The Atom: Testing

(See Cover) While grey autumn clouds obscured the sun over the nation’s capital last week, the President of the U.S. closeted himself in the White House conference room for a crucial meeting with the members of the National Security Council. The Soviet Union’s continued nuclear testing, climaxed by a 50-plus megaton explosion, left room for only one topic on the usually crowded agenda: how the U.S. should act to protect its own interests. After listening gravely to his advisers, John F. Kennedy walked briskly into his oval office to meet waiting reporters. Rarely had they seen him so grim, so abrupt. “Just wait a moment,” he said. “Just stop taking pictures for a minute.” Then Kennedy laid two heavily edited pieces of paper on the green blotter before him and began to read.

“In terms of total military strength,” said Kennedy, “the U.S. would not trade places with any nation on earth. We have taken major steps in the past year to maintain our lead—and we do not propose to lose it.” Because the Soviet tests might produce improved nuclear weapons for the Soviet Union, the U.S. will “proceed in developing nuclear weapons to maintain this superior capability. No nuclear tests in the atmosphere will be undertaken, as the Soviet Union has done, for so-called psychological or political reasons. But should tests be deemed necessary to maintain our responsibilities for free-world security, they will be undertaken only to the degree that effective progress is not possible without such tests. In the meantime, as a matter of prudence, we shall make necessary preparations for such tests so as to be ready in case it becomes necessary to conduct them.”

Pandora’s Box. Behind the President’s carefully qualified words lay a decision already made: the U.S. will resume atomic testing in the atmosphere as soon as it can get ready to do so. For two months, the U.S. had patiently waited, staging only underground tests that produce no fallout, while the Soviet Union set off some 31 nuclear blasts, the biggest of them in defiance of a United Nations plea to spare the world the most monstrous man-made explosion in history. Now U.S. patience was exhausted.

By his rupture of the three-year moratorium on nuclear testing, Nikita Khrushchev had forced the U.S.—and the whole free world—to cope with a Pandora’s box of questions. What military advance had the Russians achieved by their tests? What could the U.S. hope to gain by resumed atmospheric testing, and how far should it go? Had world reaction to the Russian tests permanently shifted any allegiances? How great is the danger of fallout from testing?

Mysterious Force. Many of those questions could not be fully and decisively answered because, in the 16th year of the Atomic Age, men were still seeking to penetrate the secrets of a mysterious natural force—as well as the inscrutable designs of an ironfisted dictatorship. But big hunks and hints of the answers lay about, ready to be fitted together and weighed to guide the U.S. on its course. The man whose job it is to weigh most of them—and to prepare the U.S. for renewed testing—is Glenn Theodore Seaborg, the craggy-faced chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

For many weeks Seaborg had been quietly, resolutely helping to shape much of the substance in the President’s statement. By phone and by personal contact almost daily with the White House, he had offered the President, who is untrained in the nuances of nuclear arming, the advice derived from a lifetime of distinguished scientific service (see box). Nobel Prizewinner Seaborg had helped usher in the Atomic Age—and he knows the perils of the atom as well as its promise. He has no illusions about the task that the U.S. faces. Says he of the Russians and their test series: “They were preparing a good deal of the time while we were negotiating in good faith with them.”

Clues from the Air. Much information about the Russian tests is already filtering into the AEC, but Seaborg and his colleagues will be picking up clues for weeks to come before they get the detailed answers as to what the Soviet Union actually tested and accomplished. Known is the fact that Russian tests at three different sites—northern and southern Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk in the Soviet Arctic—have totaled more than 110 megatons of yield, bringing the total Russian test yield to date to about 160 megatons v. 125 megatons from known U.S. and British tests since 1946. The Soviet tests ranged from about 10 kilotons (10,000 tons of TNT) to slightly more than 50 megatons (50 million tons), were shot off on the surface, below water and in the atmosphere (but not above it). The shots came in such rapid succession that U.S. air-scooped atmospheric samples often picked up radioactive debris from two or more explosions at once—thereby complicating the task of analysis.

The U.S. decision to resume atmospheric testing is based on the conviction that the Soviet Union has made some substantial advances in nuclear strength in its test series. Some military and scientific leaders fear that the Russians have made important breakthroughs in nuclear technology, including the testing or development of an anti-missile missile that could weaken the effectiveness of the U.S.’s retaliatory power. But there is no actual evidence yet to indicate any such giant Russian strides. What worries the AEC more is that the Russian tests may have severely reduced the atomic lead that the U.S. now enjoys, thus strengthening the Soviet Union’s military and political position.

