Atomic Thunder

by Elizabeth Tynan

  Leslie Martin believed that the safety committee should always be present for bomb tests. The attendance of all members at Mosaic G1 was agreed at the fourth meeting of the AWTSC on 10 January 1956:

  The Chairman was of the opinion that the whole of the Committee should be present at the trials and as it was not feasible to accommodate them on Narvik for any length of time, they should be located at Onslow with the rest of the mainland party. The Secretary was instructed to arrange for the accommodation of up to seven Safety Committee members at Onslow and to provide 2 vehicles for their use. Fast transport was also required to the Islands when the tests were on.

  Members of the committee arrived at Onslow on 14 May, a onepub town on the mainland that was the departure point for test personnel to get to the Monte Bello Islands. They were quickly transferred to Narvik to witness the test and hurriedly met to discuss some of its worrying aspects, notably the enigmatic but definite hints about ‘light elements’ being used as ‘a boost’. This seemed to suggest a fusion weapon, something that the UK prime minister Anthony Eden had mentioned in a cable to Menzies the year before.

  Light elements, particularly lithium and the isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium, are associated with fusion (thermonuclear) bombs, while the heavy elements uranium and plutonium are associated with fission bombs (although heavy water containing deuterium also was used for early fission weapons, for different reasons). However, it is possible to increase the explosive power of a fission bomb by initiating nuclear reactions among light elements to raise the temperature at the centre of the bomb quickly and by a great deal. The Royal Commission noted that:

  the Committee members wanted to know which elements would be used and the quantity of each. The information was ultimately given by [operational commander Commodore Hugh] Martell and was said to have been restricted to their own use. What information was given is not recorded but as the firing proceeded, they were evidently satisfied with that information.

  Mosaic G1, the smaller of the two Mosaic bombs, was detonated on 16 May. The members of the safety committee watched the explosion from the deck of the Narvik. Soon after G1, they departed the remote northwest but would be back just over a month later. Mosaic G2, the biggest device ever tested in Australia, would be detonated next.

  Early signs of discord between the AWRE and the Australians were evident in the lead-up to Mosaic G2. The climatic conditions were so fragile and the window of opportunity so limited that when the AWTSC started to question aspects of the safety of Mosaic, Commander Martell (standing in for Penney, who did not attend Mosaic) was greatly displeased. The Australians believed that the safety committee gave them more power than was understood by the British, specifically the power of veto up to the moment of firing. As John Symonds observed, ‘The Operational Commander [Martell] had been given full responsibility for the operation on the UK side. The fact that the AWTSC had power to veto the operation was subsequently a surprise to the Operational Commander and caused him concern during the final stages of the actual test period’.

  The AWTSC had been set up to hold such a veto, although exactly how it could actually stop the British carrying out a test was never explained or tested. The Royal Commission later found that despite the effective power of veto, the AWTSC ‘was not provided with sufficient information to discharge its function properly for the Mosaic series’. Another cause for both concern and fury for Martell was the firm direction from Howard Beale that the G2 test should not take place on a Sunday, for religious reasons, which was an Australian Government, not an AWTSC, requirement. The AWTSC was under considerable pressure from the Australian Government to ensure that Australia asserted itself in this first test series.

  The deadlock was overcome when Martell and Adams provided the committee with a bit more information. G2 was detonated just after 10 am on 19 June. Earlier assurances from the British authorities had suggested that neither Mosaic device would be more than two and a half times Hurricane, suggesting an upper limit of about 62.5 kilotonnes. G2 may in fact have been a 98-kilotonne monster, although none of the Australians, including Leslie Martin, knew this at the time. (It should be noted that 98 kilotonnes remains a disputed figure. While it has been accepted by many authors, such as Robert Standish Norris and Joan Smith, others, such as Zeb Leonard, have suggested that there is no evidence that it was anything other than 60 kilotonnes, the figure recorded by the Royal Commission.) Nevertheless, the AWTSC knew it was big.

  Martin prepared an upbeat if somewhat confused report onboard the Narvik which was sent to the prime minister. He suggested that the radiation cloud had moved out to sea, and also that some low-level radiation had spread eastwards across the Western Australian coast, towards the centre of the continent. ‘From analysis of the detailed data available to us the Safety Committee has satisfaction in reporting that the safety measures were completely adequate. There was absolutely no hazard to persons or damage to livestock or other property.’ The report made the rather strange statement that ‘the fallout on the NW coast was harmless in the extreme’. The Royal Commission later described this report as ‘misleading’, and Martin’s safety assurances as ‘grossly misleading and irresponsible’.

  As previously discussed, Beale sent out a frantic ‘please explain’ to the safety committee at Monte Bello after a miner called Stewart Stubbs at Marble Bar, hundreds of kilometres away, detected high levels of radiation on two Geiger counters on 20 June. He used Geiger counters because he was involved in uranium exploration. In drizzling rain, Stubbs detected radiation that was ‘off the scale’, according to his testimony at the Royal Commission. He didn’t keep it to himself but radioed the airport at Port Hedland and spoke to someone whom he believed to be ‘a British scientist’. (He told the Royal Commission that he thought the name of the person was Penney, although Sir William was not at Monte Bello for Mosaic.) To whom exactly he spoke is unclear, but somehow his Geiger counter readings were provided to a journalist, who wrote a story that sparked public disquiet. According to the Royal Commission report, there was no official fallout monitoring station at Marble Bar, and therefore the degree of contamination there will never be known, ‘but if drizzling rain occurred, fallout contamination would have been greater than for dry conditions’.

