THE ATOM: Soul-Searching Question

• Share

On the strength of results of a single 1957 test, President Eisenhower's Science Advisory Committee estimated that underground atomic blasts down to five kilotons could be fully detected by seismic inspection stations. On the basis of the five-kiloton report, the U.S. settled down with the Russians at Geneva to try to negotiate a stop-tests agreement with an inspection and detection system—but fully aware that the chances of detection were slim below the five-kiloton underground threshold.

But even as the negotiators were talking, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was totting up results of the October series of underground blasts at Yucca Flat, Nev. The results were enough to curl the scientists' hair: instead of a five-kiloton threshold, the real minimum underground blast that could be fully detected was about 20 kilotons—about the size of the Nagasaki-Hiroshima bombs. Science Advisory Committee Chairman James Rhyne Killian Jr. broke the news to President Eisenhower before Christmas, and the U.S. expects to break it to the Russians at Geneva this week. Next soul-searching question: Should the U.S. trust to any stop-test agreement where the chances of deception are so great as to be a major risk to survival?