Nukes and EJ

In the late 1950s there was not much of an environmental movement, the Civil Rights Movement was just beginning, the EPA was at least 15 years in the future and there was not even a concept of Environmental Justice. In this context, less than a decade after the Second World War there was both excitement and concern over Nuclear weapons and the peacetime uses of nuclear power. In this context, an amazing and troubling set of factors converged to help jump start environmental concerns, especially those taking place within the US.

Native Alaskans have an interesting history, and this case takes place around the time that Alaska became the 49^th State in 1959. This meant that there were no treaties in place. To make matters more complicated, termination was the solution being enacted by the BIA and the federal government with tribes in the lower 48. This was a time when racism was still solidly entrenched in the south and Indigenous issues were being almost completely ignored. In this environment it was possible for the US to assume that northern Alaska was basically “uninhabited.”

Partly in response to broad popular opposition to the hazards of above ground testing of atomic weapons by both the U.S. and the USSR, the AEC had decided it could improve its public image by establishing a new program called `Operation Plowshare' - drawing on the biblical narrative in which swords were beaten into plowshares. From this "peaceful use of the atom" suggested the AEC, would come "a new age of atomic progress."

In 1957, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission [AEC] established the 'Plowshare Program' to "investigate and develop peaceful uses for nuclear explosives." In early 1958, the AEC selected a site at the mouth of the Ogotoruk Creek near Cape Thompson, approximately 30 miles southeast of the Inupiat Eskimo village of Point Hope. Shortly thereafter, they developed plans for an experimental harbor excavation to be called Project Chariot. Tikigaq thus became the site of one of the first obvious cases of Environmental (in)Justice, where Edward Teller and the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) decided that they were going to use nuclear explosions for “peaceful purposes” ostensibly to create a new harbor in NW Alaska about 30 miles SE of Tikigaq. Of greater long range concern was the withdrawal of 4500 acres of land for a military reserve - an area encompassing the entire surface of Barter Island including the village of Tikigaq and its cemetery. As one local villager described the event later on: "No one knew what this was about, or why. We were just told to move. "If I had known English then, as I do now, I would have fought to keep the village. We got nothing for having to move. It was not fair of them to do this."

It wasn't until the spring of 1959, after watching a local movie, that Point Hope residents were called to an impromptu meeting by a visiting missionary from Kotzebue and told the rumor about the blast was true. Although AEC officials excluded Inupiat villagers from early discussions about Project Chariot, they did continue to promote it before Alaska's financial community and state legislature - knowing their support was essential to its successful implementation.

The events we discuss were among the first examples of US attempting to establish and environmental policy, however this was necessary because the AEC and the US Military wanted to find “peaceful” uses for nuclear explosions. This outcome was relatively positive in that instead of being a total disaster, the village of Tikigaq and its people still live in their homeland. However climate change and rising sea levels are still coming.

Another issue that emerges from this story is the issue of whether we should simply trust anything someone says is “Science.” In this case, a number of scientists lied repeatedly about safety issues involved in nuclear explosions because they seemed to feel that opportunities to experiment with explosions was more important than the safety of a Native Alaskan community.

The book we will read for this case is by Dan O’Neill,a journalist who works in Alaska: 1994. The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement. Basic Books, New York. This book is available for from $3-10 on Amazon. It is fairly long, but it tells a compelling story and reads like a bestseller, introducing and explaining the characters and showing clearly how Environmental Justice issues decades before the concept was formally given a name. See Review form the Journal Arctic: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/view/64192

A brief and more technical outline of this topic is available at Project Chariot: The Nuclear Legacy of Cape Thompson, Alaska by Norman Chance at https://arctichealth.org/media/pubs/301380/ProjectChariotNChance.pdf