  One of the main roles of the AWTSC was to establish a network of monitoring stations around Australia, and eventually 60 stations were created, including in all state and territory capitals. However, their efficacy is open to debate. The safety committee oversaw an almost comical array of sticky paper that didn’t work when it rained, air pumps that measured airborne contamination but were regularly clogged by dust, battery-powered dosimeters with batteries that were usually dead, and other totally ineffectual methods for detecting and measuring radioactivity. Even for the times, these methods were inadequate. The 1984 Kerr Report on the aftermath of the British tests found that the ‘wearing of film badges (dosimeters) was so erratic and, in some cases, the measuring of doses so arbitrary, that … little weight can be placed on the validity of records as an index of long-term dose commitment’. The report noted, too, that when Mosaic G2 was about to be detonated, the AWRE supplied the AWTSC with 50 sets of fallout deposition monitoring equipment, but they deployed only 28 sets. Whether this was due to lack of time or lack of interest was not noted. The AWTSC also used aerial surveys by low-flying planes to obtain fallout measurements. The Royal Commission found that these readings would have to be multiplied by 10 to accurately reflect the contamination on the ground. But, as author Joan Smith wrote, ‘the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee used the actual readings to give assurances to the public about the level of fallout from the tests’. Exactly why is unclear. It’s likely they did not want to upset the British or fuel public fears. They were also not in possession of all the information that the British had.

  Once the stresses of the highly problematic Mosaic series were out of the way, the safety committee turned its attention to Maralinga, which was just a
bout to become operational. Kittens tests were already underway there, and these notionally fell under the remit of the AWTSC, although, as previously noted, the committee was not really interested in the minor trials. Again, meteorological conditions were discussed at the committee meetings, especially the perennial problem of winds. In the 1950s, there were no satellites to assist in predicting weather. If meteorology is an inexact science now, it was far more so then. Would the swirling air currents send fallout to populated areas, with incalculable risks both physical and political? The AWTSC came up with guidelines to avoid this, largely by limiting the yield of bombs tested at Maralinga to no more than 10 kilotonnes and ensuring that the most precise meteorological calculations possible were made. The British test authorities did not heed any of these recommendations. The committee was also concerned about the presence of Aboriginal people in the area, and the fact that their lifestyle made it more likely that they would be affected by fallout and contamination. At the Royal Commission, William Penney claimed he had been unaware of such concerns.

  When Operation Antler, the final major bomb trial at Maralinga, was in its planning stage, there was a fundamental change in the AWTSC. The committee was reduced to three, and Titterton became its chair. The role changed too. The committee was now required to report to the prime minister only on the safety of the weapons tests. A new body, the National Radiation Advisory Committee, took on the task of examining radiation safety in the community. That committee had a broad responsibility to advise the government on all matters concerning ionising radiation in the community, including fallout from the atomic weapons test programs of other countries and not just those related to the British nuclear tests. The chair was the distinguished Australian scientist Sir Macfarlane Burnet, who was joined by Leslie Martin and Alan Butement from the old AWTSC. This new committee had been created on Martin’s advice. As defence scientific adviser, he was acutely aware of a backlash that could not be ignored caused by the swift rise in the world’s nuclear weapons arsenal and the testing by three nations. Atmospheric nuclear tests sent radioactive elements high into the upper atmosphere and stratosphere, with who knew what long-term effect. The advisory committee was intended to provide advice on how the Australian community might be affected.

  The ascension of Titterton to the head of the safety committee was a welcome development for the British, particularly during the trickier than usual negotiations for Operation Antler. The AWRE wished to deal only with Titterton, who held talks with senior AWRE staff when he visited the UK in March 1957. According to the Royal Commission, he was given details about Antler during this visit that he did not share with the Australian Government.

  A typical example of the way that Titterton operated can be seen in the case of cobalt-60. As the 1950s wore on and atomic weaponry started to become a source of considerable public anxiety, rumours often gained legitimacy. The idea of a cobalt bomb – created by adding cobalt to a nuclear weapon, a process known as salting – began in 1950 when the physicist Leo Szilard postulated it as a hypothetical ‘doomsday device’ that would wipe out all human life. The addition of cobalt would increase the amount of radioactive fallout produced by the weapon, making it more deadly. It didn’t actually exist, but the prospect caused some disquiet. Titterton addressed this issue in one of the articles he published in the Australian press during the test series. There was no cobalt bomb on the British drawing board, but, all the same, cobalt later featured in the severe criticism of Titterton during the Royal Commission.

