis of the <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/glossary/?term=Rayleigh%20wave">slow-travelling, rolling seismic waves</a> from this event, together with a 50-centimetre drop of the summit of the mountain above recorded by satellite images, revealed large-scale collapse of the test site and adjacent tunnel system.</p>
<p>Mount Mantap is North’s Korea’s only active nuclear test site, hosting of all the country’s nuclear tests since the country first went nuclear in 2006. Given the scientific evidence for the collapse, the test site, located 450 metres beneath the summit of the mountain, may have been rendered unusable. If so, this may have contributed to North Korea’s decision to give up nuclear testing, instead of it being solely due to the diplomatic efforts of the US, South Korea and China.</p>
<p>Two weeks after the North Korea nuclear test, an unrelated <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000bnrs#executive">magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck South Korea</a>, the most damaging in the country since detailed records began at the start of the 20th century. The earthquake occurred close to a site that is testing the feasibility of extracting natural geothermal energy from the ground. Cold water is injected into the ground at high pressures to stimulate the movement of hot geothermal fluids along pre-existing fractures in the rock. This process is subtly different to hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas (commonly called “fracking”), which involves creating new fractures.</p>
<p>Two independent studies <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/second-largest-earthquake-modern-south-korean-history-tied-geothermal-plant">published in Science</a> used detailed seismic measurements of this earthquake and its aftershock sequence to show that the rupture occurred at a shallow depth of around four kilometres. This is normally too shallow for natural earthquakes but is about the depth of the bottom of the geothermal well. As with the seismic events in North Korea, these events did not involve simple slip along a single, straight geological fault.</p>
<p>Even though South Korea is far from an active tectonic plate boundary, the earthquake demonstrates how ancient faults that appear dormant for long periods of time actually lie close to failure. Tiny nudges of these faults can cause them to slip and release seismic energy, and injecting fluids at high rates into Earth’s crust can do just this.</p>
<h2>Fate determined by earthquakes</h2>
<p>Similar sized events have occurred in <a href="https://theconversation.com/earthquakes-from-the-oil-and-gas-industry-are-plaguing-oklahoma-heres-a-way-to-reduce-them-91044">recent years in Oklahoma</a>, US, from the injection of wastewater from oil and gas production. Any large-scale process that causes changes in fluid pressure in the ground, even <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-011/induced.html">storing water in surface reservoirs</a>, has the potential to induce earthquakes.</p>
<p>The fate of these industries that extract energy from the ground are crucial in determining whether we meet our targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If such a large earthquake is an inherent risk, we might have to rethink the use of geothermal energy and rely on traditional, higher-emission sources of energy for longer. Equally, the oil and gas industry may have to rethink its more unconventional techniques, depending on the local geological setting of certain extraction sites, which could speed up the decline of fossil fuels. Understanding the seismic activity that is related to them could help us determine whether such extraction can be done safely, and in turn, the popular and political support they could have.</p>
<p>In these ways, detailed analysis of tiny seismic vibrations around the world can provide crucial evidence for understanding how the world will change in the future. And that’s on top of the value of <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6240/1224.full">studying man-made earthquakes in order to better understand</a> – and potentially mitigate – the risks of natural quakes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Hicks receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).</span></em></p>
Earthquakes can shape political decisions so understanding them is crucial.
Stephen Hicks, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Seismology, University of Southampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91993
2018-02-19T14:04:47Z
2018-02-19T14:04:47Z
Anthropocene began in 1965, according to signs left in the world’s ‘loneliest tree’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206946/original/file-20180219-75979-1wton43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pavla Fenwick</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Campbell Island in the Southern Ocean, some 400 miles south of New Zealand, is a single Sitka spruce. More than 170 miles from any other tree, it is often credited as the “world’s loneliest tree”. Planted in the early 20th century by Lord Ranfurly, governor of New Zealand, the tree’s wood has recorded the radiocarbon produced by above ground atomic bomb tests – and its annual layers show a peak in 1965, just after the tests were banned. The tree therefore gives us a potential marker for the start of the Anthropocene.</p>
<p>But why 1965? The 1960s is a decade forever associated with the hippie movement and the birth of the modern environmentalism, a sun-blushed age in which the Apollo moon landings gave us the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/dec/16/apollo-legacy-moon-space-riley">iconic image of a fragile planet</a> framed against a desolate lunar surface. It was also a time when the world was fast globalising, with rapid industrialisation and economic growth driving population expansion and a massive increase in our impact on the environment. </p>
<p>This postwar period has been called the “<a href="http://www.anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php">Great Acceleration</a>”. So the question we’re interested in is whether this step change in human activity left an indelible mark on our planet, one which, if we disappeared today, would still leave a permanent signature in the geological record.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206948/original/file-20180219-75990-6pj3i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If traces of nuclear testing were present even on Campbell Island then the bombs must have had a truly global impact.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20970-5">Turney et al</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The concept of a human-dominated geological epoch has been around since the 19th century, but the idea that we have created an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14258">Anthropocene</a> has recently become more popular in the face of long-term global changes in the environment far beyond what may be considered “natural”. While humans have long had an <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-still-dont-understand-the-anthropocene-and-theyre-going-about-it-the-wrong-way-70017">impact on the planet</a> at the local and even continental level, the scale of modern change is sufficiently large that geologists are considering the evidence to recognise the Anthropocene officially in the geological timescale. They have set the scientific community a major challenge to find a global-wide environmental marker or “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37200489">golden spike</a>” that represents this crucial change.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206969/original/file-20180219-116360-68l3uf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Small boy’ nuclear test in Nevada, July 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Small_Boy_nuclear_test_1962.jpg">US National Nuclear Security Administration</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A major contender for defining the start of the Anthropocene Epoch is the peak in radioactive elements produced from above ground thermonuclear bomb tests, the majority of which occurred at the height of the Cold War in the early-1960s. The problem from a geologist’s point of view is most of the records of this spike in radioactivity (for example preserved in lake sediments and the annual growth of tree-rings) <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14258">have been reported from the Northern Hemisphere</a> where the majority of the tests took place. To demonstrate a truly global human impact requires a signal from a remote, pristine location in the Southern Hemisphere that occurs at the same time as the north. This is where our new study comes in.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/954fZW9F3tQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sampling the World’s Loneliest Tree.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20970-5">Scientific Reports</a> we publish a new record that identifies a radioactive signal preserved from exactly this sort of place: Campbell Island, a rare piece of real estate in the depths of the Southern Ocean. </p>
