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Title: The hell bomb
Author: William L. Laurence
Release date: January 29, 2025 [eBook #75243]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Tim Lindell, Wayne State College and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELL BOMB ***
THE
HELL BOMB
BY
_William L. Laurence_
[Illustration: [Logo]]
1951 NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
[Illustration: THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF,
INC.]
_Copyright 1950 by The Curtis Publishing Co. Copyright 1950 by William
L. Laurence. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by
a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a
magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Limited._
FIRST AND SECOND PRINTINGS
BEFORE PUBLICATION
THIRD PRINTING, JANUARY 1951
To _FLORENCE_
FOREWORD
The material in this book falls into two categories: (1) a popular
version in terms understandable to the layman of technical data
published in scientific literature in this country and abroad, and
widely known among scientists everywhere; and (2) technical conclusions
reached by deduction based on these published facts and theory, for
which I assume the sole responsibility. In doing so, I wish to make it
emphatically clear that I have had no access to any classified
information on the current hydrogen-bomb program, and also that whatever
access I had to H-bomb information during my stay at Los Alamos in the
spring and summer of 1945 was strictly limited to the somewhat vague and
general discussions carried on there in 1945 and earlier.
I hereby take the opportunity to express my profound appreciation to Dr.
James G. Beckerley, Director of Classification, Atomic Energy
Commission, Washington, D. C., and to Mr. Corbin Allardice, Director,
Public Information Service, of the AEC’s New York Operations Office, for
their generous cooperation in clearing this manuscript for publication.
It must be strictly understood that any such clearance merely means that
the AEC has “no objection to publication” on the grounds of security. It
does not in any way vouch for the accuracy or correctness of the book’s
contents.
WILLIAM L. LAURENCE
_New York City
July 30, 1950_
CONTENTS
I The Truth about the Hydrogen Bomb 3
II The Real Secret of the Hydrogen Bomb 29
III Shall We Renounce the Use of the H-bomb? 57
IV Korea Cleared the Air 88
V A Primer of Atomic Energy 114
APPENDIX: The Hydrogen Bomb and International Control 149
A. _Significant Events in the History of International
Control of Atomic Weapons_ 151
B. _The International Control of Atomic Weapons: a Brief
History of Proposals and Negotiations_ 155
C. _The Atomic Impasse_ 168
D. _Possible Questions Regarding H-bombs and International
Control_ 171
INTRODUCTION
“Democracy Depends on an Informed Electorate”
“_It is most important in our democracy that our government be frank and
open with the citizens. In a democracy it is only possible to have good
government when the citizens are well informed. It is difficult enough
for them to become well informed when the information is easily
available. When that information is not available, it is impossible.
While there may be some cases in which the information which the citizen
needs, in order to make an intelligent judgment of national policy, must
be kept secret, so that military potential will not be jeopardized, the
present use of secrecy far exceeds this minimum limit. These are the
methods of an authoritarian government and should be vigorously opposed
in our democracy...._
“_The citizen must choose insofar as that is possible. Today, if he
tries to come to some conclusion about what should be done to increase
the national security, the citizen runs up against a high wall of
secrecy. He can, of course, take the easy solution and say that these
are questions which should be left to the upper echelons of the military
establishment to decide. But these questions are so important today,
that to leave them to the military men to decide is for the citizen
essentially to abrogate his basic responsibility. If, in time of peace,
questions on which the future of our country depends are left to any
small group, not representative of the people, to decide, we have gone a
long way toward authoritarian government._
“_The United States has grown to be a strong nation under a constitution
which wisely has laid great emphasis upon the importance of free and
open discussion. Urged by a large number of people who have fallen for
the fallacy that in secrecy there is security, and, I regret, encouraged
by many, including eminent scientists, to prophesy doom just around the
corner, we are dangerously close to abandoning those principles of free
speech and open discussion which have made our country great. The
democratic system depends on making intelligent decisions by the
electorate. Our democratic heritage can only be carried on if the
citizen has the information with which to make an intelligent
decision._”
(From a talk on the hydrogen bomb, March 27, 1950, at Town Hall, Los
Angeles, by PROFESSOR ROBERT F. BACHER, head of the Physics
Department, California Institute of Technology. Professor Bacher
served as the first scientific member of the Atomic Energy Commission
and was one of the major architects of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos,
New Mexico.)
THE HELL BOMB
I
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HYDROGEN BOMB
I first heard about the hydrogen bomb in the spring of 1945 in Los
Alamos, New Mexico, where our scientists were putting the finishing
touches on the model-T uranium, or plutonium, fission bomb. I learned to
my astonishment that, in addition to this work, they were already
considering preliminary designs for a hydrogen-fusion bomb, which in
their lighter moments they called the “Superduper” or just the “Super.”
I can still remember my shock and incredulity when I first heard about
it from one of the scientists assigned to me by Dr. J. Robert
Oppenheimer as guides in the Dantesque world that was Los Alamos, where
the very atmosphere gave one the sense of being in the presence of the
supernatural. It seemed so fantastic to talk of a superatomic bomb even
before the uranium, or the plutonium, bomb had been completed and
tested—in fact, even before anybody knew that it would work at all—that
I was inclined at first to disbelieve it. Could anything be more
powerful, I found myself thinking, than a weapon that, on paper at
least, promised to release an explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT? It
was a screwball world, this world of Los Alamos, I kept saying to
myself, and this was just a screwball notion of my younger scientific
mentors.
So at the first opportunity I put the question to Professor Hans A.
Bethe, of Cornell University, one of the world’s top atomic scientists,
who headed the elite circle of theoretical physicists at Los Alamos. Dr.
Bethe, I knew, was the outstanding authority in the world qualified to
talk about the subject, since he was the very man who first succeeded in
explaining how the fusion of hydrogen in the sun is the source of energy
that will make it possible for life to continue on earth for billions of
years.
“Is it true about the superbomb?” I asked him. “Will it really be as
much as fifty times as powerful as the uranium or plutonium bomb?”
I shall never forget the impact on me of his quiet answer as he looked
away toward the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountain range, their
peaks turning blood-red in the New Mexico twilight. “Yes,” he said, “it
could be made to equal a million tons of TNT.” Then, after a pause:
“Even more than a million.”
The tops of the mountains seemed to catch fire as he spoke.
Long before it was discovered that vast amounts of energy could be
liberated by the fission (splitting) of the nuclei of a twin of the
heaviest element in nature—namely, uranium of atomic mass 235 (235 times
the mass of the hydrogen atom, lightest of all the elements)—scientists
had known that truly staggering amounts of energy would be released if
one could fuse together four atoms of hydrogen, the first element on the
atomic table, into one atom of helium, element number two on that table,
which weighs about four times as much as hydrogen. In December
1938—three weeks before the discovery of uranium fission was announced
in Germany—Dr. Bethe had published his famous hypothesis about the
fusion of four hydrogen atoms in the sun to form helium. This provided
the first satisfactory explanation of the mechanism that enables the sun
to radiate away in space every second a quantity of light and heat
equivalent to the energy content of nearly fifteen quadrillion tons of
coal. And while Dr. Bethe was the first to work out the fine details of
the process, scientists had been speculating for more than twenty years
on the likelihood of hydrogen fusion in the sun as source of the sun’s
eternal radiance.
American audiences first heard about hydrogen as the solar fuel in a
lecture, on March 10, 1922, at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, by
Professor Francis William Aston, famous British Nobel-Prize-winning
chemist, who even at that early date warned mankind against what he
called “tinkering with the angry atoms.” His words on that occasion have
a strange prophetic ring, though most of what he said is now known to be
wrong. “Should the research worker of the future discover some means of
releasing this energy [from hydrogen] in a form which could be
employed,” he predicted, “the human race will have at its command powers
beyond the dreams of scientific fiction, but the remote possibility must
always be considered that the energy, once liberated, will be completely
uncontrollable and by its violence detonate a neighboring substance. If
this happens, all of the hydrogen on earth might be transformed [into
helium] at once, and this most successful experiment might be published
to the rest of the universe in the form of a new star of extraordinary
brilliance, as the earth blew up in one vast explosion.”
By 1945 we had learned that many things were wrong in Professor Aston’s
prophecy. It had been definitely established, for example, that it would
be impossible to “transform all the hydrogen on earth at once,” no
matter how many superduper hydrogen bombs were to be exploded. In fact,
we had learned that, under conditions as they exist on earth, we could
never use common hydrogen, the element that makes up one ninth by weight
of all water, either in a superduper bomb or as an atomic fuel for
power. On the other hand, ten years after Dr. Aston’s lecture a new type
of hydrogen was discovered to exist in nature. It was found to
constitute one five-thousandth part of the earth’s waters, including the
water in the tissues of plants and animals. It was shown to have an
atomic weight of two—double the weight of common hydrogen—and was named
deuterium. The nucleus, or center, of the deuterium atom was named the
deuteron, to distinguish it from the nucleus of common hydrogen, known
as the proton. Deuterium also became popularly known as “heavy
hydrogen.” Water containing two deuterium atoms in place of the two
atoms of light hydrogen became known as “heavy water.”
The most startling fact learned about deuterium soon after its discovery
in 1932 was that it offered potentialities as an atomic fuel, or an
explosive, of tremendous energy, provided one condition could be met.
This condition was a “match” to light it with. And here was the catch.
The flame of this match, it was found, would have to have a temperature
of the order of 50,000,000 degrees centigrade, two and a half times the
temperature in the interior of the sun.
Oddly enough, the discovery of the principle that made the atomic bomb
possible also brought with it the promise that a “deuterium fire” might,
after all, be lighted on earth. Early studies had revealed that the
explosion of an atomic bomb, if it lived up to expectations, would
generate a central temperature of about 50,000,000 degrees centigrade.
Here, at last, was the promise of realization of the impossible—the
50,000,000 degree match.
The men of Los Alamos thus knew that if the atomic bomb they were just
completing for its first test worked as they hoped it would, it could be
used as the match to light the deuterium fire. They could build a
superduper bomb of a thousand times the power of the atomic bomb by
incorporating deuterium in the A-bomb, the explosion of which would act
as the trigger for the superexplosion. And they also knew that the
deuterium bomb held such additional potentialities of terror, beyond its
vastly greater blasting and burning power, that the step from the duper
to the super would be just as great as the step from TNT to the duper.
The hydrogen bomb, H-bomb, or hell bomb, as the fusion bomb had become
popularly known, thus became a reality in the flash of the explosion of
the first atomic bomb at 5:30 of the morning of July 16, 1945, on the
New Mexico desert. As the men of Los Alamos, of whom I was at that time
a privileged member, watched the supramundane light and the apocalyptic
mushroom-topped mountain of nuclear fire rising to a height of more than
eight miles through the clouds, they did not have to wait until they
checked with their measuring instruments to know that a match sparking a
flame of about 50,000,000 degrees centigrade had been lighted on earth
for the first time. The size of the fire mountain and the
end-of-the-world-like thunder that reverberated all around, told the
tale better than any puny man-made instruments.
And there in our midst, as we learned only recently, stood a Judas,
Klaus Fuchs, a name that “will live in infamy” along with that of other
archtraitors of history. By the greatest of ironies, there he was, this
spy, standing right in the center of what we believed at the time to be
the world’s greatest secret, waiting at that very moment to tell the
Russians of our success and how we achieved it. As he confessed five
years later, he betrayed to them the most intimate details not only
about the A-bomb but about the H-bomb as well—details that he learned as
a member of the innermost of inner circles. For, alas, he was a trusted
member of the theoretical division, the sanctum sanctorum of Los Alamos.
This select group of scientists, behind doubly and triply locked doors,
discussed in whispers their ideas about the superduper.
His associates at Los Alamos, who should know, sadly admit that Fuchs
made it possible for Russia to develop her A-bomb at least a year ahead
of time. It is my own conviction that the information he gave the
Russians made it possible for their scientists to attain their goal at
least three, and possibly as much as ten, years sooner than they could
have done it on their own. Yet, though Fuchs confessed everything he
told the Russians, the content of his confession is still kept a top
secret from the American people, who sadly need information on one of
the greatest problems facing mankind. The reason given is that we cannot
actually be sure that Fuchs told the Russians all that he says he did,
and, if published, his confession might, by his tricky design, give the
Russians additional information. Of course, anything is possible for a
warped mind such as that of Fuchs. Nevertheless, it seems highly
implausible that this traitor, who went to the Russians voluntarily,
should withhold any vital information from them for as long as five
years. The best evidence that he didn’t is the Russian A-bomb.
Yet some good comes even of the greatest evil. All the circumstantial
evidence points to the fact that during the five-year period following
the end of the war our work on the hydrogen bomb had stopped completely.
The A-bomb was the mightiest weapon in the world, we seem to have
reasoned, and it would take Russia many years before she would get an
A-bomb of her own. Why spend great efforts on a superbomb?
The shock when Russia exploded her first A-bomb much sooner than we
expected, topped by the second shock that Fuchs had handed Moscow all
our major secrets on a platter—including, as must be surmised, those of
the H-bomb—awakened us to the facts of life. It is no accident that
President Truman’s official announcement of the order to build “the
so-called hydrogen bomb or superbomb” came within three days of the
announcement of Fuchs’s arrest and confession. The President gave his
order with full knowledge of Fuchs’s confession, which made it evident
that the Russians were already at work on the hydrogen bomb and had
probably been working on it uninterruptedly since 1945. The tragic
prospect is that instead of the Russians catching up with us, it is we
who may have to catch up with them.
Five years after the first announcement of the explosion of the A-bomb
over Hiroshima, even the most intelligent Americans still have only the
vaguest idea about the facts. Yet these facts are within the
understanding of the average man. If we keep the earlier analogy of the
match in mind, it becomes simple to understand the principles underlying
both the A-bomb, now more correctly identified as the “fission bomb,”
and the hydrogen bomb, more properly described as the “fusion bomb.”
Our principal fuel is coal, which, as everyone knows, is “bottled
sunshine,” stored up in plants that grew about two hundred million years
ago. When we apply the small amount of heat energy from a match, the
bottled energy is released in the form of light and heat, which we can
use in a great variety of ways. The point here is that it requires only
the application of a very small amount of energy from a match to release
a very large amount of energy that has been stored for millions of years
in the ancient plants we know as coal.
Now, during the past half century we discovered that the nuclei, or
centers, of the smallest units of which the ninety-odd elements of the
material universe are made up—units we know as atoms—had stored up
within them since the beginning of creation amounts of energy millions
of times greater than is stored up by the sun in coal. But we had no
match with which to start an atomic fire burning.
Then, in January 1939, came the world-shaking discovery of the
phenomenon known as uranium fission. In simple language, we had found a
proper “match” for lighting a fire with a twin of uranium, the
ninety-second, and last, natural element. This twin is a rare form of
uranium known as uranium 235—the figure signifying that it is 235 times
heavier than common hydrogen. Doubly phenomenal, the discovery of
uranium fission meant that to light the atomic fire, with the release of
stored-up energy three million times greater than that of coal and
twenty million times that of TNT (on an equal-weight basis) would
require no match at all. When proper conditions are met, the atomic fire
would be lighted automatically by spontaneous combustion.
What are these proper conditions? In the presence of certain chemical
agencies, spontaneous combustion will take place when an easily burning
substance, such as sawdust, for example, accumulates heat until it
reaches the kindling temperature at which it ignites. The chemical
agencies here are the equivalent of a match.
The requirement to start the spontaneous combustion of uranium 235, and
also of two man-made elements named plutonium and uranium 233 (all three
known as fissionable materials or nuclear fuels), is just as simple. In
this operation you do not need a critical temperature, but what is known
as a critical mass. This simply means that spontaneous combustion of any
one of the three atomic fuels takes place as soon as you assemble a lump
of a certain weight. The actual critical mass is a top secret. But the
noted British physicist, Dr. M. L. E. Oliphant, of radar fame, published
in 1946 his own estimate, which places its weight between ten and thirty
kilograms. If so, this would mean that a lump of uranium 235 (U-235),
plutonium, or U-233, weighing ten or thirty kilograms, as the case may
be, would explode automatically by spontaneous combustion and release an
explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT for each kilogram undergoing
complete combustion. In the conventional A-bomb a critical mass is
assembled in the last split second by a timing mechanism that brings
together, let us say, one tenth and nine tenths of a critical mass. The
spontaneous combustion that followed such a consummation on August 6 and
9, 1945 destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Thus, if we substitute the familiar phrase “spontaneous combustion” for
the less familiar word “fission,” we get a clear understanding of what
is known in scientific jargon as the “fission process,” a
“self-multiplying chain reaction with neutrons,” and similar technical
mumbo-jumbo. These terms simply mean the lighting of an atomic fire and
the release of great amounts of the energy stored in the nuclei of U-235
since the beginning of the universe. The two so-called man-made elements
are not really created. They are merely transformed out of two natural
heavy elements in such a way that their stored energy is liberated by
the process of spontaneous combustion.
Why, one may ask, does not spontaneous combustion of U-235 take place in
nature? Why, indeed, has not all the U-235 in nature caught fire
automatically long ago? To this also there is a simple answer. Just as
in the spontaneous combustion of sawdust the material must be dry enough
to burn, so must the U-235. Only in place of the word “dry” we must use
the word “concentrated.” The U-235 found in nature is very much diluted
with another element that makes it “wet.” It therefore must be separated
first, by a very laborious and costly process, from the nonfissionable,
or “wetting,” element. Even then it won’t catch fire, and could not be
made to burn by any means, until the amount separated (“dried”) reaches
the critical mass. When these two conditions—conditions that do not
exist in nature—are met, the U-235 catches fire just as sawdust does
when it reaches the critical temperature.
The fact that as soon as a critical mass is assembled the three
elemental atomic fuels burst into flame automatically thus puts a
definite limit to the amount of material that can be used in the
conventional A-bomb. The best you can do is to incorporate into a bomb
two fragments, let us say, of nine tenths of a critical mass each. To
enclose more than two such fragments would present difficulties that
appear impossible to overcome. It is this limitation of size, an
insurmountable roadblock put there by mother nature, that makes the
basic difference between the A-bomb and the H-bomb.
For, as we have already seen, to light an atomic fire with deuterium it
is necessary to strike a match generating a flame with a temperature of
about 50,000,000 degrees centigrade. As long as no such match is
applied, no fire can start. It thus becomes obvious that deuterium is
not limited by nature to a critical mass. A quantity of deuterium a
thousand times the amount of the U-235, and hence a thousand times more
powerful, can therefore be incorporated in an ordinary A-bomb, where it
would remain quiescent until the A-bomb match is struck. Weight for
weight, deuterium has only a little more energy content than U-235, so
that a bomb incorporating a 1,000 kilograms (one ton) of deuterium would
thus have an energy of 20,000,000 tons of TNT.
Here must be mentioned another form of hydrogen, named tritium. It has
long ago disappeared from nature but it is now being re-created in
ponderable amounts in our atomic furnaces. Tritium, the nucleus of which
is known as a triton, weighs three times as much as the lightest form of
hydrogen. It has an energy content nearly twice that of deuterium. But
it is very difficult to make and is extremely expensive. Its cost per
kilogram at present AEC prices is close to a billion dollars, as
compared with no more than $4,500 for a kilogram of deuterium. A
combination of deuterons and tritons would release the greatest energy
of all, 3.5 times the energy of deuterons alone. It would reduce the
amount of tritons required to half the volume and three fifths of the
weight required in a pure triton bomb, thus making the cost considerably
lower.
But why bother with such fantastically costly tritons when we can get
all the deuterium we want at no more than $4,500 a kilogram, while we
can make up the difference in energy by merely incorporating two to
three and a half times as much deuterium? Here we are dealing with what
is probably the most ticklish question in the design of the H-bomb.
To light a fire successfully, it is not enough merely to have a match.
The match must burn for a time long enough for its flame to act. If you
try to light a cigarette in a strong wind, the wind may blow out your
match so fast that your cigarette will not light. The same question
presents itself here, but on a much greater scale. The match for
lighting deuterium—namely, the A-bomb—burns only for about a hundred
billionths of a second. Is this time long enough to light the
“cigarette” with this one and only “match”?
It is known that the time is much too slow for lighting deuterium in its
gaseous form. But it is also known that the inflammability is much
faster when the gas is compressed to its liquid form, at which its
density is 790 times greater. At this density it would take only seven
liters (about 7.4 quarts) per one kilogram (2.2 pounds), as compared
with 5,555 liters for gaseous deuterium. And it catches fire in a much
shorter time.
Is this time long enough? On the answer to this question will depend
whether the hydrogen bomb will consist of deuterium alone or of
deuterium and tritium, for it is known that the deuteron-triton
combination catches fire much faster than deuterons or tritons alone.
We were already working with tritium in Los Alamos as far back as 1945.
I remember the time when Dr. Oppenheimer, wartime scientific director of
Los Alamos, went to a large safe and brought out a small vial of a clear
liquid that looked like water. It was the first highly diluted minute
sample of superheavy water, composed of tritium and oxygen, ever to
exist in the world, or anywhere in the universe, for that matter. We
both looked at it in silent, rapt admiration. Though we did not speak,
each of us knew what the other was thinking. Here was something, our
thoughts ran, that existed on earth in gaseous form some two billion
years ago, long before there were any waters or any forms of life. Here
was something with the power to return the earth to its lifeless state
of two billion years ago.
The question of what type of hydrogen is to be used in the H-bomb
therefore hangs on the question of which one of the possible
combinations will catch fire by the light of a match that is blown out
after an interval of about a hundred billionths of a second. On the
answer to this question will also depend the time it will take us to
complete the H-bomb and its cost. To make a bomb of a thousand times the
power of the A-bomb would require a 1,000 kilograms of deuterium at a
cost of $4,500,000, or 171 kilograms of tritium and 114 kilograms of
deuterium at a total cost of more than $166,000,000,000 at current
prices, not counting the cost of the A-bomb trigger. Large-scale
production of tritium, however, will most certainly reduce its cost
enormously, possibly by a factor of ten thousand or more, while, as will
be indicated later, the amount of tritium, if required, may turn out to
be much smaller.
[Illustration: MAP BY DANIEL BROWNSTEIN]
We can thus see that if deuterium alone is found to be all that is
required to set off an H-bomb it will be cheap and relatively easy to
make in a short time—both for us and for Russia. Furthermore, such a
deuterium bomb would be practically limitless in size. One of a million
times the power of the Hiroshima bomb is possible, since deuterium can
be extracted in limitless amounts from plain water. On the other hand,
if sizable amounts of tritium are found necessary, the cost will be much
higher and it will take a considerably longer time, since the production
of tritium is very slow and costly. This, in turn, will place a definite
limit on the power of the H-bomb, since, unlike deuterium, the amounts
of tritium will necessarily always be limited. As will be shown later,
we are at present in a much more advantageous position to produce
tritium than is Russia, so that if tritium is found necessary, we have a
head start on her in H-bomb development.
The radius of destructiveness by the blast of a bomb with a thousand
times the energy of the A-bomb will be only ten times greater, since the
increase goes by the cube root of the energy. The radius of total
destruction by blast in Hiroshima was one mile. Therefore the radius of
a superbomb a thousand times more powerful will be ten miles, or a total
area of 314 square miles. A bomb a million times the power of the
Hiroshima bomb would require 1,000 tons of deuterium. Such a
super-superduper could be exploded at a distance from an abandoned,
innocent-looking tramp ship. It would have a radius of destruction by
blast of 100 miles and a destructive area of more than 30,000 square
miles. The time may come when we shall have to search every vessel
several hundred miles off shore. And the time may be nearer than we
think.
The radius over which the tremendous heat generated by a bomb of a
thousandfold the energy would produce fatal burns would be as far as
twenty miles from the center of the explosion. This radius increases as
the square root, instead of the cube root, of the power. The Hiroshima
bomb caused fatal burns at a radius of two thirds of a mile.
The effects of the radiations from a hydrogen bomb are so terrifying
that by describing them I run the risk of being branded a fearmonger.
Yet facts are facts, and they have been known to scientists for a long
time. It would be a disservice to the people if the facts were further
denied to them. We have already paid too high a price for a secrecy that
now turns out never to have been secret at all.
I can do no better than quote Albert Einstein. “The hydrogen bomb,” he
said, “appears on the public horizon as a probably attainable goal....
If successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere, and hence
annihilation of any life on earth, has been brought within the range of
technical possibilities.”
What Dr. Einstein meant by “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere, and
hence the annihilation of any life on earth,” was explained in realistic
detail by such eminent physicists as Dr. Bethe, Dr. Leo Szilard, Dr.
Edward Teller, and others. All of them may even now be engaged on work
on the hydrogen bomb.
Here is how “poisoning of the atmosphere” may result from the explosion
of a hydrogen bomb: Tremendous quantities of neutrons, which can enter
any substance in nature and make it radioactive, are liberated. In the
case of a deuterium bomb, one eighth of the mass used—125 grams per
kilogram—is liberated. In the case of a deuteron-tritium bomb, fully one
fifth of the mass—200 grams per kilogram—is released, while in a bomb
using pure tritium, fully one third of the mass—333 grams per
kilogram—is liberated as free neutrons. There are 600,000 billion
billion neutrons in each gram, each capable of producing a radioactive
atom in its environment. The neutron is one of the two building blocks
of the nuclei of all atoms.
These neutrons can be used to make any element radioactive, Professor
Szilard and his colleagues point out. It follows that the casing of the
bomb could be selected with a view to producing, after the neutrons
enter it, an especially powerful radioactive substance. Since each
artificially made, radioactive element gives out a specific type of
radiation and has a definite life span, after which it decays to one
half of its radioactivity, the designer of the bomb could rig it in such
a way that its explosion would spread into the air a tremendous cloud of
specially selected radioactive substances that would give off lethal
radiations for a definite period of time. In such a way a large area
could be made unfit for human or animal habitation for a definite period
of time, months or years.
Take, for example, the very common element cobalt. When bombarded with
neutrons, it turns into an intensely radioactive element, 320 times more
powerful than radium. Any given quantity of neutrons would produce sixty
times its weight in radioactive cobalt. If the bomb contains a ton of
deuterium, 250 pounds would come out as neutrons. On the assumption that
every neutron enters a cobalt atom, this would produce 7.5 tons of
radioactive cobalt. That quantity would give out as much radioactivity
as 2,400 tons of radium.
Now, this radioactive cobalt has a half-life of five years, meaning that
it loses half of its radioactive power at every five-year period. So
after a lapse of that period of time its radioactivity would be equal to
1,200 tons of radium, in ten years to 600 tons, and so on. If used as a
bomb-casing it would be pulverized and converted into a gigantic
radioactive cloud that would kill everything in the area it blankets.
Nor would it be confined to a particular area, since the winds would
take it thousands of miles, carrying death to distant places.
The radioactivity produced by the Bikini bombs was detected within one
week in the United States. In that short time the westerly winds swept
the radioactive air mass from Bikini, 4,150 miles away, to San
Francisco. When it reached our shores, the activity was weak and
completely harmless, but it was still detectable. That, by the way, was
how we learned that the Russians had exploded their first atomic bomb.
