tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/atomic-bomb-test-18699/articlesatomic bomb test – The Conversation2017-10-19T08:16:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/857872017-10-19T08:16:49Z2017-10-19T08:16:49ZAustralia’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 ignoredSue Rabbitt Roff, Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/624412016-09-25T19:30:56Z2016-09-25T19:30:56ZSixty years on, Maralinga reminds us not to put security over safety<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138727/original/image-20160922-11676-1khqhq1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blasted trees in the aftermath of a bomb test at Maralinga.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is September 27, 1956. At a dusty site called One Tree, in the northern reaches of the 3,200-square-kilometre Maralinga atomic weapons test range in outback South Australia, the winds have finally died down and the countdown begins.</p>
<p>The site has been on alert for more than two weeks, but the weather has constantly interfered with the plans. Finally, Professor Sir William Penney, head of the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, can wait no longer. He gives the final, definitive go-ahead.</p>
<p>The military personnel, scientists, technicians and media – as well as the “indoctrinee force” of officers positioned close to the blast zone and required to report back on the effects of an atomic bomb up close – tense in readiness.</p>
<p>And so, at 5pm, Operation Buffalo begins. The 15-kilotonne atomic device, the same explosive strength as the weapon dropped on Hiroshima 11 years earlier (although totally different in design), is bolted to a 30-metre steel tower. The device is a plutonium warhead that will test Britain’s “Red Beard” tactical nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>The count reaches its finale – <em>three… two… one… FLASH!</em> – and all present turn their backs. When given the order to turn back again, they see an awesome, rising fireball. Then Maralinga’s first mushroom cloud begins to bloom over the plain – by October the following year, there will have been six more.</p>
<p>RAF and RAAF aircraft prepare to fly through the billowing cloud to gather samples. The cloud rises much higher than predicted and, despite the delay, the winds are still unsuitable for atmospheric nuclear testing. The radioactive cloud heads due east, towards populated areas on Australia’s east coast.</p>
<h2>Power struggle</h2>
<p>So began the most damaging chapter in the history of British nuclear weapons testing in Australia. The UK had <a href="http://www.industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/RoyalCommissioninToBritishNucleartestsinAustraliaVol%201.pdf">carried out atomic tests</a> in 1952 and 1956 at the Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia, and in 1953 at Emu Field north of Maralinga.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138731/original/image-20160922-11652-1494gcb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British nuclear bomb test sites in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jakew/Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The British had requested and were granted a huge chunk of South Australia to create a “permanent” atomic weapons test site, after finding the conditions at Monte Bello and Emu Field too remote and unworkable. Australia’s then prime minister, Robert Menzies, was all too happy to oblige. Back in September 1950 in a phone call with his British counterpart, Clement Attlee, he had said yes to nuclear testing without even referring the issue to his cabinet.</p>
<p>Menzies was not entirely blinded by his well-known anglophilia; he also saw advantages for Australia in granting Britain’s request. He was seeking assurances of security in a post-Hiroshima, nuclear-armed world and he believed that working with the UK would provide guarantees of at least British protection, and probably US protection as well.</p>
<p>He was also exploring ways to power civilian Australia with atomic energy and – whisper it – even to buy an <a href="https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/walsh51.pdf">atomic bomb with an Australian flag on it</a> (for more background, see <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/rethinking-the-joint-project-australias-bid-for-nuclear-weapons-19451960/DCE2FC212FCE7F81F5A6951B21357916">here</a>). While Australia had not been involved in developing either atomic weaponry or nuclear energy, she wanted in now. Menzies’ ambitions were such that he authorised offering more to the British than they requested.</p>
<p>While Australia was preparing to sign the Maralinga agreement, the supply minister, Howard Beale, wrote in a top-secret 1954 cabinet document: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Although [the] UK had intimated that she was prepared to meet the full costs, Australia proposed that the principles of apportioning the expenses of the trial should be agreed whereby the cost of Australian personnel engaged on the preparation of the site, and of materials and equipment which could be recovered after the tests, should fall to Australia’s account.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Beale said that he did not want Australia to be a mere “hewer of wood and drawer of water” for the British, but a respected partner of high (though maybe not equal) standing with access to the knowledge generated from the atomic tests.</p>
<p>That hope was forlorn and unrealised. Australia duly hewed the wood and drew the water at Maralinga, and stood by while Britain’s nuclear and military elite trashed a swathe of Australia’s landscape and then, in the mid-1960s, promptly left. Britain carried out a total of 12 major weapons tests in Australia: three at Monte Bello, two at Emu Field and seven at Maralinga. The British also conducted hundreds of so-called “minor trials”, including the highly damaging Vixen B radiological experiments, which scattered long-lived plutonium over a large area at Maralinga. </p>
<p>The British carried out two clean-up operations – Operation Hercules in 1964 and Operation Brumby in 1967 – both of which made the contamination problems worse.</p>
<h2>Legacy of damage</h2>
<p>The damage done to Indigenous people in the vicinity of all three test sites is immeasurable and included displacement, injury and death. Service personnel from several countries, but particularly Britain and Australia, also suffered – not least because of their continuing fight for the slightest recognition of the dangers they faced. Many of the injuries and deaths allegedly caused by the British tests have not been formally linked to the operation, a source of ongoing distress for those involved.</p>