<p>During the <a href="http://www.spiritofmawson.com">Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014</a> we undertook scientific sampling across the island to get a better handle on the scale of environmental change in this most remote of locations. The solitary Sitka spruce is in the southern part of the island. The species is found naturally along the west coast of North America from Alaska to California – it is only in the Southern Hemisphere because humans transplanted it there. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206967/original/file-20180219-116355-ivurse.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Levels of radiocarbon recorded on Campbell Island peaked in late 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Turney et al</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nonetheless, the Campbell Island tree is growing exceptionally well – at a rate <a href="http://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3319.pdf">five to ten times faster</a> than surrounding native shrubs – which gave us plenty of data to work with. Detailed analysis of the tree’s year-by-year growth shows the peak in radioactive elements took place sometime between October and December 1965, which coincides with the same signal in the Northern Hemisphere. This spruce has demonstrated unequivocally that humans have left an impact on the planet, even in the most pristine of environments, that will be preserved in the geological record for tens of millennia and beyond.</p>
<p>Our research promises to reignite the debate around when humans really became a geological superpower. Should we define the Anthropocene by when humanity invented the technology to make themselves extinct? If so, then the nuclear bomb spike recorded in the loneliest tree on the planet suggests it began in 1965.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Turney is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor at the University of New South Wales, Node Director of the ARC Centre for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Keele University), and Founding Director of CarbonScape (<a href="http://www.carbonscape.com">www.carbonscape.com</a>). He receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and has had support from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the European Union, The Royal Society, The Royal Geographical Society, The Leverhulme Trust and National Geographic.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Palmer is a Research Fellow in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales and a member of the Australian Research Council Centre for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). He receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and has had support from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Maslin is a Professor at University College London, Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd, Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is an unpaid member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board. He has received funding in the past from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Royal Society, DIFD, DECC, BIS, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Leverhulme Trust, WWF, JLT Re, Channel 4, RICS, British Council, and CAFOD. </span></em></p>
Nuclear bomb tests potentially mark the start of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
Christian Turney, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney
Jonathan Palmer, Research Fellow, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences., UNSW Sydney
Mark Maslin, Professor of Palaeoclimatology, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86915
2017-11-07T19:26:53Z
2017-11-07T19:26:53Z
I’ve always wondered: do nuclear tests affect tectonic plates and cause earthquakes or volcanic eruptions?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193333/original/file-20171106-1061-16ni4lh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A detection station for seismic activity at Bilibion, a remote corner of Russia. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ctbto.org/photos/#ctbto_gallery_14362/1/3">The Official CTBTO Photostream (Copyright CTBTO Preparatory Commission) </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an article from I’ve Always Wondered, a new series where readers send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. Send your question to alwayswondered@theconversation.edu.au</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Do underground nuclear tests affect Earth’s tectonic plates, and cause earthquakes or volcanic eruptions? - Anne Carroll, Victoria</strong></p>
<p>Apart from escalating <a href="https://theconversation.com/kim-jong-uns-nuclear-ambition-what-is-north-koreas-endgame-83428">global fears about conflict</a>, North Korea’s recent nuclear tests have raised questions about geological events caused by underground explosions. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/north-korea-missile-tests-earthquakes-1.4353138">Some media reports</a> suggest the tests triggered earthquakes in South Korea. <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/855707/North-Korea-Kim-jong-un-world-war-3-nuclear-mt-paektu-volcano-eruption-earthquake">Others</a> report the explosions may trigger a volcanic eruption at <a href="http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Paektu-Mountain-8297339/">Paektu Mountain</a>, about 100km from the test site. </p>
<p>So can an underground test cause an earthquake? The short answer is yes: a nuclear explosion can cause small earthquakes. But it is unlikely to affect the earth’s tectonic plates or cause a volcanic eruption. </p>
<p>Although a nuclear explosion releases a lot of energy in the immediate region, the amount of energy is small compared to other stresses on tectonic plates. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-what-earthquake-science-can-tell-us-about-north-koreas-nuclear-test-83415">Q&A: what earthquake science can tell us about North Korea's nuclear test</a>
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<h2>What are tectonic plates?</h2>
<p><a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/tectonic.html">Tectonic plates</a> are slabs of the earth’s crust which move very slowly over the surface of the earth. <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/the-dynamic-earth/plate-tectonics/">Mountain ranges</a> form at the edges of the plates when they collide, and ocean basins form when they move apart. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193361/original/file-20171106-1068-91lest.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tectonic plates are slabs of the earth’s crust.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/plate-tectonics-earths-lithosphere-scientific-theory-134705048?src=NcYsR5t4HmBC2IoUoMiF2Q-1-3">Designua/shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/hazards-archive/volcano/basics/causes">Volcanoes</a> occur mostly where plates are colliding. One plate overrides another, pushing it down to where it may partly melt. The partially melted rock – also known as lava – then rises to the surface, causing a volcano. </p>
<p>The movement of tectonic plates also causes earthquakes, which is why 90% of them occur at the <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq1/where.html">plate boundaries</a>. All but the deepest earthquakes occur along <a href="https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthquakes/Earthquakes-and-Faults">faults</a>, which are breaks in the crust where rocks can move past each other in response to stress. This stress can be from both natural events and human activities. </p>
<h2>Human induced earthquakes</h2>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity">Induced seismicity</a>” is the term used to describe earthquakes caused by human activities.</p>
<p><a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/">Human induced earthquakes</a> can be caused by anything that changes the stresses on rocks beneath the surface. These include processes that add or remove great loads from the surface, such as <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-9452-3_5">mining</a>, <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-011/induced.html">building dams</a> or <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL024223/pdf">tall buildings</a>. </p>
<p>Other processes that change the amount of pressure on rocks can include <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-oil-and-gas-activity-causing-earthquakes-and-can-we-reduce-the-risk-40810">fluid injection</a> from drilling, or extraction of water from aquifers.</p>
<p>Human-induced earthquakes have been reported from every continent except Antarctica. Induced earthquakes only occur where there is already some stress on the rocks. The human activity adds enough stress to the rocks to reach the “tipping point” and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282521730003X">trigger the earthquake</a>. </p>
<p>Nuclear explosions can <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nuclear-weapons-north-korea-kim-jong-un-earthquake-seismology-h-bomb-a7928441.html">induce small earthquakes</a> along existing faults near a test site. Some <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/nuke-testing.htm">underground nuclear tests</a> have fractured the ground surface above the explosions, causing movement on faults adjacent to explosion sites.</p>
<h2>Earthquakes from nuclear testing</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000aert#executive">3 September 2017 North Korean nuclear test</a> generated shock waves equivalent to a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. Eight minutes later, a magnitude 4.1 event was detected at the same site. This may have been linked to a collapse of a tunnel related to the blast.</p>
<p>Several <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000ati7#executive">small earthquakes</a> measured since the event may have been induced by the nuclear test, but the largest is only a magnitude 3.6. An earthquake of this size would not be felt outside of the immediate area. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-tests-not-just-a-bomb-but-the-global-nuclear-monitoring-system-83715">North Korea tests not just a bomb but the global nuclear monitoring system</a>
