The "Clean" Bomb
At the Nevada Test Site atmospheric nuclear bomb tests continued until mid-1962.19 Leukemia and cancer deaths
rose noticeably as mushroom clouds continued to darken the horizon.
For residents downwind, radioactive fallout—as AEC Commissioner Willard Libby had predicted in closed
session—had indeed become a fact of life. Living in rural range lands of Nevada’s Railroad Valley north of the test
site, Martin Bardoli was just beginning elementary school in 1956 when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He died
before the end of the year.20 Believing the fallout clouds were responsible, Martin’s parents circulated a petition and
sent it to their senators and the Atomic Energy Commission.
In a responding letter Senator George Malone warned against alarmism about fallout. And, the senator added, "it
is not impossible to suppose that some of the ‘scare’ stories are Communist inspired."21
AEC chairman Lewis Strauss replied by quoting former President Truman: "‘Let us keep our sense of proportion
in the matter of radioactive fallout. Of course, we want to keep the fallout in our tests to the absolute minimum, and
we are learning to do just that. But the dangers that might occur from the fallout involve a small sacrifice when
compared to the infinitely greater evil of the use of nuclear bombs in war.’"22 Such reasoning did not convince the
bereaved parents.
Health matters remained low priority for the nation’s nuclear weapons testers. When the AEC’s Advisory
Committee on Biology and Medicine convened in January 1957, panelists discussed how best to counter public
statements being made by independent scientists failing to toe the government line on fallout dangers.23
Two months later the AEC distributed its assurances-filled Atomic Tests in Nevada booklet to thousands of
downwind residents.24 With two dozen or so atomic explosions during Operation Plumbbob slated to begin soon at
the Nevada site, new methods of cultivating trust among residents went into effect.
Federal administrators discovered that "good public relations in the off-site area were more difficult to maintain"
than during the test series two years earlier, an in-house government report lamented. But the U.S. Government’s
evaluators had some encouraging news. Innovations for gaining the confidence of residents seemed to pay off. "The
single fact that off-site monitors (many with families) lived in communities went a long way in establishing good
public relations."25
Amid customary heavy and laudatory publicity American troops maneuvered beneath mushroom clouds of the
1957 tests.
Stationed in southern Nevada, Marine Major Charles Broudy placed a long-distance call to his wife on July 4,
1957. Excitement and urgency in her husband’s voice were apparent to Pat Broudy as she listened from their home
in Santa Ana, California, about three hundred miles away.
"You’ve got to get the kids up and face the east tomorrow morning around four Nevada time," she would always
remember his telling her. "You’ll see a miracle."26
After the "miracle"—a massive atomic explosion named Hood that official logs peg at seventy-four kilotons—
Charles Broudy returned home. An often-decorated pilot whose awards included a Distinguished Flying Cross,
Broudy was a career Marine with a top-secret clearance. He said little about the nuclear tests.
Nineteen years later he was diagnosed with lymphoma, a radiation-linked cancer. "He suffered terribly,"
recounted his widow, "but was convinced that his government would take care of him in his final days and would
take care of his family after his death."27
However, after the drawn-out death occurred, the Veterans Administration denied service-connected benefits to
his widow and children. Pat Broudy undertook detailed research. Aided by Princeton University physicist Frank von
Hippel, she found that the Hood shot had exposed her late husband to about seventy thousand millirads of
radiation—more than five thousand times above the thirteen-millirad dose the government said his film badge read at
the test blast.28
But the Veterans Administration continued to turn down the Broudy family’s appeals. "I buried my husband and
swore to avenge his death if it takes the rest of my life, and well it may," Pat Broudy said in 1981.29
In response to a growing public awareness of the threat of nuclear fallout, President Eisenhower introduced the
notion of the "clean" bomb. At a press conference on June 5, 1957, he declared that "we have reduced fallout from
bombs by nine-tenths." Nevada test detonations were continuing in order "to see how clean we can make them."30
A few weeks later, three top American atomic scientists, including Dr. Edward Teller, met with President
Eisenhower to support the "clean bomb"’ rationale for further nuclear testing. Teller told reporters the meeting
occurred to inform Eisenhower "what we are accomplishing in the current weeks and what we hope to and plan to
accomplish in the coming years, if we can continue to work."31 Teller made the comment a few hours after a thirtyseven-
kiloton nuclear bomb named Priscilla had exploded in Nevada.
