Domestic legacy of the nuclear arms race: toxic contamination, rising cleanup costs, and a culture of government secrecy

Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer brings new focus to the legacy of the Manhattan Project – the World War II program to develop nuclear weapons. As the anniversaries of the August 6 and August 9, 1945, bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approach, it is time to reflect further on the dilemmas posed by the creation of the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project gave rise to a trinity of interconnected legacies. It started a global arms race that threatens the very existence of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also caused extensive public health and environmental damage from the production and testing of nuclear weapons. And it has given rise to a culture of government secrecy with worrying political consequences. As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I have studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production.

From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a Citizens Advisory Board, providing input to federal and state officials on the massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State that continues today. Hanford is less well-known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first nuclear weapons, but it was also important to the Manhattan Project. There, a vast, secret industrial facility produced plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later. (The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the main Manhattan Project sites.) Later, Hanford workers manufactured most of the plutonium used in the US nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. . In the process, Hanford became one of the most polluted places on Earth.

The total clean-up cost is estimated to reach US$640 billion, and will take decades if it ever happens. Nuclear test victims The production and testing of nuclear weapons harms public health and the environment in a number of ways. For example, a new study released in preprint form in July 2023 awaiting scientific peer review suggests that fallout from the Trinity nuclear test reached 46 US states and parts of Canada and Mexico. Dozens of families who lived near the site—many of them Hispanic or indigenous—were unknowingly exposed to radioactive contamination. So far, they have not been included in a federal program to compensate uranium miners and downwinders who became victims of radiation-related illnesses after exposure to subsequent atmospheric nuclear tests. However, on July 27, 2023, the US Senate voted to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to communities near the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

Another bill is under consideration in the House of Representatives. America’s largest test above land, with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and other countries conducted their own test programs. Globally during 2017, nuclear-armed states detonated 528 warheads above ground or underwater, and an additional 1,528 warheads underground. It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of people whose health has been affected by these tests. Similar is the case with the problems of the communities displaced by these experiments. Contaminated soil and water The production of nuclear weapons has exposed many people, communities and ecosystems to radiological and toxic chemical contamination. Here, Hannaford offers troubling lessons.

It began in 1944 when workers at a remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract the plutonium content. Nine of Hanford’s reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, released water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river in 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down. Extracting plutonium from irradiated fuel, a process called reprocessing, generated 55 million gallons of liquid waste containing radioactive and chemical toxins. Based on the assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later, the waste was stored in underground tanks designed to last for 25 years. Seventy-eight years after the first tank was built, that solution remains unclear. Projects to vitrify or embed the tank’s waste in glass for permanent disposal have been mired in technical, managerial and political difficulties and are in danger of repeated cancellation.

Now, officials are considering mixing some of the radioactive sludge with concrete grout and sending them elsewhere for disposal – or perhaps leaving them in tanks. Critics see those proposals as risky compromises. Meanwhile, an estimated one million gallons of liquid waste from some tanks has leaked into the ground, threatening the Columbia River, the backbone of the Pacific Northwest’s economy and ecology. Radioactive waste is still scattered over parts of Hanford. Irradiated carcasses of laboratory animals were buried there. The site contains radioactive debris ranging from medical waste to decommissioned submarine propulsion reactors and reactor parts that partially melted in 1979 at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Advocates for a complete cleanup of Hanford warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a national sacrifice zone, a place abandoned in the name of national security.

Culture of Secrecy As the film Oppenheimer shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception. Clearly, the science and technology of those weapons has dangerous potential and requires careful protection. But as I have argued before, the principle of privacy expanded increasingly more broadly. Here again, Hannaford provides an example. Hanford’s reactor fuel was sometimes reprocessed before its most highly radioactive isotopes had decayed. In the 1940s and 1950s, managers intentionally released toxic gases into the air, polluting fields and pastures. Some releases supported the effort to monitor Soviet nuclear progress. By tracking intentional emissions from Hanford, scientists better learned how to detect and evaluate Soviet nuclear tests.

In the mid-1980s, local residents became suspicious of an apparent excess of illness and death in their community. Initially, strict secrecy—reinforced by the area’s economic dependence on the Hanford site—made it difficult for concerned citizens to obtain information. Once the veil of secrecy was partially lifted under pressure from area residents and journalists, public outcry prompted two major health impact studies that sparked fierce controversy. By the end of the decade, more than 3,500 downwinders had filed lawsuits related to diseases they attributed to Hanford. A judge ultimately dismissed the case in 2016 after awarding limited compensation to a handful of plaintiffs, leaving a bitter legacy of legal disputes and personal anguish. Currently active nuclear weapons facilities have also seen their share of nuclear and toxic chemical contamination.

Among them, Los Alamos National Laboratory — Oppenheimer’s original campus, and now a site for both military and civilian research — struggled with groundwater contamination, workplace hazards related to the toxic metal beryllium, and gaps in emergency planning and worker protection procedures. Is. As Nolan’s film reveals, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other scientists on the Manhattan Project were deeply concerned about how their work could pose unprecedented dangers. Looking at the legacies of the Trinity trial, I wonder whether any of them envisioned the scale and scope of those consequences.

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