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<p>The largest induced earthquake ever measured from nuclear testing was a magnitude 4.9 in the Soviet Union. An earthquake of this size can cause damage locally but does not affect the full thickness of the earth’s crust. This means it would not have any effect on the movement of tectonic plates. </p>
<p>Historical data from nuclear testing (mostly in the USA) shows that <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282521730003X#s0215">earthquakes associated with nuclear testing</a> typically occur when the explosion itself measures greater than magnitude 5, 10–70 days after the tests, at depths of less than 5km, and closer than around 15km to the explosion site. <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-nuclear-explosions-cause-earthquakes?qt-news_science_products=7#qt-news_science_products">More recent studies</a> have concluded that nuclear tests are unlikely to induce earthquakes more than about 50km from the test site. </p>
<h2>Volcanic eruptions</h2>
<p>Concerns have also been raised about the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/north-korea-nuclear-tests-could-cause-eruption-of-volcano-at-paektu-mountain-geologist-warns/news-story/041761a89ab5452be816048b800162cf">risk of volcanic eruptions</a> induced by the nuclear tests in North Korea. Paektu Mountain is about 100km from the test site and last erupted in 1903.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193338/original/file-20171106-1017-1o7r3cj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mount Paektu is an active volcano on the border between North Korea and China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Paektu+Mountain/@41.9930126,128.059966,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x5e34aef69343d173:0x29f9d45614652dce!8m2!3d41.9930145!4d128.0774756">Google Maps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1970s, the USA conducted a number of nuclear tests in the <a href="http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Aleutian-Islands-7157067/">Aleutian Islands</a>, a volcanic island arc chain containing 62 active volcanoes. </p>
<p>One of the blasts, named Cannikin, was the largest underground nuclear test ever conducted by the USA. There were fears that the blast would cause a huge earthquake and tsunami. The blast did result in <a href="https://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/4687405/">some induced earthquakes</a>, but the largest was a magnitude 4.0 and there was no increase in volcanic activity. </p>
<p>Based on this evidence, it seems unlikely a nuclear test by North Korea will trigger an eruption of Paektu Mountain. If the volcano was on the verge of erupting, then an induced earthquake from a nuclear blast could influence the timing of the eruption. However, given the distance from the test site then even this is not likely. </p>
<h2>Monitoring nuclear tests</h2>
<p>The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (<a href="https://www.ctbto.org/">CTBTO</a>) has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-tests-not-just-a-bomb-but-the-global-nuclear-monitoring-system-83715">global monitoring</a> system to detect nuclear tests, including seismometers to measure the shock waves from the blast and <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/againstnucleartestsday/history.shtml">other technologies</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193357/original/file-20171106-1017-focbf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Global network of seismic monitoring stations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CTBTO / The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Seismologists can <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-what-earthquake-science-can-tell-us-about-north-koreas-nuclear-test-83415">analyse</a> the seismic data to determine if the shock waves were from a naturally occurring earthquake or a nuclear blast. Shock waves from nuclear blasts have different properties to those from naturally occurring earthquakes. </p>
<p>Testing was much more common before the CTBTO was formed: between 1945 and 1996 <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/">more than 2,000 nuclear tests</a> were conducted worldwide, including 1,032 by the USA and 715 by the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Since 1996 only <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/againstnucleartestsday/history.shtml">three countries</a> have tested nuclear devices: India, Pakistan and North Korea. North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear tests at the same site between 2006 and 2017.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Cunneen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Human-induced earthquakes have been reported from every continent except Antarctica. We asked a geologist to investigate whether North Korea’s nuclear tests could trigger geological changes.
Jane Cunneen, Research Fellow, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85787
2017-10-19T08:16:49Z
2017-10-19T08:16:49Z
Australia’s nuclear testing before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne should be a red flag for Fukushima in 2020
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190672/original/file-20171017-30394-10vbdro.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maralinga bomb</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The scheduling of <a href="https://tokyo2020.jp/en/">Tokyo 2020</a> Olympic events at Fukushima is being <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2017/03/17/anger-fukushima-host-olympic-events-tokyo-2020-games/">seen</a> as a public relations exercise to dampen fears over continuing radioactivity from the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219">reactor explosion</a> that followed the massive <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/17/world/asia/japan-earthquake---tsunami-fast-facts/index.html">earthquake</a> six years ago.</p>
<p>It brings to mind the British <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs129.aspx">atomic bomb tests</a> in Australia that continued until a month before the opening of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Melbourne-1956-Olympic-Games">1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne</a> – despite the known dangers of fallout travelling from the testing site at <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs129.aspx">Maralinga</a> to cities in the east. And it reminds us of the collusion between scientists and politicians – British and Australian – to cover up the flawed decision-making that led to continued testing until the eve of the Games.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Read more: <a href="https://theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-the-maralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441">Sixty years on, the Maralinga bomb tests remind us not to put security over safety</a></strong></em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Australia’s prime minister <a href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/menzies/">Robert Menzies</a> agreed to atomic testing in December 1949. Ten months earlier, Melbourne had secured the 1956 Olympics even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes.</p>
<p>The equestrians were well out of it. Large areas of grazing land – and therefore the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were covered with a light layer of <a href="http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects17.shtml">radiation fallout</a> from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. Four of these were conducted in the eight weeks running up to the big event, 1,000 miles due west of Melbourne at <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Maralinga+Airport/@-28.3988016,125.4143207,5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x2ac4f317763b9a35:0x1b611958f07107ab!8m2!3d-30.1619019!4d131.6216014">Maralinga</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B3_ZRO5oATk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sky News/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bombs and games</h2>
<p>In the 25 years I have been researching the British atomic tests in Australia, I have found only two mentions of the proximity of the Games to the atomic tests. Not even the <a href="https://industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/RoyalCommissioninToBritishNucleartestsinAustraliaVol%201.pdf">Royal Commission</a> into the tests in 1985 addressed the known hazards of radioactive fallout for the athletes and spectators or those who lived in the wide corridor of the radioactive plumes travelling east.</p>
<p>At the time, the approaching Olympics were referred to only once in the <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71654380?searchTerm=atom%20rain&searchLimits=dateFrom=1956-01-01%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1956-12-31%7C%7C%7Cl-title=13">Melbourne press</a> in relation to the atomic tests, in August 1956. It is known that <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs49.aspx">D-notices</a> from the government “requesting” editors to refrain from publishing information about certain defence and security matters were issued.</p>
<p>The official history of the tests by British nuclear historian <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/lorna-arnold/">Lorna Arnold</a>, published by the UK government in 1987 and no longer in print, reports tests director William Penney signalling concern only once, in late September 1956: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Am studying arrangements firings but not easy. Have Olympic Games in mind but still believe weather will not continue bad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This official history doesn’t comment on the implications. And nowhere in the 1985 Royal Commission report is there any reference to the opening of the Olympics, just one month and a day after the fourth test took place 1,000 miles away.</p>
