Cover

File Attachment

Thumbnailsjpg

Military Nuclear Accidents

Radioactive Risk Set coordinated by

Jean-Claude Amiard

Volume 1

Military Nuclear Accidents

Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences

Jean-Claude Amiard

First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study or criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may only be reproduced stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission in writing of the publishers or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address

ISTE Ltd John Wiley amp Sons Inc 27-37 St Georgersquos Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken NJ 07030 UK USA

wwwistecouk wwwwileycom

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 The rights of Jean-Claude Amiard to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Library of Congress Control Number 2018956923 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-333-2

Military Nuclear Accidents

Radioactive Risk Set coordinated by

Jean-Claude Amiard

Volume 1

Military Nuclear Accidents

Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences

Jean-Claude Amiard

First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study or criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may only be reproduced stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission in writing of the publishers or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address

ISTE Ltd John Wiley amp Sons Inc 27-37 St Georgersquos Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken NJ 07030 UK USA

wwwistecouk wwwwileycom

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 The rights of Jean-Claude Amiard to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Library of Congress Control Number 2018956923 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-333-2

Radioactive Risk Set coordinated by

Jean-Claude Amiard

Volume 1

Military Nuclear Accidents

Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences

Jean-Claude Amiard

First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study or criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may only be reproduced stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission in writing of the publishers or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address

ISTE Ltd John Wiley amp Sons Inc 27-37 St Georgersquos Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken NJ 07030 UK USA

wwwistecouk wwwwileycom

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 The rights of Jean-Claude Amiard to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Library of Congress Control Number 2018956923 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-333-2

First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study or criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may only be reproduced stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission in writing of the publishers or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address

ISTE Ltd John Wiley amp Sons Inc 27-37 St Georgersquos Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken NJ 07030 UK USA

wwwistecouk wwwwileycom

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 The rights of Jean-Claude Amiard to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Library of Congress Control Number 2018956923 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-333-2

Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii

Preface xix

Chapter 1 Classification of Nuclear Accidents 1

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident 1 12 Military classification 3 13 Acknowledged unknown and secret accidents 6 14 Origin and frequency of accidents 8

141 Origin of accidents 8 142 Frequency of accidents 8

Chapter 2 Birth of Atomic Weapons and Their First Atrocious Applications 11

21 Introduction 11 211 Discoveries of natural and artificial radioactivity 12 212 The discovery of fission and the first nuclear reactor 13 213 The A-bomb 14 214 French research work before and after World War II 15

22 The explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the first appalling applications of fission 16

221 The facts 17 222 The immediate effects (destruction of buildings) 18 223 The environmental consequences 20 224 Health consequences 23

vi Military Nuclear Accidents

225 The sociological costs 32 226 The economic costs 33

23 Conclusion 35

Chapter 3 Atomic Bomb Tests 37

31 Introduction 37 311 Test sites 39 312 Various types of atomic tests 42 313 Safety of atmospheric tests 43 314 Various phases of a nuclear explosion 43

32 Atmospheric atomic tests massive voluntary releases 44 321 A-bombs 45 322 H-bombs 45 323 Production of radionuclides from an explosion 46 324 Production of particles and aerosols 47 325 Surface deposits 48 326 Accidents during atmospheric atomic tests 48

33 Accidents during underground atomic tests 52 331 Radioactive releases during underground tests 52 332 Soviet accidents 52 333 American accidents 53 334 French accidents 53 335 British and Chinese accidents 54

34 Environmental consequences 54 341 Geomechanical consequences 54 342 Environmental contaminations 55

35 Worldwide spatial consequences of atomic tests 67 36 Health consequences 71

361 Health consequences to military personnel 72 362 Health consequences on workers 73 363 Health consequences on local populations 74 364 Health consequences on the world population 90

37 Sociological consequences 91 371 Taking into account the harm suffered from French tests 91 372 The case of American military personnel and civilians 94 373 Psychological illnesses related to nuclear explosions 94

38 Economic impact 95 381 Compensation for military personnel and local populations 95 382 The cost of French tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa 99

39 Conclusion 99

Contents vii

Chapter 4 Accidents Involving Deterrence 101

41 Introduction 101 411 The principle of nuclear deterrence 101 412 Acquisition of the bomb 103 413 From massive retaliation to flexible response 104 414 The second path to nuclear arms 104 415 The situation in the 21st Century 105 416 The main non-proliferation treaties 106

