Atomic Energy

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE day of the Hiroshima bomb, August 6, 1945, was staggering both as revelation and as warning. It made known the results of a success achieved on December 2, 1942. That was the day when Enrico Fermi, Arthur Compton, and their associates in the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago accomplished the first selfsustaining, or chain, reaction in uranium.

The crux of the achievement is the fact that the uranium atom, when its nucleus is struck by an electrically neutral particle — a neutron — traveling at the right speed and under the right conditions, splits into two atoms, one of barium and one of krypton, releasing some two hundred million electron volts of energy and liberating several more free neutrons to produce the subsequent fission of more uranium atoms, the release of further energy, the liberation of more free neutrons, and so on and on.

It sounds simple, but from the scientific point of view it was the most exacting problem to which men’s minds had ever been set. Professor Niels Bohr reported to physicists at Washington in January, 1939, the theory of Meitner and Frisch, interpreting experimental results of Hahn and Strassmann, that fission of the uranium atom to give barium and krypton is accompanied by the release of tremendous energy.

From a string of equations on paper to actual controlled release of energy took nearly four years. From the Stagg Field demonstration of December 2, 1942, to completion and use of the Alamogordo test bomb in New Mexico, July 16, 1945 — about two years and a half. From the Alamogordo test to Hiroshima — three weeks; Hiroshima to Nagasaki — three days; Nagasaki to the surrender of Japan and the end of the world’s worst war, August 14, 1945 — five days. But such a pace must be appraised against two facts. First, it was the pace of emergency effort directed at a single specific goal — the atomic weapon. And it took the combined leadership and guidance of Roosevelt, Churchill, King, Stimson, Marshall, Bush, Conant, Oppenheimer — that is to say, the chiefs of state of mighty nations, military acumen of the highest order, and surpassing skill in the intricate business of focusing and coördinating scientific activity.

Second, in terms of the evolution of science itself, this pace was the spurt in the final stretch of a long race: Klaproth had isolated a “half-metallic” substance from pitchblende and named it uranium in 1789. For a hundred and fifty years thereafter, bits of knowledge were accumulated in widely scattered areas and at irregular intervals — a theory here, a device there — until in 1939 the whole mosaic could be set and fixed in the Meitner-Frisch calculations. The six years and a half from these to the shattering blasts of two years ago this August are clearly the mere visible peak of an iceberg in the ocean of time.

Controlling the genie

Even more clearly, what has happened and what has not happened in regard to atomic energy in the two years since August, 1945, must be reckoned against the longer time-scale. In the United Nations, in the United States, and in other nations, substantial effort has been made toward thoroughgoing attack on the related problems of controlling atomic weapons and realizing atomic utilities. But no largescale benefits in industrial power have been achieved. In unhappy degree, progress toward these objectives has been held up by debate, often at cross-purposes, over world control of atomic weapons.

Bills for the establishment of domestic control of atomic energy began to pour into the hoppers of the United States Congress a month after the Hiroshima explosion. Yet it is significant that the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission was established in January, 1946, some eight months before President Truman could sign the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 calling for the creation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

The Atomic Energy Act

Equally significant, probably, is the fact that the United States Atomic Energy Commission is today a going concern. It is operating under a clear directive, while a comparably clear directive on the international scale is yet to be framed.

It was evident from the introduction of the MayJohnson bill and other bills in the fall of 1945 that domestic responsibility for and authority over atomic energy would move from the War Department to a new entity. What that entity was to be, required a year to decide, the interval being some measure of the scope of the responsibility, its vital importance to the security of the nation, its appalling newness.

The Commission took over the Manhattan District formally on January 1, 1947, and received Senate confirmation on April 9. Thus, though it took the United States but three months to assemble a suitable Commission, four and a half months had to pass before the Commission was confirmed and could go ahead with the tremendous tasks involved. The record since April 9 is clear indication that it was worth while waiting. The present Commissioners have another year to serve, for the Atomic Energy Act provides that complete reappointment take place after it has been in force for two years, with staggered reappointments thereafter.

The Commission’s big job

The Commission must handle a process and a material that are at once the most lethal weapon man knows and potentially an economic and industrial force of the first magnitude. Moreover, they must control a governmental monopoly of sweeping extent. This monopoly is occasioned by the fact that over two billion dollars of the people’s money is invested in it, and by the fact that, whether as weapon or as power plant, the fissioning atom is a deadly thing demanding, for the common safety, a system of controls and precautions to be invoked on a national scale by no agency less than government itself.

To the Congress and to others responsible governmentally for setting up mechanisms for peacetime control and development, the task came full-fledged and with no warning, and there was a complicated mass of complex information to be mastered even before intelligent questions could be put to a witness. Senators had to go to school, and went with a will. Meanwhile time passed. The atmosphere of secrecy unquestionably had tricky psychological effects, for secrecy and the governmental tradition of our nation have not had much in common.

As the war ended and it became plain that the Manhattan District would be going out of business, there was an exodus of workers, professional and otherwise, from the District’s operating centers at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos. In part, this was the natural rebound of scientists and others who had been working at a high pace and in unusual circumstances for long periods. In part, it resulted from the desire of people to return to earlier and familiar occupations — the physics professor to get back to his laboratory and classroom, the mechanic to work again in his accustomed machine shop.

