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OW seems likely that, in its excitement over the
Obyl affair, the big media went much farther than
» €ver intended in raising public consciousness
the dangers of nuclear power in general. What was
to be a cautionary anti-Soviet tale may well re-
ny «ainst the huge and secretive nuclear establish-
| the West.
ar, the renewed debate has been limited to civilian
Nuclear energy, while the nuclear power indus-
Mighty silent partner, the Pentagon, seems to
-aped scrutiny. By far the most profligate and
US abuses of atomic power over the past 40

debate around Chernobyl has

N limited to civilian uses of nuclear
er. However the most profligate
dangerous abuses of atomic

er over the past 40 years have

N Committed by the military.

bie” of nuclear physics since 1945 has caused a

ius on Earth are exposed to. Overwhelmingly, this
Tesult of the approximately 1,500 atmospheric and
Genound nuclear weapons tests that have been
hed Of course, experts maintain that a mere
: ling of the background radiation is.of no particular
quence. On the other hand, no one seems able to
lain why the cancer rate keeps rising despite
t advances in medical science.
Nall of the anxiety over Chernobyl was the news
&t another serious accident involving a U.S. nu-
©Wered submarine occurred in the Mediterranean
129. It seems that the USS Atlanta was making
Asit of the Straits of Gibraltar, carrying a load of
"awk cruise missiles, when she ran aground,
ing serious structural damage. The sub repor-
Managed to limp into Gibraltar for emergency re-
but what might have happened if her reactor had
Teached, if there had been an explosion, if her
‘ the 29 of nuclear missiles had been scattered ac-
Seabed? It is now reported that a similar incident
| American nuclear submarine occurred a month
Off tthe British Isles. Add these to a list of some 600
Nts, large and small, involving nuclear weapons
Nergy-systems, that the U.S. Navy alone has ad-
to having had in the past four decades.
ore. all those Ramboesque manoeuvres near the
ut Sidra in recent months, did anyone think to ask
© consequences if a lone Libyan pilot should

(ae :
lid pticle, reprinted from the

OWever, have been committed by the military. .

8 of the natural background radiation that all |

white minority rights.

News
Analysis

Fred Weir

manage to score a lucky hit on one of those huge nu-
clear-powered aircraft carriers? If the USS Enterprise,
with her eight nuclear reactors and full load of nuclear
weapons were to go to the bottom the inhabitants of the
Mediterranean Basin would be paying the price for the
next thousand years. Such are the stakes of gunboat
diplomacy in the nuclear age.

In 1980, the Pentagon admitted to 32 “‘broken arrows’’
— a quaint euphemism for a serious nuclear weapons
accident. This list is undoubtedly very incomplete. The
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute esti-
mates the actual number of mishaps with U.S. nuclear
weapons to be more like 125 between 1945 and 1976. It is
probably even far greater than that, considering the U.S.

Navy’s recent admission of 600 accidents with its own .

nuclear equipment. Just by itself, the list of officially
announced “‘broken arrows”’ contains some horrifying
close calls, including:

e March 11, 1957: A B-47 accidentally dropped a
nuclear bomb over one megaton strong, near Mars Bluff,
South Carolina. The chemical explosive trigger went off,
destroying a farmhouse and killing several people. The
nuclear explosive, fortunately, did not detonate.

e September 25, 1959: A U.S. Navy P-SM anti-sub-
marine warfare plane crashed in Puget Sound, off the
coast of Washington. The nuclear weapon aboard was
never recovered.

e January 24, 1961: A B-52 on airborne alert broke up
in the air over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Two nuclear
bombs were released. Both were huge 24 megaton
weapons, equivalent to about 2,000 Hiroshimas each.
One bomb split open on impact, contaminating a large
area with uranium-235. The parachute straps of the other
became entangled in a tree, somehow causing five out of
six ‘‘failsafe’’ switches on the device to be tripped. Had
that bomb exploded, a good part of North Carolina
would have been obliterated.

e January 17, 1966: A B-52 carrying four nuclear —

bombs, believed to be around 20 megatons each, collided
with an aerial tanker during Strategic Air Command

operations over Spain. Both aircraft crashed near Palo- .

mares, Spain. The conventional explosive triggers of
two of the bombs detonated on impact, rupturing the
nuclear charges and spreading radioactive plutonium-
238 over a large area. Another bomb was recovered

the assistant secretary said in its

tiate a constitution. A truly demo-

‘Broken arrows’ the stakes of
gunboat diplomacy in nuclear age

intact from the ground, and the fourth from the sea.
Some 1,400 tons of plutonium-contaminated soil and
vegetation were scraped up from the worst 640 acres of
land, and imported to the U.S. in steel drums to be
dumped at the Savannah River waste storage facility in
South Carolina.

e January 21, 1968: A similar accident occurred in
Greenland when a B-52 crashed while attempting to land
at Thule Air Force Base. It was carrying four nuclear
bombs. On that occasion, the U.S. had to cart away
237,000 cubic feet of plutonium-contaminated snow, ice
and water.

e The latest ‘‘broken arrow’ the Pentagon has owned
up to is the explosion of a Titan II ICBM in its silo near

Damascus, Arkansas, in September 1980. One man was —

killed and 20 injured; the nine megaton hydrogen-bomb
warhead was catapulted hundreds of metres by the explo-
sion, and later found lying in a field next to a grazing cow.
cow.