As Glenn Seaborg sees it. the U.S.S.R. probably had several good nonpolitical reasons for testing. Among them: to reduce the weight of Russia’s large and clumsy atomic warheads, thus getting more punch for a small load; to improve the range and effectiveness of Soviet battlefield atomic weapons; to test entire weapons systems by mating new warheads to missiles; and to conduct “proof” tests of weapons already in the Soviet stockpile. The current test series is almost certainly providing the Russians with valuable data for development of small-and medium-yield weapons, an area where they have been weak. At least one underwater blast, totaling 10 kilotons, was probably the developmental test of a depth charge geared with an eye on the threat of U.S. Polaris missiles.

Political Act. Many U.S. military thinkers believe that the Russian blast of a 50-megaton bomb indicates weakness rather than strength: it could mean that the Soviet Union does not have enough missiles to deliver large numbers of smaller, but perhaps more effective, nuclear warheads. But whatever the Soviet military motives for exploding the monster bomb—and not everyone was as optimistic as the military—the free world had no doubt that one of Khrushchev’s chief aims was purely and simply to terrorize and intimidate the world.

For this reason, President Kennedy called the 50-megaton test “a political rather than a military act,” pointed out that the U.S. could make a 50-megaton bomb any time it wished (for that matter, each SAC B-52 carries two 25-megaton bombs, which the U.S. considers more effective than a 50-megatoner). But, said John Kennedy, such a bomb would presently be “primarily a mass killer of people in war” rather than a nuclear weapon of any real military use. “Fear is the oldest weapon in history,” said Kennedy. “Throughout the life of mankind, it has been the resort of those who could not hope to prevail by reason and persuasion. It will be repelled today, as it has been repelled in the past—not only by the steadfastness of free men but by the power of the arms which men will use to defend their freedom.”

Calculated Risk. Just how well did Khrushchev’s terror tactics work? Though he gloried in his role of modern-day Genghis Khan, the Soviet dictator took a calculated risk that his tests might so enrage the uncommitted nations that they would openly turn on Russia. As it turned out. almost all the neutralist nations professed disillusionment—although often couched in perfunctory language. “It is regrettable that Russia has proceeded with the test in spite of the appeal of the United Nations and other countries not to do so.” said India’s Nehru. “No amount of argument that it was done in self-defense would wash off the wrong.” Brazil’s President João Goulart protested “against all forms of international coercion, including the threatened atomic destruction of humanity.” Malaya’s Prime Minister Abdul Rahman called the Soviet tests “deplorable,” said that they showed “utter contempt and disregard for world opinion.”

From New York to Los Angeles and from Copenhagen to Delhi, demonstrations were held to protest the Soviet tests. But they seemed, somehow, to have little more fervor than such anti-U.S. demonstrations as those generated by the executions of convicted Atom Spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Abductor Caryl Chessman. In this sense, Khrushchev appeared to have won his gamble.

Sadly Mistaken. On the other hand, if Khrushchev expected that he could bully and stampede the free world into a state of defenseless fear, he was sadly mistaken. “We must not be cowed,” said Secretary General Shigesaburo Maeo of Japan’s ruling Liberal-Democratic Party, “but must reaffirm our determination to continue resistance against such inhuman conduct.” Said Philippines President Carlos P. Garcia: “If Russia does not stop her defiant disregard of the feelings of entire humanity, she will inevitably reap what she has sown.” Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke for the entire free world when he said: “If Khrushchev’s reason was to spread panic among our people, then he has signally failed.”

Nowhere was that truer than in the U.S. itself, where Americans, far from being frightened or cowed, were fighting mad, “When a rattlesnake is loose in the house.” said the Dallas News, “you get down your gun and go after it.” Said Robert J. Holton, 55, a Columbus, Ohio, grocer: “We should start testing some of our own bombs just as close as we can to Russia, and let them have some of that fallout.” “Among the people I’ve talked to,” said University of California Professor Harry B. Keller, “there’s a hardening of attitudes. Now that the Russians have done their bit, people tell me, it’s time we got cracking ourselves—even if it means atmospheric testing.” Detroit’s Police Commissioner Herbert Hart felt that the Russians may have done the U.S. a service: “I believe that the Russian superbomb angered our people and succeeded only in placing them more firmly behind any decision that President Kennedy might now have to make.”

