ATOMIC BOMB TESTS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24868, 7 May 1946, Page 5

ATOMIC BOMB TESTS

SENATOR’S MOVE FOR CANCELLATION

QUESTION OF RUSSIAN ATTITUDE WASHINGTON, May 5. Senator J. Huffman (Democrat Ohio) has announced that he and Senator Scott W. Lucas (Democrat, Illinois) intend to renew the fight to cancel the atomic bomb tests in the Pacific, which are scheduled for July 1. Senator Huffman said that Russia might well use the atomic demonstrations as an excuse for walking out of the United Nations. “Nobody knows what Russia is going to do. We certainly should not give her any excuse for evading her cardinal responsibilities,” he said. Senator Huffman added that if the bomb tests were carried out Russia could say that the United States was perfecting a terrible war weapon and that, therefore, Russia must look out for her own interests. The chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Senator David Walsh (Democrat, Massachusetts) said that the bill permitting the Navy to use 33 warships as targets for the atomic bomb was likely to come up as soon as the Senate disposes of the British loan.

Senator Carl A. Hatch (Democrat, New Mexico) said that the Administration would have staunch support for carrying out the tests. He expressed the opinion that the United States would certainly be criminally negligent if she failed to carry out such a “primarily defensive test.’’ Dr Farrington Daniel, director of the University of Chicago’s metallurgical laboratory, announced that an atomic power experimental plant would* be built at Oakridge, Tennessee. “We have reached the blueprint stage, and we will soon have a tur-* bine spinning on power supplied by a small pile of uranium,” he said.