Yet the District, to protect the national investment of which it was trustee and to continue progress in an unstable world, had to do its best to hold the frame together, to hold people, to adapt conditions to meet their desires. The establishment of regional laboratories to enable major contractors to continue their work for the District, but nearer to their own plants, was part of the answer. The hazards of uncertainty were, of course, renewed at first when the Commission took over the undertaking.

The prospect for atomic machines

What is the working situation today? The first answer to this question is that there will not be any atomic-powered automobiles for a long time. Nor will there soon be atomic-powered aircraft, though the Army Air Forces are at work on the possibility.

Atomic energy for industrial uses — to drive generators for the manufacture of readily transmissible electric power —is a matter of the future, and will remain so for some years. If an all-out effort were to be made in this direction, disregarding economic considerations as they could be disregarded in the Manhattan District’s bomb-building days and cannot be disregarded in a peacetime economy, the generation of electricity by means of atomic energy significant in amount, in cost, and in reliability might be achieved in as little as two or three years.

With ordinary economic controls operating, such a demonstration will at best be a matter of five to ten years. In ten to twenty years, one may expect further specific advance, but what form it will take is a matter beyond any confident prediction. Not only the technical problems involved, but far-reaching questions of social needs, perplex even the most fully informed, with the result that view’s vary widely.

Specialized applications of atomic energy where cost considerations are secondary or where natural conditions are extraordinary, as in the Sahara, are regarded by some competent judges as a logical next step after the sound demonstration. Installations to drive seagoing vessels, where room and weight capacity for the necessary shielding are available, are looked upon by some observers as falling in this category. There cannot, now be confident prediction of the time when industrial power derived by way of electricity from atomic energy will become significant in the total power output of the United States.

Now this is by no means a time-scale comparable to that of the atomic bomb. Competition in bomb building there was not, save the urgent pressure for speed against the unknown potentialities of the enemy. Keen and direct competition in power generation there is. Hence the comparative capital cost of a nuclear energy installation to make steam to drive a turbine to drive a generator, as against the capital cost of a conventional boiler installation fired by coal or oil, is a factor of the first importance.

How to make it work

To bring the energy released by the fissioning atom into a readily manipulated and transportable form, it is necessary to convert it into electrical energy. From nuclear to electrical energy is not a single step. The chain-reacting pile, or reactor, is in reality a furnace to produce steam. True, the fuel burned by this furnace is to all intents free of charge, but the furnace itself is still a pretty costly affair. Hence the central problem is that of bringing the capital cost down. Reactors now being designed will, when used as research tools, ultimately provide engineering and technical information for the design of a commercial installation.

This is no picture of gloom, however far it may be from some of the more rosy predictions. On the contrary, it is an encouraging and optimistic picture, for it shows that the nation’s enormous investment is being handled in rigorous, hardheaded fashion. That is the best guarantee that when power from atomic energy finally becomes a significant factor, it will be fitted into the general economic structure without shock and dislocation.

There are immediate positive facts to back up a conviction of optimism concerning prospects for the domestic development of atomic energy. The Commission, through its agreements with contractors — including universities, foundations, major corporations, and smaller corporations — is purchasing for the government the unique skill of each: from universities and foundations research acumen, from corporations competence and imagination in the handling of large-scale affairs.

There is now developing, through the familiarity of increasing numbers of organizations with the work and the purposes of the Commission’s operating plants, a basic supplying industry. In future it can be counted on to supply the legion of components, special materials, buildings, shielding materials, instruments, controls, and so on, that will be needed as atomic power becomes a recognized element in our total economy.

Atoms for research

The chain-reacting pile is the most efficient known manufactory of radioisotopes, familiar under the name “tagged atoms,” which are produced through placing suitable forms of stable elements, properly jacketed, in the pile to undergo irradiation for a proper length of time. Today, the limiting factor on utilization of materials thus rendered radioactive is the number of people qualified to use them safely and effectively. A decade ago, the materials were limited in supply by the number and production rate of cyclotrons.

The nuclear reactor is the equivalent of hundreds of cyclotrons in the production, for example, of carbon 14, which has lately been much in the news because of its value in biological studies, particularly of the process of photosynthesis on which plant life depends. The same holds true for other radioisotopes which can be manufactured by neutron bombardment. As tools of medicine, the radioisotopes have been compared to the microscope and the X-ray in importance.

Not the physics, but the politics, of the atom is plainly the central question to be settled. The primary emphasis of the work being done under the aegis of the United States Atomic Energy Commission at present is military. Chairman Lilienthal has made it plain that the United States is determined to maintain and strengthen its pre-eminent position not only in atomic energy generally, but in atomic weapons specifically, until such time as a sound system of international control has been established.

The logic of events — or the illogic of the political relationships of mankind — enforces such a decision. It necessarily delays the bringing of the atom fully to the peaceful service of men.

The United States through the Acheson-Lilienthal Report in March, 1946, through the formal plan presented by Mr. Baruch in June, 1946, through the efforts since then of Warren R. Austin and Frederick H. Osborn, through the recent appearances of Dr. Oppenheimer and Mr. Lilienthal, has placed before the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission proposals unique in that they are the only ones based on actual experience with atomic energy. The system of world control which we have urged on the nations and to which we stand ready to commit our own vast installations is no more rigorous than our self-imposed system of domestic control.

This is the first of a series of Atlantic Reports on Atomic Energy. The next will appear in the November issue.