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U.S. releases films of Cold War atomic tests
December 22, 1997
Web posted at: 8:05 p.m. EST (0105 GMT)WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Trees and Jeeps are contorted by the blast of a nuclear explosion. Donkeys and pigs are tied down near detonation sites to study the effects of radiation.
These images of U.S. nuclear testing were filmed during the Cold War. Until Monday, though, they had never been seen by the public.
Recently declassified, and just released by the U.S. Department of Energy, the films from the 1950s and '60s offer historians a ringside seat at Operation Redwing, Operation Wigwam, Operation Knothole and Ivy Flats -- some of the country's most dramatic Cold War experiments.
CNN's Bob Franken reports on recently declassified footage of the detonation of atomic bombs.
2 min. VXtreme video
One at the Nevada Test Site on July 6, 1962, was six times the size of the bomb dropped at Hiroshima, displaced 12 million tons of earth and released the seismic energy equivalent of an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.75.
Evolving policy of openness
The old-fashioned, military documentary-style reels were never intended for public consumption. Energy Secretary Federico Pena, who previewed the films with reporters, said their new availability highlights a marked difference between governments past and present.
"The American people should know this government is more open," Pena said. "We're not hiding things like we used to a long time ago."
Newly released films of nuclear testing 1.2MB/30 sec./160x120
QuickTime movieThe release of the previously secret material was part of the Clinton administration's evolving policy of openness at DOE and 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 declared classified.
"In the past, documents have been assumed to be born classified. Starting today, that assumption is eliminated. Only materials with a compelling national security interest will be classified," Pena said.
Films reveal naive approach
The films released Monday suggest a certain naive approach to radioactive exposure. After an Ivy Flats nuclear exercise in 1964 -- which counted then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy among its witnesses -- the film's narrator remarks, "No one needed decontamination and only two vehicles required a washdown."
However, testers did use tools to gauge the level of contamination in objects at the testing sites.
Pena said the DOE also was releasing 270,000 pages of previously classified documents about the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland, Washington, 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 an entire lake of radioactive waters used for cooling at the site along the Columbia River.
Also released for the first time were details of trades for plutonium, tritium and enriched uranium between the United States and the United Kingdom from 1960 to 1979.
Correspondent Bob Franken and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Sailors, airmen got radioactive treatments - August 27, 1997
- Report: Nevada nuclear test fallout reached as far as New York - July 25, 1997
- Stricter rules enacted for radiation experiments - March 28, 1997
- Declassified films show nuclear weapons in their infancy - January 15, 1997
Related sites:
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- The Department of Energy's OpenNet Database
- Human Radiation Experiments - DOE
- Protecting Human Subjects - DOE
- The Manhattan Project
- The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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