NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH TROY WADE January 14, 1998 Taken At KNPR Studios 5151 Boulder Highway Las Vegas, Nevada TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 2 MR. ANDERSON: This is January 14th. I'm Tim Anderson. And this is for The Las Vegas I Remember oral history series. And if you would introduce yourself, sir. MR. WADE: I'm Troy Wade. I have been a resident of Las Vegas since 1958 and associated with the programs at the Nevada Test Site and other nuclear programs in this country. Since that time, I retired in 1989 from the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., at the time, and came back here to Las Vegas in 1990 and expect this to be my home for as long as God wants it to be. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. I guess we can just go ahead. And I don't know if you found this helpful as a reminder to our conversation, but we can just go right down the list. And start out with a brief summary of your life just prior to coming to Nevada. MR. WADE: Well, actually, I was born and raised in Colorado but came to Nevada in 1958 to the test site when the test site was in the beginnings of moving from atmospheric testing to underground testing. And as I said, I've been involved in that since that time. Initially, I came to work for Reynolds Electric, who were developing the tunnel program. And then I moved over to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Worked for that laboratory for a decade and then went to the government, which at that time was the Atomic TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 3 Energy Commission. So I've been involved with the laboratories and the government since that time. MR. ANDERSON: Tell us please, Mr. Wade, about some of your educational background that fitted you for this kind of work. MR. WADE: Well, I'm not sure that it did fit. I'm an engineer by training, but I came here because of my experience in mining from Colorado. And I actually made the transition from that into the nuclear business, if you will, a little bit because of my knowledge of explosives, but also because I was one of the people with a security clearance at the Nevada Test Site. And I was young enough and hadn't gotten myself into any trouble I guess at the time, and it was easy to clear me. But the clearance became a very important part of my life, and that's how I sort of made the transition from what you might say was a construction view of the world to a technical view. MR. ANDERSON: So you've been privy to very sensitive information as far as the nuclear program. Would you characterize that as classified or top secret? How would you classify it? MR. WADE: Well, let me just say that the things I did over my career involved me with some information that was among the most sensitive in the country having to do with our nuclear programs and others. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 4 MR. ANDERSON: Okay. As others have, and I've found every testimony very compelling, if you could give me your own personal experience of witnessing the awesome power of an atmospheric test. MR. WADE: Well, it is indeed awesome. In fact, it's difficult to find words to describe it. When I first arrived at the test site in '58, I got to see the last few atmospheric tests that were done in '58 and then a couple of more in '61, the actual last ones before the limited Test Ban Treaty. But the light and the heat and the shock wave from a nuclear weapon exploding are terrifying. I mean, you feel the heat. You feel the shock wave. You are blinded if you don't have your eyes closed or have on goggles. And it's an awful thing. Every leader of the world should have to look at one of those at some time, and I think it would make them understand a little more. MR. ANDERSON: You were involved how directly? Talk a little about the negotiations with the Soviets and the testing moratorium that the Soviets broke in '61, if you could talk a little bit about that. MR. WADE: Well, you know, if you go back a little bit beyond that, I think it was very clear that the Germans were working on a nuclear program, were working on nuclear weapons. There's some evidence that the Japanese were doing the same during World War II. We got there first. That ended TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 5 World War II. But right behind us in nuclear technology were the Soviets. And the Soviets knew they were behind and knew that what they had gotten, they had gotten from espionage. And I'm one of many who believe they wanted to catch up. And so in 1958 the Soviets agreed in a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. Mr. Eisenhower, and I think Mr. Khrushchev at the time agreed on a unilateral, bilateral cessation of testing in 1958. And that went into effect in the United States on October 30th, 1958. And this country stood down and in many senses disbanded and did away with many of the things it had developed to do testing. And what we found in '61, of course, was that the Soviets abrogated the treaty, broke the moratorium by beginning a series of, I think, sixty-some tests in the next several months, which indic ated that they had spent the entire three years of the moratorium in continuing their development work and preparing for this test series. And that certainly allowed them, if you will, to catch up, and that's what really started the Cold War. MR. ANDERSON: They snookered us? MR. WADE: They snookered us. Absolutely. MR. ANDERSON: From where you were, where you stood at that time, how did that affect decision making in this country vis-a-vis nuclear weapons? MR. WADE: Well, I think it frightened people. I was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 6 clearly not in any policy position back in those days. In the latter stages of my career, I had to deal with some of the same issues. And you know, nuclear weapons whether you like them or not are an instrument of war, just as are conventional bullets and tanks and airplanes. It was very clear from our experiences with the weapons dropped on Japan that these were enormously powerful and could keep the world free. The problem with the moratorium and the Russians and Soviet abrogation of that moratorium, I think, was that we learned very quickly that our existence didn't depend on things and pieces, it depended on people. And we lost those people. Between '58 and '61, had a difficult time. We lost the edge. We had a difficult time regaining it, and it was very clear from that point on that we must