CONGRESSMAN’S REPORT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27302, 19 March 1954, Page 11

CONGRESSMAN’S REPORT

“People Of World Should Be Told” March 17. The United States exploded this month a thermo-nuclear weapon in the Pacific many times more powerful than the one tested in November, 1952, Mr Carl Durham, the senior Democrat on the Congressional Atomic Committee, said today. He said that the 1952 explosion itself was a success. “This more recent one is just much greater.” Mr Durham took the view that the new bomb was such a horrible thing that the people of the entire world should be told quickly the extent of the property damage and the damage to life that could now be expected from this type of weapon. The Associated Press quoted informed sources as saying that the “warm up" explosion of a hydrogen device in the Pacific on March I surprised American scientists with a blast at least 600 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. They said it was three or four times stronger than had been expected. The Hiroshima bomb, which caused 60.000 deaths, was measured as the equivalent of 20,000 tons of T.N.T. The most recent hydrogen explosion was measured «at between 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 tons of T.N.T. It was five, times greater than the measured force of what was believed to be the first hydrogen bomb test in 1952.