42 Accidents involving weapons in service 107 421 Accidents involving bombers carrying nuclear weapons 107 422 Accidents involving submarines carrying nuclear weapons 110 423 Missile and rocket accidents 116 424 Accidents during armed missile tests 117 425 Accidents involving power generators and satellites 119 426 Various accidents 120

43 Consequences for the environment 121 431 Consequences of bomber aircraft accidents 121 432 Consequences of submarine wrecks 124 433 Consequences of submerged military waste 127

44 Consequences for flora and fauna 130 45 Consequences on human health 131 46 Economic consequences the cost of nuclear deterrence 134

461 The American costs of nuclear deterrence 134 462 French costs of nuclear deterrence 139 463 British costs of nuclear deterrence 140 464 The costs of nuclear deterrence for other nations 140

47 Strike force in the future 141 48 Conclusion 144

Chapter 5 Accidents Involving the Production of Atomic Weapons 145

51 Introduction 145 52 Accidents involving plutonium production units 151

521 The Windscale accident 151 522 The Kyshtym accident at Mayak 152 523 The accident at Tomsk 154 524 The Gore accident 155

53 Criticality accidents 155 54 The consequences of an accident on atomic bomb storage sites 159

viii Military Nuclear Accidents

55 Environmental impact 160 551 Windscale 160 552 Kyshtym and its surroundings 161 553 Tomsk 169 554 Hanford and Los Alamos 169

56 Health consequences 170 561 Windscale 170 562 Kyshtym 172 563 Tomsk 179 564 Gore 179

57 Costs of weapons production plants 180 58 Conclusion 182

Chapter 6 Nuclear Warfare 185

61 Introduction 185 62 Humanity and the legitimacy of a nuclear war 186 63 The risks of a nuclear war 187

631 Nuclear war has not taken placehellip but it is possible 187 632 International crises and moments of senseless escalation 188 633 Accidents that may trigger nuclear war 190 634 False alarms that may trigger nuclear war 191 635 Geopolitics and nuclear war 192

64 How to avoid nuclear war 194 641 Increased awareness and establishment of peace movements 194 642 The Stockholm Appeal 195 643 Limiting those that possess the bomb 196 644 Towards a new treaty for outlawing nuclear weapons 196 645 Peace movements 197

65 Scenarios of nuclear war 198 66 The environmental impact of nuclear war 199

661 Large-scale fires and smoke 200 662 Dust 201 663 Radioactive fallout 201 664 Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and increase in UV rays 201 665 Oxygen losses and increases in carbon dioxide 202 666 Reductions in light and temperatures 202 667 Nuclear winter 203 668 Radioactive contamination 204

Contents ix

67 Ecological impact of nuclear war 205 68 Impact of nuclear war on health 206 69 Expenditure on dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons in the United States 207 610 Conclusion 211

Conclusion 213

References 215

Index 247

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

vi Military Nuclear Accidents

225 The sociological costs 32 226 The economic costs 33

23 Conclusion 35

Chapter 3 Atomic Bomb Tests 37

31 Introduction 37 311 Test sites 39 312 Various types of atomic tests 42 313 Safety of atmospheric tests 43 314 Various phases of a nuclear explosion 43

32 Atmospheric atomic tests massive voluntary releases 44 321 A-bombs 45 322 H-bombs 45 323 Production of radionuclides from an explosion 46 324 Production of particles and aerosols 47 325 Surface deposits 48 326 Accidents during atmospheric atomic tests 48

33 Accidents during underground atomic tests 52 331 Radioactive releases during underground tests 52 332 Soviet accidents 52 333 American accidents 53 334 French accidents 53 335 British and Chinese accidents 54

34 Environmental consequences 54 341 Geomechanical consequences 54 342 Environmental contaminations 55

35 Worldwide spatial consequences of atomic tests 67 36 Health consequences 71

361 Health consequences to military personnel 72 362 Health consequences on workers 73 363 Health consequences on local populations 74 364 Health consequences on the world population 90

37 Sociological consequences 91 371 Taking into account the harm suffered from French tests 91 372 The case of American military personnel and civilians 94 373 Psychological illnesses related to nuclear explosions 94

38 Economic impact 95 381 Compensation for military personnel and local populations 95 382 The cost of French tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa 99