never lose that edge again. MR. ANDERSON: So that indeed is what started the Cold War, then? MR. WADE: Yes, I believe very strongly that that was the case. MR. ANDERSON: Maybe you could talk a little bit about the philosophy upon which our weapons strategy was based and some of the politics involved in weapons development. MR. WADE: Well, I think it became very clear and became U.S. policy all the way back to the '50s that a very large piece, not all, but a very large piece of this nation's TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 7 defensive strategy was going to be based on these things called nuclear weapons. And that decision was made without knowing a lot about them. And so there had to be a very dramatic development program to develop the right kinds of nuclear weapons and also to keep track of what both allies and enemies were doing in the same business. You know, the United States developed a nuclear deterrent that had the so-called triad, that had three legs. And I believe that that served us well for 50 years. I think lots of judgment calls can be second guessed, maybe we had too many. I certainly thought that the policy of mutually assured destruction that we carried out for a while with the Soviets where the idea was that they could completely obliterate us and we could completely obliterate them, and therefore, probably all life on the plant planet was silly. And I was pleased to see the nation in a policy since move away from that. But how one designed and developed and prepared to use nuclear weapons was very much a function of the world political situation of the day. A lot of people don't realize that, but it has changed from time to time. Numbers have changed. The kinds of weapons one used have changed. Target sets have changed based on the world political situation, not at all based on just something that any president or any general might want to do. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 8 MR. ANDERSON: Since all the testing, there have been a lot of allegations against the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission, in neglect in above-ground testing. If you can maybe talk a little bit about your experience of what the AEC knew about the effects of fallout and what were the things that might happen with atmospheric testing. MR. WADE: Well, I'm not sure I would ever subscribe to the word "neglect." I think this country was conducting a scientific program that was on the very edge of knowledge. And this country's done that many times. Developing commercial airliners is another example. Developing the Apollo program where going to the moon was another thing which was on the leading edge of technology. I think AEC officials at the time knew that radiation was a potential hazard to the public. They certainly knew that any atmospheric test had the possibility of exposing the public. And I think they did the best they could under the circumstances to minimize the risk to the public. Clearly there were some mistakes, and there were clearly some situations in which people were exposed. And I regret that, but I don't know how it could have been done any differently to meet what were thought to be the military demands at the time. MR. ANDERSON: When we talked before, we talked a little bit about acceptable risk, and that must have been an TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 9 extremely difficult thing to weigh. What could you tell me about that? MR. WADE: Well, I think the whole history of the nuclear programs in this country, as well as many of the others I mentioned before, are founded on what is an acceptable risk. Depending upon the program, it can be a financial risk or a safety risk or a technical risk. In the case of developing nuclear weapons, in order to develop them, in order to learn how they worked and what the effects were, and in order to assure that we knew what enemies were doing in the business, the decision makers of the day did go through conversation that said, look, we know that there will be fallout from the U.S. nuclear tests. We will do the best we can to make the risks acceptable. We will try and capitalize on weather conditions and only do it when the weather conditions are the most likely and when there are the fewest people around. In those days, that met the requirement for acceptable risk. As we moved on into time and went underground with the testing, what became an acceptable risk changed. And it's changed even more now because the nation's policies is to not test, which is an acceptable risk of another kind. MR. ANDERSON: What was the reaction? You were still in this business when word began to circulate about the so-called downwinders. What kind of an effect did that have TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 10 on the thinking of policy makers and of people involved with the atomic weapons program? MR. WADE: Well, I certainly can tell you my own feelings and my own experiences. I certainly knew that the testing that was done in Nevada, and in the Pacific for all that matter, had created a fallout and that there had been fallout on citizens in Nevada and Utah and other places. I think that there clearly have been instances in which there have been some health effects from those. I don't believe there have been nearly as many health effects as people have alleged, and I think the cancer statistics support that. And that may sound a little cold, but what I'm saying is what I believe was the policy and continues to be the policy. If someone is endangered or affected or contracts an illness, they should be treated. They should be helped, and they should be compensated. But don't let it turn into an ambulance chaser thing, which all things like that tend to get to sometimes. MR. ANDERSON: There was an incident of some note that took place here in Nevada, the Baneberry test. Even though you weren't on site at the time, I understand, for posterity and for those who will listen to this in the future, tell us what happened to the Baneberry test that caused it to vent. MR. WADE: Well, Baneberry was an underground nuclear TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 11 test. And very shortly after the detonation, there was a rupture, if you will, a crack that opened to the surface. And an underground test, any test, creates very high pressures and very high temperatures. And the trick when you're testing underground is to contain those. And in Baneberry that containment failed, and the cloud and the pressures got out and a fallout