THE NEW ‘CLEAN’ BOMB IS EXPENSIVE BOLONEY

By Our Science Correspondent, J. H. Bradley HE only danger from the Americans’ recent 95 per cent ‘clean’ H-bomb does not come from strontium or genetic effects, but from the many tons of pure high-pressure boloney distributed all over the world by US public relations officials. This bomb is the most expensive piece of pure propaganda since Christmas Island.

The indecent haste shown by the Americans to blow up the percentage of the fall-out eliminated should make us highly suspicious: scientific deductions confirm our suspicions.

In America I should be arraigned before Congress for writing this article, as happened to Dr, Ralph Lapp when he published some deductions the Governmenz had not foreseen.

In the usual fission-fusion-fission bomb. of some one to fen megatons energy, nearly all the energy is derived from the last (fission) stage, which forms an outer coat round the remainder.

The great majority of the uranium present undergoes one of three processes—tission into lighter elements, conversion & CALL TO THE NATIONAL COUNCIL The General Council of Tottenham Labour Party has passed the following resolution for submission to the ‘Labour Party’s annual conference: ‘This. conference realizes that the manufacture and testing of H-bombs constitute a threat to the health and safety of present and future generations. ‘It_calls upon the National Council.of Labour to mobilize the working class in a campaign of nationwide demonstrations to stop the manufacture and testing “of nuclear weapons. ‘Furthermore the National Council rT of Labour should call upon the working-class and socialist movements to take similar action.’

The resolution was passed unanimously, and-in a + ballot for resolutions to be forwarded for inclusion in the conference agenda it headed the poll.

mato uranium 237, or neutron capture to form plutonium and ether heavier’ elemnets.

In the new bomb, on the other hand, only 50 to 500 kilotons energy can be derived from fission. Yet the least possible mass of uranium to explode is about five kilograms, which Sy modern methods may be reduced perhaps ten per cent.

This means that very little of the uranium undergoes fission —that is to say the bomb is very inefficient, just as was predicted.

Being inefficient, it is also very expensive—probably some hundred times the cost of a fission-fusion-fission bomb of the same power.

This ‘tactical H-bomb’, we are told. ‘no longer destroys whole cities’. This seems to exaggerate its inefficiency, for me megaton bomb can do less damage than a ‘nominal’ 1945 2® kiloton bomb.

2s one pleases, yet it is hard to believe that even the brass- It is of course true thal one may build an H-bomb as small hats will want an H-bomb which can do the job of a plain atomic bomb at many times the cost.

The testing of the ‘clean’ bomb may have yielded a certain amount of scientific information which could have been obtzined more easily by other means. Such a bomb will never 20 into large-scale manufacture. let alone use.

CLIO IN CHAINS AT KING STREET Many people gave King Street credit for unexpected broadmindedness when the Communist Party’s Historians’ Group brought out last April the selection of documents entitled ‘Labour-Communist Relations, 1920-39", Tt is now learned, however, that this publication in fact appeared in defiance of a direct ban by the Political Committee of the Communist Party.

It further appears that the communist historians have been warned against allowing such distinguished ex-party Marxists as John Sayville and Christopher Hill to continue to attend their meetings.

They have also received a plain hint of King Street’s intention virtually to liquidate their group, together with other ‘cultural and professional’ groups’ of party.members which have proved to be centres of criticism and Opposition dyging the past year, , The place of such groups is to be taken, it seems, by committees, hand-picked by the party Centre. with’ stri P defined ‘advisory’ functions:

, ied _YCL ‘NATIONAL COMMITIEE MAN GOES _ Four resignations from the Wigan branch of, the Young Communist League include Ron Thompson, a member of. the YCL National Committee and Lancashire and Cheshire DisAlanis and” Arnold ‘Thompson, ‘secretary of Wigan ‘Three of the four have: applied~ for membership -of ‘the Labour ‘Party.

» ; ' .

: ‘THREE EX-SECURITY MEN INDICTED According’to Polish Facts and Figures (July 6) the indictments of: three former security officials have been handed over to the City of Warsaw court, They are Roman Romkowski, former Vice-Minister of ' Public Security, Jozef Rozanski, former Director of the Investigation Department at the Ministry of Public Security, and.Anatol Fejgin, former Director of Department 10 of that Ministry.

F The latter two were accused af the Ninth Plenum of the Polish United Workers’ Party last autumn of having ripped out prisoners’ finger-nails.

WHAT THE EXPERTS FORETOLD ‘It_is impossible not to conclude that the days ‘of Khrushchev’s overweening ascendancy are at an end. The collective idea of government has been reaffirmed. But other voices are heard, and. among them, clearly, the voice of Malenkov.— Edward Crankshaw, The Observer. December 30, 1956.

‘Without putting himself forward, without raising his voice, Malenkov now appears as the person who, three years ago, in the transition from Stalin to Khrushchev, was right. Tt might (Continued overleaf, col. 2)

juny 13; VOS7 EXPERTS (Continued from front page) be possible that, for the first time in the history of modern Russia, public opinion will be strong enough to acclaim the man of the moment and not, once more, have him imposed