The Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center missile site on then McGuire Air Force base was established in 1959 and stayed operational until 1972. This was the first operational BOMARC site among 13 built in North America, to include two in Canada. On June 7, 1960 at approximately 3 p.m., a fire erupted from inside one the shelters that housed a BOMARC missile. The Air Force responded after finding plutonium contamination from the accident. The historical BOMARC missile site was remediated from 2001 to 2002 to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Energy standard. The site still stands today, clear of contamination.
Transcript
[John] The warhead compartment panel was badly burnt, exposing its innards, but revealing that the pressure cap of the warhead was intact. Firefighters doused the innards with water, which created a large amount of runoff. This probably enabled the melting plutonium to migrate instead of coalesce into a cohesive pile.
[Briana] A B.O.M.A.R.C. missile at Shelter 204 set on fire June 7th, 1960. This was the largest amount of leftover radioactive residual material ever recorded from any United States accidents, excluding gaseous emissions. The public reacted with worry, ranging from severe headlines such as “The Day a Nuclear-Tipped Missile Caught Fire” to “Nuclear Nightmare Almost.” Even the Soviet Union at that time reacted to the accident, telling exaggerated stories and calling it an atomic explosion. Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, local townships, and concerned citizens commented at public hearings back in 1991, with statements for and against restricted access, and addressing the public concern for a full decontamination. The organizations looked to the Air Force for guarantees of environmental remediation and restoration. They pushed for offsite disposal, onsite treatment, and removal of contaminates for disposal at a certified radioactive waste facility. Meetings were held years after the incident still met with worry. New York Times archives showed testaments of meetings still being held about the site. The director of the State Division of Environmental Quality, Donald A. Desiao comments.
[Jorge] What I hear at the meeting implied far more than a mild fire, and the incident might well have involved the burning of the entire warhead.
[Briana] What happened exactly? Why did this accident happen? How was it taken care of? And is it safe now? Airman 1st Class Briana Cespedes, reporting with Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Public Affairs. First we start with the history of the missiles. B.O.M.A.R.C., Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center was a combined effort by Boeing, and the Research Center to create a nuclear missile that would defend against the threats of that day.
Well it was activated on January 1959, and they had the 46th Air Defense Missile Squadron stationed there. The B.O.M.A.R.C. site was part of a wider network, to protect the eastern seaboard from bombs that would dropped by Soviet bombers, that were nuclear in nature. And the B.O.M.A.R.C. site was the first ground-to-air missile site and had the longest range. So these were new missiles that were produced by the Boeing and the University of Michigan Research Center, which is why it’s called B.O.M.A.R.C. And they collaborated to create these missiles to defend us basically from nuclear attack.
[Narrator] The Bomarc is defense missile that can be fired by remote control from hundreds of miles away. Its accuracy is incredible. (marching music) The B.O.M.A.R.C. climbs skyward from its launcher. (rocket engine roaring) Remote control cameras follow missile and plane. The missile streaks toward the plane. But just as it is about to strike, it is purposely directed to veer off to save the target for other tests.
The missiles were pretty big. They were 45 feet long, they had a circumference of about 35 inches, and a wingspan of a little over 18 feet. And they were housed in kinda shelters that would launch them up. They could go at Mach 2.5. And they had a range of about 250 miles.
[Briana] McGuire Air Force Base hosted the first of the B.O.M.A.R.C. missiles, becoming the first site among 10 throughout the Atlantic. It was started in 1959 and lasted til 1972, when the last of the B.O.M.A.R.C. sites were closed down. The 46th Air Defense Missile Squadron was in charge of maintaining and preparing the missiles and site. Another system involved during this time was the semi-automatic ground-to-air missile computer system.
The SAGE building was built with the largest super computer at the time. The building was built around this computer. It was a above ground bunker. And it controlled your fighter aircraft here at McGuire and around the area. And there’s some missiles. You had the B.O.M.A.R.C. missiles. There were also Army that had Nike missiles which were smaller and faster. And it would have a controller that would see any threats that came into the area or into the region. And then it can tell the different sites to launch the missiles or to scramble jets and go intercept the bombers. And so it was a first instance of a control center that controlled multiple avenues to take out any enemies that came to threaten America. And that hadn’t happened before where you combined all that into one location. The time it was built by IBM. And basically this building is four levels. The first level was all just cooling and telephone connectors for the computers which took up the entire second floor. Four floors, two of them just for the equipment and the cooling to make things work. Because it was designed to maintain security and to take the blast from a nuclear bomb even though it’s above ground. So the building has no windows and it’s completely square and all reinforced concrete and sections within the building. So it’s very sturdy. Hard to bust, hopefully. They never got to test it, luckily.
These radio calls were a reaction to the rupture that occurred in Shelter 204 on the B.O.M.A.R.C. site, June 7th, 1960, at approximately 3 p.m. The nuclear tipped warhead caught fire.
The whole warhead was destroyed by the fire, so was the missile. The fire stayed on for many, many hours. It was so intense, they basically put a water hose inside the shelter where the fire was and let it run.