39 Conclusion 99

Contents vii

Chapter 4 Accidents Involving Deterrence 101

41 Introduction 101 411 The principle of nuclear deterrence 101 412 Acquisition of the bomb 103 413 From massive retaliation to flexible response 104 414 The second path to nuclear arms 104 415 The situation in the 21st Century 105 416 The main non-proliferation treaties 106

42 Accidents involving weapons in service 107 421 Accidents involving bombers carrying nuclear weapons 107 422 Accidents involving submarines carrying nuclear weapons 110 423 Missile and rocket accidents 116 424 Accidents during armed missile tests 117 425 Accidents involving power generators and satellites 119 426 Various accidents 120

43 Consequences for the environment 121 431 Consequences of bomber aircraft accidents 121 432 Consequences of submarine wrecks 124 433 Consequences of submerged military waste 127

44 Consequences for flora and fauna 130 45 Consequences on human health 131 46 Economic consequences the cost of nuclear deterrence 134

461 The American costs of nuclear deterrence 134 462 French costs of nuclear deterrence 139 463 British costs of nuclear deterrence 140 464 The costs of nuclear deterrence for other nations 140

47 Strike force in the future 141 48 Conclusion 144

Chapter 5 Accidents Involving the Production of Atomic Weapons 145

51 Introduction 145 52 Accidents involving plutonium production units 151

521 The Windscale accident 151 522 The Kyshtym accident at Mayak 152 523 The accident at Tomsk 154 524 The Gore accident 155

53 Criticality accidents 155 54 The consequences of an accident on atomic bomb storage sites 159

viii Military Nuclear Accidents

55 Environmental impact 160 551 Windscale 160 552 Kyshtym and its surroundings 161 553 Tomsk 169 554 Hanford and Los Alamos 169

56 Health consequences 170 561 Windscale 170 562 Kyshtym 172 563 Tomsk 179 564 Gore 179

57 Costs of weapons production plants 180 58 Conclusion 182

Chapter 6 Nuclear Warfare 185

61 Introduction 185 62 Humanity and the legitimacy of a nuclear war 186 63 The risks of a nuclear war 187

631 Nuclear war has not taken placehellip but it is possible 187 632 International crises and moments of senseless escalation 188 633 Accidents that may trigger nuclear war 190 634 False alarms that may trigger nuclear war 191 635 Geopolitics and nuclear war 192

64 How to avoid nuclear war 194 641 Increased awareness and establishment of peace movements 194 642 The Stockholm Appeal 195 643 Limiting those that possess the bomb 196 644 Towards a new treaty for outlawing nuclear weapons 196 645 Peace movements 197

65 Scenarios of nuclear war 198 66 The environmental impact of nuclear war 199

661 Large-scale fires and smoke 200 662 Dust 201 663 Radioactive fallout 201 664 Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and increase in UV rays 201 665 Oxygen losses and increases in carbon dioxide 202 666 Reductions in light and temperatures 202 667 Nuclear winter 203 668 Radioactive contamination 204

Contents ix

67 Ecological impact of nuclear war 205 68 Impact of nuclear war on health 206 69 Expenditure on dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons in the United States 207 610 Conclusion 211

Conclusion 213

References 215

Index 247

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Contents vii

Chapter 4 Accidents Involving Deterrence 101

41 Introduction 101 411 The principle of nuclear deterrence 101 412 Acquisition of the bomb 103 413 From massive retaliation to flexible response 104 414 The second path to nuclear arms 104 415 The situation in the 21st Century 105 416 The main non-proliferation treaties 106

42 Accidents involving weapons in service 107 421 Accidents involving bombers carrying nuclear weapons 107 422 Accidents involving submarines carrying nuclear weapons 110 423 Missile and rocket accidents 116 424 Accidents during armed missile tests 117 425 Accidents involving power generators and satellites 119 426 Various accidents 120

43 Consequences for the environment 121 431 Consequences of bomber aircraft accidents 121 432 Consequences of submarine wrecks 124 433 Consequences of submerged military waste 127

44 Consequences for flora and fauna 130 45 Consequences on human health 131 46 Economic consequences the cost of nuclear deterrence 134

461 The American costs of nuclear deterrence 134 462 French costs of nuclear deterrence 139 463 British costs of nuclear deterrence 140 464 The costs of nuclear deterrence for other nations 140

47 Strike force in the future 141 48 Conclusion 144

Chapter 5 Accidents Involving the Production of Atomic Weapons 145

51 Introduction 145 52 Accidents involving plutonium production units 151

521 The Windscale accident 151 522 The Kyshtym accident at Mayak 152 523 The accident at Tomsk 154 524 The Gore accident 155

