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Radioactive Leakage at
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Critical Cleanup Target |
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| This report confirms radioactive leakage into the Bering Sea from the world's largest underground nuclear explosion. Government data show americium-241 leaking from all three nuclear blast sites under Amchitka Island, Alaska. Americium-241 is a radionuclide with a 433-year half-life. It is produced by the decay of plutonium that fueled the bombs. The full extent of the leakage from Amchitka nuclear blast sites is yet unknown. | |||||||||||
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| Workers at the Cannikin Shaft, Amchitka Island, 1971. | |||||||||||
| To get a copy of this report, contact Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT) at e-mail: info@AKAction.net | |||||||||||
| The Atomic Energy Commission claimed that nuclear waste from the three Amchitka detonations would be contained for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Both the 1996 and 1997 investigations clearly reveal radioactive leakage. | |||||||||||
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The Cannikin nuclear bomb is lowered into the Earth. Amchitka Island, 1971.
Within two days after the Cannikin test in 1971, the Cannikin shaft collapsed with a mechanical breach, forming a subsidence crater over one mile wide and 60 feet deep. During May of 1972, samples from the Cannikin shaft revealed venting of about 14,000 cubic feet of radioactive krypton-85 gas with concentrations of 200,000 femtocuries per milliliter. This was the first radiological evidence of a containment breach at Cannikin, yet the Atomic Energy Commission did not publicly reveal the incident. |
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