But, in the words of Professor Teller, one of the Los Alamos men who
made the preliminary studies on the hydrogen bomb, “if the activity
liberated at Bikini were multiplied by a factor of a hundred thousand or
a million, and if it were to be released off our Pacific Coast, the
whole of the United States would be endangered.” He added that “if such
a quantity of radioactivity should become available, an enemy could make
life hard or even impossible for us without delivering a single bomb
into our territory.”
One limitation to such an attack, Professor Teller points out, is the
boomerang effect of these gases on the attacker himself. The radioactive
gases would eventually drift over his own country, too. He adds,
however, that since these gases have different rates of decay—some
faster, some slower—the attacker is in a position to choose those
radioactive products best suited to his attack. “With the proper choice
he could ensure that his victim would be seriously damaged by them, and
that they would have decayed by the time they reached his own country.”
“It is not even impossible to imagine,” in the words of Professor
Teller, “that the effects of an atomic war fought with greatly perfected
weapons and pushed by utmost determination will endanger the survival of
man.... This specific possibility of destruction may help us realize
more clearly the probable consequences of an atomic war for our
civilization and the possible consequences for the whole human race.”
On this point Professor Szilard is much more specific. “Let us assume,”
he said at a University of Chicago Round Table, “that we make a
radioactive element which will live for five years and that we just let
it go into the air. During the following years it will gradually settle
out and cover the whole earth with dust. I have asked myself, ‘How many
neutrons or how much heavy hydrogen do we have to detonate to kill
everybody on earth by this particular method?’ I come up with about
fifty tons of neutrons as being plenty to kill everybody, which means
about 400 tons of heavy hydrogen” (deuterium).
Now, obviously Professor Szilard was stating the extreme case. He merely
called attention to the scientific fact that man now has at his
disposal, or soon will have, means that not only could wipe out all life
on earth, but could also make the earth itself unfit for life for many
generations to come, if not forever. Here we have indeed what is
probably the greatest example of irony in man’s history. The very
process in the sun that made life possible on earth, and is responsible
for its being maintained here, can now be used by man to wipe out that
very life and to ruin the earth for good.
It is inconceivable that any leaders of men today, or in the near
future, would resort to such an extreme measure. But the fact remains
that such a measure is possible. And it is by no means unthinkable that
a Hitler, faced with certain defeat, would not choose to die in a great
Götterdämmerung in which he would pull down the whole of humanity with
him to destruction. And who can be bold enough to guarantee that another
Hitler might not arise sometime, somewhere, possibly in a rejuvenated
Germany making another bid for world domination or total annihilation?
It is more likely, of course, that an attacker, particularly if he is
otherwise faced with certain defeat, might choose the less drastic
method outlined by Professor Teller, selecting for his weapon a
short-lived radioactive element that would have spent itself by the time
it reached his shores. If he is the sole possessor of the hydrogen bomb,
he may not even have to use it, a threat of its use being sufficient to
end the war on terms to his liking. In the face of such a threat, as
Professor Szilard pointed out, who would dare take the responsibility of
refusing?
These are the stark, unvarnished facts about the “so-called hydrogen
bomb.” They raise many questions to which the American people as a whole
will have to find the answer. It is possible, and the odds here are more
than even, that the very possession of the hydrogen bomb by both
ourselves and Russia will make war unthinkable, since neither side could
be the winner. This would be a near certainty if we had the answer to
Russia’s Trojan Horse method of taking over nations by first taking over
their governments, as was done in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
the Balkan countries. Suppose the Communists take over Italy, then
Germany, by the same method. What would we do then? The answer is, of
course, that if we wait until “then,” everything would be lost, no
matter what we did. It therefore becomes obvious that our very existence
may depend on what we do _here_ and _now_ to prevent such an
eventuality.
Now that the hydrogen bomb has come out into the open after five years
as a super-top secret, the authorities, and particularly the Atomic
Energy Commission, may be called upon to answer some embarrassing
questions. “Why,” we may ask, “was the work on the hydrogen bomb
apparently dropped altogether during the past five years?” According to
Professor Bethe, it would take about three years to develop it. This
means that, had we continued working on it in 1945 and thereafter, we
would have had it as far back as 1948. We have thus lost five precious
years, our loss being Russia’s gain.
Some scientists and others contend that, because of our great harbor and
industrial cities, the hydrogen bomb would be a greater threat to us
than to the Soviet, because most Russian cities are much smaller than
ours, while her industries are much more dispersed. There may be some
truth in this. But on the other hand there are some great advantages on
our side. With a strong Navy and good submarine-detecting devices we may
have control of the seas and be able to prevent the delivery of the
hydrogen bomb by ship or submarine. With a strong Air Force and radar
system we could prevent the delivery of hydrogen bombs from the air.
By far the most important advantage the possession of the hydrogen bomb
would give us against Russia is its possible use as a tactical weapon
against huge land armies. Since they can devastate such large areas, one
or two hydrogen bombs, depending on their size, could wipe out entire
armies on the march, even before they succeeded in crossing the border
of an intended victim. The H-bomb would thus counterbalance, if not
completely nullify, the one great advantage Russia possesses—huge land
armies capable of overrunning western Europe. The bomb might thus serve
as the final deterrent to any temptation the Kremlin’s rulers may have
to invade the Atlantic Pact countries.
Yet no matter how one looks at it, the advent of the H-bomb constitutes
the greatest threat to the survival of the human race since the Black
Death.
One is reminded of a dinner conversation in Paris in 1869, recorded in
the _Journal_ of the Goncourt brothers. Some of the famous savants of
the day were crystal-gazing into the scientific future a hundred years
away. The great chemist Pierre Berthelot predicted that by 1969 “man
would know of what the atom is constituted and would be able, at will,
to moderate, extinguish, and light up the sun as if it were a gas lamp.”
(This prophecy has almost come true.) Claude Bernard, the greatest
physiologist of the day, saw a future in which “man would be so
completely the master of organic law that he would create life
[artificially] in competition with God.”
To which the Goncourt brothers added the postscript: “To all of this we
raised no objection. But we have the feeling that when this time comes
to science, God with His white beard will come down to earth, swinging a
bunch of keys, and will say to humanity, the way they say at five
o’clock at the salon: ‘Closing time, gentlemen!’”
II
THE REAL SECRET OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB
Can the hydrogen bomb actually be made? If so, how soon? How much will
it cost in money and vital materials? Above all, will it, if made, add
enough to our security to make the effort worth while?
As was pointed out by Prof. Robert F. Bacher of the California Institute
of Technology, one of the chief architects of the wartime atomic bomb
and the first scientific member of the Atomic Energy Commission, “since
the President has directed the AEC to continue with the development [‘of
the so-called hydrogen, or super bomb’] we can assume that this
development is regarded as both possible and feasible.” Many eminent
physicists believe that it can be made, and the use by the President of
the word “continue” suggests that this belief is based on more than
theory. No less an authority than Albert Einstein has stated publicly
that he regards the H-bomb as “a probably attainable goal.”
On the other hand, there are scientists of high eminence, such as Dr.
Robert A. Millikan, our oldest living Nobel-Prize-winner in physics, who
doubt whether the H-bomb can be made at all. And there are also those
who express the view that, while it probably could be made, it would not
offer advantages great enough, if any, to justify the cost in vital
strategic materials necessary for our security.
Fortunately, facts mostly buried in technical literature make it
possible for us to go behind the scientific curtain and look intimately
at the reasons for these differences in opinion. More important still,
these facts not only provide us with a clearer picture of the nature of
the problem but also enable us to make some reasonable deductions or
speculations. The scientists directly involved do not feel free to
discuss these matters openly, not because they would be violating
security, but because of the jittery atmosphere that acts as a damper on
open discussion even of subjects known to be non-secret.
We already know that the so-called hydrogen bomb, if it is to be made at
all, cannot be made of the abundant common hydrogen of atomic mass one,
and that there are only two possible materials that could be used for
such a purpose: deuterium, a hydrogen twin twice the weight of common
hydrogen, which constitutes two hundredths of one per cent of the
hydrogen in all waters; and a man-made variety of hydrogen, three times
the weight of the lightest variety, known as tritium. We also know that
to explode either deuterium or tritium (also known, respectively, as
heavy and superheavy hydrogen) a temperature measured in millions of
degrees is required. This is attainable on earth only in the explosion
of an A-bomb, and therefore the A-bomb would have to serve as the fuse
to set off an explosion of deuterium, tritium, or a mixture of the two.
These facts, fundamental as they are, merely give us a general idea of
the conditions required to make the H-bomb. All concerned, including Dr.
Millikan, fully accept the validity of these facts. But there is one
other factor at the very heart of the problem—the extremely short time
at our disposal in which to kindle the hydrogen bomb with the A-bomb
match. According to statements attributed to him in the press, Dr.
Millikan believes that the time is too short; in other words, he seems
to be convinced that the A-bomb match will be blown out before we have
time to light the fire. Those of opposite view believe that methods can
be devised for “shielding the match against the wind” for just long
enough to light the fire. As we shall presently see, it is these methods
for shielding the match that lead some to doubt whether the game would
be worth the candle, or the match, if you will. These honest doubts are
based on the possibility that, even if successful, the shielding might
exact too high a price in terms of vital materials, particularly the
stuff out of which A-bombs are made—plutonium. According to this view,
we may at best be getting but a very small return for our investment in
materials vitally important in war as well as in peace. Even though the
price in dollars were to be brought down to a negligible amount.
A closer look at the details of the problem may enable us to penetrate
the thick fog that now envelops the subject. We may begin with a
quotation from Dr. Bacher, who outlined the principle involved with
remarkable clarity. “The real problem in developing and constructing a
hydrogen bomb,” he said in a notable address before the Los Angeles Town
Hall,
is, “How do you get it going?” The heavy hydrogens, deuterium and
tritium, are suitable substances if somehow they could be heated hot
enough and kept hot. This problem is a little bit like the job of
making a fire at 20 degrees below zero in the mountains with green
wood which is covered with ice and with very little kindling. Today,
scientists tell us that such a fire can probably be kindled.
Once you get the fire going, of course, you can pile on the wood and
make a very sizeable conflagration. In the same way with the hydrogen
bomb, more heavy hydrogen can be used and a bigger explosion obtained.
It has been called an open-ended weapon, meaning that more materials
can be added and a bigger explosion obtained.
The phrase that goes to the very heart of the problem is “very little
kindling,” which is another way of illustrating the difficulty of
lighting a fire in a high wind when you have only one match. We know
that to ignite deuterium, by far the cheaper and more abundant of the
two H-bomb elements, a temperature comparable to those existing in the
interior of the sun, some 20,000,000 degrees centigrade, is necessary.
This temperature can be realized on earth only in the explosion of an
A-bomb. We also know that the wartime model A-bombs generated a
temperature of about 50,000,000 degrees, more than enough to light a
deuterium fire. The trouble lies in the extremely short time interval,
of the order of a millionth of a second (microsecond), and a fraction
thereof, during which the A-bomb is held together before it flies apart.
In the words of Professor Bacher, we must make our green, ice-covered
wood catch fire in the subzero mountain weather before the “very little
kindling” we have is burned up.
The times at which deuterium will ignite at any given temperature, in
both its gaseous and its liquid form, are widely known among nuclear
scientists everywhere, including Russia, through publication in official
scientific literature of a well-known formula, originally worked out by
two European scientists as far back as 1929, and more recently improved
upon by Professor George Gamow and Professor Teller. By this formula,
derived from actual experiments, it is known that deuterium in its
gaseous form will require as long as 128 seconds to ignite at a
temperature of 50,000,000 degrees centigrade, well above 100,000,000
times longer than the time in which our little kindling is used up. This
obviously rules out deuterium in its natural gaseous form as material
for an H-bomb.
How about liquid deuterium? We know that the more atoms there are per
unit volume (namely, the greater the density), the faster is the time of
the reaction. The increase in the speed of the reaction (in this case
the ignition of the deuterium) is directly proportional to the square of
the density. For example, if the density, (that is, the number of atoms
per unit volume) is increased by a factor of 10, the time of ignition
will be speeded up by the square of 10, or 100 times faster. Since
liquid deuterium has a density nearly 800 times that of gaseous
deuterium, this means that liquid deuterium (which must be maintained at
a temperature of 423 degrees below zero Fahrenheit at a pressure above
one atmosphere) would ignite 640,000 times faster (namely, in
1/640,000th part of the time) than its gaseous form. Arithmetic shows
that the ignition time for liquid deuterium at 50,000,000 degrees
centigrade will be 200 microseconds, still 200 times longer than the
period in which our kindling is consumed.
The same formula also reveals the time it would take liquid deuterium to
ignite at higher temperatures, the increase of which shortens the
ignition time. These figures show that the ignition time for liquid
deuterium at 75,000,000 degrees centigrade is 40 microseconds. At
100,000,000 degrees the time is 30 microseconds; at 150,000,000 degrees,
15 microseconds; and at 200,000,000 degrees on the centigrade scale,
about 4.8 millionths of a second. Doubling the temperature speeds up the
ignition time for liquid deuterium by a factor of about six.
The problem thus is a dual one: to raise the temperature at which the
A-bomb explodes, and to extend the time before the A-bomb flies apart.
It is also obvious that if the liquid deuterium is to be ignited at all,
it must be done before the bomb has disintegrated—that is, during the
incredibly short time interval before it expands into a cloud of vapor
and gas, since by then the deuterium would no longer be liquid.
Can we increase the A-bomb’s temperature fourfold to 200,000,000 degrees
and literally make time stand still while it holds together for nearly
five millionths of a second? To get a better understanding of the
problem we must take a closer look at what takes place inside the A-bomb
during the infinitesimal interval in which it comes to life.
This life history of the A-bomb is an incredible tale, from the time its
inner mechanisms are set in motion until its metamorphosis into a great
ball of fire. As explained earlier, the A-bomb’s explosion takes place
through a process akin to spontaneous combustion as soon as a certain
minimum amount (critical mass) of either one of two fissionable
(combustible) elements—uranium 235 or plutonium—is assembled in one
unit. The most obvious way it takes place is by bringing together two
pieces of uranium 235 (U-235), or plutonium, each less than a critical
mass, firing one of these into the other with a gun mechanism, thus
creating a critical mass at the last minute. If, for example, the
critical mass at which spontaneous combustion takes place is ten
kilograms (the actual figure is a top secret), then the firing of a
piece of one kilogram into another of nine kilograms would bring
together a critical mass that would explode faster than the eye could
wink—in fact, some thousands of times faster than TNT.
Just as an ordinary fire needs oxygen, so does an atomic fire require
the tremendously powerful atomic particles known as neutrons. Unlike
oxygen, however, neutrons do not exist in a free state in nature. Their
habitat is the nuclei, or hearts, of the atoms. How, then, does the
spontaneous combustion of the critical mass of U-235 or plutonium begin?
All we need is a single neutron to start things going, and this one
neutron may be supplied in one of several ways. It can come from the
nucleus of an atom in the atmosphere, or inside the bomb, shattered by a
powerful cosmic ray that comes from outside the earth. Or the emanation
from some radioactive element in the atmosphere, or from one introduced
into the body of the bomb, may split the first U-235 or plutonium atom,
knock out two neutrons, and thus start a chain reaction of
self-multiplying neutrons.
To understand the chain reaction requires only a little arithmetic. The
first atom split releases, on the average, two neutrons, which split two
atoms, which release four neutrons, which split four atoms, which
release eight neutrons, and so on, in a geometric progression that, as
can be seen, doubles itself at each successive step. Arithmetic shows
that anything that is multiplied by two at every step will reach a 1,000
(in round numbers) in the first ten steps, and will multiply itself by a
1,000 at every ten steps thereafter, reaching a million in twenty steps,
a billion in thirty, a trillion in forty, and so on. It can thus be seen
that after seventy generations of self-multiplying neutrons the
astronomical figure of two billion trillion (2 followed by 21 zeros)
atoms have been split.
At this point let us hold our breath and get set to believe what at
first glance may appear to be unbelievable. The time it takes to split
these two billion trillion atoms is no more than one millionth of a
second (one microsecond). If we keep this time element in mind we can
arrive at a clear understanding of the tremendous problem involved in
exploding an A- or an H-bomb.
And while we are recovering from the first shock we may as well get set
for another. That unimaginable figure of two billion trillion atoms
represents the splitting (explosion) of no more than one gram (1/28th of
an ounce) of U-235, or plutonium.
Now, the energy released in the splitting of one gram of U-235 is
equivalent in power to the explosive force of 20 tons of TNT, or two
old-fashioned blockbusters. Since we know from President Truman’s
announcement following the bombing of Hiroshima that the wartime A-bomb
“had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT,” it means that the atoms in an
entire kilogram (1,000 grams) of U-235 or plutonium must have been
split. In other words, after the A-bomb had reached a power of 20 tons
of TNT, it had to be kept together long enough to increase its power a
thousandfold to 20,000 tons. This, as we have seen, requires only ten
more steps. It can also be seen that it is these ten final crucial steps
that make all the difference between a bomb equal to only two
blockbusters, which would have been a most miserable two-billion-dollar
fiasco, and an atomic bomb equal in power to two thousand blockbusters.
With the aid of these facts we are at last in a position to grasp the
enormousness of the problem that confronted our A-bomb designers at Los
Alamos and is confronting them again today. It can be seen that for a
bomb to multiply itself from 20 to 20,000 tons in ten steps by doubling
its power at every step, it has to pass successively the stages of 40,
80, 160, 320, and so on, until it reaches an explosive power of 2,500
tons at the seventh step. Yet it still has to be held together for three
more steps, during which it reaches the enormous power of 5,000 and
10,000 tons of TNT, without exploding.
Here was an irresistible force, and the problem was to surround it with
an immovable body, or at least a body that would remain immovable long
enough for the chain reaction to take just ten additional steps
following the first seventy. There is only one fact of nature that makes
this possible, or even thinkable—the last ten steps from 20 to 20,000
tons take only one tenth of a millionth of a second. The problem thus
was to find a body that would remain immovable against an irresistible
force for no longer than one tenth of a microsecond, 100 billionths of a
second.
This immovable body is known technically as a “tamper,” which pits
inertia against an irresistible force that builds up in 100 billionths
of a second from an explosive power of 20 tons of TNT to 20,000 tons.
The very inertia of the tamper delays the expansion of the active
substance and makes for a longer-lasting, more energetic, and more
efficient explosion. The tamper, which also serves as a reflector of
neutrons, must be a material of very high density. Since gold has the
fifth highest density of all the elements (next only to osmium, iridium,
platinum, and rhenium), at one time the use of part of our huge gold
hoard at Fort Knox was seriously considered.
With these facts and figures in mind, it becomes clear that an H-bomb
made of deuterium alone is not feasible. It is certainly out of the
question with an A-bomb of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki types, which
generate a temperature of about 50,000,000 degrees, since, as we have
seen, it would take fully 200 microseconds to ignite it at that
temperature. It is one thing to devise a tamper that would hold back a
force of 20 tons for 100 billionths of a second, and thus allow it to
build up to 20,000 tons. It is quite another matter to devise an
immovable body that would hold back an irresistible force of 20,000 tons
for a time interval 2,000 times larger, particularly if one remembers
that in another tenth of a microsecond the irresistible force would
increase again by 1,000 to 20,000,000 tons. Obviously this is
impossible, for if it were possible we would have a superbomb without
any need for hydrogen of any kind.
It is known that we have developed a much more efficient A-bomb, which,
as Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado has inadvertently blurted out,
“has six times the effectiveness of the bomb that was dropped over
Nagasaki.” We are further informed by Dr. Bacher that “significant
improvements” in atomic bombs since the war “have resulted in more
powerful bombs and in a more efficient use of the valuable fissionable
material.” It is conceivable and even probable that the improvements,
among other things, include better tampers that delay the new A-bombs
long enough to fission two, four, or even eight times as many atoms as
in the wartime models. But since, as we have seen, the ten steps of the
final stages require only an average of 10 billionths of a second per
step, increasing the power of the new models even to 160,000 tons (eight
times the power of the Hiroshima type) would take only three steps, in
an elapsed time of no more than 30 billionths of a second. And even if
we assume that the improved bomb generates a temperature of 200,000,000
degrees, it would still be too cold to ignite the deuterium during the
interval of its brief existence, since, as we have seen, it would take
4.8 microseconds to ignite it at that temperature. In fact, calculations
indicate that it would require a temperature in the neighborhood of
400,000,000 degrees to ignite deuterium in the time interval during
which the assembly of the improved A-bomb appears to be held together,
which, as may be surmised from the known data, is within the range of
1.2 microseconds.
From all this it may be concluded with practical certainty that an
H-bomb of deuterium only is out of the question. Equally good, though
entirely different, reasons also rule out an H-bomb using only tritium
as its explosive element.
There are several important reasons why an H-bomb made of tritium alone
is not feasible. The most important by far, which alone excludes it from
any serious consideration, is the staggering cost we would have to pay
in terms of priceless A-bomb material, as each kilogram of tritium
produced would exact the sacrifice of eighty times that amount in
plutonium. The reason for this is simple. Both plutonium and tritium
have to be created with the neutrons released in the splitting of U-235,
each atom of plutonium and each atom of tritium made requiring one
neutron. Since an atom of plutonium has a weight of 239 atomic mass
units, whereas an atom of tritium has an atomic weight of only three, it
can be seen that a kilogram, or any given weight, of tritium would
contain eighty times as many atoms as a corresponding weight of
plutonium, and hence would require eighty times as many neutrons to
produce. In other words, we would be buying each kilogram of tritium at
a sacrifice of eighty kilograms of plutonium, which, of course, would
mean a considerable reduction in our potential stockpile of plutonium
bombs.
We would cut this loss by more than half because a kilogram of tritium
would yield about two and a half times the explosive power of plutonium.
But even this advantage would soon be lost, since tritium decays at the
rate of fifty per cent every twelve years, so that a kilogram produced
in 1951 would decay to only half a kilogram by 1963. Plutonium, on the
other hand, can be stored indefinitely without any significant loss,
since it changes slowly (at the rate of fifty per cent every twenty-five
thousand years) into the other fissionable element, U-235, which in turn
decays to one half in no less than nine hundred million years. What is
more, plutonium, if the day comes when we can beat our swords into
plowshares, will become one of the most valuable fuels for industrial
power, the propulsion of ships, globe-circling airplanes, and even,
someday, interplanetary rockets. It holds enormous potentialities as one
of the major power sources of the twenty-first century. Tritium, on the
other hand, can be used only as an agent of terrible destruction. It
will yield its energy in a fraction of a millionth of a second or not at
all. The only other possible uses it may have would be as a research
tool for probing the structure of the atom, and as a potential new agent
in medicine, in which it may be used for its radiations.
How much tritium would it take to make an H-bomb 1,000 times the power
of the wartime model A-bombs? Since tritium has about 2.5 times the
power per given weight of U-235 or plutonium, it would take 400
kilograms (about 1,880 quarts of the liquid form) of tritium to make a
bomb that would equal the power of 1,000 kilograms of plutonium. Such a
bomb, we can see, would have to be made at the sacrifice of 32,000
kilograms of plutonium. In other words, we would be getting a return, in
terms of energy content, of 1,000 kilograms for an investment of 32,000.
And we would be losing fully half of even this small return every twelve
years.
How many A-bombs would we be sacrificing through this investment? On the
basis of Professor Oliphant’s estimate that the critical mass of an
A-bomb is between 10 and 30 kilograms, we would sacrifice at least
1,066, and possibly as many as 3,200, if we take the lower figure. And
we must not forget that a bomb a thousand times the power will produce
only ten times the destructiveness by blast and thirty times the damage
by fire of an A-bomb of the old-fashioned variety.
These cold facts make it clear that a tritium bomb, particularly one a
thousand times the power of the A-bomb, is completely out of the
picture.
But, one may ask, if a deuterium bomb is not possible and a tritium bomb
is not feasible, and these are the only two substances that can possibly
be used at all, isn’t all this talk about a superbomb sheer moonshine?
And if so, how explain President Truman’s directive “to continue” work
on it?
To find the answer let us go back for a moment to Dr. Bacher’s man in
the mountains, confronted with the problem of lighting a fire with
green, ice-covered wood at twenty degrees below zero with “very little
kindling.” Obviously the poor fellow would be doomed to freeze to death
were it not for one little item he had almost forgotten. Somewhere in
his belongings he discovers a container filled with gasoline, which
increases the inflammability of the wet wood to the point at which it
will catch fire with a quantity of kindling that would otherwise be much
too small.
Something closely analogous is true with the H-bomb. It so happens that
a mixture of deuterium and tritium is the most highly inflammable atomic
fuel on earth. It yields 3.5 times the energy of deuterium and about
twice the energy of tritium when they are burned individually. Most
important of all, the deuterium-tritium mixture, known as D-T, ignites
much faster than either deuterium or tritium by themselves. For example,
the D-T combination ignites 25 times faster than deuterium alone at a
temperature of 100,000,000 degrees, and the ignition time is fully 37.5
times faster than for deuterium at 150,000,000 degrees.
The published technical data show that at a temperature of 50 million
degrees the D-T mixture ignites in only 10 microseconds, or 20 times
faster than deuterium alone. At 75 million degrees it takes only 3
microseconds, as against 40 for deuterium, while at 100 million degrees
it needs only 1.2 microseconds to catch fire, a time, as we have seen,
only 0.1 microsecond longer than it took the wartime A-bomb to fly
apart. Since the latter held together for 1.1 microseconds at a
temperature of about 50 million degrees, it is reasonable to assume that
the improved and more efficient models generate a temperature at least
twice as high, and that this is done by holding them together for about
1.2 microseconds.
It can thus be deduced that the only feasible H-bomb is one in which a
relatively small amount of a deuterium-tritium mixture will serve as
additional superkindling, to boost the kindling supplied by the improved
model A-bomb, for lighting a fire with a vast quantity of deuterium.
This, it appears, is the real secret of the H-bomb, which is really no
secret at all, since all the deductions here presented are arrived at on
the basis of data widely known to scientists everywhere, including
Russia. And since it is no secret from the Russians, whom the
arch-traitor Fuchs has supplied with the details still classified top
secret, the American people are certainly entitled to the known facts,
so vitally necessary for an intelligent understanding of one of the most
important problems facing them today.
A deuterium bomb with a D-T booster would become a certainty if the
temperature of the A-bomb trigger could be raised to 150 million or,
better still, to 200 million degrees. At the former temperature the D-T
superkindling ignites in 0.38 microseconds; at the higher temperature
the ignition time goes down to as low as 0.28 microseconds. Now, the D-T
mixture releases four times as much energy as plutonium, and the faster
the time in which energy is released, the higher goes the temperature.
Since four times as much energy is released at a rate four times faster
than in the wartime model A-bomb, it is not unreasonable to assume that
the temperature generated would be high enough to ignite the green wood
in the bomb—its load of deuterium.
How much tritium would be required for the kindling mixture? On this we
can only speculate at present. Since the D-T kindling calls for the
fusion of one atom of tritium with one atom of deuterium, and the atomic
weight of tritium is three as compared with two for deuterium, the
weight of the two substances will be in the ratio of 3 for tritium to 2
for deuterium. Thus if the amount to be used for the kindling mixture is
to be one kilogram, it will be made up of 600 grams of tritium and 400
grams of deuterium. Since, as we have seen, it would take eighty
kilograms of plutonium to produce one kilogram of tritium, we would have
to use up only 48 kilograms of plutonium to create the 600 grams, or the
equivalent of one and a half to about five A-bombs, according to Dr.
