ACY EARNS
UNITED STATES
ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION
Washington 25, D.C.
Tel.
ST 3-8000
Exte 307
FOR RELEASE AT 5:15 P.M. (EDT)
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 195)
Remarks Prepared by Dr. John C. Bugher, Director
Division of Biology and Medicine
United States Atomic Energy Commission
For Delivery at 7th Annual Industrial Health Conference
Houston, Texas - September 23, 1954
THE MEDICAL EFFECTS OF ATOMIC BLASTS
To comprehend the magnitude of the medical problems
of atomic attack, it is imperative that we know the fundamentals of the types of weapons and the range of power that
may be anticipated in any action brought against this country.
While it is obviously impossible to disclose in any detail
our own capability, President Eisenhower in his historic
speech before the UN General Assembly, December 8, 1953,
said:
"Atomic bombs today are more than 25 times as
powerful as the weapons with which the atomic age dawned,
while hydrogen weapons are in the ranges of millions of
tons of TNT equivalent."
Subsequently, there was released the documentary
film of the first full-scale thermonuclear test at Eniwetok
on November 1, 1952.
This tremendous explosion, resulting
in a fireball over three miles in diameter, created a
large erater in the reef with the lifting of millions of
tons of water and coral into the skies.
With the earlier
announcement, for an experimental device at Nevada, of a
yield of 15,000 tons of TNT equivalent, or 15 kilotons, and
the original estimation of the Nagasaki bomb at 20 kilotons,
it is apparent that we may consider our family of weapons
in a great range of possible yields and modes of delivery.
What do these units of energy mean? What is implied by the words "kiloton" and "megaton"? Commission
Chairman Strauss in a recent address used an illuminating
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