Science: Monster Conference

Tourists in Geneva hotels began getting get-out notices more than three weeks ago (exception: the Emir of oil-drenched Qatar and his white-draped retinue), and a flood of nontourists saturated the town. The Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (full title) which started last week, is probably the biggest scientific confab ever. Besides the 5,000 scientists from 67 countries, and 900 accredited correspondents, came uncounted thousands of atomic businessmen, many with wives or camp followers. Geneva has 6,500 hotel beds, but it was so jammed that some of the delegates were forced to bunk in Evian, France, 60 miles away.

Speeches & Exhibits. The delegates came loaded with 2,300 scientific papers, 600 of which they were to present orally at five parallel series of meetings, with often baffled translators trying to deliver the highly technical texts in four languages. Along with this scientific five-ring circus ran two monster exhibitions, technical and commercial. The U.S. technical exhibit, which many visitors consider a triumph, and much better than the U.S. effort at the Brussels World’s Fair, is staffed by white-coated scientists and 50 attractive, multilingual girls, who were put through a three-week crash course in basic nucleonics. The U.S. is showing two real live nuclear reactors, and four real and working fusion devices, which flash like lightning when crew-cut young scientists throw the switches. The U.S. exhibit cost $4,500,000. No other nation has anything comparable. The only item in the Soviet exhibit to draw much popular interest is nonnuclear: a gleaming model of Sputnik III.

The scientific papers presented were highly technical and mostly concerned with specialized details. (Example: neutron transport theory in slab lattices, L. Trlifaj and J. Cermak, Czechoslovakia.) Much more interesting to the public was the general feeling among the scientist delegates, as expressed in interviews or press conferences. The first Geneva conference, 1955, was notable for unaccustomed fraternization between scientists from Communist and non-Communist countries. It also took the secrecy lid off the technology of fission reactors that burn uranium or other heavy elements.

The 1958 conference is doing the same unwrapping job for controlled nuclear fusion of light elements, the great power hope of the future. The U.S., Britain and

Russia have agreed to make public their experiments with fusion for power. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission released a 216-page book giving an excellent history of Project Sherwood, its fusion program. Papers presented at Geneva brought the account up to the minute.

Neither the U.S. nor any other nation can yet report that controlled fusion has surely been achieved, even on an impractical laboratory scale. Perhaps the most optimistic report came from British-born Physicist James L. Tuck, head of controlled fusion research at Los Alamos, who described an experimental device called Scylla, developed under Dr. William C. Elmore of Swarthmore College, which heats an ionized gas to extremely high temperature by compressing it magnetically. Dr. Tuck said that Scylla “looks probable as a thermonuclear source. At present there seems no reason to doubt that a thermonuclear reaction is taking place.” The delegates of no other nation would say as much about their fusion experiments.

Bombs for Oil. Nearly all scientists at Geneva agreed that practical fusion power is many years off. Dr. Homi Bhabha of India stuck by his prediction at the first conference that it would take 20 years from that date, 1955, to generate fusion electricity. A few scientists were more optimistic, while Dr. Edward Teller of the U.S. guessed that success would not come “before the end of the 20th century.” Meanwhile, he advocated exploding H-bombs under the earth and using their trapped heat to generate power. Dr. Gerald W. Johnson of the Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, Calif, suggested that H-bombs be exploded in deep-lying oil shales. One such shot, he figured, might cost $5,000,000 but its trapped heat would liberate from 50 million tons of shale 25 million bbl. of oil, worth $50 million.

This and other U.S. proposals to blast harbors with nuclear explosives brought the only West-East dust-up at the conference. Academician Vasily S. Emelyanov, head of the Soviet Delegation, suggested that the U.S. might test new H-bombs by exploding them for allegedly peaceful purposes. Some reporters made much of this episode, but Dr. Emelyanov was not emphatic. He urged that such nuclear blasting be done under international inspection, which the U.S. also favors. At a press conference he was reminded that the late Andrei Vishinsky had bragged in 1949 that the Soviet Union was “utilizing atomic energy for razing mountains, irrigating deserts, cutting through the jungle and the tundra. We are spreading life, happiness, prosperity and welfare in places where the human footstep has not been seen for thousands of years.” Said Emelyanov (to hearty applause): “Before 1955 I didn’t pay much attention to politicians.”

Kilowatts & Ice. Although controlled fusion caused most of the excitement at Geneva, the slowly developing techniques of fission power got plenty of attention too. In practical achievement, the British are ahead, with their Calder Hall reactors producing nearly three-quarters (144,000 kw.) of the world’s atomic-power electricity. The U.S. produces 81,000 kw. for practical uses; the U.S.S.R. has completed no plant since its primitive 5,000-kw. job that was finished in 1954.

But the Russians had much to say about their nuclear-powered icebreaker, the Lenin, which is scheduled for completion this year. Its four reactors, one for standby, will produce 90,000 kw., and they will drive the 16,000-ton vessel through ice 7 ft. thick. The Russians explained that they do not consider nuclear power economically practical for most ships, but an icebreaker usually operates far from sources of conventional fuel.

While the physicists were discussing ways to cause more and more nuclear reactions, the biologists were talking about the dangers of radioactivity, and how they can be reduced. Dr. Jean Maisin of Belgium reported that certain low animals seem to develop resistance to radiation. In mammals this “radio-adaptation” is found only in the embryonic stage. Guinea pigs irradiated in their mother’s uterus show a 50% increase in radiation resistance.