The canister for the Cannikin test lowered into the test shaft Cannikin was an underground nuclear weapons test performed on November 6, 1971, on Amchitka island, Alaska, by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. The experiment, part of the Operation Grommet nuclear test series, tested the unique W71 warhead design for the LIM-49 Spartan anti-ballistic missile. With an explosive yield of almost , the test was the largest underground explosion ever detonated by the United States. Prior to the main five-megaton test in 1971, a test took place on the island on October 2, 1969, for calibration purposes, and to ensure the subsequent Cannikin test could be contained.
|
|
Three such tests were carried out: Long Shot, an blast in 1965; Milrow, a blast in 1969; and Cannikin in 1971 – at , the largest underground test ever conducted by the United States. The tests were highly controversial, with environmental groups fearing that the Cannikin explosion, in particular, would cause severe earthquakes and tsunamis. Amchitka is no longer used for nuclear testing. It is still monitored for the leakage of radioactive materials.
|
|
This test, Milrow, was included in the Operation Mandrel nuclear test series. The Cannikin test faced considerable opposition on environmental grounds. The campaigning environmental organization Greenpeace grew out of efforts to oppose the test.
|
|
The U.S. conducted underground tests of nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island from 1965 to 1971 as part of the Vela Uniform program. The final detonation, the Cannikin, was the largest underground nuclear explosion by the U.S.
|
|
" Film stills from the Cannikin test show the effects on the surface of the detonation below, equivalent to a 7.0 earthquake. In July 1971, a group called the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility filed suit against the AEC, asking the court to stop the test. The suit was unsuccessful, with the Supreme Court denying the injunction by 4 votes to 3, and Richard Nixon personally authorized the $200 million test, in spite of objections from Japan, Peru, and Sweden. "What the Court didn't know, however, was that six federal agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, and the fledgling EPA, had lodged serious objections to the Cannikin test, ranging from environmental and health concerns to legal and diplomatic problems.
|
|
The Cannikin test was too large to be conducted safely in Nevada. Amchitka had been considered in the 1950s as a potential nuclear test site, but had been deemed unsuitable at that time. In 1965, a single nuclear test, Long Shot, was carried out on the island for the purposes of seismic test detection development, under program Vela Uniform.
|
|
Cannikin was detonated on November 6, 1971 , as the thirteenth test of the Operation Grommet (1971–1972) underground nuclear test series. The announced yield was 5 megatons (21 PJ) – the largest underground nuclear test in U.S. history. (Estimates for the precise yield range from 4.4 to 5.2 megatons or 18 to 22 PJ). The ground lifted , caused by an explosive force almost 400 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
|
|
Has a subtitle - Demonstrators picket US Embassy in Ottawa. The Canadian Don't Make a Wave Committee, founded that year in Vancouver, attempted to halt further nuclear testing on the Aleutian islands chain.The Story of Project Cannikin: In 1971, the U.S. Military Nuked Alaska With the intention of sailing to Amchitka to protest the 1971 test, the committee chartered a ship it renamed Greenpeace. The ship was turned back by the U.S. Coast Guard.
|
|
Though performed as part of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program, "[the] purpose of the Milrow test was to test an island, not a weapon." It was a "calibration shot", intended to produce data from which the impact of larger explosions could be predicted, and specifically, to determine whether the planned Cannikin detonation could be performed safely. Milrow was detonated on October 2, 1969 , with an approximate yield of .See Miller "Nuclear Flashback" or Schneider "Amchitka's nuclear legacy".
|
|
Preparation for the test took place over five years and involved hundreds of staff from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, later the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Drilling for the shaft for the Milrow test began in March 1967, with drilling for the Cannikin test commencing in August 1967. To perform the test, 400 tons of equipment was placed in a shaft deep and wide. Test support equipment was designed to survive a ground upheaval of at test time.
