Word: kiloton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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...
...which the U.S. already has big hydrogen weapons "beyond rational bounds," but a series of Red-started limited wars in which the Communists might inflict "a kind of piecemeal defeat." In such wars, said Murray, the U.S. would need "great numbers of tactical nuclear weapons of low-kiloton yield. Our security vitally depends on continued progress in perfecting the technology of small weapons, and this progress cannot be assured without tests." Beyond that, Murray attacked the whole basis of a nuclear policy pitched to world opinion in a tough cold war. "Public opinion both in America and abroad," said...
...deep underground explosion sends no air waves, but such explosions, and surface explosions too, send seismic waves through the earth. A station in a quiet place can detect the waves from a one-kiloton explosion as much as 2,200 miles away. The detecting apparatus is accurate enough to pinpoint the explosion within an area of 40-80 sq. mi., less than one-quarter the area of New York City...
Radio Giveaway. Another detecting method is by means of radio waves caused by the gamma rays from a nuclear explosion above the surface of the earth or sea. Radio waves from a one-kiloton test can be detected 4,000 miles away under favorable Circumstances, and can locate within 20 miles an explosion 600 miles away...