What We Are Up Against

by DR. HENRY DEWOLF SMYTH

Chairman of the Physics Department, Princeton University, and author of the Smyth Report

DURING the past year the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb have made a great effort to explain the importance of atomic energy. They have told the American people and their representatives at Washington that the release of atomic energy is a revolutionary development with great potentialities for evil and for good, that atomic bombs are cheap and incredibly destructive, and that there is no defense against them. These statements, which had to be made again and again, were too general to offer a basis for practical action.

The practical problem of controlling atomic energy needed to be defined in a more limited and immediate fashion so that legislation or treaties could be drawn. Such a definition involves political and psychological factors as well as scientific knowledge. During recent months definition has been repeatedly attempted in discussions among industrialists, engineers, natural scientists, political scientists, and men in public life. Anyone who has taken part in such discussions can appreciate how great an advance toward definition and solution has been made in the Acheson Report.

The problems of setting up international control of atomic energy are both technical and political. On the technical level it is necessary to consider what knowledge and what powers must be available to the controlling body. Once these are determined, we must estimate how many men and what kind of men are needed to gain the knowledge and to maintain the control. For example, is it necessary to inspect and control merely the mining of uranium, or must inspection and control cover all activities contributing to the use of atomic energy for any purpose? If such a broader program is required, will it not logically lead to control of every industry that furnishes essential parts for plants such as those at Oak Ridge or Hanford? If atomic energy can be obtained from “common” materials, is there any part of our economy that can be left free? Or must all science and most of industry be rigidly controlled merely to ensure safety from atomic bombs? Does adequate control of atomic weapons really mean giving up peacetime uses of atomic energy?

If there is inspection, must it be by scientists? And if so, how can good ones be found to do the job? Granted the technical feasibility of inspection and control, and granted that it is not impossibly difficult or too expensive, how can it be achieved politically? What degree of plant inspection will our own industrialists accept? What kind of international organization will be adequate and will gain the adherence of diverse, suspicious, and fearful nations? Who will be the inspectors and what their loyalty? Can an adequate control body be set up under the UN charter, leaving intact the sovereignty of the member nations, or must some measure of sovereignty be relinquished to an international authority?

These are the kinds of questions which must be answered before we can have atomic energy under control. Naturally they cannot be completely answered by an advisory committee to the United States State Department. Yet I believe the Acheson Report goes a long way toward answering the principal technical questions and makes many wise suggestions about the political questions. It is a brilliant report and should be read by every citizen.

Partly because of secrecy limitations and partly because of the technical nature of atomic energy, there has been much uncertainty about its future possibilities. In the popular press we have had prophecies of bombs made from a handful of clay, and ocean liners fueled for an Atlantic crossing by a cup or two of water. The Acheson Report defines what we do know and do not know. It explains clearly why uranium and thorium are the key materials and the only materials whose control is important at present, and probably for many years to come. Furthermore it points out that although uranium and thorium are distributed throughout the world, they are of little commercial value and are thought to occur in high concentration only under very special geologic conditions. Thus, by confining control of raw materials to uranium and thorium, the necessary measures are so limited as to interfere very little with normal industry and science.

Since the use of thorium is discussed for the first time in the Acheson Report, a word of explanation may be appropriate here. We know that in the Hanford plant a chain reaction converts non-explosive uranium 238 into a new chemical element, plutonium, which is an atomic explosive. The Report indicates that a chain-reacting combination of uranium and thorium can also make an atomic explosive; so thorium must be controlled too.

Further to clarify the problem of control, the Acheson Report evaluates the two main probable peacetime uses of atomic energy: for scientific research and for development of power units. Based on an unpublished report prepared for an earlier Committee of the Secretary of War, it rightly emphasizes the use of radioactive by-products of the fission process both for the treatment of such diseases as cancer and for research in biology, medicine, chemistry, and physics. One can hardly overestimate the effect that these new tools may have in increasing our knowledge of disease, of life processes, and of basic scientific laws. In their value to all branches of science, radioactive elements from atomic fission are properly compared to the introduction of the microscope.

The Acheson Report is properly conservative about the development of large-scale power units using atomic energy. The report concludes that such power units can be developed but that their characteristics are such as to make them supplement, rather than replace, existing power sources.

Evidently the peaceful applications of atomic fission are not so spectacular as some would have us believe; yet they are potentially very great. Certainly we should not readily forgo their development even for the sake of controlling atomic bombs. Even if we agreed to a prohibition of further research in this field, such a prohibition would be stultifying and extremely difficult to enforce. How then are free research and development going to be reconciled with adequate control? The Acheson Report makes a bold attempt to answer this question by distinguishing between “safe” and “dangerous” activities.

In brief, the Acheson Report proposes that all “dangerous” activities shall be monopolized by the international Atomic Development Authority but that “safe” activities may be carried out by individuals, by national authorities, and by the international authority. Some activities are clearly dangerous: (1) production of the raw materials uranium and thorium; (2) production in quantity of atomic explosives; (3) manufacture of atomic weapons. Certain other activities are clearly safe: (1) use of small quantities of radioactive material for research or therapeutic purposes; (2) use of small nuclear reactors containing fissionable material of such poor quality, or in such small quantity, as to be useless for bombs, and operating at a power too low to produce dangerous quantities of fissionable material.

