Idealist - High-altitude and in-space nuclear testing

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor to the Department of Energy) conducted several atomic and thermonuclear explosions in space and high-altitudes to test the effects of various forms of radiation bursts on Earth's upper atmosphere.

During August and September 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) carried out Operation Argus, an experimental series designed to create an artificial radiation belt around the Earth. Tests in the series, dubbed Argus I, Argus II and Argus III, produced 1-2 kiloton yield explosions that were delivered - like their other High-Altitude Nuclear Explosion, or HANE, peers - by rocket. (see location map of Argus tests at bottom of page).

The atomic devices were detonated over the South Atlantic Ocean at between 200 and 540 kilometers (124 and 336 miles) above the Earth's surface and cumulatively generated a '60 mile blanket of beta particles that completely encircled the earth for days' (Under the Cloud, Miller, 1986). This great infusion into Earth's magnetic field of beta particles, comprising radioactive elements produced by the nuclear blast, created an 'artificial aurora,' or colorful streams of light in the night sky. This phenomenon was often witnessed following U.S and U.S.S.R. high-altitude nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1962, the AEC conducted high-altitude tests over Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean that did even greater damage to Earth's outer atmosphere and materially to property in space and on Earth's surface. Shot 'Starfish Prime,' conducted on July 9, 1962, at 399 kilometers (248 miles) above Earth, was a 1.4 megaton thermonuclear explosion - one of a series of five tests of Operation Fishbowl - that created an envelope of charged particles that stayed trapped in Earth's magnetic field. The artificial radiation belt created by 'Starfish', which took at least five years to dissipate, inadvertently compromised the operability of numerous U.S. satellites. Transit 1B, launched on April 13, 1960, was later 'silenced by radiation damage to its solar cells' after the July 9, 1962 test. Four months after the Starfish test, Transit 4B, launched on November 15, 1961, went silent after being damaged by radiation. (Orbital Space Flight, 1964) Other satellites that sustained minor or major damages from Starfish include Ariel, Traac, Cosmos V, Injun I and Telstar. Starfish disabled, or caused degradation to, up to one-third of all low-earth orbit satellites at the time. Starfish's resulting electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) reached the Earth's surface where it disrupted radio stations, communication circuits and caused outages or malfunctions in electrical systems in and around Hawaii. The effects were similar in fashion to the fictional EMP employed by the characters in the movie Ocean's Eleven that disrupted electricity in Las Vegas and helped them rob a casino. EMPs can also affect heart pacemakers.

Starfish's health impacts may have been worse than imagined or estimated. Radioactive particles from Starfish dispersed evenly around the low-earth space, in both hemispheres, initially creating a ring of debris between altitudes of about 100 to 200 kilometers (62 to 124 miles). The 'prompt fallout,' of immediate dry-deposition of radioactive debris, from Starfish, as with other high-altitude tests, was nil (zero) - the debris resided in space for a lengthy period, dubbed the 'residence time' - but fission products (test debris) did slowly reenter Earth's lower atmosphere starting after about one year and, later, over decades to come. This fact was entirely ignored by NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich who said in a July 1, 2010 piece¹ about the 'Starfish Prime' test that the radiation from the test "gradually dissipated up there." NPR's science reporters are either incompetent or revisionists, or both. Debris from HANE tests, including Starfish, was detected evenly across the globe, in both hemispheres, and bio-accumulated across the Earth's surface, in plants and crops and up the food chain to humans.

There were two U.S. hydrogen bomb tests conducted above the stratosphere (50 kilometers) for which fallout will remain for decades (and conceivably remain for over 100 years in small amounts) in the upper atmosphere (mesophere - up to 120 km - or thermosphere - to 600 km). (A general rule of thumb is the time it takes for one half of the debris to be removed from the upper atmosphere from a nuclear test conducted above 100 kilometers is about 10 years.) These were the nuclear tests 'Starfish Prime' and 'Teak' (3.8 mt), conducted in July 1962 and August 1958, respectively.

A rough estimate⁺ of the Curies of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 released from Starfish are found below: (compare this to other Chernobyl-like disasters here)

We assume above for Starfish Prime and Teak that both were conducted in 1960 and that the above rule of thumb applies to Teak's burst altitude of 77km

Other HANE tests detonated above the stratosphere - at altitudes (<100km) containing enough oxygen to create a fireball - posed added health negatives. These such tests, conducted in the Pacific by the U.S. in 1962, were visible over a greater area of the globe than surface tests, perhaps up to 500 or 1,000 miles. Due to the extreme brightness of a fireball in space or near-space, anyone watching such a test within hundreds of miles of the ground-zero may have suffered eye injury or blindness. Sinisterly, this is one of the strategic tactics of conducting high-altitude nuclear bomb attacks - to cause mass-scale blindness. Another is to disable the electronic systems of a nuclear enemy.

Other U.S. high-altitude tests included three tests in the 1958 Hardtack series, and five tests, including Starfish Prime, in the Fishbowl Series of 1962 that were nuclear-effects tests of high altitude nuclear detonations. The 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibited nuclear explosions under-water, and above-ground or in space (in the atmosphere up to 50 kilometers, or about 31 miles).

