Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up

By Alan Parkinson

In April 2000, a $108 million clean-up of the former British A-bomb test site in outback South Australia was being wound up. It was declared a success and the Maralinga tjarutja Aboriginal people were reassured that it would be safe to move back onto their lands. It was claimed to be a world first, the biggest and most successful clean-up ever.But leaked documents show that behind the scenes, the project had been increasingly troubled. Some key insiders, including the government's advisers, say that the job was never finished properly. In the process of the clean-up, Australia put large amounts of plutonium into several unlined, unguarded holes in the ground, the toxic waste blowing across the land in dusty clouds. the site is a devastating legacy to nuclear testing, not to mention the Aboriginal people who have been told it is safe to live there.Alan Parkinson was the official adviser to the project, but after he voiced his concerns about the dangers of the shortcuts that were being taken, he was removed from the project and told to be quiet. Refusing to be silenced, Alan has been fighting for an inquiry for six years. this is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781460701713

Alan Parkinson

Alan Parkinson is a mechanical and nuclear engineer with over 40 years experience in the UK, Australia, Canada and the US. In 1993 he was appointed as a governmental engineering adviser for the Maralinga clean-up project and was appointed the government's representative for overseeing the whole project. He was removed from the project when he began questioning the unsafe and life-threatening clean-up practices that were occurring at Maralinga.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

CONTAMINATING THE OUTBACK

It is sad, but probably true, that most people living in Australia today have never heard of Maralinga, know nothing of what happened there 50 years ago, and don’t know that 12 atomic bombs have been exploded in Australia. Seven of those bombs were exploded at Maralinga in South Australia in two campaigns. The first campaign involved four explosions in 1956. The second was in 1957, when three bombs were exploded.

Since Australia does not possess a nuclear arsenal, we could well ask, How could atomic bombs have been exploded here? The answer is simple – Britain exploded them. But how did that come about? Who allowed it to happen, and why?

Following that most secret of wartime programs – the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Europe was gripped in a Cold War in which Britain felt particularly vulnerable. Even though other nations, particularly Britain, participated in the Manhattan Project, after the war America wanted to keep all nuclear secrets to itself. To do so, in 1946, the US Congress passed what was known as the McMahon Act. This forbade cooperation with any foreign power in the development of nuclear science, whether for peaceful or military uses. As a result, Britain set up its own program to acquire nuclear weapons.

The British Prime Minister of the day was Clement Atlee, and he approached the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, seeking permission to test a nuclear bomb on Australian territory. Menzies agreed, apparently without even telling his own Cabinet of the approach or of his decision.

Britain exploded atomic bombs at three locations on Australian territory.

After Britain had detonated two atomic weapons at Emu, they realised that site was far too remote – there had not even been a track there until one was cut to reach the site. After their experience with the Emu explosions, the boffins thought safety concerns could be relaxed and the site did not need to be so remote. So an alternative was sought.

The Maralinga site was identified by British aerial reconnaissance, and towards the end of 1953 Sir William Penney (the chief of Britain’s atomic weapons development) asked Len Beadell to locate and survey the site. Len was the South Australian surveyor who had found the Emu site, and had cut a track from Woomera to Emu. In one of his books, Len describes how he drove from Emu – through scrub, over sandhills, across claypans, and skirting salt lakes – until he emerged on the Transcontinental Railway near Fisher.¹ He was accompanied on the journey by Alan Butement, the Australian Chief Defence Scientist, and apparently it was he who named the site Maralinga, adopting an Aboriginal word meaning ‘thunder’.

Years later I stood at Taranaki and watched as a thunderstorm developed in the distance. The storm gradually expanded until the whole horizon was a canvas of forked and sheet lightning and thunder rolled all around us. It was a fantastic experience. Perhaps Alan Butement saw something similar when he named the place Maralinga; or perhaps he was anticipating the thunderous explosions that would soon destroy the area’s tranquillity.

After reaching the railway, Len and his party drove eastwards along the railway to Ooldea, on the way passing the six houses that were then at Watson – little did they know that Watson was to become the main land transport access point for Maralinga. Ooldea was where Daisy Bates established an Aboriginal mission. There is a memorial to Daisy by the railway line there.