Another class of accident involves military reactors.
There has been an undisclosed number of these but we
do know, for instance, that all eight reactors aboard the
USS Enterprise have gone critical at one time or
another. The five reactors at Savannah River and Han-
ford, which are used to produce plutonium and tritium
for hydrogen bombs — and which, by the way, lack any
type of containment facilities — are considered to be “‘a
horror story’? by some nuclear experts.

Then there are computer failures. In one eighteen
month period, from January 1979 to June 1980, NORAD
alone experienced 152 serious false alarms, all but three
of which were eventually traced to equipment failure. It
is a sobering thought that if Reagan’s Star Wars is ever
built, it will have to be operated by a computer program
so complex that it can only be written by another
computer.

And then there are accidents-in-the-making. Despite
all the publicity surrounding NASA’s incredible run of
bad luck with its rocket launchers, few people have
realized how much worse it might have been. The space
shuttle mission following the Challenger that exploded
was scheduled to have carried a package containing 20
kilograms of plutonium-238 into orbit. Plutonium is the
most toxic substance in the universe; 20 kg. of it would
be enough to give S billion people lung or bone cancer
under ‘‘worse case’’ conditions. If Star Wars goes
ahead, the Pentagon means to build dozens of reactors in
space, to provide electricity and power “‘directed ener-
gy’’ weapons. By the end of the century, they may be

transporting large quantities of highly radioactive mate- —

rial through the atmosphere on a routine basis.

Whatever the pros and cons of the debate over civilian
nuclear energy, what can be said for the reckless military
abuse of atomic power which, by accident or design,
could end up destroying life on this planet?

UIT CM

hen Speakes speaks apartheid trembles

Q: Well, how do you know

“porter, newspaper of The
Per Guild, is by Grant Dill-
"rector of the Washington
€ndment Centre of the Sigma

! Foundation.

°Wing are the first para-

hs of a story on Page 1 of the

f ‘stration favors Black ma-
© in South Africa and re-
Members of the militant
Can National Congress
‘Om fighters’’ in their bat-
“St the apartheid regime.

fying before the House
"Affairs subcommittee on
» Ass’t. Secretary of State
~.“\. Crocker was asked by
an, Rep. Howard E.
2 D-Mich., whether the
wstration supported the cre-
ystem based on Black
le and the protection of

“7 think that’s inherent in
everything we’ve said,’ Crocker
replied.

“Does that mean [Black] ma-
jority rule?’’ Wolpe persisted.

“*Yes,”’ replied Crocker, who is
regarded as the architect of the
administration’s ‘‘constructive
engagement’ policy toward
South Africa, an effort to quietly
encourage reform of the white
minority apartheid system.

Also on March 12, White

. House press representative Larry

Speakes devoted a major part of
his daily briefing for reporters to
the Crocker testimony. Here is a
partial transcript:

Speakes: Secretary Crocker
testified and there was some stir
caused . . . about what he had said
about the South African govern-
ment and the majority rule there. I
think it would behoove all of you

before you write to examine what

entirety, which was not reported.

Secretary Crocker agreed to an
assertion by a congressman that
in a general sense the African Na-
tional Congress is one of the many
organizations engaged in a strug-
gle for freedom in South Africa.
... He also noted ... our long-
standing opposition to the policy
of violence of the ANC and our
concerns about the ties of that or-
ganization to the Soviet Union.

[On] the question of majority
rule, we have consistently called
for a system of government that
recognized the rights of all South
Africans, including political
rights. }

Question: Well, did he call the
freedom fighters?

Speakes: The South African
government itself has recently
acknowledged the need to pro-
vide for universal sufferage. It is
up to the South Africans to nego-

cratic constitution, by definition,
provides for majority rule with
protection for minority rights. ...

Q: Are they freedom fighters?
The Mandela people?

Speakes: We certainly don’t
agree with their practice of vio-
lence and their standing with the
Soviet Union.

Q: Well, did he (Crocker) say
they were freedom fighters in his
text?

Speakes: I think you’d have to
look it up. I think he responded to
a question . . . designed not to find
out the administration’s views,
but to elicit a specific answer the
congressman wanted to play up.

Q: So you’re accusing his ques-
tioners you feel. he was
trapped?

Speakes: Yes, I do.

Q: Is that what he says?

Speakes: I haven’t talked to
him. :

that?

Speakes: Because I read the tes-
timony. Simple as that.

Q: What do you mean, “‘simple
as that?”’ Is he backtracking from
his testimony?

Speakes: No, he’s not back- <

tracking from his testimony.
Q: But you are?

Speakes: No, I’m putting it in

the context which it should be
recognized in the press. ...

Q: Out of curiosity ... is there
something about the phrase
‘Black majority rule’ that pre-
sents a diplomatic problem for the
United States? :

: No.

Q: So why don’t you just say

that you favor it, then?
Speakes: The South Africans

have to work out the specifics of _

their constitution. ors -

There now,
clear?

is everything