Nuclear Testing

Arms control experts from the United States and the Soviet Union will meet in Geneva around July 25 to discuss nuclear testing issues, the White House announced today. But preparations for a second summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev are lagging. The Administration has been unable to induce Moscow to send Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze here before September, when he will be in New York for the opening session of the U.N.

China conducted an underground nuclear test Monday, just days after more than 170 nations agreed to indefinitely extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The official New China News Agency did not say when or where the test took place, but the Australian Seismological Center monitored the blast and said it occurred at Lop Nur, in the Xinjiang region of western China. The center estimated that the blast was equivalent to between 40 and 150 kilotons of dynamite.

The resumption of testing on the part of the United States is a step in the wrong direction. Bigger and better nuclear weapons will not make us safer; rather the resumption of testing threatens us with another round of arms escalation as well as escalation of fear, tension and distrust. By turning away from the testing moratorium, we are turning away from an opportunity to reassure the world that we are sincere in our desire for peace. The fact that the most powerful government in the world rescheduled its resumption of testing to preempt the many demonstrations planned nationwide is in itself testimony to the effectiveness of ordinary people saying no. We must continue to say no to death and destruction, and turn again to those efforts that are life-affirming.

The Soviet Union gave a clear signal Wednesday that it will resume nuclear tests after Jan. 1 unless the United States joins a testing moratorium. Andronik A. Petrosyants, chairman of the Soviet state atomic energy committee, said that Moscow's unilateral test moratorium, declared in August, 1985, remains in force until the end of this year. "There is still time for the United States, before Jan.

One day after the United States set off an underground nuclear explosion in Nevada, the Soviet Union announced Friday that it will end its self-imposed, eight-month-old nuclear test moratorium The formal statement did not indicate when, or if, the Soviet Union would set off a nuclear blast. It did, however, add that the Soviet government is still ready at any time to negotiate a halt to nuclear tests if U.S. officials agree to a moratorium.

China on Monday sidestepped President Clinton's request to join the United States publicly in a moratorium on underground nuclear testing. In a statement issued in response to Clinton's extension of a testing moratorium, the Chinese Foreign Ministry chose only to reiterate Beijing's oft-stated stand opposing nuclear arms in principle and vowing "restraint" in testing. But the statement avoided mention of Washington's specific request that China agree to halt testing.

A Spaniard who authorities said was "not all there" threatened to blow up a Paris-bound airliner Sunday to protest French nuclear tests, but he was overpowered by police after releasing nearly 300 passengers. The 33-year-old man, whose name was not released, was arrested after a 90-minute standoff with police at the Geneva airport, where he forced the French Air Inter Airbus to land midway into a flight from the Spanish island of Majorca.

Under growing pressure from Congress, allied nations and former U.S. adversaries in the aftermath of the Cold War, the Bush Administration is considering proposals to limit U.S. nuclear weapons testing, officials have disclosed. High-ranking U.S. officials 10 days ago completed work on an "options paper" listing alternative nuclear testing constraints that President Bush could put forward at or before next month's summit in Washington with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, the officials said.

Carbon-14 fallout from above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s is embedded in tooth enamel, allowing scientists to estimate age to within 1.6 years, Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm reported this week in the journal Nature. Tooth enamel contains 0.4% carbon. Concentrations in teeth thus reflect the amount in the atmosphere when the enamel was formed. It does not work for individuals born before 1943 because their teeth formed before nuclear tests began.

President Reagan lent his support and encouragement to renewed nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, despite a unilateral promise by the Soviet Union to place a moratorium on such testing while the two superpowers negotiate a nuclear treaty. This support verifies a growing concern that what we have on our hands is a President whose competency is in question. It is not only personally insulting, but also truly frightening that our President would ignore the hand that is finally reaching out in a gesture of peace, in favor of "defensive" underground explosions that shake up the world.