Len then travelled north from Ooldea over yet more sandhills and dense vegetation before coming quite suddenly on the site he knew would be what Penney wanted. He had arrived at Tietkens Plain, an open area covered with saltbush. He entered at the southeastern corner and then veered west to a level area which he smoothed by dragging a piece of railway line backwards and forwards for 1 mile (1.6km) so that it could be used as an aircraft landing strip. Beadell does not say exactly where this aircraft landing strip was, but from his description of going to Tietkens Well he must have been on the eastern side of the road that now runs from Maralinga village to Taranaki, at a site later called Hendon Airfield. And that was where the party landed to inspect the site.

Penney decided it was ‘the cat’s whiskers’ – and then promptly sat on a pile of rubber tyres while Beadell gave him a haircut. The Hendon Airfield, complete with the remains of the windsock, was still clearly visible when I last visited the site.

Between the Buffalo and Antler campaigns at Maralinga, the British moved their operation to Malden Island (in the Pacific Ocean), exploding three more bombs in the Grapple series. After the Taranaki bomb they transferred to Christmas Island to complete the Grapple series, detonating six more bombs.

It will also be a surprise for most to find that Australia wanted to have its own nuclear capability. In 1951, Menzies, with his ‘reds under the beds’ and ‘yellow peril’ fears, probably saw an opportunity for Australia to acquire nuclear arms through participation in the British program. But while he agreed to the British request, Menzies did not organise sufficient involvement by Australian scientists, engineers, or military, and so failed to acquire a nuclear arsenal by piggybacking the British program.

Having failed in that first endeavour, the government hawks planned an independent approach. Their attempt to develop weapons of mass destruction is described in a book by Wayne Reynolds.² Another account was presented in the television program Fortress Australia.³ Before rushing to condemn those governments, we should remember that the political climate of the time was one that engendered fear in Australia. China exploded its first atomic bomb in 1964, and in February 1965 Indonesia admitted that it was developing its own atomic bomb.⁴ Australia’s concerns were echoed by the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson: If India, Pakistan and perhaps Indonesia all became nuclear powers, then world nuclear war is inevitable.⁵

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was part of the Australian dream. In mid-1965 I saw full-page advertisements by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) in the Sunday newspapers in Britain. The AAEC was seeking engineers and scientists with a background in nuclear reactors. It seemed Australia was embarking on a nuclear power program – something far removed from a weapons program. I responded to the advertisements and attended an interesting interview in Australia House in London, at which just about the only topic of conversation was my experience in designing the cores of nuclear power reactors, particularly heavy water reactors. I was offered a position with the AAEC and arrived in Australia with my family in December 1965. For the next six years or so I worked on the design of nuclear power reactors. I did this work in Australia and then on secondment to the United Kingdom, in the office I had left some years earlier. I was then transferred to Canada to work on other parts of nuclear power stations at the Pickering and Bruce sites, and then to San Francisco to work on the assessment of tenders for an Australian nuclear power station.

I returned to Australia in October 1970 and continued to work on the assessment of those tenders. Early in 1971 I was told to be ready to go back to England to work on the design of a heavy water reactor that was going to be built at Jervis Bay on the south coast of New South Wales. There was nothing in any of this work that suggested any link to a nuclear weapons program.

In the meantime, Menzies retired. His successor, Harold Holt, went for an early morning swim and was never seen again. John Gorton then became Prime Minister. He continued the dream of nuclear power and nuclear weapons until he voted himself out of office. The next Prime Minister, Billy McMahon, had different views about spending money to build a nuclear power station, so the Australian nuclear dream evaporated. In an ironic coincidence of names, it was an American McMahon who shut Britain out of the fledgling nuclear industry, and an Australian McMahon who closed the door on Australia’s aspirations.

Even at that late stage I was not aware that there had been a dream of nuclear weapons. Perhaps the first inkling was when I met someone who arrived in Australia in late 1970 whose specialty was the design and operation of plutonium separation plants. Although Australia had been planning the introduction of nuclear power, I could not understand why we needed plutonium separation. I then started to look at other indicators. For example, the reactor chosen for Jervis Bay was to have ‘online’ refuelling: that is, the reactor could be refuelled without shutting down. This feature is important because it could have enabled the surreptitious production of plutonium.

