Word: aec
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...recent study of the seismic effects of 21 underground nuclear tests staged by the Atomic Energy Commission in Nevada, a highly quake-prone region. Though each blast was followed by countless small aftershocks, none reached quake proportions and all were substantially weaker than the original explosion. The AEC is convinced that there is little risk in conducting such tests. It plans to follow up its recent controversial detonation of a 1.2 megaton H-bomb on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians, another major quake zone, with more powerful underground blasts. To the dismay of scientists, however, these explosions are designed...
...split that particle into its constituent quarks. A particle with an energy of 200 billion electron volts, for example, might be enough to pry apart the three tightly bound quarks that theoretically constitute a proton. But a machine that can supply such energy will not be available until the AEC completes its giant accelerator at Weston...
...only previous explosion of this sort. "The Gasbuggy experiment caused about a sevenfold increase in gas yield," they report, "but the value of the excess gas was much less than the cost of the nuclear explosive. More important, the gas released from Gasbuggy is too radioactive for use." AEC spokesmen say that the Gasbuggy blast was designed mainly as an experiment to measure the resulting radiation, not necessarily to produce commercially usable natural gas. Because of new safeguards, they predict, Rulison's radiation will be much lower than Gasbuggy...
...precisely the Government's wisdom that the Colorado scientists question. "It took the AEC three years to acknowledge that strontium 90 appeared in milk and was a hazard to human health," says Biochemist H. Peter Metzger. "The last time they supervised anything in Colorado, they allowed uranium miners to leave radioactive tailings lying around that could be blown over homes, farms and grazing lands and carried hundreds of miles downstream by rivers. The AEC is always saying things are 95% safe. We worry about the other...
Metzger is pessimistic about the possibility of stopping the Rulison blast, but he feels that the Colorado Committee has achieved something merely by asking pointed questions. "We have encouraged the AEC and the Army to release information which ordinarily they wouldn't release. In the process, we have created a tremendous amount of public awareness. People are beginning to realize they can do something about their environment." The question is, what? The Denver Post has strongly criticized Project Rulison; the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking a court injunction. But Rulison's nuclear device is now firmly...