Oh, dear ! Are we all going MAD ? : Ken Gibbs

AM I REALLY GOING MAD ?

Following the written exchanges between my wife and her Canadian cousin about the cold war and how she wished to teach her grandchildren something about their own history, the latter made a comment about what sounded like a nuclear accident in Canada.  No, you didn’t misread that, it was in Canada.

It came from the ‘Teaching Room’ at the Diefenbunker facility which referred to a number of potential nuclear mistakes or accidents – which presumably precipitated the construction of the many underground facilities in Canada – and the USA.  The Canadian cousin named one such accident in British Columbia in 1950.

Now this is where Mr Google has been quite helpful.  Looking on line for publicly available records of this accident, I found a listing of nuclear ‘events’ on ‘Operation Broken Arrow’ which the reader might want to consult – if only to show that I am not ‘making up’ this account: https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/broken-arrows/index.html  Incidentally, I was not asked to sign any Official Secrets Act document. . . . .

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 The archive document has the following description of a 1950 event:

 “Date: February 13, 1950

“The B-36 was en route from Eielson AFB to Carswell AFB on a simulated combat profile mission. The weapon aboard the aircraft had a dummy capsule installed. After six hours of flight, the aircraft developed serious mechanical difficulties, making it necessary to shut down three engines. The aircraft was at 12,000 feet altitude. Icing conditions complicated the emergency and level flight could not be maintained. The aircraft headed out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped the weapon from 8,000 feet. A bright flash occurred on impact, followed by a sound and shock wave. Only the weapon's high explosive material detonated. The aircraft was then flown over Princess Royal Island where the crew bailed out. The aircraft wreckage was later found on Vancouver Island.”

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CONVAIR B-36 PEACEMAKER BOMBER

For those who do not live close to any of the places mentioned, a few words about each may be helpful.  The B-36 was an enormous aircraft, built by Convair, having six piston engines and four jet engines (often referred to as ‘six turnin’ and four burnin’); a wingspan of 70 metres and a fuselage length of 50 metres.  This particular flight was between Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska and Carswell Air Force Base in Texas, some 8 ½ hours by today’s passenger jet.  As the bomber was probably only capable of less than 400 miles per hour, it was going to be a long, long trip but this aircraft was designed to fly long distances.

The account does not say how far out into the Pacific the bomber travelled before jettisoning its alleged ‘dummy capsule’ so the bright flash, sound and shock wave was likely to be from high explosive.  A ‘dummy’ capsule ?

The aircraft then turned back towards the coast of Canada where the crew bailed out over Princess Royal Island and left the aircraft to fly on, unpiloted.  The final crash site was said to be on Vancouver Island, around 300 to 400 miles further south, so the aircraft flew on, unattended for up to an hour.  Given the fact that the plane had completed only half of the intended journey, the crash was likely to have caused a huge fire from the remaining fuel.

The pilots could at least have pointed the plane out to sea, couldn’t they, but maybe they didn’t manage to set the auto pilot in their scramble to exit the bomber.  Careless ?  Possibly.  While the final crash site was an island which probably was not overly populated, there was always the possibility that someone innocent would be eliminated or cremated prematurely.  Perhaps these were the days before plans were made about, “In the case of an emergency, do this. . . . .” to reduce casualties.  After all, they were flying over their (at that time) a friendly neighbour.

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Back to the Almanac, and another 1950 event:

 “Date: November 10, 1950

 “A B-50 jettisoned a Mark 4 bomb over the St. Lawrence River near Riviere-du-Loup, about 300 miles northeast of Montreal. The weapon's HE [high explosive] detonated on impact. Although lacking its essential plutonium core, the explosion did scatter nearly 100 pounds (45 kg) of uranium. The plane later landed safely at a U.S. Air Force base in Maine.”

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45 kgs of uranium was likely to make a lot of fish glow, and poison anything that ate them.  Crocodile Dundee might have used dynamite in the Hudson River, but at least one could eat the fish that were stunned. 

The almanac is silent on what was done to clear up the mess and reduce the radiation risk to the Canadians living in that area and where the St Lawrence river disgorges into the sea.  Incidentally, this could have been classified as a ‘dirty’ bomb.