As part of some studies I was undertaking in 1979, I wrote a paper⁶ for presentation at the University of New South Wales about the possibility that Australia could develop its own nuclear weapon. For that paper, I drew only on published literature, but I showed that Australia had the capacity and skills, and some of the infrastructure, to develop its own nuclear weapon should it so desire. The nation also had its own delivery system – the F-111 aircraft purchased some years earlier can be made nuclear capable. In my paper, I concluded that although Australia could develop the capability to produce its own nuclear weapon, there was then no political incentive to do so.

I relate this story so that those who throw up their hands in horror, saying, Look what the Poms did to our lovely land, might understand that it was not all one-sided.

A further surprise will be that it was not the atomic bombs which led to the clean-up at Maralinga. It was something much more sinister and irresponsible.

A nuclear bomb is not an easy thing to make, especially a plutonium or implosion bomb – the type dropped on Nagasaki. The development requires many experiments with various fast-acting and slow-acting explosives, metals, triggers and timing mechanisms. Hundreds of these trials were carried out at Maralinga – with fanciful code names such as Kittens, Rats, Tims and Vixen. The Kittens, Tims and Rats trials were aimed at the development of the bomb. The Vixen trials were said to be mainly concerned with the safety of the bomb. (Outline descriptions of these trials can be found in Symonds.⁷)

The Tims and Vixen trials caused widespread contamination of the surrounding landscape. Between mid-October and mid-December 1960, six rounds of Tims trials were fired, each using about 100g of plutonium, none of which was repatriated to Britain. A further series was conducted in September and October 1961, involving about 600g of plutonium, of which some 500g was returned to Britain (in 1979).⁸

The Vixen A trials involved the detonation and burning of materials, components and assemblies. The first series, in September 1959, involved burning two 400g rods of plutonium in a petrol fire – about 395g were repatriated to Britain. The second series involved about 570g of plutonium in May and June 1961; none was repatriated.

While the Tims and Vixen A trials spread contamination at the locations known as TM and Wewak at Maralinga, the effect was small compared with what followed in the Vixen B trials, which were all conducted at the Taranaki location.

The Vixen B trials were said to be to test the safety of nuclear weapons in storage or in transit, but there was evidently an element of weapons development. In those trials, a nuclear device was placed on a large steel structure, known as a featherbed, which in turn was erected on a concrete firing pad. The device was basically a nuclear bomb in which there was a core of plutonium surrounded by uranium, and that ‘pit’ was surrounded by explosive charges.

For the bomb to work, the explosive charges have to be detonated simultaneously – this will compress the plutonium and produce the nuclear explosion with its characteristic mushroom cloud. However, in those trials, the purpose was not to produce a nuclear explosion; one explosive charge was fired ahead of others, thus avoiding the nuclear reaction. Even so, the heat of the chemical explosion melted the plutonium and uranium core and hurled the molten mix almost a kilometre into the air, where it was caught by the wind and spread over a huge area – shaped like a giant radioactive handprint. The palm of the hand was central Taranaki, the thumb pointed west, the inordinately long forefinger pointed northwest, the middle finger pointed north, and two fingers were bound together to point northeast. We referred to these ‘fingers’ as plumes. The three main plumes stretched for several kilometres, well beyond what was to become the clean-up boundary.

There were 15 of these trials in three series. Each series was preceded by a calibration shot in which the core was natural or depleted uranium; the other 12 contained cores made from plutonium and uranium. Three plutonium trials were conducted in September and October 1960. The first used 1300g of plutonium, the second and third each used 1400g. None of this plutonium was repatriated, as it was spread over a huge area. There were five trials in the second series, conducted in April and May 1961. Each used a little over 2kg of plutonium, and again, since it was spread over a wide area, none was repatriated. The third series, in March and April 1963, involved four trials, each using about 1900g of plutonium. As with the other trials, the plutonium was spread over a wide area and none was repatriated.

As if that was not bad enough, 10–20 per cent of the molten cocktail fell downwards and contaminated the surrounding soil and the featherbeds. This meant that the featherbeds could not be used a second time. They were disposed of in pits dug generally close to the firing pads. The concrete firing pads were also contaminated and were buried, along with the other debris.

By the time these trials were finished, the Taranaki site was heavily contaminated with plutonium. The TM and Wewak sites were also contaminated, but to a much lesser extent.

In summary, 24,400g of plutonium was used in the minor trials at Maralinga and only 900g was repatriated to Britain. The remainder was spread over a very wide area. For example, scientists from the Australian Radiation Laboratory (ARL) detected plutonium over 100km away from Maralinga. In addition, the Kuli site was contaminated with 7 tonnes of depleted uranium, which had been used in some trials as a substitute for plutonium.