|
|
During meetings in 1970 Bill Darnell combined the words ‘green’ and ‘peace’,Sean Connolly, Global Organizations: Greenpeace, Franklin Watts, 2008, p. 12 thereby giving the organization its first expedition name, Greenpeace. Many Canadians protested the United States military underground nuclear bomb tests, codenamed Cannikin, beneath the island of Amchitka, Alaska in 1971. In May the year, the Don't Make a Wave Committee sent Jim Bohlen and Patrick Moore, to represent the Don't Make a Wave Committee in US Atomic Energy Commission hearings in Alaska.
|
|
Because of this and the increasingly bad weather the crew decided to return to Canada only to find out that the news about their journey and the support from the crew of the Confidence had generated widespread sympathy for their protest. Greenpeace chartered another ship, a former minesweeper Edgewater Fortune, which was renamed the Greenpeace Too!. Paul Watson, also a co-founder of Greenpeace was selected to crew the 2nd vessel. One day out of Amchitka the United States Atomic Energy Commission conducted the underground 5 Mt Cannikin nuclear test a day earlier than scheduled on November 6, 1971.
|
|
No evidence of an Air Traffic Control Tower has been located. The postwar White Alice Site appears to be at A new 5,000 ft airfield (01/19) was constructed at and the #3 Air Force runway was refurbished in the 1960s. The AEC built a series of roads, base camp facilities and support buildings for the nuclear workers over the south part of the island in a similar manner to the Nevada Test Site. A total of three nuclear tests, Long Shot, (1965) , Milrow (1969) , and Cannikin (1971) were performed, spurring the Don't Make A Wave Committee environmental protests.
|
|
Prior to the W71 test, a calibration test known as Milrow of Operation Mandrel was conducted in 1969. Despite political and pressure group opposition to both tests, and in particular the full yield W71, coming from then US Senator Mike Gravel and the nascent Greenpeace, a Supreme Court decision led to the test shot getting the go-ahead, and a W71 prototype was successfully tested on 6 November 1971 in Project Cannikin of Operation Grommet in the world's largest underground nuclear test, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. The second highest-yield underground test known occurred in 1973, when the USSR tested a 4 Mt device 392 The W71 was lowered down a borehole into a man-made cavern in diameter. A instrumentation system monitored the detonation.
|
|
Robert Hunter was on the first expedition of the Don't Make a Wave Committee in 1971, titled Greenpeace I. This was a halibut seiner by the name of Phyllis Cormack, chartered to travel to Amchitka to attempt to halt the underground nuclear bomb test codenamed Cannikin by the United States military beneath the island of Amchitka, Alaska. The Amchitka test program was delayed, and, five months later, cancelled altogether.G+M: "Greenpeace co-founder's daughter makes peace with her dad, a decade after his death", 19 Jun 2015 In 1975 Robert Hunter led the Greenpeace expedition against the Soviet whaling fleet, along with lifelong friend and activist Paul Watson and Patrick Moore. The expedition chartered the Phyllis Cormack again, and pioneered using inflatable zodiacs as a shield between the harpoon and the whale.
|
|
In an earthquake, which are generally of a natural tectonic plate origin (although they can be artificially generated by the detonation of a nuclear explosive device in which sufficient energy is transmitted into the ground, with an extreme case to serve as an example of this phenomenon being the Operation Grommet Cannikin test of the 5 megaton W71 warhead exploded deep underground on Amchitka Island in 1971, which produced a seismic shock quake of 7.0 on the Richter magnitude scale) people are encouraged, regardless of the cause of the quake, to "drop, cover, and hold on": to get underneath a piece of furniture, cover their heads and hold on to the furniture. This advice also encourages people not to run out of a shaking building, because a large majority of earthquake injuries are due to broken bones from people falling and tripping during shaking. While it is unlikely that "drop, cover and hold on" will protect against a building collapse, in earthquake-prone areas in the United States building codes require that buildings withstand quakes up to an expected magnitude enough to allow evacuation after shaking stops. and thus a building collapse of these structures (even during an earthquake) is rare.
|
|