The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Atomic Energy

TEN years ago, when the Axis bully-boys — German, Italian, Japanese—were throwing their weight around and thousands of men were in training to die on the beachheads to stop them, a crucial decision was taken by representatives of the free world. It was the decision to divert men and material from the sure and known to an untried gamble, the decision to construct an atomic bomb.

Circumstances involving geography, resources, and industrial potential dictaled that the work should be done in the United States. It was to require two billions of the United States taxpayers’ dollars—a staggering sum even in time of war. The decision was shrouded in secrecy such as no democratic government had ever before imposed on the people it represented. That secrecy was a logical concomitant of hot shooting war.

Early this year, in contrast, President Truman’s directive to the Atomic Energy Commission — that it “continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or superbomb"— was accompanied and followed by fanfares of publicity. Rumors and prognostications by columnists, portentous essays on Congressional pressure, ominous interviews with scientists and near-scientists, all saying in essence “It must be done,”had preceded the terse statement from the While House. The statement itself was reported in the accents of doom. Very plainly the news of the action was and is a weapon in the cold war.

The logical awful progression

From the point of view of nuclear physics, to continue work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bomb, is merely a logical progression from earlier knowledge which for convenience may be dated as beginning with Einstein’s formulation of the convertibility of matter and energy.

It is five years since Professor Hans A. Bethe told the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy that “the process of atomic fission has so far been observed only with the very heaviest atomic nuclei,” but that with very light nuclei “we can get an energy release by building nuclei up rather than splitting them.” This process, he said, “is believed to be the source of the energy in the sun and in the stars. . . . It is not impossible that some day in the future we shall be able to release nuclear energy by reactions similar to those taking place in the stars.”

That this sort of natural sequence in the development of atomic knowledge has been going steadily forward was implicit in the seventh semiannual report of the Atomic Energy Commission, issued on the day of the President’s statement and overshadowed by it. The report announced great increase in efficiency and reductions in the cost of producing conventional atomic bombs. Although it contained no specific discussion of the more advanced type of bomb, the report indicated progress in experimentation with the lighter elements, including beryllium, lithium, hydrogen, and helium, and discussed programs involving the bombardment of deuterons (nuclei of the hydrogen isotope deuterium of mass 2) with tritons (nuclei of the hydrogen isotope tritium of mass 3).

Special significance attaches to this work, for theoretically a bomb utilizing tritons would be the most powerful explosive yet envisioned. Work with lithium is likewise important; bombardment of lithium with high-energy protons results in the formation of tritium and a light form of helium.

the report seems to support the inference that the White House statement meant what it said — “to continue . . . work on all forms of atomic weapons” — and the inference that work looking toward any super-bomb is still in the long and arduous stage of fundamental research.

The creation of an explosive possibly a thousand times more powerful than the one that devastated Hiroshima is of awful import, made all the more repugnant by the apparent probability that the physical reaction involved, unlike the chain-reaction fission of uranium, cannot be turned to any controlled, useful, peaceful purpose.

How much does Russia Know ?

Americans were shocked by the arrest at Harwell, England, center of British atomic research, of the German-born British-naturalized physicist Klaus Fuchs, and his arraignment on charges that he gave away information on atomic energy which would be useful to an enemy.

During his work as a member of a team of British physicists at Los Alamos from 1943 to 1946, it developed, Fuchs had access, in the words of the Atomic Energy Commission, to “a wide area of the most vital weapons information.” This appeared to include not only information on the assembly of fission bombs utilizing uranium or plutonium but also, according to Senator Brian McMahon, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, information concerning thermonuclear weapons such as the hydrogen bomb.

Knowledge of Dr. Fuchs’s betrayal of his trust is insurance against the temptation to build up anew the delusion of an atomic weapon monopoly which the Russian explosion of last September upset. It might even cut down to size some of the effusive pronouncements aboul the alleged magic of American “ know-how ” which have in the past contributed to a Maginot Line complex in much American thinking.

For one thing, to go from the paperand-pencil, or fundamental research, stages of the uranium bomb to an actual weapon was the work of some four or five years under the forced draft of hot shooting war. The superbomb today is presumably still in the stage of fundamental research. Granted that techniques have advanced and that our present greater general knowledge can be counted on to supply under the conditions of cold war a valuable acceleration, there still is in prospect a fairly lengthy period before the test explosion of a hydrogen — or triton — bomb can be announced.

As for the comfortable tendency to rely on “know-how,” the Fuchs affair raises reasonable questions. It will be some time before we know how much, if any, essential knowledge has been transmitted.

Meantime, it will not do to underrate the Russians. Whether because of innate ability or because of superior espionage, they have already demonstrated the capacity to beat estimated deadlines.

