Studies at Nuclear Test Sites, 1948-1958
The first test series at Eniwetok, Operation Sandstone (1948), incorporated no formal radiobiological studies, but radiobiologists visiting Bikini also made surveys at Eniwetok in 1948 and 1949. Then, for a time, world events intervened. The detonation of an atomic device by the U.S.S.R. in 1949 was followed in 1950 by the outbreak of the Korean War, and these events produced a national mood oriented toward national defense. By 1951, because events in the Pacific had interrupted tests there, the Atomic Energy Commission had established a continental test site in Nevada. In that year, too, tests were made at Eniwetok preliminary to the detonation of the first thermonuclear device.
After 1951 each of the test programs had its radiobiological component. In the Pacific, radiobiological surveys were associated with Operation Ivy (1952), Operation Castle (1954), Operation Redwing (1956), and Operation Hardtack (1958). A small field station, the Eniwetok Marine Biology Laboratory, was established for use by scientists conducting biological studies. Bikini was incorporated into the Pacific Proving Ground in 1953, and new biological surveys were performed there in connection with the tests of 1954 and later.
The Eniwetok Marine Biology Laboratory. Monument at right commemorates the battle for Eniwetok in World War II.
In these years, 1951 to 1958, the U.S.S.R. was testing nuclear weapons, as was Great Britain after 1952. Fallout from these contributed to the total of man-made radioactivity potentially available to the environments of the world.
Landmarks
The years between the establishment of the Pacific Proving Ground and the signing of the 1958 nuclear test moratorium were years in which the quest for environmental information could not keep pace with the rapid growth of nuclear capability. But the growth in the field of weapons served to underline the need for information and produced certain landmark developments in environmental research.
The detonation of the first thermonuclear device projected the problem of environmental contamination to the stratosphere and, literally, to every part of the earth. This explosion, Test Mike, largest on earth to that time, was set off on Elujelab Island, on the north rim of Eniwetok Atoll, on November 1, 1952. In the reef where Elujelab had been, the blast left a crater almost a mile in diameter and 200 feet deep. The towering nuclear cloud rose in 15 minutes to a height of 130,000 feet.
Test Mike marked a point of change. Before, fallout from nuclear detonation had been principally local, touching the waters and reefs of an atoll or a desert landscape. After Test Mike, the implications of fallout obviously were global.