53 Criticality accidents 155 54 The consequences of an accident on atomic bomb storage sites 159

viii Military Nuclear Accidents

55 Environmental impact 160 551 Windscale 160 552 Kyshtym and its surroundings 161 553 Tomsk 169 554 Hanford and Los Alamos 169

56 Health consequences 170 561 Windscale 170 562 Kyshtym 172 563 Tomsk 179 564 Gore 179

57 Costs of weapons production plants 180 58 Conclusion 182

Chapter 6 Nuclear Warfare 185

61 Introduction 185 62 Humanity and the legitimacy of a nuclear war 186 63 The risks of a nuclear war 187

631 Nuclear war has not taken placehellip but it is possible 187 632 International crises and moments of senseless escalation 188 633 Accidents that may trigger nuclear war 190 634 False alarms that may trigger nuclear war 191 635 Geopolitics and nuclear war 192

64 How to avoid nuclear war 194 641 Increased awareness and establishment of peace movements 194 642 The Stockholm Appeal 195 643 Limiting those that possess the bomb 196 644 Towards a new treaty for outlawing nuclear weapons 196 645 Peace movements 197

65 Scenarios of nuclear war 198 66 The environmental impact of nuclear war 199

661 Large-scale fires and smoke 200 662 Dust 201 663 Radioactive fallout 201 664 Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and increase in UV rays 201 665 Oxygen losses and increases in carbon dioxide 202 666 Reductions in light and temperatures 202 667 Nuclear winter 203 668 Radioactive contamination 204

Contents ix

67 Ecological impact of nuclear war 205 68 Impact of nuclear war on health 206 69 Expenditure on dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons in the United States 207 610 Conclusion 211

Conclusion 213

References 215

Index 247

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

viii Military Nuclear Accidents

55 Environmental impact 160 551 Windscale 160 552 Kyshtym and its surroundings 161 553 Tomsk 169 554 Hanford and Los Alamos 169

56 Health consequences 170 561 Windscale 170 562 Kyshtym 172 563 Tomsk 179 564 Gore 179

57 Costs of weapons production plants 180 58 Conclusion 182

Chapter 6 Nuclear Warfare 185

61 Introduction 185 62 Humanity and the legitimacy of a nuclear war 186 63 The risks of a nuclear war 187

631 Nuclear war has not taken placehellip but it is possible 187 632 International crises and moments of senseless escalation 188 633 Accidents that may trigger nuclear war 190 634 False alarms that may trigger nuclear war 191 635 Geopolitics and nuclear war 192

64 How to avoid nuclear war 194 641 Increased awareness and establishment of peace movements 194 642 The Stockholm Appeal 195 643 Limiting those that possess the bomb 196 644 Towards a new treaty for outlawing nuclear weapons 196 645 Peace movements 197

65 Scenarios of nuclear war 198 66 The environmental impact of nuclear war 199

661 Large-scale fires and smoke 200 662 Dust 201 663 Radioactive fallout 201 664 Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and increase in UV rays 201 665 Oxygen losses and increases in carbon dioxide 202 666 Reductions in light and temperatures 202 667 Nuclear winter 203 668 Radioactive contamination 204

Contents ix

67 Ecological impact of nuclear war 205 68 Impact of nuclear war on health 206 69 Expenditure on dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons in the United States 207 610 Conclusion 211

Conclusion 213

References 215

Index 247

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Contents ix

67 Ecological impact of nuclear war 205 68 Impact of nuclear war on health 206 69 Expenditure on dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons in the United States 207 610 Conclusion 211

Conclusion 213

References 215

Index 247

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Acknowledgments

Claude Amiard-Triquet (Honorary Research Director CNRS France) has taken on the onerous task of re-reading annotating and casting a critical eye over the French version of this book and Professor Philip Rainbow (former Keeper of Zoology Natural History Museum London United Kingdom) has done the same for the English version I warmly thank them both for their time and efforts

A certain number of colleagues have made documents available to me and I am grateful for this They are in particular Christelle Adam-Guillermin from IRSN Pierre-Marie Badot at the Universiteacute de Besanccedilon Mariette Gerber from INSERM in Montpellier Anders Pape Moslashller from the CNRS at the Universiteacute de Paris Sud (Orsay) and Timothy Mousseau at the University of South Carolina I hope that I have not forgotten anyone

