Tests in China, Russia, U.S.

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 17

Tests in China, Russia, U.S.

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) HONG KONG, October 16. China’s latest nuclear test was seen in Hong Kong today as part of a series of experiments to reduce the size and weight of its atomic weaponry to missile warhead proportions.

The Chinese atmospheric blast —coinciding with the biggest Soviet underground nuclear explosion in history —showed the two Communist rivals were maintaining a steady pace in the arms programme, analysts in Hong Kong said. The United States Atomic Energy Commission reported that the Chinese test at . op Nor, Sinkiang, was the nation’s fourth in the three megaton range. But Chinese news media stayed silent on the blast. It is not unusual for China to report such tests several days after they have been detec-

ted in the West. Meanwhile, warnings that radioactive fall-out from the Chinese blast might reach Japan within 24 hours were issued in Tokyo and the Japanese Foreign Ministry urged China not to carry out any more atmospheric tests. The Chinese test, first of the year, was carried out about 90 minutes after United States officials said that they had detected seismic signals

indicating the massive Soviet blast was in the six megaton range—equivalent to six million tons of T.N.T. At the same time the United States Atomic Energy Commission announced that the United States had conducted a low-range underground nuclear test in the Nevada desert. An A.E.C. spokesman ’1 Washington said that the fact that three nuclear blasts had been set off on the same day—the first time this had happened—was pure coincidence. He said that all three countries disclosed little about their nuclear pro-

grammes. t Shock waves from the • Soviet blast on the Arctic i island site of Novaya Zemlya ■ registered 6.7 on the open- ■ ended Richter earthquake I scale on seismographs in i Uppsala, Sweden. American officials said that f the Russian blast was several : times as large as the previous I biggest test carried out un- ' derground by any nuclear > power.