Radioactive carbon from nuclear explosion and nonthreshold biological effects

Abstract

In this article, which appeared in the June 1958 issue of the Soviet journal, Atomic Energy, Sakharov estimated that about 10,000 people would ultimately suffer cancers, genetic disorders, and other ill effects from the radioactivity produced by a 1-megaton nuclear explosion in the atmosphere. According to this estimate, the 1961 Soviet test of a 58-megaton nuclear explosive—an explosion that by itself accounts for about 10 percent to the total yield of all atmospheric nuclear explosions in history—will, in the long term, injure or kill about half a million people. Sakharov took his arguments against testing all the way to Khrushchev, but, according to his account, Khrushchev brusquely informed him that the responsibility of scientists was limited to designing the weapons. It was the responsibility of the governmental leaders to decide what to do with them. Thus ended Sakharov’s faith in going through channels. Even though the Soviet journal in which this article appeared was being translated and published in English and independent U.S. scientists—notably Linus Pauling—were making similar estimates, the Sakharov paper received almost no public notice in the West. How has Sakharov’s estimate stood the test of time? In a brief appendix, I compare the assumptions that he made for population radiation doses and biological doseeffect coefficients with the most recent estimates for the same numbers. Sakharov’s population-dose estimate appears somewhat high and his dose-effect coefficient somewhat low. However, his resulting estimate of 10,000 deaths and other health injuries from the low-dose radiation effects from each megaton of nuclear explosion in the atmosphere over the thousands of years that the explosion-produced carbon-14 would