Operation Totem
Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebello Islands a year previously. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb.
In addition to the two main tests, there was a series of five subcritical tests called "Kittens". These did not produce nuclear explosions, but used conventional explosives, polonium-210, beryllium and natural uranium to investigate the performance of neutron initiators.
Background
During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, code-named Tube Alloys, which the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined American, British, and Canadian project. The British government expected that the United States would continue to share nuclear technology, which it regarded as a joint discovery, after the war, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended technical co-operation. Fearing a resurgence of United States isolationism, and Britain losing its great power status, the British government restarted its own development effort, which was given the cover name "High Explosive Research". The first British atomic bomb was tested in Operation Hurricane at the Montebello Islands in Western Australia on 3 October 1952.Purpose and site selection
The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit of the amount of plutonium-240 that could be present in a bomb. The plutonium used in the original Hurricane device was produced in the nuclear reactor at Windscale, but the Windscale Piles did not have the capacity to provide sufficient material for the British government's planned weapons programme, and consequently eight more reactors were planned. These were intended to produce both electricity and plutonium, and the design was known as PIPPA, for pressurised pile producing power and plutonium.Although PIPPA produced less plutonium than a Windscale Pile, it also produced electricity which it could put back into the grid, whereas a Windscale Pile consumed GBP £340,000 a year worth of electricity to run its blowers. The electricity produced was more expensive than that of a conventional coal-fired plant, but this was offset by the value of the plutonium produced, which was about £100 per gram. Construction of the first PIPPA commenced at Calder Hall in March 1953. For cost reasons PIPPA was to operate in such a way that there would be a higher proportion of plutonium-240 present with the plutonium-239 product than in the Windscale-produced material. Since plutonium-240 is prone to spontaneous fission, this increased the risk of criticality accident and a fizzle that would reduce the yield. Nuclear testing was required to gauge the effect of an increased proportion of plutonium-240.
The Royal Navy was unable to provide the level of support it had for the Operation Hurricane test in the time available, so the Montebello Islands were ruled out. The search for an alternative site on the mainland in the vicinity of the Woomera Rocket Range had already begun in June 1952. Surveys of the area were carried out by Len Beadell, the surveyor at the Long Range Weapons Establishment. Harry Pritchard, the Chief Superintendent there, loaned a Bristol Sycamore helicopter for the purpose. A site, originally given the codename X200 but later renamed Emu Field, was selected. It was an isolated dry, flat clay and sandstone expanse in the Great Victoria Desert north west of Woomera, South Australia. A natural claypan known as the Dingo Claypan provided a ready-made airstrip. In August, Sir William Penney, the Chief Superintendent Armament Research at the British Ministry of Supply, and the head of the British atomic weapon development effort, notified W. A. S. Butement, the Chief Scientist at the Australian Department of Supply, of his intention to visit the site before the Hurricane test. Butement warned Penney that it was very remote, and that Beadell and his companions might well have been the first non-Aboriginal people to see the area.
Sir John Cockcroft, the director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, personally lodged a formal request for a feasibility study with the prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, at a meeting on 4 September. Other matters discussed included the attendance of Butement and Leslie Martin, the Australian Defence Scientific Adviser, as Australian observers at the Hurricane test, the creation of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, and the supply of Australian uranium to the UK. Cockcroft reported to Sir Roger Makins at the Foreign Office that Menzies had agreed in principle to Penney's reconnaissance of the Emu Field site. Penney flew in to the Dingo Claypan in a Royal Air Force Percival Prince. His party included Pritchard, Butement, Martin, Ben Gates, Ivor Bowen from the UK Ministry of Supply staff in Melbourne and Omond Solandt from the Canadian Defence Research Board. The party inspected the area by helicopter and Land Rover; the light sandy clay soil was easily traversed by motor vehicles. The drawbacks of the Emu Field site were also discussed. These included the fact that there was no all-weather road from Woomera.
In December, Penney secured ministerial permission from the British government for two tests to take place in October 1953: one of the Blue Danube type but with a smaller fissile charge, and one of a new experimental type. The prime minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, then sought permission from Menzies, who was in London at the time. Churchill's scientific adviser, Lord Cherwell, handed Menzies an aide-mémoire on 13 December. Two days later the acting prime minister, Arthur Fadden, signalled his approval for the tests from Australia.
