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For many weeks Seaborg had been quietly, resolutely helping to shape much of the substance in the President's statement. By phone and by personal contact almost daily with the White House, he had offered the President, who is untrained in the nuances of nuclear arming, the advice derived from a lifetime of distinguished scientific service (see box). Nobel Prizewinner Seaborg had helped usher in the Atomic Age—and he knows the perils of the atom as well as its promise. He has no illusions about the task that the U.S. faces. Says he of the Russians and their test series: "They were preparing a good deal of the time while we were negotiating in good faith with them.''
Clues from the Air. Much information about the Russian tests is already filtering into the AEC, but Seaborg and his colleagues will be picking up clues for weeks to come before they get the detailed answers as to what the Soviet Union actually tested and accomplished. Known is the fact that Russian tests at three different sites—northern and southern Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk in the Soviet Arctic—have totaled more than 110 megatons of yield, bringing the total Russian test yield to date to about 160 megatons v. 125 megatons from known U.S. and British tests since 1946. The Soviet tests ranged from about 10 kilotons (10,000 tons of TNT) to slightly more than 50 megatons (50 million tons), were shot off on the surface, below water and in the atmosphere (but not above it). The shots came in such rapid succession that U.S. air-scooped atmospheric samples often picked up radioactive debris from two or more explosions at once—thereby complicating the task of analysis.
The U.S. decision to resume atmospheric testing is based on the conviction that the Soviet Union has made some substantial advances in nuclear strength in its test series. Some military and scientific leaders fear that the Russians have made important breakthroughs in nuclear technology, including the testing or development of an anti-missile missile that could weaken the effectiveness of the U.S.'s retaliatory power. But there is no actual evidence yet to indicate any such giant Russian strides. What worries the AEC more is that the Russian tests may have severely reduced the atomic lead that the U.S. now enjoys, thus strengthening the Soviet Union's military and political position.
As Glenn Seaborg sees it. the U.S.S.R. probably had several good nonpolitical reasons for testing. Among them: to reduce the weight of Russia's large and clumsy atomic warheads, thus getting more punch for a small load; to improve the range and effectiveness of Soviet battlefield atomic weapons; to test entire weapons systems by mating new warheads to missiles; and to conduct "proof" tests of weapons already in the Soviet stockpile. The current test series is almost certainly providing the Russians with valuable data for development of small-and medium-yield weapons, an area where they have been weak. At least one underwater blast, totaling 10 kilotons, was probably the developmental test of a depth charge geared with an eye on the threat of U.S. Polaris missiles.