Atomic Thunder

by Elizabeth Tynan

  The aftermath was different from that of the maritime Hurricane test. At Emu Field the earth was heated to such high temperatures it became glass.

  The second test was on 27 October. Between the two tests, Menzies defended Australia’s role in the ongoing atomic test series during his regular weekly radio broadcast, Man to Man:

  There is tremendous public interest in Atomic Bombs … Unfortunately there are scare stories, wild allegations, and, between you and me, a good deal of nonsense … But we must face the facts. And they are that the threat to the world’s peace does not come from the Americans or the British, but from aggressive Communist-Imperialism. In this dreadful state of affairs, superiority in atomic weapons is vital. To that superiority Australia must contribute as best she can.

  Howard Beale described Beadell as ‘a man of iron endurance, and (like Kipling’s elephant child) of infinite resource and sagacity’. Beadell later wrote about Old Luke, a member of his surveying team:

  Old Luke had a little joke waiting at this stage for the reporters. ‘Look’, he shouted pointing at the atomic cloud, ‘do you see it?’ Everyone whipped around to direct their attention to the cloud. ‘A perfect portrait of a myall blackfeller written with atomic dust; the new and old have come together today’. He was so enthusiastically serious that one by one they agreed that there was no doubt about it. Sure enough the newspapers printed the huge headlines: ‘Myall black man written by atomic dust in sky over Emu’. Good old Luke.

  Prominent British Daily Express journalist Chapman Pincher also witnessed Totem and contributed an article to the Sydney Morning Herald. Pincher provided a vivid word picture of Totem 1, overcome with awe at what he had witnessed:

  Peering through welders’ safety goggles, I watched [the explosion] swell into a tremendous fireball – a miniature manmade sun which rose away from the red sand like a giant balloon. A minute later I was shaken by a terrific shock wave – a hot blast that sent a double thunder clap rumbling around the desert for 30 seconds. As the fireball expanded it gave off a second burst of light more brilliant than the sun.

  He concluded, ‘It is clear already that Britain’s bomb, designed and built without outside assistance, is a winner’.

  The Totem tests caused many problems. The planning was rushed and the site was endlessly difficult. The British had not tested their own bomb on a mainland desert site before, and they were unfamiliar with the weather conditions. There was also the essentially uncontrolled presence in the general area of Aboriginal people, notwithstanding the work of the native patrol officer Walter MacDougall. The two tests were destined for controversy, particularly because of the infamous ‘black mist’ that is said to have blinded an Aboriginal boy, Yami Lester, killed others and caused significant, long-lasting distress to all the local Aboriginal people (discussed in more detail in chapter 7). Penney later conceded when questioned by the Royal Commission that Totem 1 took place in conditions that were unsafe for all concerned.

  The Totem bombs were part of a push by the British to build up the country’s atomic weapon stockpile quickly. The Americans and the Soviets were already well ahead in the game, and the British couldn’t be finicky about the purity of the design and execution. They had to make bombs with whatever material came to hand. The ideal material for nuclear weapons is plutonium-239, but it is expensive to produce, and British reactors were not able to keep up with the demand from the AWRE. So the Totem bombs made use of impure plutonium. Plutonium-240 is quicker and cheaper to produce, and this potentially enabled faster production of the hundreds of bombs Britain wanted. Totem was designed to test whether plutonium-240 was suitable to power nuclear bombs. Lorna Arnold, the British chronicler of the nuclear trials, called the tests ‘a technical success’, despite the harm that Totem 1 (in particular) caused. The tests advanced understanding of plutonium-240 for cheaper weapons manufacture, including the proportion that would produce a viable chain reaction. The British also learned about fallout patterns – effectively by experimenting on the local Indigenous population.

