Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1997

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Nuclear Island
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STORY: In 1971, eight protesters chartered a fishing boat and headed for Amchitka, Alaska, a remote volcanic island in the North Pacific Ocean. They planned to stop the largest nuclear test ever conducted beneath U.S. soil. Although they never reached the island, the publicity they raised launched the environmental organization Greenpeace.

Twenty-five years later, Greenpeace scientists finally made it to Amchitka. This time, they came to look for contamination that may be leaking from three nuclear tests conducted beneath the island between 1965 and 1971. Pam Miller is biologist with Greenpeace.

MILLER: "We found the presence of particularly two long-lived and very toxic radionuclides, Americium 241, which is a decay product of plutonium and has a half-life of over 400 years, and plutonium which is probably one of the most toxic substances on earth and has a half-life of 24,000 years."

Also found in plants sampled from freshwater springs on the island were traces of Strontium 90 and Cesium 137. Both are heavy metals left over following a nuclear explosion.

MILLER: "I think the concern about these long lived and persistent radionuclides is that we found them in detectable concentrations two orders of magnitude above background in plants which are the base of the food chain and they have the possibility of biomagnifying and moving up the food chain."

Doug Dasher manages the radiation program with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. He says Greenpeace may be measuring fallout from atmospheric tests done by several countries up until 1963.

DASHER: "We take the report that Greenpeace did seriously. Realize right now that the reported levels that they did observe are extremely low and are not out of line with some of the levels that you do get with worldwide fallout in previous atmosphere testing."

Russia's Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which leaked massive amounts of radiation into the world's atmosphere following a meltdown in 1986, also could be to blame.

State and federal investigators will travel to the island this summer to conduct their own tests. Dasher says it's too early to say whether nuclear waste is leaking into the Bering Sea food chain. It's also too soon to predict what dangers, if any, it may pose to the region's billion-dollar-a year-commercial fisheries.

DASHER: "I currently would not expect at this time to see that there would be an impact on Bering Sea fisheries by bioconcentrating radionuclides from Amchitka. But additional tests need to be done to verify what's happening and to verify what further leakage rates at Amchitka and what is the potential for contamination locally in the environment."

In all, the U.S. conducted three underground nuclear tests on Amchitka Island. The largest was a 5 megaton blast--roughly 385 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

OUTRO: For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Debra Damron reporting from Fairbanks, Alaska.