To these activities that are clearly safe the Report makes the very important addition of high powerlevel (100,000 kw.) reactors. Though admitting that these are “more marginal from the standpoint of safety,” the reporting Committee regards them as safe if they use “denatured” U 235 or plutonium and if the installations contain no additional uranium or thorium. Unfortunately the Report does not explain the denaturing process. It merely states that “such denatured materials do not readily lend themselves to the making of atomic explosives.”

A later press release of the State Department, dated April 9, 1946, specifically states that “denaturing is accomplished by adding to the explosive an isotope which has the same chemical properties. These isotopes cannot be separated by ordinary chemical means. The separation requires plants of the same general type as our plants at Oak Ridge, though not of the same magnitude.” This release appears in the Doubleday & Company edition of the Acheson Report, which also contains a preface by Dr. I. I. Rabi, saying that “the [denatured] mixture cannot be used directly to make a highly efficient bomb by any process known today.” Evidently the denaturing offers only relative safety — probably to the extent that it would take a year or so to convert a high-power denatured chain reactor to a producer of atomic explosives. Essentially the public must today depend on the members of the Acheson Committee for the assurance that such largescale power-producing units can be safely developed by private corporations. We should certainly agree with the Report in requiring “reasonable supervision of their design, construction, and operation.”

There are two further valid points made in this section on “safe” and “dangerous” activities. First, that there can be no safe activities without parallel dangerous ones, since the primary material production is dangerous. Second, — and this stipulation is very important, — that “safe” and “dangerous” must be constantly redefined in terms of advancing techniques.

Americans, recalling the Prohibition era, are not likely to be optimistic about inspection and control of anything. To be sure, the analogy is poor. Most citizens never heard of uranium before last August and are never likely to encounter an international uranium inspector. Yet the difficulties of getting qualified men for such jobs and having them acceptable to various mines, plants, and laboratories in various countries seem almost insuperable. The Acheson Report suggests a simple and effective solution to these difficulties.

It proposes that an international Atomic Development Authority be set up which shall have not only the negative functions of inspection and control but the positive function of mining, manufacture, development, and research in the whole field of atomic energy. Furthermore, the international Authority would be the only body permitted to engage in “dangerous” activities. Thus the scientists and engineers of the international body would be the only group working without restriction in the field of atomic energy. Presumably they would have the function of learning all that can be learned about atomic energy and disseminating this information.

The men on the Atomic Development Authority might well become the elite of the scientific world. Able men devoted to the traditional ideals of science, and men eager to contribute to the increase and dissemination of knowledge regardless of national boundaries, will be glad to join this group. Only the pressure of war makes scientists willing to work in secret, for the destruction of their country’s enemies, instead of in the open, for the benefit of all men. In peacetime, able men will rebel against conditions so contrary to their beliefs and will turn toward the international Authority as one place where they may be able to work freely. Furthermore, when the emissaries of the international Authority go on “inspection” tours, we may hope that they will be welcomed as visiting experts instead of being received reluctantly as policemen.

Turning to the more specific regulatory functions of the proposed international Authority, they are of three kinds: leasing of materials or equipment; licensing of “safe” activities; and inspection. The three go naturally together, but there are difficult problems. Consider one of the simplest: mining. The Report suggests that the international Authority should own all the uranium and thorium mines, but does not mention mines where uranium is a by-product — such as the vanadium mines. Should the Authority own and control the vanadium mines, which are important for alloy steels, or should it merely take over at the point where the uranium has been separated from the vanadium?

Then there is the question of the location of the production plants, essentially atomic explosive plants. The Report speaks of a “strategic balance” between nations. This sounds like straight power politics, necessary perhaps in the present state of the world, but not likely to make the task of the international Authority easier. In fact, all through the Report I find a conflict implied between the powers needed by the international Authority and traditional ideas of unlimited national sovereignty. The Atomic Development Authority, if it is to succeed, will have to be backed by something stronger than a set of treaties between nations retaining unlimited sovereignty.

The last section of the Report discusses a whole category of questions concerned with the transition period from the present condition to full establishment of the international Authority. These are not only the most difficult questions facing us, but they are questions that must be worked out in concert with other nations.

Obviously it is unsafe to release all information before the international Authority has been completely established. Yet we must remember that there is no “secret” in principle and that we ourselves pay heavily in scientific stagnation for every week that we keep new scientific knowledge from our own research workers. We must remember that our stock pile of bombs may be of little use to us but irritating to others. The great danger, as I see it, is that we may try so hard to keep “our present advantage” that we shall hamstring the international Authority by failing to give it sufficient power and sovereignty to make it effective.

The invention of atomic bombs is scientifically revolutionary, but the political issues it raises are not new. They are the age-old issues that lead to war. Prevention of war itself must be the objective of those who wish to control atomic bombs. It is the only real control. Considered in this light, the Acheson Report is primarily a political document, not a scientific one. Judging it from this point of view, and speaking as a citizen, I believe it is a farsighted state document. It clears the foreground and points the way. It will be criticized as impractical — so was the development of atomic energy. Yet it is a document that lifts the heart and stirs the mind. It has the boldness and vision that are needed in times like these.