ye
The overall plowshare program is being considered pera Staff Paper,
AEC811/53, that ithe initial meeting and through much of the discussion
the consideration is given mainly to Project Gnome.
It was noted that
the Plowshare advisory committee had advised going ahead with Gnome
and, after discussing in great detail with the Commissioners the potential
safety problems with contamination of
the aquiferand earthquake problems
and so forth, the ALOO consultants seem to be saying that the probability
of hazards was negligible and therefore recommending approval of the
tests from the hazards standpoint.
Another Plowshare project, Cilsand,
’ a project to recover oil from tar sands in the Athabasca area of Alberta,
CAnada, by heating with a nuclear device explozion, was discussed at
some length with Jerry Johnson, Philip Farley and representatives of
Richfield Oil Company present on 22 January.
was to use a
The initial oil sand test
device whereas Richfield believed that
would provide an economical return.
Richfield further commented "That
they believed that the Canadian Government was waiting for the U.S. to
go ahead with the Gnome project before granting approval for the Oilsand
experiment.
Mr. McCone said that the U.S. had insisted at the Geneva
negotiations that peaceful uses of nuclear energy be exclured from any
prohibitions on testing, and he believed that this reservation was recognized,
at least in principle, by the Russians and would be included in any agreement
reached at Geneva.
The Chairman commented that he thought ina relatively
short time the Geneva negotians would indicate one way or the other whether
we could proceed with the Gnome project."
105