  The RAAF deployed 10 Lincoln bombers to the Totem series to take samples from the atomic clouds. The huge military aircraft, based at Woomera and Richmond (near Sydney), landed on the Emu claypan in all weather. Also, Bristol freighter aircraft transported equipment to the site. The US Air Force sent two B29 Superfortress four-engine turboprop bombers that operated out of Richmond RAAF base, 1900 kilometres away, to collect air samples from the clouds. The American air crew who flew into the atomic cloud were provided with dosimeters, and their aircraft were fitted with radiation detection equipment. Dosimeter is the collective name for various kinds of radiation detection devices, including film badges that could be worn on the uniforms of personnel in contaminated areas. Film badges had a plastic holder containing a piece of film similar to a dental x-ray film. Radiation exposed the film, which was later developed to determine the radiation dose received. The Americans were strict about the use of dosimeters.

  This was not the case for the RAAF crew operating under British orders, or the RAF crew. The British view was that the risk of exposure of radiation caused by flying through the cloud was ‘negligible’, so no detection gear or personal monitoring devices were issued. Penney said in his Royal Commission statement, ‘The fact that the crew of an RAF Canberra received significant doses of radiation as a result of their early passage through the [Totem 1] cloud was reported to me. I did not regard it as very serious as a once in a lifetime dose’.

  In fact, only the more rigid American safety procedures drew any attention to the risk that pilots and other air force personnel faced. The Americans were stricter about safety than the British ever were throughout the time they tested their bombs in Australia. As writer Joan Smith said in her book on Maralinga, ‘The Americans … knew exactly what they were doing’. American Geiger counters were run over the Australian planes as well as their own aircraft. Every time they did this the planes were ‘hot’ – that is, they were contaminated with radiation. The British Canberra aircraft that sampled the Totem 1 cloud, and which had been sealed before take-off, was too contaminated to be used again for Totem 2.

  Nuclear armament doesn’t involve just a clever design of a big weapon made of uranium or plutonium. Subsidiary matters such as triggering the devices or predicting and ameliorating the worst-case scenarios must be dealt with too. The British authorities were keen to supplement the program of major bomb trials with smaller scale experiments on a range of associated issues. They started to broaden the scope of the test program with the advent of the early minor trials at Emu Field, codenamed Kittens. These experiments were designed to test aspects of the design of bomb triggering devices known as initiators. Despite the obvious inadequacy of the Emu Field site, five Kittens experiments were held there in 1953 before the British departed. As the British prepared to leave this difficult site, plans for what to do next were afoot. Australia was preparing for the long haul.

  As future plans were drawn up, Australia’s pallid attempts to become a more senior partner in the tests ran to offering more funding than the British had even requested. A top-secret 1954 Cabinet briefing document outlined this strategy:

  Although U.K. had intimated that she was prepared to meet the full costs, Australia proposed that the principles of apportioning the expenses of the trial should be agreed whereby the cost of Australian personnel engaged on the preparation of the site, and of materials and equipment which could be recovered after the tests, should fall to Australia’s account. This basis was accepted by U.K., and the approximate costs of the trials in Australia amounted to:- United Kingdom £771 000; Australia 144 000. The U.K. share … does not, of course, include the cost of development of the bomb, which probably amounted to some millions of pounds. Included in the U.K. share in Australia is a considerable quantity of stores and equipment still at Emu Field and Woomera, which could be used for future tests, or sold and a credit passed to the U.K. A cheque for £600 000 sterling was received in June [1954] from
the U.K. Government in payment of her share, but adjustments may be necessary before the costs are finalised.

  Beale said that Australia should aim to be more than a mere ‘hewer of wood and drawer of water’ for the British at the new Maralinga site. He recommended extensive financial, material and manpower contributions so Australia would be considered a true partner, after canvassing four other less costly scenarios. Beale’s preferred option was projected to cost a huge £200 000 per year.

  This alternative will ensure the best return to Australia for any expenditure provided and comes more adequately than any of the other [cheaper] alternatives within the definition of a joint project because it means that we would have a definite responsibility in the scientific trials and would share in the knowledge gained therefrom.