Soon after the last nuclear explosion at Maralinga, Britain signed an agreement with the United States on 4 August 1958. Under this agreement they have exploded 24 weapons (the last in September 1992) at the Nevada Test Site.⁹ Joint exercises may have continued after that date, but I do not have any information about that.

With the United States having relaxed its attitude to sharing nuclear secrets, Britain had no further need for the Maralinga site, but they retained it so that they could conduct more safety trials, notably the infamous Vixen B trials. And then they abandoned it. So Australia, having failed to acquire nuclear weapons, was left with a grim reminder of those days – hundreds of square kilometres of land contaminated with plutonium and uranium, and thousands of tonnes of plutonium-contaminated debris.

Before withdrawing completely, the British Army conducted a ‘final’ clean-up of the Maralinga range in 1967. It was codenamed Operation Brumby. In this operation, the British Army collected contaminated soil, mixed it with clean soil in a scraper to dilute the radioactivity, and then deposited it in windrows behind the scraper. Where this treatment was applied became known as ‘the ploughed area’, and since the windrows were clearly visible, it was easily identified. Although at the time this degree of dilution was deemed acceptable, the required dilution factor was not achieved in some parts, and some 4200 cubic metres of clean soil were hauled into central Taranaki and spread over the offending areas. The work also included repairing or erecting fences, removing debris and buildings and burying them in the crater left by the Marcoo bomb or disposing of them in other pits. And reinforced concrete caps were cast over more than 20 pits containing debris contaminated with plutonium.

Three atomic bombs had been tested on Australian territory before the government of the day thought it prudent to have some say in safety provisions. To this end, they established the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee (AWTSC), led by Englishman Ernest Titterton. The committee visited Maralinga towards the end of Operation Brumby to inspect the work. On the strength of a three day visit which included a visit to Emu (200km to the north of Maralinga, and the site of two other nuclear bomb tests), they said they were extremely satisfied with the work done.¹⁰ None of them had first-hand knowledge of where the contamination lay, nor what was done to remove it, but they nevertheless felt able to say the outcome was satisfactory. Almost 20 years later, scientists from ARL monitored the surface radioactivity and found that the site had been left in a thoroughly unsatisfactory state. Further, since the government had accepted the committee’s statement, responsibility for the site was left with Australia.

In 1984, the Labor federal government established a Royal Commission to inquire into the status of the Maralinga and Emu atomic bomb test sites. The findings of the Royal Commission were that previous clean-up attempts were inadequate, and in some ways made any future clean-up more difficult. The Commission recommended that Maralinga should be cleaned up to allow unrestricted access by the traditional Aboriginal owners, and that the cost should be borne by Britain.¹¹

Another recommendation was that there should be a Maralinga Commission to decide the criteria for a clean-up and then oversee the work. This group should include representatives of the traditional owners and of the South Australian, British and Australian governments. That recommendation was not accepted, but the Commission did lead to the formation of the Technical Assessment Group (TAG) and a Consultative Group. The latter was a forum for discussion, a free association of interested parties, but it had no decision-making powers, except of course whether or not to accept the outcome.

So the federal government set up the TAG to investigate many aspects of the site and the lifestyle of Aborigines, and to develop options for the clean-up. And that is where I came in.

CHAPTER 2

EARLY DAYS

I have never been an overly ambitious person. I have never been one to climb on other people’s shoulders to further my own career. This approach has meant that things have sometimes happened to me by accident, and my involvement in the Maralinga clean-up was one such occasion. It has also meant that occasionally I have found myself the subject of a bit of backstabbing, and while I have most times been able to withstand such tactics, I maintain that my departure from the Maralinga project was one of those occasions on which I failed. But more of that later.

My involvement in the Maralinga project really did come about by accident. In 1988 I was visiting an employer I had worked for before, and I happened to see a report about a visit by the company’s Deputy Chairman to ANSTO to discuss Maralinga. As I recognised the names of the people he’d met, I asked if he would like me to follow up the contact. The answer was an immediate yes, so I telephoned Dr Mike Costello, whom I had known for many years, and went to Lucas Heights to discuss the project.

