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SESSION II
THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST
INTRODUCTION
BRUES: To introduce the subject which will occupy us voday we
have asked Dr. Dunham to say something about the 1954 thermonuclear test, its background ard nature and anything else he wishes to
say.
DUNHAM: My guidance has been rather loose, | would say, and
not having attended the previous meeting, you are going to have to
put up with my playing it very much by ear. have taken our leaders
literally in that I haven't prepared a half-hour lecture on any particular topic and | gather that my function is that of an initiator in the
sense that one talks about initiators in atomic weapons; the problem
is whether I can generate enough neutrons to mroduce a chain reac.
tion with this, our critical assembly here.
FREMONT-SMITH:
{ Laughter]
Critical mass,
DUNHAM: Critical mass. [I've been thinking about this off and on
ever since Austin persuaded me to take this assignment last June, and
I'm still having very great difticulty in trying to relate this event to
the avowed purposes of these meetings, which are to conside> the longrange effects, psychological ane biomedica!, of a nuclear «sai. The
more [ think about it the more difficult { find this, other than the med--
ical, You wilt find that Dr, Conard and Dr, Donaldson will have a
great deal to say on what the fallout aftermath is for plants, animals
and people ina hypothetical or real nuclear war,
To relate the way people behave—and this is one of the more fascinating things about this whole story—to the way people might behave
or react during awwar,
[find very,
very difficult, and [think of a pro-
posed experiment that was concocted back around [| 249,
in relation to
the old NEPA Project, to find out howpilots would behave if they realized, when they were flying a plane near where a nuclear device let
go, that they had received a lethal dose of radiation. This flight project