THE ATOM: Nuclear-Test Debate

In the twelve months since the U.S. voluntarily suspended its testing of nuclear weapons, the public debate on this serious switch in defense policy has been almost nil. But last week, virtually on the test-ban anniversary (midnight Oct. 31), the issue burst into politics.

New York’s Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller moved out to the tougher side of the Eisenhower Administration, argued on a TV show that the U.S. ought to resume nuclear testing—presumably on Dec. 31, the date President Eisenhower has set as the deadline for a workable Russian agreement on test inspection. Said Rockefeller: “I think that we cannot afford to fall behind in the advanced techniques of the use of nuclear material. I think those testings could be carried on, for instance, underground, where there would be no fallout.” Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, chairman of the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee, countered that the U.S. ought to extend the test suspension for one more year.

Actually the President’s defense and scientific advisers generally agree that the present situation of suspended testing, without any check on possible Russian underground or space explosions, is clearly unsatisfactory. At the year-old nuclear-test talks with the Russians at Geneva (resumed last week), the U.S. has made major concessions without getting any workable inspection agreement. Moreover, the U.S., in recalculating the results of its underground shot in October 1958, has discovered that underground explosions below 20 kilotons (about Hiroshima size) cannot accurately be detected by known seismographic instruments (TIME, Jan. 12). Meanwhile, the U.S. has had to hold up development of “clean” (low-fallout) bombs and smaller thermonuclear weapons. Sample result: a delay in the smaller warhead for the second-generation Minuteman intercontinental missile.

Unless the Russians start making meaningful concessions at Geneva, the Administration plans to move quietly toward a resumption of nuclear testing in 1960. There will be no “big bang” at year’s end to signalize the end of the moratorium; that suggestion has been rejected as “overly flamboyant.” There will be no breakoff at Geneva, nor a breakoff from allies; the U.S. is prepared to go along with a British plan for joint U.S.-U.S.S.R.-British underground tests to improve detection techniques. Also, present plans are that the U.S. will bow to the worldwide outcry against radioactive fallout by resuming only underground tests —even though the restriction will hamper development of high-altitude nuclear anti-missile missiles.