Clouds of Deceit Read online

  But, until the spring of 1983, American ex-servicemen had little hard evidence to back up their claims of ill-health because of the tests. In May that year, congressional hearings were held to examine their claims after much campaigning by the veterans’ organization, NAAV.

  The evidence presented to the congressional hearings was startling. It suggested that ‘significant numbers’ of the 42,000 US personnel taking part in two atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946 ‘probably received very high doses of radiation in tissue destructive ranges’.

  The evidence came from recently declassified papers which had been donated to the library of the University of California, Los Angeles, by Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Radiological Safety Section during the tests in 1946. It was presented in the shape of an evaluation of these official, formerly secret documents carried out at the International Radiation Research and Training Institute.

  The tests, known as Operation Crossroads, are particularly interesting because the second, ‘Baker’, was the first ever underwater explosion. One of the people who watched it was William Penney - his observation of the ‘base surge’ phenomenon persuaded him to make the first British test at Monte Bello an underwater explosion. At 20 kilotons, Baker was slightly smaller than the first British bomb. But it produced a dreadful list of errors and hazards.

  The official US position on its bomb tests is identical to that of the British on theirs. ‘Exposures generally were well within established radiation exposure limits and there was no reason to expect any increased health risk,’ according to the Defense Nuclear Agency.

  The Crossroads documents suggest otherwise. Eighty-four ‘target’ ships were placed close to the Baker explosion, with about a hundred others at a safe distance. Contamination of the target ships was severe and attempts to clean those still floating failed; most of them had to be sunk. Within six days, all the non-target ships had sailed into contaminated waters and become radioactive. Astonishingly, the US navy had succeeded in irradiating nearly 200 ships without any real idea of how to decontaminate them.

  What happened next was to have a curious parallel six years later, after the first British test at Monte Bello. The report on Crossroads presented to the congressional hearings goes on: ‘It was only after the radioactive ships reached San Francisco and other major ports, followed by extensive experimentation and work, that the levels of radioactivity were substantially reduced. In the meantime, the sailors received radiation doses as they lived and worked aboard.’ The British, of course, were luckier than the Americans: they had only four radioactive ships to deal with, whereas the Americans had around a hundred left after the target ships had been sunk. (The US navy managed to irradiate so many ships that the Pacific Fleet was left short.)

  Radiation protection officers complained of a ‘hairy-chested’ attitude to the dangers of radiation on the part of officers, who passed on their disdain of unseen hazards to their men. The official Decontamination Report on the whole of Operation Crossroads records that General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, ‘is very much afraid of claims being instituted by men who participated in the Bikini tests’.

  This example of what happens when secret documents are declassified, which I reported in the Sunday Times in May 1983, offered little cheer to the British government. Unfortunately, it had decided on its defence against the veterans’ claims long before the horrible prospect of a full Royal Commission, complete with public hearings, raised its unwelcome visage. Before the Australians arrived in London, part of that defence was scientifically shaky. By the time they left, it was clear that the British tests had been conducted in a cavalier manner which far from justified ministers’ confident assertions that everything had gone according to plan.

  Chapter Six

  A case to answer

  The response of the British government to any criticism of the bomb tests is remarkable for the degree of certainty with which it presents two questionable assertions. This confidence has been a consistent feature of all ministerial replies on the subject, whether they have come from Geoffrey Pattie, as Minister of State for Defence Procurement, his successor, Adam Butler, or from Margaret Thatcher herself. The only discernible difference since the first ministerial replies in January 1983 is the note of irritation which has crept in since Butler became spokesman.

  Here is Geoffrey Pattie, writing to Liberal MP David Alton, in January 1983. The tone is confident but concerned. ‘The safety arrangements made for our 1950s’ test operations are still considered to have been very satisfactory. Everyone who was liable to a radiation exposure was issued with a personal dose monitoring device and the records of the measurements made by these dosimeters are available today, some twenty-five to thirty years later; this of itself is some proof of the attention we have continually paid to safety.

