"A Kinda Flash"

In Pioche, a dusty mining town snuggled in the Nevada hills, Robert Roy Orr, 65, remembered afterwards: "There was a kinda flash lit up the window--a real big flash it was. With it comes a bang--bingo, just like that. I thought two cars must have hit into one another on the road outside. This white flash started on the ground and sort of swooshed up into the air." He added: "I reckoned there wasn't much I could do about it. So I just sat down and ate my breakfast. What did you want me to do?"

One of the all-night gamblers at Las Vegas' Golden Nugget heard the same rumble, over the click of chuck-a-luck cages, and looked up. "Must be an A-bomb," he remarked, and turned back to the dice table.

At week's end the Atomic Energy Commission cautiously confirmed the fact that the first atomic explosion had taken place in its new 5,000-sq.-mi. testing ground on the remote and barren plateau northwest of Las Vegas known as Frenchman Flat. It was the first atomic explosion in the U.S. since the historic test at Alamogordo in 1945. Most Nevadans, warned earlier in the week by the announcement of a non-nuclear "dry run," took the explosion in stride, though it rattled windows, startled early-rising tourists, and was heard as far as 150 miles away.

But they were a little annoyed when, before sunrise next day, a brighter, louder explosion thundered out of the barren plateau, waking sleepers with a start, and setting the burglar alarms ringing in North Las Vegas. "What are they trying to do--make us click like Geiger counters?" grumbled a housewife.

There would be other explosions, the AEC made clear in its announced search for new weapons. Some of those suggested : baby A-bombs to be used by bombers smaller than the B-29s, missiles for tactical use by the Army, including atomic projectiles which might even be fired by artillery.

The Monsanto Chemical Co. and Detroit Edison Co. (allied with Dow Chemical Co.) asked and got AEC permission last week to study the work done on nuclear reactors. They hoped to develop nuclear reactors to produce power for commercial purposes as well as plutonium (for bombs).

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