The shockwaves from the Trinity Test detonation 79 years ago are still felt by the world today.
The present-day effects of the test in New Mexico include disproportionate disease and death for those who live near the test site, with no recognition or compensation from the United States government, according to Source New Mexico.
Additional effects include “brain drain” – which occurs when educated or professional people leave an area for better conditions – and financial drain from civilian causes, according to Greg Mello, the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an organization that pursues nuclear disarmament and environmental protection.
“The (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and (Sandia National Laboratories) absorb the lion’s share of technical graduates and drain the talent we so desperately need from civilian work,” Mello said.
On July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear device was detonated 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, according to the U.S. Air Force. Ash rained down for days, witnesses said, and it was as if the sun rose twice, according to a book by Ferenc Morton Szasz.
Trinity left behind a complex local and global legacy. It was a scientific breakthrough, the likes of which the world had never seen. But nearby communities — and later, the victims of nuclear bombings in Japan — faced harm in its wake, according to the National World War II Museum.
The Trinity Test harmed Indigenous communities in New Mexico, including Navajo uranium miners. It also harmed workers in nuclear facilities and the half-million residents within a 50-mile radius of the test site, according to Source NM.
Exposure to radiation from the site over time has led to disproportionate incidences of cancer and infant mortality, according to Source NM.
A Truchas woman’s liver accumulated 60 times the amount of plutonium as other New Mexicans after living with a family member that was a janitor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to Searchlight New Mexico.
“We’re talking about pollution over a whole society and which direction it’s going in,” he said.
The progress towards nuclear disarmment has been moving backwards quickly since the Trinity Test, Mello said.
There are nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads in military stockpiles globally, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Though the overall inventory of nuclear weapons is declining, the pace of this decline is slower than it has been the past 30 years, according to the FAS.
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Modern nuclear weapons are 15 to 20 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to BBC Science Focus.
“(People) love to talk about the thing that happened 79 years ago, but not about the billions and billions spent to produce things that, if they ever exploded, would be worse than Trinity,” Mello said.
Plutonium is one of the primary fuels used in nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is the sole location in the U.S. with plutonium pit production capability, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The laboratory plans to produce 30 plutonium pits per year by 2030, according to ExchangeMonitor.
“This is a $22 billion project and you can compare that to every social, human need in the state, and it dwarfs them,” Mello said.
NNSA and the Office of Environmental Management will relay their national security and environmental priorities at a town hall meeting in Santa Fe on July 22.
“I don’t think that young people should think that the affluence we now enjoy will last and that there may not be the kind of justice we would like to see for the people that were harmed long ago,” Mello said. “We should also look forward to (solving) big problems of war and peace, to shift the priorities of our government, to protect the people and the environment instead of waging war and seeking domination.”
Shin Thant Hlaing is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com
