Atomic Energy

on the World Today

NOT only in the United States but in more than a score of other nations, the by-products of the fission of the uranium atom are finding wide application in basic science, in medicine, in industry, and in agriculture. The United States Atomic Energy Commission now offers in its catalogue and price list — like so many auto accessories — more than a hundred radioisotopes.

As a specific example of the production of radioisotopes (atoms of elements made artificially radioactive) that is possible today, the nuclear reactor at the Commission’s installation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, can in a few weeks produce more than 200 milicuries of Carbon 14. This is a carbon atom which does not occur in nature, and which is chemically identical with natural carbon atoms bul differs from them by a greater atomic weight and by the emission of radiation. It is a “tagged atom, whose presence in the starch of a potalo, the steel of a locomotive wheel, or the tissue of human liver is readily detected.

At an operating cost of roughly $10,000, the Oak Ridge pile has in a short time supplied millions of times more of this radioisotope than was previously available. Since the life processes — the photosynthesis whereby green plants use energy from ihe sun to form the foodstuffs on which all other life depends, and the metabolism whereby foodstuffs are made to give energy to man — center in the carbon atom, the availability of lagged carbon atoms to investigators is of great significance.

The Carbon 14 story is only one of many in the record. During the first two years of the Commission’s isotope program, 3136 shipments of radioisotopes were sent to investigators in the United Stales alone. Moreover, there were 362 shipments of stable isotopes— the rare individualized atoms occurring in nature but distinguished from their more numerous brothers by differences in atomic weight. In addition, nearly 200 shipments of radioisotopes were made to investigators in qualifying nations outside the United States.

These figures should be set against the fact that a scant five years ago these tools of research were so few, so costly, and so difficult of access as to be comparable to radium itself.

The shipments of radioisotopes to investigators in the United States have been employed in more than a thousand research undertakings. Forty per cent are used in medical research and therapy, particularly the study of cancer. Industrial research— studies of plastics, rubber and steel technology, and metallurgy - and agricultural research — fundamental investigations of animal metabolism as well as of fertilizers — utilize another large share of the total.

The catalogue from which investigators order the radioisotopes is a fascinating document. Properly qualified, one may select such items as Chlorine 36 or Technetium 99, with a half-life of one million years, or Samarium 155 or Tellurium 131, half-life twenty-five minutes. It should he stressed, however, that this is no simple mail-order transaction in which any casual bargain-hunter may participate. Radioisotopes are potentially very dangerous affairs, and they are made available to individuals only through institutions possessing the personnel and equipment necessary to assure that they will be handled usefully and safely.

Shortage of atomic scientists

The principal limit on scientific and medical work with radioisolopes today is the drastically small number of people qualified to use them. Throughout the scientific world there is a severe shortage of such people, as might be expected in view of the fact that the radioisotopes, multiplying the researcher’s power of perception by as much as a million times, demand that he master new skills in order to use them effectively.

The Atomic Energy Commission is moving to overcome this shortage of qualified manpower at home. New research fellowships in the physical, biological, and agricultural sciences have been announced which bring to a total of 206 the numbei of graduate students at work during the present academic year in the Commission-financed educational program. At all three of the Commission’s national laboratories — Argonne in Chicago, Brookhaven on Long Island, and Oak Ridge—educational programs in nuclear physics are being pushed. Fifty-eight associated educational institutions are sharing in this work.

The hazard of abuse

But there is a sharp and hazardous countercurrent to all this progress. Chairman Lilienthal of the Commission, in an address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, put it in these direct terms: “It is the increasing unwillingness of specially qualified (and badly needed) scientists, engineers, and management experts to engage in work for the Government of the United States.”He declared this to be a threat to the success of the atomic energy enterprise.

Such an enterprise, said Mr. Lilienthal, must go ahead with greater and greater momentum “or it goes to pot"; it cannot stand still. Maintenance of our leadership depends on knowing more and more, know ing it fast, and knowing it lirsf, he explained. That demands the abilities of the most highly qualified people in the country. The risk of undeserved injury to a man’s good name, professional standing, and peace of mind has made public employment, “in a very real sense, a hazardous occupation.”