<p>The 1984 <a href="http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/17/019/17019465.pdf">report</a> of the Expert Committee on the review of Data on Atmospheric Fallout Arising from British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that the methodology used to estimate the numbers of people who might have been harmed by this fallout at fewer than 10 was inappropriate. And it concluded that if the dose calculations were confined to the communities in the path of the fallout and not merged with the total Australian population “such an exercise would generate results several orders of magnitude higher than those based on conventional philosophy”. There was no mention of the Olympic Games.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190674/original/file-20171017-30436-188uvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s prime minister at the time of the Maralinga nuclear tests, with the Queen in 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/search-results/fluid/?q=robert%20menzies&amber_border=1&category=A,S,E&fields_0=all&fields_1=all&green_border=1&imagesonly=1&orientation=both&red_border=1&words_0=all&words_1=all">PA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neither Prime Minister Menzies nor his cabinet ever referred publicly to what had been known from the outset – that the British atomic tests in Australia would almost coincide with the Melbourne Olympics. The tests and the Games were planned simultaneously through the first half of the 1950s.</p>
<p>In May 1955, 18 months before the Olympics were due to start, Howard Beale, the Australian minister for supply, announced the building of “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TeyHDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=los+alamos+of+the+british+commonwealth&source">the Los Alamos of the British Commonwealth</a>” (a nuclear test site in New Mexico) at Maralinga, promising that “tests would only take place in meteorological conditions which would carry radioactive clouds harmlessly away into the desert”.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/04/076/4076166.pdf">Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee</a> was formed by the Australians but was closely controlled by physicist <a href="http://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/ernest-w-titterton">Professor Ernest Titterton</a>, the only Englishman on the panel. The 1985 Royal Commission stated explicitly that the AWTSC was complicit in the firing of atomic detonations in weather conditions that they knew could carry radioactive fallout a thousand miles from Maralinga to eastern cities such as Melbourne.</p>
<h2>Hazards of radioactivity</h2>
<p>Professor Titterton, who had recently been appointed to a chair in nuclear physics at the Australian National University after working on the <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-1-349-12731-3%2F1.pdf">Manhattan Project</a> at Los Alamos, and at <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/696046.stm">Aldermaston</a> in England, explained why the atomic devices were being tested in Australia:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because of the hazards from the radioactivity which follows atomic weapons explosions, the tests are best carried out in isolated regions – usually a desert area … Most of the radioactivity produced in the explosion is carried up in the mushroom cloud and drifts downward under atmospheric airstreams. But particular material in this cloud slowly settles to the ground and may render an area dangerously radioactive out to distances ranging between 50 and several hundred miles … It would therefore be hazardous to explode even the smallest weapons in the UK, and it was natural for the mother country to seek test sites elsewhere in the Commonwealth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The AWTSC published two scientific papers in <a href="https://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/4299656-radioactive-fallout-australia-from-operation-mosaic">1957</a> and <a href="http://citeweb.info/19580012489">1958</a> which flat out denied that any dangerous levels of radioactivity reached the eastern states. But their measurements relied on a very sparse scattering of sticky paper monitors – rolls of gummed film set out to catch particles of fallout – even though these could be washed off by rain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190675/original/file-20171017-30417-1mq1d1u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The outback near Maralinga today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&biw=1415&bih=672&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=maralinga+australia&oq=maralinga+australia&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i24k1l2.741665.744630.0.744847.2.2.0.0.0.0.117.204.1j1.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.116....0.McwRUixx-O4#imgrc=u99XsEqjP9GYHM:">Wayne England</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite their clear denials in these papers, meteorological records show that prior to the Games there was <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=086115">rain</a> in Melbourne which could have deposited radioactivity on the ground.</p>
<p>The AWTSC papers included maps purporting to show the plumes of radioactive fallout travelling north and west from Maralinga in the South Australian desert. The Royal Commission published expanded <a href="https://industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/RoyalCommissioninToBritishNucleartestsinAustraliaVol%201.pdf">maps</a> (see page 292) based on the AWTSC’s own data and found the fallout pattern to be much wider and more complex. The Australian scientist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/marston-hedley-ralph-11066">Hedley Marston’s</a> <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/BI/pdf/BI9580382">study</a> of radioactivity uptake in animals showed a far more significant covering of fallout on a wide swathe of Australian grazing land than indicated by the sticky paper samples of the AWTSC.</p>
<p>The 1985 Royal Commission report into British Nuclear Tests in Australia discussed many of these issues, but never in relation to the proximity and timing of the 1956 Olympic Games. Sixty years later, are we seeing the same denial of known hazards six years after the reactor explosion at Fukushima?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Rabbitt Roff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Given what we know about radiation fallout, the parallels between Melbourne and Fukushima should not be ignored
Sue Rabbitt Roff, Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83639
2017-09-08T05:58:03Z
2017-09-08T05:58:03Z
What the West gets wrong about North Korea’s motives, and why some South Koreans admire the North
<p>North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on September 3 – of what was possibly a hydrogen bomb – prompted a flurry of Western media think pieces attempting to explain the past and predict the future. </p>
<p>Most left out important aspects of the current crisis, says analyst B.R. Myers, a South Korea-based academic expert on North Korean propaganda and author of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/books/excerpt-cleanest-race.html?mcubz=0">The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters.</a></p>
<p>In this Q&A, The Conversation asked Professor Myers to explain what most in the West are missing about the North-South conflict.</p>
<p><strong>You’re always complaining about press coverage of the Korean crisis. What is it you think people need to know more about?</strong></p>
<p>A major problem is the mischaracterisation of the government in Seoul as liberal, as if it were no less committed to constitutional values and opposed to totalitarianism than the West German social democrats were in the Cold War. This makes Westerners think, “North Korea can’t take over the South without a war, but it knows it can’t win one, therefore it must now be arming only to protect itself”. </p>
<p>In fact, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has pledged commitment to a North-South confederation, and stressed his opposition to any use of military force against the North, no matter what happens. That makes Moon’s current displays of military hardware seem pretty meaningless. </p>
<p>If Seoul and Washington are playing a good-cop, bad-cop game, it’s a terrible idea. The more placid South Korea appears, the more US troops look like the only real obstacle to unification. </p>
<p>Western media applaud Moon’s soft-line declarations, and they like it when the South Korean man in the street says he finds Trump scarier than Kim Jong Un. But there is a danger of Kim taking all these things the wrong way. </p>
<p><strong>You’ve written that some South Koreans admire the North, or at least, feel a sense of shared identity. Why is that? And can this persist in the current climate?</strong></p>
<p>Many intellectuals here admire the North for standing up to the world. It’s a right-wing sort of admiration, really, for a resolute state that does what it says. More common than admiration are feelings of shared ethnic identity with the North. We are perhaps too blinkered by our own globalism to understand how natural they are. </p>
<p>But the average South Korean’s pan-Korean nationalism is rather shallow. Most people here want to see symbolic shows of reconciliation with the North – like a joint Olympic team in 2018 – but they don’t want unification, least of all under Kim Jong Un’s rule. </p>
<p>And they want the US Army to stay here in case he gets the wrong idea. It’s understandable enough, but this crisis will soon force them to pick one side, and one side only. “No ally is better than one’s own race,” President Kim Young Sam (president of South Korea from 1993 to 1998) said, which no West German chancellor would have dreamed of saying. </p>