⁺Starfish Prime's total yield was 1.45 megatons, and about 50% was fission yield. Our estimates use conversion ratio of 0.1 megaCi/Mt for Sr90; and 0.16 megaCi/Mt for Cs137

Coordinates: Argus 1: 38.5 S, 11.5 W; Argus 2: 49.5 S, 8.2 W; Argus 3: 49.5 S, 9.7 W

¹ 'A Very Scary Light Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space,' All Things Considered, July 1, 2010. [NPR mentioned several common rainbow colors seen by observers/victims of Starfish Prime, but they forgot one: black, the 'color' that remained as the only visual experience for those who were blinded by Starfish Prime (also the color worn at funerals by those mourning the death of radiation victims from U.S. nuclear testing)]

Most high-altitude tests by the U.S. were conducted over Johnston Island in the Pacific:

Special section: Radioactive air-travel?

There's talk of full-body scanners coming to airports near all of us. These scanners give out about about 0.01 millirems of x-ray radiation. If globally there are a total of 5 billion passengers on flights annually (this is called 'passenger emplanements' which include some people who are repeat, or frequent, fliers), then the annual cumulative radiation dose - that is, if everyone gets body-scanned each time they fly - would be 50,000 person-rem. If one adds the radiation that passengers get from cosmic rays while being up in the unprotected parts of the atmosphere, which is about 1.5 millirems per flight per person (0.5 mRem/hr), then the annual cumulative dose rises to 7.55 million person-rem. An accepted scientific value of 800 fatal cancers per 1 million person-rem (John Gofman's value is 2,600) means that full-body scanners and exposure to cosmic rays will annually cut short the lives of 6,040 people, or 19,630 people using John Gofman's 'Fatal Cancer Yield.'. A scientific paper "Estimation of the fluence of high-energy electron bursts produced by thunderclouds and the resulting radiation doses received in aircraft" noted that planes may be rarely struck by 'terrestrial gamma ray flashes' from lightning blasts. These microsecond intense bursts of radiation can expose passengers to 'biologically significant levels' that could go as high as 10,000 millirems, which is about 30 years' worth of an individual's annual radiation dose put in one microsecond!. If this happens once a year, then the lives of about 100 extra people are yearly cut short. That's a total range of 6,140 to 19,730 people globally who statistically are doomed fatally by radiation exposure from flying in airplanes each and every year. Then we must consider that the stratosphere - the part of the atmosphere where most jetliners reach cruising altitude - is still contaminated with radioactive fallout from high-altitude nuclear tests of the 1950s and 1960s. These particles include gamma emitters that give off tiny bursts of radiation through the plane's walls but also alpha and beta emitters that would enter through the cockpit air intake and circulate throughout the aircraft. Commercial airline passenger inhalation of particles from high altitude nuclear tests fallout debris has never been studied. Our own calculations show that 20,000 Curies of cesium-137 and strontium-90 is still airborne in the stratosphere and above the stratosphere. This amount of radioactive cesium and strontium fallout is about the same that would be created from an atomic bomb five times the size of the Hiroshima blast. It is a certainty that airline travelers' face an added danger from still-airborne fallout from the Cold War.

1 milliRem = 1/1000 Rem

Rapidscan, a leading provider of scanners to the TSA ("Rapidscan Secure 1000"), claims that the dose from one 'exam' is 'Less than 10 microREM.' 10 microrem= 0.01 millirem. Interestingly, in the past, the Rapidscan 'Secure' gave out a dose per 'exam' of just 3 microrems. At a presentation at the 25th meeting of the DHHS' Technical Electronic Products Radiation Safety Standards Committee in 1998, it was said that the " The radiation dose produced by the Secure is 3 microrem per scan, and again, there is some controversy whether it is 3, whether it's 5, whether it's 4, but it is generally in that range. It is certainly not 10 microrem per scan. When you get to these levels, it is very difficult to do the dosimetry on them. "

So, now the dose from the Secure 1000 is at the 10 microRem dose level, probably, and because of the 'room' for error in 'dosimetry,' the dosage could be more. There is also the question of how many passengers will have to 'retake' the 'exam' or get multiple scans. Anyone who has visited the hospital x-ray room knows that the first x-ray doesn't always work and a second or third one is needed. Will the per-passenger dose realistically be 15 or 20 or 30 microRems? Then what happens when the (backscatter) x-ray scanners malfunction and give off excess radiation to thousands of passengers before the poorly-made calibrations are discovered and fixed? Could these machines turn into killer robots with x-ray guns?

	Curies of Sr90	Curies of Cs137	Height of burst	What percent of debris remains by 2010 (~50 yrs)	Curies of Sr90 and Cs137 remaining in upper atmosphere
Chernobyl	216,000	2,700,000
Starfish Prime	72,500	116,000	400 km	3%	5,655
Teak	190,000	304,000	77 km	3%	14,820