If the Nuclear Meltdown Happens, What Then?
Document Title: If the Nuclear Meltdown Happens,
What Then?
Document Ref No: R9002151
First Published: Reflections - The Philippine Daily InquirerTBA
Publication Date: February 15th 1990
Author's Name: Father Shay Cullen SSC
When United States and Soviet arms negotiators discussed arms control in Moscow recently they had in mind land based nuclear weapons and troops in Europe. While this has given much hope to the peoples of the North it is cold comfort to the peoples of Asia and the Pacific because Nuclear weapons are going to sea in ever increasing numbers. There are no negotiations in sight on sea based nuclear weapons and it is these that poise an even greater danger to the ecology of the oceans and especially to the Philippines. The possession of nuclear weapons which can destroy entire cities is immoral according to the US Catholic Bishops because even contemplating their use means the killing of thousands of innocent people and accepting the inevitable death of millions of people in a counter retaliatory attack. Thinking the unthinkable is now an acceptable fact of life. The Philippine bases and the fleets which it services are part of the US strategic forward nuclear defence plan. In other words Filipinos are the sandbags of the US defense bunker. But the more immediate danger to Filipinos comes from the real possibility of a nuclear accident. When we talk bases we talk death either by accident or design.
There are already more than 16,000 nuclear weapons on ships and submarines of the navies of the US, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. That is not all, these global superpowers plan to deploy even more in the near future. Besides the huge number of nuclear weapons there are almost 550 nuclear reactors churning away in the bowels of the ships of these navies and despite the claims that they are the safest power sources afloat they are accidents waiting to happen with devastating results. These ship-based nuclear reactors make up more than half of the nuclear reactors in the entire world.
Little is really known about the terrible accidents aboard Navy submarines and ships. They can happen when submarines are submerged far from the public eye. The few that are reported are frightening.
Last October 3, 1986 a nuclear missile exploded on board a Soviet "Yankee" class submarine off the coast of Bermuda in the Atlantic, within three days the submarine sank to the ocean bottom taking with it 32 nuclear weapons and two nuclear reactors. The massive pressure at that depth could crush the containers and flood the ocean bed with deadly radioactivity. This is probably happening already. But few people even know about or have quickly forgotten. We like to put bad news behind us, out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.
The reactors that sank had 10-20 million curies of radioactive material with a highly toxic life of thousands of years. There could be no greater danger to the life of the planet than the radiation of the oceans.
The Neptune papers Volume 3, a study of Naval accidents from 1945 -1988 by the Institute for Policy studies is very frightening. It records that since the end of WWII the world's navies have had 1,276 major accidents. The majority of these are little known, many are shrouded in military secrecy but all have been documented. There may be hundreds more undocumented. The accidents involving nuclear warheads and reactors are the most closely guarded secrets and it is a wonder that we know anything at all. But it is known that there are a staggering 48 nuclear warheads and seven nuclear reactors presently on the ocean floor and it is likely there are many more unreported or covered up. Such accidents have happened not only at sea far from land but in harbors and costal waters posing a deadly threat to all life.
In l973 for example, on April 21, USS Guardfish, a nuclear powered attack submarine of the US navy had an accident in which the coolant of the reactor was lost. Without this vital fluid the reactor will overheat and melt down, the worst nuclear disaster possible. The submarine was submerged 370 miles off Puget Sound, Washington, but managed to surface and repair the damage and barely avoid a melt-down. There was a serious radioactivity leak but what was more serious was the cover up, the deck log book and the command history were falsified.
Many Naval accidents have happened in the Pacific (318 or 25% of all the accidents ) and in the Indian ocean 34 accidents are know to have occurred. Of the 1,299 known accidents, 799 have involved ships of the United States Navy. But perhaps many more Soviet accidents have gone undocumented or the information is not available because of their obsession with secrecy.
The accidents of all navies are of grave concern but in particular those of the Soviet, Chinese and the United States who have more nuclear powered and armed ships in the South China Sea and the Pacific than other world powers. The United States has the most of all and they are frequently visiting Philippine costal waters and ports. A single nuclear accident like that of the USS Gurardfish in Philippine waters could contaminate many thousands of Filipinos with radiation and destroy many more thousands of square miles of fishing grounds. It would be worse that the worst oil spill imaginable.
Nuclear weapons are an even greater source of danger than a reactor melt-down. Since the l950s U.S. naval ships and Soviet vessels began carrying nuclear weapons. It is noted that the first US ship to be armed in December l951 with nuclear bombs was the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Since then they have been greatly upgraded by modern technology and they are as many as 16,000 at sea with the world nuclear navies. There have been many accidents not all of the recorded or documented but what we do know makes chilling reading.
Accidents do happen. In fact with navy ships there are so many that a few months ago the US navy ordered a worldwide stand-down of all navy ships to study their safety procedures. Such an unprecedented move is a warning that one of these days a reactor accident at Subic or a nuclear armed US jet crashes could happen. The consequences are awesome and the Philippines has to accept these real possibilities and take note of them when talks to the United States about the presence of nuclear armed or propelled ships in Philippines waters. What compensation would be available for the victims of a nuclear accident. Under present agreements probably none because the US steadfastly neither confirms or denies that its ships are nuclear. END
