Although the AEC had few compunctions about keeping the public in the dark about the hazards of the nuclear testing program, it adopted a different policy for the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, New York.1 On January 27, 1951, the AEC inaugurated its newly established continental test site — the Nevada Proving Ground (now the Nevada Test Site) — by secretly detonating a 1-kiloton nuclear device, code-named Able. Two days later, Geiger counters at Kodak's film plant on the shores of Lake Ontario detected high levels of radiation as heavy snow blanketed the city. Kodak officials became worried that the radiation would damage film stocks.

Having experienced a similar occurrence nearly six years earlier, following the Trinity test, Kodak executives had little doubt that fallout from a nuclear test was responsible.2 Kodak registered a complaint with the National Association of Photographic Manufacturers, who in turn telegrammed the AEC: "Tests snowfall Rochester Monday by Eastman Kodak Company give ten thousand counts per minute, whereas equal volume snow falling previous Friday gave only four hundred. Situation serious. Will report any further tests obtained. What are you doing?" The following day, the AEC released a statement to the Associated Press that it was "investigating reports that snow that fell in Rochester was measurably radioactive. The reports...indicate that there is no possibility of harm to humans or animals....All necessary precautions, including radiation surveys and patrolling, are being undertaken to insure that safety conditions are maintained."

Kodak's general manager also telephone AEC Commissioner Sumner Pike to notify him of the situation. The AEC eventually replied that a test had in fact taken place and that while it appreciated the company's and the industry's concerns, it could provide no assurances that fallout from future tests would not be carried across the country by the prevailing winds. Kodak president T.J. Hargrave warned the AEC that if the company's costs to deal with the radioactivity should mount it would "very likely" have to sue the Government for damages. The AEC, which took this threat very seriously, countered with an extraordinary offer. Foregoing the strict secrecy rules it enforced everywhere else, the AEC decided to send Kodak, before and after each future test, a series of classified maps - updated daily - delineating areas of potentially heavy fallout (along with general information on the type of test, for example, tower shot or air drop). A Kodak executive and representatives of several other photographic companies were granted "Q" clearances (see chapter 8) to receive and make use of the information to alter plant operations and otherwise avoid contact with contaminated materials. Thus, beginning with the Operation Greenhouse series of tests in 1951 at Enewetak (and continuing presumably until the end of atmospheric testing in 1962), this industry knew in advance when a test would occur, where the fallout was expected to go, and, most important, where it went. Yet citizens living downwind of (and in closer proximity to) the test site, particularly in Nevada and Utah, were never given any such detailed early warnings. Whatever fallout did drift away from the test site - the AEC assured the public in Atomic Tests in Nevada, a booklet it distributed widely in Nevada and southern Utah in the mid-1950s - was exceedingly minimal. "Your potential exposure...will be low...made possible by very close attention to a variety of on-site and off-site procedures...." By staying indoors for a few hours following a test or, if outside, taking a bath and dusting off clothes and shoes, the AEC noted, they could avoid harm from fallout.3

Notes:

1 Atomic Energy Commission, Report by the Director of Military Application, "Summary of Relations between the AEC and the Photographic Industry Regarding Radioactive Contamination from Atomic Weapon Tests, from January through December 1951," January 17, 1952, Record Group 325, Secretariat Collection, Box 1258, Folder MH&S 3-3 Contamination & Decontamination, formerly Confidential, declassified March 28, 1983, Department of Energy Archives; Richard L. Miller, Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 58-59, 90-91; Peter Pringle and James Spigelman, The Nuclear Barons (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1981), pp. 179-180. [Back]


2 As the radioactive cloud from Trinity crossed the country, fallout was washed out by rainfall into the Wabash River in Indiana, more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from Alamogordo, New Mexico. The river water, in turn, contaminated some materials later used to package Kodak industrial x-ray film. The film was damaged by the radiation. [Back]


3 A. Costandina Titus, "Selling the Bomb: Public Relations Efforts by the Atomic Energy Commission During the 1950s and Early 1960s," Government Publications Review, vol. 16 (January/February 1989), pp. 15-29. For compelling documentary evidence of the consequences of this indifference see, Carole Gallagher, American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1993). [Back]


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