Carl Darton

You and Science

The First Seven Years of the Atomic Age

From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 22, 29 May 1950, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

There is a new version of “butter or guns.” Business Week of May 8 says: Hydrogen Hurts.

You haven’t heard much lately about the peacetime applications of atomic energy and there is a reason why. The research-laboratory facilities which were set aside for nuclear power-plant development have been given to higher priority work – the hydrogen bomb project.

The Atomic Energy Commission recently announced that the atomic power plant the General Electric Company had been planning to start building this spring is “temporarily deferred.! The design work is not far enough along (having been held up by the use of Knolls Laboratory facilities for higher priority bomb work) and in the future Knolls will be needed to meet “the demands of the expanded atomic energy production program.”

This reactor, under design for several years at the GE lab, was to have been the nearest approach to an atomic-fueled commercial power plant operating at customary power plant temperatures and was to have given an answer to the controversial economic aspects of the feasibility of using nuclear fission.

The Atomic Age opened in deepest secrecy on December 2, 1942, when the first nuclear chain reaction occurred at the University of Chicago. From that day to this, the progress and, even more important, the lack of progress, in the development of peacetime applications of atomic energy has not been adequately publicized.

One-tenth of one ton of mass would, if completely transformed into energy (according to the Einstein equation) meet the energy requirements of the entire world – mechanical, light and heat – for one year. If uranium 235 furnished this energy by nuclear fission, 100 tons would be needed and if the energy were furnished by fusion of hydrogen atoms only 1.0 tons would be needed.

It’s a long step, however, from these theoretical considerations to actual realizations of atomic power. The applications of nuclear power which have been envisaged are of two distinct kinds: large-scale production of electricity and using fission products – radioisotopes.

To date no one has conceived a scheme for direct transformation of subatomic energy into electricity. Transformation is through the conventional medium of the heat engine (steam turbine). The atomic fuel, natural uranium ore, undergoes slow controlled disintegration and the energy of the nuclear discharged particles is changed in part into heat within the reactor. The heat must be transferred to a heat engine and converted to mechanical and then electrical energy.

A partial list of the many problems encountered includes: the difficulty of replenishing the fuel charge, the availability of the fuel, use of molten cadmium or lead for heat transfer at high temperature, and radoactive waste – a new aspect of industrial pollution.

While the problems are difficult they are not insurmountable and T.R. Hogness of the University of Chicago has predicted that the U.S. will have an atomic energy pilot plant of several hundred horsepower in five years and one or more of 100,000 horsepower within 20 years, probably using the “breeder” principle – a process which creates new fuel as the old fuel is disintegrated. Specialized atomic power developments have been reported under way for marine, air and submarine transportation.

Radioactive waste products are finding wide and diverse uses in industry: as substitutes for X-rays in taking photographs, for measuring film thicknesses, continuous measurements of fluid density in pipes, and in “tracer” techniques. The latter is being used to investigate the mysteries of vulcanization of rubber, source of sulphur in steel, and wear of piston rings and floor surfaces.

In the field of medicine these “tracer” techniques are also being used. Radioactive drugs and hormones injected in minute quantities into the blood stream can be traced through the body with Geiger counters to study the functions of life. In uses similar to X-rays, these radioactive substances have the advantages of being placed where needed.

For example bone marrow, which is subject to a disease called polycythemia, is also known to use phosporus. Thus radioactive phosphorus injected into the blood finds its way to the bone marrow, where the radioactivity alleviates the overactive condition. Similar cures have been effective for cancer and lukemia and radioactive iodine is used to treat hyperthyroidism.

The use of these bomb by-products will be expanded as new techniques and personnel become available, for the supply is superabundant. It is estimated that the atomic pile at Harwell, England, furnishes enough radioisotopes for all of Europe but produces only enough fissionable material for part of an atomic bomb per year.

At the same time, it would seem, the public here is being propagandized against peacetime applications of atomic energy. Frauds like “atomic shin plasters” and “U-235 drinking water,” deliberate overestimates of atomic power costs, exaggeration of technical difficulties, scare stories of radioactive contamination, and now the shelving of peacetime research for bomb work tend to dissolve those Atomic Age dreams of a few short years ago. We are being given guns instead of butter, and bombs – not atomic power.