Word: sahara
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Early one morning last week, the phone rang for Nikita Khrushchev at the elegant Chateau Rambouillet, country residence of France's Presidents. On the other end of the line was Soviet Ambassador to France Sergei Vinogradov with the news that France had just exploded in the Sahara its second atomic bomb-a small one, roughly the size of the U.S.'s Hiroshima bomb (20 kilotons), but far closer to being a portable, functional weapon than the first 60-to 70-kiloton French bomb...
...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...
...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...
...well, although the opposition Labor Party denounced the French. Unlike Red China ("a defiance of world opinion") and East Germany ("an atomic crime!"), the Soviet Union merely expressed its "regret" in tones that indicated more sorrow than anger. On a visit to India, Red Boss Nikita Khrushchev took the Sahara detonation in stride, remarked casually that he still believed "France and President de Gaulle also want a relaxation in tensions...
...tape cutters started snipping. When the show went on the air, the Wayside Chapel, the water closet and Narrator Paar were replaced by a news broadcast. But what followed made all other news - even wine, women, and cash for disk jockeys, even the French atomic blast in the Sahara -seem insignificant on Page...