Military Nuclear Accidents: Environmental, Ecological, Health and Socio-economic Consequences

By Jean-Claude Amiard

The use of atomic energy for military purposes has given rise to a variety of nuclear accidents from the outset. This applies to all levels of use: from the manufacture of weapons to their commissioning.

This book provides an overview of the potential impact of such accidents. The prospective consequences of local and global nuclear war are detailed. Similarly, for each accident, the environmental, ecological, health and socio-economic consequences are reviewed. The contamination of the environment and its fauna and flora is detailed and the effects of ionizing radiation are reported. The same is provided for human populations and the adverse effects on the health and physical and mental states of the populations concerned. The economic cost of accidents is also evaluated.

The research presented in this book is based on scientifically recognized publications, and reports from the military forces of the various countries concerned and from the national and international organizations competent in this field (IAEA, WHO, UNSCEAR, IRSN, ICPR, etc.).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781119572503

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Preface

The danger posed by radioactivity came to light a few days after the discovery of this phenomenon by the very person who discovered uraniferous salts, 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 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 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 accident is a chance event that has more or less damaging effects on people and things. Depending on the severity of the damage, we instead use catastrophe when the event causes significant disruption and deaths or even calamity when the affliction is public, the misfortune affects a region, a group of individuals. On the contrary, the term incident will be used for a fact, an event of secondary, generally irritating, character, that occurs during an action and can disturb its normal function.

In this book, the term nuclear accident 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.

1.1. 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 (e.g. roads, construction). However, a certain number of serious accidents are perhaps totally unreported, since the number of accidents that have been 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 1.1). 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 and/or the public), (2) on-site effects, and (3) impacts on defense-in-depth (multiple security systems). The change from an incident (levels 1–3) to an accident (levels 4–7) 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.

Table 1.1. The severity levels of a nuclear event. INES scale (source: adapted from [WIK 18a])

1.2. 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 Pinnacle 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.

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 Nuke Flash; in other words, a nuclear flash. Slightly less serious accidents are those named Broken Arrow 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 Bent Spear.

American inventories do not record any nuclear flash accidents. On the contrary, the United States Defense Department recognizes 32 broken arrow 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 bent spear category. In particular, there have been several bombers that have crashed with their bomb load (Table 1.2). An example of bent spear 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 Dull Sword 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 1.2 for aviation and in Table 1.3 for submarines. Two American submarines and seven or eight Soviet submarines sank; more details are provided in Chapter 4.

Table 1.2. Some nuclear accidents in American military aviation classified as Bent Spear (source: selected from Villain [VIL 14] and Wikipedia [WIK 18b])

Table 1.3. Some nuclear accidents (Dull Sword) on naval nuclear propulsion reactors (source: adapted from Villain [VIL 14])

1.3. Acknowledged, unknown and secret accidents

Nénot and Gourmelon [NEN 07] proposed a different classification of accidents in three classes: acknowledged accidents, unknown accidents and secret accidents.

Most accidents are acknowledged immediately and good knowledge of the circumstances, the type of irradiation and its intensity, in addition to identification of victims and access to suitable logistics, allows the impact on health to be considerably reduced. However, two accidents have provoked management difficulties from a medical point of view. These are Yanango in Peru (February 20, 1999) when a source of iridium 192 lost on a construction site remained in contact for more than 10 hours with a worker who subsequently died, and Tokaï-Mura in Japan (September 30, 1999) when three workers in a fuel manufacturing factory received mixed gamma and neutron irradiation. Sometimes an accident is assimilated to a catastrophe, and in this category, typical accidents are, for example, Chernobyl where there was a significant number of victims, or Fukushima where the environment is widely contaminated in a long-lasting manner [NEN 07].

The second category includes unknown accidents or those acknowledged at a later date. Nénot and Gourmelon [NEN 07] stated that the number of accidents whose radiological origin is identified by chance seems to increase regularly over time. In addition, they ask questions about the number of serious accidents whose radiological cause remains known and whose consequences are attributed to more classical causes. This type of accident is very frequent and the origin is firstly industrial, then medical and military. These are mainly accidents related to linear accelerators or sealed radioactive sources (cobalt 60, cesium 137, iridium 192, etc.) lost in the environment and collected by individuals who know nothing of their nature, and whose dangers only become apparent later on. In fixed installations, accidents occur when elementary safety rules are not applied, when personnel are not properly qualified, and when regulations and instructions are not followed. Since none of the five human senses is capable of detecting ionizing radiation, humans in contact with or in close proximity to this source will receive high doses of radiation. It has been observed that their afflictions that occur within a few hours or a few days will cause more or less permanent effects, or in extreme cases, death. In this category, the number of victims becomes significant if the accident is caused by medical over-irradiation and the malfunction is discovered late or when the time period of loss of the radioactive sources is long. Three such accidents with very serious consequences for victims have also had serious repercussions on the environment. They are caused by the same factor and come from the abandonment of a source of radiotherapy followed by the dissemination of its radioactive components. These three accidents took place in Juarez, Mexico (December 6, 1983), in Goiânia, Brazil (September 10–13, 1987) and in Bangkok, Thailand (January 25, 2000). A fourth accident, which occurred in a hospital in San José in Costa Rica (August 26, 1996 to September 27, 1996), injured more than 100 sick people, and was a national tragedy. Radiotherapy overdose cases in French hospitals must also be added in this category.

