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Vida
May 7, 1958
The General Advisory Committee feels that the country is
approaching a crisis with regard to the continuation of atomic
tests on anything like the present scale.
While most of the
widely disseminated arguments against further tests are
exaggerated and unsound, there is widespread uneasiness in
the country over the prospect of constantly increasing radioactive fallout, and even many sincere scientists share this
feeling.
The statements of the President regarding a possible
change of policy aiter the completion of the present series
of tests make it important in our unanimousopinion that a
statement should be issued before the end éz this series,
indicating that hereafter we are willing to restrict tests
so that future fallout will be sharply reduced.
In our opinion the least concession which the Commission
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could offer with prospect of winning over a substantial jart
of the sincere opposition would be to say that hereafter the
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great bulk of our tests would be carried out underground,
with no fallout production, and that tests in the atmosphere
would be limited so that the maxjmm fission yield from the
tests of the free nations in any year would not exceed a megaton
providing the Rugsians agreed to a similar limitation.
If they
did so, and our allies cooperated, we would reduce the addition
to potential fallout to between 10 and 20% of the average
annual addition resulting from the tests made during the past