Radioactive Clouds. What frightened the world more than the specter of Soviet military might was the reappearance, after a three-year absence, of a much-feared, fiercely debated and vastly misunderstood phenomenon: radioactive fallout. With radioactive clouds from the Soviet tests spinning around the earth, fallout was on almost everybody’s mind. U.S. housewives worried that their milk might be contaminated by the tests or that their children might get cancer. The Finns worried that their reindeer meat might become radioactive when reindeers munched on contaminated lichen. Great Britain set up plans for rationing baby foods and dried milk if radioactivity became too high. And in India, some people stopped buying chicken and other fowl because they feared radiation poisoning.

What was the force they feared? When a nuclear bomb explodes, the triggering process called fission—the splitting of atomic nucleii—produces some 200 radioactive products that are quickly sucked up into the troposphere and the stratosphere. Some of these fall to earth quickly, causing dangerous fallout around the blast area; others drift around the earth in the troposphere, like the clouds of radioactive ash from recent Russian tests; still others—the great majority—may stay in the stratosphere for months or even years before dropping to earth. A “dirty” nuclear explosion is one that depends heavily on the fallout-producing fission process (used as a trigger for H-bombs), especially when it is exploded so low that it sucks up dirt, which causes radioactive materials to fall to earth more quickly than in a nuclear high-air burst.

Most of the fallout from the Russian tests will not return to earth until late winter or spring. By that time, most of the particles will have lost their radioactivity, but others will still be active. The active fallout is dangerous because of its abilities to emit gamma rays and high-speed particles that can destroy living tissue. Unlike local fallout, which falls on those downwind from the test site and penetrates the body externally, delayed fallout enters the human body through food supplies, particularly milk, meat and vegetables.

The chief villains in fallout are three radioactive isotopes known as strontium 90, cesium 137 and iodine 131. Strontium 90 and cesium 137 remain active for 28 years, iodine 131 for only eight days. Strontium 90 is the greatest threat of all because it concentrates in the bones of children, where it is believed to cause bone cancer and leukemia. In its brief life, iodine 131 is suspected to cause cancer, chiefly in children’s thyroids. Cesium 137 may course through the entire body, sowing the seeds of possible future mutations.

Raging Controversy. Scientists agree that radioactivity in any quantity is bad for the human body. But a controversy rages about the actual effects of fallout and the level at which it becomes intolerably dangerous to human health. At one extreme is Dr. Linus Pauling, Caltech’s Nobel Prizewinning chemist, who believes that the fallout danger point was reached when the U.S. exploded the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945 to usher in the Atomic Age. Pauling estimates that one 50-megaton bomb alone would cause 40,000 babies to be born with physical defects in the next few generations, and 400,000 more defective or still-born babies over the next 6,000 years—or slightly more than one a week. He also expects uncounted cases of bone cancer, leukemia and other physical defects to appear in humans now alive. At the other extreme is Dr. Edward Teller, professor of physics at the University of California and a developer of the H-bomb, who insists that there is no worldwide danger from fallout as a result of nuclear testing. Says Teller: “The fallout danger is grossly and improperly exaggerated.” Last week the U.S. Public Health Service, guardian of the nation’s health, announced that fallout levels in the U.S. as a result of the Russian tests “do not warrant undue public concern.” The agency charged that the Soviet tests would indeed add to the risk of health damage and genetic effects in future generations, but added: “At present radiation levels, and even at somewhat higher levels, the additional risk is slight, and very few people will be affected.”

Unlucky Dragon. Though the Atomic Age is not yet old enough to produce definitive information on the long-term results of fallout, many scientists consider the problem far less serious than they thought it only a few years ago. Says Nuclear Scientist Bo Lindell of Sweden’s Royal Caroline Institute: “No one needs to worry over the global fallout from nuclear tests. That can be said and must be said again and again.” Says Dr. Merril Eisenbud, director of the environmental radiation laboratory of the New York University Medical Center: “Fallout is not a good thing. But of all the sources of man-made exposure to ionizing radiation, this is among the smallest. The total dose from fallout to the present time has been about 5% of the dose the average person receives from natural radioactivity. It’s probably less than 5% of the dose delivered to the average person as the result of the improper use of X rays. It would be relatively simple for our physicians to improve their X-ray techniques, and thus reduce exposure by a much larger amount.”