  In the end, despite the massive expenditure, Australia was never more than the wood hewer and water drawer. In fact, that description could not be more apt, with its connotation of lowly hard labour and exclusion from decision-making.

  Harder negotiators on the Australian side might have made a difference, since Australia was not without bargaining chips, but they were nowhere to be seen. Instead, Australia just worked out how to pay the exorbitant costs associated with its menial role. After some discussion back and forth between senior government officials, they decided Australia’s initial contribution should be £400 000 to £500 000, continuing at an annual rate of £150 000. Beale recommended a special government appropriation to cover the cost, rather than raid the Defence budget. The means of raising such a significant amount of money was up to Treasury – it would not come out of existing departmental or service budgets.

  After Totem, the British test program in Australia stopped for two and a half years. The decision to create a permanent nuclear test site in Australia at Maralinga took a lot of planning, expense and time. While the Australian Government was preoccupied with the logistical matters associated with building a new desert township and associated bomb testing range, the British were getting impatient with the fact that the permanent site would not be ready until the second half of 1956.

  During that time, AWRE scientists shifted their focus to the prospect of a British H-bomb. This fusion weapon, already in the arsenals of both the US and the USSR, had a much larger yield – in the megatonne rather than the kilotonne range, a megatonne being 1000 kilotonnes. The prospect of an international treaty to limit nuclear weapons testing gave British plans for a thermonuclear bomb greater urgency. They needed to test a megatonne weapon before a test ban took effect. Penney made the running on the British H-bomb test, in the Pacific Ocean at Christmas Island. It was given the codename Operation Grapple.

  When negotiating the Maralinga agreement, the Australians had explicitly forbidden testing an H-bomb on Australian soil. The political ramifications of the much bigger H-bomb were beyond what even a compliant government felt able to deal with. However, while they were forbidden from testing the H-bomb itself, the British needed to test a highly efficient and more advanced device that could operate as a trigger for it. In a top-secret telegram prepared by the Ministry of Defence, the British made their intentions clear to the Menzies government:

  You know well the importance we attach to the speediest development of efficient nuclear weapons. You know also … how much we appreciate the immense help given to us by Australia in having our previous nuclear trials take place on Australian territory and in agreeing to the establishment of a permanent proving ground at Maralinga. We have however still one more request to make of you. Maralinga will not be ready until September 1956. Our scientists on the other hand will be ready to make tests in April 1956 which are very urgently needed in the course of our development of more efficient weapons by the inclusion of light elements as a boost. We are most anxious not to lose the six months that would be involved in waiting for the Maralinga range to be ready.

  And so, for Operation Mosaic (originally named Operation Giraffe), the British returned to the remote Monte Bello Islands for two tests, one of which became particularly infamous.

  Unlike Hurricane, which was a maritime operation to test base surge caused by an atomic weapon, the Mosaic bombs at Monte Bello were detonated from land-based steel towers. The fallout was expected to be much less than from the radioactive water spout of Hurricane – Menzies was told that it be would less than one-fifth of the first British test’s fallout. That was another of the false predictions that riddled the British nuclear weapons test program.

  HMAS Warrego and Karangi were pressed back into service to set up the firing sites during October and November 1955. In addition, HMAS Fremantle and Junee assisted by providing transport and logistics during the first Mosaic test. The RAAF pitched in with a variety of support services, such as security, transportation and signalling. These aircraft deployed from RAAF base Pearce in Western Australia later travelled across the continent to RAAF base Amberley, near Brisbane, for decontamination. RAF aircraft also performed a multitude of tasks an atomic weapons test requires, such as surveys of ground contamination and cloud tracking.