Oliphant’s estimate.
But would we need as much as 600 grams of tritium? Such an amount, mixed
with 400 grams of deuterium, would yield an explosive power equal to
80,000 tons of TNT, an energy equivalent of 100 million kilowatt-hours.
A twentieth part of this amount would still be equal in power to 4,000
tons of TNT, equivalent in terms of energy to 5,000,000 kilowatt-hours.
Now one twentieth of 600 grams, just 30 grams of tritium, could be made
at a cost of no more than 2.4 kilograms of plutonium. Thus we would be
paying only one twelfth to one fourth of an A-bomb (in addition to the
one used as the trigger) to get the equivalent of ten A-bombs in
blasting power and of thirty times the incendiary power, which would
totally devastate an area of more than 300 square miles by blast and of
more than 1,200 square miles by fire.
Would 30 grams of tritium be enough to serve as the superkindling for
exploding, let’s say, 1,000 kilograms (one ton) of deuterium? We shall
probably not know until we actually try it. It will largely depend on
the temperature generated by our more powerful A-bomb models. If it is
true, as Senator Johnson informed his television audience, that they
have “six times the effectiveness of the bomb that was dropped over
Nagasaki” (which, by the way, had more than twice the effectiveness of
the Hiroshima model), it is quite possible that their temperature is as
high as 150 million, or even 200 million, degrees. In that case, the
extra kindling of a 20–30 gram D-T mixture, with its tremendous burst of
5,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy in 0.28 to 0.38 microseconds (added
to the vast quantity already being liberated by the exploding plutonium,
or U-235), might well heat the deuterium to the proper ignition
temperature and keep it hot long enough for its mass to explode well
within 1.2 microseconds. In any case it would appear logical to expect
that a mixture of 150 grams of tritium and 100 grams of deuterium, which
would release an energy equal to that of the Hiroshima bomb, should be
able to do the job with plenty of time to spare.
We thus have a threefold answer to the question: Can the H-bomb
_actually_ be made? As we have seen, the deuterium bomb is definitely
not possible. The tritium bomb is theoretically possible, but definitely
not practicable. But a large deuterium bomb using a reasonably small
amount of a deuterium and tritium mixture as extra kindling is both
possible and feasible.
We now also stand on solid ground in dealing with the questions of cost
and of the time it would take us to get into production. With these
questions answered, we can then decide whether the H-bomb, if made, will
add enough to our security to make the effort worth while.
We know at this stage that the H-bomb requires three essential
ingredients. It needs, first of all, an A-bomb to set if off. We have a
sizable stockpile of them. It needs large quantities of deuterium. We
have built several deuterium plants during the war, and they should be
large enough to supply our needs. Since it is extracted from water, the
raw material will cost us nothing. The only item of cost will be the
electric power required for the concentration process, and this should
not be above $100 per kilogram, and probably less. The third vital
ingredient, tritium, can be made in the giant plutonium plants at
Hanford, Washington. Thus it can be seen that all the essential
ingredients of the H-bomb, the costliest and those that would take
longest to produce, as well as the multimillion-dollar plants required
for their production, are already at hand.
This means that as far as the essential materials are concerned, we are
ready to go right now. And as for the cost, it would appear to require
hardly any new appropriations by Congress, or, at any rate, only
appropriations that would be mere chicken feed compared with the five
billion we have already invested in our A-bomb program.
The raw material out of which tritium is made is the common, cheap light
metal lithium, the lightest, in fact, of all the metals. It has an
atomic weight of six, its nucleus consisting of three protons and three
neutrons. When an extra neutron invades its nucleus, it becomes unstable
and breaks up into two lighter elements, helium (two protons and two
neutrons) and tritium (one proton and two neutrons). They are both gases
and they are readily separated. And while lithium of atomic weight six
constitutes only 7.5 per cent of the element as found in nature (it
comes mixed with 92.5 per cent of lithium of atomic weight seven), there
is no need to separate it from its heavier twin, since the latter has no
affinity for neutrons and nearly all of them are gobbled up by the
lighter element.
The production of tritium, even in small amounts, will nevertheless be a
formidable process. As we have seen, it takes eighty times as many
neutrons to produce any given amount of tritium as to produce a
corresponding amount of plutonium. Since the lithium will have to
compete with uranium 238 (parent of plutonium) for the available supply
of neutrons, and since the number of atoms of U-238 per given volume is
nearly forty times greater than the number of lithium atoms, the rate of
tritium production would be very much slower than that of plutonium. On
the other hand, even if it took as much as two hundred times as long to
produce a given quantity of tritium, the handicap would be considerably
overcome because of the relatively small amounts that may be required.
If, for example, we should need only 30 to 150 grams of tritium per
bomb, it would take our present plutonium plants only six to thirty
times longer to produce these quantities than it takes them to produce
one kilogram of plutonium. A hypothetical plant such as the one
mentioned in the official Smyth Report, designed to produce one kilogram
of plutonium per day, would thus yield 30 grams of tritium in six days.
How much tritium would be needed for an adequate stockpile of H-bombs?
Since our primary reasons for building it are to deter aggression, to
prevent its use against us or our allies, and as a tactical weapon
against large land armies, it would appear that as few as twenty-five,
or fifty at the most, would be adequate for the purpose. On the basis of
the larger figure (assuming 30 to 150 grams of tritium per bomb), it
would mean an initial stockpile of only 1.5 to 7.5 kilograms of tritium,
which would entail the sacrifice of about 120 to 600 kilograms of
plutonium. Once this initial outlay had been made, however, our
plutonium sacrifice would be reduced annually to only one twenty-fourth
of the original respective amounts—namely, 5 to 25 kilograms a year—just
enough to make up for the decay of the tritium at the rate of fifty per
cent every twelve years.
One of the major problems to be solved, in addition to the main problem
of designing the assembly, arises from the fact that the deuterium and
the tritium booster will have to be in liquid form. Liquid hydrogen
boils (that is, reverts to gas) at a temperature of 423 degrees below
zero Fahrenheit under a pressure of one atmosphere (fifteen pounds per
square inch). To liquefy it, it is necessary to cool it in liquid air
(at 313.96 below zero F.) while keeping it at the same time under a
pressure of 180 atmospheres. To transport it, it must be placed in a
vacuum vessel surrounded by an outer vessel of liquid air. This would
point to the need of giant refrigeration and storage plants, as well as
of refrigerator planes for transporting large quantities of liquid
deuterium and its tritium spark plug.
Will the H-bomb, if made, add enough to our security to make the effort
worth while? We have seen that the required effort may, after all, not
be very great. In fact, it may turn out to be a relatively small one, in
view of the fact that all the basic ingredients and plants are already
at hand and fully paid for. But supposing even that the effort turns out
to be much more costly than it now appears? The question we must then
ask ourselves is: Can we afford not to make the effort?
It is true, of course, as some have pointed out, that ten or even fewer
A-bombs could destroy the heart of any metropolitan city, while only one
would be quite enough, as we know, for cities the size of Hiroshima or
Nagasaki. But that neglects to take into consideration the fact that one
H-bomb concentrates within itself the power of thirty A-bombs to destroy
by fire and by burns an area of more than 1,200 square miles at one
blow. Nor does it take into consideration the military advantage of
delivering the power of a combination of ten and thirty A-bombs in one
concentrated package, which would make it a tremendous tactical weapon
against a huge land army scattered over many miles, or its possible
enormous psychological effect against such an army.
Most important of all, this view grossly minimizes the apocalyptic
potentialities of the H-bomb for poisoning large areas with deadly
clouds of radioactive particles. It is a monstrous fact that an H-bomb
incorporating one ton of deuterium, encased in a shell of cobalt, would
liberate 250 pounds of neutrons, which would create 15,000 pounds of
highly radioactive cobalt, equivalent in their deadliness to 4,800,000
pounds of radium. Such bombs, according to Professor Harrison Brown,
University of Chicago nuclear chemist, could be set on a north-south
line in the Pacific approximately a thousand miles west of California.
“The radioactive dust would reach California in about a day, and New
York in four or five days, killing most life as it traverses the
continent.”
“Similarly,” Professor Brown stated in the _American Scholar_, “the
Western powers could explode H-bombs on a north-south line about the
longitude of Prague which would destroy all life within a strip 1,500
miles wide, extending from Leningrad to Odessa, and 3,000 miles deep,
from Prague to the Ural Mountains. Such an attack would produce a
‘scorched earth’ of an extent unprecedented in history.”
Professor Szilard, one of the principal architects of the A-bomb, has
estimated, as already stated, that four hundred one-ton deuterium bombs
would release enough radioactivity to extinguish all life on earth.
Professor Einstein, as we have seen, has publicly stated that the
H-bomb, if successful, will bring the annihilation of all life on earth
within the range of technical possibilities. The question we must
therefore ask ourselves is: Can we allow Russia to be the sole possessor
of such a weapon?
There can be no question that Russia is already at work on an H-bomb.
Like ourselves, she already has the plutonium plants for producing both
A-bombs and tritium. She can produce deuterium in the same quantities as
we can. In Professor Peter Kapitza she has the world’s greatest
authority on liquid hydrogen.
Furthermore, she has great incentives to produce H-bombs. Since she is
still behind us in her A-bomb stockpile, she can, in a sense, catch up
with us much more quickly by converting her fewer A-bombs into H-bombs
that would be the equivalents of ten to thirty A-bombs each, thus
increasing the power of her stockpile ten to thirty times. Equally if
not more important from Russia’s point of view is the stark fact that an
H-bomb could be much more easily exploded near a coastal city from a
submarine or innocent-looking tramp steamer, since most of our great
cities are on the seacoast, whereas Russia practically has no coastal
cities.
Even if we openly announced that we would not make any H-bombs, it would
not deter Russia from making them as fast as she could, not only because
she would not believe us but also because her sole possession would
greatly weight the scales in her favor. If, God forbid, she finds
herself one day with a stockpile of H-bombs when we have none, she would
be in a position to send us an ultimatum similar to the one we sent to
the Japanese after Hiroshima: “Surrender or be destroyed!”
Valuing their liberty more than their lives, the American people will
never surrender. But while there is time, would anyone advocate that we
run the risk of ever facing such a choice?
III
SHALL WE RENOUNCE THE USE OF THE H-BOMB?
A few days after President Truman announced that he had directed work
“to continue” on “the so-called hydrogen, or super bomb,” a group of
twelve eminent physicists, including half a dozen of the major
architects of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, who, no doubt, are playing
a similar role in the development of the H-bomb, issued a statement
urging the United States to make “a solemn declaration that we shall
never use the bomb first,” and “that the only circumstances which might
force us to use it would be if we or our allies were attacked by _this_
bomb.” They added that “there can be only one justification for our
development of the hydrogen bomb, and that is to prevent its use.”
Signers of the statement, unprecedented in the annals of science (with
the possible exception of a secret memorandum submitted to the
government just before the A-bomb was used), included such outstanding
physicists as Hans A. Bethe of Cornell; Kenneth T. Bainbridge of
Harvard; Samuel K. Allison, University of Chicago; Dean George B.
Pegram, Columbia; C. C. Lauritsen, California Institute of Technology;
Bruno Rossi and Victor F. Weisskopf, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; F. W. Loomis and Frederick Seitz, University of Illinois;
Merle A. Tuve, Carnegie Institution of Washington; R. B. Brode,
University of California; and M. G. White, Princeton—all, with the
exception of Dr. Tuve, professors of physics at their respective
universities. Those among them who did not directly participate in the
development of the A-bomb played major parts in other scientific wartime
projects, such as radar and the proximity fuse.
Implicit in their statement was the first confirmation—indeed, the most
authoritative we have had so far from scientists with first-hand
knowledge of the subject—that a hydrogen bomb of a thousand times the
power of the A-bomb could be made. More than that, they informed us that
Russia may complete the H-bomb in less than four years, meaning, of
course, that we too could achieve the same goal in the same period. We
were thus provided by the experts with a time-table on which we must act
if we are not to run the risk of Russia’s getting the H-bomb ahead of
us, and so being in a position to use it, or threaten its use, against
the nations of western Europe, as the greatest blackmail weapon in
history.
The statement summarizes in essence the principal points of view that
have been advanced so far on what policy we should adopt on the H-bomb,
and since it was promulgated by men known to have definite inside
knowledge of the subject, it deserves closer scrutiny than it has
hitherto received.
“It was stated correctly,” they inform us at the outset,
that a hydrogen bomb, if it can be made, would be capable of
developing a power 1,000 times greater than the present atomic bomb.
New York, or any of the greatest cities of the world, could be
destroyed by a single hydrogen bomb.
We believe that no nation has the right to use such a bomb, no matter
how righteous its cause. The bomb is no longer a weapon of war, but a
means of extermination of whole populations. Its use would be a
betrayal of morality and of Christian civilization itself.
Senator Brien McMahon has pointed out to the American people that the
possession of the hydrogen bomb will not give positive security to
this country. We shall not have a monopoly of this bomb, but it is
certain that the Russians will be able to make one, too. In the case
of the fission bomb the Russians required four years to parallel our
development. _In the case of the hydrogen bomb they will probably need
a shorter time._
We must remember that we do not possess the bomb but are only
developing it, and Russia has received, through indiscretion, _the
most valuable hint that our experts believe the development possible_.
Perhaps the development of the hydrogen bomb has already been under
way in Russia for some time. But if it was not, our decision to
develop it must have started the Russians on the same program. If they
had already a going program, they will redouble their efforts.
Statements in the press have given the power of the H-bomb as between
two and 1,000 times that of the present fission bomb. Actually, the
thermonuclear reaction on which the H-bomb is based is limited in its
power only by the amount of hydrogen which can be carried in the bomb.
Even if the power were limited to 1,000 times that of a present atomic
bomb, the step from an A-bomb to an H-bomb would be as great as that
from an ordinary TNT bomb to the atom bomb.
To create such an ever-present danger for all the nations of the world
is against the vital interests of both Russia and the United States.
Three prominent Senators have called for renewed efforts to eliminate
this weapon and other weapons of mass destruction from the arsenals of
all nations. Such efforts should be made, and made in all sincerity
from both sides.
In the meantime, we urge that the United States, through its elected
government, make a solemn declaration that we shall never use this
bomb first.
Before discussing in detail the merits of the proposal that the United
States renounce the use of the H-bomb, “no matter how righteous its
cause,” except in retaliation for its use against us or our allies, it
behooves us to examine the effect of our decisions to proceed with the
development of the H-bomb on Russia’s A-bomb progress.
We know that the H-bomb requires an A-bomb for its trigger. We also have
strong grounds for assuming that, in addition to the A-bomb, an H-bomb
will require certain quantities of tripleweight hydrogen, or tritium, as
extra superkindling to boost the A-bomb. We know, furthermore, that it
takes eighty times as many neutrons to make a given quantity of tritium
as it does to make a corresponding amount of plutonium, which, of
course, means a reduction in A-bombs.
Hence, should Russia decide to embark on an H-bomb program of her own,
or to “redouble her efforts,” it would lead inevitably to a serious
curtailment in her stockpile of A-bombs. While we would have to make the
same sacrifice of plutonium, it is obvious that we can afford the
sacrifice much better than Russia, since we already have a sizable
stockpile of both plutonium and uranium bombs, whereas she has just
begun building her stockpile. The situation for her would be much worse
if she has put all her atomic eggs in the plutonium basket without
bothering to build the much more complicated and costly uranium
separation plants, as the incomplete evidence available would seem to
indicate. In that case she would be faced with a serious dilemma indeed,
for you cannot have H-bombs without A-bombs, and you cannot have A-bombs
without plutonium, and if, as the evidence indicates, she has built her
A-bomb program exclusively around plutonium, she would have to sacrifice
quantities she could ill afford to spare, at this stage of her
development, of the only element she desperately needs for building up
her A-bomb stockpile.
How do we know that Russia’s A-bomb is made of plutonium? We have the
testimony of Senator Johnson of Colorado, who assured us in his famous
television broadcast of November 1, 1949 that “there’s no question at
all that the Russians have a bomb more or less similar to the bomb that
we dropped at Nagasaki, a plutonium bomb.” In this single sentence the
Senator from Colorado, who as a member of the Joint Congressional
Committee on Atomic Energy has access to such information, inadvertently
let at least three cats out of the bag. He confirmed that the Nagasaki
bomb was made of plutonium (though, in fairness, it must be said that
this had been known unofficially for some time); he told us that we had
found out not only that “an atomic explosion had occurred in the
U.S.S.R.,” as the President had announced in carefully chosen words, but
that the explosion was that of an atomic bomb and that, more important
still, the bomb was made of plutonium. And in doing so he, furthermore,
gave away the secret of how we had obtained that information, something
the Russians very much wanted to know. Not being a scientist, Senator
Johnson obviously did not realize that the split fragments (fission
products) of a plutonium bomb differ from those given off by the
explosion of a uranium bomb, so that in revealing that we knew what the
bomb was made of he would also be revealing at the same time that we
found it out by examining radioactive air samples and finding them to
contain fission fragments of plutonium, as well as whole plutonium atoms
that escaped fission.
There is thus no doubt that the Russians have built nuclear reactors for
producing plutonium from nonfissionable uranium 238. We cannot, of
course, be sure that they have not at the same time also built plants
for concentrating uranium 235, but the odds favor the negative. We built
uranium separation plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and plutonium plants
at Hanford, Washington, during the war because we didn’t know at the
time which method would work, and we gambled on the chance that, by
building plants for producing fissionable materials by four different
methods, at least one of them might work. Had we known at the time that
the plutonium plants were practical, it is quite likely that we would
not have invested a billion dollars in building the uranium separation
plants. Since the Russians have obviously decided on plutonium plants as
the simplest and cheapest (three plutonium plants cost us a total of
$400,000,000, whereas a single large uranium separation plant cost half
a billion), it is hardly likely that they would consider it worth while
to invest in the much more costly uranium separation plants.
As Senator Johnson said in the same broadcast: “We tried out four
different methods of making a bomb and all of them succeeded, but one of
these methods was superior to all the others in simplicity and
effectiveness, and we told the Russians and we told the world that fact.
Of course, they didn’t have to make the experiments that we had to make
to find out by elimination which method was the most effective and which
the one that they should follow.”
The evidence is thus strongly in favor of the assumption that Russia has
only plutonium plants as her sole source of A-bomb material, whereas we
have both plutonium plants and gigantic uranium plants in full
operation. If that is so, then our forcing Russia to embark on an H-bomb
program, at a time when her A-bomb program is barely started, will place
her under a double handicap in her race to catch up with us in A-bombs,
and at least to keep abreast of us, if not ahead, in H-bombs. For in
this grim race we have a dual if not a triple advantage: our much
superior stockpile, both in numbers and no doubt in quality, and our
gigantic plants for concentrating U-235, the production of which would
not have to be curtailed at all, since tritium can be made only in
plutonium plants. In fact, we are now in the process of construction of
two great additions to the uranium plant at Oak Ridge.
One may visualize the masters of the Kremlin gnashing their teeth in
impotent rage at what they no doubt regard as a diabolical plot on our
part to sabotage their A-bomb effort. Indeed, there can be no question
that our decision to proceed with the H-bomb was an answer to Russia’s
challenge to our atomic supremacy, and it appears quite plausible that
one of the motives behind the decision was the knowledge that it would
force Russia either to build great additions to her atomic plants, at
great expense in money and materials and at the loss of considerable
precious time, or to curtail her production of A-bomb material. And
while any such motive could not possibly have been the determining
factor, the ultimate effect of our decision was the same as though we
had succeeded in getting a team of expert saboteurs behind the Iron
Curtain to plant a good-sized monkey wrench in the Soviet atomic
machinery.
With this in mind we begin to appreciate how dangerous a move it would
be, to ourselves and to world peace, if we were to make a solemn
declaration at the outset, even before we have a single H-bomb, that we
will never use it, “no matter how righteous our cause,” unless it is
used first against us or our allies. By making such a unilateral
declaration, without even making it conditional upon Russia issuing a
similar solemn renunciation, we would, in effect, be saying to Russia:
“We humbly beg your pardon. We did not realize that we would be putting
a nasty monkey wrench in the machinery of your vital A-bomb program. We
shall remove the wrench at once so that you may proceed with your
program unhindered by us in any way.”
The masters of the Kremlin would, indeed, have every right to laugh long
and loud, and to take such foolhardy action on our part as further
evidence of what they call “the decadence of the bourgeois democracies.”
For, once we make such a magnanimous unilateral solemn renunciation of
the one weapon that promises to become the greatest single deterrent
against war, without even bothering to ask Russia publicly to do
likewise, Russia could then proceed calmly at her leisure to build up
her A-bomb stockpile, with the complete assurance from us that she need
not worry about our H-bomb as long as she does not use one against us or
our allies. After she has accumulated an adequate A-bomb stockpile—and
fifty to one hundred would be adequate from her standpoint—she would
then be in a position, already attained by us now, to proceed with her
H-bomb program, knowing full well that we would never use H-bombs
against her while she is still without them. And while she obviously
could not use anything she does not have, she could well afford to make
aggressive war even before she has an H-bomb, or to bide her time until
she does, the choice being entirely hers. And if she waits until she has
the H-bomb, the decision whether to use it or not would still be
entirely hers, so that she could use it whenever she decides it is to
her advantage to do so, whereas we should have to wait on her pleasure,
having morally bound ourselves, without qualification, not to use it
first, even if our very existence depended on it.
It can thus be easily seen that this “after you, my dear Alphonse”
gesture on our part in a matter that may involve our very existence
would be more than quixotic. It is likely to prove suicidal. It will not
improve the prospects of world peace; on the contrary it will weaken
them. It will not enhance our moral stature, since the world does not
have much respect for starry-eyed dreamers with their heads in the
clouds.
But while we must keep our feet planted on the ground, we need not lose
sight of the stars. Our refusal to expose ourselves by giving Russia the
great advantages mentioned, does not mean that we retain the right to
use the H-bomb indiscriminately as though it were just another weapon.
There are, I shall presently show, both legitimate and illegitimate uses
to which the H-bomb can be put, and it is the failure so far, even by
eminent scientists, to distinguish between these two types of possible
uses that is responsible for a great deal, if not all, of the confusion
and much futile debate that have followed the President’s announcement
of his directive to continue work on the hydrogen bomb, and for the
flood of verbiage that will continue to plague and bewilder us until we
take time to acquaint ourselves with the facts about the H-bomb.
One of the major difficulties in our approach to the subject stems from
the general tendency to talk about the H-bomb as though it were just one
weapon, which obviously it is not. As we know, it is several weapons in
one package, which can be designed for various uses, depending on the
intent of its designer. It is, on the one hand, a weapon that can cause
total destruction by blast over a radius of ten miles, or an area of
more than 300 square miles, with graduated lesser damage over a much
larger area. Secondly, it is a weapon that can produce fires and severe
flash burns over a radius of twenty miles—that is, over an area of more
than 1,200 square miles. These two functions, destruction by blast and
by fire, go together. They are inseparable as far as the bomb itself is
concerned, though their relative effects can be regulated by the height
from which the bomb is dropped, by the terrain over which it is used,
and by its mode of delivery other than by air.
Then, of course, there is the third weapon of terror, the tremendous
quantities of deadly radioactive particles that the H-bomb may release
in the atmosphere, which, as Dr. Einstein said, would bring within the
range of technical possibilities “the annihilation of life on earth.”
This, however, would depend on the choice and purpose of the designer.
If he so chooses, he can design an H-bomb that would produce only
slightly greater radioactivity than its A-bomb trigger. Or he can rig it
in such a manner that one bomb would release into the atmosphere the
equivalent of nearly five million pounds of radium that would poison the
atmosphere for thousands of miles, killing all life wherever it goes.
The catchword here is “rig,” and the rigging depends entirely, not on
the contents of the bomb itself, but on the material of which its outer
shell is composed. If, for example, the casing chosen is a material such
as steel, the radioactivity produced would be practically harmless. If
the shell is made of cobalt, the radiations released would cause untold
havoc. The reason for the vast difference is not difficult to
understand. The H-bomb, when it explodes, releases tremendous quantities
of neutrons, the most penetrating particles in nature. As soon as it is
liberated, a neutron enters the nucleus of the nearest element at hand.
This may produce a wide variety of changes in the nature of the element
penetrated by the neutron, the changes depending on the element. Some
elements, such as cobalt, become intensely radioactive, others only
mildly so, and still others not at all. Furthermore, each element thus
made radioactive has its own characteristic decay period, lasting from
seconds to many years, so that the designer of the bomb has a great
variety to choose from.
From this it can be seen that, instead of one, there are actually two
types of H-bombs—the non-rigged and the rigged. With this vital
distinction in mind the problem of its use becomes much more simplified.
We are in a position to reach full agreement with the scientists that no
nation has the right to use such a “rigged” bomb, no matter how
righteous its cause. For the rigged H-bomb would add nothing to the
military value of the non-rigged H-bomb, which is already more than
enough to achieve any military objective. It would merely be piling
horror upon horror for no purpose beyond wanton destruction for its own
sake. Its use even in small numbers would ruin large segments of the
earth for years. It would, as the scientists said, “be a betrayal of
morality and of Christian civilization itself.” There can therefore be
no question that when this distinction between the non-rigged and the
rigged H-bomb is made clear to the American people—something the
scientists failed to do—they would overwhelmingly lend their support to
a move on the part of our government solemnly declaring that we would
never use the rigged H-bomb first; that our only aim in building it is
to prevent its use, and that the only circumstances under which we would
find ourselves forced to use it would be in retaliation for its use
against us or our allies.
We can, and should, make such a solemn declaration unilaterally,
regardless of whether Russia makes a similar declaration. We would lose
nothing by doing so from a military or strategic point of view, and we
would gain enormously in moral stature and on the battlefront of ideas
if we were to do it now. Otherwise we run the risk that Russia might do
it first. If she takes advantage of this lost opportunity of ours, we
shall have handed her a great moral victory. In fact, the law of nations
compels us to make such a declaration. Unlike the A-bomb, in which the
radioactivity is part and parcel of the bomb itself, the rigged H-bomb
is purposely designed to produce radioactive poisoning in the
atmosphere. Since it has to be specially incorporated into the casing of
the bomb, it comes under the international convention outlawing the use
of poison gas. For there can be no question that a radioactive cloud
that may lay waste to whole areas is the most diabolical and deadly
poison gas so far invented.
But the twelve scientists do not seem to be satisfied with the mere
renunciation of the rigged H-bomb. They ask us to declare that we would
not be the first to use even the non-rigged bomb, on the grounds that it
“is no longer a weapon of war, but a means of extermination of whole
populations.” This requires closer scrutiny.
