DOE releases films of atomic bomb tests

Tuesday, Dec. 23, 1997 | 1:52 a.m.

The most destructive, at the Nevada Test Site July 6, 1962, was seven times the size of the bomb dropped in August 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan. It displaced 12 million tons of earth and released the seismic energy equivalent of an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.75 on the Richter scale, Energy Department officials said Monday.

Newly released film of that "Project Sedan" shows the spectacular explosion and 320-foot-deep, 1,280-foot-diameter crater left behind by the 104 kiloton blast. The bomb at Hiroshima was 15 kilotons.

Energy Secretary Federico Pena previewed the films with reporters, including new footage he described as "disturbing" of radiation tests on pigs and other animals at nuclear test sites during the Cold War.

The Energy Department also showed tests 30 years ago using parachutists to deliver a lightweight nuclear device to enemy harbors. The small nuclear device would have yielded less than a kiloton, but could have left a large area of contaminated water. It never was used.

Other footage included then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy donning eye shades to view a blast at the Nevada Test Site in 1962 and a soldier firing a nuclear weapon from a shoulder-fired rifle - an atomic battlefield weapon the Army withdrew from units in 1972.

The release of the previously secret material was part of the Clinton administration's evolving policy of openness at DOE. It was accompanied by new rule changes intended to protect whistleblowers who work for DOE contractors and to reverse the burden of proof when determining whether nuclear-related documents should be classified.

"In the past, documents have been assumed to be born classified," Pena said. "Starting today, that assumption is eliminated. Only materials with a compelling national security interest will be classified."

The DOE for the first time released specific yields for 11 of the 27 test blasts for peaceful purposes, the "Plowshare Project." All but four were conducted at the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas.

Most of the tests were totally contained under ground, ranging from less than 1 kiloton to slightly more than 11 kilotons. A kiloton has the explosive force of 1,000 tons of TNT. In a few cases, the nuclear explosive was at a shallow depth and created a crater. In addition to construction, the tests were used to determine possible use for drilling and mining.

The first was Dec. 10, 1961, at Carlsbad, N.M., and the last May 17, 1973, at Rifle, Colo. Others were at Farmington, N.M., and Grand Valley, Colo.

"Although a technical success, nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes were never used by the United States following the Plowshare program," DOE said in a summary issued Monday.

Overall, the United States detonated 35 nuclear explosions in 27 peaceful tests. Russia has released information that the former Soviet Union detonated 173 nuclear explosives in 156 peaceful nuclear tests, DOE said.

Pena said the department also was releasing 270,000 pages of previously classified documents about the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland, Wash., and making them available to the public on the Internet.

They include information about plutonium processing for the Manhattan Project as well as an abandoned proposal to build a lake to store contaminated wastewater at the reservation near Richland, Wash.

Researchers decided it was safer and cheaper to release the wastewater directly into the Columbia River.