Plowshare Symposium, 1964: Engineering with Nuclear Explosives Page: 3
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THE PLOWSHARE PROGRAM - HISTORY AND GOALS
Gerald W. Johnson
Associate Director for Plowshare
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory
Livermore, CaliforniaThe applied nuclear age began a little over
twenty years ago when a small group of scientists
led by Enrico Fermi demonstrated the controlled
release of fission energy on a minute but meas-
ureable scale under the football stands at the
University of Chicago. The basic nuclear science
on which this accomplishment depended was pro-
vided through fifty years of prior fundamental re-
search which culminated in early 1939 in the key
discovery of the fission process and the possibil-
ity of a chain reaction. Because soon after we
were involved in a major war of survival, and one
of the enemies had the potential of "getting there
first," the overriding initial objective in the use
of this new form of energy was properly that of
building a bomb. This was, as we all know,
crowned with success, and the war was promptly
ended.
The military, political and social impact of
this development is difficult to assess in all of its
ramifications, but it was enormous. The impor-
tant technical fact was that a single bomber ca-
pable of delivering about ten tons of explosive on
target suddenly was able to deliver a load more
than 1000 times greater--and this in the first ru-
dimentary developmental step. The implications
of this led first to an approach which is still being
pursued--to develop, if possible, political con-
trols with respect to the use of this force for war-
fare. The other factor that was brought out at the
same time was the potential of the new source of
energy for other purposes, namely power pro-
duction and ship propulsion. It was the recogni-
tion of both the military and civil potentials of
nuclear energy that led to the establishment of the
basic policy of the United States as set forth in
the Atomic Energy Act, first enacted in 1946 and
periodically amended. In the declaration of the
Act it is noted that "atomic energy is capable of
application for peaceful as well as military pur-poses." In addition the stated policy of the United
States is:
"a. The development, use, and control of
atomic energy shall be directed so as to
make the maximum contribution to the
general welfare, subject at all times to
the paramount objective of making the
maximum contribution to the common de-
fense and security; and
"b. The development, use, and control of
atomic energy shall be directed so as to
promote world peace, improve the gen-
eral welfare, increase the standard of
living, and strengthen free competition
in private enterprise."
Following the passage of this Act in 1946, in-
creasing attention was devoted to nuclear power
development and ship propulsion. Major accom-
plishments were recorded in both. The ship
propulsion to date has been most significant for
submarines--and coupled with advances in other
fields, has provided a most powerful deterrent
force.
With the entry of the Soviet Union into the
nuclear weapons field in 1949, and in view of their
open political and military aggressiveness, it was
again necessary to devote urgent attention to meet-
ing the "paramount objectives. " This threat and
our resulting activities led to two important tech-
nological steps which are relevant to the present
discussion. These were: (1) the achievement of
the thermonuclear, or fusion, explosion, and (2)
the demonstration of the clean bomb--which meant
merely that the fission contribution to the explo-
sion could be small. The significance of these
two steps was that, first, fusion fuels were much
cheaper and more abundant than fission fuels, and
secondly, the lower fission contribution led to a
reduction of the generation of those radioactivities
considered to be most difficult to control.3
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Plowshare Symposium, 1964: Engineering with Nuclear Explosives, report, 1964?; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc784228/m1/13/?q=%22Chemistry%22: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.