  ‘The recorded doses conform to the radiological safety standards which were enforced at the time … Even by today’s standards, radiation exposures to these levels are considered not to increase significantly the risk of an individual contracting cancer.’

  Pattie goes on, in a tone of the utmost reasonableness, to deal with the government’s survey. ‘The Ministry of Defence continues to believe that no significant health damage was caused by the 1950s’ test programme but, recognizing the concerns now being expressed, decided that it was necessary to carry out a survey to establish whether or not this assessment is valid. This survey, which we announced on 12 January 1983, will produce statistically valid data against which claims can be judged objectively.’

  Radiation and its effects are notoriously difficult subjects for the lay person. Superficially, Pattie’s letter sounds a pretty fair way of going about things. The government was confident nothing was wrong but accepted its responsibility to allay public concern. The government presumably hoped that, with little firm evidence to back up the anecdotal claims of veterans that parts of the test programme were a shambles, the subject would go away. They would also have been right in thinking that delving into radiological standards, which involves difficult arguments about the effects of radiation, not to mention a willingness to take on international regulatory organizations, was beyond the resources of many veterans and journalists.

  This thwarted hope may lie behind the impatient tone adopted by Adam Butler nearly two years later in a letter to the MP of a Brighton veteran, Colin Avey. ‘Contrary to Mr Avery’s [sic] inference that something may have gone wrong, I am not aware of any excessive exposure to radiation in any part of the nuclear test programme,’ the minister snapped.

  This sentence is interesting for two reasons. First, there is the fact that Butler has not even bothered to get Avey’s name right, a discourtesy which hints at his impatience with the subject. Second, Butler shows a remarkable ignorance of the issue on which it has fallen to him to be the government’s spokesman. One presumes that Butler attempted at least to acquaint himself with major incidents that happened at the tests before arriving at his optimistic opinion on whether anyone was exposed to ‘excessive’ radiation.

  So to take just one example: why was Butler not aware of the high levels of radiation to which RAF and RAAF crew were exposed after the Totem I blast at Emu Field? Contamination of the Australian planes was so severe that the Australian air force was furious about the hazard to which its men had been exposed. As for the British aircrew, an RAF officer, Wing Commander Dhenin, while on board the RAF Canberra which sampled the cloud, got nearly 50 per cent more than the highest level of gamma radiation exposure permitted for personnel at the tests.

  Butler’s surprising ignorance of a serious contamination hazard at the Totem I blast is symptomatic of the general unreliability of the government’s assurances on the bomb tests. Its statements can be divided into two parts, each as unreliable as the other.

  One is that safety arrangements were so satisfactory that no one could have been exposed to high levels of radiation. The other is that the low levels of radiation which most of the expos
ed men encountered are not hazardous. The rest of this chapter will demonstrate the untruth of the first assertion. The next chapter will set out reasons for disbelieving the second.

  In September 1950, just two years before Britain’s first atom bomb exploded in the Monte Bello Islands, Air Vice-Marshall E. D. Davis, of the Ministry of Supply, received a secret memo from the Health Physics Division at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. The writer, Group-Captain David Wilson, wrote to say just how unprepared the RAF was to take part in atomic tests.

  ‘I realize that this is not in any way in my province or terms of reference, and, indeed, amounts to criticism of Service matters to an outside source [Ministry of Supply], but I feel that it is sufficiently important for me to risk this,’ Wilson explained a little nervously. But he wanted to raise ‘several purely domestic RAF problems’ which had not been fully appreciated. ‘These are enhanced by the general fact that all radioactivity is potentially highly dangerous and extremely insidious.’ (Underlining as in original text.)

