Livermore scientists prepared for Tesla with their customary bravado. Whereas Los Alamos had traditionally transported their devices to the test site on an army flatbed truck with a military escort, Foster and his colleagues jauntily drove to the shot tower in a late-model sedan, their bomb—crammed into a pair of heavily reinforced Samsonite suitcases—sitting in the backseat.50
The hush countdown for Tesla began in the early morning hours of March 1, 1955, and ended at dawn’s light with a 7-kiloton explosion—more than three times what Foster had predicted.51 To the relief of Livermore scientists, the blast this time also completely obliterated the bomb’s 300-foot tower. The AEC promptly gave approval to Livermore’s second test. Six days later, Turk—another small-diameter, boosted device—yielded the hoped-for 40 kilotons.52
For Lawrence, who flew out from Berkeley to witness Turk, the occasion was one for celebration. On March 8, he telephoned Thomas Murray to congratulate the man he called “the ‘founder’” of the second lab.53 Among the scientists gathered in York’s office, joy was unrestrained. “We’re still in business, we’re still in business!” shouted Livermore’s business manager as he ran down the hall.54
Hoping to forestall any further talk of closing the lab, Lawrence had formally made York the director of Livermore the previous fall.55 A subsequent contract from the army for an atomic bomb small enough to be fired from a cannon gave York the justification he needed for dramatic new expansion: the lab’s scientific staff swelled to 500, following a $6-million increase in budget. By spring 1955, Livermore had outgrown its parent, Berkeley’s Rad Lab, in both staff and budget.56 But perhaps most important, symbolically, was the fact that for the first time Livermore had taken a weapons project away from Los Alamos.57
The California lab’s belated successes had also removed a great burden from Teller, who informed Strauss in mid-April that he and his colleagues were “proud and happy and grateful that … [their] work needed no further elaborate justification.”58 Wrote Edward to Maria Mayer that same day: “Livermore is now running fine. In fact, it’s running so fast, it’s running away with us.”59
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In Washington, however, York and Teller were appalled to learn that the rug might be yanked out from under Livermore just as it was finally getting on its feet.
The possibility of a ban on nuclear testing had been raised as early as January 1954 by Murray, who had argued to his fellow commissioners that “some control over testing offers an avenue of approach to atomic disarmament which should not be overlooked.”60 Ignored by Strauss, the crusading commissioner had next approached Eisenhower with a plea for an international moratorium on tests, which might “prevent the future development of much larger yield weapons.”61 Ike’s reply, drafted by Strauss, had curtly dismissed the idea.
The public outcry over Bravo a few weeks later encouraged Murray to try again. His particular interest was in stopping the testing of multimegaton hydrogen bombs—what he called “big cheap bombs”—replacing them with an arsenal of less powerful fission bombs, more useful against enemy troops than enemy cities.62 As always, there was an element of fervent religious conviction behind Murray’s appeal: he objected not only to the radioactive fallout caused by peacetime H-bomb tests like Bravo, but to the fact that city-destroying superbombs violated the Christian doctrine of proportionality.63 (That Murray saw no conflict between his religious views and his duties as an AEC commissioner was evident in a letter he once wrote to Truman. Just before leaving on another visit to Fatima, he informed the president that he was “going to Portugal first of all to pray to the Blessed Virgin and second to try to increase Portugal uranium production.”)64
Privately, Ike found Murray’s notion of an end to testing attractive—if only for public relations reasons. “Everybody seems to think that we’re skunks, saber-rattlers and warmongers,” the president had complained that spring.65 After Castle was completed, the president told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, he was “willing to have a moratorium on all further experimentation whether with H-bomb or A-bombs.”66
Strauss and Teller grew alarmed as the moratorium idea gained momentum, inside as well as outside the White House.67 That spring, responding to his constituents’ concerns, Joint Committee chairman Sterling Cole endorsed “a halt to a search for more destructive bombs” in a letter to Eisenhower.68 Even the redoubtable Dulles, architect of the administration’s controversial “massive retaliation” military doctrine, thought the moratorium “an area where we have a chance to get a big propaganda advantage—and perhaps results.”69
But the handwritten note that Eisenhower slipped Dulles at an NSC meeting, called in early April to study the test ban, probably foreordained the outcome. “Ask Strauss to study,” Ike instructed.70
Strauss reported back that the development of promising new weapons—including the small, low-yield bombs that Murray favored—would be seriously hampered by such a ban. More to the point, Strauss and Defense Secretary Charles Wilson argued, was the fact that the Russians could cheat by testing secretly, in such remote regions as Antarctica. Reluctantly, Eisenhower and Dulles conceded that the time was not yet ripe for a test ban.71
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A year later, the public’s rising fear of radiation threatened to bring about an end to nuclear testing anyway, at least within the continental United States. Hoping to dampen the furor over tests in Nevada, Teller proposed using northern Alaska as an alternate site.72 The air force, taking a different tack, recommended that the AEC henceforth describe U.S. tests as