I would also like to thank the members of the Scientific Council of the ANCCLI (French National Association of Local Nuclear Information Committees and Commissions) who have helped me sometimes without knowing it to understand certain subjects The same goes for all members of the GRNC (Nord-Cotentin Radioecology Group) a multi-faceted group for the remarkable work they have accomplished working together in complete harmony

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Acronyms and Abbreviations

ABCC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

AFB Air Force Base (of the United States Air Force)

AMFPGN Association des Meacutedecins Franccedilais pour la Preacutevention de la Guerre Nucleacuteaire [French Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons]

Aven Association des veacuteteacuterans des essais nucleacuteaires [French Association of Nuclear Test Veterans]

AWE Atomic Weapons Establishment

BMI Body Mass Index

CEA Commissariat agrave lrsquoeacutenergie atomique [French Atomic Energy Commission]

CEG Centre drsquoeacutetudes de Gramat [Gramat Study Centre]

CEMO Oasis Military Test Centre

CESTA Centre drsquoeacutetudes scientifiques et techniques drsquoAquitaine [Aquitaine Centre for Scientific and Technical Research France]

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

xiv Military Nuclear Accidents

CI Confidence Interval

CIVEN Comiteacute drsquoindemnisation des victimes des essais nucleacuteaires [French Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Testing]

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique [French National Centre for Scientific Research]

CSEM Centre Saharien drsquoExpeacuterimentations Militaires [French Saharan Military Experiments Centers]

CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction

DAM Military Applications Division (CEA)

DOD Department of Defense (of the United States)

DOE Department of Energy (of the United States)

DTC Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

EB Electric Boat

EMRAS Environmental Modeling for Radiation Safety

ERR Excess Relative Risk

ERWM Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

FAS Federation of American Scientists

FOST Strategic Ocean Force (of France)

HPZ Heavily Polluted Zone

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Acronyms and Abbreviations xv

HQ Headquarters

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IASAP International Association of Security Awareness Professionals

ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

ICP-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry

ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection

IFRI Institut franccedilais des relations internationales [French Institute of International Relations]

INES International Nuclear Event Scale

INID Installation nucleacuteaire inteacuteressant la deacutefense [French designation for Nuclear Facility of Interest to Defense]

IPB International Peace Bureau

IPPNW International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

IRR Incidence Rate Ratio

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory

LCF Latent Cancer Fatalities

LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

LMC Liquid Metal Coolant

LOCA Loss-of-Coolant Accident

LPZ Lightly Polluted Zone

LSS Life Span Study

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

xvi Military Nuclear Accidents

MaRV Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle

MCA Multiple Congenital Anomalies

MPZ Moderately Polluted Zone

MR ASM Medium Range Air to Surface Missile

MRTT Multi Role Tanker Transport

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NNW North-Northwest

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command

NPR Nuclear Posture Review

NPT Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

NTS Nevada Test Site

OPRI Office de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants [French Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation]

OR Odds Ratio

ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PA Incidence in peopleyear

PAH Phenylalanine Hydroxylase

PDD Pervasive Developmental Disorder

PEA Advanced Monitoring Station

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Acronyms and Abbreviations xvii

PESK Programme Environnement Santeacute au Kazakhstan [Kazakhstan Health and Environment Plan]

PTC Pacific Testing Centre

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF Royal Air Force

RAPD Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA

RERF Radiation Effects Research Foundation

SAF Forces aeacuteriennes strateacutegiques [Strategic Air Forces (of France)]

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SD Standard Deviation

SMR Standard Mortality Ratio

SOM Special Operating Materials

SORT Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

SRS Savannah River Site

SSBN Sub-Surface Ballistic Nuclear (nuclear-powered ballistic missile attack submarine)

SSN Sub-Surface Nuclear (nuclear-powered attack submarine)

STS Semipalatinsk Test Site

SWFLANT Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic

SWFPAC Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific

TBP Tributyl Phosphate

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

xviii Military Nuclear Accidents

TNT Trinitrotoluene

TU Tritium Unit

UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

USAEC US Atomic Energy Commission

VNIIEF All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered ldquouraniferous saltsrdquo Professor Henri Becquerel himself when a red mark and then a burn appeared on his skin within the space of a few days when he left a tube of radium in his jacket pocket This did not prevent radioactivity from becoming a great success among the public since it had amazing virtues and one apparently just had to drink radioactive waters consume food and use medicines containing radium dress in wool containing radium use radioactive cosmetics and have watches and clocks whose needles were luminous due to this radioactive element This enthusiasm continued into the 1930s [AMI 13]

