American military planners explored the idea of using radiation from nuclear bombs as an instrument of terror, along with using the explosions to inflict military damage, according to a study by two groups that seek to reduce the threat from nuclear weapons and the production of bomb fuel.
The study of nuclear arms, which was made public yesterday in Washington, quotes extensively from previously secret documents about the potential uses of radioactive mists, created by exploding bombs under water. The Government exploded such a bomb in 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, throwing tons of contaminated water into the air.
"We can form no adequate mental picture of the multiple disaster that would befall a modern city, blasted by one or more bombs and enveloped by radioactive mists," the bomb testers said in a 1947 evaluation of that blast.
"Of the survivors in the contaminated areas, some would be doomed by radiation sickness in hours, some in days, some in years," said the document, as quoted in the book. "But these areas, irregular in size and shape, as wind and topography might form them, would have no visible boundaries. No survivor could be certain he was not among the doomed, and so added to every terror of the moment, thousands would be stricken with a fear of death and the uncertainty of the time of its arrival."
Advance knowledge of the effects of radiation would provide "psychic stimuli" that were lacking at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said the document, which was obtained from the archives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Available as Book
The study was published as a book, "Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age" (International Physicians' Press, $15). It was conducted by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a Washington group that has reported extensively on environmental contamination and accident risks at bomb production sites.
One of the authors, Arjun Mahkhjani, who heads the environmental group, said the test at the Bikini Atoll spread so much plutonium on ships in the area that other tests had to be canceled. He said the documents showed that the test results inspired planners to see plutonium itself, rather than the explosion, as a tool of terror.
The study said that despite the end of the cold war, plutonium was still a major threat to human health, either through weapons proliferation or pollution. Plutonium is routinely produced as a byproduct of civilian nuclear power as uranium is consumed, but the study calls for a worldwide halt of plutonium recovery from spent fuel.
Dr. Makhijani said that the biggest single threat was probably 30 tons of "civilian" plutonium near Chelyabinsk in Russia. The plutonium is in a physical form that makes it highly dispersible, he said, and if someone were to sell the material, it could be turned into a weapon simply by attaching conventional explosives and threatening to contaminate a city.
Most of the world's nuclear weapons use plutonium as the primary explosive. With knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb now widespread, the main challenge in building one is obtaining the fuel. But plutonium suitable for bombs can be purified using relatively simple chemical steps. In contrast, the form of uranium that is useful for bombs is difficult to purify.
Countries using plutonium for nuclear power argue that the form typically created in reactors is not well-suited to bomb use. But the new study said that the distinction between "bomb grade" and "civilian" plutonium was faulty because the reactor-grade material could be used in bombs, even if they were less efficient than the ones made from purer plutonium.
The issue has recently gained worldwide attention with the shipment of plutonium scavenged from used Japanese reactor fuel back to Japan from France, where the processing was done. Several countries along the sea lanes from France to Japan have insisted that the ship not approach their shores.