No one denies the potential dangers of fallout, but the statistics fail to show so far that the danger has been realized. The only man thought to have died as a result of testing fallout was a seaman on the Japanese fishing boat, The Lucky Dragon, which came too close to U.S. Pacific testing grounds—and doctors are not even sure of that. Public health figures show that the frequency of bone cancer or leukemia in adults as a result of fallout is practically negligible. Since the recent Russian tests, most U.S. children carry about ten units of strontium 90 in their bodies, far less than the top tolerance of 50 units, which has to be maintained steadily in the body before scientists consider it hazardous. Since strontium 90’s effect declines as a child grows, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union would have to explode a tremendous number of bombs in succession even to get near the danger level.

As for the genetic effects of test fallout, says Professor Cyril L. Comar, head of the physical biology and radiation field lab at Cornell University, “As I see it, the absolute effect, in terms of the numbers involved and human suffering, will be very small. It will be of no significance.” Scientists point out that people already unwittingly do many things that can produce mutations. Men who wear tight shorts or athletic supporters may produce genetic mutations by causing the testes to be maintained at a higher temperature than normal. And Norwegian scientists believe that people living in houses made of concrete get some 300 milliroentgens of radioactivity annually, three times more than the radiation from nuclear testing expected in 1962. Reason: concrete carries a higher rate of natural radioactivity than most building materials.

Milk in the Freezer. When they speak of fallout, the scientists are sanguine only about peacetime fallout from testing, which is not carried out in populated areas.

The only examples of wartime nuclear devastation that the world has to goon are the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The single bomb that fell on Hiroshima, packing only 20 kilotons of power, almost completely wiped out everything within 4.4 square miles, killed 70,000 to 80,000 people (total pop. 245,000) and injured an equal number. Some 62,000 of the 90,000 buildings in the urban area were leveled. Fires broke out instantly as far as 13,700 ft. from ground zero. Though thousands died that day from the effects of initial radiation, those outside the Hiroshima and Nagasaki areas have showed no ill effects from fallout, and there has been no later widespread incidence of cancer, sterility, cataracts or defective births.

Still, the world must obviously prepare for the day when fallout, even from tests, may rise beyond tolerable levels. The U.S. is improving a vast detection system that will enable it to give public warning to its citizens if radiation becomes a real danger. Should the level of radioactivity rise markedly, babies could be kept on processed food longer to avoid radiation; milk and other vulnerable foods could be kept in freezers for a longer time before consumption, allowing short-lived radioactive materials to decay. Contaminated milk could also be diluted with uncontaminated milk, bringing radioactivity below the danger point. People could be protected from radioactive iodine by taking potassium iodine in their diet to block out or neutralize radioactivity. Farmers could use stored feed grain for their cattle during periods of high radioactivity. As for the vital water supply, most potable U.S. water sits in huge reservoirs for years before it is consumed, giving plenty of time for short-lived radioisotopes to die; the addition of chemicals in treatment plants would further cut radioactivity. Says University of California Professor Everett R. Dempster: “Fallout is a thing to be avoided, but we’re not at the danger point yet. To me the issues of peace and war are very much more important than fallout and mutations.”

Polishing the Adjectives. It is in the interests of those issues that the U.S. finds itself with little choice but to resume atmospheric testing. Though the Administration has not yet decided just when to begin testing, pressure grew in Congress for a quick test resumption. New Mexico’s Senator Clinton P. Anderson and California’s Representative Chet Holifield—the two senior Democrats on the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy—called last week in strong words for atmospheric tests. Said Anderson: “We must conduct atmospheric tests because the underground tests have not given us all the answers we need.” Connecticut’s Democrat Senator Thomas J. Dodd demanded a crash program of testing to develop a deadly neutron bomb (TIME, July 7), which scientists still consider several years away from reality. Added Georgia’s Democratic Senator Richard B. Russell: It is essential to ”conduct some atmospheric tests—until we perfect the neutron bomb.”

