The aftermath was different from that of the maritime Hurricane test. At Emu Field the earth was heated to such high temperatures it became glass.
The second test was on 27 October. Between the two tests, Menzies defended Australia’s role in the ongoing atomic test series during his regular weekly radio broadcast, Man to Man:
There is tremendous public interest in Atomic Bombs… Unfortunately there are scare stories, wild allegations, and, between you and me, a good deal of nonsense… But we must face the facts. And they are that the threat to the world’s peace does not come from the Americans or the British, but from aggressive Communist-Imperialism. In this dreadful state of affairs, superiority in atomic weapons is vital. To that superiority Australia must contribute as best she can.
Howard Beale described Beadell as ‘a man of iron endurance, and (like Kipling’s elephant child) of infinite resource and sagacity’. Beadell later wrote about Old Luke, a member of his surveying team:
Old Luke had a little joke waiting at this stage for the reporters. ‘Look’, he shouted pointing at the atomic cloud, ‘do you see it?’ Everyone whipped around to direct their attention to the cloud. ‘A perfect portrait of a myall blackfeller written with atomic dust; the new and old have come together today’. He was so enthusiastically serious that one by one they agreed that there was no doubt about it. Sure enough the newspapers printed the huge headlines: ‘Myall black man written by atomic dust in sky over Emu’. Good old Luke.
Prominent British Daily Express journalist Chapman Pincher also witnessed Totem and contributed an article to the Sydney Morning Herald. Pincher provided a vivid word picture of Totem 1, overcome with awe at what he had witnessed:
Peering through welders’ safety goggles, I watched [the explosion] swell into a tremendous fireball – a miniature manmade sun which rose away from the red sand like a giant balloon. A minute later I was shaken by a terrific shock wave – a hot blast that sent a double thunder clap rumbling around the desert for 30 seconds. As the fireball expanded it gave off a second burst of light more brilliant than the sun.
He concluded, ‘It is clear already that Britain’s bomb, designed and built without outside assistance, is a winner’.
The Totem tests caused many problems. The planning was rushed and the site was endlessly difficult. The British had not tested their own bomb on a mainland desert site before, and they were unfamiliar with the weather conditions. There was also the essentially uncontrolled presence in the general area of Aboriginal people, notwithstanding the work of the native patrol officer Walter MacDougall. The two tests were destined for controversy, particularly because of the infamous ‘black mist’ that is said to have blinded an Aboriginal boy, Yami Lester, killed others and caused significant, long-lasting distress to all the local Aboriginal people (discussed in more detail in chapter 7). Penney later conceded when questioned by the Royal Commission that Totem 1 took place in conditions that were unsafe for all concerned.
The Totem bombs were part of a push by the British to build up the country’s atomic weapon stockpile quickly. The Americans and the Soviets were already well ahead in the game, and the British couldn’t be finicky about the purity of the design and execution. They had to make bombs with whatever material came to hand. The ideal material for nuclear weapons is plutonium-239, but it is expensive to produce, and British reactors were not able to keep up with the demand from the AWRE. So the Totem bombs made use of impure plutonium. Plutonium-240 is quicker and cheaper to produce, and this potentially enabled faster production of the hundreds of bombs Britain wanted. Totem was designed to test whether plutonium-240 was suitable to power nuclear bombs. Lorna Arnold, the British chronicler of the nuclear trials, called the tests ‘a technical success’, despite the harm that Totem 1 (in particular) caused. The tests advanced understanding of plutonium-240 for cheaper weapons manufacture, including the proportion that would produce a viable chain reaction. The British also learned about fallout patterns – effectively by experimenting on the local Indigenous population.
The RAAF deployed 10 Lincoln bombers to the Totem series to take samples from the atomic clouds. The huge military aircraft, based at Woomera and Richmond (near Sydney), landed on the Emu claypan in all weather. Also, Bristol freighter aircraft transported equipment to the site. The US Air Force sent two B29 Superfortress four-engine turboprop bombers that operated out of Richmond RAAF base, 1900 kilometres away, to collect air samples from the clouds. The American air crew who flew into the atomic cloud were provided with dosimeters, and their aircraft were fitted with radiation detection equipment. Dosimeter is the collective name for various kinds of radiation detection devices, including film badges that could be worn on the uniforms of personnel in contaminated areas. Film badges had a plastic holder containing a piece of film similar to a dental x-ray film. Radiation exposed the film, which was later developed to determine the radiation dose received. The Americans were strict about the use of dosimeters.
This was not the case for the RAAF crew operating under British orders, or the RAF crew. The British view was that the risk of exposure of radiation caused by flying through the cloud was ‘negligible’, so no detection gear or personal monitoring devices were issued. Penney said in his Royal Commission statement, ‘The fact that the crew of an RAF Canberra received significant doses of radiation as a result of their early passage through the [Totem 1] cloud was reported to me. I did not regard it as very serious as a once in a lifetime dose’.
In fact, only the more rigid American safety procedures drew any attention to the risk that pilots and other air force personnel faced. The Americans were stricter about safety than the British ever were throughout the time they tested their bombs in Australia. As writer Joan Smith said in her book on Maralinga, ‘The Americans… knew exactly what they were doing’. American Geiger counters were run over the Australian planes as well as their own aircraft. Every time they did this the planes were ‘hot’ – that is, they were contaminated with radiation. The British Canberra aircraft that sampled the Totem 1 cloud, and which had been sealed before take-off, was too contaminated to be used again for Totem 2.
Nuclear armament doesn’t involve just a clever design of a big weapon made of uranium or plutonium. Subsidiary matters such as triggering the devices or predicting and ameliorating the worst-case scenarios must be dealt with too. The British authorities were keen to supplement the program of major bomb trials with smaller scale experiments on a range of associated issues. They started to broaden the scope of the test program with the advent of the early minor trials at Emu Field, codenamed Kittens. These experiments were designed to test aspects of the design of bomb triggering devices known as initiators. Despite the obvious inadequacy of the Emu Field site, five Kittens experiments were held there in 1953 before the British departed. As the British prepared to leave this difficult site, plans for what to do next were afoot. Australia was preparing for the long haul.
As future plans were drawn up, Australia’s pallid attempts to become a more senior partner in the tests ran to offering more funding than the British had even requested. A top-secret 1954 Cabinet briefing document outlined this strategy:
Although U.K. had intimated that she was prepared to meet the full costs, Australia proposed that the principles of apportioning the expenses of the trial should be agreed whereby the cost of Australian personnel engaged on the preparation of the site, and of materials and equipment which could be recovered after the tests, should fall to Australia’s account. This basis was accepted by U.K., and the approximate costs of the trials in Australia amounted to:- United Kingdom £771 000; Australia 144 000. The U.K. share… does not, of course, include the cost of development of the bomb, which probably amounted to some millions of pounds. Included in the U.K. share in Australia is a considerable quantity of stores and equipment still at Emu Field and Woomera, which could be used for future tests, or sold and a credit passed to the U.K. A cheque for £600 000 sterling was received in June [1954] from the U.K. Government in payment of her share, but adjustments may be necessary before the costs are finalised.