<p>Washington has let this stuff slide for a long time, but people there are now asking themselves, “Must we really expose America to a nuclear threat in order to protect moderate Korean nationalists from radical nationalists?”</p>
<p><strong>While the failures of the Vietnam War loom large, the US bungling of Korea is rarely discussed in “western media”. What’s the national memory of that war in both Koreas, and how is that impacting the current state of affairs?</strong></p>
<p>That memory impacts the current situation less than one might think. Foreigners assume that because of the war, the two sides must dislike each other more than West and East Germans did. The opposite is the case. Some of my students say, “The North would never attack us, we’re the same people,” as if the war never happened. And North Korea would now be just as committed to unification if it hadn’t. </p>
<p>You mention the Vietnam War. In some ways that’s the more relevant and topical event right now. Kim Il Sung (leader of North Korea from its inception in 1948 until he died 1994, and the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un) was struck both by Washington’s decision not to use nukes on North Vietnam and by its general reluctance to go all out to win. </p>
<p>I’m sure the ease with which bare-footed Vietcong marched into Saigon in 1975 now strengthens Pyongyang’s conviction that the “Yankee colony” will not last long after the colonisers pull out. </p>
<p>In South Korea, meanwhile, conservatives are now loudly invoking the story of South Vietnam’s demise. They say, “There too you had a richer, freer state, and it fell only a few years after US troops pulled out. Let’s not make the same mistake”. They point worriedly to President Moon Jae-in’s own remark that he felt “delight” when predictions of US defeat in Vietnam came true.</p>
<p><strong>How likely is a war?</strong></p>
<p>I agree with those who say North Korea knows a nuclear war is unwinnable. I also think it fancies its chances of a peaceful takeover too highly to want to risk a premature invasion while US troops are here. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the North’s legitimacy derives almost wholly from its subjects’ perception of perfect strength and resolve. This makes it harder for Pyongyang to back down than it was for Moscow during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.</p>
<p>Also, the North’s ideology glorifies the heart over the mind, instincts over consciousness, which makes rash decisions more likely to be made, even quite low down the military command structure. There is therefore a significant danger of some sort of limited clash at any time. But that has always been the case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>B.R. Myers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
North Korea’s legitimacy derives almost wholly from its subjects’ perception of perfect strength and resolve. This makes it harder for Pyongyang to back down.
B.R. Myers, Professor of International Studies, Dongseo University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83421
2017-09-06T20:13:14Z
2017-09-06T20:13:14Z
When it comes to North Korea, China is happy to make Trump squirm
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184834/original/file-20170906-9862-1wcwr9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks at the BRICS summit in Xiamen.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The sixth and latest <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/world/asia/north-korea-tremor-possible-6th-nuclear-test.html?mcubz=1">nuclear test by North Korea</a> on September 3 has once again put the spotlight on China. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly asked China to do more to rein in the nuclear weapons and missile development by its neighbour and treaty ally, but to no avail.</p>
<p>In fact, China may have already lost most of its direct influence on North Korea through past unsuccessful attempts to control the rogue state’s behaviour. It does still have more leverage on its neighbour than any other country because it supplies most of the oil to North Korea, which in turn fuels Kim Jong-un’s military and industrial machinery.</p>
<p>But China is unlikely to completely cut off crude and refined oil supplies to its troublesome ally. This is because it believes it is unlikely that North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons and delivery systems any time soon.</p>
<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin told the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) leaders <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emhcGknfGdc">in China this week</a> that the North Koreans would “rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program”. This echoes former Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose country defied international sanctions to develop its own nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>The Chinese and Russians now believe it would be almost impossible to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons without a comprehensive settlement with the US.</p>
<p>There was a time when China did enjoy considerable influence over North Korea. Special trains bearing the country’s leader frequently chugged into Beijing to a warm welcome from Chinese leaders. </p>
<p>Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, was taken to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4614848.stm">China’s capitalist enclave of Shenzhen</a> and its other bustling cities, such as Shanghai, on his seven visits to China as leader. These were intended to inspire him to take a leaf out of China’s book and launch his own market-friendly economic reforms. But he politely refused to toe the line while still accepting China’s economic and diplomatic support.</p>
<p>Kim Jong-un has gone a step further in rebuffing the Chinese leadership. Since becoming North Korea’s leader in 2011 he has never visited China, not even when it celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war by hosting a grand military parade in Beijing in 2015. Not surprisingly, Chinese President Xi Jinping has also not visited Pyongyang.</p>
<p>Some Chinese scholars privately blame their own government for North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear weapons program.</p>
<p>It is believed that, in an effort to persuade its estranged ally to desist from developing nuclear weapons, Xi had sent a senior envoy to Pyongyang with a message that China would no longer abide by the security provisions of its <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070201133.html">1961 Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance with North Korea</a>. Instead of buckling under pressure, Kim Jong-un decided to accelerate his nuclear weapons program because he could no longer rely on China’s support.</p>
<p>Whether or not China is indirectly responsible for Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear tests in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, it is still the only permanent council member to have the ability to make life really difficult for the Kim regime. China could do so by fully enforcing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/07/what-the-new-u-n-sanctions-on-north-korea-mean/?utm_term=.d69bf1b81b65">UN sanctions</a> and cutting off oil supplies. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the most we can expect from China, in addition to the measures it has already taken – for example, stopping coal imports – is a reduction in oil supplies. The Chinese leadership does not want to do anything that could bring about the collapse of the North Korean regime and, in the process, provoke its leader to lash out at China. </p>
<p>In any case, a partial reduction in oil supplies is unlikely to have a significant impact on North Korea’s behaviour. It would probably make up the shortfall by smuggling in oil on the high seas. </p>
<p>No doubt China’s relations with Pyongyang have deteriorated to such an extent that China finds its behaviour unacceptable and insulting. Chinese people are also tiring of the shenanigans of Kim and his cronies. This is evident in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41152784">commentary</a> on Chinese social media, which the Chinese government is trying to suppress lest it projects its leaders as ineffective. </p>
<p>China has always been loath to adopt or support measures that could trigger a collapse of the North Korean regime and send millions of impoverished Koreans flooding into China’s northeast. </p>
<p>China also does not want to see an end to North Korea’s status as the buffer between China and the American presence in the southern Korean peninsula. It fears a premature reunification of the two Koreas under US influence. A unified Korea could bring American troops to China’s doorstep.</p>
<p>So, while China’s leaders probably dislike Kim Jong-un as much as the Americans do and want an end to his reckless behaviour, they are unlikely to heed Trump’s calls to help him bring the tyrant to his knees, even if they could.</p>
<p>China is happy to make Trump squirm and appear to his own people and the world as feckless. But it will be watching the American moves very carefully and do anything to avoid war on the Korean peninsula. That could have serious ramifications for the region and the world, and impede China’s own seemingly inexorable rise as a great power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pradeep Taneja does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
China is probably no more fond of the North Korean regime than the Americans are, but it is walking a fine line between managing both nations and ensuring its own continued rise.