It has become customary to think of the A-bomb, and now of the H-bomb,
as purely strategic weapons for destroying industrial centers producing
war materials, thus depriving the armies at the front of the vital
sinews of war. It is also regarded as a weapon of superterror to bring a
nation to its knees, as the A-bomb did in Japan. Since industrial
centers, particularly in the United States, are densely populated areas,
and since, conversely, all large cities are also important industrial
centers, it has become almost axiomatic that the A-bomb and the H-bomb
could be used only in strategic bombing of large centers of population,
which, of course, means the wholesale slaughter of millions of civilians
and the wiping out of cities with populations of more than 200,000.
But to think along such lines would be thinking of World War III, which
we must do our utmost to prevent, in terms of World War II, which would
be just as fatal as thinking in terms of World War I was to the French
in World War II. For even a cursory examination of the situation should
reveal that strategic bombing of cities may, and very likely would be,
as obsolete in the next war as trench warfare was in the last. One does
not have to be a military expert to know the reason why. In the last war
strategic bombing was resorted to in order to deprive the army at the
front of weapons and supplies. Obviously, if you had a superweapon that
could wipe out an entire army in the field or on the march at one blow,
there would be no further need of depriving an army that was no longer
in being.
That is exactly what the non-rigged H-bomb is. As a blast weapon, we
have seen, it can cause total destruction of everything within an area
of more than 300 square miles. As an incinerator it would severely burn
everything within an area of more than 1,200 square miles. It is thus
the tactical weapon par excellence. No army in the field or on the march
could stand up against it. Had we possessed it at the Battle of the
Bulge, just one could have wiped out the entire Bulge. If the Nazis had
had it before D-Day, one would have been enough to wipe out our entire
invasion army even before it landed; or they could have waited and wiped
out our entire Normandy beachhead. In a word, the non-rigged H-bomb has
produced a major revolution in tactics and strategy. It has made
strategic bombing of cities as obsolete as the trench of World War I,
except as a weapon of pure terror and wanton wholesale destruction of
life and property. It would be absolutely useless to the victor as well
as to the vanquished, as the victor would have no spoils of victory left
and would have to rebuild what he had needlessly destroyed.
Viewed in this light, the non-rigged H-bomb, just because it is the
weapon for the annihilation of armies, becomes vis-à-vis Russia, the
greatest deterrent against war that could possibly be devised in the
present state of affairs. For, after all, the only great advantage
Russia has over us today is her land army and her great reserve of
manpower. The non-rigged H-bomb, supported by a large and up-to-date air
force capable of delivering it either by air or from a seized airhead
behind the lines, could nullify that advantage in a few hours. At least
the threat of such a possibility will always be there. It is therefore
doubtful, to say the least, that any group of men would willingly take
such a risk.
Since the greatest and most effective use of the non-rigged H-bomb would
thus be as a tactical weapon against armies in the field, while its
strategic use against civilian populations would be simple wanton
destruction from the point of view of both victor and vanquished, then
not only morality and Christian civilization but plain common sense
would dictate the wisdom of our solemnly declaring right now that we
will never be the first to use either the non-rigged H-bomb or even the
A-bomb against civilian populations, and that the only circumstance that
would compel us to use them so would be in retaliation for their use
against us or our allies. In fact, we could renounce strategic bombing
altogether. By doing so we would gain one of the greatest moral
victories, for then if Russia failed to make a similar declaration, as
she most likely would, she would stand before the world as a nation bent
on wholesale slaughter of civilian populations. We have nothing to lose
and everything to gain by such a declaration, and the sooner we make it
the better.
Should we make such a declaration, it would place Russia in an
embarrassing position indeed. For while as a tactical weapon the
non-rigged H-bomb offers us great advantages as a counterforce to
neutralize her huge army, she can use the H-bomb, both the rigged and
the non-rigged, as a constant threat against our densely populated
cities. As Senator Brien McMahon, of Connecticut, chairman of the Joint
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, has warned, an H-bomb attack
“might incinerate 50,000,000 Americans—not in the space of an evening
but in the space of a few minutes.” We have eleven cities of one million
or more inhabitants, whereas Russia has only three or four. We have
forty cities of 200,000 and over, inhabited by 40,000,000, or 27 per
cent of our population, whereas Russia has only twenty cities of 200,000
and over, inhabited by only 20,000,000, or 10 per cent of her
population. Furthermore, her industries are now largely dispersed,
whereas our industries are highly centralized. Russia would thus get
much the worse of the bargain if she were to accept our challenge to
renounce the use of strategic bombing, particularly that of the A- and
H-bombs, while we still retain the right to use them in tactical bombing
against her armies.
Suppose Russia in this dilemma, and recognizing the need to avoid the
moral opprobrium of the peoples of the world that her refusal to meet
our renunciation would entail, comes forth with a counterproposal to
renounce the use of both A- and H-bombs altogether, as strategic as well
as tactical weapons, thus exchanging the elimination of the threat of
the annihilation of our teeming cities and industries, for the removal
of the threat of destruction to her armies. Suppose that at the same
time she repeats her demand, frequently voiced by her in the United
Nations, that all stockpiles of A- and H-bombs be destroyed and a
convention signed to outlaw their uses. The world already knows the
answer, for we have already made it again and again.
Immediately after the close of the last war we declared our readiness to
give up the A-bomb. In 1946, at a time when we were the sole possessor
of the bomb, when we had every reason to believe that our monopoly would
last for a number of years, we submitted a far-reaching plan for the
international control of atomic energy, the most generous offer by far
ever made by any nation in history. In this historic plan we not only
declared our readiness to give up our stockpile of A-bombs and to agree
to refrain from further production; we even offered to give up our
sovereignty over our multibillion-dollar atomic plants to an
international agency. We further agreed to submit to unhindered, free
inspection by such an agency to assure the world, and Russia in
particular, that we were not manufacturing A-bombs, or A-bomb materials,
in secret. No nation in history had ever gone so far in its desire to
show its goodwill and its peaceful intentions as to make a voluntary
offer to surrender the world’s most powerful weapon of war, and an
important part of its sovereignty to boot. The offer still stands. It
has been enthusiastically endorsed by all the members of the United
Nations except Russia and her satellites. After three years of futile
negotiations and discussions Russia still insists that she would not
surrender any part of her sovereignty or submit to the only kind of
inspection that could assure the world against clandestine production of
atomic bombs and materials.
Hence, should Russia demand that we renounce the right to use the A- and
H-bombs not only as strategic but also as tactical weapons against her
armies in exchange for a similar offer on her part, it would on the face
of it be a mere repetition of her earlier efforts to trick us into
giving up our greatest weapons while she remained free to produce them
in secret, since she insists upon her right to retain ownership of the
atomic plants and materials and upon the inspection of only those plants
she acknowledges to exist, thus making it impossible to find plants
whose existence she does not admit. To accept such an offer would be
tantamount to surrender, since our giving up the right to use the H-bomb
as a tactical weapon against her armies would leave her free to march
into the countries of western Europe. It would then be too late to stop
her, for we could not drop the H-bomb on the cities of western Europe.
The only time to stop Russia’s armies is before they cross into the
territory of our allies, during the crucial period when they are
mobilized in large numbers and on the march.
The American people, and the other free peoples of the world, could not
agree to such a scheme to disarm them in advance and thus give the
masters of the Kremlin a free hand. To do so would not prevent war, it
would encourage it. It would not even delay it, it would hasten it.
Instead of being preventable, it would become inevitable. We wouldn’t
even save our cities from the fate of strategic bombing with A- and
H-bombs, since the Kremlin has never kept its promises when they did not
suit its purposes. When we had lost our greatest chance to wipe out her
armies in one mighty blow, Russia would be in a position to trade our
industries and cities for her dispersed and still primitive industrial
plants and cities. If at that stage she should offer us, as well as our
neighbors to the south and Britain and her Dominions, independence and
complete sovereignty, while she assumed hegemony over all of Europe and
Asia, could we then refuse, at the risk of the lives of our millions?
Supposing the nations of western Europe, overrun by the Red Army, become
“people’s democracies,” Russian style, would we risk our millions to
liberate nations whose governments would by then have joined the ranks
of our enemy?
These are the brutal facts that would confront us were we to renounce
the right to use A- and H-bombs as tactical weapons against armies in
the field. As long as we retain that right, the chances are good that we
could prevent global war, for no nation would be likely to risk such a
war in the face of the possibility that the main bulk of its armies
might be wiped out at the outset. If we give up that right, we would
also prevent war—by surrendering in advance. Russia, of course, might
figure that she could still make war, when she decides the time is ripe,
taking the calculated risk that we would not use the A- and H-bombs
against her armies for fear of her retaliation against our cities and
industries. But whether she would consider that calculated risk worth
taking would depend on how good our defenses were. Senator McMahon’s
warning that an H-bomb attack “might incinerate 50,000,000 Americans ...
in the space of a few minutes” would become a possibility only if we
allowed ourselves to be surprised for a second time by a “super Pearl
Harbor,” which, of course, is inconceivable. While it is generally
agreed that it is impossible to decentralize our cities and industries,
because of the tremendous cost (estimated at $300 billion) and the short
time at our disposal between now and the ultimate showdown, when Russia
is expected to be ready to make major moves at the risk of “accepting”
war, we have many advantages not possessed by Britain and Germany during
the last war as far as defenses against strategic bombing were
concerned. Britain, as well as Poland, Holland, and Belgium—little,
densely populated countries—were within very short range of Germany’s
airfields. So was Germany, in her turn, within easy range from Britain.
Radar, as compared with its modern types, was primitive in quality and
inadequate in quantity. Automatic antiaircraft guns, interceptor planes,
and night fighters were either nonexistent in the early days of the
blitz or in a crude stage of development compared with present
equivalents.
How vastly different is our situation today vis-à-vis Russia! Instead of
a short hop across the English Channel she would have to cross the
Atlantic or the Pacific to reach our continent, whereas we can reach her
heartland from bases all around her borders. It is unthinkable that any
of her bombers can cross either ocean without being detected hundreds of
miles before they reach our shores. With modern radar devices, which are
constantly being improved, and fleets of fast interceptors far in
advance of anything Russia could develop, we would destroy them long
before they would do us any harm. If she attempts to fly over the North
Pole, she will still have to cross all of Canada before she can reach
us, and if we and our Canadian friends are on the alert, as we must and
shall be, any hostile planes could be detected and destroyed over the
Arctic.
There is, of course, the possibility of exploding an H-bomb some
distance off shore from a submarine or from a tramp steamer, but here,
too, eternal vigilance will be the price of our liberties and our lives.
There can be no question that we shall succeed in finding the answer to
the detection of the Snorkel-type submarine and master it just as we
mastered the earlier types. American ingenuity and superior technology
have never failed yet in the face of an emergency, and it is unthinkable
that they should fail now.
We often hear it said that an enemy could smuggle an A-bomb in small
parts into this country and assemble it here. While such an operation is
possible, its successful execution against a nation fully on guard is
highly improbable. As for the H-bomb, it requires large quantities of
liquefied gas, which must be kept in a vacuum surrounded by large
vessels of liquid air. In addition it must have its A-bomb trigger and
other complicated devices. All this makes its surreptitious smuggling
into a country such as ours even more improbable.
We have had it dinned into our ears for so long that there is no defense
against the atomic bomb, and that the only choice confronting us is “one
world or none,” without anyone taking the trouble to challenge these two
pernicious catch-phrases, that we have accepted them as gospel truth,
particularly since they were uttered by some of our more articulate
atomic scientists. That scientists should at last step out from their
laboratories and classrooms to take an active interest in public affairs
is highly commendable and welcome. But that does not give them the right
to take advantage of the great respect and confidence the public has for
them with utterances that serve only to create fear and hysteria and a
sense of helplessness, while at the same time offering remedies they
know to be unattainable.
The truth of the matter is that there can be and there is a defense
against atomic weapons, as against any other weapon. Basically it is the
same as the defense against submarines or enemy bombers: detect them and
destroy them before they reach you. The difference is largely a matter
of degree. Since the atomic-bomb carrier can do greater damage, the
measures of defense against it must be correspondingly greater. With the
aid of the vast stretches of the Atlantic and the Pacific, augmented by
an effective radar and interceptor system, on the one hand; and with
effective counter-submarine measures on the other, the odds would be
against a single A- or H-bomb reaching our shores.
Faced with such an impregnable system of defense, and with a threat of
the swift annihilation of its armies as soon as they begin marching for
war, the Kremlin could no longer, unless its masters went completely
berserk, regard war, or even a challenge to war, a risk worth taking.
The cold war may get warmer, as it did in Korea, but as long as we keep
our heads and don’t give way to fear and hysteria, trusting in God and
keeping our H-bombs “wet,” it may never reach the boilingpoint.
And we have in addition a weapon even more powerful than the H-bomb or
any other physical weapon, which instead of bringing misery and death
would bring new life and new hope to hundreds of millions now enslaved.
We have not yet even begun to fight on the battlefield of ideas, in
which we can match freedom against tyranny, friendship against class
hatred, truth against lies, a society based on the respect and dignity
of the individual and the giving of full scope to human aspirations
against a society modeled after the beehive and the ant-heap.
“Real peace,” former Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr.,
said in the _New Leader_, “is deeper than absence of war. That will be
won in the realm of philosophy and ideas. Indeed, the great reason for
preventing war is to permit ideas to meet ideas on their own merits....
The statesman’s business is to keep the conflagration at bay and give
ideas their chance, relying on the moral strength of the ideals he
represents to bring to their support the masses throughout the world.”
In such a war of ideas, he adds, there could be no doubt about the
outcome, as the West can oppose all its positives against Moscow’s
negatives. We meet “a betrayed revolution, in a decadent, imperialist,
dictatorial phase, building an empire on the negatives of human
behavior. Such empires engage no permanent loyalties; they invariably
break up. War would defeat this empire in any case. First rate
statesmanship can avoid that war.”
In the words of General George C. Marshall, “the most important thing
for the world today is a spiritual regeneration.... We must present
democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited
progress for the human race. We should make it clear that it is a means
to a better way of life within nations and to a better understanding
among nations. Tyranny inevitably must fall back before the tremendous
moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the
individual.”
As an advance army in this war of ideas we already have a fifth column
of millions waiting for our signal to march, the millions of the
enslaved satellite countries—Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic
countries, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania—as well as millions upon millions
behind the Iron Curtain in Russia itself. The greatest mistake made by
Hitler was his failure to utilize the readiness and eagerness of a large
percentage of the Russian masses to turn against their oppressors. When
the Nazi armies marched into the Ukraine, large numbers of Ukrainians,
who had been longing for independence for centuries, greeted them as
their liberators with the traditional bread and salt, symbol of welcome.
Russian soldiers surrendered by the thousands and they, along with the
men of the villages, volunteered in great numbers to fight against their
enslavers. In the hearts of millions of Russians behind the front, the
longing for liberty, never extinguished, was given its greatest stimulus
since the days when they overthrew the Czarist regime. They, too, were
waiting for the Germans to give them back the revolution the Communists
had stolen from them with lies and deceit.
With the stupidity characteristic of all criminals, Hitler and Himmler
proclaimed that the Russians were to be treated as an “inferior race.”
Everywhere their armies went they burned and pillaged and raped. Instead
of liberators they turned out to be most savage barbarians, who behaved
even worse than the commissars. It was this inconceivable folly of
Hitler, as well as our Lend-Lease, that played a major role in enabling
the Kremlin to win the war.
The Russian masses and those of the enslaved satellite countries are
still waiting for their liberators. The masters of the Kremlin know it,
but they hope that, like the Nazis, we will be too stupid to take
advantage of it. If a war ever breaks out, we shall have millions
joining our ranks provided we do not destroy these millions, those not
in uniform, with A- or H-bombs in the strategic bombing of their cities.
But we should not wait until a war breaks out. We must begin mobilizing
them right now for the war of ideas.
The so-called Iron Curtain is a fake, like the rest of the Communist
set-up. It is made of tinsel and is full of thousands of holes, through
which we can pass if we will. Those thousands of miles of border ringing
the vast Russian Empire could be utilized as great thoroughfares of
ideas, to be smuggled to the millions waiting for them. There isn’t a
guard on those borders who couldn’t, with the proper approach and
inducements, be enlisted in our army of ideas. In addition to flooding
the air over Russia with tiny balloons, each carrying a message of
freedom and hope, we could also smuggle into the country small radio
receiving sets by the millions to bring the Voice of America to millions
of Russian homes. We could attach to those balloons small loaves of
bread, packages of cigarettes, little trinkets for babies, nylon
stockings for women, on a scale that no police could cope with. Nor
could the Kremlin risk forbidding it, as that would place it in the
position of further depriving its starved and hungry people of things
they badly need and want.
With these weapons on the battlefront in the war of ideas, and with the
A- and H-bomb to give the Kremlin pause, we would be well on the way to
win any war, cold or hot. Our justification for building the hydrogen
bomb is thus not merely to prevent its use, but to prevent World War
III, and to win it if it comes. We are not building it to bring Russia
to her knees. We are building it to bring her to her senses. We must
make the Kremlin realize with General Marshall that “tyranny inevitably
must fall back before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of
freedom and self-respect for the individual.”
IV
KOREA CLEARED THE AIR
As this is being written, the Korean war is just one month old. By the
time these lines appear in print we may know whether the naked Communist
aggression on the Republic of South Korea was an episode, a prelude, or
the first act of World War III. But whatever history records, the first
flash of the Communist guns, supplied by the Kremlin, has revealed to
the free world at last the face of the enemy in all its hideousness. It
brought the first phase of the so-called cold war to a definite end. It
aroused freedom-loving peoples everywhere and put them on the alert. It
served as a powerful headlight in the night, revealing many dangerous
curves on the road ahead. It has given the United Nations its first
great opportunity to display its vitality for all the world to see.
Among other things, the flash of the North Korean guns has illumined for
us more clearly than ever before the path we must follow in our policy
on atomic weapons, both the A-bomb and the H-bomb. It has revealed the
extreme danger lurking in any plan to outlaw production and use of
atomic weapons in a world constantly threatened by a savage
dictatorship, ready to pounce on it at the first sign of weakening in
its armor.
The flash of the Red guns, in the first place, made it clear to free men
everywhere that to renounce our right to the production of atomic
weapons as potentially the greatest deterrents against the further
spread of Communist aggression, and as the most powerful defenders of
the spiritual and moral values without which our way of life would
become meaningless, would allow the Red Army to overrun what remains of
the free world. Such a move on our part, for the present and the
foreseeable future, may herald the last appearance of free men on the
stage of history. It would be, as the Goncourt brothers feared, “closing
time, gentlemen!”
In addition to warning us what we must not do, the Red guns also gave
warning of a more positive nature. They warned us to make all haste in
the construction of the hydrogen bomb, to get it ready as soon as
possible, against the eventuality that Russia may decide it would be to
her advantage to precipitate World War III before our H-bomb is ready.
Instead of the estimated pre-Korea time-table of three years, it now
becomes a vital necessity for us to complete our H-bomb, and facilities
for its production at a speedy rate, within a year. And if the history
of our development of the A-bomb may serve as an example, it almost
becomes a certainty that we shall do so. While we may not announce it to
the world, we have good reason to expect that the first H-bomb will be
ready for testing sometime in 1951, possibly in early summer.
This forecast is not based on merely guesswork. When we decided to go
all out in developing the A-bomb—and we didn’t really go to work in
earnest until May 1943—nobody knew that it could be successfully made.
There were two enormous major problems to be solved, and solved in time
to be of use in winning the war. One was to produce unheard-of
quantities of fissionable materials (U-235 and plutonium), literally in
quantities billions of times greater than had ever been produced before.
Nobody knew whether it could be done or how it could be done. Three
gigantic plants were built, at a cost of $1,500,000,000, on the mere
chance, “calculated risk” we called it, that one of them would work. As
it turned out, they all worked, some more efficiently than others,
though all contributed to the shortening of the war. The second major
problem, among a host of smaller ones, all important to the successful
attainment of the goal, was how to assemble the materials produced in
the billion-dollar plants into a bomb that would live up to
expectations. Both major problems had to be solved simultaneously. The
designing of the bomb went on for more than two years with only trickles
of the active material.
Yet despite all these enormous difficulties the A-bomb was completed for
testing in about two years and three months after the beginning of the
large-scale effort. Compared with the enormousness of the problems that
had to be solved, and were solved successfully in this remarkably short
time, the problems still to be solved for building the hydrogen bomb
appear relatively simple, since all the materials required and the
plants to produce them are already built, paid for, and operating
successfully. As already pointed out, we have the A-bombs to serve as
triggers, large stockpiles of deuterium, and the refrigeration equipment
and techniques to liquefy it. We have an adequate supply of lithium for
the production of tritium, which, as explained earlier, would be used as
the extra kindling to the A-bomb match. And we have, of course, our
gigantic plutonium factories at Hanford, Washington, in which the
lithium could be converted into tritium in the desired amounts.
Thus, instead of having to start from scratch as we were forced to do
with the A-bomb, we have at hand all the necessary ingredients for the
H-bomb with the possible exception of sufficient tritium, and since we
have the plutonium plants, greatly expanded and improved since the end
of the war, it is reasonable to make a “guestimate,” to use a word
popular in wartime, that a few months should suffice for them, if they
are employed exclusively for that purpose, to produce tritium in proper
amounts.
That we have decided to complete the construction of the H-bomb in the
shortest possible time was made clear on July 7, two weeks following the
Communist attack on South Korea, when President Truman asked Congress to
furnish $260,000,000 in cash “to build additional and more efficient
plants and related facilities” for materials that can be used either for
weapons or for fuels potentially useful for power purposes. The
appropriation, he said, was required “in furtherance of my directive of
January 31, 1950,” in which he had ordered the Atomic Energy Commission
“to continue its work on the so-called hydrogen bomb”; and this was
further clarified in a letter to the President by the Budget Director,
Frederick J. Lawton, recommending the money request, to the effect that
the materials to be produced in the proposed plants could be used for
either atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs. Since the only type of plant that
could produce materials for both the A-bomb and the H-bomb is a nuclear
reactor for producing plutonium, and since tritium is the only H-bomb
element that could be produced in a plutonium plant, the request by the
President may be interpreted as the first, though indirect, official
confirmation that tritium is looked upon as one of the ingredients
necessary for a successful H-bomb. We were given a hint of a possible
time-table when it was revealed that the all-cash request would have to
be obligated in one year though its actual disbursal could be spread
over four years. This suggests the possibility that the nuclear reactors
for the large-scale production of tritium might be rushed to completion
within one year.
While these new reactors for the production of tritium are being built,
we can convert all our Hanford reactors for that purpose so that no time
need be lost. Whatever amounts of plutonium would have to be sacrificed
by diverting the Hanford plants from plutonium to tritium would be
offset by the new uranium concentration plants at Oak Ridge, and by the
fact that we already have a large stockpile of both U-235 and plutonium
accumulated over a period of five years.
The one and only major problem to be solved is how to assemble into an
efficient H-bomb the materials we already have at hand or will have in a
few months. Here, too, we are much farther advanced than we were at the
time we decided to build the A-bomb, as we are not called upon to start
from scratch. For whereas in the early days of the A-bomb development
scientists were doubtful whether it could be made at all and were
actually hoping that their investigations would prove that it was
impossible, for the Nazis as well as for us, no such doubts seem to
exist in the minds of those most intimately associated with the problem.
On this score we have had more than hints from a number of those in the
know, among them Senator McMahon. “The scientists,” he said in a
historic address to the United States Senate on February 2, 1950, “feel
more confident that this most horrible of armaments [the hydrogen bomb]
can be developed successfully than they felt in 1940 when the original
bomb was under consideration. The hydrogen development will be cheaper
than its uranium forerunner. Theoretically, it is without limit in
destructive capacity. A weapon made of such material would destroy any
military or other target, including the largest city on earth.”
What is this confidence based on? Scientists are a very conservative
lot, not given to jumping to conclusions without experimental evidence
on which to base them. I remember well the agonizing hours preceding the
test of the first A-bomb in New Mexico, when everyone present,
particularly the intellectual hierarchy that was most responsible, was
beset by grave doubts whether the A-bomb would go off at all, and if it
did, whether it would live up to expectations or turn out to be no more
than an improved blockbuster. Very few, if any, felt confident that it
would be as good as it finally turned out to be. For example, in a pool
in which everyone bet a dollar to guess the ultimate power of the bomb
in terms of TNT, Dr. Oppenheimer placed his bet on 300 tons. This makes
it evident that the scientists were not very confident even as late as
1945, up to the very last minute, when “the brain child of many minds
came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do.”
If the scientists are more confident today than they were in 1940, and
even, it would seem, in 1945, when the bomb stood on its steel tower
ready for its first test, it can only mean that their confidence is
based on innumerable experiments carried out during the five years that
have elapsed since Hiroshima. By the semiannual reports to Congress by
the Atomic Energy Commission, and reports presented before the American
Physical Society, or published in official publications, by members of
the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and other leading institutions, we
have been officially informed of many experiments that have been carried
out on nuclear reactions between deuterons and deuterons, tritons and
tritons, and deuterons and tritons—namely, the very reactions to be
expected in an H-bomb using deuterium, tritium, or a mixture of the two.
This makes it obvious that during the five years since Hiroshima we have
accumulated a vast body of knowledge about the reactions necessary for a
successful H-bomb. Furthermore, this gives us the assurance that we are
five years ahead of Russia on the H-bomb as well as the A-bomb, since we
have had plutonium plants in which to make tritium for at least five
years, whereas she has just placed her plutonium plants in operation
and, as we have seen, can ill afford to sacrifice the vital plutonium
she needs for building up her A-bomb stockpile to begin experiments we
had most likely carried out five years ago.
The best evidence so far that we have made much progress during the past
five years on the design of the H-bomb—evidence strongly indicating that
it had passed the blueprint stage and was ready for construction—was
supplied recently by Lewis L. Strauss, a member of the original Atomic
Energy Commission, when he revealed that “the greatest issue of
division” (between himself and other members of the AEC) “was whether or
not to proceed with the hydrogen bomb, as for some time I had strongly
urged to do.” Now, Strauss, who went into the Navy in World War II as a
lieutenant commander and rose to be a rear admiral, is a leading
financier of wide experience, so it may be taken for granted that if for
some time he had “strongly urged” proceeding with the hydrogen bomb, it
must have been because he had been assured by the scientific experts
that it was feasible. Men of his background and experience do not
“strongly urge” the diversion of resources to projects unless they are
strongly convinced that the project is both practical and feasible. His
words, when read in the light of statements by other members of the AEC,
suggest that the division of opinion on this score among the members of
the Commission was not over the feasibility of the H-bomb but over the
belief that the A-bomb was good enough as long as we were its sole
possessors and that we could maintain our advantage for a long time by
building more and better A-bombs.
On the other hand, the fact that the majority of the AEC did not agree
with Strauss on the necessity of proceeding with the hydrogen bomb must
certainly not be interpreted to mean that they halted all studies on the
subject, for that would be charging them with gross negligence. It is
much more reasonable to assume that the “greatest issue of division”
(mark the use of the word “greatest,” which indicates many a heated
debate) was whether or not to proceed at once with the actual building
of the bomb, after it had been fully designed and shown to be feasible
in a host of painstaking studies over a period of at least four years.
