Sixty years ago on Saturday, the Soviet Union detonated the world’s most powerful nuclear weapon, with a force 3,333 times that of the bomb used on Hiroshima. As the device shattered all records, it sent shock waves through the American defense establishment: How should the United States respond? Did the nation need bigger, more destructive arms? Was it wise to do nothing? What was the best way to protect the nation from the deadly stirrings of a belligerent foe?American policymakers now face similar questions as bold rivals pursue novel delivery systems for their nuclear arms. A new study, based on recently declassified documents, offers insights into how an earlier president resolved a comparable dilemma. The report shows that the secret debate over what to do about the unprecedented Soviet blast was ended by President John F. Kennedy. He chose not only to ignore the military’s appeals for deadlier arms, but to sponsor and sign an East-West treaty that precluded more superweapons.“It went all the way to the top,” Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and the study’s author, said in an interview. “It’s clear that Kennedy was on the fence. But he decided not to go in the bomb direction.”Andrew Cohen, author of “Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History,” said in an interview that Dr. Wellerstein reveals “an untold story that’s terrifying, sobering and illuminating.” Mr. Cohen’s book lays out the president’s 1963 pivot to diplomacy that helped make the groundbreaking arms treaty possible. He added that disclosure of Kennedy’s calculated nonresponse to the pushy clamor showed his “deep revulsion for nuclear weapons.”The explosive force of the Soviet device — nicknamed Tsar Bomba, or the Tsar’s bomb, and set off on Oct. 30, 1961 — was 50 megatons, or equal to 50 million tons of conventional explosives. Last year, the Russian nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, released a 30-minute, formerly secret documentary video that showed preparation and detonation of the mega-weapon. The blinding flash and churning mushroom cloud hinted at its gargantuan force. Its radioactivity shot into the stratosphere and circled the globe for years.In his study, published on Friday in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dr. Wellerstein shows that the Soviets were not the only nuclear power to contemplate such astonishing explosives; the United States had long prepared in secret to go down the same path.ImageEdward Teller, an architect of the hydrogen bomb, told an Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 that work was underway on two super-bombs, one 1,000 megatons, the other 10,000 megatons.Credit...Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryBy definition, the American plans for unthinkable arms focused on hydrogen bombs, which in the years after World War II flashed to life at a level about 1,000 times as destructive as the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan.Making more potent ones required trial-and-error testing that identified problems and let bomb designers devise fixes and workarounds.Dr. Wellerstein quotes Edward Teller, a main architect of the hydrogen bomb, as announcing at a 1954 meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission that his laboratory was working on two superbomb designs. One would be 1,000 megatons — or 20 times as powerful as the planet shaker the Soviets would come to detonate in 1961. The other would be 10,000 megatons, or 200 times as destructive.Scientists at the secret meeting “were ‘shocked’ by his proposal,” Dr. Wellerstein writes, citing an official record. “Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day,” he adds.ImageThe Tsar Bomba at an undisclosed location in the 1960s, in footage that was declassified last year.Credit...Rosatom, via ReutersThe lobbying intensified as the military added its voice. In 1958, the Air Force chief of staff called for a study of weapons up to 1,000 megatons, Dr. Wellerstein notes. A once-secret Air Force history said enthusiasm for the giant weapon cooled as the study found that “lethal radioactivity might not be contained within the confines of an enemy state.”By January 1961, when Kennedy took office, plans for a lesser superbomb had grown more detailed. Dr. Wellerstein reports that the new president was told that a 100-megaton weapon would be six feet wide and 12 feet long — easy for a large bomber to carry and drop.The detonation of Tsar Bomba in October 1961 gave the issue new urgency. Dr. Wellerstein quotes a scientist at the Sandia weapons lab — one of the nation’s three design centers for nuclear arms — as declaring that the American military wanted superbombs “even though no known targets justify such weapons.”In late 1962, Dr. Wellerstein states, the defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, wasBy: William J. Broad
Title: When the Soviets Set Off the Biggest Nuclear Bomb, J.F.K. Didn’t Flinch
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/10/30/science/tsar-bomba-60.html
Published Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2021 09:00:28 +0000
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