Green Light on Cannikin

The word is go. Or, as AEC Chairman James R. Schlesinger put it, "The Atomic Energy Commission is now planning to proceed with the Cannikin test. We have received the requisite authority to go, including detonation."

The decision was made by Richard Nixon himself, and it was a decision he did not expect to have to make. The whole thing seemed simple enough when it was proposed. The nation needed an anti-ballistic missile system, and its prime ingredient was the Spartan warhead, which is designed to destroy or neutralize incoming enemy warheads.

Since tests in the atmosphere were banned by international treaty, the new warhead would have to be tested underground. The choice fell on one of the world's most remote islands--Amchitka, near the end of Alaska's Aleutian chain--where AEC officials dug a shaft more than a mile deep, and proposed to lower the five-megaton Spartan warhead down to the bottom. All it cost was $200 million, and they anticipated no trouble.

Necessary Precedence. They were wrong. Environmentalists set up an outcry that such a massive explosion, five times as powerful as the previous Amchitka blast in 1969, might trigger an earthquake or, in case of a blowout, contaminate the area with radioactive fallout. Committees were formed, suits were filed, studies were conducted by Government agencies. Politicians, diplomats and strategists were consulted.

But with Nixon's decision made, AEC Commissioner Schlesinger was firm: "The primary purposes of Cannikin are to proof-test the Spartan warhead . . . before large investment of funds is made on that component of the Safeguard system. Environmental damage has been exhaustively considered, and overriding requirements of national security have, of necessity, taken precedence."

The precedence gained added weight when the Russians set off an underground explosion last spring that U.S. monitors rate at from four to six megatons. "It became evident," Schlesinger explained, "that the Soviets were ready and eager to test high-yield weapons." In other words, the Russians were testing ABMs, recognized that the U.S. must therefore also test ABMs, and the Cannikin explosion would not jeopardize the disarmament talks, which, said Schlesinger, "are proceeding in businesslike fashion."

Fallout in Canada. Reaction elsewhere was less businesslike. Alaska's Governor William Egan declared that responsibility for any harm done to the Aleutian Islands (which with Japan and California are situated on the Circum-Pacific Girdle of Fire) should be borne by the AEC and the President. The Canadian government expressed a "deep sense of disquiet" and, like Egan, held the Administration accountable for any aftereffects that might be caused by the explosion. Taking a more direct approach, a Canadian group chartered a minesweeper, Greenpeace, Too, and sailed from Vancouver for Amchitka, where they intended to anchor outside the three-mile limit in hopes of persuading Washington to cancel the test. Japan, Peru and Sweden have asked that the test be canceled.

Legal maneuvers to stop the test continued. In one suit, 33 Congressmen sought to force public disclosure of the reports given to the President by environmental and other Government agencies. A Washington-based group called the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility has asked a court to enjoin the tests on the grounds that the AEC had not filed an adequate environmental-impact statement as required by law, and that the blast would damage the environment.

Schlesinger was unimpressed. "Over the years, we've detonated a large number of explosions," he pointed out. "No device ever generated an aftershock greater than the explosion itself." Only an aftershock ten to 30 times as great as the original explosion, he said, could cause an earthquake. The minute Schlesinger got the word from Nixon, AEC workers were set to work shoveling sand, gravel and cement into the Amchitka shaft, in the "stemming" operation that is supposed to seal the explosion off from any possibility of blowout.

By week's end the environmentalists had failed to get their injunction, though under court order the Government did hand over the environmental-impact reports for the judge's perusal. If an injunction is issued, Schlesinger says he will defer to Justice Department opinion.

In any case, the Spartan warhead will be buried forever and lost. Not to worry. It only cost $200 million. And if anybody is concerned about just leaving it there, with all its potential nuclear power, it can be harmlessly destroyed by a small charge of TNT, which the AEC has already installed against just such a contingency.

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