<p>The cost of the clean-up <a href="http://www.industry.gov.au/resource/Documents/radioactive_waste/martac_report.pdf">exceeded A$100 million</a> in the late 1990s. Britain paid less than half, and only after protracted pressure and negotiations. </p>
<p>Decades later, we still don’t know the full extent of the effects suffered by service personnel and local communities. Despite years of legal wrangling, those communities’ suffering has never been properly recognised or compensated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138733/original/image-20160922-11649-1oct9gu.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Maralinga landscape today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wayne England/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why did Australia allow it to happen? The answer is that Britain asserted its nuclear colonialism just as an anglophile prime minister took power in Australia, and after the United States made nuclear weapons research collaboration with other nations illegal, barring further joint weapons development with the UK.</p>
<p>Menzies’ political agenda emphasised national security and tapped into Cold War fears. While acting in what he thought were Australia’s interests (as well as allegiance to the mother country), he displayed a reckless disregard for the risks of letting loose huge quantities of radioactive material without adequate safeguards.</p>
<p>Six decades later, those atomic weapons tests still cast their shadow across Australia’s landscape. They stand as testament to the dangers of government decisions made without close scrutiny, and as a reminder – at a time when leaders are once again preoccupied with international security – not to let it happen again.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Liz Tynan will launch her book, <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/atomic-thunder/">Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story</a>, on September 27. A travelling art exhibition, <a href="http://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/">Black Mist Burnt Country</a>, featuring art from the Maralinga lands, will open on the same day.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Tynan 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>On September 27, 1956, an atomic mushroom cloud rose above the Maralinga plain - the first of seven British bomb tests. Why was Australia so keen to put UK military interests ahead of its own people?Liz Tynan, Associate professor and co-ordinator of professional development GRS, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410692015-07-16T10:15:41Z2015-07-16T10:15:41ZRadiation in the postwar American mind: from wonder to worry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88423/original/image-20150714-21719-9oc0uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blowing up the desert – and people's minds: the first atom bomb test in 1945. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ctbto/4926598556/">US Government</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than seventy five years ago at a remote site in New Mexico, the first test of a nuclear bomb was detonated, producing a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-bombtest/">massive explosion</a>. The test, which presaged the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945, forever changed the course of world affairs. Subsequent nuclear explosions, and the radioactive fallout they produced, quickly gave rise to worries over the dangers of radiation.</p>
<p>But what does “radiation” mean? And how have attitudes toward radiation changed over time? </p>
<p>The <a href="https://orise.orau.gov/reacts/guide/define.htm">technical definition</a> aside, for most Americans today, it means something like this: energies, often man-made, usually undetectable, that have <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo19804483.html">strange effects</a> on living things. We connect the abstract, physical concept with a personal, biological one. We take special notice when we are exposed to those energies, even briefly. </p>
<h2>The early days: a glowing reception</h2>
<p>In that sense, the age of radiation began in 1895 with the discovery of X-rays. In the <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-first-atomic-age-matthew-lavine/?K=9781137307217">half-century that followed</a>, Americans indulged in <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2013/11/18/The-Strange-Fate-of-Eben-Byers/">optimistic fantasies</a> about the miracles these energies could perform for better health. But they also quickly learned to <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/history/clarence-dally-the-man-who-gave-thomas-edison-x-ray-vision-123713565/">fear</a> them. On balance, the anxieties have had greater staying power. </p>
<p>Such reactions came from the many direct, personal experiences Americans had with irradiation in an era when radium and X-ray machines were icons of scientific modernity in the early 20th century. They were hailed as the wonders of the age, presented simultaneously as poisons and cure-alls, perpetual motion machines and planet-busting explosives. Radioactive substances (or plausible fakes thereof) were added to dozens of <a href="http://io9.com/seriously-scary-radioactive-consumer-products-from-the-498044380">everyday consumer products</a>, including toothpaste and lipstick, to enhance them with the mysterious energies of the atom. X-rays were tools of portraiture at the <a href="http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1494.htm">beauty salon</a> (for hair removal) as well as the hospital. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88424/original/image-20150714-21701-1kb30w1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Health and beauty products were often advertised as containing radioactive elements like radium or thorium. Fortunately for consumers, these claims were rarely true.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quackery_involving_radioactive_substances#/media/File:Tho-Radia-IMG_1228.JPG">Rama</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, radioactive substances and irradiating machines came directly under the control of a specific few entities: the government, medical authorities and the scientific community. Tangible experiences of radiation became <a href="http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/content/67/4/587.full">muted</a> and rarer for Americans, and gee-whiz speculations about atomic energies in popular literature gave way to soberer considerations of the new nuclear reality. American feelings about radiation became more guarded and more related to their anxieties about the broader world than to their personal experiences. Radiation, always inscrutable, became a tabula rasa.</p>
