Science: The Atomic Future

Ten years after Hiroshima, 13 after man first split the atom, 1,200 atomic scientists from 72 nations filled Geneva’s huge Palace of Nations last week with the excited babble of exploration and discovery. The first International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy was a conclave of adventurous men and optimists caught up in the dream of a peaceful atomic revolution. “Now everybody feels he can talk freely,” exclaimed the ranking U.S. expert, Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard Libby, a man seldom moved to excitement. “It’s a great emotion—you can feel it all over the place.”

In brain-straining technical sessions, in press conferences, even in the chatter of cocktail parties, the scientists exchanged information, ideas and prognostications on the power for good that lies in a power associated for so long with war. Mostly it was the sound, detailed talk of scientists to scientists—facts about Russia’s 5,000-kw. showpiece reactor (TIME, Aug. 15), U.S. uses of radio isotopes in medicine and industry, Britain’s plans to begin making commercial atomic-power reactors.

But the talk that most stirred the conference’s first week was a bold prophecy by India’s Physicist Homi J. Bhabha, 45, conference president. Bound by none of the security regulations that so often gag U.S. experts, Bhabha predicted that by 1975 man will have tamed the H-bomb’s fusion reaction and converted its tremendous energy (more than 1,000 times that of the Abomb) to useful electric power.

Some scientists thought Bhabha highly optimistic, but he insisted that he was actually speaking conservatively, that fusion power might come even sooner. Would fusion replace fission in reactors? he was asked. Said Bhabha: “There will probably be a place for all of them. Airplanes have not eliminated railroads.”

Gentler Triggers. Although Bhabha was the first topflight scientist to predict the coming of H-power, the prospect has intrigued his brethren everywhere (TIME, July 25). Present atomic reactors all use the fission process: splitting nuclei of the heavier atoms, e.g., uranium or plutonium, to produce a controllable reaction. But fusion, used solely in the H-bomb, involves binding the nuclei of far more plentiful, lighter atoms (deuterium, lithium, etc.) under tremendous heat to produce an explosion.

So far, only an exploding A-bomb has provided enough heat to trigger off fusion. But it is theoretically possible. Bhabha suggested, that other far less violent triggers can be fashioned to produce fusion without explosions. For example, high-voltage linear accelerators have been designed to propel particles at high speeds through electrical fields to give them high energy but little heat effect; a low-voltage, high-current accelerator shooting more particles at lower speeds might supply the few millions of degrees required for fusion. Even ordinary TNT “shaped charge” explosions might do the triggering. Already, said Bhabha. Indian theoretical scientists were making “reasonable progress” toward an answer.

Pressed to comment on Bhabha’s fore cast, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss disclosed what most scientists already knew: the U.S. (like Russia and Britain) has long been experimenting with fusion power on “a moderate scale.” But, he added, H-power is a long-range project, and, barring an early, unforeseen “breakthrough,” uranium will be the standard reactor fuel for some time to come.

The U.S. delegation made fusion seem even more tantalizing by releasing for the first time cost figures for fuel, for fusion and for fission. One pound of heavy hydrogen costs only $140; one pound of pure uranium 235, used as reactor fuel, costs a whopping $11,000. Most important, a fusion reactor’s fuel supply is as inexhaustible as the oceans—in every gallon of water there is one part deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to 5,000 parts of light hydrogen, easily separated by electrolysis.

Through most of the week, the scientific exchange dealt with the present state of peaceful atomic knowledge and the more immediate future, the “model T” stage of atomic development. Technical papers came from nations large and small, but the big news was made, of course, by scientists of three big nations, Britain, Russia and the U.S. Highlights:

Great Britain, relatively poor in conventional fuel and in dollars, showed surprising activity in the fields of atomic power and the manufacture of atomic devices and equipment, both for internal use and export. The British reported that they already produce nuclear power at a cost of 7 mills per kwh, which is expensive, but no more so than Britain’s present conventional power supply. British scientists said Britain plans to get 40% of its electricity from atomic reactors by 1975, possibly will freeze design at its present primitive stage in order to get reactors into production.

To assure themselves of reactor fuel, the British are exploring the potential of thorium, an abundant metal once used in gaslamp mantles, as a replacement for uranium, which Britain must get at high cost from the U.S. While its atom cannot split like uranium, thorium can be converted by nuclear bombardment into fissionable U-233. In a breeder reactor seeded with plutonium or U-235, thorium could efficiently produce new fuel with compound interest. Moreover, the British announced, they are already operating a small, experimental “one-for-one” breeder reactor that produces one new neutron fuel for every neutron it consumes—well above the one-for-ten “reproduction rate” of U.S. breeder reactors. Named the Zephyr (for Zero Energy Fast Reactor), the new pile uses plutonium, produces little electric power, is designed solely as a steppingstone to self-sufficiency in atomic fuel.

The U.S.S.R. showed a working model of the year-old 5,000-kw. power plant in operation about 50 miles outside Moscow, reported that a new 100,000-kw. reactor—probably of a similar design, and therefore behind U.S. models—will go into action within a year and will provide power on a competitive cost basis with coal-fed plants. The Russians also said that they are building the world’s biggest atom smasher, one that will hurl protons (hydrogen nuclei) with energies as high as 10 billion volts against the nuclei of target atoms, enabling Soviet scientists to study the forces binding the atoms. In another paper read at Geneva, the Russians claimed to have discovered, by using radioactive isotopes as tracers, that plants photosynthesize protein as well as carbohydrates directly under light. Western scientists saw no evidence that the Russians have made important advances beyond Western accomplishments, but they were impressed by the Soviet revelations. Said one U.S. official: “This conference ought to dispel forever the idea that the Russians are stumblebums in science.”

The U.S., where electricity costs less than half (3 mills per kwh) the average in Britain, indicated in its Geneva revelations that it may be able to produce nuclear power at as little as 4 mills per kw-h by 1970, depending partly on how much byproduct plutonium and U-233 is bred from reactors. The first big U.S. nuclear power plant, a uranium-fueled, pressurized water reactor at Shippings-port, Pa., will start delivering 60,000 kw. to Pittsburgh in 1957.

The AEC revealed that one U.S. town has briefly been supplied all its electricity by a small atomic reactor. In a special test, Arco, Idaho (pop. 1,200) was cut off from its regular power supply for an hour last July 17, drew its current solely from a 2,000-kw. boiling-water-type “Borax” reactor at the AEC’s testing station 20 miles away.

From the U.S. also came one of the few somber notes to temper Geneva’s optimism. In a paper written with two co-workers (Roger McCollough, Mark Wells), the University of California’s famed H-expert, Edward Teller, warned that science has not yet found sure ways to prevent peaceful reactors from blowing up. “[Despite] all the inherent safeguards that can be put into a reactor,” said Teller, “. . . it is important to emphasize . . . the public hazard that might follow a reactor accident . . . [Because of leaking radiation] it may be necessary to evacuate a large city, to abandon a watershed and . . . make the reactor site itself a forbidden area for years to come.”

Perhaps the most important U.S. contribution at Geneva was the declassification, some of it even after the conference opened, of a parade of precise details of the atomic process, e.g., how to extract uranium concentrates from raw uranium ore. With this new knowledge, other nations could save years of duplicating research, speed up their atomic programs with less cost and effort. For the small, underdeveloped nations, in particular, the rich buffet of know-how was a memorable feast. Waving a thick sheaf of scholarly reports, one Israeli scientist declared happily: “This’ll keep me busy for years.”