No Confirmation Of Chinese A-Tests

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30057, 15 February 1963, Page 9

No Confirmation Of Chinese A-Tests

(NJZ.P^.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, February 13. A United States Atomic Energy Commission spokesman said today that the A.E.C. had no information to confirm an Indian newspaper report that China had exploded a nuclear device on January 11, in Sinkiang.

There was no immediate formal comment from the State Department.

The “Indian Express” report was received with scepticism at seismological listening posts throughout the world.

Seismologists in New Delhi said the observatory there had not recorded anything on the night of January 11 even remote’/ attributable to a nuclear blast

Seismological stations in London and Tokyo also recorded no unusual activity on January 11 that would substantiate the report. However, on the night of February 11 at 9 p.m. G.M.T. the New Delhi observatory did record “surface waves of slight intensity,” the origin of which was still not known. New Delhi is in the "earthquake belt,” and it was possible that the waves were of small earthquakes, far away, they said.

United Press International says most authorities now agree that China will set off a crude atomic device within a few years. The fact that China’s first “home-grown” atomic bomb probably will not be very sophisticated is only cold comfort to some United States policy-makers. Some experts take comfort in the assumption that the first device will be of little military use because China will not have an effective means of delivering it on target—neither supersonic bombers nor hypersonic missiles. But others counter by saying the mischief China could do with the crudest sort of nuclear device would be boundless.

"Suppose they test it over Formosa,” one expert said. “Suppose it is just something they can hoist aboard a piston job (non-jet plane) and roll out the side door when the time comes?”

Some experts speculated how the Chinese could use their device to set off a Sov-iet-American war if they decided that it would be to their advantage to do so. The Chinese might be able to start such a war by dropping an atomic device on Formosa at a time of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

“They might roll them on a boat, beach the boat on Quemoy, and roll em’ off,” one student of atomic warfare remarked. “Then the fat would be in the fire. We might feel impelled to retaliate in kind. If we did, what would Russia do?” The first H-bomb ever exploded was a huge machine which could have been de-

livered on target only by an ocean liner. The next, however, was one that could be dropped from a high-flying plane.

The difference between test “devices” and actual weapons is in ease of delivery. But one may be as destructive as the other. One authority said: “Anybody can knock off an atomic explosion if they have enough of the stuff.” In China’s case the “stuff” undoubtedly would be plutonium, a bomb explosive manufactured in nuclear reactors, U.P.I. said. China does have some nuclear reactors, as well as some very fine atomic, aeronautical and space scientists. Given the mechanical, electronic, and ordinance engineering skills modem weaponry demands, there is no doubt that China could one day become a genuine nuclear power.