Guam attack wouldn’t affect B.C. immediately: expert
But even across ocean, a nuclear strike’s radiation would ‘eventually impact us all’
About 9,000 kilometres of ocean separate Guam from Vancouver, meaning a nuclear attack on the U.S. island territory in the western Pacific Ocean would not have an immediate impact on B.C., nuclear expert Gordon Edwards says.
But Edwards said any nuclear detonation would have repercussions beyond the initial cloud of radiation generated by an explosion, as both the United States and North Korea continue to engage in rhetoric around the prospect of a nuclear war.
“There’s always a risk (with nuclear weapons),” the head of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility said from his home in Montreal. “We’re still getting fallout from tests that were done many, many years ago.”
If a nuclear missile were to explode on the ground, radioactive particles would be thrown into the atmosphere where they would be diffused and slowly fall to earth over a large area. After Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe, radiation levels in B.C. rose slightly, according to Health Canada data. A detonation in the Pacific would likely result in the same.
If a nuclear missile exploded in the ocean, the contaminated water could gradually be borne on currents to B.C.’s shores, or it could enter the food chain through fish and marine life, Edwards said.
“With an incident in the mid-Pacific, I’d say it’s virtually impossible that B.C. would see an immediate impact, but every dose of radiation does eventually impact us all,” he said.
University of Northern B.C. environmental scientist Peter Jackson said that because there are no jet streams connecting the tropics to the middle latitudes, including North America, nuclear fallout would not travel as efficiently north, although “specific weather patterns at the time of injection” could play a role.
The meteorologist, who works on transport and dispersal of atmospheric pollutants but does not consider himself an expert on nuclear fallout, estimated that about half of the fallout could be transported farther than 1,000 kilometres from the source. Guam is about 3,000 kilometres from North Korea and 9,000 kilometres from Vancouver.
“If there was a nuclear strike on Guam, we might be able to detect nuclear fallout in North America, but it is likely to be below a threshold that would be of health concern because of the great distance and the fact that much of the fallout would likely already have been deposited over the oceans before reaching North America,” he said.
In a statement, the City of Vancouver’s office of emergency management said a nuclear emergency would have impacts over a large area and would necessitate the province and federal governments activating their emergency plans.
If Vancouver was expected to be impacted, “the appropriate action may involve evacuation of the city, distribution of supplies, sheltering in place,” the statement said. Sheltering in place means staying inside and limiting intake of outside air into your home.
The spectre of nuclear war was raised this week as North Korea said it was in the final stages of plans to launch four intermediaterange ballistic missiles into waters near Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific island region known as Micronesia.
U.S. President Donald Trump has promised “fire and fury” against North Korea if it continued to threaten the U.S.
There is no indication the North Korean missiles would be tipped with nuclear warheads, although U.S. intelligence analysts believe that state may have produced a nuclear warhead.