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...
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