of nuclear explosions for large excavation projects such as harbors or
canals.
The 100 kiloton Sedan shot dug out a crater 320 feet deep and
with an average diameter of 1280 feet and displaced almost 7.5 million
cubic yards, or 12 million tons of earth, 4°
The Cold War Heats Up
The Commission conducted the 1961 and 1962 tests as the inter_NMational situation became more tense.
Heating up the Cold War,
Soviet Union began a series of confrontations over Berlin in 1961.
the
But
the worst crisis came in October 1962, when President Kennedy demanded
that the Soviet Union withdraw missiles it had deployed in Cuba.
Although Chairman Krushchev removed the missiles, the world seeme< close
to the brink of nuclear war before the crisis ended.
The Cuban missile crisis profoundly affected test ban negot: -tions
which had resumed in Geneva.
Doubtlessly the ‘erisis made =... the
United States and the Soviet Union more willing to compromis: *’ on
October 11, 1963, the two powers formally entered into a treaty Danning
nuclear testing in the atmosphere, under water, and in outer space.
Thereafter all American nuclear testing was conducted underground.
‘Three months later in his first State of the Union address,
Si-
dent Lyndon B. Johnson announced that the United states would reduce ics
production of enriched uranium by 25 percent and shut down four production reactors.
stockpile
arms
The United States, the President declared, would not
beyond
its
needs.
Indeed,
hac
wc
production complexes operated that the Commission had put only c-
new
reactor into production since the mid-1950's.
so
efficiently
Called the New Pros °=ticn
Reactor and added to the Hanford complex, the unit was symbolic -<: che