There can therefore be no question that as soon as the President issued
his directive to the AEC “to continue” its work on the hydrogen bomb,
the first item on the program was to proceed at once with the production
of tritium in sizable amounts, since all known facts point to the need
of tritium as extra kindling for the A-bomb trigger. We can also be sure
that the production of whatever other auxiliary paraphernalia may be
necessary was at once placed on the top-priority list. By the end of
1950, if not earlier, we should thus have all the necessary materials
ready in the desired amounts. Meantime, we can be sure that our top
scientists have been putting the finishing touches on designs for
assembling the materials—the _finishing_ touches, since there can be no
doubt that the blueprints for a successful H-bomb have been completed
for at least a year and possibly for three or four. It would be
unthinkable that we were so careless as to drop all work on such a vital
matter, which as far back as 1945 appeared to be a definite possibility.
For this we have no less an authority than Dr. Oppenheimer. In an
article in the book _One World or None_, published late in 1945,
discussing atomic weapons of the future, he described bombs “that would
reduce the cost of destruction per square mile probably by a factor of
10 or more,” which, as we now know, would be a bomb of a thousand times
the power that destroyed Hiroshima—namely, a hydrogen bomb. “Preliminary
investigations” of proposals for such a bomb, Dr. Oppenheimer wrote at
that early date, “appeared sound.” If the preliminary investigations
“appeared sound” to scientists such as Dr. Oppenheimer in 1945, and
bearing in mind President Truman’s orders to the AEC in 1950 “to
continue its work,” we can only conclude that the interim years produced
results far beyond the preliminary stage, when they merely “appeared” to
be sound. Judging by the reaction of some leading physicists to the
President’s order, the H-bomb appears to be an ominous reality, a
completed architectural plan requiring only a few polishing touches. In
a word, we are almost ready to go.
And while Dr. Bethe estimated that it would take three years to complete
the first H-bomb, we must remember that he spoke several months before
the guns of Korea gave the alarm. And we must not forget that had it not
been for the threat of the Nazis we might not have had the A-bomb in
less than twenty-five and possibly fifty years, according to the best
estimates, though the present Communist threat might have reduced the
time considerably.
Furthermore, we also have the word of Senator McMahon, who should know,
that “the hydrogen development will be cheaper than its uranium
forerunner.” This lends weight to the earlier deduction that only
relatively small amounts of tritium will be necessary, since, as we have
seen, large amounts would be prohibitively costly in terms of vast
quantities of plutonium. Small amounts of tritium, in turn, mean that it
would take a relatively short time to produce them. A reasonable
“guestimate,” assuming that 150 to 300 grams of tritium would be
required, is that such amounts could be produced within a few months,
particularly if we employ all our huge plutonium plants at Hanford on
the task of producing tritium.
It is therefore within the realm of possibility that when we carry out
the announced tests of the latest models of our A-bombs at Eniwetok,
sometime in the spring or summer of 1951, one of them will be the first
H-bomb. It may not be the best model, and it need not be the equal in
power to a thousand wartime model A-bombs. In fact, it would be highly
inadvisable to use such a bomb in a mere test. It will be an H-bomb,
nevertheless, and from it we shall learn how to make bigger and better
ones, which is all that a test is supposed to do. For unlike the A-bomb,
which cannot be made below or above a certain size, the H-bomb can be
made as small or as large as the designer wants it to be. As Professor
Bacher has pointed out, the H-bomb is “an open-ended weapon.”
One of the major outcomes of the Korean aggression instigated by the
Kremlin has thus been to bring the H-bomb into being much sooner than it
would otherwise have been. And that is only one branch of the chain
reaction that the Korean guns have set in motion.
In addition to unmasking completely the Kremlin’s ultimate intentions to
enslave mankind, and alerting the free nations of the world to the
danger facing them as they had not been alerted since Hitler’s attack on
Poland, the flash of the Korean guns has also shed new light on the
Politburo’s strategy of conquest. The best-informed opinion in the
summer of 1950 holds that the Kremlin has decided on a series of little
wars that would slowly drain our lifeblood and ruin our economy, and
thus bring about the collapse and ruin of the rest of the world’s free
nations, rather than force a global war, German style. Among other
reasons for such a strategy—and there are many logical reasons for it
from Russia’s point of view—is the fact, already become evident in
Korea, that in such little wars, fought with Russian equipment and other
people’s blood, we would not use atomic weapons of any kind, not only
because there are no suitable targets, but because dictates of humanity
make the use of such weapons on little peoples, caught in the net of
Communism, wholly inconceivable. By deciding on a series of little wars,
over a prolonged period, one following the other or coming
simultaneously, Russia may thus figure that she could gain her ultimate
objective in the cheapest possible way, while at the same time making
sure that our atomic-bomb stockpile is wholly neutralized.
If this turns out to be true, we would at least escape atomic warfare,
and since we, and the rest of the civilized world, fervently wish to
avoid being forced to use atomic weapons, this would be all to the good.
But we must also take into consideration the possibility that the very
decision on Russia’s part to wage little wars and avoid a global war may
have been greatly influenced by the fact that we have a large stockpile
of A-bombs while her stockpile is still negligible, forcing her to adopt
a strategy in which our superiority would be nullified. It is also
possible that after her first experience with the production of A-bombs
she may have realized that it would be much too costly to try to catch
up with us and have therefore decided on a strategy in which atomic
weapons could not possibly play any part. On the other hand, it may also
mean that she will not risk a global war until she has built up an
adequate stockpile of her own, meantime softening us up with a series of
little wars.
With all this in mind, it behooves us to take a closer look at our
program for the outlawing of atomic weapons and the placing of atomic
energy under international control. It was a noble ideal, one of the
noblest conceived by man: the most powerful nation in the world
voluntarily offered to give up the right to produce or use the greatest
weapon ever designed. Alas, it almost died at birth, and now, after four
years of nursing in an incubator, the Korean guns have given it a fatal
blow. We might as well face the facts squarely: the majority plan for
the international control of atomic energy, the only acceptable plan
possible, is dead, one of the first casualties of the Korean guns.
We still talk about trying to find ways for compromise between our plan,
accepted by all the nations outside the Iron Curtain, and that of
Russia. We are still talking, at least officially, as though somehow a
compromise can and will be found. The truth of the matter is that the
plan as it stands today is completely out of tune with the times. As we
look on it by the light of the North Korean guns, it becomes clear that
it is wholly visionary, without any relation to the realities.
We still talk as though our original offer still stands. The truth of
the matter is that even were the impossible to happen and Russia were to
say to the world: “We have been mistaken. We accept the American and the
majority plan _in toto_ without any reservations,” we should be forced
to say: “Sorry, it is too late, you have missed your chance. Your
actions have made the plan unworkable, since it cannot possibly work in
an atmosphere of mutual distrust and the constant threat of little
wars!”
And even if wise diplomacy prevented us from saying it in such blunt
language, and though we may still find it expedient to pay lip service
to the majority plan, so that Russia could not use it in her propaganda
war as evidence that we were insincere from the very beginning, we would
have to wriggle to get out of the very serious predicament in which
Russia’s acceptance would place us. And even if diplomacy dictated that
we sign a convention with Russia to outlaw production and use of all
atomic weapons, to destroy our stockpiles and hand over all our atomic
plants to an international atomic authority, as our present plan calls
for, there can be no question that such a convention could never muster
the approval of even a majority of the Senate, and certainly not the
required consent of two thirds of the Senate called for by the
Constitution. What is more, such a rejection would have the overwhelming
approval of American people, once the facts were made clear to them, and
any administration daring to enter such a pact would be overwhelmingly
defeated.
All this has been so evident for more than two years that it is
remarkable that the Russians have failed so far to take advantage of our
potential embarrassment and thus win one of their greatest victories on
the propaganda front. In fact, their failure to do so, with the sure
knowledge that they would risk nothing by accepting a plan that would
most certainly be rejected by our own people, not only reveals lack of
subtlety on their part, but appears on the surface as crass stupidity,
the same type of stupidity displayed by Hitler, which appears to be an
inevitable trait of all monolithic dictatorships that must lead to their
ultimate undoing.
The time has come for us to stop talking about giving away our greatest
weapons, the only ones, as President Truman and Winston Churchill have
told us, that have kept the Red Army hordes from overrunning the free
world. It is time for us to face reality and place the blame where it
belongs. The evil does not lie in weapons per se. It lies in war itself.
It is no evil to build and possess the most powerful weapons at our
command with which to defend ourselves against a ruthless aggressor. On
the contrary, it would be an evil thing to throw away the principal
weapon standing between us and possible defeat. It is no evil to use a
weapon to destroy your enemy just because your weapon happens to be the
most powerful in existence. It is no greater evil to destroy thousands
of your enemy in one great flash than to destroy them by goring them
with bayonets. The real evildoer is the nation that starts an aggressive
war. Those attacked have the right and duty to defend themselves by all
means at their command.
Our confusion has been the result of our first use of the A-bomb to
destroy a city with thousands of its civilian population. Let us admit
that the mass bombing of large populated cities (which, by the way, was
started by the Nazis) is wholly inexcusable with any kind of weapons,
and that we should never resort to such strategic bombing again. That
does not mean that we should renounce our right to use A-bombs to
destroy an enemy’s armies, navies, and airfields, his transportation
facilities and his oil wells—in a word, his capacity to make war against
us. And as long as we use the A-bomb and the H-bomb only as weapons of
tremendous power to destroy by blast and by fire, they are no different
from ordinary blockbusters or incendiaries except that they concentrate
their power in a small package. Is there any difference, morally
speaking, between the use of thousands of blockbusters and tens of
thousands of incendiaries and a weapon that concentrates all their power
in one?
Probably the main reason for the confused thinking that has singled out
atomic weapons as a greater evil than other weapons of mass destruction
has been their radioactivity. But even the A-bombs exploded over Japan
were purposely dropped from a height that carried most of the
radioactivity away into the upper atmosphere. Nor will the H-bomb, as
explained earlier, release great quantities of radioactivity unless it
is purposely rigged to do so. We should, therefore, lose nothing and
gain much if we renounced the use of A- and H-bombs as radioactive
weapons except in retaliation against the use of such weapons on us or
our allies. But to renounce their use altogether would be tantamount not
only to physical but to spiritual suicide as well, for it would mean
condoning the advance of the Red Army.
It has become customary to talk about Russia’s atom bomb as though she
already was, or soon will be, on a par with us. It is true that
eventually she will catch up with us in the development of a large
stockpile of her own and in designing more efficient models. But that is
only one side of the picture. As of 1950, and for at least until 1952,
years that may well be crucial, our superiority in A-bombs will remain
unchallenged, not only qualitatively but quantitatively. By that time we
shall have greatly increased our lead by the possession of an effective
stockpile of H-bombs. Since Russia cannot build H-bombs at the present
stage without sacrificing quantities of plutonium she needs to build up
her A-bomb stockpile, she will find herself compelled to build
additional plutonium plants, which not only will greatly strain her
resources but, more important from our point of view, will gain us
additional time.
How many A-bombs can Russia make? Former Secretary of War Henry L.
Stimson has told us that the A-bombs we dropped on Japan “were the only
ones we had ready.” Counting the test bomb at Alamogordo, we had thus
produced three bombs by mid-August 1945. This represented the total
output of a two-billion-dollar plant, employing three major methods of
production, after the plants had been in operation for an average of
about six months. In other words, it took our two-billion-dollar plant
about six months to produce three A-bombs—a rate of six A-bombs a year.
Now all the evidence at hand, as already pointed out, indicates that,
instead of building three different types of plants for producing A-bomb
materials, Russia is concentrating entirely on plutonium. Hence, if we
assume that she built a plutonium plant equal in output to the total
capacity of our wartime uranium and plutonium plants, and further
assuming that her methods for producing plutonium are as efficient as
ours, the best she could do at present would be at the rate of six
plutonium bombs a year. At this rate she would have about eighteen by
the middle of 1952. This would be a sizable stockpile for a nation in
sole possession of such a weapon. But would any nation with such a
stockpile dare challenge a nation with a stockpile many times bigger,
consisting of bombs many times more powerful, and possessing a few
hydrogen bombs to boot?
Russia will, no doubt, improve her production methods. But to improve
them to the extent of producing, let us say, two bombs per month, she
would have to step up her production by four hundred per cent. It is
doubtful if such a step-up could be achieved in less than three years.
Then there are other factors to be considered that greatly balance the
scales in our favor. To produce plutonium bombs requires tremendous
quantities of uranium, something that cannot be conjured up by just
dialectic materialism. It so happens that we have access to the only two
rich uranium deposits known in the world: the Belgian Congo, and the
Great Bear Lake area in Canada. There were no known rich uranium
deposits in Russia proper or in the territories of her satellites, with
the possible exception of Czechoslovakia. We know this from the fact
that she never competed for the world markets for radium, extracted
economically only from rich uranium ores, which sold before the war at
$25,000 per gram, or at the rate of nearly $12,000,000 a pound. The best
evidence, however, that she does not have at her command rich uranium
deposits either in Russia or elsewhere is her ruthless exploitation, at
the cost of thousands of human lives, of the depleted uranium mines in
the mountains of Saxony, which had long been abandoned by their German
owners. The only other known source of pitchblende (the mineral richest
in uranium) under Russian control is Joachimsthal (Jachymov) in Bohemia,
from which came the first radium sample isolated by Mme Curie about
fifty years ago. This mine, too, has been largely depleted, though much
of its uranium may possibly be recoverable from the dump-heaps, if they
have not in the meantime been disposed of.
Now, every ton of pure uranium metal contains just fourteen pounds of
the fissionable element uranium 235. The latter, when split, releases
the neutrons that create plutonium out of nonfissionable uranium 238. On
the basis of one hundred per cent efficiency, impossible in this
operation, the yield of plutonium would thus be fourteen pounds per ton.
Since the plutonium must be extracted long before all the U-235 atoms
have been split, however, the likelihood is that the yield would be no
more than two to four pounds per ton. Russia would thus need tens of
thousands of tons of uranium ore to build up a sizable stockpile of
A-bombs, and while she may be able to process low-grade ores, it would
take her much longer to produce a given quantity of plutonium than it
takes us to produce it from our much richer ores. For example, an ore
containing fifty per cent uranium would yield a given quantity of
plutonium ten times faster than an ore containing only five per cent,
unless a refining plant ten times the size is built at ten times the
cost of construction and of operation.
If we take Professor Oliphant’s published estimate that the critical
mass (that is, the minimum amount) needed for an A-bomb is between 10
and 30 kilograms (22 and 66 pounds), we get a clear picture of the
enormous difference there is between rich ores and poor ores for the
building up of an A-bomb stockpile, and a further concept of the
difficulties that Russia will face in trying to produce an H-bomb.
According to the best available prewar information, the pitchblende of
the Belgian Congo has a uranium content as high as 60 to 80 per cent;
the Canadian ore yields from 30 to 40 per cent. A conservative estimate
would thus place the average uranium content of Belgian and Canadian
ores at somewhere around 50 per cent. This contrasts sharply with a
prewar figure of around 3 per cent uranium for the pitchblende of
Czechoslovakia, and the ore in the mountains of Saxony is of even lower
grade.
Hence on the basis of two to four pounds of plutonium per ton of uranium
metal, it would require the mining and processing of only 2 tons of
Belgian and Canadian ore to obtain that amount as compared with 34 tons
for the ore from Czechoslovakia, and a larger amount for the Saxon ore.
To make a bomb containing 22 pounds of plutonium would thus require us
to mine and process from 11 to 22 tons of ore, whereas Russia would need
from 187 to 374 tons. For a bomb requiring 66 pounds, the amount, of
course, would be correspondingly tripled, reaching a possible figure of
1,122 tons of ore to produce one A-bomb, as compared with a maximum of
no more than 66 tons of the ores available to us. In a state employing
slave labor and heedless of the wastage of human lives, the production
cost does not count. But even Russia’s manpower is not unlimited, and
workers removed from other lines of production must inevitably hurt the
economy. This factor must put a definite limit to Russia’s capacity to
produce A-bombs and will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for
her to produce a large stockpile in a short time.
When it comes to producing an H-bomb, the disparity between ourselves
and Russia assumes astronomical proportions. It takes 80 pounds of
uranium 235 to produce one pound of tritium. Since, as we have seen,
there are only 14 pounds of U-235 in a ton of natural uranium metal,
this means that 5.7 tons of uranium metal would be required, assuming
one hundred per cent efficiency of utilization, which is out of the
question. On the basis of figures already given, it can be seen that we
would require the mining and processing of only 11.4 tons of ore whereas
Russia would have to use as much as 194 tons to produce that single
pound of the element which, as the facts cited earlier appear to
demonstrate, is vital for the construction of a successful H-bomb.
All these basic facts, never presented before, should convince us that,
despite the fact that Russia has exploded her first A-bomb, we still
have tremendous advantages over her that she will find extremely
difficult to overcome. And we must not forget other advantages on our
side that may prove decisive even after Russia succeeds in building up a
sizable stockpile. Bombs can be delivered against us at present only by
airplane or by submarine. A look at the map will show that whereas the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans stand between us and Russia’s nearest bases,
we are in a much better position to deliver A-bombs to her vital
centers, such as the oil fields in the Caucasus, for example, from bases
close by. It is, furthermore, not unreasonable to assume that we, as the
most advanced industrial nation in the world, will manage to maintain
our lead not only in methods of delivery by superior and faster
airplanes, or by guided missiles, but also in the development of radar,
sonar, and other detection devices, as well as of superior interceptors
and other defensive measures, which would make delivery of A-bombs
against us much more difficult than it would be for us to deliver them
against Russia.
For the next three years, it can thus be seen, and possibly for a
considerably longer period, the initiative, as far as atomic weapons are
concerned, will remain with us. Let us therefore be done with all
visionary plans for destroying the shield that now protects civilization
as we know it, and proceed to build bigger and better shields, hoping
that by our very act of doing so we can prevent the ultimate cataclysm.
Right now the outlook is not bright, but our strength, physical and
spiritual, should give us faith that the forces of good will prevail in
the end over the forces of evil, as they have always done throughout
history; that the four freedoms will triumph over the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse.
V
A PRIMER OF ATOMIC ENERGY
The material universe, the earth and everything in it, all things living
and non-living, the sun and its planets, the stars and the
constellations, the galaxies and the supergalaxies, the infinitely large
and the infinitesimally small, manifests itself to our senses in two
forms, matter and energy. We do not know, and probably never can know,
how the material universe began, and whether, indeed, it ever had a
beginning, but we do know that it is constantly changing and that it did
not always exist in its present form. We also know that in whatever form
the universe may have existed, matter and energy have always been
inseparable, no energy being possible without matter, and no matter
without energy, each being a form of the other.
While we do not know how and when matter and energy came into being, or
whether they ever had a beginning in time as we perceive it, we do know
that while the relative amounts of matter and energy are constantly
changing, the total amount of both, in one form or the other, always
remains the same. When a plant grows, energy from the sun, in the form
of heat and light, is converted into matter, so that the total weight of
the plant is greater than that of the elementary material constituents,
water and carbon-dioxide gas, out of which its substance is built up.
When the substance of the plant is again broken up into its original
constituents by burning, the residual ashes and gases weigh less than
the total weight of the intact plant, the difference corresponding to
the amount of matter that had been converted into energy, liberated once
again in the form of heat and light.
All energy as we know it manifests itself through motion or change in
the physical or chemical state of matter, or both, though these changes
and motions may be so slow as to be imperceptible. As the ancient Greek
philosopher Heraclitus perceived more than two thousand years ago, all
things are in a constant state of flux, this flux being due to an
everlasting conversion of matter into energy and energy into matter,
everywhere over the vast stretches of the material universe, to its
outermost and innermost limits, if any limits there be.
Each manifestation of energy involves either matter in motion or a
change in its physical state, which we designate as physical energy; a
change in the chemical constitution of matter, which we know as chemical
energy; or a combination of the two. Physical energy can be converted
into chemical energy and vice versa. For example, heat and light are
forms of physical energy, each consisting of a definite band of waves of
definite wave lengths in violent, regular, rhythmic oscillations. A
mysterious mechanism in the plant, known as photosynthesis, uses the
heat and light energy from the sun to create complex substances, such as
sugars, starches, and cellulose, out of simpler substances, such as
carbon dioxide and water, converting physical energy, heat, and light
into the chemical energy required to hold together the complex
substances the plant produces. When we burn the cellulose in the form of
wood or coal (coal is petrified wood), the chemical energy is once again
converted into physical energy in the form of the original heat and
light. As we have seen, the chemical energy stored in the plant
manifested itself by an increase in the plant’s weight as compared with
that of its original constituents. Similarly, the release of the energy
manifests itself through a loss in the total weight of the plant’s
substance.
It can thus be seen that neither matter nor energy can be created. All
we can do is to manipulate certain types of matter in a way that
liberates whatever energy had been in existence, in one form or another,
since the beginning of time. All the energy that we had been using on
earth until the advent of the atomic age had originally come from the
sun. Coal, as already said, is a petrified plant that had stored up the
energy of the sun in the form of chemical energy millions of years ago,
before man made his appearance on the earth. Oil comes from organic
matter that also had stored up light and heat from the sun in the form
of chemical energy. Water power and wind power are also made possible by
the sun’s heat, since all water would freeze and no winds would blow
were it not for the sun’s heat energy keeping the waters flowing and the
air moving, the latter by creating differences in the temperature of air
masses.
There are two forms of energy that we take advantage of which are not
due directly to the sun’s radiations—gravitation and magnetism—but the
only way we can utilize these is by employing energy derived from the
sun’s heat. In harnessing Niagara, or in the building of great dams, we
utilize the fall of the water because of gravitation. But as I have
already pointed out, without the sun’s heat water could not flow. To
produce electricity we begin with the chemical energy in coal or oil,
which is first converted into heat energy, then to mechanical energy,
and finally, through the agency of magnetism, into electrical energy.
The radiations of the sun, of the giant stars millions of times larger
than the sun, come from an entirely different source, the greatest
source of energy in the universe, known as atomic or, more correctly,
nuclear energy. But even here the energy comes as the result of the
transformation of matter. The difference between nuclear energy and
chemical energy is twofold. In chemical energy, such as the burning of
coal, the matter lost in the process comes from the outer shell of the
atoms, and the amount of matter lost is so small that it cannot be
weighed directly by any human scale or other device. In nuclear energy,
on the other hand, the matter lost by being transformed into energy
comes from the nucleus, the heavy inner core, of the atom, and the
amount of matter lost is millions of times greater than in coal, great
enough to be weighed.
An atom is the smallest unit of any of the elements of which the
physical universe is constituted. Atoms are so small that if a drop of
water were magnified to the size of the earth the atoms in the drop
would be smaller than oranges.
The structure of atoms is like that of a minuscule solar system, with a
heavy nucleus in the center as the sun, and much smaller bodies
revolving around it as the planets. The nucleus is made up of two types
of particles: protons, carrying a positive charge of electricity, and
neutrons, electrically neutral. The planets revolving about the nucleus
are electrons, units of negative electricity, which have a mass about
one two-thousandth the mass of the proton or the neutron. The number of
protons in the nucleus determines the chemical nature of the element,
and also the number of planetary electrons, each proton being
electrically balanced by an electron in the atom’s outer shells. The
total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus is known as the mass
number, which is very close to the atomic weight of the element but not
quite equal. Protons and neutrons are known under the common name
“nucleons.”
There are two important facts to keep constantly in mind about protons
and neutrons. The first is that the two are interchangeable. A proton,
under certain conditions, loses its positive charge by emitting a
positive electron (positron) and thus becomes a neutron. Similarly, a
neutron, when agitated, emits a negative electron and becomes a proton.
As we shall see, the latter process is taken advantage of in the
transmutation of nonfissionable uranium into plutonium, and of thorium
into fissionable uranium 233. The transmutation of all other elements,
age-old dream of the alchemists, is made possible by the
interchangeability of protons into neutrons, and vice versa.
The second all-important fact about protons and neutrons, basic to the
understanding of atomic energy, is that each proton and neutron in the
nuclei of the elements weighs less than it does in the free state, the
loss of weight being equal to the energy binding the nucleons. This loss
becomes progressively greater for the elements in the first half of the
periodic table, reaching its maximum in the nucleus of silver, element
47. After that the loss gets progressively smaller. Hence, if we were to
combine (fuse) two elements in the first half of the periodic table, the
protons and the neutrons would lose weight if the newly formed nucleus
is not heavier than that of silver, but would gain weight if the new
nucleus thus formed is heavier than silver. The opposite is true with
the elements in the second half of the periodic table, the protons and
neutrons losing weight when a heavy element is split into two lighter
ones, and gaining weight if two elements are fused into one.
Since each loss of mass manifests itself by the release of energy, it
can be seen that to obtain energy from the atom’s nucleus requires
either the fusion of two elements in the first half of the periodic
table or the fission of an element in the second half. From a practical
point of view, however, fusion is possible only with two isotopes
(twins) of hydrogen, at the beginning of the periodic table, while
fission is possible only with twins of uranium, U-233 and U-235, and
with plutonium, at the lower end of the table.
The diameter of the atom is 100,000 times greater than the diameter of
the nucleus. This means that the atom is mostly empty space, the volume
of the atom being 500,000 billion times the volume of the nucleus. It
can thus be seen that most of the matter in the universe is concentrated
in the nuclei of the atoms. The density of matter in the nucleus is such
that a dime would weigh 600 million tons if its atoms were as tightly
packed as are the protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
The atoms of the elements (of which there are ninety-two in nature, and
six more man-made elements) have twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc.,
known as isotopes. The nuclei of these twins all contain the same number
of protons and hence all have the same chemical properties. They differ,
however, in the number of neutrons in their nuclei and hence have
different atomic weights. For example, an ordinary hydrogen atom has a
nucleus of one proton. The isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, has one
proton plus one neutron in its nucleus. It is thus twice as heavy as
ordinary hydrogen. The second hydrogen isotope, tritium, has one proton
and two neutrons in its nucleus and hence an atomic mass of three. On
the other hand, a nucleus containing two protons and one neutron is no
longer hydrogen but helium, also of atomic mass three.
There are hundreds of isotopes, some occurring in nature, others
produced artificially by shooting atomic bullets, such as neutrons, into
the nuclei of the atoms of various elements. A natural isotope of
uranium, the ninety-second and last of the natural elements, contains 92
protons and 143 neutrons in its nucleus, hence its name U-235, one of
the two atomic-bomb elements. The most common isotope of uranium has 92
protons and 146 neutrons in its nucleus and hence is known as U-238. It
is 140 times more plentiful than U-235, but cannot be used for the
release of atomic energy.
Atomic, or rather nuclear, energy is the cosmic force that binds
together the protons and the neutrons in the nucleus. It is a force
millions of times greater than the electrical repulsion force existing
in the nucleus because of the fact that the protons all have like
charges. This force, known as the coulomb force, is tremendous, varying
inversely as the square of the distance separating the positively
charged particles. Professor Frederick Soddy, the noted English
physicist, has figured out that two grams (less than the weight of a
dime) of protons placed at the opposite poles of the earth would repel
each other with a force of twenty-six tons. Yet the nuclear force is
millions of times greater than the coulomb force. This force acts as the
cosmic cement that holds the material universe together and is
responsible for the great density of matter in the nucleus.
