Atoms Aloft

The Atomic Energy Commission was flying captive balloons last week over its Nevada test site. Magnesium flares, burned at varying altitudes, would simulate atom bombs and indicate how high a bomb could be exploded without blinding auto drivers on the highways of southern Nevada.

AEC's smaller nuclear devices are generally exploded on steel towers inside a ring of screening mountains north of Las Vegas. The towers are vaporized by the heat, and the atomic fireball, touching the ground for an instant, drags up toward the stratosphere a large amount of radioactive dust. Both the dust and the vaporized steel must fall to earth somewhere, and the piercing outcry from places where they have fallen has made the AEC jumpy.

Exploding the devices from balloons will reduce this local fallout. There will be no tower to vaporize (the balloon hardly counts), and if the balloon is tethered high enough, the rising cloud will drag no hot dust with it.

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