[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, GLOBAL: "60th Anniversary of Castle BRAVO Nuclear Test, the Worst Nuclear Test in U.S. History"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

60th Anniversary of Castle BRAVO Nuclear Test, the Worst Nuclear Test  
in U.S. History
Blast Had Far Greater Explosive Yield than Expected, Equivalent to  
1,000 Hiroshimas
Fallout from the Test Contaminated the Marshall Islands and Japanese  
Fishermen on the Fortunate Dragon (Fukuryu Maru)
Consequences of BRAVO Created Outrage around the World and Pressure  
to Ban Nuclear Weapons Tests
National Security Archive
Electronic Briefing Book No. 459
February 28, 2014


Washington, D.C., February 28, 2014 – Sixty years ago, on 1 March  
1954 (28 February on this side of the International Dateline), on  
Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. government staged the  
largest nuclear test in American history. The BRAVO shot in the  
Castle thermonuclear test series had an explosive yield of 15  
megatons, 1000 times that of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and  
nearly three times the 6 megatons that its planners expected. To  
recall this shocking event the National Security Archive posts today  
a selection of documents about the BRAVO shot and its consequences,  
mainly from State Department records at the National Archives.

Castle BRAVO spewed radioactive fallout around the world and gravely  
sickened nearby inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, then under a  
U.S. trusteeship, and 236 were evacuated as well as 28 American  
military personnel on a nearby island. Twenty-three Japanese  
fishermen were also contaminated, which made the test known to the  
world and roiled U.S-Japanese relations. While the U.S. government  
claimed at the time that a shift in the wind spread the fallout far  
from the test site, a recent U.S. government report demonstrates that  
it was the volcanic nature of the explosion that dumped the fallout  
nearby. The adverse health effects for inhabitants of Rangelop Atoll,  
110 miles away from the test site, were severe and some islands  
remained uninhabitable for years. This radiological calamity had a  
significant impact on world opinion and helped spark the movement for  
a nuclear test moratorium which ultimately led to the 1963 Limited  
Test Ban Treaty.


...

For the entire release and links to supporting documents, go to
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb459/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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