Pentagon to assess impact of nuclear explosion in Europe

The US Department of Defense is set to assess the repercussions of a nuclear detonation in Europe.

To achieve this, the Pentagon aims to commission research on the effects of nuclear weapons on agriculture, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

The department's documents provide detailed information on this. The chosen contractor will need to use software to broaden the geographic scope of the modelling, including not only Eastern European countries but also extending to regions beyond Eastern Europe and Western Russia.

The contract, worth $34 million, will be awarded exclusively by the US Army Corps of Engineers to a single company.

Notably, on 16 July 1945, US conducted the first test of a nuclear weapon as part of the Manhattan Project in the New Mexico desert. This was a plutonium implosion device, and its explosion caused radioactive fallout that contaminated over 1,100 square miles (1,770 km) with debris spreading as far as Canada. Six weeks after the test, a report from Los Alamos Laboratory highlighted that an area around 100 miles (160 km) long and 30 miles (48 km) wide showed high levels of radiation, and gamma radiation was detected in locations up to 260 miles (418 km) away, including Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Trinidad, Colorado.

While the long-term health effects of low-level radiation remain a debated topic, researchers from the UCLA Medical School's Atomic Energy Project investigated potential health risks from the fallout. Though their studies didn’t reach definitive conclusions, a 1951 report suggested the presence of "many potential long-term hazards" from the low-level contamination. The Atomic Energy Commission funded these studies to assess both the public health risks and the military implications of such radiation affecting large areas of land.

The Trinity test took place years ago, but it is not entirely in the past. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute have determined that the test’s fallout contributed to excess numbers of thyroid cancers.