Science: France's Atomic Status

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As the clouds of political fury drifted away after the French atomic explosion, the world's scientists last week had their first chance to take a calm, studied look at the French achievement. Even the high commissioner of the French Atomic Energy Commission joined in the dispassionate stocktaking. Said trim, goateed Francis Perrin: "It [the explosion] gives us no more than a folding seat, and not an armchair, in the atomic club. One must not entwine the vain sense of glory around this experiment."

But though little noticed, France has developed a solid and tidy atomic capability. The fissionable substance in the French bomb was plutonium. The French have been producing plutonium since 1948, now get their supply from three reactors located at Marcoule, near Avignon in southern France. Together the three turn out about 100 kilograms of plutonium a year. In anyone's nuclear language, this is a respectable amount of plutonium, and with it France can turn out an estimated twelve atomic bombs a year, in the 20-200 kiloton range. By the end of 1961, when two reactors now under construction at Chinon begin to produce, France's annual output should increase to 320 kilograms.

The efficiency of the device the French set off in the Sahara is shrouded in secrecy, but some top atomic experts estimate that it was roughly as efficient as the early U.S. bombs, i.e., it achieved fission of 2% of the plutonium it contained. (Current rate of fission in the U.S. bombs is estimated at 10%.) Says one Western European nuclear physicist well acquainted with the French atomic program: "They are ten years behind the Americans, seven years behind the British."

No one expects France to have much difficulty in progressing into the more advanced arts of nuclear devices. Asked how long it would take the French to convert the Sahara test device into a compact bomb, one U.S. expert said: "They'll do it within months." With plutonium and heavy water already in hand, the French are expected to be able to produce an H-bomb in much less time than it took the U.S. and Russia, both of whom had to spend many months and even years in theoretical studies to determine whether a hydrogen explosion was even feasible.