We as yet know very little about the basic nature of this force, but we
can measure its magnitude by a famous mathematical equation originally
presented by Dr. Einstein in his special theory of relativity in 1905.
This formula, one of the great intellectual achievements of man,
together with the discovery of the radioactive elements by Henri
Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie, provided the original clues as
well as the key to the discovery and the harnessing of nuclear energy.
Einstein’s formula, E = mc², revealed that matter and energy are two
different manifestations of one and the same cosmic entity, instead of
being two different entities, as had been generally believed. It led to
the revolutionary concept that matter, instead of being immutable, was
energy in a frozen state, while, conversely, energy was matter in a
fluid state. The equation revealed that any one gram of matter was the
equivalent in ergs (small units of energy) to the square of the velocity
of light in centimeters per second—namely, 900 billion billion ergs. In
more familiar terms, this means that one gram of matter represents
25,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy in the frozen state. This equals the
energy liberated in the burning of three billion grams (three thousand
tons) of coal.
The liberation of energy in any form, chemical, electrical, or nuclear,
involves the loss of an equivalent amount of mass, in accordance with
the Einstein formula. When 3,000 metric tons of coal are burned to
ashes, the residual ashes and the gaseous products weigh one gram less
than 3,000 tons; that is, one three-billionth part of the original mass
will have been converted into energy. The same is true with the
liberation of nuclear energy by the splitting or fusing (as will be
explained later) of the nuclei of certain elements. The difference is
merely that of magnitude. In the liberation of chemical energy by the
burning of coal, the energy comes from a very small loss of mass
resulting from the rearrangement of electrons on the surface of the
atoms. The nucleus of the coal atoms is not involved in any way,
remaining exactly the same as before. The amount of mass lost by the
surface electrons is one thirtieth of one millionth of one per cent.
On the other hand, nuclear energy involves vital changes in the atomic
nucleus itself, with a consequent loss of as high as one tenth to nearly
eight tenths of one per cent in the original mass of the nuclei. This
means that from one to nearly eight grams per thousand grams are
liberated in the form of energy, as compared with only one gram in three
billion grams liberated in the burning of coal. In other words, the
amount of nuclear energy liberated in the transmutation of atomic nuclei
is from 3,000,000 to 24,000,000 times as great as the chemical energy
released by the burning of an equal amount of coal. In terms of TNT the
figure is seven times greater than for coal, as the energy from TNT,
while liberated at an explosive rate, is about one seventh the total
energy content for an equivalent amount of coal. This means that the
nuclear energy from one kilogram of uranium 235, or plutonium, when
released at an explosive rate, is equal to the explosion of twenty
thousand tons of TNT.
Nuclear energy can be utilized by two diametrically opposed methods. One
is fission—the splitting of the nuclei of the heaviest chemical elements
into two uneven fragments consisting of nuclei of two lighter elements.
The other is fusion—combining, or fusing, two nuclei of the lightest
elements into one nucleus of a heavier element. In both methods the
resulting elements are lighter than the original nuclei. The loss of
mass in each case manifests itself in the release of enormous amounts of
nuclear energy.
When two light atoms are combined to form a heavier atom, the weight of
the heavier is less than the total weight of the two light atoms. If the
heavier atom could again be split into the two lighter ones, the latter
would resume their original weight. As explained before, however, this
is true only with the light elements, such as hydrogen, deuterium, and
tritium, in the first half of the periodic table of the elements. The
opposite is true with the heavier elements of the second half of the
periodic table. For example, if krypton and barium, elements 36 and 56,
were to be combined to form uranium, element 92, the protons and the
neutrons in the uranium nucleus would each weigh about 0.1 per cent more
than they weighed in the krypton and barium nuclei. It can thus be seen
that energy could be gained either through the loss of mass resulting
from the fusion of two light elements, or from the similar loss of mass
resulting from the fission of one heavy atom into two lighter ones.
In the fusion of two lighter atoms, the addition of one and one yields
less than two, and yet half of two will be more than one. In the case of
the heavy elements the addition of one and one yields more than two, yet
half of two makes less than one. This is the seeming paradox of atomic
energy.
Three elements are known to be fissionable. Only one of these is found
in nature: the uranium isotope 235 (U-235). The other two are man-made.
One is plutonium, transmuted by means of neutrons from the
nonfissionable U-238, by the addition of one neutron to the 146 present
in the nucleus, which leads to the conversion of two of the 147 neutrons
into protons, thus creating an element with a nucleus of 94 protons and
145 neutrons. The second man-made element (not yet in wide use, as far
as is known) is uranium isotope 233 (92 protons and 141 neutrons),
created out of the element thorium (90 protons, 142 neutrons) by the
same method used in the production of plutonium.
When the nucleus of any one of these elements is fissioned, each proton
and neutron in the two resulting fragments weighs one tenth of one per
cent less than it weighed in the original nucleus. For example, if U-235
atoms totaling 1,000 grams in weight are split, the total weight of the
fragments will be 999 grams. The one missing gram is liberated in the
form of 25,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, equivalent in explosive
terms to 20,000 tons of TNT. But the original number of protons and
neutrons in the 1,000 grams does not change.
The fission process, the equivalent of the “burning” of nuclear fuels,
is maintained by what is known as a chain reaction. The bullets used for
splitting are neutrons, which, because they do not have an electric
charge, can penetrate the heavily fortified electrical wall surrounding
the positively charged nuclei. Just as a coal fire needs oxygen to keep
it going, a nuclear fire needs the neutrons to maintain it.
Neutrons do not exist free in nature, all being tightly locked up within
the nuclei of atoms. They are liberated, however, from the nuclei of the
three fissionable elements by a self-multiplication process in the chain
reaction. The process begins when a cosmic ray from outer space, or a
stray neutron, strikes one nucleus and splits it. The first atom thus
split releases an average of two neutrons, which split two more nuclei,
which in turn liberate four more neutrons, and so on. The reaction is so
fast that in a short time trillions of neutrons are thus liberated to
split trillions of nuclei. As each nucleus is split, it loses mass,
which is converted into great energy.
There are two types of chain reactions: controlled and uncontrolled.
The controlled reaction is analogous to the burning of gasoline in an
automobile engine. The atom-splitting bullets—the neutrons—are first
slowed down from speeds of more than ten thousand miles per second to
less than one mile per second by being made to pass through a
moderator before they reach the atoms at which they are aimed.
Neutron-“killers”—materials absorbing neutrons in great numbers—keep
the neutrons liberated at any given time under complete control in a
slow but steady nuclear fire.
The uncontrolled chain reaction is one in which there is no
moderator—and no neutron-absorbers. It is analogous to the dropping of a
match in a gasoline tank. In the uncontrolled chain reaction the fast
neutrons, with nothing to slow them down or to devour them, build up by
the trillion and quadrillion in a fraction of a millionth of a second.
This leads to the splitting of a corresponding number of atoms,
resulting in the release of unbelievable quantities of nuclear energy at
a tremendously explosive rate. One kilogram of atoms split releases
energy equivalent to that of 20,000,000 kilograms (20,000 metric tons)
of TNT.
It is the uncontrolled reaction that is employed in the explosion of the
atomic bomb. The controlled reaction is expected to be used in the
production of vast quantities of industrial power. It is now being
employed in the creation of radioactive isotopes, for use in medicine
and as the most powerful research tool since the invention of the
microscope for probing into the mysteries of nature, living and
non-living.
In the controlled reaction the material used is natural uranium, which
consists of a mixture of 99.3 per cent U-238 and 0.7 of the fissionable
U-235. The neutrons from the U-235 are made to enter the nuclei of U-238
and convert them to the fissionable element plutonium, for use in atomic
bombs. The large quantities of energy liberated by the split U-235
nuclei in the form of heat is at too low a temperature for efficient
utilization as power, and is at present wasted. To be used for power,
nuclear reactors capable of operating at high temperatures are now being
designed.
In the atomic bomb only pure U-235, or plutonium, is used.
In both the controlled and the uncontrolled reactions a minimum amount
of material, known as the “critical mass,” must be used, as otherwise
too many neutrons would escape and the nuclear fire would thus be
extinguished, as would an ordinary fire for lack of oxygen. In the
atomic bomb two masses, each less than a critical mass, which together
equal or exceed it, are brought in contact at a predetermined instant.
The uncontrolled reaction then comes automatically, since, in the
absence of any control, the neutrons, which cannot escape to the
outside, build up at an unbelievable rate.
Whereas the fission process for the release of nuclear energy entails
making little ones out of big ones, the fusion process involves making
big ones out of little ones. In both processes the products weigh less
than the original materials, the loss of mass coming out in the form of
energy. According to the generally accepted hypothesis, the fusion
process is the one operating in the sun and the stars of the same
family. The radiant energy given off by them, it is believed, is the
result of the fusion of four hydrogen atoms into one atom of helium, two
of the protons losing their positive charge, thus becoming neutrons.
Since a helium atom weighs nearly eight tenths of one per cent less than
the total weight of the four hydrogen atoms, the loss of mass is thus
nearly eight times that produced by fission, with a corresponding
eightfold increase in the amount of energy liberated. This process,
using light hydrogen, is not feasible on earth.
The nuclei of all atoms are thus vast storage depots of cosmic energy.
We must think of them as cosmic safe-deposit vaults, in which the
Creator of the universe, if you will, deposited at the time of creation
most of the energy in the universe for safekeeping. The sun and the
other giant stars that give light have, as it were, drawing accounts in
this “First National Bank and Trust Company of the Universe,” whereas we
on this little planet of ours in the cosmic hinterland are much too poor
to have such a bank account. So we have been forced all these years we
have been on earth to subsist on small handouts from our close neighbor
the sun, which squanders millions all over space, but can spare us only
nickels, dimes, and quarters (depending on the seasons of the year) for
a cup of coffee and a sandwich. We are thus in the true sense of the
word cosmic beggars, living off the bounty of a distant relative.
The discovery of fission in 1939 meant that after a million years of
exclusive dependence on the sun we had suddenly managed to open a modest
drawing account of our own in this bank of the cosmos. We were enabled
to do it by stumbling upon two special master keys to five of the cosmic
vaults. One of these keys we call fission; the other, which allows us
entry into a much richer chamber of the vault, we call fusion. We can
get a lot of the stored-up cosmic treasure by using the key to the
fission vaults alone, but, as with our terrestrial bank vaults, which
generally require two keys before they can be opened, it is not possible
to use the key to the fusion vault unless we first use the fission key.
Except for the payment of our heat and light bill, the sun gives us
nothing directly in cash. Instead it deposits a very small pittance in
the plants, which serve as its major terrestrial banks. The animals then
rob the plants and we rob them both. When we eat the food we live by we
thus actually eat sunshine.
The sun makes its deposits in the plant through an agent named
chlorophyll, the stuff that makes the grass green. Chlorophyll has the
uncanny ability to catch sunbeams and to hand them over to the plant. A
chemical supergenius inside the plant changes the sunlight energy into
chemical energy, just as a bank teller changes bills into silver. With
this chemical energy at their disposal, a great number of devilishly
clever chemists in the plants’ chemical factory go to work building up
many substances to serve as vaults in which to store up a large part of
the energy, using only part of it for their own subsistence.
The building materials used by these chemists inside the plants consist
mainly of carbon-dioxide gas from the atmosphere, and water from the
soil, plus small amounts of minerals either supplied by the good earth
or by fertilizers. Carbon dioxide, by the way, composed of one atom of
carbon and two atoms of oxygen, is the stuff you exhale. In solid form
it is what we know as dry ice, used in efforts to make rain. It is
present in the atmosphere in large amounts.
Out of the carbon dioxide and water the chemists in the plants build
cellulose, starch, sugar, fat, proteins, vitamins, and scores of other
substances, all of which serve as vaults for the sun’s rays caught by
the chlorophyll. The biggest vaults of all, storing most of the energy,
are the cellulose, sugars and starches, fats and proteins. There the
stored energy remains until it is released by processes we call burning
or digestion, both of which, as we shall see, are different terms for
the same chemical reaction. When we burn wood, or the petrified ancient
wood we know as coal, we burn largely the cellulose, the chief component
of the solid part of plants. When we eat the plants, or the animals in
whom the plant tissues are transformed into flesh by the solar energy
stored within them, it is the sugars, starches, fats, and proteins that
give us the energy we live by.
In the process of burning wood or coal the large cellulose vaults,
composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up, thus allowing
the original solar energy, stored up within them as chemical energy, to
escape in the form of heat and light. This is the same heat and light
deposited there by the sun many years before—in the case of coal, some
two hundred million years back. The process of burning thus transforms
the chemical energy in the plants back to its original form of light and
radiant heat energy. The complex carbon and hydrogen units in the
cellulose are broken up, each freed carbon atom uniting within two
oxygen atoms in the air to form carbon dioxide again, while two hydrogen
atoms unite with one of oxygen to form water. Thus we see that the
cellulose vaults are broken up once more into the original building
bricks out of which the chemists in the plants had fashioned them.
When we eat plant or animal food to get the energy to live by, exactly
the same process takes place except at a lower temperature. The sunlight
deposit vaults of sugar, starch, and fat, also composed, like cellulose,
of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up by the digestive system
into their component parts, thus allowing the original solar energy
stored within them to get free in the form of chemical energy, which our
body uses in its essential processes. Here, too, the end products are
carbon dioxide, which we exhale, and water. About half the energy we
thus obtain is used by us for the work we do. The other half is used by
the body for building up the tissues burned up as part of the regular
wear and tear of life.
We thus burn food for our internal energy as we burn cellulose for our
external energy. The interesting thing here is that, in both types of
burning, fission as well as fusion processes take place. The fission is
the splitting of the cellulose, sugar, fats, starches, and proteins into
carbon and hydrogen atoms. The fusion part is the union of the carbon
and the hydrogen with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and water. The
fusion part is just as necessary to release the stored-up solar energy
in the wood or coal as is the fission part, for, as everyone knows,
unless there is oxygen for the carbon to fuse with, no combustion
(burning) can take place and hence no release of energy. The plant
vaults would remain closed absolutely tight.
At this point two things become clear. We see, in the first place, that
whenever we get any kind of energy in any form we do not in any way
create any of it. All we do is merely draw on something that is already
stored up; in the case of coal and wood by the sun, in the case of
uranium and hydrogen by the same power that created the sun and all
energy. We draw water from the spring, but we do not make the water. On
the other hand, we cannot draw the water unless we first find the
spring, and even then we cannot draw it unless we have a pitcher.
And we also see, in the second place, that fission and fusion are common
everyday phenomena that occur any time you burn anything. Both are
essential whenever energy is released, whether it is the chemical energy
from coal or the atomic energy from the nuclei of uranium, deuterium, or
tritium. When you light a cigarette you employ both fission and fusion
or you don’t smoke. The first fission and fusion take place in the
lighting of the match, the cellulose in the match (whether it is wood or
paper) being fissioned (that is, split into its component atoms of
carbon and hydrogen). These atoms are then fusioned with the oxygen in
the air. The same thing happens when the tobacco catches fire. In each
case the fusion with the oxygen makes possible the fission of the
cellulose. When we burn U-235, or plutonium, we again get both fission
and fusion, except that, instead of oxygen, the nuclei of these elements
first fuse with a neutron before they are split apart. Thus we see that
the process of burning U-235, or plutonium, requires not only fission
but fusion as well, without which they could not burn. This is true also
in hydrogen fusion. When you burn deuterium by fusing two deuterons
(nuclei of deuterium) to form helium of atomic weight three, plus a
neutron, one of the two deuterons is split in half in the process.
Similarly, when you burn tritium by fusion two tritons (nuclei of
tritium), one of the tritons splits into two neutrons and a proton, the
one proton joining the other triton to form helium of atomic weight
four.
Thus we see that fission and fusion are the cosmic firebrands that are
always present whenever a fire is lighted, chemical or atomic, whether
the fuel is wood, coal, or oil, or uranium, plutonium, deuterium, or
tritium. Both, with some variations, are essential for opening the
cosmic safe where the energy of the universe is kept in storage. The
only reason you get much more energy in the fission and fusion of atomic
nuclei is that so much more had been stored in them than in the
cellulose vaults on this planet.
The same reason that limits our ability to obtain stored chemical energy
to a few fuels also limits our ability to obtain atomic energy. Coal,
oil, and wood are the only dividend-paying chemical-energy stocks.
Similarly only five elements, uranium 233 and 235, plutonium, deuterium,
and tritium are the only dividend-paying atomic-energy stocks, and of
these only two (U-235 and deuterium) exist in nature. The other three
are re-created from other elements by modern alchemical legerdemain.
What is more, we know for a certainty that it will never be possible to
obtain atomic energy from any other element, by either fission or
fusion.
This should put to rest once and for all the notion of many, including
some self-styled scientists, that the explosion of a hydrogen bomb would
set the hydrogen in the waters, and the oxygen and the nitrogen in the
air, on fire and thus blow up the earth. The energy in common hydrogen
is locked up in one of those cosmic vaults which only the sun and the
stars that shine can open and which no number of H-bombs could blow
apart. Oxygen and nitrogen are locked even for the sun. As for the
deuterium in the water, it cannot catch fire unless it is highly
concentrated, condensed to its liquid form, and heated to a temperature
of several hundred million degrees. Hence all this talk about blowing up
the earth is pure moonshine.
But while we know that we have reached the limit of what can be achieved
either by fission or by fusion, that by no means justifies the
conclusion that we have reached the ultimate in discovery and that
fission and fusion are the only possible methods for tapping the energy
locked up in matter. We must remember that fifty years ago we did not
even suspect that nuclear energy existed and that until 1939 no one,
including Dr. Einstein, believed that it would ever become possible to
use it on a practical scale. We simply stumbled upon the phenomenon of
fission, which in its turn opened the way to fusion.
If science tells us anything at all, it tells us that nature is infinite
and that the human mind, driven by insatiable curiosity and probing ever
deeper into nature’s mysteries, will inevitably find ever greater
treasures, treasures that are at present beyond the utmost stretches of
the imagination—as far beyond fission and fusion as these are beyond
man’s first discovery of how to make a fire by striking a spark with a
laboriously made flint. The day may yet come, and past history makes it
practically certain that it will come, when man will look upon the
discovery of fission and fusion as we look today upon the crudest tools
made by primitive man.
A great measure of man’s progress has been the result of serendipity,
the faculty of making discoveries, by chance or sagacity, of things not
sought for. Many an adventure has led man to stumble upon something much
better than he originally set out to find. Like Columbus, many an
explorer into the realms of the unknown has set his sights on a shorter
route to the spices of India only to stumble upon a new continent.
Unlike Columbus, however, the explorers in the field of science, instead
of being confined to this tiny little earth of ours, have the whole
infinite universe as the domain of their adventures, and many a virgin
continent, richer by far than any yet discovered, still awaits its
Columbus.
Roentgen and Becquerel were exploring what they thought was an untrodden
path in the forest and came upon a new road that led their successors to
the very citadel of the material universe. Young Enrico Fermi was
curious to find out what would happen if he fired a neutron into the
nucleus of uranium, hoping only to create a heavier isotope of uranium,
or at best a new element. His rather modest goal led five years later to
the fission of uranium, and in another six years to the atomic bomb.
Yet, as we have seen, in both fission and fusion only a very small
fraction of the mass of the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of the
elements used is liberated in the form of energy, while 99.3 to 99.9 per
cent of their substance remains in the form of matter. We know of no
process in nature which converts 100 per cent of the matter in protons
and neutrons into energy, but scientists are already talking about
finding means for bringing about such a conversion. They are seeking
clues for such a process in the mysterious cosmic rays that bombard the
earth from outer space with energies billions of times greater than
those released by fission or fusion, great enough to smash atoms of
oxygen or nitrogen, or whatever other atoms they happen to hit in the
upper atmosphere, into their component protons and neutrons. Luckily,
their number is small and most of their energy is spent long before they
reach sea level.
But we have already learned how to create secondary cosmic-ray particles
of relatively low energies (350,000,000 electron-volts) with our giant
cyclotrons. The creation of these particles, known as mesons, which are
believed to be the cosmic cement responsible for the nuclear forces,
represents the actual conversion of energy into matter. This is the
exact reverse of the process taking place in fission and fusion, in
which, as we have seen, matter is converted into energy. And we are now
about to complete multibillion-volt atom-smashers that will hurl atomic
bullets of energies of from three to ten billion volts at the nuclei of
atoms. With these gigantic machines, known as the cosmotron (at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission) and the
bevatron (at the University of California), we shall be able to smash
nuclei into their individual component protons and neutrons and thus get
a much more intimate glimpse of the forces that hold the nuclei
together. What is more, instead of creating only mesons, particles with
only 300 electron masses, we shall be able for the first time to convert
energy into protons and neutrons, duplicating, as far as is known, an
act of creation that has not taken place since the beginning of the
universe. Man at last will be creating the very building blocks out of
which the universe is made, as well as the cosmic cement that holds them
together.
What new continents will our first glimpse into the mechanism of the
very act of creation of matter out of energy reveal? What new secrets
will be uncovered before the dazzled eyes and mind of man when he takes
the nucleus of the atom completely apart at last? Not even Einstein
could tell us. But, as Omar Khayyám divined, “a single Alif” may provide
“the clue” that, could we but find it, leads “to the Treasure-House, and
peradventure to the Master too.” The fact is that we already have opened
the door to the anteroom of the treasure-house, and we are about to
unlock the door to one of its inner chambers. What shall we find there?
No one as yet knows. But we do know that every door man has opened so
far has led to riches beyond his wildest dreams, each new door bringing
greater rewards than the one before. On the other hand, we also know
that the treasure-house has many mansions, and that no matter how many
chambers he may enter, he will always find new doors to unlock. For we
have learned that the solution of any one secret always opens up a
thousand new mysteries.
We also have learned, to our sorrow, that any new insight gained into
nature’s laws and forces can be used for great good and for equally
great evil. The greater the insight, the greater the potentialities for
good or evil. The new knowledge he is about to gain by his deeper
insight into the heart of matter, and by his ability to create it out of
energy, may offer man the means to make himself complete master of the
world he lives in. It is equally true, alas, that he could use it to
destroy that world even more thoroughly than with the hydrogen bomb.
As already stated, scientists are even now discussing the possibility of
finding means for the complete annihilation of matter by the conversion
of the entire mass of protons and neutrons into energy, instead of only
0.1 to 0.7 per cent. And while the total annihilation of protons and
neutrons still seems highly speculative, we already know that such a
process actually does take place in the realm of the electron. This is
the phenomenon already achieved numerous times on a small scale in the
laboratory, in which a positive electron (positron) and an electron with
a negative charge completely destroy each other, their entire mass being
converted into energy. Luckily, this is at present only a laboratory
experiment, in which each positron must be individually produced, since
there are hardly any positive electrons in our part of the universe. But
suppose the new knowledge we are about to pry loose from the inner
citadel of matter reveals to us a new process, at present not even
suspected, that would release positrons in large numbers, just as the
fission and fusion processes made possible for the first time the
liberation of large quantities of neutrons. Such an eventuality, by no
means beyond the realm of the possible, would open potentialities of
horror alongside which those of the H-bomb, even the rigged one, would
be puny. For any process that would release large numbers of positrons
in the atmosphere, in a chain reaction similar to the one now liberating
neutrons, may envelop the earth in one deadly flash of radioactive
lightning that would instantly kill all sensate things. And although
this is admittedly purely speculative, no one dare say that such a
discovery will not be made, not when one remembers how remote and
unlikely a process such as fission seemed to be just before it was made.
Though many of the great discoveries came about as the result of chance,
they came because, as Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.”
Actually they came largely through the intellectual synthesis of what
had originally appeared as unrelated phenomena or concepts. When Faraday
discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, he established
for the first time that electricity and magnetism, looked upon since
prehistoric times as two separate and distinct phenomena, were actually
only two aspects of one basic natural force, which we know today as
electromagnetism. This great intellectual synthesis led directly to the
age of electricity and all its wonders. About thirty years later the
great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that
electromagnetic action traveled through space in the form of transverse
waves similar to those of light and having the same velocity. This
revealed the existence in nature of electromagnetic waves, better known
to us today as radio waves. About a quarter century later the great
German-Jewish physicist Heinrich Hertz not only produced these
electromagnetic waves but showed that they are propagated just as waves
of light are, possessing all other properties of light, such as
reflection, refraction, and polarization. This led directly to wireless
telegraphy and telephony, radio and television, radiophotography and
radar.
When Einstein, in his special theory of relativity of 1905, united
matter and energy in one basic cosmic entity, the road was opened to the
atomic age. Yet Einstein was never satisfied and has devoted more than
forty-five years of his life to the search for a greater, all-embracing
unity underlying the great diversity of natural phenomena. In his
general theory of relativity of 1915 he formulated a concept that
encompasses the universal law of gravitation in his earlier synthesis of
space and time, of which matter and energy were an integral part. This
synthesis, wrote Bertrand Russell in 1924, “is probably the greatest
synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time. It
sums up the mathematical and physical labors of more than two thousand
years. Pure geometry from Pythagoras to Riemann, the dynamics and
astronomy of Galileo and Newton, the theory of electromagnetism as it
resulted from the researches of Faraday, Maxwell, and their successors,
all are absorbed, with the necessary modifications, in the theories of
Einstein, Weyl, and Eddington.
“So comprehensive a synthesis,” he continued, “might have represented a
dead end, leading to no further progress for a long time. Fortunately,
at this moment quantum theory [the theory applying to the forces within
the atom] has appeared, with a new set of facts outside the scope of
relativity physics [which applies to the forces governing the cosmos at
large]. This has saved us, in the nick of time, from the danger of
supposing that we know everything.”
Yet Einstein, working away in majestic solitude, has been trying all
these years to construct a vast intellectual edifice that would embrace
all the laws of the cosmos known so far, including the quantum, in one
fundamental concept, which he designates as a “unified field theory.”
Early in 1950 he published the results of his arduous labors since 1915.
This he regards as the crowning achievement of his life’s work, a
unified theory that bridges the vast gulf that had existed between
relativity and quantum, between the infinite universe of the stars and
galaxies and the equally infinite universe within the nucleus of the
atom. If he is right, and he has always been right before, his latest
contribution will prove to be a greater synthetic achievement of the
human intellect than ever before, embracing space and time, matter and
energy, gravitation and electromagnetism, as well as the nuclear forces
within the atom, in one all-encompassing concept. In due time this
concept should lead to new revelations of nature’s mysteries, and to
triumphs even greater than those which followed as a direct consequence
of all earlier intellectual syntheses.
If the synthesis of matter and energy led to the atomic age, what may we
expect of the latest, all-inclusive synthesis? When Einstein was asked
about it he replied: “Come back in twenty years!” which happens to
coincide with the end of the hundred-year period recorded by the
brothers Goncourt: God swinging a bunch of keys, and saying to humanity:
“Closing time, gentlemen!”