  ‘There is no special clothing or equipment for troops engaged in handling sources’ of radiation, Wilson said. Although plans to train personnel to take part in the tests were being prepared, the RAF had no instruments to measure levels of radioactivity. Nor did it have dosimeters to measure the exposure of individuals to radiation. ‘There is no arrangement, as far as I know, for any form of air monitoring or for protection of aircraft, nor for their decontamination,’ he went on.

  This was in spite of the fact that ‘a sample of metal similar to Sunderland [flying boat] hull contaminated here in August has remained badly contaminated for over six weeks,’ the memo records. Wilson says that ‘it has hitherto been regarded as mandatory that organizations dealing with radioactive materials must have an overall protection plan to counteract the effects of radiation.’ The gist of his memo is that it would be a good idea if such a plan were drawn up.

  It is perhaps the fault of the rushed nature of Britain’s bomb testing programme that preparations were so behind at this stage. But a tendency to underestimate risk and place too much reliance on the efficiency of safety arrangements is a consistent theme of the weapons tests. Much greater detail is available on the Australian tests, simply because of the Australian Royal Commission, but there is little reason, judging by anecdotal evidence, to suppose the hydrogen bomb tests at Christmas Island were much better. If anything, the risk to servicemen at the hydrogen bomb trials was potentially greater, because of the massive yield of thermonuclear weapons.

  The picture which has emerged of the Australian tests is remarkable for the extent to which things went wrong. From the testimony of those who were there, and from studying formerly secret documents, a terrifying catalogue of errors can be put together:

  • Lord Penney has admitted that the Totem I blast at Emu Field in 1953 should not have been exploded. The bomb caused a black mist to pass over Wallatinna Station, an aboriginal settlement, where aborigines claim many of their number became sick and even died.

  • Before the Royal Commission was set up, the British government admitted to only one incident in which aborigines strayed into a heavily-contaminated area. Not only is this claim nonsense - ex-servicemen have reported numerous incidents in which aborigines were spotted in prohibited areas - but even this single event was originally covered up because of its potential political impact on the future of the test programme. Servicemen were threatened with being imprisoned or shot if they talked about it.

  • Members of both the British and Australian air forces were exposed to unacceptably high levels of radiation during an exercise to sample the radioactive cloud at the Totem I explosion. The risk extended to ground crew who handled the planes when they returned from the mission.

  • Equipment used to monitor individuals’ exposure to radiation was unreliable. Film badges gave different readings from pocket-sized personal dosimeters carried by the same person. Sometimes, film badges were not collected at all.

  • Predictions of where atomic clouds would travel were often hopelessly wrong and they frequently passed across large chunks of Australia.

  • Methods of measuring fallout on the mainland were hit or miss. Aerial surveys of ground contamination may have underestimated the amount of fallout by as much as ten times. At the first three explosions, long-range monitoring of the mainland was virtually non-existent.

  • The series of minor trials conducted at Maralinga from 1955 to 1963 has left thousands of acres of land contaminated with radioactive plutonium and polonium, as well as highly toxic beryllium. Britain may be forced back to clean up this mess, an exercise which would involve removing tons of contaminated topsoil as well as the dangerous task of digging up twenty kilograms of plutonium buried in pits. One of the few installations in the world capable of dealing with this high-level radioactive waste is at Sellafield - that is, Windscale - in Cumbria.

  There is now abundant evidence that, in some specific incidents, men were exposed to unacceptably high levels of radiation. It is also clear that methods of monitoring the exposure of individuals were not as reliable as the British government likes to suggest. Aborigines were exposed to radioactive hazards, both from airborne fallout and from contamination on the ground; they are still at risk from their trapping of rabbits which have burrowed among the plutonium pits at Maralinga. Radioactive clouds did drift over the mainland; because of faults in the monitoring systems, it is likely that they posed more of a hazard to the Australian population than has ever been admitted.