  The first Antler bomb at Maralinga in 1957 contained a radio-active cobalt isotope, cobalt-60. Titterton knew this extremely dangerous substance was going to be used but did not tell the Australian officials at the site. Doug Rickard, an 18-year-old technician who was monitoring fallout for the Commonwealth X-Ray and Radium Laboratory, found small pellets of the highly radioactive substance on his routine patrol at the Tadje site after the first Antler test. He scooped some of the pellets into a tobacco tin. The tobacco tin was so radioactive that the radiation readings were off the scale. The Australian health physics representative Harry Turner reported this to the British authorities, who acted to lock down the information. During the Royal Commission, Titterton claimed that he had deliberately concealed information about the use of cobalt as a ‘test’ for Turner and his health physics team. Jim McClelland’s scorn comes through in the transcript. He accused Titterton outright of being a liar.

  The cobalt was used during the Antler Tadje test to detect the amount of energy released at the time of the explosion, although it failed in this purpose. In fact, the substance was simply sprayed out from ground zero and fell as pellets all around the test site. Doug Rickard was not meant to discover it. Titterton was, of course, party to the information, but no-one else on the Australian side was supposed to be. According to a top-secret memorandum from Charles Adams to Admiral Brooking back at Aldermaston, ‘With some difficulty I obtained permission from the Director to inform Titterton (as Chairman of the Safety Committee) that we intended to use such an indicator. Titterton was entirely sympathetic, raised no difficulties, realised that we were not adding any real hazard, and agreed that the information should go no further on the Australian side’. By informing Titterton, the British could claim that they had done their duty to the Australians, as they did at the Royal Commission, while knowing that he would not pass anything on.

  The AWRE brass were concerned about Turner spreading the cobalt information, and a secret memorandum recorded, ‘It appears that Turner has reported to [range commander] Dick Durance in addition to reporting here. In doing so I think Turner has misconstrued his terms of reference which were to report in the first instance to A.W.R.E.’ Adams indicated that he was urgently trying to contact Titterton. ‘If it is necessary to correspond with the Australian Department of Supply or the Range Commander, I should much prefer to do so in terms agreed with Titterton, rather than write indepdently [sic].’ In the end, a huge number of cobalt-60 fragments were encased in lead and buried at the airfield, the place where many problems were buried out of sight.

  The undoing of Titterton was Vixen B, the most secret and most dangerous of all the Maralinga tests (described in chapter 5). The AWRE told the Australian authorities next to nothing about the minor trials, including the new style of test represented by Vixen B. But, especially since plutonium-239 would be used, the British knew they would have to tell the Australian Government something about them. The Vixen B experiments sparked a series of correspondence between the two governments and the test authorities that continued for a couple of years. Some of these letters contained a heated or exasperated tone, as relations between the parties were increasingly strained.

  The correspondence began with a carefully worded letter sent by Titterton to Allen Fairhall (who in 1959 was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Public Works and in 1961 became minister for Supply). Titterton let Fairhall know that the longest lived isotope of plutonium was on the agenda and that this might have some political overtones given the then-current moratorium on atmospheric nuclear tests. The letter, sent on 10 July 1959, was followed on 30 July 1959 by a formal request for approval of the relevant tests, the Vixen A and B minor trials at Maralinga, from the UK minister for Supply to his Australian counterpart. It said in part, ‘Although these experiments are in no sense nuclear tests, it will be desirable to avoid publicity for them in order to remove the risk of their being misrepresented by ignorant or illintentioned persons’.

  The Australian minister for Defence Athol Townley, who had taken over from Philip McBride in 1958, also received a copy of this letter, and the following day he sent a reply notable for its glimpse into the preoccupations of that era:

  I am not troubled very much by the trials themselves … The political aspects, however, can be potentially dangerous … for the first time it is proposed to use explosives on the Woomera Range which will bring the usual howl from the ‘Ban the H Bomb’ section of the community – Communis
t and otherwise. It is my view, therefore, that there should be some political discussion on it … I would hesitate to put it into full Cabinet, purely on the ‘need to know’ basis.

  This letter attracted the scorn of Justice James McClelland in his 1985 report:

  The decision to allow fissile material with a half-life of 24 000 years to be spread on Australian soil, no matter how remote, was evidently in the hands of politicians, one of whom [Townley] did not know that the Woomera Range and the Maralinga Range were not the same thing, and with the exclusion from such a decision of all but two or three members of the Cabinet. This is an instructive little lesson in the style of democratic government in Australia during the Menzies era.

  As we have seen, Roy Pilgrim, head of safety co-ordination for the AWRE at Aldermaston, was responsible for issuing the highly confidential and later contentious MEP 1960 safety statement at the end of 1959, the first to include Vixen B. It acknowledged the use of ‘long lived radioactive elements including fissile materials’, while downplaying the consequences. Pearce admitted at the Royal Commission that the safety statements weren’t an appropriate basis for the Australians to judge the safety of the proposed tests. Significantly, the official document requesting Australian approval for the 1960 MEP did not mention Vixen B explicitly, even though it had been discussed with Titterton in his role as head of the AWTSC. Titterton had conveyed the view to the AWRE that ‘the approval process already granted by the Australian Government for the series of experiments now at Maralinga in 1960 covered the type of experiment we now wish to carry out’ and did not advocate a formal approach, which would inevitably have led to detailed questions.