cloud developed. People believed that it was a geologic phenomena. There was a particular clay in the north end of the test site that had an affinity for water. And during the drilling process, that clay was saturated, and that caused the shock wave to move in a different way than predicted. So it was a geologic failure that probably should have been recognized, wasn't because it was a clay that existed only in the north edge of Yucca Flat. And it was an accident that put us out of business for almost a year until we understood exactly what happened. MR. ANDERSON: I'm trying to gauge a little bit of the outcry over some of these things, trying to gauge the public outcry and the things like testing and fallout and the dangers and the protest that was happening against the nuclear program. And how big a deal was that in the country, as you saw it? MR. WADE: Well, the protests against what we did at the test site I think had two pieces. There were those who TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 12 protested because they were legitimately concerned about the effects. The downwinders were one kind of protestor. There was another kind of protest -- well, maybe I'd say there were three. There was a series of protestors at the test site that really objected on moral grounds. And then there is a third set of protestors who are, in my mind, kind of professional protestors, who, you know, it was nuclear weapons testing on such and such a day, and another time it would be killing the whales in the Arctic Ocean. And I don't have a lot of patience for those kind of protesters. I understand those that have deep moral objections, and I certainly honor their opinion. And I understand those who believe they have legitimate safety concerns, and we had all three. MR. ANDERSON: I talked with a guy named Hal Curtis who was an ironworker at the test site. I'm just beginning to edit some of his comments for the radio program. And he talked about his feeling of patriotism when he was working there, thinking that they were doing work that added to the strength of our national security. And he had contempt for these protestors. And then after he saw certain things happen, especially the way some of the people were treated after they had been exposed, then he said he, quote, saw the scales fall from their eyes, and that he tended to agree with them. Did you see any kind of sentiment like that among your ranks, of people in your position? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 13 MR. WADE: Well, I would respond to that in kind of a different way. I worked out there continuously from 1958 until 1981, when I left here to go to Washington, as a worker bee, later on as an executive. But I certainly saw, I believe, what went on at the test site from about every possible vantage point. People did things wrong after I got to be a test controller. I probably did some things wrong as well. I never saw anything done wrong deliberately. I never saw anybody deliberately unnecessarily put at risk. There were risks taken when we did atmospheric testing, just as there was a risk taken when you got on a bus to ride on a two-lane highway 90 miles out to the test site. And you have to be personally comfortable with that risk no matter what it is. I can honestly say that I believe very firmly that the contribution of the people that worked at the site and the people of Nevada who surrounded the site was enormous in keeping this nation free. And a lot of people are very patriotic about what was done. I'm certainly one of those. I regret that some people don't see it that way. MR. ANDERSON: One thing that I skipped over here under that number five, the Cold War, to more fully characterize and flush out this Cold War mentality that was driving our testing and the Russians' testing, if you could, give our listeners a little bit of a taste of what the Mother TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 14 Russia syndrome is about and how that worked to help drive nuclear testing. MR. WADE: Well, I think it's even more basic than that. I think if you look at weapons over the history of this planet, you know when the first people developed arrows, at the same time there was another group of people developing shields that would prevent the arrows from hitting them. And so for almost any kind of weapon that has ever been invented, there immediately becomes a major effort on the part of others to protect themselves against that weapon or find a way to defeat that weapon. Certainly that was true in the nuclear programs. The other nations of the world, but particularly the Soviets, not only wanted to know what we were doing, but they wanted to know how to defeat what we were doing. And in the Soviet Union it was unique because of this thing you called the Mother Russia syndrome. The protecting Mother Russia against war or incursion is such a basic philosophy or certainly was at the time, and I suspect it's still there in large numbers. But the average Soviet, whoever that was, was fanatic about protecting his country. He had known through history that people had come in and tried to destroy Russia. And if you look at World War II, you remember that the Germans almost got to Moscow. And so defending Mother Russia at any cost was the basic philosophy of everybody from a babooska TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 15 (phonetic), from a street cleaner, to the president of the Soviet Union. MR. ANDERSON: And to illustrate that, maybe you could tell us that story of George Shultz's visit to the Soviet Union. One of the stories that you told me before, was that George Shultz that you mentioned? MR. WADE: Well, yeah, I'm not sure what -- MR. ANDERSON: When he went to Russia and he was being escorted, and they stopped at some monument and this official -- MR. WADE: Oh. Oh, yes. I was privileged to be involved in a series of negotiations with the Soviets. And the Cold War was still on at the time, which resulted in -- MR. ANDERSON: And this would have been about when? MR. WADE: '86 and '7 and '8 -- which resulted in a set of experiments. We called them the Joint Verification Experiments, where we did a nuclear test at the test site and the Russians instrumented it; and they did a nuclear test at their test site and we instrumented that, all leading to the Comprehensive Test Ban, which is in place right now. Could you verify the Comprehensive Test Ban. But anyway, my first visit to Moscow was part of a delegation led by Secretary of State George Shultz. It