  As if all this was not bad enough, it is now clear that the British did everything they could to deceive the Australians. The true size of the biggest bomb, the ninety-eight kiloton Mosaic II blast - nearly eight times as large as the Hiroshima bomb - was concealed from the Australian government for twenty-nine years. Penney has admitted suggesting that radioactive samples should be held back from Australian scientists for a few days to prevent them learning much about the nature of the bomb. A leading Australian scientist, Sir Mark Oliphant, was kept away from the tests on the grounds that the Americans considered him a security risk.

  The Australians were far from blameless themselves. The safety committee set up to look after the health of the civilian population of Australia was as much worried about the effects of adverse publicity on the test programme as it was about the possibility of radioactive rain falling on the mainland. When it did express reservations about aspects of the tests, it seems to have done little to make the British amend their behaviour accordingly.

  Much of the picture drawn above comes from formerly secret documents belonging to the British government. Some of the admissions come from Penney, the British scientist most closely associated with the test programme. It is curious, then, that British ministers - who had access to the documents while their contents were still concealed from the rest of us - have always been so confident about the safety of the tests.

  Undoubtedly the most shocking admission to emerge about the tests came on the final day of the Royal Commission’s London hearings, 18 March 1985. Penney accepted that, ‘in hindsight’, the Totem I test took place in unsafe conditions.

  The two Totem tests, on 14 and 26 October 1953, were a rush job. They took place at Emu Field, in the South Australian desert, only 110 miles from the nearest inhabited area and within fifty miles of an aboriginal hunting area. They were held because of a decision that Britain should make 200 of the 600 atom bombs which the British Chiefs of Staff considered necessary for a joint British-American stockpile.

  Britain did not have the capacity to produce sufficient pure plutonium for 200 bombs, so the Totem tests were designed to try out impure plutonium. ‘The purpose of the test is simple,’ says a contemporary memo to the Minister of Defence. ‘It is to find out how much of the isotope 240 can be tolerated in plutonium used for military purposes … The need for carrying out this trial earlier is primarily due to the Chiefs of Staff proposal for doubling the production of fissile material.’ />
  A Ministry of Supply document prepared five months before the test of the Totem I device predicts its yield as five kilotons, only a fifth of the size of the Hurricane bomb. It warns that fallout would be greatest if the weapon was exploded when the wind was blowing at the same speed and direction at all levels of the mushroom cloud. ‘If these conditions should exist at the time of firing, then to avoid any risk of slight sickness this narrow wedge [of land] should not include a centre of population,’ the report warns.

  The first attempt to fire Totem I took place on 7 October. Standby was announced at eight in the morning, but by one o’clock the weather was so bad that it was called off. It rained heavily over the next few days and, frustratingly, standby could not be declared for a whole week. The weapon was fired at seven o’clock in the morning on 14 October: a circle of 200 yards radius around the steel tower on which the bomb was sitting was pulverized, indicating the bomb was much bigger than expected. In fact, it was ten kilotons, twice the size anticipated. Another official document released to the Royal Commission shows that the weapon was exploded in precisely the conditions - a steady wind at all levels of the cloud - which scientists had warned against five months before.

  A narrow plume of radioactivity moved north-east from Emu, passing over aborigines camped at Wallatinna Station and Welbourn Hill.

  Ronald Siddons, one of the authors of the report which forecast how the Totem I bomb would behave, told the Royal Commission that the document underestimated the actual level of fallout by a factor of three. ‘I believe that it was unduly risky to proceed with Totem I at the time it was fired,’ he said.

  Siddons, who is now a Deputy Director at AWRE at Aldermaston, said: ‘If I had been asked at the time, my advice would have been not to fire it.’

  As recently as 1983, the British Ministry of Defence denied any connection between Totem I and the black cloud which aborigines claimed to have seen over Wallatinna and Welbourn Hill after Totem I. But AWRE secretly asked meteorologists to look into the claim. One of them, Dr William Roach, confirmed to the Royal Commission that ‘the fallout cloud would have been seen about mid-morning, possibly as an extended black curtain’.