Trinity's atomic blast changed the world

Jul. 16--As the first atomic blast lit up the morning sky and scorched a vast desert landscape in south-central New Mexico, the scientists and engineers who had worked on this top-secret weapon felt a mixture of relief, awe and trepidation.

No one knew exactly what to expect July 16, 1945 -- not even renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was put in charge of designing the nuclear device for the Manhattan Project with the aim of ending World War II.

Some researchers feared it might wreak widespread, fiery destruction. More than a few scientists worried it might be a total failure.

But when they watched the plutonium bomb dubbed "The Gadget" explode into a blinding, mushroom-shaped cloud at the Trinity Site, they knew they had unleashed something both magnificent and terrible.

Oppenheimer famously alluded to the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

The bomb was set off at 5:29 a.m., about halfway between the hamlets of San Antonio and Carrizozo. The detonation near daybreak was fitting, given that it became the dawn of the Atomic Age.

The successful test led to two atomic bombs being dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended World War II after killing an estimated 200,000 people and inflicting massive radiation poisoning on much of the populace.

The Trinity test itself would later be blamed for harming residents in downwind towns who weren't warned or evacuated. Many would tell of radioactive fallout dropping like snow, and many would die of cancer.

One historian said it's difficult to know what might have happened if the atomic test had failed.

The bomb might've been retested eventually or, if it was a serious technological failure, the project might have been shelved -- but in any case, President Harry S. Truman would not have had the same aggressive confidence, said Alex Wellerstein, who teaches nuclear history at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

"The results of the Trinity test is what made Truman and his advisers think the atomic bomb was real," Wellerstein said.

Without a nuclear weapon, Truman might not have pushed for Japan's unconditional surrender or later treated the Soviets so harshly it increased the rift with the onetime U.S. ally, Wellerstein said.

"It would not be impossible to conclude that the world might be a very different place, maybe for the better, if the test had failed," Wellerstein said.

Nuclear resurgence?

Seventy-five years have passed since the Trinity Site test, and in that time, World War II ended and the Cold War came and went.

But the nuclear chessboard is more crowded than ever, and the renewed rivalry between the U.S. and Russia -- not to mention China's emergence as a nuclear threat -- has prompted the U.S. to modernize its stockpile.

To that end, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina have been tasked with producing a combined 50 plutonium triggers for warheads by 2030.

The U.S. Department of Energy has proposed almost tripling the Los Alamos lab's plutonium operations budget to $845 million in the coming year as a first step.

"The president has chosen to put the U.S. back into the nuclear game," U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouilette said at a February teleconference to reporters. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, on Thursday will visit the Los Alamos site where part of the bomb was developed. She is expected to pay tribute to the lab's historic role in creating the first atomic bomb and its evolving role in the country's current nuclear security.

The Trinity anniversary gives no pleasure to watchdog groups that bemoan the birth of the atomic bomb and the continued efforts to bolster the nuclear arsenal.

"Seventy-five years after the first atomic explosion, the Los Alamos and Sandia labs are pushing their agenda of nuclear-weapons forever through the $2 trillion so-called modernization program, aided and abetted by the New Mexican congressional delegation," said Jay Coghlan, executive director of nonprofit Nuclear Watch New Mexico.

Explosive testing discussed again

There have been rumblings among White House officials and some Republican senators about looking into reviving explosive nuclear tests.

Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee in a party-line vote approved putting $10 million in the next military spending bill to increase readiness for nuclear testing. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., spearheaded the action.

A few Trump administration officials had floated the idea of resuming the tests to prod China to the bargaining table to forge a trilateral arms-control agreement with Russia and the U.S. before the New START Treaty expires in February.

"The $10 million authorized for test preparation 'if necessary' was a partisan political stunt, pure and simple," said Alexandra Bell, senior policy director at the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "It is an amount that would not even begin to cover the costs of test preparations."

The Energy Department did not ask for this money and has been "noticeably silent" on the subject, Bell said. And making countries believe the U.S. might return to nuclear testing only increases instability at a dangerous time, she said.

Bell said the best way to stop countries like China and Russia from doing tests is to give teeth to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Drafted in 1996, 184 countries have signed the treaty, including the U.S. However, the U.S. is among the eight countries that must ratify it before it is enacted.

New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, both Democrats, have expressed opposition to resuming explosive tests.

National labs use simulations to test whether nuclear devices work and whether plutonium cores, also known as pits, have deteriorated.

Nuclear testing is an inexact science, whether it's done with simulations or explosions, Wellerstein said.

Simulations, which are based on the past 1,000 explosive tests, are only as good as the data that's applied, Wellerstein said. And conducting an explosive test with a particular warhead won't guarantee that other warheads of the same class will behave the same way, he said.

"And that's why they tested so many in the Cold War," Wellerstein said.

Downwinders

One painful legacy of the Trinity blast and subsequent nuclear tests is how the downwind communities were affected.

Military officials did not evacuate the towns before the Trinity Site test, and because the project was secretive, they claimed at the time the explosion people heard was at an ammunitions dump. Residents were also left to wonder about the snow-like dust falling in midsummer.

For decades, federal agencies conducted no comprehensive studies on the health of residents living near the Trinity Site and whether rising cancer rates, infant mortality and children's diseases might be linked to the blast's radioactive fallout.

Worse yet, the downwinders and their families did not receive any compensation because the government refused to formally acknowledge what happened, said Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.

"This is a moral issue and an ethical issue," Cordova said.

The National Cancer Institute began belated research about five years ago, surveying 210 elderly downwinders about lifestyles and diets that might have led to increased doses of internal radiation from the Trinity blast fallout. The institute, which did not respond to phone and email queries, has said it will release a report this year.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act offers funds to help cover medical care for those who can show their health suffered because of radiation, whether from uranium mining or radioactive fallout.

But only Nevada and Utah residents can be compensated for fallout, which cuts out New Mexico's downwinders.

Cordova said she is encouraged by bipartisan efforts to both extend the compensation program, which expires this year, and amend it to include affected New Mexicans.

In the past, certain senators resisted adding New Mexicans because they claimed they lacked the money, Cordova said. But now with trillion-dollar pandemic and defense-spending bills, that excuse no longer flies, she said.

"There'a level of injustice when you take care of one group of American citizens and you don't take care of another," Cordova said.

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