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BEST AVAILABLE COPY This document has been determined to be NOT DECLASSIFIABLE and has been removed from this folder. US DOE ARCHIVES 326 US ATOMIC ENERGY BEST AVAILABLE COPY
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BEST AVAILABLE COPY Gross belli selivllr In surface air and precipitation, Dcrcinber I06S____________________ _ Most Probable From Salt Lake City. Number ol Cross beta activity, pCi/m1 BEST AVAILABLE COPY 33
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BEST AVAILABLE COPY Legislative History of Article 1(b) of the Test Ban Treaty During the 1963 negotiations of the Limited Test' Ban Treaty in Moscow, an article specifically permitting peaceful nuclear explosions was dropped from the treaty, but the provisions for amendment were liberalized to facilitate a subsequent amendment for this purpose. Pending such an amendment, explosions for peaceful pur poses were to be treated in the same manner as nuclear The line drawn by the Treaty on what was prohibited was based on our ability to detect and identify possible violations. Thus President Kennedy said, in his message transmitting the Treaty to the Senate for ratification, "Essentially it prohibits only those nuclear tests that we ourselves can police." In the Senate hearings on ratification of the Treaty, Chairman Seaborg said (at page 206): . delivery of radioactive debris outside the territorial limits of the state under -whose jurisdiction or control such explosion is con "In those cases where venting does take place, no problems are presentediif the effects are noticed solely within the United States. The treaty would prohibit a test which resulted in a quantity of radioactive debris BEST AVAILABLE COPY
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BEST AVAILABLE COPY ^ delivered outside of the country's territorial limits in amounts sufficient to establish that such con tamination resulted from a recent test within that "We are in the process of developing guides for the use of those responsible for the carrying out of underground nuclear explosions so that there will be assurance that detectable and identifiable amounts of radioactive debris do not leave the territorial The guides referred to were worked out shortly after ratification of the treaty, and thus reflect a contemporaneous construction. They were embodied in NSAM 269, which established a procedure for the review of proposals for nuclear detonations as to which "there is a significant possibility that the test will place measureable amounts of radioactive debris beyond the boundaries of the United States under circumstances in which,^ the debris could be credibly related to the test," or for "any. other nuclear test which by its nature could reasonably give ~ rise to domestic or foreign charges of a violation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty...even though the sponsoring agency believes that the charges would be unfounded." Hie Committee it established advises the President as to whether or not pro posed detonations are "acceptable under the Nuclear Test Ban The Senate was well aware of the fact that the peaceful purpose article, prepared by the United States, had been dropped from the treaty during the negotiations. Moreover, in the hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee, senior Administration spokesmen made not only the statement quoted above, but also a statement to the effect that until the treaty was amended it would not be possible to carry out those nuclear excavation experiments from which detectable amounts of radioactive debris would be found and be detected outside of the territorial limits of the country where the experiments were performed, though there would appear to be no problem if the debris did not move outside of the United States or was so slight as to be beyond the capability of national detection systems. (Hearings: pages 24-26, 206 and 240..) BEST AVAILABLE COPY
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BEST AVAILABLE COPY On September 11, 1963, Senator Dodd introduced a proposed "Understanding" providing that ratification of the treaty was "subject to the understanding, which is hereby made a part of the resolution of ratification, that the words of Article I, subsection b 'in any other,environment if such explosion causes radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the state under whose jurisdiction or control such explosion is conducted* shall be construed as referring to any significant quantity of radioactive debris rather than any measurable As indicated in Senator Dodd's speech on the Senate floor on September 23, 1963, this proposal was designed to remedy what he considered to be one of the defects of the treaty— • namely that "it prohibits the kind of testing necessary to develop the peaceful uses of atomic energy." But he withdrew the proposed understanding and voted for the treaty as it stood, saying that: "After weeks of balancing the virtues, . defects and limitations of the treaty against each other, against the needs of our national defense and against the hopes and fears of mankind, I have decided to vote for the treaty. I believe that the good in it outweighs the bad." (Cong. Rec., In his Memorandum for the Secretary dated May 11, 1966, the Legal Adviser discussed the conflict between "our Treaty commitment not deliberately to conduct any test that would result in. detectable and identifiable amounts of radioactivity across our borders, and our 1963 intention -- stated to the Senate -- to continue with a Plowshare program, including cratering experiments." He concluded: "I do not believe there is any ambiguity in the legislative history on these points. It seems • . clear that the AEG was unduly optimistic in pre dicting what could be done within the limitations of the Treaty. At the same time, there was no \ suggestion that should these predictions prove erroneous we would consider ourselves free, much less obligated, to conduct the experiments." BEST AVAILABLE COPY