BOMB TEST AWRY?

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28265, 1 May 1957, Page 13

BOMB TEST AWRY?

Huge Soviet Explosion

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.50 p.m.) LONDON, April 30. Newspapers and scientific sources in London suggest that the final explosion in the latest series of Soviet nuclear tests in Siberia has been much more violent than the scientists who initiated it had expected. The Russians have made an explosion, they say, which is certain to have" great political repercussions, not only in Moscow and Peking, but in every other capital, ‘ not the least London and Wash- 1 ington. ! The “Yorkshire Post” commen- ’ tator on Soviet affairs gpes so J far as to say that it may be that a disaster of great magnitude has ’ occurred. ! He and other commentators base their opinions on the news from 1 Peking that the resultant fallout of the last explosion had caused such danger to the whole of v orth China from East to West that the Peking Minister of Health had to broadcast an urgent warning to the population of this huge area telling them to wash and boil all their food, cover their wells and take other measures of decontamination. “Gone Too Far” The “Yorkshire Post” commentator says it looks as though the Soviet Government might have gone too far in the latest tests—too far both physically and politically. “So far Peking has not dared report its own warning in any of its overseas services, but it is clear the fallout must have been and must still be of catastrophic dimensions,” he says. “It has swept China at such speed that Peking has been unable to hush it up. All the world and all China now knows of it and for a long time to come we shall hear much more about it. “It is difficult to see how Russia will be able to make a single further test explosion without 1 causing at least a serious rift between Moscow and Peking. One

may shudder at , the further thought that in Russia there has been no such broadcast warning, yet there must be millions of Russions and members of Siberian nationalities in the gravest peril,” he adds. A “Daily Herald” special correspondent quotes the opinions of scientists in London and Oxford that the Russians are probably ignorant of the dangers that nuclear tests present to future generations because of their theories about genetics.