Nuclear Blast Films: 1000s Declassified By Livermore Lab

LIVERMORE, CA — If scientists don't have a precise calculation to measure a nuclear bomb's yield — or the amount of energy released when the weapon is detonated — then there's no way to have an accurate understanding of the death, destruction, environmental impact and nuclear fallout that could follow a nuclear blast.

Greg Spriggs of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory first realized something was amiss while working on a project in 2011, writing computer codes to predict nuclear fallout. The code he was getting didn't match up with literature on the subject, so he turned to films in the lab's archive to check.

That's when he said he realized there were discrepancies in the way scientists had been measuring the yield of nuclear bombs. Spriggs told his boss it would take one-and-a-half years to review a slew of nuclear test films filed by the U.S. between 1945 to 1962 to get a more accurate understanding of a weapon's tield.

Nearly nine years later, Spriggs is still working on the project. And his work is getting more urgent with every passing year.

"Films sitting around in 60 years and in 40 years will be dust, probably," he said.

That's because the films, made of cellulose acetate, last about 100 years before decomposing due to vinegar syndrome. Open up a can with a film in the early decomposing stage and you'll get a whiff of vinegar, he said. It eventually "looks like a frothy milkshake" before turning into dust.

"We're kind of racing against it now," Spriggs said.

So far, Spriggs and his team have scanned around 5,000 films, including 4,600 scientific films and other documentary films, taken from lookout points, he said.

Somewhere out there exists another 2,000 films from test videos taken as part of Operation Plumbbob in 1957 at a Nevada test site, Spriggs said.

And if tracking down and reviewing the films wasn't time-consuming enough, there's also the tedious process of declassification.

The government allowed the declassification of videos showing nuclear detonation in the 1940s so emergency responders could have a better understanding of how to do their jobs, Spriggs said.

But it's not that simple. To declassify a video, two trained experts must go through the films individually and submit paperwork for each film. Griggs and a colleague are trained, but it still takes weeks to finish the paperwork.

It's not easy work. But it's so fun, Griggs said, that he hasn't yet given in to his wife's requests that he retire.

Hear more from Griggs and take a look at some of the videos declassified on YouTube here. More videos below: