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Nuclear
Bomb Tests And Earthquakes
Could
Nuclear Bomb Testing Cause Earthquakes?
John Staughton
Since
the Atomic Age began back in July of 1945, following the detonation of an
atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, the world has had a
complicated relationship with nuclear power.
For
decades, it was believed that nuclear weapons would destroy humanity, likely in
the aftermath of an all-out atomic war between the USSR and the USA.
However,
an attack on a city wasn’t the only source of fear for people around the world.
As
more and more nations developed their own atomic programs, testing was an
unavoidable element of their evolution.
In
short, once they created an atomic bomb, they needed to make sure it worked.
In the past 70 years, roughly 2,000
nuclear detonation tests have occurred on this planet. Of those tests, nearly
75% of them took place underground.
For decades, there has been a growing fear that underground
nuclear tests, which can release as much energy as 5 million tons of TNT, could
cause devastating earthquakes and destabilize the very foundation of our
planet.
The question is… can nukes actually cause earthquakes?
Short answer: No, there is no direct evidence that underground
nuclear testing can trigger earthquakes, but mankind can cause earthquakes in
other ways….
Underground Nuclear Testing
In the decades following the development of the first nuclear
bomb, research on the physical, geological, short-term and long-term effects of
nuclear bombs was extensive.
After realizing that nuclear fallout from above-ground nuclear
testing had disastrous effects on the environment and the health of any people
affected, it was widely agreed that testing would be safer underwater, in space
or underground, where the radiation could be contained or dissipated in a safer
way.
Underground nuclear testing was the chosen method of many nuclear
nations, including the USA, USSR, Great Britain, France, China, and most
recently, North Korea.
All nuclear testing was banned in response to an
international accord in 1996, and the only nations to have breached that were India
and Pakistan (both in 1998, underground) and North Korea (2006 and 2008,
underground).
The process of underground nuclear testing is rather
straightforward.
A large hole is dug straight down into the ground, usually 1-3
meters in width, and up to 1 kilometer in depth.
The nuclear weapon is lowered into this hole, and then filled in
with layers of sand and pea gravel, which can absorb radiation and prevent it
from entering the atmosphere.
There is also a number of lead-lined sensory equipment that can record
the explosive strength of the detonation.
This is not a perfect system, although it is widely considered the
safest means of testing, both for nearby populations and the environment
itself.
In more than 100 cases of underground nuclear testing by the
United States alone, radiation did end up escaping into the atmosphere.
The controversy in recent years has arisen due to the significant
increase in earthquake frequency all over the globe, leading many to suspect
that these massive underground blasts were affecting the tectonic plate
structure and behavior, leading to a more volatile planetary crust.
Conspiracy theorists, scientists, governmental leaders and common
citizens over the years have supported and spread this idea, but it simply
isn’t true.
Underground Nuke —> Earthquake?
The idea of manmade nuclear bomb-inspired earthquakes (or
“anthroquakes”) is a frightening prospect, but according to the United States
Geological Survey, that shouldn’t be cause for concern.
What people fail to realize is the sheer size and strength of the
Earth’s tectonic plates. The amount of strain that can be handled on a
daily basis by these plates is enormous.
A 4o-kiloton bomb, for example, releases 100 times less energy than the strain induced on
tectonic plates by the diurnal movement of the planet’s tides.
Essentially, if the tidal movement on the planet isn’t causing
earthquakes on a daily basis, then a few nuclear detonations underground won’t
be enough to rearrange the tectonic plates.
The coincidental nature of certain nuclear detonations with
earthquakes in the region reignited concerns over the effects of nuclear
testing on the tectonic structure of the planet, but studies have shown
that thermonuclear energy release, when moving in a similar way as seismic
waveforms, do not have pronounced adverse seismic effects further than 40 kilometers
from the blast origin (although there is anecdotal evidence that buildings are
affected even beyond that distance).
Attempts to link nuclear testing with earthquakes thousands of
kilometers away are therefore misleading and not based in fact.
Correlation does not guarantee causality, but many people are
eager to jump to these conclusions.
One of the final nails in the coffin of this theory comes from a
1971 underground nuclear test near the Aleutian Islands, in Alaska.
It was a 5-megaton hydrogen bomb, detonated by the United States,
and had a body wave magnitude of approximately 6.9 on the Richter scale.
This was the largest underground detonation in history, and
despite it being set off in the seismically active region of the Aleutian
Islands, no subsequent seismic activity on the nearby tectonic plates occurred.
The Truth Behind “Anthroquakes”
Although manmade earthquakes caused by nuclear testing doesn’t
have the ability to cause earthquakes, humans have been the source of
earthquakes in other situations.
The instantaneous release of energy (occurring in a millionth of a
second) connected to a nuclear explosion is not nearly as significant as the
shifting of mass.
You can imagine it in these terms; driving a car into a
tree is not nearly as impactful as slowly applying more and more
weight to the top branches until the tree snaps in half under the strain.
Human beings are good at many things, and moving mass
around is one of them.
Creating dams can change the weight on a certain area of
a tectonic plate by hundreds of millions of pounds, namely the area of the
valley that backs up to a dam.
When the Hoover Dam was created, hundreds of small
earthquakes were detected in the region, despite it not being seismically
active before that point.
Some researchers believe that up to 1/3 of anthroquakes
are caused by reservoir and damming efforts in various parts of the planet,
particularly those in seismically active areas.
Mining thousands of tons of coal from the center of a
mountain can, once again, dramatically shift the stress load on a tectonic
plate, resulting in small seismic quakes resulting purely from human
activities.
Research points to nearly 50% of anthroquakes being
caused by mining operations around the world.
As you can see, human beings can do a lot of foolish
things to negatively impact the planet and make it a less stable place.
However, while nuclear detonations are some of the most
feared and destructive forces on the planet, they are not the human activities
that we should be worrying about as the earthquakes keep piling up around the
globe.
John Staughton is a traveling writer, editor and publisher who
earned his English and Integrative Biology degrees from the University of
Illinois in Champaign, Urbana. He is the co-founder of a literary journal,
Sheriff Nottingham, and calls the most beautiful places in the world his
office. On a perpetual journey towards the idea of home, he uses words to
educate, inspire, uplift and evolve.
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