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Looking at the Almanac yet again:  It would seem that ‘accidents’ in which potential nuclear loads/bombs/missiles were involved, were numerous.  Whether it is dozens, scores or hundreds of events, it begs the question as to whether Canadians had been consulted or informed about what the US was doing, especially when flying over Canadian territory ?

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Here are so many aspects to the handling of nuclear material – many of which are immensely complex – that the chance of making a mistake is likely to be high and possibly catastrophic, potentially affecting millions of people.  Oh, and by the way, those millions include children who, by and large, have absolutely no say in what should – and what should not - happen in their part of the world.

Then comes the ‘management’ control of nuclear materials and devices. What really, really concerns me is that in Russia and the USA, the final control of the ‘Red Button’ which launches a nuclear device, lies in the hands of unpredictable leaders – who seem not to understand the true potential of any mis-guided decision they may make.

As if the foregoing is not concerning enough, what effect will the present war between Russia and Ukraine have on the nuclear sector ?  Remember Chernobyl ?  Remember the coordinated, mass attacks on Russian bomber facilities which did so much damage ?  Will this inflame the already unpredictable Russian leader ?  Will he lash out in anger ?  And how many children will be affected by his fit of pique ?

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We should remember that after the end of the Second World War (WW2), there was a scramble by the big powers to demonstrate that they had a bigger one than anyone else (Atomic bombs and later, Hydrogen bombs).  It was not confined to the USA and Russia though they were the leaders in this ‘game’ – if one could call it that.  It was during this time that having equally huge bombs which could effectively wipe out the opposition was known as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) deemed to ensure that nobody would do anything silly with them.  Looking at the present leaders of both the USA and Russia does not convince me that this theory is valid.

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 The foregoing – about Atomic and Hydrogen bombs is important in as much as they generate tritium – some in the case of Atomic bombs, and a lot in the case of Hydrogen bombs.  This meant that with all the A- and H-bomb tests going on, the concentration of tritium in the atmosphere was increasing and increasing.

Tritium is a radio-active isotope of hydrogen and has a relatively short half-life of just over 12 years.  Other radio-active materials have considerably longer half-lives, so it is better that one doesn’t detonate any bombs if you want the tritium levels to decrease; and probably VERY much better in the case of Uranium because it would last for so much longer.

It seems that some common sense prevailed when this deduction had been made and later tests were undertaken underground until it was shown that even underground tests eject tritium into the atmosphere from deep down, presumably through cracks, fissures and the like.  The obvious answer was to stop as many tests as possible to ensure that humanity didn’t begin to take on a gentle green glow.  Green, by the way, is the colour that tritium emanates until the process of half lives have decreased the tritium concentration to near zero.  That’s enough science for the moment.

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 Now some clever chaps who were more interested in water supplies than anything else, noted that if you plotted the atmospheric tritium levels at any point on the globe, you would have seen the ‘curve’ pick up from near zero in 1944, and then increasing after the Hiroshima and Nagaski bombs and later tests up till common sense kicked in and testing was reduced. 

I am told that in the rural area of my birth (Nyamandhlovu, near Bulawayo in present day Zimbabwe), tritium levels peaked in 1963.  This is important to remember.  Was I beginning to glow a gentle green by then ?  Frankly, I can’t remember, but I had always wanted to go green, but not that way, thank you.

Tritium has a useful characteristic in that it can be washed out of the atmosphere by rainfall, and a further useful characteristic that because it is a hydrogen atom, when mixed with water, it behaves like a free hydrogen atom and is carried in the water wherever it flows.

A group of scientists thought that if one wanted to establish the rate at which water percolates down to the aquifer, if one could ‘date’ when it had fallen on the ground, this proved useful because when, let us say, rain-water fell with a peak tritium concentration, one could track its passage down into the aquifer by testing the tritium concentration in water taken from a core sample at specific intervals later on.  Plotting the results graphically, one should be able to see where the peak occurs in the soil core which shows how far it has travelled since falling to the ground.  Dead simple.

We were reliably informed that we were unlikely to run out of groundwater any time soon; and that with the concentration of tritium, there was no need for a personal Geiger Counter.   Who would ever have thought that something good could come out of A- and H-bomb testing ?

I’m just hoping that Israel and Iran are not going to raise the tritium levels again. . . . .

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