The search for new intellectual syntheses goes on, and no doubt new
relationships between the diverse phenomena of nature will be found,
regardless of whether Einstein’s latest theory stands or falls in the
light of further discovery. Physicists, for example, are speculating
about a fundamental relationship between time and the electronic charge,
one of the most basic units of nature, and there are those who believe
that this relationship will turn out to be much more fundamental than
that between matter and energy. Should this be found to be true, then
the discovery of the relationship between time and charge may lead to
finding a way for starting a self-multiplying positron-electron chain
reaction, just as the relationship between matter and energy led
inevitably to the self-multiplying chain reaction with neutrons. If this
comes about, then closing time will come much closer.
Yet the sound of the swinging keys need not necessarily mean closing
time for man at the twilight of his day on this planet. It could also
mean the opening of gates at a new dawn, to a new earth—and a new
heaven.
APPENDIX
THE HYDROGEN BOMB AND INTERNATIONAL CONTROL
_In the fall of 1949 Senator McMahon directed the staff of the Joint
Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy to study the hydrogen bomb in
relation to international control of atomic energy. The material in the
following pages, with the exception of the comments in Appendix D, was
prepared by the staff at the chairman’s request to assist the joint
committee in considering the problem._
_It is my belief that this valuable material, until now unavailable in
such excellent summary form, will also assist Americans in general in
considering this vital problem. Readers of this volume should find it
helpful in arriving at conclusions of their own, particularly in the
light of the facts and discussion presented in Chapters III and IV. I
further believe that a careful perusal of the following material will
lend strong support to my view that the international control of atomic
weapons, as envisaged in the majority plan of the United Nations,—the
only plan that may give assurance against a surprise atomic attack—had
become wholly impractical even before the entry of the H-bomb into the
picture, and that the imminent development of the H-bomb has made it so
unworkable that any further plan to revive it would be futile._
_This material makes it clear (a) that Russia never had any intention of
reaching any agreement on international control and had set out to
sabotage any plan from the very beginning; and (b) that no plan, no
matter how foolproof, could hope to succeed in the absence of complete
mutual trust and confidence. Events in Korea, I am convinced, have
driven the last nail into the coffin of the UN control plan._
A
SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF ATOMIC
WEAPONS
May 1945: Secretary of War Stimson appoints interim Committee to study
problem of atomic energy.
August 6, 1945: Hiroshima.
October 3, 1945: President’s message to Congress outlines necessity
for international control of atomic energy and proposes
conversations with Canada and United Kingdom.
November 15, 1945: Three-nation agreed declaration on atomic energy
(Truman-Attlee-King declaration). Calls for United Nations
Commission to make proposals for international control plan.
Proposals should provide safeguards “by way of _inspection and
other means_.” (Wherever used in the following pages, italics are
supplied.)
December 27, 1945: U.S.-U.K.-U.S.S.R. Foreign Minister communiqué on
results of Moscow Conference. Proposes that Canada, China, and
France join with Big Three in sponsoring resolution calling for
United Nations Atomic Energy Commission with terms of reference
stipulated in Truman-Attlee-King declaration.
January 24, 1946: General Assembly resolution establishing United
Nations Commission on Atomic Energy. Composed of members of
Security Council plus Canada.
March 28, 1946: Acheson-Lilienthal report. Urges that mines and
“dangerous” atomic-energy facilities be put under _international
ownership_ and _management_ of Atomic Development Authority.
Additional safeguards in the form of _inspection_. Nations to
operate “safe” plants under ADA license. Plants to be distributed
among nations in keeping with _strategic balance_. Control plan to
be implemented by stages.
June 14, 1946: Baruch proposals to United Nations. Closely follow
Acheson-Lilienthal recommendations. Ask “condign punishment,” for
violations, and request agreement that UN Charter _veto_ clause
not apply to sanctions for stipulated violations of atomic-energy
treaty.
June 19, 1946: Soviet Union counterproposals. Demand prohibition of
atomic weapons and destruction of existing stockpiles _before_
international control plan is negotiated. Soviet proposals provide
no safeguards against evasion.
December 31, 1946: First Report of UNAEC. Incorporates essential
features of Baruch proposals into statement of principles for plan
for international control of atomic energy. Adopted 10 to 0, with
U.S.S.R. and Poland abstaining.
June 11, 1947: U.S.S.R. control proposals. Soviets assent to _periodic
inspection_, but this would apply only to _declared_ plants.
August 11, 1947: Soviets consent in principle to concept of _quotas_.
September 11, 1947: Second Report of UNAEC. Outlines powers,
functions, and limitations thereon of any international agency in
implementing effective control plan.
May 17, 1948: Third Report of UNAEC. Reports impasse because Soviets
refuse to accept majority plan and persist in refusing to put
forward effective proposals of their own. Concludes that further
work in UNAEC is fruitless until Soviet cooperation in broader
fields of policy is secured. Recommends that Commission’s work be
suspended until sponsoring powers find that basis for agreement
exists.
September 25, 1948: Soviets modify position by asking that conventions
for prohibition of atomic weapons and for international control go
into effect simultaneously.
November 4, 1948: By vote of 40 to 6, UN General Assembly endorses
majority control plan. Calls upon UNAEC to continue work and
requests that sponsoring powers consult to explore possible basis
of agreement.
August 9, 1949: First meeting of sponsoring powers of UNAEC.
September 23, 1949: President Truman’s announcement of Soviet atomic
explosion.
October 25, 1949: Canada, China, France, United Kingdom, United States
statement reveals Soviet attitude still prevents agreement.
November 23, 1949: General Assembly resolution calls upon sponsoring
powers to continue consultations.
November 23, 1949: Soviets reverse position on quotas, abandoning
previous assent in principle.
January 19, 1950: U.S.S.R. walks out of sponsoring powers
consultations over China recognition issue.
January 31, 1950: President Truman announces that United States will
proceed with development of hydrogen bomb.
B
THE INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF ATOMIC WEAPONS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF
PROPOSALS AND NEGOTIATIONS
_Early steps looking toward international control_
Even before the test explosion at Alamogordo, N. Mex., had ushered in
the atomic age, the United States Government was studying methods of
making atomic energy a socially constructive force.
In May 1945 an Interim Committee appointed by Secretary of War Stimson
commenced investigating the problem. The Committee recognized “that the
means of producing the atomic bomb would not forever remain the
exclusive property of the United States....” Therefore, “Secretary of
War Stimson was one of the first to recommend a policy of international
supervision and control of the entire field of atomic energy....”
When on August 6, 1945, President Truman made the first public statement
on the atomic bomb, he made clear that “under present circumstances it
is not intended to divulge the technical process of production or all
the military application, pending further examination of possible
methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of
sudden destruction.” He assured the American people that he would “make
further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can
become a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world
peace.”
The President’s recommendations were transmitted to the Congress on
October 3, 1945. He spoke of the necessity for “international
arrangements looking, if possible, to the renunciation of the use and
development of the atomic bomb, and directing ... atomic energy ...
toward peaceful and humanitarian ends.” So great a challenge could not
await the full development of the United Nations. The President,
therefore, proposed initiating discussions “first with our associates in
this discovery, Great Britain and Canada, and then with other
nations....”
_The Truman-Attlee-King declaration_
In the three nations agreed declaration of November 15, 1945—frequently
called the Truman-Attlee-King declaration—was recorded the concerted
objectives of the three nations that had developed the atomic bomb.
According to the declaration, any international arrangements should have
a dual goal: Preventing the use of atomic energy for destructive
purposes, and promoting its use for peaceful and humanitarian ends. To
reach these objectives, the signatory nations proposed a United Nations
Commission empowered to make recommendations to the parent body. It was
asked that the Commission make specific proposals “for effective
safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect states
against the hazards of violations and evasions.” It was further
suggested that the Commission’s work “proceed by separate stages, the
successful completion of each of which will develop the necessary
confidence of the world before the next stage is undertaken.”
Contained in the agreed declaration was the genesis of the basic feature
of the control proposals subsequently advanced by the United States, and
accepted by a large majority of the United Nations: safeguards through
inspection and _other means_. It was recognized even at this early date
that “effective, reciprocal, and enforceable safeguards” against evasion
represented the minimum prerequisite of a satisfactory international
arrangement.
At the Moscow meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, held in
December 1945, the Truman-Attlee-King proposals received the Soviet
Union’s endorsement. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet
Union agreed to invite Canada, China, and France to join with them in
sponsoring a resolution calling for a United Nations Atomic Energy
Commission. Such a Commission would consist of the 11 members of the
Security Council plus Canada when that state was not sitting on the
Council. It is noteworthy that the Commission’s proposed terms of
reference were exactly those suggested by the Truman-Attlee-King
declaration.
In its first substantive resolution, the United Nations General Assembly
unanimously adopted the recommendations of the Moscow Conference and
established the United Nations Commission on Atomic Energy on January
24, 1946.
_The Acheson-Lilienthal report_
In order to inquire into the nature of the “effective, reciprocal, and
enforceable safeguards” called for in the Truman-Attlee-King
declaration, Secretary of State Byrnes in January 1946 appointed a
Committee headed by Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The Committee
in turn enlisted the aid of a Board of Consultants under the
chairmanship of David Lilienthal.
The findings of the two groups were made public on March 28, 1946, in
the Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, commonly
called the Acheson-Lilienthal report. It was advanced “not as a final
plan but as a place to begin, a foundation on which to build.”
The report concluded that no security against atomic attack could be
found in an agreement that merely “outlawed” these weapons. Nor was it
considered feasible to control atomic energy “only by a system which
relies on inspection and similar police-like methods.” Instead,
inspection must be supplemented by _international ownership and
management_ of raw materials and key installations. “Dangerous”
operations—those of potential military consequence—would be carried out
by an Atomic Development Authority, an international agency under the
United Nations. Only “safe” activities—those of no military
importance—would be conducted by the individual nations, under licenses
from the Atomic Development Authority. Any plan finally agreed upon
would be implemented by _stages_ with the United States progressively
transferring its fund of theoretical and technological knowledge to an
international authority as safeguards were put into effect.
The report amplified the Truman-Attlee-King proposals in two important
respects.
First, it stated that international ownership—not specifically mentioned
in the earlier declaration—was a necessary adjunct of international
inspection. Second, it advanced the concept of “strategic balance” or
“quotas.” The Report held that an acceptable plan must be “such that if
it fails or the whole international situation collapses, any nations
such as the United States will still be in a relatively secure position,
compared to any other nation.” To help attain this end, it was proposed
that the Atomic Development Authority’s stock piles and plants be well
distributed geographically.
_The Baruch proposals to the United Nations_
Less than 3 months after the publication of the Acheson-Lilienthal
report, the United States Government gave the world its proposals for
the international control of atomic energy. On June 14, 1946, Bernard
Baruch presented them to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission “as
a basis for beginning our discussion.”
Mr. Baruch stated that:
When an adequate system for control of atomic energy, including the
renunciation of the bomb as a weapon, has been agreed upon and put
into effective operation and condign punishments set up for violations
of the rules of control which are to be stigmatized as international
crimes, we propose that:
1. manufacture of atomic bombs shall stop;
2. existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of the
treaty; and
3. the Authority shall be in possession of full information as to the
know-how for the production of atomic energy.
The methods suggested for achieving international control were the
following:
The United States proposes the creation of an International Atomic
Development Authority, to which should be entrusted all phases of the
development and use of atomic energy, starting with the raw material
and including—
1. Managerial control or ownership of all atomic energy activities
potentially dangerous to world security.
2. Power to control, inspect, and license all other atomic activities.
3. The duty of fostering the beneficial uses of atomic energy.
4. Research and development responsibilities of an affirmative
character intended to put the Authority in the forefront of atomic
knowledge and thus to enable it to comprehend, and therefore to
detect—misuse of atomic energy. To be effective, the Authority must
itself be the world’s leader in the field of atomic knowledge and
development and thus supplement its legal authority with the great
power inherent in possession of leadership in knowledge.
These proposals represented a broadening—rather than essential
modification—of the Acheson-Lilienthal recommendations. The additional
features concerned (1) _condign punishment_, and (2) the so-called power
of veto of the United Nations Charter.
Whereas the Acheson-Lilienthal report had not dealt with the subject of
sanctions, Mr. Baruch held that a realistic agreement must provide for
penalties “of as severe a nature as the nations may wish and as
immediate and certain in their execution as possible....” Such “condign
punishment” would be meted out if _previously stipulated_ violations of
a control plan occurred.
This problem, Mr. Baruch stated, was intimately related with the veto
provisions of the United Nations Charter. Under the Charter, sanctions
can be invoked only with the concurrence of the five permanent members
of the Security Council, i.e., China, France, United Kingdom, United
States, and the Soviet Union. Mr. Baruch maintained, however, that
“there must be no veto to protect those who violate their solemn
agreements not to develop or use atomic energy for destructive
purposes.... The bomb does not wait on debate.” He pointed out that the
United States was “concerned here with the veto power only as it affects
this particular problem.”
A United States memorandum of July 12, 1946, stressed that “Voluntary
relinquishment of the veto on questions relating to a specific weapon
previously outlawed by unanimous agreement because of its uniquely
destructive character, in no wise involves any compromise of the
principle of unanimity of action as applied to general problems or to
particular situations not foreseeable and therefore not susceptible of
advance unanimous agreement.”
_The first Soviet proposals—Gromyko’s statement of June 19, 1946_
A week after the American plans were put forward, the Soviet Union
announced its own proposals. They were marked chiefly by Soviet
insistence that the United States agree to stop the production of atomic
weapons and destroy existing bombs _before_ international control
arrangements were negotiated.
Although they called for “an international convention for outlawing
weapons based on the use of atomic energy,” the Soviet proposals did not
provide “effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to
protect complying states against the hazards of violations and
evasions.” They proposed that the “rule of unanimity” in the Security
Council apply to atomic-energy matters. Hence if one of the permanent
members of the Security Council or a friend violated a control scheme,
the other members of the United Nations would have no legal means, under
the Charter, of invoking sanctions against it.
Throughout 1946 the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission continued
its investigations of the control problem. On December 31, 1946, the
Commission issued its _First Report_. It revealed that the essential
features of the Baruch proposals had won the support of all the members
of the Commission except the Soviet Union and Poland.
_The Soviet Proposals of June 11, 1947_
A year after it suggested a convention for “outlawing” atomic weapons,
the Soviet Union came forward with a set of control proposals.
A chief point of interest in the plan was the fact that the Soviets now
assented to “_periodic_ inspection of facilities for mining and
production of atomic materials” by an international inspectorate. In
answer to a United Kingdom inquiry, however, the Russians stated that
“normally, inspectors will visit only _declared_ plants”—with this
supplemented by special investigations when there were “grounds for
suspicion” of violation of the convention for the prohibition of atomic
weapons. The power of the Control Commission would be further limited to
making recommendations to governments and to the Security Council. On
other matters that separated the Soviet Union from the majority
position—such as international ownership and management, and the veto
question—there was no change in the Russian position.
The subsequent half-year brought one sign of a further modification of
the U.S.S.R. stand. On August 11, 1947, Mr. Gromyko seemingly brought
the Soviets closer to the majority position by agreeing that “the idea
of quotas deserves attention and serious consideration by the Atomic
Energy Commission....”
_The Second and Third Reports of the United Nations Atomic Energy
Commission—September 11, 1947, and May 17, 1948_
The _Second Report_ of the Atomic Energy Commission spelled out in
detail the precise powers and functions and the limitations thereon of
any international agency in implementing an effective control plan. When
the _Report_ was approved by the General Assembly by a vote of 40 to 6,
the plan developed in the UNAEC became a world plan—to which only the
Soviet Union and her satellites took exception.
By the spring of 1948 the UNAEC became convinced that the Soviet Union’s
refusal to accept any plan that met the technical requirements of
controlling atomic energy was symptomatic of broader differences which
made further negotiations on the Commission level fruitless.
The _Third Report_ stated that “the majority of the Commission has been
unable to secure the agreement of the Soviet Union to even those
elements of effective control from the technical point of view, let
alone their acceptance of the nature and extent of participation in the
world community required of all nations in this field....”
It appeared to the Commission that the atomic deadlock was but one
manifestation of the more widespread dispute between the Soviet Union
and the rest of the world. In view of this, the Commission majority
recommended that negotiations in the Commission be suspended until the
permanent members of the UNAEC found that “there exists a basis for
agreement on the international control of atomic energy....”
The following were regarded as the basic considerations which, even on a
technical level, made the U.S.S.R. position untenable:
I. The powers provided for the International Control Commission by the
Soviet Union proposals, confined as they are to _periodic inspection_
and _special investigations_, are insufficient to guarantee against
the diversion of dangerous materials from known atomic facilities, and
do not provide the means to detect secret activities.
II. Except by recommendations to the Security Council of the United
Nations, the International Control Commission has no powers to enforce
either its own decisions or the terms of the convention or conventions
on control.
III. The Soviet Union Government insists that the convention
establishing a system of control, even so limited as that contained in
the Soviet Union proposals, can be concluded only _after_ a convention
providing for the prohibition of atomic weapons and the destruction of
existing atomic weapons has been “signed, ratified, and put into
effect.” [Italics in original.]
The Commission’s work had come to a standstill.
_Atomic energy negotiations since 1948_
Meeting in Paris in the fall of 1948 the General Assembly, by a vote of
40 to 6, approved the general findings and recommendations of the FIRST
REPORT and the specific proposals of part II of the SECOND REPORT “as
constituting the necessary basis for the establishing of an effective
system of international control of atomic energy.” However, it called
upon the UNAEC to continue its work and to study such subjects as it
deemed “practicable and useful,” and asked that the permanent members of
the Commission “consult in order to determine if there exists a basis
for agreement....” The permanent members were requested to transmit the
results of their consultations to the General Assembly.
In the meanwhile, the Soviet Union had served notice of what appeared to
be a significant change in its position. In a draft resolution dated
September 25, 1948, the Soviets proposed—
To elaborate draft conventions for the banning of atomic weapons and
conventions for the establishment of international effective control
over atomic energy, taking into account that the convention for the
banning of atomic weapons and the convention for the establishment of
international control over atomic energy must be signed and
implemented and entered into force _simultaneously_.
It was the last word of this resolution that marked a change in the
U.S.S.R. stand. Previously, the Soviets had demanded that atomic weapons
production be prohibited and stock piles be destroyed _before_ a control
plan was discussed.
Nonetheless, the new Soviet proposal gave no indication that the Soviets
would accede to what the majority regard as an _effective_ control plan.
Furthermore, the proposal for simultaneous prohibition and control was
considered to be physically impossible to implement. “The development of
atomic energy is the world’s newest industry, and already is one of the
most complicated. It would not be reasonable to assume that any
effective system of control could be introduced and enforced overnight.
Control and prohibition must, therefore, go into effect over a period of
time and by a series of stages.”
The record of negotiations from the fall of 1948 to the present is
largely one of inaction.
On September 23, 1949, President Truman announced that an atomic
explosion had occurred in the Soviet Union. One month later, the
sponsoring powers of the UNAEC revealed that the consultations between
them “had not yet succeeded in bringing about agreement between the
U.S.S.R. and the other five powers.”
Despite this, the General Assembly, on November 23, 1949, asked that the
permanent members of the Commission continue their consultations and
keep the Commission and the General Assembly informed of their work. On
the same day, Vishinsky revealed that the Soviets no longer entertained
favorably the principle of quotas.
On January 19, 1950, consultations came to an end when the Soviet Union
withdrew from the discussions over the question of recognition of the
Chinese Government.
C
THE ATOMIC IMPASSE
Regarded in fundamental terms, the deadlock in international control
negotiations reflects diametrically opposed notions of the
responsibilities of individual nations in a world of atomic energy.
All nations except the Soviet Union and her satellites “put world
security first, and are prepared to accept innovations in traditional
concepts of international cooperation, national sovereignty, and
economic organization where these are necessary for security. The
government of the U.S.S.R. puts its sovereignty first and is unwilling
to accept measures which may impinge upon or interfere with its rigid
exercise of unimpeded state sovereignty.”
This basic variance in the objectives of the Soviet Union and the other
members of the United Nations is mirrored in the majority and minority
control proposals.
The specific differences in the two plans may be summarized as follows:
INTERNATIONAL INSPECTION
_United Nations._—Complete and continuing inspection by international
personnel, including aerial and ground surveys, and inspection of
atomic facilities.
_Soviet Union._—Periodic inspection of declared plants. Special
investigations when there exist “grounds for suspicion”—not that
the control agreement has been violated—but that the convention
outlawing atomic weapons has been violated. (This could mean that
only if a nation were subjected to surprise atomic attack would
the necessary “grounds for suspicion” enter into existence.)
INTERNATIONAL OWNERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
_United Nations._—International ownership or management of dangerous
facilities and international ownership of source materials and
their fissionable derivatives—in order to prevent diversion of
such material from existing plants.
_Soviet Union._—Complete opposition to international ownership or
management provisions.
STRATEGIC BALANCE (QUOTAS)
_United Nations._—National quotas to be incorporated into
international control treaty.
_Soviet Union._—Sees in quotas an instrument for “American
domination.”
SANCTIONS
_United Nations._—No veto to protect those who violate stipulated
provisions of international agreement.
_Soviet Union._—All decisions require unanimous consent of permanent
members of Security Council.
The permanent members of the UNAEC have summarized the differences
between the Soviet plan and the world plan in the following fashion:
“The Soviet Union proposes that nations should continue to own explosive
atomic materials.
“The other five Powers feel that under such conditions there would be
no effective protection against the sudden use of these materials
as atomic weapons.
“The Soviet Union proposes that nations continue, as at present, to own,
operate, and manage facilities making or using dangerous quantities of
such materials.
“The other five Powers believe that, under such conditions, it would
be impossible to detect or prevent the diversion of such materials
for use in atomic weapons.
“The Soviet Union proposes a system of control depending on periodic
inspection of facilities the existence of which the national government
concerned reports to the international agency, supplemented by special
investigations on suspicion of treaty violations.
“The other five Powers believe that periodic inspection would not
prevent the diversion of dangerous materials and that the special
investigations envisaged would be wholly insufficient to prevent
clandestine activities.”
D
POSSIBLE QUESTIONS REGARDING H-BOMBS AND INTERNATIONAL CONTROL[1]
_The answers to many of the questions which follow are obvious. The
answer to other questions are less obvious. Each question has been
selected to suggest and to illustrate the kind of problem which may be
involved, whether easy or difficult of solution. It should be
emphasized that the original United States proposals and the existing
United Nations plan foresee and carefully take into account the
possibility of an H-bomb, as evidenced by the language they contain.
The same is true of the McMahon Act for domestic control of atomic
energy within the United States._
Footnote 1:
All material in this appendix, except those paragraphs headed
“Author’s Comments,” has been prepared by the staff of the Joint
Committee on Atomic Energy.
1. IS THE HYDROGEN BOMB A MORE OR LESS IMPORTANT WEAPON THAN THE ATOMIC
BOMB? MIGHT HYDROGEN BOMBS PROVE TO BE DECISIVE IN WAR, OR HAS THEIR
SIGNIFICANCE BEEN EXAGGERATED?
Dr. Harold Urey, a Nobel Prize winner in [chemistry], has suggested that
the H-bomb would be militarily decisive; Dr. Hans Bethe, [and other
noted physicists, have] indicated that the step from A-bombs to H-bombs
is as great as the original step from conventional to atomic explosives.
However, Dr. Robert F. Bacher, a former AEC Commissioner, states that—
while it [the H-bomb] is a terrible weapon, its military effectiveness
seems to have been grossly overrated in the minds of laymen.
Some of the questions which may bear upon this difference of opinion are
as follows:
(1) _Shock effect._—To what extent do H-bombs excel A-bombs in
permitting a highly destructive attack to be compressed in time?
(2) _Comparative numbers._—What quantity of A-bombs are required to do
the same job as a given number of H-bombs?
(3) _Neutron economy._—How much fissionable material for A-bombs is
sacrificed by using the neutrons available in reactors for making H-bomb
materials?
(4) _Deliverability._—Under various combat conditions, is the delivery
of H-bombs cheaper and surer than delivery of an “equivalent” number of
A-bombs?
(5) _Aiming accuracy._—How superior is a weapon which need strike only
within a number of miles in order to destroy its target over one which
must strike within 1 or 2 miles?
(6) _Psychology._—As compared with the A-bomb, to what extent might the
H-bomb impair an enemy’s will to resist and accelerate recognition of
defeat?
(7) _Tactical employment._—What is the relative value of A-bombs and
H-bombs in tactical situations—when used against troops in the field,
guerrilla fighters, forces preparing for amphibious invasion, a fleet, a
string of air strips or submarine bases, atomic facilities, underground
installations, etc.?
(8) _Definition of “military effectiveness.”_—Would the use of H-bombs
to destroy large urban centers containing no armaments plants have no
“military effectiveness,” or would such destruction aid the attacker and
therefore represent “militarily effective” use of the weapon? Is it
possible to distinguish, in an era of total war, between “military” and
“nonmilitary” targets?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
The answer to (1) becomes obvious in light of the answers to (2), (3),
(4), (5), and (6), all of which must be considered together. We know
that a standard H-bomb would be the equal to ten nominal A-bombs in its
power to destroy by blast and to as many as thirty A-bombs in its
incendiary effects. In terms of total area, the H-bomb can destroy by
blast an area of more than 300 square miles, as compared with an area of
only ten square miles for the nominal A-bomb, and more than 1,200 square
miles by fire and burns, as compared with only four square miles for the
early A-bomb model. As for neutron economy, we have seen that this vast
increase in power could be achieved at a cost in fissionable A-bomb
material possibly as low as one twelfth, and no higher, at the most,
than the plutonium required (according to Professor Oliphant’s estimate)
for just one A-bomb. It thus becomes obvious that such a weapon not only
is much cheaper, in terms of destruction and cost of materials, than the
conventional A-bomb, but is much more easily and safely delivered, since
it would still be highly effective as a blasting weapon if exploded more
than five miles from its target, while as an incendiary it would still
be highly effective as far as fifteen miles away. Hence there can be no
question that H-bombs vastly excel A-bombs in permitting a highly
destructive attack to be compressed in time, and that its psychological
effect in impairing an enemy’s will to resist is also incalculably
greater.
Its vastly greater range of destructiveness, its economy of material,
and its surer delivery also make the H-bomb vastly superior to the
A-bomb as a tactical weapon. Neither the H-bomb nor the A-bomb appears
to be practical for use against guerrilla fighters, except possibly as a
threat.
As already discussed at length in Chapter III, there could be no
possible justification, on moral as well as military grounds, for using
the H-bomb as a strategic weapon to destroy large urban centers,
especially those containing no armaments plants, except in retaliation
for such use against us or our allies.
2. IF THE H-BOMB IS DEEMED TO BE DECISIVE OR FAR MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE
A-BOMB, SHOULD INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF HYDROGEN WEAPONS TAKE PRIORITY
OVER CONTROL OF ORDINARY ATOMIC WEAPONS? SHOULD THE UNITED STATES
PROPOSE A SEPARATE PLAN EXCLUSIVELY DESIGNED TO REGULATE H-BOMBS?
The official United Nations proposals for international control of
atomic energy apparently involve the assumption that A-bombs are so
unique technically and so menacing as to set them apart from
conventional weapons and to justify separate consideration in the United
Nations and a separate regulatory system. If the step from A-bombs to
H-bombs is considered to be as great as the step from conventional
weapons to A-bombs, does it follow that hydrogen warfare should become
the subject of a separate control proposal and should receive separate
consideration in the United Nations?