[Briana] Evacuations were made within an eight-mile radius of the site. The firefighters continued to spray water on the shelter. With approximately 30 thousand gallons of water sprayed on the warhead. Damages included the entire warhead melted, the missile burned, and the shelter destroyed. The water went down the drainage on the site and extended to just outside the gate. Plutonium contamination came from the inside of the nuclear missile and followed the flow of the water down the drainage ditch. The missile was believed to catch fire because of the helium tank rupturing from within. A small explosion inside of the missile led to the liquid fuel catching fire. The warhead melted and did not erupt as it was designed to.
You gotta have certain elements before you can create a nuclear detonation. The fire itself melted the nuclear warhead. It did not create a nuclear reaction. We knew that there was a plutonium contamination. They want make sure that stuff did not become airborne, plutonium to become airborne and get into peoples body through inhalation. You don’t want to get into your lungs. You don’t want the stuff to get into your stomach through ingestions. You don’t want people exposed to plutonium through cuts into your blood stream through cuts and wounds. Because this stuff plutonium gives off radiation. So they don’t want it to get into your body. That radiation will emit for continuously, won’t stop.
[Briana] Plutonium is a silvery white radioactive metal produced when uranium absorbs two atomic particles in nuclear decay. Alpha particles can only travel short distances and cannot go through layers such as skin. Gamma radiation can travel the farthest and can penetrate skin. However, gamma radiation is very minimal from plutonium. Thus, only harmful health effects can happen from breathing or swallowing the plutonium, not a physical (mumbles). (marching music) (somber cello) The first response after the accident was to cover up the asphalt apron and floor of Shelter 204, with a coating of fixative paint and a four to six-inch layer of concrete. They also put in an asphalt cover over the drainage ditch that led to Shelter 204 where the water distributed. They also fenced off the site with a six-foot chain-link fence and barbed wire to preclude access.
They said we’ve got to do something to keep this facility up and running because you cannot have people running around with contamination on the road surface and also inside the shelter. How can we do that? Let’s use paint first. Paint will do that as a temporary measure. So few days after the accident they would spray paint the inside Shelter 204. And they paint the entire roadway near Shelter 204 where the accident was all the way down to the drainage ditch. And then six months later they said let’s do permanent protective measures. That’s when we used the concrete. They were thorough. After they put those layers in they would have annual inspections to ensure that those layers were intact and they were still effective. Those protective measures were effective, preventing this stuff from becoming airborne.
[Briana] Site contamination radiological surveys were conducted frequently after the accident by several different agencies around the B.O.M.A.R.C. site, adding up to 21 separate occasions between 1960 and 1987. Water sampling was also conducted in the 1980s, early 1990s, and in 2000, to test for groundwater contamination.
[King] In 1980s, DuPont Energy spent time to figure it out and release that information saying that no more than 300 grams plutonium was left onsite.
[Briana] With the threat of ingestion, however, the surveys and site characterizations showed a high enough contamination level in the soil to be a threat to human health. The Air Force then made a Record of Decision to clean the site to a condition that would allow people to establish residence in the middle of the site and not be effected. The approach for determining the cleanup level was developed with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Energy and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
There was eight picocuries per gram. That’s for plutonium. So that’s the cleanup standard and we will clean up to eight picocuries per gram. We’re standing here in Shelter 206. The accident happened in Shelter 204. As you can see, it’s not there anymore. Because we actually clean it up on 2004. We started cleanup 2002. Took us two years to clean up this site by moving the burned out shelter, Shelter 204, by removing all the contaminate soil, and we took two years for us to do that. And by moving the soil inside the drainage ditch which is only two shelters away, from Shelter 204 there’s a drainage ditch. We also removed the contaminate in this drainage ditch. All that add up to 22 thousand cubic yards of material. Took us two years to do it. How many truckloads? Thousands, over a thousand truckloads. It was a joint effort because we need permission from the Navy. We need permission from the Army to get this truck load going.
[Briana] The final selected remedy includes first, excavation of soils contaminated above cleanup criteria. Second, demolition and consolidation of structures contaminated above cleanup criteria. Third, transportation and offsite disposal of radioactive soils and structural wastes and a permitted US Department of Energy radioactive waste disposal facility.
There was a team of us, actually. At AMC MO would command. They are the ones who actually provide funding to keep this project going. I was the guy who actually provide logistic support at the base level. So we have a person mixture of funding we kept coming. We have Army guys watching day to day operation. We have the Air Force guy come make sure we meet the technical requirements. And then two years after it we got it done. So it was a lot of work. I mean, two years, a lot of work. But we are a team of good people, well committed to do the work. State of New Jersey’s Environmental Protection, they also analyzed the same sample, make sure the sample is clean. It’s safe.
[Briana] The B.O.M.A.R.C. site on McGuire has been an object of controversy and attention dating all the way back to when it started in 1959 to when it closed down in 1972. The US military had to respond thoroughly and publicly in order to preserve the environment, continue the mission, and stay accountable to the citizens of New Jersey. Currently, the site only makes Mother Nature’s noises as it sits among the trees, gated and locked. Future plans could include renewing the site for another use or historically preserving it. For now though, besides the sporadic manholes and rust from the buildings, it lays safe.