Following my visit to Lucas Heights, I was asked to submit a tender on behalf of that employer for some of the preliminary engineering investigations required by the TAG. We were then invited to attend an interview – which, strangely, Mike did not attend. We had hardly sat down when we were confronted with a confusing statement: We [ANSTO] have been told we have to be more commercial and we now want a fixed price for the work. This left us bemused, because we were being asked to suggest different approaches and investigate options for the clean-up, and a fixed price contract is not suitable for that type of work.

As it happened, the request was immaterial because we were not successful in our bid. But then Mike asked me to help him with the preliminary engineering studies. Had I not visited my previous employer, and had I not seen that contact report, I would not have been involved in the project.

The first thing to do if you want to understand a project is visit the site. My first visit to Maralinga was on a cold July day in 1989. A few years earlier I had stood at ground zero in Hiroshima – apart from the remains of the dome, there was nothing to tell me that it had been the site of an atomic explosion. So I did not expect to see any devastated areas at Maralinga. But radiation is a silent and invisible enemy; there was obviously some hazard – otherwise there would be no clean-up effort.

Because of a very strong headwind, our Citation jet was a couple of hours late arriving at the site. This meant that the whole visit was a whirl as we were whisked to ground zero at seven atomic bomb sites and some other areas of interest. Darkness was descending when we returned to the village, where we slept in temporary accommodation put there a couple of years earlier.

Sleeping was difficult, as the slightest sounds passed through the thin walls, and diesel generators throbbed less than 50m away. I had managed probably a couple of hours before there was a thumping on the doors to arouse those who were going by 4WD vehicles 200km north to Emu. I stayed behind and snoozed until it was time for breakfast and the flight to the northern site. So I was one who witnessed the look of concern when our pilot found he had to land on a dirt runway alongside the claypan at Emu – not the best surface for that type of aircraft because of the dust and small pebbles that might be sucked into the jet engines.

We then visited the two bomb sites at Emu – Totem I and Totem II – taking note of the black glazing resulting from the atomic fireball hitting the ground and melting the soil. Then we flew home.

The more radioactive parts of Maralinga were enclosed by high cyclone-mesh fencing or by low strand fencing, so while we saw the concrete plinths at the bomb sites, which advised visitors that the surrounding soil was radioactive, and were shown some radioactive fragments, all we really saw was fencing and the changing landscape and sky. But we did appreciate the remoteness of the site, made to seem even more so because of the long flight.

I noted the names given to some locations – Wewak, Buna, Tufi, Kuli, Gona, Tadje, Biak, Marcoo and Taranaki. Most of them would be recognised by soldiers who fought in the South Pacific during World War II. And every Anzac Day most can be seen on banners carried by ex-servicemen in the parades. They are names of the islands that were stepping stones in the campaign. But Taranaki? That’s not one of the islands – it’s in New Zealand. The story I heard was that the site was meant to be called Tarakan, another of the South Pacific islands, but a Kiwi signals officer must have been thinking of home and made a mistake in one of his signals, and the name stayed.

So Taranaki was named by accident; it seemed an omen for what was to follow. For there can be no doubt that what was permitted to happen there was a huge mistake on the part of the Australian government. And that mistake was then compounded by the British methods of dealing with the contamination in various clean-up operations. The history of that site is littered with mistakes.

The earliest recorded mistake was made by a man called Tietkens, who had gone exploring in Central Australia with Ernest Giles. But at least his mistake led to an honour in his favour – the area is now known as Tietkens Plain. He arrived in the area in the 1890s, thinking he could raise sheep there. He built a small hut at a place now called Roadside. I was able to see the base of Tietkens’ hut on my early visits, but even those remains have succumbed to time and the work of vandals. Tietkens sank a well near his hut, digging through hard rock in his search for fresh water. He failed, not even finding the brine that abounds below the surface. He then sank a deeper well further east, but with the same result. Had he gone north, he might have been lucky.

I was driving back from Taranaki one day, and from my elevated position in a 4WD vehicle on a built-up road I noticed a strange circle on the ground to my left. Steve Sheppard, my senior site representative, was with me at the time and we drove down to the circle to find it was the base of an old tank just by the head of a bore. We picked up a tin can lying nearby, hacked off a length of telephone wire which was also lying on the ground, and lowered the can down the bore hole. We then recovered the can, which was now full of fresh water – only about 30 metres below the surface. It might be that the water from Fresh Bore would not have been sufficient for Tietkens’ venture, but