The dangerous nature of radioactivity was confirmed by researchers themselves such as Marie Curie by uranium miners subjected to high levels of exposure to radon and its decay products and by radiologists who irradiated themselves intensely at the same time as their patients accumulating their exposure

While the danger is well-known the radioactive risk is nevertheless tricky to estimate since it depends on numerous different parameters Radiosensitivity is mainly a function of the intensity of exposure (dose) and also of the distribution of this dose over time (absorbed dose per unit of time) The effects on living molecules of the various ionizing rays (alpha beta gamma neutron emitters) are very different In addition the

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

xx Military Nuclear Accidents

radioactive risk depends on which radionuclide is involved or rather on the mix of radionuclides present in the environment around the living being

In addition some cells are more radiosensitive than others This is true for both plant and animal species as well as for individuals In a single species in most cases the first stages of life (embryo fetus child) are much more radiosensitive than adults and old people [AMI 16]

Nuclear accidents will be covered in a series of three volumes The first volume is dedicated to definitions and classifications of nuclear accidents of military origin It will then tackle the consequences of the actions taken in warfare at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs and accidents that occurred during underground testing The use of military force to act as a nuclear deterrent has caused various accidents in particular among submarines and bomber aircraft This volume also considers the various accidents that have occurred during the manufacture of nuclear weapons in particular those of criticality This book finishes with estimations of the effects of a possible nuclear war

The second volume will be dedicated to accidents related to civilian use of nuclear technology from the points of view of civil engineering the production of electricity and tools for human health (in particular detection and radiotherapy) Electricity production depends on several stages Yet accidents can occur at various stages of the fuel cycle from mining to reprocessing of the exhausted fuel Chapters will be dedicated especially to the accidents that occurred in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors A later chapter evokes the possible consequences of acts of terrorism

For each of the first two volumes we will describe the consequences for terrestrial aquatic and marine environments consequences for flora and fauna consequences for human health sociological and psychological consequences and economic consequences

The third volume expands on the future management of nuclear accidents in particular looking at activities involving decontamination feedback post-accident management risk perception Industrial Intervention

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Preface xxi

Plans (PPIs in France) and the need to take potential accidents into account during project design

The book also includes a list of abbreviations

Nuclear accidents and catastrophes have given rise to an abundant literature Why produce more books on the subject Many books are openly pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear The intention of the books in this series is to provide the reader with a clear transparent and objective summary of the relevant scientific literature

Jean-Claude AMIARD September 2018

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

1

Classification of Nuclear Accidents

The widely accepted definition of the term ldquoaccidentrdquo is ldquoa chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and thingsrdquo Depending on the severity of the damage we instead use ldquocatastropherdquo when ldquothe event causes significant disruption and deathsrdquo or even ldquocalamityrdquo when the ldquoaffliction is public the misfortune affects a region a group of individualsrdquo On the contrary the term ldquoincidentrdquo will be used for ldquoa fact an event of secondary generally irritating character that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal functionrdquo

In this book the term ldquonuclear accidentrdquo will cover both conventional accidents that occur in an involuntary manner following a large-scale natural event (earthquake tsunami etc) a human error that has serious repercussions or an act of terrorism but we will also find it used in reference to voluntary acts such as atmospheric nuclear bomb tests or war events such as atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Effectively for these various events if the decision is voluntary and therefore not at all related to chance the damage to the environment to flora fauna and to mankind is considerable

11 Classification of nuclear events incident or accident

The definition of an accident is generally based on the existence of visible medical damage morbidity or even mortality Accidents caused by ionizing rays are very rare in comparison to other types of accidents (eg roads construction) However a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported since the number of accidents that have been

Military Nuclear Accidents Environmental Ecological Health and Socio-economic Consequences First Edition Jean-Claude Amiard

copy ISTE Ltd 2018 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley amp Sons Inc

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

2 Military Nuclear Accidents

discovered by chance is significant and even appears to increase over time [NEN 01a NEN 07]

Following the accident in Chernobyl in 1986 the IAEA decided to create an international scale for nuclear events (INES International Nuclear Event Scale) This scale was applied on a worldwide scale in 1991 It is made up of eight levels of severity graded from 0 to 7 (Table 11) For events that are quantifiable and that can be compared the scale is logarithmic

