A History of U.S. Nuclear Testing and Its Influence on Nuclear Thought, 1945–1963 by Blades David M.;Siracusa Joseph M.;

Author:Blades, David M.;Siracusa, Joseph M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The notion that clandestine nuclear testing could be conducted through the solar system seems a peculiar one, but it is important to remember that it dates from the dawn of the space age. The superpowers had developed only embryonic space programs in 1959, but nuclear weapons tests had already moved into the high atmosphere and beyond. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s successful launch of its first satellite, Sputnik, on 4 October 1957, had visibly established its lead in the space race only two years earlier. The same distrust that was shown in the field of underground test detection was naturally transferred to the field of outer space, a field in which the Soviet Union, at least at the end of the 1950s, was technically ahead of the United States. But most importantly, for the purposes of test detection, speculation on outer space testing, outlandish as it was, illustrated not only the immense technical difficulties associated with a test cessation agreement, but that these difficulties had to be fully explored and understood to have confidence in such an agreement.

While initially intended to experiment in mediums that would reduce or eliminate fallout, the underground nuclear weapons tests of PLUMBBOB in 1957 and HARDTACK II in 1958—and, to a lesser extent, the high-altitude tests of HARDTACK I in 1958—also demonstrated the increasing difficulty of detecting nuclear tests that a determined power could conduct in a clandestine manner. These difficulties were explored, debated, and, at times, politicized in the months leading up to the test moratorium that began on 31 October 1958, and they continued to pose problems throughout 1959. At the core of these technical matters of detection was a conflict between possibility and probability, and figures within the Eisenhower administration on both sides of the test ban debate portrayed their arguments in terms of that tension between possibility and probability. The need to objectively determine the probability of evading detection created a feedback loop that encouraged more and further nuclear testing, a loop not dissimilar to that which, in the first half of the 1950s, had greatly expanded U.S. nuclear testing to accommodate weapons effects studies. The methods of conducting clandestine tests were difficult and expensive and, at least in the case of decoupling, could potentially be detectable even if the test itself was not, but so long as these methods remained possible, a test cessation agreement would be imperfect, and it was with these technical matters at the forefront of debate that the Eisenhower administration committed to the test moratorium.

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