page_title: Amchitka
section_title: Controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Amchitka / Nuclear testing / Milrow and Cannikin tests / Controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: Film stills from the Cannikin test as part of the Amchitka program, showing the displacement of dirt and rock caused by the 5 MT underground thermonuclear explosion.
context_page_description: Amchitka is a volcanic, tectonically unstable island in the Rat Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in southwest Alaska. It is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The island, with a land area of roughly 116 square miles, is about 42 miles long and 1 to 4 miles wide. The area has a maritime climate, with many storms, and mostly overcast skies.
  Amchitka was populated for more than 2,500 years by the Aleut people, but has had no permanent population since 1832. The island has been part of the United States since the Alaska Purchase of 1867. During World War II, it was used as an airfield by US forces in the Aleutian Islands Campaign.
  Amchitka was selected by the United States Atomic Energy Commission to be the site for underground detonations of nuclear weapons. Three such tests were carried out: Long Shot, an 80-kiloton blast in 1965; Milrow, a 1-megaton blast in 1969; and Cannikin in 1971 – at 5 Mt, 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.
context_section_description: A few days after the Milrow test, the Don't Make A Wave Committee was organized at a meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The committee's name referred to predictions made by a Vancouver journalist named Bob Hunter, later to become a member of Greenpeace. He wrote that the test would cause earthquakes and a tsunami. On the agenda was whether to fight another blast at the island, or whether to expand their efforts to fight all perceived threats against the environment. As he was leaving, one man gave the traditional farewell of the peace-activist movement "Peace" - to which another member replied "Make it a green peace". The committee would later become Greenpeace.
  The AEC considered the likelihood of the test triggering a severe earthquake "very unlikely", unless one was already imminent on a nearby fault, and considered a tsunami "even more unlikely". Others disagreed. Russell Train, then Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, argued that "experience with Milrow ... does not provide a sure basis for extrapolation. In the highly nonlinear phenomena involved in earthquake generation, there may be a threshold value of the strain that must be exceeded prior to initiation of a large earthquake. ... The underground explosion could serve as the first domino of the row of dominoes leading to a major earthquake. ... as in the case of earthquakes it is not possible at this time to assess quantitatively the probability of a tsunami following the explosion."
  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. Nixon issued an executive order to keep the comments from being released." The Don't Make A Wave Committee chartered a boat, in which they had intended to sail to the island in protest, but due to weather conditions they were unable to reach their destination.
caption: Film stills from the Cannikin test show the effects on the surface of the 5-megaton (21 PJ) detonation below, equivalent to a 7.0 earthquake.
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