Opposition to renewed testing was not based so much on fear of fallout as the feeling by some Government officials that the U.S. will suffer an international political disaster if it resumes atmospheric tests. The notion is that many unaligned nations and wavering neutrals will be glad to stop yelling at Khrushchev, who frightens them and pays no attention to them, and start yelling at the U.S., which acts the part of a gentleman and in the past has taken their complaints with utmost seriousness. Says USIA Chief Edward R. Murrow: “Editorial writers in the non-Communist-bloc countries have just about exhausted all the known adjectives in expressing their condemnation of the Soviet nuclear tests—but they’ll polish up some new ones when we begin testing.” Yet the U.S. may certainly be pardoned for feeling that this transitory expression of world opinion—including new Afro-Asian adjectives—is less important than its own security and the future of freedom everywhere in the free world.

Waiting: 30 Weapons. That security and that future have been shaken by the Russian test series. Although the U.S. still leads in the quality, sophistication and number of its nuclear arsenal, few in Washington doubt that the lead has been badly cut during the three-year moratorium and by the current Soviet tests. Most military experts and scientists believe that the Russians could not have resumed testing at such a brisk pace without preparing for the tests for at least a year, and some suspect that they have been setting off underground explosions all along. While the U.S. was penalized by its adherence to the moratorium, the Russians planned, prepared for, and executed the most intensive and impressive test series in the world’s history.

Because of more advanced techniques, the U.S. atmospheric tests will produce a mere fraction of the fallout that has accompanied the Russian shots. The U.S. does not intend to resume atmospheric testing for the mere hellishness of it. But there are plenty of practical reasons why the U.S. does need to resume tests. In its labs, the U.S. has developed some 30 weapons with nuclear capability since the moratorium went into effect in 1958—and scientists are anxious to test them fully. The military would like to improve the weight-yield ratio of its weapons and try to come closer to a completely “clean” bomb. High-altitude testing could produce information about how to defend against incoming H-bomb missiles. Scientists, in need of advanced tests on weapon structure, may explore the effects of setting off more than one bomb simultaneously to see what happens when the two blast waves collide.

Most of these require atmospheric testing—and even though the decision has essentially been made by President Kennedy, there remain considerable problems. Starting almost from scratch because of its three years of inactivity, the U.S. has yet to prepare sites both above and below ground, get devices ready for testing, set up schedules, and move personnel to potential test sites. Estimates are that the U.S. will not be able to perform any meaningful atmospheric testing until midsummer. In fact, the U.S. does not even have a good test site for atmospheric testing, is scouring the Pacific to find one. The U.S. is, among other things, reluctant to resume testing at the Eniwetok Atoll because of the political furor that it feels would be caused among Africans and Asians by south-blown fallout.

Changed Emphasis. The huge and vital job of preparing the U.S. to resume testing falls heavily upon the AEC and Chairman Seaborg. Though Seaborg is a civilian who would rather concentrate on the peaceful uses of the atom, the responsibility of preparing the U.S. for possible nuclear war can never be out of his mind. Seaborg’s AEC was established in 1946. when Congress decided to take control of atomic power away from the War Department. The AEC was set up as an independent agency of civilians charged with guiding a national program to convert atomic energy for peaceful uses and, at the same time, ensuring that such energy could be used if necessary to defend the U.S. from any nuclear aggressor.

Under David Lilienthal, its first chairman, the AEC’s emphasis in a world just recovered from war was on the atom’s peaceful use. But when the Soviets turned down a U.S. plan (presented by Bernard Baruch) for international control of atomic energy—and shortly thereafter set off their own A-bomb—the emphasis changed. Though the U.S. continued to work on nuclear power projects and medical uses of the atom, the military face of the atom loomed larger and larger. Under AEC Chairmen Gordon Dean and Lewis Strauss, the U.S. began devoting its energy to turning out nuclear submarines, developing more powerful nuclear warheads, and setting off a whole testing series for the H-bomb.

Three Hats. To do his job properly, Glenn Seaborg must wear three hats. There is Seaborg the AEC chairman, involved in all the technical complexities of that job. There is Seaborg the adviser to the President on nuclear and atomic matters. And there is Seaborg the top Government spokesman for the scientific and industrial community. Though he has only the same single vote in the AEC as its other four commissioners, Seaborg must make the day-to-day decisions that keep the AEC pulsating, still be able to explain the facts of the nation’s nuclear stance to such searching inquirers as President Kennedy, Defense Secretary McNamara or the Members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

The realization that he must devote most of his energies to preparing for the possibility of war saddens Glenn Seaborg. But the choice is not his—or that of the U.S. For the Soviet Union has made it necessary for the U.S. to meet ruthlessness with strength.