The Fuchs affair is a basis for further queries. If it is said that the British were lax in employing on vital secret work in 1942 a physicist who had been interned in 1940 as an enemy alien, it may also be argued that the Manhattan District was lax in accepting British certification of the physicist and making no independent investigation of him. It will be asked also whether superior ability as a scientist is the one overriding qualification necessary.

The arrest of Fuchs, coming after the conviction of the Briton Alan Nunn May and his imprisonment for ten years for divulging secret atomic information, cannot help slowing down negotiations for greater exchange of atomic information among the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Conant calls for agreement

Extremely difficult questions of evaluation are involved at every step in the atomic energy program, whether the immediate matter is the clearance of an individual scientist or the determination to move on from plutonium to hydrogen bombs. The White House announcement presumably was preceded by affirmative answers to the questions whether the physical problems posed by the superbomb can be overcome, whether the diversion of skill and materials to that bomb from other projects is justified, whether as a military weapon such a bomb will pay off.

At Rochester, New York, James B. Conant, President of Harvard, a day or two before President Truman’s announcement, called for reviewing boards of expert laymen to settle technical disputes among scientists and engineers on scientific matters vital to the common defense. His plea took on greater significance when, after the President’s announcement had been made, there were still rumors and rumblings of incomplete agreement about it.

Pike succeeds Lilienthal

President Truman has appointed Sumner T. Pike Acting Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. With the departure in early April of Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, Mr. Pike is the last of the original group of Commissioners. Henry D. Smyth, Princeton University physicist noted as author of the “Smyth Report,” succeeded Robert F. Bachor as scientist member of the Commission. Gordon Dean, onetime law partner of Senator Brien McMahon, took over the so-called “public member" commissionersh ip originally held by W. W. Waymack, Iowa newspaper editor.

Mr. Pike, as a long-time public servant, is fully familiar with governmental administration. He is by his close association with the whole history of the enterprise and his service the most experienced immediate possible successor to Mr. Lilienthal.

His experience will be highly useful in the months ahead, dune 30 will see the terms of all present Commissioners expire together. Before the critical date when a new set of nominations must be presented, searching discussions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1940 may be expected.

The preamble of the Act points out that atomic energy “is a field in which unknown factors are involved. Therefore any legislation will necessarily be subject to revision from time to time.” Not only has the basic assumption of monopoly underlying the law been radically altered since 1946, but also the administrative machinery created by the Act may now be inadequate.

One source of doubt more frequently expressed in late months is the possibility of top-heaviness in the central organization of the atomic enterprise, an enterprise now more heavily loaded than before. This is another way of asking whether, in the effort to secure double safeguards, the legislation of 1946 may have created an organization so hedged with checks and balances as to be unwieldy, and so complexly systematized as to diffuse rather than to focus responsibility, and to block rather than to channel the flow of authority essential to swift and efficient operation.

The Act established an Atomic Energy Commission of five full-time members. This was and is a safety device, of course, but may by now have become outdated. Whether it has or not, the fact that the chairman is but primus inter pares — a presiding officer only—and that therefore there must be a fivefold focus for responsibility and authority, is disturbing to some critics.

Arguing that though the tasks of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of State are different, they are not so different that five Secretaries of Atomic Energy are required as against one Secretary of State, these critics would set up a single administrator who would have a part-time commission responsible to him. Mr. Lilienthal is said to favor this plan, but there is doubt that the White House agrees.

How many watchdogs?

The “watchdog” idea, under which Congress sets up means of keeping a supervisory eye on the actions of executive agencies, is an accepted concept in the United States. Hence the creation of the largest of the three statutory committees established by the Act —the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy — was logical enough when the Act was being framed.

But with four years’experience, the function of the Joint Committee does not appear to be fully clear. The watchdog task is to no small extent performed by the appropriations committees before whom the Commission must justify its budget. The Joint Committee’s job, according to the Act, is to “ make continuing studies of the activities “ of the Commission and of “problems relating to the development, use, and control of atomic energy.”One such, of course, was the Hickenlooper investigation. The Act specifies that the Commission shall keep the Joint Committee “fully informed" concerning its activities.

Similarly, the Commission is directed to keep another committee “ fully informed “ on all atomic energy matters having military implications. Thus a second watchdog group is provided, this being the Military Liaison Committee established by the statutes, comprising a civilian chairman and seven representatives of the military forces. Lastly a General Advisory Committee of nine members is appointed from civilian life by the President “to advise the Commission on scientific and technical matters.”

In a world where things move with increasing speed, and in a field where extremely complicated problems develop almost overnight, this machinery may not be geared to the kind of positive action likely to be necessary. If it is not so geared, we had better find out.