The World - News from March 19, 1985

British scientists once considered releasing radioactive material in a test in the Scottish Highlands but never contemplated testing an atomic bomb there, the British Defense Ministry said. It was responding to reports that a scientific paper written in the early 1950s by W.G. Marley, a scientist at the Harwell Atomic Research Center, showed that a nuclear test at Wick near Scotland’s northeast coast was seriously considered but rejected because of the effects of humidity on delicate monitoring instruments. The paper was read to an Australian Royal Commission investigating British nuclear tests in Australia between 1952 and 1963.