<p>Physicists <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=446">emerged from the war</a> with a <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/1945-08-12-NYT-Baby-play-with-nice-ball.jpg">fearsome</a> and controversial reputation. Some scientists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfBLXLz4wQ8">campaigned</a> against further development of nuclear weapons. Many more took Department of Defense funding to do exactly that. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2B8R-umE0s0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">President Eisenhower announces the Atoms for Peace program in 1953.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Publicly, the government downplayed weapons research while promoting peaceful <a href="http://newbooksinscitechsoc.com/2014/01/07/angela-n-h-creager-life-atomic-a-history-of-radioisotopes-in-science-and-medicine-university-of-chicago-press-2013/">medical applications</a> of new isotopes. The 1953 “Atoms for Peace” media campaign envisioned international cooperation on energy research. Jobs and comfort came from American uranium, the message went. Obsession with the destructive capacity of atomic energy was the province of the Communist bloc.</p>
<p>The atomic peace dividend was real: nuclear power plants built beginning in 1957 became a <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-T-Z/USA--Nuclear-Power/">substantial</a> part of the nation’s electrical production. Before the first commercial plant had been built, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission gleefully predicted a world in which electricity was “<a href="http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2009/09/too-cheap-to-meter-nuclear-quote-debate.html">too cheap to meter</a>.”</p>
<h2>Fallout becomes a major fear</h2>
<p>But enthusiasm faded as nuclear plants became a reality. The public did not universally trust the <a href="http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/history.html#aec">regulators</a> and corporations that oversaw such plants, nor the engineers and scientists behind them. In March of 1979, two reactors melted down: one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and one in a <a href="http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073417,00.html">movie</a>, The China Syndrome. The fact that the real accident was eventually contained without casualties did little to dispel the anxieties given voice by the movie: that nuclear energies were fundamentally beyond the control of fallible and corruptible people. No further plants were approved until 2012.</p>
<p>Radiation anxiety was heightened by the realization that it was becoming harder to avoid. Civilian scientists, refusing to trust “oracles speaking ‘ex cathedra’ from the Atomic Energy Commission,” conducted nationwide tests of <a href="http://www.stlmag.com/How-to-Stop-a-Nuclear-Bomb-The-St-Louis-Baby-Tooth-Survey-50-Years-Later/">baby teeth</a> beginning in 1959. They found clear evidence that fallout from nuclear tests was accumulating in children’s bodies. By 1963, atmospheric tests had been banned, but the sense that radiation was a form of pollution endemic to the new “atomic age” had taken root. Even natural sources of radiation seemed newly threatening. <a href="http://oldweb.northampton.ac.uk/aps/env/wastes/radon_hotline/radonstory.htm">Radon gas</a>, a selling point for early 20th-century health spas, was discovered in the 1980s to be accumulating in dangerous quantities in some residential basements. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xBfZTkuVzt4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A terrifying vision of nuclear war: The Day After from 1983.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was this threat of omnipresent and involuntary irradiation that gave nuclear weapons their real horror. One might survive the initial blast, but the irradiated landscape that awaited the survivors was subtle and menacing. Richard Rhodes credits the grim 1983 TV movie <a href="http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/the-day-after-review-the-most-depressing-movie-of-all-time.php">The Day After</a> with Ronald Reagan’s energetic engagement in disarmament talks. </p>
<p>He was hardly the only person so affected. Books and movies that imagined the world after a nuclear war stressed the physical agonies of radiation sickness. But they also reinforced the association between radiation and mutation: fictional post-nuclear landscapes featured radioactive distortions of both <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4URRp39XOo">the body</a> and the <a href="http://the-toast.net/2013/08/08/slightly-less-beloved-classics-a-canticle-for-leibowitz/">social order</a>. Radiation had always been associated with change, but in an era when nuclear energies posed an existential threat to the world, it was harder to believe that such change would be for the better.</p>
<p>If “radiation” is bound up with Americans’ opinions of the people who wield it, then perhaps the most troubling thing about it is how flimsy and circumstantial their monopoly over it is. There is no longer a “secret of the bomb”; only diplomacy or threats prevent states from acquiring nuclear weapons. Even far simpler devices of mass irradiation – so-called “dirty bombs” – alarm people because of anxiety left over from more than a century of encounters with radiant energy. Cold War-style nuclear anxieties have persisted because we fully trust neither the energies nor the human systems in which they are embedded.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated with a new anniversary year.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Lavine 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 first atom bomb test seventy years ago today marks the start of a change in Americans’ thinking about radiation. On balance, our nuclear anxieties endure today.Matt Lavine, Assistant Professor of History, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.