A-TESTING BY FRANCE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30146, 1 June 1963, Page 10

A-TESTING BY FRANCE

Monitoring Need Seen

If France went ahead with her announced intention to explode nuclear bombs in the South Pacific, it would be '"wise and sensible” for New Zealand to extend the scope of its radiation fall-out monitoring, according to two American scientists. They are Mr W. F. Marlow, of the United States Atomic Energy Commission's Division of Biology and Medicine, and Mr T. E. Ashenfel ter, air officer of the United States Weather Bureau on secondment to the commission as technical adviser. Both were visiting Christchurch. “What you may get as fallout from such tests no-one can say, and you don’t want to be caught napping,” said Mi Marlow.

It would be “highly advisable” to consider preparations for increasing both the number of monitoring stations and the scope of the sampling? said Mr Ashenfelter. To provide for the analysis of a much larger number of samples in a much smaller time, more comprehensive equipment would be needed at the laboratory from which the monitoring was conducted (at present the Dominion X-ray and Radium Laboratory of the Department of Health in Christchurch. Messrs Marlow and Ashen - telter, who yesterday visited the laboratory, are in New Zealand to see various scientists who provide data of interest to them. They have just come from Australia, where they spent some time with a group working on the radiation-count sampling of high-altitude air.