Pradeep Taneja, Lecturer in Asian Politics, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83442
2017-09-05T05:48:16Z
2017-09-05T05:48:16Z
What ‘sniffer’ planes can tell us about North Korea’s nuclear tests
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184499/original/file-20170904-17926-1ymgvj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Boeing WC-135 Constant Phoenix "sniffer plane" used to monitor radioactive emissions from nuclear bomb tests.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.offutt.af.mil/News/Article/311823/constant-phoenix-crew-returns-from-pacific/">US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Christopher Boitz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Sunday, North Korea <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/03/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test/index.html">claimed</a> it had completed its sixth nuclear test – a hydrogen bomb. </p>
<p>This test was performed underground by the notoriously secretive regime. So, how can the international community know the state news agency was telling the truth? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000aert#dyfi">6.3 magnitude</a> tremor tells us <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-what-earthquake-science-can-tell-us-about-north-koreas-nuclear-test-83415">there was an explosion</a> Sunday. But to know this was a nuclear test, we have to detect the signature of a nuclear explosion.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Read More:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-cant-win-the-north-korea-crisis-is-a-lose-lose-proposition-for-the-us-83419?">Trump can’t win: the North Korea crisis is a lose-lose proposition for the US</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Nuclear weapons either produce energy through nuclear fission (fission bombs) or a combination of fission and fusion (thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs). In both cases, nuclear reactions with neutrons cause the uranium or plutonium fuel to fission into two smaller nuclei, called fission fragments. These fragments are radioactive, and can be detected by their characteristic decay radiation. </p>
<p>If we detect these fission fragments, we know that a nuclear explosion occurred. And that’s where “sniffer” planes come in.</p>
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<h2>Enter ‘sniffer’ planes</h2>
<p>Since 1947, the United States Air Force <a href="http://www.offutt.af.mil/News/Article/311782/offutt-aircraft-helps-detect-nuclear-blasts-worldwide/">has operated</a> a nuclear explosions detection unit.</p>
<p>The current fleet <a href="http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104494/wc-135-constant-phoenix/">uses the</a> WC-135 Constant Phoenix. The aircraft fly through clouds of radioactive debris to collect air samples and catch dust. By measuring their decay, fission fragments can be detected in minute quantities. </p>
<p>The crew are kept safe using <a href="http://www.offutt.af.mil/Portals/97/Constant%20Phoenix%20Industry%20Visit%20Unclass%20Brief%20v1.pdf?ver=2017-08-24-110340-703">filters to scrub cabin air</a>. Radiation levels are monitored using personal measuring devices for each crew member. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184638/original/file-20170905-28059-17mdi3h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A WC-135 Constant Phoenix from the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron taxis in on the flightline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.offutt.af.mil/News/Article/311823/constant-phoenix-crew-returns-from-pacific/">US Airforce/Staff Sgt. Christopher Boitz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sniffer planes like Constant Phoenix can be rapidly deployed soon after a reported nuclear test and have been used to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/14/nkorea.test.sample/index.html">verify nuclear</a> <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/08/politics/us-air-force-radiation-sniffer-jet/">tests</a> in North Korea in the past. </p>
<p>This year, Constant Phoenix has reportedly been <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/nuke-sniffer-aircraft-arrives-on-okinawa-as-tensions-rise-on-korean-peninsula-1.463108#.Wa0yXBdLekB">deployed in Okinawa</a>, Japan and has had <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/18/politics/china-us-jets-intercept/">encounters with Chinese jets</a>. </p>
<p>On the ground, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) operates <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/verification-regime/monitoring-technologies-how-they-work/radionuclide-monitoring/">80 ground-based monitoring stations</a> across the globe that constantly monitor the air for fission products that have dispersed through the atmosphere. </p>
<p><a href="http://jciv.iidj.net/map/">Japan</a> and <a href="http://iernet.kins.re.kr/">South Korea</a> operate their own radiation monitoring networks. These networks will also presumably be looking for signatures of the latest North Korean test. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CTBTO radiation monitoring system.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>What can fission fragments tell us?</h2>
<p>When a nuclear test occurs underground, the fission fragments are trapped except for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/noble-gas">noble gasses</a>. </p>
<p>Because noble gasses don’t react chemically (except in extreme cases), they diffuse through the rock and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18383">eventually escape</a>, ready to be detected. </p>
<p>In particular, some radioactive isotopes of the chemical element xenon are useful due to the fact these isotopes of xenon don’t appear in the atmosphere naturally, have decay times that are neither too long nor too short, and are produced in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X0100042X?via%3Dihub">large quantities in a nuclear explosion</a>. If you see these isotopes, you know a nuclear test occurred.</p>
<p>Something happened during this test that has people excited — there was an additional <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us2000aetk#executive">magnitude 4.1</a> tremor around eight minutes after the initial tremor, according to the United States Geological Survey. Among other things, this may indicate that the tunnel containing the bomb collapsed. If this happened, then other fission products and other radioactive isotopes could escape as dust particles. </p>
<p>This might have been accidental or deliberate (to provide proof to international viewers), but in either case, we <a href="http://www.moh.govt.nz/notebook/nbbooks.nsf/0/856377d65427ad6fcc257346006f47e0/$FILE/2005-1.pdf">may learn</a> <a href="http://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/160121_dalnoki-veress_xenon_and_particulates.pdf">a lot</a>, depending on how fast the sniffer planes arrived and how much dust was released. </p>
<p>For example, by looking at the probability of seeing fission fragments with different masses, the composition of the fission fuel could be determined. We could also learn about the composition of the rest of the bomb. These facts are things that nuclear states keep very secret. </p>
<p>Crucially, by looking for isotopes that could only be produced in a <a href="http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/11/543/11543720.pdf">high intensity high energy neutron flux</a>, we could suggest whether or not the bomb was indeed a hydrogen bomb. </p>
<h2>What can’t they tell us?</h2>
<p>The amount of information a sniffer plane can determine depends on how much material was released from the test site, how quickly it was released (due to nuclear decay) and how rapidly the sniffer plane got into place.</p>
<p>But fission fragment measurements probably can’t tell us whether the bomb tested was small enough to fit on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). After all, it’s easy enough for North Korea to show a casing in a staged photograph and blow up something else. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Read More:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/north-korea-panics-the-world-but-h-bomb-test-changes-little-83413?">North Korea panics the world, but ‘H-bomb’ test changes little</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Whether or not North Korea has a thermonuclear device that is capable of being mounted to an ICBM is a question weighing heavily on the minds of the international community. </p>
<p>Sniffer planes and the CTBTO network will be wringing all of the data they can out of the debris in the atmosphere to help the world understand the nuclear threat from North Korea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitlin Cook is employed under an Australian Research Council grant. </span></em></p>
Want to know if a rogue state has performed a nuclear test? Sniffer planes can help.
