Atomic Tests: The Blast at Lop Nor

The bleak land around Lop Nor, a salt lake in the Takla Makan Desert of Red China's Sinkiang province, is one of the most remote and unpleasant places on earth. But last week Lop Nor was suddenly familiar to all the world when President Johnson pinpointed it as the place where the Chinese had conducted their first atomic test.

U.S. authorities have not yet told all they know about the Chinese test, presumably because disclosure would divulge too much about their detection methods, which are extremely efficient. They predicted the blast weeks in advance, reported it almost as soon as...