Are the technical facts of atomic and hydrogen weapons so intimately
related that both must be controlled if either is to be controlled? Are
the political facts such that the two problems must be regarded
inseparably?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
Since the H-bomb requires the A-bomb as a trigger, it becomes obvious
that the two problems are inseparable.
3. IS THE EXISTING UNITED NATIONS PLAN TECHNICALLY ADEQUATE TO CONTROL
H-BOMBS?
The United Nations plan has been couched in such a manner that an
international agency would possess discretionary authority in defining
and controlling materials and processes that may be employed to
manufacture nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
For instance, the _Second Report_ of the United Nations Atomic Energy
Commission defines “atomic energy” as including “all forms of energy
released in the course of, or as a result of, nuclear fission _or of
other nuclear transformation_.” “Source material” is taken to mean “any
material containing one or more key substances in such concentration as
the international agency may by regulation determine.” “Key substance”
is defined to mean “uranium, thorium _and any other element from which
nuclear fuel can be produced, as may be determined by the international
agency_.” (p. 71). Similarly, the report defines “nuclear fuel” as
“plutonium, U-233, U-235, uranium enriched in U-235, material containing
the foregoing, _and any other material which the international agency
determines to be capable of releasing substantial quantities of atomic
energy through nuclear chain reaction of the material_.” (p. 71.) The
_report_ likewise observes that: “Dangerous activities or facilities are
those which are of _military significance_ in the production of atomic
weapons. The word “dangerous” is used in the sense of _potentially
dangerous to world security_.” (p. 70). [Italics supplied throughout.]
Does such breadth of phraseology mean that manufacturing processes and
source materials needed in the production of H-bombs could be properly
controlled, through the existing UN plan?
Since nearly 2 years of work were required to formulate the UN plan, can
this plan be regarded as adequate for hydrogen weapons so long as the
control measures for the atomic energy industry are not explicitly
elaborated with the same detail as the arrangements evolved for
controlling U-235 and plutonium?
It may also be pointed out that the existing UN plan contains no
provision for physically protecting informants who advise the
international agency of violations. Might potential informants keep
silent for fear of being punished by their national governments? Is this
factor important if the existing UN plan were subjected to the added
strain of controlling hydrogen weapons as well as atomic weapons?
What safeguards would assure that the employees of an international
control agency would be faithful and loyal to the objectives of the
agency and that they would not work purely in the interests of some
national government—perhaps a national government other than that of
their own country?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
The language makes it obvious that the United Nations plan “foresees and
carefully takes into account the possibility of an H-bomb.” In view of
Russia’s attitude, however, and to leave no room for future quibbling,
the present plan should be explicitly elaborated to include hydrogen
weapons. On the other hand, since Russia will have none of the plan,
such elaboration would at best be purely academic.
As for protecting informants, certainly no plan could contemplate that
citizens would act as spies against their own country, even if they find
that their country is violating an international agreement. The plan is
designed so that such violations could be detected by the official
employees of the international control agency. Obviously, such official
employees stationed in any country should not be nationals of that
country and should be protected by diplomatic immunity. Each country, in
selecting its representatives to the control agency, would naturally
subject them to a most careful screening as to their character and
loyalty, and would use all necessary checks to make certain that they
are faithful and loyal to the objectives of the agency.
4. IS CONTROL OVER FISSIONABLE MATERIALS SUFFICIENT TO PREVENT THE
PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN BOMBS? IF SO, IS THE EXISTING UN PLAN ADEQUATE TO
THIS TASK?
The technical facts suggest that H-bombs may be regulated in at least
two ways: (1) Control over the fissionable material usable as a
“trigger” and (2) control over deuterium and tritium.
Perhaps control over _all_ fissionable material would give effective
control over hydrogen weapons. However, by way of specific example, the
introduction to volume VI of the Scientific Information Transmitted to
the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946-October 14,
1946 (see State Department Publication 2661, pp. 151–152), comments as
follows:
It is difficult to define the amount of activity in the illicit
production of atomic weapons which is significant. The illicit
construction of a single atomic bomb by means of a decade of
successful evasion would not provide an overwhelming advantage, if it
can be assumed that it would take another decade to produce a second
bomb. But the secret production of one bomb per year would create a
definite danger, and the secret production of five or more per year
would be disastrous. This report assumes arbitrarily that the minimum
unit of noncompliance is the secret production of one atomic bomb per
year or a total of five bombs over any period of time. [This example
is chosen because UN documents published later omit concrete
illustrations, although the stress which these documents place upon
international ownership, operation, and management clearly reflects a
determination to reduce to the rock-bottom minimum any illicit mining
or production.]
Considering that five illicit A-bombs might, under certain
circumstances, lead to five illicit H-bombs, what margin of
inefficiency—if any—in controlling source and fissionable material is
permissible? Is absolute protection against illegal diversion of source
and fissionable material technically possible? Does the existing UN plan
provide absolute or near-absolute protection? Can greater technical
protection be secured than under the present UN plan?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
It can be stated unequivocally that, in the absence of complete mutual
faith and goodwill on the part of all concerned, neither the existing UN
plan nor any other technical plan that can be devised will provide
absolute or near-absolute protection. No plan could be devised that
would provide assurance against the diversion of enough material in any
one year to make at least one atomic bomb. In five years this would mean
the secret production of five hydrogen bombs.
5. MUST H-BOMB CONTROLS RELATE TO DEUTERIUM AND TRITIUM AS WELL AS TO
FISSIONABLE MATERIAL? IF THEY MUST, CAN THE PRESENT UN PLAN FULLY
PROVIDE FOR THESE CONTROLS OR DOES IT REQUIRE REVISION OR CHANGES IN
EMPHASIS?
Should control over both fissionable material and deuterium and tritium
call for the same emphasis and consideration which the United Nations
Atomic Energy Commission has already given to control of U-235 and
plutonium? Would surveillance of deuterium and tritium manufacture
furnish better insurance against illicit H-bomb construction than
surveillance of U-235 and plutonium, or is the reverse more apt to be
true? Are added safeguards necessary to regulate deuterium and tritium?
Or is the UN plan, as now constituted, sufficiently flexible and
comprehensive to take care of light-element control?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
Since H-bombs require either U-235 or plutonium, as well as deuterium
and tritium, and since absolute or near-absolute control of U-235 or
plutonium is not possible, it becomes obvious that H-bomb controls must
relate to both deuterium and tritium as well as to fissionable material.
Since the UN plan does not mention them by name, added safeguards are
necessary to regulate deuterium and tritium. No safeguards, however,
could be devised even in this respect to provide absolute or
near-absolute protection.
6. IS IT TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE TO DETECT THE MANUFACTURE OF HEAVY WATER
AND DEUTERIUM THROUGH INTERNATIONAL INSPECTION? WOULD AN INTERNATIONAL
AGREEMENT FLATLY PROHIBITING PRODUCTION IN QUANTITY BE DESIRABLE?
The manufacture of heavy water and the separation of deuterium are
relatively simple processes. They may be carried out in small plants
which can exist in a variety of locales.
The _Second Report_ of the UN Commission comments as follows:
The international agency shall have the authority to require periodic
reports from nations regarding the production, shipment, location, and
use of specialized equipment and supplies directly related to the
production and use of atomic energy, such as mass spectrometers,
diffusion barriers, gas centrifuges, electromagnetic isotope
separation units, very pure graphite in large amounts, heavy water,
and beryllium or beryllium compounds in large amounts. In addition,
the agency shall have authority to require reports as specified of
certain distinctive facilities and construction projects having
features of size and design, or construction or operation, which, in
combination with their location and/or production or consumption of
heat or electricity, are peculiarly comparable to those of known
atomic facilities of dangerous character (p. 54).
Would inspectors possessing freedom of movement be able to locate
deuterium and heavy water plants? Would aerial surveys and aerial
photographs of industrial areas help detect processes which produce
hydrogen as a byproduct and which might therefore be concerned with the
manufacture of heavy water or deuterium? Should quantity production of
deuterium be prohibited even though it is used in certain types of
peacetime reactors such as the Canadian reactor at Chalk River, the
French reactor at Chatillon, Swedish reactors under construction, and a
research reactor at the Argonne National Laboratory? Is it possible on
technical grounds to enforce such a prohibition?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
It would not be desirable to prohibit production of heavy water and
deuterium in quantity since heavy water is the best moderator of
neutrons in the large-scale production of atomic power for industrial
uses. Furthermore, such a prohibition could never be enforced, since, as
stated, the manufacture of heavy water and the separation of deuterium
are relatively simple processes that “may be carried out in small plants
which can exist in a variety of locales.” What makes it even more
difficult, if not impossible, to detect any violation of such a
prohibition is the fact that the raw material for heavy water or
deuterium is just plain water.
7. SHOULD THE PROVISIONS OF THE PRESENT UN PLAN RELATING TO INSPECTION,
SURVEYS, AND EXPLORATIONS BE MODIFIED TO CONTROL HEAVY WATER AND
DEUTERIUM PRODUCTION?
The United Nations plan assumes that the production of fissionable
material cannot be regulated without strict supervision over the mining
of source materials such as uranium and thorium:
Without the control of raw materials, any other controls that might be
applied in the various processes of atomic energy production would be
inadequate because of the uncertainty as to whether or not the
international agency has knowledge of the disposition of _all_ raw
material. (_Second Report_, p. 30.)
Whereas uranium and thorium are needed to produce U-235, [U-233] and
plutonium, the production of deuterium is not subject to such limitation
of source materials. Only water, the existence of power, and
comparatively simple plants are needed for the manufacture of heavy
water and deuterium. In view of these facts, can the existing United
Nations plan cope with the problem of regulating deuterium production?
In commenting upon spot aerial surveys, for example, the _Second Report_
recommends that “the [international] agency shall conduct spot aerial
surveys in each period of 2 years over areas not exceeding 5 percent of
the territory under the control of each nation or areas not to exceed
2,000 square miles, whichever is the larger. (These area limitations
apply to spot aerial surveys only)” (p. 68). If aerial surveys were to
be used not only in controlling raw materials but also to help in
spotting deuterium and heavy water plants, must they be carried out more
frequently than is provided in the existing plan?
The _Second Report_ also indicates that a UN inspectorate should be
compelled to secure permission, through a warrant procedure, before
inspecting “private and restricted property not open to visitation by
the population in the locality, and in the case of certain ground
surveys and aerial surveys which are additional to others which the
agency may conduct without warrant or other special authorization” (p.
60). Do the technical facts surrounding heavy water and deuterium
production suggest that such a restriction on an international agency’s
authority would have to be modified?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
See comment on question 6.
8. WHAT SAFEGUARDS ARE NECESSARY TO PREVENT CLANDESTINE PRODUCTION OF
TRITIUM? WOULD AN INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT FLATLY PROHIBITING PRODUCTION
IN QUANTITY BE DESIRABLE?
U-235 and plutonium may be used either in weapons or as fuels for
peacetime reactors. Here is the reason most frequently cited for
requiring that international control include not only inspection but
also such further guaranties as United Nations ownership, operation, and
management of “dangerous” plants. The potentiality, both for good and
evil, that characterizes fissionables does not appear to characterize
tritium, which has no known peacetime uses except as a laboratory
research tool. Is it therefore possible that the reason for requiring
inspection plus other guaranties as regards U-235 and plutonium does not
apply to tritium and that inspection alone would answer?
If quantity production of tritium were altogether forbidden—as having no
peacetime purpose—the mere act of preparing lithium (the tritium raw
material) for irradiation and the mere act of inserting it in a nuclear
reactor might be considered a violation. Would such action be impossible
to conceal from managers and inspectors stationed at each reactor
permitted under the control agreement? Would an illegal reactor itself
be impossible to conceal from inspectors enjoying freedom of movement?
A few private commentators have argued that the UN plan fundamentally
errs in assuming industrial power to be around the corner. They estimate
that this goal is actually a decade or two away and that meanwhile the
control problem would be simplified if all high-powered reactors were
dismantled. Does the role of reactor-produced tritium in H-bomb
production strengthen such an argument?
The UN plan distinguishes between atomic facilities which are
sufficiently “dangerous” to require UN management and facilities which
may be operated by national governments and merely require international
inspection. Since all reactors produce neutrons and hence might be
useful in some degree—however small—in manufacturing tritium, is it now
necessary to regard certain reactors formerly considered to be
“non-dangerous” as now being in the “dangerous” category?
Are there other methods, apart from reactors, for producing tritium? If
so, how can they be controlled? Would the right of the international
control agency to own, operate, and manage “dangerous” plants and to own
and regulate both fissionable materials and “fusionable materials” meet
such a situation?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
The most efficient and rapid method for producing tritium is by
inserting lithium metal into a large nuclear reactor, thus exposing it
to irradiation by neutrons, which transmute the lithium into tritium and
helium. Tritium could also be produced in a similar manner in the
smaller nuclear reactors used for research purposes, and though these
smaller reactors would produce it at a considerably slower rate, the
fact that the amounts of tritium required may be rather small would
inevitably shift these reactors from the “non-dangerous” to the
“dangerous” category. Such small reactors are essential for research,
and their prohibition would strike a vital blow at the progress of
science. Furthermore, they could be much more easily hidden than large
reactors. This fact, therefore, weakens, rather than strengthens the
argument for the dismantling of all high-powered reactors, as such
dismantling would not prevent the production of tritium.
There are other, though less efficient, methods for producing tritium,
however, that do not require any reactors at all. A good neutron source
can be provided by exposing beryllium to radium, radon, or polonium.
These neutrons could then be used to bombard lithium and convert it into
tritium. Nor is lithium necessary, for at least four other elements,
including deuterium, helium 3, boron, and nitrogen, can be transmuted by
neutrons from the beryllium into tritium. What is more, even neutrons
are not absolutely essential, since deuterons (nuclei of deuterium) and
beryllium could be made to yield tritium by bombarding them with other
deuterons. The latter method, however, would require the use of giant
cyclotrons and would be very slow.
All this would indicate that it would be extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to provide safeguards against the clandestine production of
tritium.
9. SHOULD A WORLD-WIDE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY COVER CONCENTRATED LITHIUM
DEPOSITS?
A key feature of the United Nations plan is the provision for a
world-wide geological survey of uranium and thorium—the raw materials
potentially usable in A-bombs. This survey is considered necessary in
order to permit tracing of materials as they progress from the mines
through various processing phases and finally enter a nuclear reactor.
Does the same kind of logic apply to lithium—raw material for tritium?
How formidable is the technical problem of locating and controlling
deposits of lithium?
Pegmatite minerals constitute a principal source of lithium ores, which
are currently produced as a byproduct of the nonmetallic mineral
industry. Commercial deposits of lithium are known to exist in the Black
Hills of North Dakota; northern New Mexico; Saskatchewan, Canada; and
southwest Africa. Production of ores rose to about 900 tons of lithium
oxide in 1944 and is now about 200 tons. So long as requirements do not
exceed byproduct production, supply does not appear to present a
problem. If requirements exceed byproduct supply, the cost of the excess
might be high. Lithium is now used commercially in glass, as a compound
in welding fluxes, in storage batteries, in fluorescent light tubes, and
as an alloying element.
Are the quantities of lithium ore required on an order of magnitude that
makes control feasible?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
Such a world-wide geological survey would be futile, as only a few
hundred pounds of lithium would be necessary to produce enough tritium
for a relatively large H-bomb stockpile, and such amounts could be
hidden right now from available stocks.
10. DO THE TECHNICAL FACTS OF THE H-BOMB MEAN THAT NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
THE UNITED NATIONS PLAN IS THE CORRECT APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL
CONTROL?
Various critics of the UN plan have denied that management control over
“dangerous” plants is essential to protect against violations.
High-power reactors are among the plants to be classified as “dangerous”
under the UN plan, and these same reactors are the ones which might
produce not merely plutonium but tritium in quantity. Likewise, an
international agency would possess authority to check the design of any
isotope separation unit and to assume the right of construction and
operation if these fall into the “dangerous” category. Deuterium may be
obtained through isotopic separation. Do such facts as these refute the
critics and demonstrate that managerial and material control by the
United Nations, over and above inspection, is more than ever necessary
in order to prevent diversion of nuclear fuel or illegal irradiation of
lithium?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
In the light of the technical facts about the H-bomb, the argument as to
whether managerial control over “dangerous” plants is essential to
protect against violations becomes wholly academic. We have seen that
even managerial control would not offer either absolute or near-absolute
protection. No plan that does not offer at least near-absolute
protection against the clandestine production of even one H-bomb per
year could be trusted when a nation’s very existence may be at stake.
11. HOW DOES THE H-BOMB AFFECT THE PROBLEM OF “STAGES”?
The United Nations plan would take effect by “stages”—one stage to
include, among other projects, a world-wide geological survey, another
stage, to involve, among other projects, the taking over of atomic
installations, and still another to bring about the disposition of
fissionable materials.
At what point in some such progression would national stockpiles of
deuterium and tritium be placed under control? When this point was
reached, would they be destroyed or be held in storage under United
Nations auspices? If a nation pretended to make known its entire
stockpile of tritium and deuterium while actually it kept hidden a
substantial portion, how would the international agency discover such a
violation?
AUTHORS COMMENT
See comment on questions 12 and 13.
12. HOW DOES THE H-BOMB BEAR UPON THE PROBLEM OF DISPOSITION OF EXISTING
STOCKS OF FISSIONABLE MATERIAL?
When a control plan takes effect, what should be done with supplies of
U-235 and plutonium in excess of a quantity immediately usable for
peacetime purposes? This problem has received relatively little
consideration in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. If excess
stocks were destroyed, a valuable future source of energy and storehouse
of neutrons would be lost. On the other hand, if the stocks were kept in
existence under UN guard, seizure by an aggressor state might rapidly
permit it to attack with atomic bombs—and innocent countries might have
relatively little warning.
Such seizures might quickly lead, under certain circumstances, to the
construction of “triggers” for H-bombs. Does this fact tip the balance
in favor of destroying excess U-235 and plutonium? Or are these
substances still too valuable and too difficult to replace to justify
destruction? Is there a third alternative—possibly involving partial
destruction or the use of “denaturants” or the construction of many
power reactors, regardless of cost factors—to keep excess stocks of
fissionables contaminated with fission products?
AUTHORS COMMENT
The problem of the disposition of existing stocks of fissionable
materials was given little consideration because it was too hot to
handle. From the very beginning Russia insisted that all atomic bombs be
destroyed, and she left no doubt that she meant the destruction of the
fissionable materials with which bombs could be quickly assembled. Even
before the H-bomb, such destruction might have meant suicide to nations
that complied, since they would have been at the complete mercy of
noncomplying nations. The advent of the H-bomb makes all talk of such
destruction, wholly apart from the waste of a priceless, irreplaceable
natural resource, completely unrealistic, as any such act would be
tantamount to abdication, a prelude to a super-Munich by the free
nations. Denaturing, which makes fissionable materials temporarily
useless for bombs, is also out of the question, since it would take a
long time to reconcentrate them, giving nations with a hidden stock of
nondenatured material a tremendous advantage that might well mean the
difference between survival and annihilation for a nation that acted in
good faith. All this also applies to the destruction of stocks of
deuterium and tritium.
13. HOW DOES THE H-BOMB BEAR UPON “QUOTAS”?
The United Nations plan envisages that reactors and other atomic
facilities will be distributed among the nations according to “quotas”
and a “strategic balance”—whereby no one nation, by seizing the plants
within or near its borders, could gain an undue military advantage over
innocent nations. This “quota” feature has been criticized as
unnecessary and as likely to hinder individual countries in developing
the peacetime uses of atomic energy to the maximum extent.
Does the fact that reactor fuels, if seized by an aggressor, might make
available H-bomb “triggers” tend to render all the more desirable the
“quota” idea? How long a time would an aggressor require to make enough
deuterium and tritium for H-bombs in seized plants? Could a world
control authority, by requiring that certain design features be
incorporated in the plants under its control, extend this time period?
What should be done with plants in existence at the time a control
agreement takes effect and well suited to H-bomb production but poorly
suited to peacetime uses? How should such plants, if they were not
dismantled, figure in “quota” allotments?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
From its very inception the quota system was totally impossible of
realization. Today it is likely to prove a snare and a delusion, giving
a false sense of security, since it could not guarantee against the
clandestine production of at least one H-bomb a year. The plutonium for
the trigger could be produced in hidden small reactors, while the
deuterium and tritium could be produced in other small plants that could
be equally hidden. As we have seen, tritium production does not even
require a nuclear reactor.
Like the “quota system,” the system of “stages” has also become
completely out of date, since it was predicated on the control system
taking effect before Russia developed her own atomic bombs or had built
her own nuclear reactors. Today there is no longer any logical reason
for any stages, since any delay would make effective control more
difficult. Even today, if an international agency were to take over
stockpiles, it could never be certain that considerable amounts had not
been hidden away. In other words, even if the UN plan were to be adopted
today, it would not give security against a surprise atomic attack,
which is the very purpose of the plan.
14. HOW DOES THE H-BOMB BEAR UPON RESEARCH TO BE PERFORMED BY THE UNITED
NATIONS CONTROL AGENCY?
Under the United Nations plan, individual nations would be forbidden to
engage in atomic weapons research, but such research would be performed
by the world control agency itself, as a means of keeping it at the
forefront of knowledge in this field and thereby enabling it to detect
violations which might otherwise pass unnoticed through ignorance. Is
research upon H-bombs so dangerous that not even the world control
agency should be allowed to undertake it?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
If an international agency is ever established, it is obvious that it
would have to carry on research on H-bombs for the same reason that
would make it vital for it to carry on research on A-bombs—“to keep at
the forefront of knowledge” so that it would be in a position to “detect
violations.” This would become all the more imperative just because the
H-bomb is so much more dangerous.
15. SHOULD TECHNICAL INFORMATION REGARDING THE H-BOMB BE TRANSMITTED TO
THE UNITED NATIONS AS A BASIS FOR A DISCUSSION OF HYDROGEN CONTROL?
In 1946 the United States transmitted six volumes of technical
information on atomic energy to the United Nations. This was one
important means of providing members of the United Nations Atomic Energy
Commission with sufficient basic data to discuss international control.
No similar body of material on hydrogen bombs has been transmitted to
the United Nations. Can the Commission now discuss the control of
hydrogen warfare without further official information on its technical
aspects? If such information is to be provided, who should be the
provider, the United States or the Soviet Union, or both?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
All the information so far has come from the United States. In fact, the
Smyth Report, the six volumes of technical information submitted to the
UN, the testimony by scientists at the Congressional hearings on the
McMahon Act, and much declassified information have been of invaluable
aid to Russia in developing her own atomic bomb. It is about time that
this one-way flow of information came to a stop. Not a trickle has so
far come out of Russia—not even an official acknowledgment that she has
exploded her first A-bomb—and until she shows her willingness to
co-operate fully, we must stop playing Santa Claus.
16. SHOULD A NEW PANEL OF EXPERTS ANALOGOUS TO THE ACHESON-LILIENTHAL
BOARD BE APPOINTED TO STUDY THE H-BOMB IN RELATION TO INTERNATIONAL
CONTROL?
It is now more than 4 years since the Acheson-Lilienthal Board made its
recommendations on international control. Their findings have since been
largely incorporated into the UN plan.
Do the events of the last 4 years make it desirable, for technical
reasons, to rethink the control problem? Are the technical data of
hydrogen bombs such, as to demand a recasting and change of emphasis in
the existing UN plan? Have the prospects of large-scale peacetime
applications of atomic energy sufficiently changed that a different
orientation in control measures is desirable?
If re-examination of the control question is indicated, should this
inquiry be undertaken in the first instance by a group of qualified
Americans? Or should the United States suggest that an internationally
constituted board initially take on this assignment?
Considering the strong Soviet opposition to the UN plan, is it useful to
consider the problem of control? Is the Soviet attitude at all likely to
change in the foreseeable future? Would a rethinking of the control
problem contribute to a solution unless Soviet representatives
participated? Would the appointment of a new “Acheson-Lilienthal Board”
raise false hopes?
AUTHOR’S COMMENT
As indicated in Chapter IV and in the preceding comments, the UN plan
for the international control of atomic energy is wholly out of date,
and the sooner we realize it, the better for us and for the world. It
was at best a noble ideal, which did not have the slightest chance of
realization from the very start. A re-examination of the entire problem,
even before the advent of the H-bomb, had been long overdue. Today it is
all the more imperative. Since such a re-examination requires, or at
least implies, the withdrawal of the plan, originally sponsored by this
country, it should be done by an international board, preferably at the
suggestion of some nation other than the United States.
The new board, in considering the whole problem anew, should avoid our
original error of regarding control of atomic weapons as a problem
wholly separate from that of other weapons of mass destruction. It
should recognize the facts of life and not aim at bringing the
millennium overnight. It should not seek absolute security, since the
facts show it to be unattainable. Rather should it accept as a wise
maxim that even partial security is better than none.
If the board set for itself certain limited objectives, they would have
a much better chance of universal acceptance than if its aims were too
high, as they were in the original United States plan, now the plan of
the majority of United Nations. Its first limited objective should be a
general agreement to outlaw the use of all weapons of mass destruction
against civilian populations. This would mean outlawing the use not only
of A- and H-bombs against large urban centers of population, but also of
all other conventional weapons for the mass killing of noncombatants.
A second limited objective should be the outlawing of radiological
warfare in all forms, which should include the use of the rigged H-bomb
as well as the use of A-bombs in a manner that takes advantage of their
radioactive effects. This would mean the prohibition of the explosion of
A- or H-bombs from a low altitude, or their explosion underwater in a
harbor.
These limited objectives would still permit nations to manufacture
atomic weapons and to use them as tactical weapons against military
personnel, while they would eliminate their use as strategic weapons
against large urban centers. The very possession of atomic weapons by
both sides, however, may in itself prevent their use even tactically. In
fact, there would still be the hope that they would serve as effective
deterrents against war itself.
The advantage of such a plan of limited objectives is the likelihood, or
at least the possibility, that even Russia would not dare to turn it
down and thus stand before the world as preventing the prohibition of
the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations. And once we
reached agreement with Russia on one set of limited objectives, the door
may possibly have been opened for further agreement on other limited
objectives.
Peace, step by step, appears to be the only alternative to possible
catastrophe. One limited objective after another must become our major
policy.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET
_The text of this book is set in Caledonia, a Linotype face designed by
W. A. Dwiggins. This type belongs to the family of printing types called
“modern face” by printers—a term used to mark the change in style of
type-letters that occurred about 1800. Caledonia borders on the general
design of Scotch Modern, but is more freely drawn than that letter._
_The book was composed, printed, and bound by Kingsport Press, Inc.,
Kingsport, Tennessee._
[Illustration: [Logo]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Also by_ WILLIAM L. LAURENCE
DAWN OVER ZERO
[_1946_, _1947_]
_This is a Borzoi Book, published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
56 Valuing their liberty more their Valuing their liberty more than
lives, the American their lives, the American
122 Einstein’s formula, E = mc₂, Einstein’s formula, E = mc²,
revealed that matter revealed that matter
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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