Kaitlin Cook, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Nuclear Physics, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83413
2017-09-04T04:54:25Z
2017-09-04T04:54:25Z
North Korea panics the world, but ‘H-bomb’ test changes little
<p>North Korea has conducted its sixth nuclear device test, and based on what we know so far it looks like by far the biggest yet. Pyongyang’s own news agency, KCNA, described the test as a “perfect success”, and claimed the device was an advanced hydrogen bomb small enough to fit atop a long-range missile. </p>
<p>Though it’s still too soon to confirm whether that’s true, whatever the north tested was clearly much larger than its previous devices. Seismic readings detected the blast via a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, and Norway’s <a href="https://www.norsar.no/press/latest-press-release/archive/large-nuclear-test-in-north-korea-on-3-september-2017-article1534-984.html">NORSAR seismological observatory</a> suggested the explosive yield would translate to a massive 120 kilotons.</p>
<p>After an extremely tense few months of tough rhetoric, missile launches, military exercises and troop movements, it seems North Korea has come very close to achieving what it’s always said it was after: a viable missile-borne thermonuclear deterrent. So has the time finally come to run for the bomb shelters?</p>
<p>Before answering that, it pays to take stock of what the north has been up to of late – and why.</p>
<h2>The best-laid plans</h2>
<p>As of September 4, North Korea had tested more than 20 missiles in 2017. Some were short-range, some medium-range; many of them were targeted to land into the East China Sea. Some launches failed, but one flew over northern Japan. None of these launches took place in a vacuum. They are part of a delicate, almost choreographed interplay between East Asia’s most important actors, a dance of military moves, domestic political shuffling and international aspirations. </p>
<p>The Korean peninsula’s problems always come down to the unresolved issues of Korean partition, the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/10165796">post-Korean War armistice</a>, and the thousands of US troops permanently stationed in the region for the sake of Japan and South Korea’s reconstruction and protection. The American military presence is a direct threat to the security of the Pygonyang power elite, and provides a pretext for the Kim government to claim it needs a massive military and a nuclear deterrent. </p>
<p>In the last year, the north has been especially concerned with the US’s deployment of the the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, a Lockheed Martin-manufactured ballistic missile interceptor. THAAD is <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/what-is-thaad-what-does-it-do-and-why-is-china-mad-about-it/">controversial in China and South Korea</a> too, but it had arrived on the peninsula by March. By then, North Korea had already tested a new <a href="http://www.38north.org/2017/02/jschilling021317/">Pukguksong-2 missile</a>, apparently assassinated Kim Jong Un’s stepbrother, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/20/kim-jong-nam-killing-cctv-footage-appears-to-show-attack-on-north-korean">Kim Jong-nam</a>, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39175704">launched four intermediate-range ballistic missiles</a> into the East China Sea on March 6. </p>
<p>With THAAD partially deployed and operational by early May, and with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-koreas-president-is-getting-his-north-korea-policy-badly-wrong-81047">new South Korean president</a> assuming office, North Korea fired off various other missiles of other ranges in the ensuing weeks. The US, meanwhile, conducted its <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/25/asia/north-korea-fires-projectile/index.html">usual joint missile drills</a> with South Korea and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/uss-nimitz-pacific-deployment-north-korea-2017-6?r=US&IR=T">dispatched military ships</a> to waters near the Korean peninsula. </p>
<p>The international community also condemned, as is customary, all of the launches with the standard volley of castigations: unacceptable, deplorable, beyond the pale. It all culminated on August 5 with <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/sc12945.doc.htm">United Nations Security Council Resolution 2371</a>, which further targets North Korean exports and imports and its foreign workers. </p>
<p>Clearly that resolution hasn’t deterred the north from its plans. But though this test looks like a giant step, technologically and politically speaking, it’s only a small one. </p>
<h2>Business as usual?</h2>
<p>While the world’s attention was mostly focused on the diplomatic tit-for-tat – and especially with what Donald Trump would do when forced to take an actual decision on North Korea – a number of sources, including the site 38 North, were <a href="https://www.38north.org/2017/04/punggyeri041217/">already reporting</a> that the established Punggye-ri test site was prime and ready for a new nuclear test, and had been as early as April. That in itself was hardly surprising; a bigger, more mobile bomb is just latest step in the nuclear programme, and has always been on the agenda. </p>
<p>Yet Pyongyang still hasn’t made it all the way. Even if it might (and only might) be able to fit a hydrogen bomb onto a missile, it still has to solve other stubborn technical problems, particularly how to design long-range missiles that can re-enter the atmosphere without burning up. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the absence of ill-advised and highly unpredictable military action, the international community seems to have little up its sleeve other than sanctions and tough rhetoric. So far, both have failed – and they could be starting to backfire.</p>
<p>When Donald Trump threatened the north with “fire and fury” in retaliation for its long-range missile tests, I <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-threat-of-fire-and-fury-is-a-gift-to-north-koreas-propaganda-machine-82275">suggested</a> it was likely that his inflammatory rhetoric would only spur Pyongyang to test yet more missiles. It seems this will continue. As soon as he woke up to the news of the latest nuclear test, Trump not only suggested that North Korea was a rogue nation, unsurprising, but that it was an embarrassment to China. </p>
<p>This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Yes, Chinese trade is vital to the North Korean economy, but Pyongyang is responsible for its own behaviour. This crisis draws its energy not from China’s supposed enabling, but from the way North Korea understands its own security and protection – and as mentioned above, that worldview dates all the way back to the Korean armistice and its unresolved problems.</p>
<p>As things stand, it’s clear that the north has developed enough technology to claim the title of “nuclear power”, and whether or not other nations think it has the right to be regarded as such is irrelevant. Equally, any military incursion on northern territory would very likely meet with retaliation from what’s now a nuclear-armed state, meaning any discussion of conventional military intervention is effectively moot.</p>
<p>All the parties involved are fully aware of this. And as such the only way forward in this crisis is through some sort of dialogue about how to control the north’s nuclear arsenal. When the safety of millions is at stake, talking with an opponent is no sign of weakness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Virginie Grzelczyk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Pyongyang’s latest test isn’t the great leap forward it purports to be.