The third category includes secret accidents that are almost solely of military origin and took place during the Cold War. The end of this episode by no means guarantees that the large nuclear powers have lifted the veil to reveal all the accidents that have been part of the weapons race. The number of nuclear military accidents is very high. Among the main military accidents, we point out the American or Soviet nuclear submarines highlighted above. Similarly, there were major implications of the Chelyabinsk accident in the Ural Mountains in the USSR (September 29, 1957) where in the months following the accident, 7,500 inhabitants of 20 villages had to be permanently evacuated. Two examples of massive contamination of extensive land areas are provided by nuclear weapons falling from American aviation accidents: the first one in Spain at Palomares (January 17, 1966), and the second one in Thule, Greenland (January 21, 1968).

1.4. Origin and frequency of accidents

1.4.1. Origin of accidents

The hindsight provided by the past 50 years demonstrates that the industrial sector is responsible for 51% of the total number of serious radiological accidents, followed by research responsible for 20%, the civilian nuclear sector for 13%, medicine for 11% and military activities for 5% [CHA 01a].

1.4.2. Frequency of accidents

Nénot and Gourmelon [NEN 07] concluded that the frequency of known serious accidents does not diminish over time; instead, it displays an increasing trend. The accidents affect all countries and appear to bear no relation to the degree of economic development. Many serious accidents remain without doubt entirely unreported, since a significant proportion was discovered by chance and this proportion could even increase over time.

For the 560 events identified in the ACCIRAD project, 70 caused at least one death. These radiological events have led to a total number of deaths due to acute radiation sickness of about 180 people [CHA 01a].

2

Birth of Atomic Weapons and Their First Atrocious Applications

2.1. Introduction

Nuclear physics was born at the turn of the 20th Century. Great advances were made during the whole of the first half of this century. They are detailed in our previous book [AMI 13]. In this chapter, we will only mention the essentials.

The discovery of radioactivity gave rise to numerous prizes attributed by the jury for the Nobel Prize to scientists in the field. The first prize was attributed in 1903 to Henri Becquerel in recognition of the extraordinary services provided by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity and to Pierre and Marie Curie in recognition of the extraordinary services provided by their joint research into the radiative phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel. During the 20th Century, more than 30 nuclear physicians received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, fewer in number, greatly helped radioactivity to become more widely known. Thus, in 1908, Ernest Rutherford was given the Nobel Prize for his research into the disintegration of elements and chemistry of radioactive substances; in 1911, Marie Curie for services to advancing chemistry by her discovery of the elements radium and polonium, after having isolated radium and studied the nature and components of this remarkable element; in 1921, Frederick Soddy for his contribution to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and for his research into the nature of isotopes; in 1935, Frédéric Joliot and Irène Joliot-Curie in recognition of their summaries of new radioactive elements; in 1944, Otto Hahn for his discovery of fission of heavy nuclei; in 1951, Edwin McMillan and Glenn Theodore Seaborg for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements; and in 1960, Willard Frank Libby for his dating method using carbon 14 that can be used in archeology, geophysics and other fields of science [WIK 18c].

In the same way, one Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is directly associated with radioactivity, that of Hermann Joseph Muller in 1946 for the discovery of the generation of mutations using X-rays.

2.1.1. Discoveries of natural and artificial radioactivity

The first atomic theories appeared during the 5th Century before the Common Era, produced by Leucippus and his disciple Democritus. They considered that matter was made up of infinitely small and indivisible particles and used the word atomos, meaning indivisible in Greek. In the following century, Aristotle disagreed with this theory of empty space, considering that matter is made up of four elements (earth, water, air and fire). Aristotle’s view of matter survived for centuries until the 18th Century when alchemists added the Principles, that all matter is made of, whether living or not. This Aristotelian conception of matter passed through the centuries until the 18th Century when the alchemists added the Principles of which all matter is composed, living or not.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, discoveries became more frequent. Thus, Louis Joseph Proust (1754–1826), a French alchemist, demonstrated that matter was made up of simple elements that could combine into compound elements. John Dalton (1766–1844), British chemist and physician, developed his atomic theory according to which matter was composed of indivisible atoms of various masses that combine by respecting the law of constant composition. Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856–1940) discovered electrons. These small particles are always charged with negative electricity and their mass is an extremely low fraction (1/1,000) of that of the smallest known atom, a hydrogen atom. Claude Félix Abel Niepce de Saint Victor (1805–1870) had highlighted as far back as 1856 the action of light on certain bodies such as uranium salts and this was the subject of six notes to the French journal Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences between 1857 and 1859 [MEY 97]. On December 28, 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845–1923) announced the discovery of X-rays. The X-ray of his wife’s hand was published widely in newspapers and became a sensation all over the world. In 1896, Henri Becquerel (1852–1908) observed that rays (uraniferous rays) were emitted by uranium minerals and that they darkened photographic plates. The following year, Marie Curie Sklodowska (1867–1934) observed that other minerals emitted rays. She produced the hypothesis that this property is a general property of matter and attributed the name radioactivity to it. Pierre Curie (1859–1906) and his wife discovered in 1898 two highly radioactive elements, radium and polonium, in a uranium mineral (uraninite). These elements were not isolated until later [WOJ 88].

Ernest Rutherford discovered α and β rays in 1899 and γ rays in 1903. In 1919, he carried out the first artificial nuclear disintegration by transmuting nitrogen into an oxygen nucleus by means of α rays. He proposed a draft of the structure of the atom with a nucleus made up of nucleons (protons and neutrons) surrounded by an electronic cortex. Practically, the entire mass of the atom is in its nucleus. The presence of neutrons in the hypothetical constitution of the nucleus was only demonstrated by Sir James Chadwick (1891–1974) in 1932. The existence of isotopes or nuclides of the same element, therefore made up of the same number of protons, was demonstrated in 1910 by Frederick Soddy (1877–1957).