"Clean bomb" verbiage sought to put a relatively pretty face on the testing program. "This was done to counter
the increasing public protests in the late 1950s against radioactive contamination resulting from atmospheric nuclear
test explosions," a later article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remarked. "In addition, the possible
development of an ‘absolutely clean’ bomb was used as an argument against a nuclear test ban, then under
negotiation with the Soviet Union."32
After his June 1957 meeting with Teller and other physicists, President Eisenhower shared his enthusiasm with
the nation. "What they are working on is . . . the production of clean bombs," Eisenhower proclaimed. "They tell me
that already they are producing bombs that have 96 percent less fallout than was the case in our original ones, or
what we call dirty bombs, but they go beyond this. They say: ‘Give us four or five more years to test each step of
our development and we will produce an absolutely clean bomb.’" The New York Times headline, for the article
conveying the President’s statements, revealed one of the significant motives behind the announcement:
"EISENHOWER WARY OF ATOMIC TEST BAN."33
But promises about cleanliness of nuclear bombs did not decontaminate the radiation still rising from Pacific
Ocean and Nevada test sites in 1958—during which the U.S. exploded seventy-seven nuclear weapons. Even
America’s major metropolitan areas were not exempt from intensely radioactive fallout clouds. Rapid-fire
atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada, plus Russian atomic detonations, sent radiation readings to the highest ever
recorded in Los Angeles by the end of October 1958. Government officials announced that the fallout on Los
Angeles was "harmless." Yet privately the National Advisory Committee on Radiation termed the L.A. radioactivity
"an emergency."34
Panel members met in secret session on November 10, 1958, to discuss the problem. "If you ever let these
numbers get out to the public, you have had it," said Lauriston S. Taylor, head of the Atomic Radiation Physics
Division of the National Bureau of Standards.35
The average radiation dose in Los Angeles hovered at the maximum levels deemed "permissible" according to
federal guidelines—and some citizens received more than that amount. Taylor admitted that references to
permissible levels "carry the implication that we know what we are talking about when we set them. But in actual
fact, they really represent the best judgment we would exercise now in the total absence of any real knowledge as to
whether they are correct or not."36
U.S. surgeon general Dr. LeRoy Burney commented, "If I were in Los Angeles, I would consider I was insulted
for somebody in the Federal Government . . . to say, ‘This is nothing to be alarmed about.’"37
The huddled government scientists observed that radiation dosages at least as high as those besetting Los Angeles
had been found the previous year in Salt Lake City. But twenty years would pass before residents of either city
learned about what was said at that closed governmental meeting.38
By the time the provisional nuclear test moratorium began in November 1958, the United States had set off 196
nuclear bombs, while the Soviet Union had detonated 55.
For nearly three years the world got relief from atmospheric nuclear tests—except for a few fired by France in
1960 and 1961. Amid growing world tensions—the Berlin and Cuban crises in particular—the Soviets resumed
testing with a huge nuclear explosion in September 1961, and the U.S. soon followed that example.39 But the
movement for a formal test treaty continued.
19. Even when the bombs weren’t exploding, the radiation burden was being increased because of test-site activities. From 1955 to 1958, and again in 1962, the
government conducted dozens of "safety experiments"—sometimes labeled "plutonium dispersal" in official logs—sprinkling deadly plutonium particles to
the winds in the southern Nevada desert. At the time, the general public was unaware those tests were going on. The Environmental Protection Agency
discovered in 1974 that soil in the two states contained the nation’s highest plutonium concentrations. The thickest blankets of plutonium in Utah were found
in northern parts of the state—including Salt Lake City. (U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, Final Environmental Impact Statement,
Nevada Test Site, Nye County, Nevada (Washington, D.C.: ERDA, September 1977), pp. 2-88 to 2-91; Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation, April 19,
1979, Vol. 1, pp. 65-66.
20. Deseret News, April 24, 1979; Life, June 1980, pp. 38-39.
21. Life, June 1980, p. 38.
22. Ibid., p. 39.
23. AEC Advisory Committee on Biology and Medicine Meeting Minutes, January 16-19, 1957, pp. 4-6.
24. AEC, Atomic Tests in Nevada.
25. AEC, "Plumbbob Off-Site Rad-Safety Report," 1958, p. 19.
26. Pat Broudy to authors, January 2, 1981.
27. Ibid.
28. Atomic Veterans’ Newsletter, p. 19.
29. Broudy to authors, January 2, 1981.
30. New York Times, June 25, 1957.
31. Ibid.
32. Wim A. Smit and Peter Boskma, "Laser Fusion," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1980, p. 34.
33. New York Times, June 27, 1957, cited in Smit and Boskma, "Laser Fusion," p. 34.
34. Deseret News, April 24, 1979.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. For a list of nuclear tests by all nations, see Melvin W. Carter and A. Alan Moghissi, "Three Decades of Nuclear Testing," Health Physics, July 1977, pp. 55-
71.