  Although there were no nuclear tests in Australia during 1954 and 1955, Mosaic was still a rush job. The experience of the 1952 Hurricane test gave the British a good idea of the challenges of the site, but the Monte Bellos were damnably remote, and the two Mosaic tests were entirely different propositions from Hurricane. From conception to first test, the British had only about 15 months to plan. For such a step-up in technology, this was recklessly fast. A lot of equipment, and of course the nuclear devices themselves, had to make the trip from the UK. On this occasion, to save time, the British took the risk of travelling via the Suez Canal, chopping weeks off the journey.

  Mosaic G1 was detonated on Trimouille Island just before midday on 16 May 1956. It was controlled from a Royal Navy ship anchored in a lagoon about 25 kilometres away. It had an approximate yield of 15 kilotonnes, 10 kilotonnes less than Hurricane. The mushroom cloud rose higher than predicted, up to 6400 metres instead of 5200 metres.

  The main event came a few weeks later. Mosaic G2 remains the biggest atomic device ever exploded on Australian soil. This device was also tower-mounted, this time on Alpha Island. Its yield was disputed for years and was noted by the Royal Commission as being 60 kilotonnes. Many commentators and scholars now accept it was 98 kilotonnes (although some continue to maintain that it did not exceed 60 kilotonnes, and the British have not publicly released yield data). Its cloud rose 14 000 metres, instead of the predicted 11 000 metres, and proceeded to spread east across the entire continent, causing considerable consternation in the media and among the public. Between G1 and G2, Howard Beale, who had apparently misinterpreted information from the British authorities, claimed publicly that the second Mosaic test would be smaller than the first. This assertion was so far from the truth that the statement contributed to public panic when G2 was detonated. Many people believed that something had gone terribly wrong and the massive explosion was some kind of nuclear accident. As the minister responsible, Beale had to scramble to dispel public fears.

  In his autobiography Beale recounted an anecdote from his media trip to Maralinga in June 1956. (Beale’s autobiography noted this trip took place in July 1956 to the Woomera weapons test range, rather than Maralinga, but since the second Mosaic test occurred on 19 June 1956, the same day that journalists arrived at Maralinga, it seems likely this was one of the several inaccuracies in his autobiographical account.) Maralinga was being highlighted at the time in media publicity and Mosaic was played down. While the papers reported on Mosaic, they were not at Mt Potter to witness it, as they had been for Hurricane. At Maralinga, visiting media representatives were alerted to allegations of what they believed were unacceptably high levels of radiation heading to the mainland from Monte Bello following G2. A rumour swept through the dining room during the evening meal, leading to a mass exodus of the editors and journalists to call their offices. The rumour suggested that a miner in the Pilbara town of Marble Bar (roughly 1000
kilometres to the northwest of Maralinga, but close to the coastline near the Monte Bello Islands) had detected significant radiation on his Geiger counters. This mobilised the journalists and gave Beale some uncomfortable hours as he attempted to kill the rumour and restore order to the restive media contingent. Given the poor state of communications to the Monte Bello site, this took some time.

  Beale, after finally receiving the reassuring words he needed from the AWTSC chair Leslie Martin, who was at Monte Bello, issued a dramatic media statement at midnight saying that most of the radioactive fallout had been deposited in the sea, although some was drifting at very high altitude and posed no risk. His later account stated:

  I learnt again from this that newspaper editors may be gracious guests, but when it comes to a sensational news story they are newsmen first and foremost. Nevertheless they co-operated in an awkward situation, and faithfully kept their word to me by damping the story down as far as they could.

  That media representatives damped down the story to assist Beale is a revealing comment. It probably speaks to the kind of relationship Beale had developed with the media and the closeness to official sources that was maintained by media practitioners at the time. One story published by the Sydney Sun was headlined ‘Threat to 3 towns’. It began, ‘All Australia is anxiously watching a radio-active cloud – result of the atomic blast on the Monte Bello islands on Tuesday’. Beale was quoted citing Martin: ‘Prof. Martin … has reported to me that conditions of firing were ideal and there was absolutely no danger to the mainland. The path of the cloud was followed by plane, and last night the cloud was over the sea, 100 miles off the north-west coast’.