Several criteria are taken into account to define the severity level of a nuclear event The reported events are analyzed as a function of their consequences on three levels (1) wider effects on people or goods (human health of workers andor the public) (2) on-site effects and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems) The change from an incident (levels 1ndash3) to an accident (levels 4ndash7) is characterized by a contamination of the environment that is likely to be damaging to public health This will be detailed in Volume 2 which is dedicated to civilian industrial and medical accidents Effectively in the military field the INES classification is rarely applied except for nuclear facilities where a civilian activity is present Thus a second military accident has been classified as level 6 (serious accident) namely the Kyshtym catastrophe in the USSR (Mayak nuclear complex) in 1957 Another event (accident) the fire in the Windscale power station (that became Sellafield) in the United Kingdom in 1957 was considered to be level 5

The American military uses a different classification (see below) The military classifications of other countries that possess atomic weapons remain unknown

Type INES Wider effect On-site effect Damage to

defense-in-depth

Major accident

7 Major release widespread effects on health and the environment

Serious accident

6 Significant release likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures

Accident with wider consequences

5

Limited release likely to require implementation of some planned countermeasures

Serious damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

Classification of Nuclear Accidents 3

Accident with local consequences

4 Minor release public exposure of the order of the statutory limits

Significant damage to the reactor or to radiological barriers or lethal exposure of a worker

Loss of defense-in-depth and contamination

Serious incident

3

Very small release public exposure represents a fraction of the statutory limits

Serious contamination or acute effects on the health of a worker

Near-accident Loss of defense lines

Incident 2 No consequence

Significant contamination or overexposure of a worker

Incident combined with significant failure of safety provisions

Anomaly 1 No consequence No consequence

Anomaly not included in the authorized modus operandi

Deviation 0 No safety significance No safety significance

Insignificant anomaly from a safety point of view

Table 11 The severity levels of a nuclear event INES scale (source adapted from [WIK 18a])

12 Military classification

The authorities of countries that possess nuclear arms are very discreet about providing information concerning nuclear incidents and accidents In the United States a specific terminology has been made public Thus the term ldquoPinnaclerdquo designates an incident of interest for the Chief of Staff of the Defense Department because it requires a higher level of military action causing a national reaction affects international relations causes wide immediate media coverage affects current national policy and is clearly against national interests Another term that defines the gravity of this nuclear event is then associated with this generic term

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4

4 Military Nuclear Accidents

The United States Defense Department considers that the most serious accident would be the unintentional and unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon creating a risk of war It calls this a ldquoNuke Flashrdquo in other words a ldquonuclear flashrdquo Slightly less serious accidents are those named ldquoBroken Arrowrdquo that involve nuclear weapons warheads or components but that do not create the risk of nuclear war This includes unexplained nuclear accidents or explosions non-nuclear detonations combustion of a nuclear weapon radioactive contamination the loss of the active part of a nuclear weapon during transport with or without its transporting vehicle and dropping a nuclear weapon or nuclear component that poses a real or implicit danger to the public A significant incident that is not part of the first two categories is coded ldquoBent Spearrdquo

American inventories do not record any ldquonuclear flashrdquo accidents On the contrary the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 ldquobroken arrowrdquo accidents [SCH 13] Among these we cite the accident in 1950 with a B-36 in British Columbia in 1956 the disappearance of a B-47 in 1958 the accidental loss of a nuclear weapon by a B-47 in Mars Bluff (South Carolina) and the mid-air collision of aircraft at Tybee Island (Georgia) in 1961 the accidents in Yuba City and Goldsboro with a B-52 in 1964 another accident with a B-52 in Savage Mountain in 1965 in the Philippines the incident with a Sea A-4 and in 1980 the explosion of a Titan Missile in Damas (Arkansas) However the two worst nuclear accidents took place in 1966 near Palomares Spain and in 1968 at Thule Greenland following two aerial accidents involving B-52 bombers

There have been numerous incidents in the ldquobent spearrdquo category In particular there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 12) An example of ldquobent spearrdquo is the loss in transit of six cruise missiles with armed nuclear warheads carried on a B-52 bomber from the Minot Air Force Base to the Barksdale Air Force Base in August 2007 when they should have been disarmed [WAR 07]

The term ldquoDull Swordrdquo describes minor incidents involving weapons components or nuclear systems or which could compromise deployments of these A selection of several nuclear military accidents is presented in Table 12 for aviation and in Table 13 for submarines Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank more details are provided in Chapter 4