Virginie Grzelczyk, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Aston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80583
2017-07-05T20:11:08Z
2017-07-05T20:11:08Z
4 things to know about North and South Korea
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176959/original/file-20170705-21675-xudwrd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People watch news of missile test on a public TV screen in North Korea.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Professor Ji-Young Lee of American University answers four questions to help put issues related to North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities into context.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Why is there a North and a South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>Before there was a South and North Korea, the peninsula was ruled as a dynasty known as Chosŏn, which existed for more than five centuries, until 1910. This period, during which an independent Korea had diplomatic <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/chinas-hegemony/9780231179744">relations with China and Japan</a>, ended with imperial Japan’s annexation of the peninsula. Japan’s colonial rule lasted 35 years.</p>
<p>When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, the Korean peninsula was split into two zones of occupation – the U.S.-controlled South Korea and the Soviet-controlled North Korea. Amid the growing Cold War tensions between Moscow and Washington, in 1948, two separate governments were established in Pyongyang and Seoul. Kim Il-Sung, leader of North Korea, was a former guerrilla <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">who fought under Chinese and Russian command</a>. <a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8995-9780824831684.aspx">Syngman Rhee</a>, a Princeton University-educated staunch anti-communist, became the first leader of South Korea.</p>
<p>In an attempt to unify the Korean peninsula under his communist regime, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5740.html">Kim Il-Sung invaded the South</a> in June 1950 with Soviet aid. This brought South Korea and the United States, backed by United Nations, to fight against the newly founded People’s Republic of China and North Korea. An armistice agreement ended hostilities in the Korean War in 1953. Technically speaking, however, the two Koreas are still at war.</p>
<p><strong>Beyond the political divide, are Koreans in the North and South all that culturally different? If so, how?</strong></p>
<p>Koreans in the South and North have led separate lives for almost 70 years. Korean history and a collective memory of having been a unified, independent state for over a millennium, however, are a powerful reminder to Koreans that they have shared identity, culture and language. </p>
<p>For example, in both Koreas the history of having resisted Japanese colonialism is an important source of nationalism. Both North and South Korean students learn about the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-real-north-korea-9780199390038?cc=us&lang=en&">1919 March 1 Independence Movement</a> in school.</p>
<p>Consider, too, the Korean language. About 54 percent of North Korean defectors in South Korea say that they have <a href="http://www.nkrf.re.kr/nkrf/archive/archive_01/kolas/kolasView.do?key=70048046&kind=DAS&q2=">no major difficulty understanding</a> Korean used in South Korea. Only 1 percent responded that they cannot understand it at all. </p>
<p>However, the divergent politics of North and South Korea have shaped differences in Koreans’ outlook on life and the world since the split. South Korea’s vibrant democracy is a result of the mass movement of students, intellectuals and middle-class citizens. In <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756223/obo-9780199756223-0109.xml">North Korea</a>, the state propaganda and ideology of Juche, or “self-reliance,” were used to consolidate the Kim family’s one-man rule, while reproducing a certain mode of thinking designed to help the regime survive.</p>
<p><strong>What have we learned from North Korean defectors who settled in South Korea?</strong></p>
<p>As of September 2016, an estimated 29,830 North Korean defectors are <a href="http://eng.unikorea.go.kr/content.do?cmsid=3892">living in South Korea.</a> From them, we’ve learned the details of people’s everyday life in one of the world’s most closed societies. For example, despite crackdowns, more North Koreans are now watching South Korean TV dramas. </p>
<p>In North Korea, repression, surveillance and punishment are pervasive features of social life. The state relies heavily on coercion and terror as a means of sustaining the regime.</p>
<p>Still, not all North Koreans are interested in defecting. According to <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/marching-through-suffering/9780231171342">anthropologist Sandra Fahy</a>, interviewees said they left the North reluctantly driven primarily by famine and economic reasons, rather than political reasons. A majority of them missed home in the North. </p>
<p>However, Thae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2016, believes that Kim Jong-un’s North Korea could face a popular uprising or elite defection as North Koreans have increasingly become <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvNBfdjuJI">disillusioned with the regime.</a></p>
<p><strong>What is the history of U.S. relations with South Korea, and where do they stand now?</strong></p>
<p>The purpose of the U.S.-South Korea alliance has changed little since its formation in 1953. This has much to do with continuing threats from North Korea. </p>
<p>However, despite differences in their approach to North Korea, President George W. Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun took a major step toward transforming the Cold War alliance into a “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/07/joint-declaration-commemoration-60th-anniversary-alliance-between-republ">comprehensive strategic alliance</a>.” Under President Barack Obama and South Korean Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, many believed the U.S.-South Korea alliance was at its best. Under their leadership, Washington and Seoul agreed to expand the alliance’s scope to cover nontraditional threats, like terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other global challenges like piracy and epidemic disease, while coordinating and standing firm against North Korea’s provocations. </p>
<p>Now, with Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump as new presidents of South Korea and the United States, there is a greater degree of uncertainty. Among other things, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-we-may-terminate-us-south-korea-trade-agreement/2017/04/27/75ad1218-2bad-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.7220866a5910">Trump criticized</a> the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, while insisting Seoul pay for THAAD, a U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/trump-south-korea-thaad-missile-defense-north-korea.html?_r=0">missile defense system deployed in South Korea</a>. Moon, whose parents fled the North during the Korean War, is likely to put inter-Korean reconciliation as one of his top priorities. This may collide with the current U.S. approach of imposing sanctions against North Korea. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-things-to-know-about-north-and-south-korea-77441">May 14, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ji-Young Lee received funding from the Academy of Korean Studies (Competitive Research Grant, 2013), for a book project on historical international order in Asia.</span></em></p>
North and South Korea explained in four questions and answers.
Ji-Young Lee, Assistant Professor, American University School of International Service
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.