The effective answers to this problem are reassertion of basic confidence in the common sense of the American public and press, full development of reasonable procedures to detect the disloyal and untrustworthy few without pillorying the decent many, and faith that democracy is worth more than the price sometimes exacted of those who, entering government service, risk the hazard of abuse.

Loyalty and secuirity

The Commission’s course in dealing with questions of loyally and security Mr. Lilienlhal described as based on two premises. The first is recognition that in the present world situation “there are some people who just have no business in the atomic energy program.”The Commission investigates thoroughly its employees who have access to restricted data.

The second premise is the belief that security problems can be reasonably handled in a fashion which gives a considerable measure of protection to the individual and at the same time protects the national security. A person whose loyally, character, and associations have been questioned is given by the Commission the fullest possible statement concerning unfavorable information about him, and carelul provision is made for hearings and for appeal from adverse decisions. No procedure can give absolute assurance against unfair attack, Mr. Lilienthal believes. The assurance of fairness will rest on the basic good judgment and conscience of the American people. The risk that they may occasionally be slow to act is part of the price paid for t he benefits of a free society; and seen in perspective, it is not too high a price.

Atomic and the unions

Another phase of the problem is reflected in the recent action of the Commission in directing that recognition be withheld from two CIO affiliates: the United Public Workers of America, which the University of Chicago was instructed to continue to refrain from recognizing at the Argonne National Laboratory, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which the General Electric Company was directed not to recognize at the new Knolls II Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York.

In each case, the action was based on failure of the officers of the union to comply with the requirement of the Labor Management Relations Act that they file affidavits that they arc not members of the Communist Party or affiliated with it; and on information, much of which is of open public record, concerning alleged Communist affiliation or association of officers of the union.

The loyalty of individual members of the unions was not called in question in the Commission’s action. Such individuals, like the thousands ot other workers employed on restricted atomic energy work, are required to furnish detailed personal information including their affiliations, and are subject to investigation by the FBI and to determination by the Commission that their engaging in the work will not endanger the common defense and security.

Union officers, in the Commission’s view, should be as clear of suspicion as the individual members of their unions. The seriousness with which the situation is regarded may be gauged by placing these rigorously direct interventions in the perspective of the Commission’s bands-off position during the threatened strike at the Oak Ridge X-10 plant last spring.

Governor Dewoy on atomie energy

These and related considerations give useful background for appraisal of the remarks of Thomas E. Dewey in a campaign speech at Phoenix, Arizona. Governor Dewey declared his complete allegiance to the proposition that this country’s full control of atomic weapons should be assiduously maintained until other nations are prepared to act in good faith to establish effective means of international control.

He went on to say that “the genius that split the atom was not furnished by Government. The technological knowledge, skill and know-how which built the vast plants for the production of the atom bomb and which produced it were not furnished by Government, either. These triumphs were a triumph for our American system, our American way of life— for our belief in what man can do if he is free to tackle his job without fetters or fears and unhampered by the dead hand of political authority.” Headers familiar with the Smyth Report may conceivably differ with the Governor as to tthe hampering effect of the government’s allegedly “dead hand" between 1939 and 1945.

Developing his views on the relation of government 1o atomic energy, he pointed out that “today nearly every aspect of atomic work in our country is, by law, a Government monopoly.” So far as it is necessary to safeguard and develop the military uses of the secret, he said, the monopoly must be maintained.

“But with this precaution for our security,”he continued, “it is perfectly dear that atomic progress cannot continue to be left exclusively to the Government. I propose that we protect, this weapon of our defense with every means, and that we develop it further with every means. And then I propose that we go on from there and give American initiative and skill a chance to turn this power to productive and peaceful account.”

The firm hand of government

Objectively considered in the light of the record, this does not wash very well. Many of the data arc shaky, many of the innovations anticipated. The present government monopoly, in the words of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, has as a principal objective “strengthening free competition in private enterprise.” Of some 65,000 citizens working in the atomic energy enterprise, 5000 are employed by the government, 60,000 by industrial and other contractors. Of the latter, many are under normal collective bargaining procedures.

In the language of the “Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy” submitted to the Secretary of State in March, 1946, and of fundamental importance to this nation’s proposals for control placed before the United Nations, “the development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course interchangeable and interdependent.” The hand of Government must be at the ultimate controls of this undertaking. That it has been light, effective, yet firm when necessary, is clear from the record.