was kind of unique because it was the first time that, although there had been many, many arms control discussions that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 16 nuclear weapons people were involved, and I just thought it interesting that as we were being caravaned in from the airport in Moscow into the city itself, some 40 miles as I recall, they stopped at the monument that they have on what are the outskirts of Moscow, big antitank barriers. And that's where the Soviets stopped the Germans in World War II. And they made quite a point to us, particularly to those of us who were new at this business of, you know, we will defend this country any way we can at any cost. Here's an example of what we did in World War II. And you U.S. guys, you better take note of this because this is the kind of negotiating posture that we normally take. It was quite an education for me and very interesting. MR. ANDERSON: How did Mr. Shultz respond? MR. WADE: Well, I have a very, very high regard for that man. He was a brilliant statesman. And I don't remember precisely what he said at the time, but he took note of the monuments and compared them to monuments that had similar meaning to people in the United States, and on we went. He had gotten that message several times before I suspect. It was just new to me, so very interesting. MR. ANDERSON: I'm sure. As a test controller, if you could just go ahead and tell our listeners, that as test controller I was in charge of... If you could just sort of reiterate that and tell us TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 17 what that meant. MR. WADE: Well, we talked about the fact that in the later stages of my full time at the test site, I became test manager/test controller, and that was quite an honor and quite a responsibility. The test controller is the senior official at the test site who has the authority to either proceed or to stop a nuclear test. It's not a case of a man sitting with his finger on the big red button, but the outcome is the same. And so as test controller, I had the responsibilities associated with not only the successful conduct of the test, but much more importantly the safe conduct of the test as it would relate to both test site employees and off-site people as well. A big responsibility. MR. ANDERSON: There are people who have been involved with this program who feel that the government was negligent, and I have them on tape saying so. One of the things why I was interested in having someone like you sit and talk with us was to talk about the safety standards and the elaborate procedures that you used to ensure safety, because I don't think a lot of people understand. Their cynicism of the government says, yeah, we're not surprised that these things happened because of the way the government will do people when they feel like they want to do something. So I want them to hear the other side of how carefully these things were planned out from a person who was there on the ground. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 18 MR. WADE: Well, we do not live in a risk-free society. By any measure in any subject, we don't live in a risk-free society. One way to not have any risk associated with nuclear testing was not to test. And as a matter of fact, some people, including me, take a great deal of comfort in the fact that we are not testing. We have a problem of a different kind, but that is one risk that we don't have to take anymore. I can certainly say that in my career at the test site, and certainly when I was test controller, I never knowingly put anybody at beyond what I deemed to be an acceptable risk. Now, you know, you had security guards in the forward area when -- nobody else but security guards -- when you got ready for an underground nuclear test. They were at a higher risk than I was several miles away, but we did that in a very, very ordered, deliberate way. We had very strict requirements about weather conditions and where people were and geologic conditions and containment conditions. And we did not proceed unless we met the very, very strict requirements and did what we could to meet technical objectives that had been levied upon us in the most safe and reliable way we could. And I did that to the best of my ability. Now, people can question whether that was good enough, but all I could offer was the best of my ability. MR. ANDERSON: We're moving through this very TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 19 quickly. That's why I like to do a preinterview, because once you get your points defined, you can move through this thing pretty well. Pretty much up to the last number, looking back, nuclear deterrents. There have been many people weighing in on nuclear deterrents and how nuclear weapons accomplished that. Do you think nuclear weapons or the deterrence of nuclear weapons worked? Did that work for this country? MR. WADE: I absolutely believe that it did. I believe that it was the presence of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. defense system that kept us out of World War III. Now, a lot of people will argue that we had Korea and we had Vietnam and we had everything up to Desert Storm. And of course, they're right. Those were wars, those were conflicts and people died. But there was not a major world confrontation like there had been twice before. And I believe very strongly that the presence of nuclear weapons prevented that. So what we participated in at the test site for 50 years. Kept us out of World War III, and continue to this day to keep us out of World War III. I feel that very strongly. And you can also look at what others have done, both allies and enemies. They obviously felt the same way. MR. ANDERSON: In 1962, we literally looked into the abyss during the Cuban missile crisis. What did you all feel like at the test site when that was happening? How were TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 20 things in there? What were people talking about, and how were you feeling about what was going on then? MR. WADE: Well, certainly, again, speaking for myself, I was very concerned, and I had no more information than any other Nevadan did at the time. I was listening to the radio and watching television and reading the newspapers. But I knew that the alert levels in the military of the United States had gone up to the highest levels, and I knew that we were very close to a nuclear confrontation. And since I knew better than some, I think, what that might mean, I was very concerned about that. I'm one of many, many, many people at the test site who spent their lives there, devoted their lives to what went on at the test site and take a measure of success in the fact that after Japan, we never ever had to use them again. Just the fact that we had them and we had the best that we could develop was enough. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I was just a kid. I was, what, ten years old. I don't remember much about it, but that must have been a pretty scary time. MR. WADE: Well, you know, I think you and I will never really know how scary it was sitting in with Mr. Kennedy and his advisors who knew they were being forced much closer to a decision to use nuclear weapons than anybody in history had up to that time. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 21 MR. ANDERSON: With an adversary of equal power. MR. WADE: And very close, and very close. So the prospect for horrifying destruction in the United States was very high, and it must have been very tough on those guys. I've never participated in anything like that. I've watched exercises that have taken place dealing with similar kinds of situations and watched just the blood pressure and the reactions of people just in an exercise. I can imagine what it must have been for real in Cuban days. MR. ANDERSON: Looking back, if you could sort of encapsulate for us the test site's contribution to the overall nuclear program and what that meant, what Nevada's contribution was out here. MR. WADE: Well, I hope Nevadans continue to learn and to believe the enormity of that contribution. Without the ability to test the weapons to assure that they would work with 99.9 percent confidence if you ever had to use them, and that they were reliable and safe, you could handle them up until the time you had to use them as safely as possible was an enormous technical challenge. The nuclear laboratories, Livermore and Los Alamos, did the calculations, did the designs, but the tests that proved that they were right were all done at the test site. Without the test site and without those tests, we couldn't have maintained our nuclear deterrence, and who knows where that might have led. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 22 So the contribution of the test site to this nation's defense was very important and continues to be. Even though we now have entered into a comprehensive test ban, where the nations of the world have agreed to not test, this country and many others still have nuclear weapons in the inventory and as the basis of national defense. And now the test site and the laboratories are presented with a different kind of challenge; and that is, how do you maintain the safety and reliability without testing? You take some comfort in the fact that before you drive your car out on the street, you can look to see that the lug nuts are tied and you got plenty of oil and all of that. In years past, our final say on whether nuclear weapons was safe and reliable was a test. Now we have to, if you will, trust that the car's going to start and run safely and just go get in it. And that presents a technical challenge of another kind. We're gearing up to do that at the test site. I think the test site will continue to play a very important role in this country's defense for many, many years, certainly as long as there are nuclear weapons in the inventory. MR. ANDERSON: Still there are protestors -- we didn't talk about this during our first meeting -- protestors who say that just that kind of work could spark another Cold War. What do you say? MR. WADE: Well, that's certainly an argument, and I TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 23 certainly respect those who firmly believe that. History has shown many, many times that just because we, the United States, took high moral ground on an issue didn't necessarily mean that anybody else on this planet was going to pay any attention to it. For us to say, look, we're going to get rid completely of nuclear weapons, and we're not going to do anything to maintain the ones that we have in the inventory is really sticking your head in the sand because we know the Russian aren't doing that. We have allies, the British and the French, that aren't doing that. There are lots of other people, some countries who acknowledge having nuclear weapons and some who we suspect have them but don't acknowledge that. It is clearly not in this country's best interest to unilaterally completely disarm and be suckered again. 1958 was a tough lesson, and we should learn from that. MR. ANDERSON: From the policy makers that you knew and what they believed -- I don't know if they ever looked back and thought what kind of world this would have been if we hadn't gotten nuclear weapons first, but just sort of conjecturing, what might that world look like? MR. WADE: Well, it's hard to say, you know. Nazi Germany, Hitler was working very hard on atomic weapons. I think history has shown that they made some very fortuitous mistakes and didn't get there until after we got there. But you know, if someone as fanatic as Hitler had had nuclear TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 24 weapons to use, I believe the face of the world would have changed certainly from what it is today. You can look at some of the world leaders now, Mr. Qadhafi for example, we worry a lot about him having one because he is so unpredictable. So you know, nuclear stability of the world is very difficult to predict. You know, I say again that we need to keep our guard up and keep our programs strong and keep them going much smaller because that's adequate now that the Cold War is over, but not give them up. MR. ANDERSON: Was there any worry during your time? Of course, now we're seeing problems with plutonium in the ground water near Amargosa. Was there any inkling of that or any thought of that back when you were doing underground testing? MR. WADE: Sure. I mean, I think you can take to the bank the fact that the 1350 square miles at the Nevada site is probably the most well characterized, well understood piece of geology in the world. We have drilled it, sampled it, tunneled it until we understand it and all of its components better than anywhere else. I think the Nevada Test Site is a closed basin. There's no known flow of water from the test site into the Amargosa Valley. I think the fact that tritium exists in the aquifers that flow through the test site and that we know have flown through the test site, we've known for TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 25 many, many years. We've measured that. We've measured the movement of radioisotopes. We've measured the decay of those radioisotopes over time. I've spent my career believing that there was no known path of those radioisotopes off of the test site, and I still believe that. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. Are you familiar with the term "twisting the dragon's tail"? MR. WADE: In the context of criticality, nuclear criticality? MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, yeah. MR. WADE: And Louie Slocum and Los Alamos, yes. MR. ANDERSON: Yes. What did that mean? What was that about? If you could start this sentence off with my understanding of twisting the dragon's tail or twisting the dragon's tail means... MR. WADE: Twisting the dragon's tail was a way of describing experiments, very basic experiments (end of side one of tape) process, and the fission process, which is the process that, you know, a nuclear weapon uses or a nuclear reactor uses. It talks about combining materials in a way that creates energy. And if you were going to do that, you had to know how to do it and how to measure it and how to control it. And in the early days at Los Alamos, one of their ways of doing that was to take pieces of plutonium, two pieces of plutonium and a very rudimentary radiation detector, Geiger TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 26 counter, and actually push the two pieces of plutonium towards one another with a screwdriver and watch how that affected the Geiger counter. And that was called tickling the dragon's tail because you were approaching a criticality and a release of energy. Very scary thing to have done, but had they not done it, they would have not been able to understand how to control it. MR. ANDERSON: It's amazing work -- amazing work. Well, I've asked pretty much, I think, everything that I wanted to cover here. If there's anything else that I didn't ask that I should have or something that's on your mind that you'd like to talk about... MR. WADE: Oh, I guess one final thought is that, you know, I think it's certainly important to me that the citizens of Las Vegas and Nevada recognize not only the contribution that the site has made to the nation but also the enormous economic contribution that the site has made to Nevada and the fact that that's not over yet, you know. Although we've entered a comprehensive test ban, weapons safety programs still continue at the test site, will continue. We hope that the test site's future includes a major research facility like an accelerator. And we also are looking in a stronger way than we ever have in the past about what other kinds of contributions site technology, weapons technology can make to Nevada. For TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 27 example, we have some initiatives going with Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson on air quality. Through the NTS development corporation, there are some initiatives on using test site technologies to develop alternate fuels, to look at whether or not test site and laboratory technologies in communication and fiber optics can make Nevada a technological leader as well as a gaming leader. In fact, today at the chamber of commerce Preview '98, there are some exhibits and some examples of laboratory test site technology and how we believe that can be part of the, as they say, the city of the century and the community of the future. So a big effort now that the test site's role has changed is to see how we can benefit in a different way in Southern Nevada. MR. ANDERSON: You're talking about a particle accelerator there you mentioned? Would that be a particle accelerator? MR. WADE: Yes, some form of a particle accelerator, several different kinds being discussed. There's a thing called the advanced hydro facility on the drawing boards. Actually, it would be three accelerators because its purpose would be to find a way to take a moving picture, if you will, a three-dimensional photo of how nuclear weapons material reacts. That's a technology that is beyond us at the moment but it's being developed, and some of us hope that it will end TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 28 up at the Nevada Test Site. MR. ANDERSON: How might that benefit us? MR. WADE: Well, I think it would benefit us in several ways. Number one, it would keep active the test site's role as a major contributor to national defense for another couple of decades. But it would also do something very new and very exiting, and it would be to put the test site and Las Vegas in an international research area where we've not been before like Los Alamos or like Livermore or like Berkeley. I think that the things that an international research facility could do in conjunction with the university system of Nevada, UNLV, give us some very exciting possibilities, and we're all working on that. MR. ANDERSON: Back in the '50s, I remember when I was a kid there was a lot of talk of the industrial applications of nuclear power. And even though I know this is really not your bailiwick, you may have something to say about it, so I thought I'd ask while we're here instead of kicking myself for not asking it after you've gone. I don't know how much you know about this part of it, but fusion energy, of course, nuclear power is supposed to supply cheap energy for a long time. And of course, then they began talking about fusion, that this is going to be it. This is going to be the thing that will give us cheap energy from here to kingdom come, and it's going to set us free in a way that we've not TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 29 known before. How close are we to achieving a safe cold fusion? MR. WADE: Well, I'll you give a sarcastic, facetious answer. I suspect when I went off to the University of Colorado in the early '50s, fusion was 40 years away. It's now 1998, and I think fusion is now 50 years away. So even though the prospect is there, and even though this country and others have done an awful, awful lot of work over that very long period of time, this free, endless supply of energy is -- we still don't know how to do it. In fact, the Russians know more about that or have had more progress at that than we have. We've taken fission energy and we've built, I think, there are now 108 operating reactors in this country that generate electricity with fission energy. Very controversial use of special nuclear material because it produces a waste stream. It turns out it's also