Preparations
The test series was given the codename Totem. A Totem Executive chaired by Air Marshal Sir Thomas Elmhirst was formed in the UK to coordinate the tests. The UK government agreed to foot the bill for the tests. Penney was appointed the trial director, with Leonard Tyte as scientific director. Tyte was appointed to the National Coal Board in May 1953, and was replaced by Charles Adams. In Australia, a Totem Panel chaired by J. E. S. Stevens, the head of the Department of Supply, was created to coordinate the Australian contribution. With defence money short and Britain paying for the tests, it was important that expenditure was correctly recorded and charged. The total cost of the trial was estimated at £799,700. Unlike Hurricane, it was decided that it would be best if a single service was responsible for the test series, and the Australian Army was so designated.The task of coordinating the construction phase was given to Brigadier Leonard Lucas. Lucas was an architect who had been the Deputy Engineer in Chief of the Australian Army during the Second World War. When he was given the assignment on 6 January 1953, he was the Regional Director of the Commonwealth Department of Works in Perth. Squadron Leader Kenneth Garden was appointed deputy director and supervisor of construction. The construction force was drawn from the Army, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Departments of Supply and Works.
The main units involved were detachments from No. 5 Airfield Construction Squadron RAAF, and the Army's 7th Independent Field Squadron, 17th Construction Squadron, with elements of the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Australian Corps of Signals and the Royal Australian Survey Corps. Civilians came from the LRWEs at Salisbury and Woomera. The RAAF also provided ten Avro Lincoln bombers based at RAAF Woomera and RAAF Richmond for air sampling, and two Dakota transports based at Woomera for ground contamination surveys. The RAF provided a lone Canberra bomber for cloud sampling. The United States Air Force had two Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers and two Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft based at RAAF Richmond for radioactive cloud sampling.
A five-man Australian mission consisting of Lucas, Gates, Group Captain Alfred George Pither, Frank O'Grady, and a representative of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, visited the UK in February 1953 to discuss the arrangements for Totem. There was a week of discussions, culminating in the Australians attending the second meeting of Totex. Lucas informed the people at Fort Halstead, where Penney's High Explosive Research team was based, that their plan for a temporary village of trailers had to be discarded. Lucas told them that the trailers would not be able to make it over the first sand hill. Instead, Australian Nissen huts would be used for the offices and laboratories, and test personnel would be accommodated in tents. Lucas was able to allay fears about the supply of water, which would not only be required for drinking, but also for decontamination of personnel and equipment, and the processing of the film badges which registered how much radioactivity people had been exposed to. Lucas was able to inform them that adequate supplies of bore water would be available, although a distillation plant would still be required. The UK team also explained that in addition to the two atomic tests, there would be a series of subcritical tests.
The isolated location and poor roads meant that only of the of equipment needed for the test arrived by road, the bulk arriving via the airstrip, which was quickly constructed on the site about north west of the test field on a dry lake bed. This required a much greater air transport effort from the RAF and RAAF than originally envisaged. The main scientific party arrived on 17 August and the device for the first test arrived on 26 September to be followed three days later by Penney. The British government invited Martin, Butement and Ernest Titterton, a British nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project but was now living in Australia, to be observers. In addition, 45 Australians would participate as part of the test team, including some Royal Australian Navy personnel who had been involved in Operation Hurricane. Ten of them would be part of the Radiation Hazards Group.
An important concern was the welfare of the local Aboriginal people, the Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjarra, who inhabited the area. They lived through hunting and gathering activities, and moved over long distances between permanent and semi-permanent locations, generally in groups of about 25 or so, coming together for special occasions. The construction of the Trans-Australian Railway in 1917 had disrupted their traditional patterns of movement. Walter MacDougall had been appointed the Native Patrol Officer at Woomera on 4 November 1947, with responsibility for ensuring that Aboriginal people were not harmed by the LRWE's rocket testing programme. He was initially assigned to the Department of Works and Housing but was transferred to the Department of Supply in May 1949. As the range of the rockets increased, so too did the range of his patrols, from in October 1949 to in March and April 1952.
MacDougall found the Aboriginal people reluctant to reveal important details such as the location of water holes and sacred sites, but they did inform him that the Dingo Claypan area, which was in Yankuntjatjarra territory, had no particular importance or significance. MacDougall paid personal visits to pastoral stations in August 1953, warning the station managers, and requesting that the warnings be passed on to local Aboriginal people. Warning notices were posted around the perimeter of the test site, and aerial and ground searches, usually within of the site, were made with increasing frequency as the test firings approached. The 1985 Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia was critical of these efforts, which it deemed inadequate to warn people spread over.
As the Emu Field site was on the Australian mainland, the Australian government required much more information than they had for the Hurricane test about nuclear fallout and radioactive contamination. The aide-mémoire that Lord Cherwell had given Menzies offered to provide information to Martin and Titterton on the possible radioactive hazards. Arrangements were made for them to see the full hazards report that the British team had prepared. They were not provided details about the bomb's design, but assurances were given that the Totem devices contained much less fissile material than the Hurricane device. Martin was particularly concerned that balloon flights had indicated that in October there were east and north east winds with speeds of up to between. Penney reassured Martin and Titterton that while the radioactive cloud might rise above, it would not reach. On this basis they reported to Menzies that no people would suffer ill-effects from the trials.