the cleanest and most benign source of electrical power, but it produces a waste stream. Fusion research continues. But to have a clean non-waste producing, endless source of energy and electrical power is 40 years away. MR. ANDERSON: Rats. You're familiar with Nikola Tesla. MR. WADE: Yes, yes. MR. ANDERSON: That's one of the things that he was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 30 working on. What a brilliant mind he was. MR. WADE: Well, I've been to Princeton, which for years has been the focus of fusion research in the United States, and looked at this huge machine they have there called a tocomak (phonetic) and watched it operate. And of course, the idea is to put a tremendous amount of energy into hydrogen and cause it to fuse in a way that would give off energy. But on the tocomak, they've gotten to unity, I think, where they got for microseconds the same energy out that they were putting in, but they've never been able to sustain that. And until you can get more out than you're putting in -- well, you have to do that before you can take the next step. MR. ANDERSON: Sure. MR. WADE: And I feel we all would like to have clean energy, but I don't know what that is, and I don't think anybody else really does at this point. MR. ANDERSON: We've always got the sun. MR. WADE: Yeah. Yeah. MR. ANDERSON: One thing we did talk about and I didn't put on the outline, but I think would be interesting for people to hear this coming from you since you have such a long background working with nuclear technology. There has been some concern lately that there is fissionable material that is not accounted for around the world and that it may end up in the wrong hands. And I don't know, is this a matter of TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 31 time before some catastrophic event happens with a small nuclear device somewhere in the world? How do you feel about that? MR. WADE: Well, I think it's a very, very real problem. When the Soviet empire collapsed, the Soviets had thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads spread out in at least four what are now republics of Russia, and maybe more. And a lot of us worried back in those days and still worry that they were all recovered. So that's been a concern since we saw this coming in the late '80s, and I was involved at that time. There are lots of instances in very recent years where there's evidence that people have tried to sell nuclear material or claim that they had nuclear material for sale. And there's also some evidence that some of the nuclear scientists that were involved in the Soviet programs have gone elsewhere with their knowledge, which is just as scary in some ways as the material itself. I think the risk to the United States has changed, but I'm not sure it hasn't increased. The prospect of a full-out nuclear exchange, a nuclear war has gone away. Thank God. I think the possibility of a single nuclear warhead being used in a World Trade Center kind of incident has increased, and that's pretty scary. MR. ANDERSON: It certainly is. I promise this is my last question. We did talk a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 32 little bit about this. Everybody is familiar with the character, caricature maybe even of Dr. Strangelove. You happened to mention that you knew guys like this. If you could, define for us from your point of view what is a Dr. Strangelove, and how did they fit into the military scheme of things. MR. WADE: Well, I certainly, in my career, have met people that sort of fit the Dr. Strangelove category, brilliant, brilliant people that had ideas and applications for not only nuclear weapons but other things like star wars applications. Thank God we have those kind of people. The challenge is to control them. And the challenge is to assure that what they are proposing can be done and can be done in the name of good of mankind and can be controlled. And sometimes you have to have a kind of a short choke chain around those kind of people. But thank goodness we have that sort of brilliance. And we must not forget that we are not the only nation in the country that has those kind of people. MR. ANDERSON: Now, you've obviously met some of these people firsthand. MR. WADE: Yes. MR. ANDERSON: How did you feel about them? What were your impressions of them when you walked away from them? MR. WADE: Well, you know, I can think of people with whom I had association over the years who were indeed in what TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 33 I would call the category of being technically so brilliant in things like physics or astrophysics that they really didn't have a good grasp of the realities of everyday life or what that might mean. You go back in history, though, and history's full of people like that. I've had the privilege of working with some of them who were involved in various parts of the nuclear program over my career that came up with answers and breakthroughs and calculations that made great differences to the way we were able to do things. Again, channeling that energy is a big challenge in itself. And in this country we've been able to do it. There have not been any people quite like the Dr. Strangelove in the movie, or who was it? Chill Will was riding the bomb down off of the airplane with his cowboy hat and his spurs on. I never met anybody quite like that, even Lee Butler. MR. ANDERSON: Are these people -- are they scary? MR. WADE: Well, they're scary because they are intimidating because they're so damn smart. But you can't let them intimidate you. Now, one of the people that I've had the privilege to work with fairly closely over the years, I clearly wouldn't put in the Dr. Strangelove category, but he is one of these brilliant guys who can intimidate you just by walking in the room and that's Edward Teller. After I retired from the DOE in 1989, I went to George Washington -- I was living in Washington before I moved back here, and I went to TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 34 George Washington University for a year and a half and what at that time was the Edward Teller think tank at George Washington University. And so I worked very closely with Edward for that period of time. And is an absolutely brilliant man. Brilliant physicist, world-renowned classical pianist. But he intimidates people just by walking in the room because he can ask you questions that just set you back on your heels. I regret very much, by the way, that in this world that we have nowadays, we don't have very many people like Edward Teller. When I was growing up, perhaps when you were growing up, you could name some of the eminent scientists in the country at that time. I'll bet there aren't very many people right now who can name the president's science advisor. And I think that's kind of a shame. I think it's a shame that there aren't more Edward Tellers. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, those kind of guys, they're not heroes. We don't know much about them. There must be some out there. MR. WADE: I think they're out there. I think that science has become much more commonplace. MR. ANDERSON: It's a servant to technology more than it was. MR. WADE: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: Instead of being a free, pure research TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 35 oriented kind of thing. Which you learn so many wonderful things just by looking into them, whether or not you know you're going to have applications for them or not. And I think that that's maybe a function that the government's not willing to fund research, and there's not as much capital for that kind of research because people are not going to invest money unless they know they've got some recoup coming. MR. WADE: That's right. MR. ANDERSON: They're not going to just spend money and say, hey, well, let's just see what we can find out. MR. WADE: And you know, in a way, that's kind of sad because not many of the things that we enjoy today in a technological sense, everything from computers to virtual reality, those things didn't come easy and come quickly. And the United States free enterprise system, the need to make a buck quickly, has in a lot of ways stifled good old basic research that got us some of the things we enjoy now. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think that when you let scientists be free enough to pursue their hearts' desires within certain parameters, you get a lot more benefit from that than when you really narrow the scope of their research. Because when they're really enjoying something and having fun, just like anything else, you really do well with it. And you find out all kinds of wonderful things that you wouldn't have found out if you had narrowed your scope very finely to say TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 36 make me a product that does this. MR. WADE: Well, a good example of that was the development of the transistor, which was done by brilliant scientists. Maybe, again, they didn't fit the Strangelove model, but brilliant scientists in Bell laboratories who didn't have a requirement that they had to produce a revenue stream five years out, and from that sort of thing we got the transistor. Now, today if you look at success stories like Bill Gates and Microsoft, even though enormous gains are being made, they're all being made measured against what's the revenue stream. And to me that's a little sad. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, I think so, too. Because if it were up to me, if I were the president or the king, we would be on a Manhattan project to develop solar energy right now. MR. WADE: Or some of the other medical kinds of things. You know, the classic research scientist is the long-haired fellow on the bench with the test tubes. And that's how penicillin was developed, you know. There aren't many of those sets of circumstances in the world anymore where you got two or three long-haired guys with test tubes that you've turned loose to try and develop something. MR. ANDERSON: Sure. MR. WADE: Maybe we need to do more of that. MR. ANDERSON: I agree with you 100 percent. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 37 Okay. I won't burden you anymore. And I really thank you for taking the time to sit down with me and talk about this, because I don't want to present an imbalanced picture with this. Even though I have certain philosophical, moral and political sympathies, I think it's unethical to present propaganda. I don't ever want to be a propagandist. I think that's a cheap way to go about presenting information. And it ultimately defeats everybody's purposes if you do that. MR. WADE: Well, I've enjoyed chatting with you. And you know, I said to you at one of our earlier discussions that -- I have always supported the fact, always understood and honored the fact that people had other opinions and other beliefs than I did. What I have tried to do and will continue to do is whatever decision someone makes, they make on the best data available. And that means not entirely on emotion sometimes, and not entirely on rhetoric. And I, frankly, don't have a lot of patience for people who espouse other opinions just to sort of hear themselves talk. But I very much respect people who have different views. I just ask them to make sure their point of view is based on sound data. MR. ANDERSON: Absolutely. Hey, you can't ask for any more. MR. WADE: And I appreciate you for trying to get balance in the program -- TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 38 MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. MR. WADE: -- because you don't see that a lot. MR. ANDERSON: Well, I could have gone the other way. MR. WADE: Yeah. MR. ANDERSON: 'Cause everybody else I've got in this program have very strong opposing viewpoints. And I have a great deal of sympathy for their viewpoints. MR. WADE: I was never a downwinder. MR. ANDERSON: Right. MR. WADE: And you know, my argument is, and I think I made this to you before, I spent a lot of years at the site working very closely with radioactive material and around it and fallout clouds and underground, and I'm fine. MR. ANDERSON: Um-hm. MR. WADE: Now, that's good for me. That doesn't make anybody who's ill feel any better, but that's the only measure I have. MR. ANDERSON: Right. I think it's amazing how resilient the human body is, you know, that people could be exposed to some really God-awful things and come out of it. Well, like this Hal Curtis, he had a pretty intense exposure one time. He was acutely ill for a couple of weeks. He said he lost about 18 pounds, couldn't hardly eat anything, came out of it. He's in his 70s now, and he's doing all right. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 39 MR. WADE: Good. Good. Glad to hear that. (End of tape.) * * * * * ATTEST: The foregoing transcript of the interview was transcribed fully and accurately from the audio tape provided by KNPR Radio. Eunice G. Jones, Transcriptionist TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 ??