ORNL: THE FIRST 50 YEARS--CHAPTER 5: BALANCING ACT
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In 1961, Director Alvin Weinberg predicted that historians would
view atom-smashing accelerators, fission reactors, and fusion
energy machines as prime symbols of modern history, just as the
Egyptian pyramids and Roman Colosseum have come to symbolize those
ancient cultures. The same year Weinberg made that prediction,
however, Laboratory activities began to shift slowly from a
reliance on the traditional sciences and engineering hardware to
sciences related to social engineering and environmental
restoration.
In the 1960s, when congressional committees called on the Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) to expand and diversify national laboratory
programs to create more "balanced laboratories," the call struck a
responsive chord in Oak Ridge. Program disruptions that followed
the ORNL terminations of the Materials Testing Reactor in 1947, the
Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1957, and the Homogeneous Reactor
Test in 1961 taught Laboratory management the dangers of relying on
a few large hardware programs. In addition, nationwide scientific
involve-ment in the space race intensified competition for federal
research dollars.
Responding to the "balanced laboratory" challenge, Director
Weinberg organized an advanced technologies seminar to consider the
Laboratory's future. "What we should try to do is to identify
long-range, valid missions which in scope and importance are
suitable for prosecution by ORNL," he said. "Most missions of this
sort will probably not fall in the field of nuclear energy. This
need not bother us since, in the very long run, ORNL very possibly
will not be in nuclear energy exclusively."
As a member of science panels advising presidents Dwight Eisenhower
and John Kennedy, Weinberg aggressively sought to use Laboratory
expertise to help solve national and international environmental
and social problems. Under Weinberg's leadership, and the
leadership of Alexander Hollaender in biology, the Laboratory
broadened its programs during the 1960s. Although basic nuclear
science continued as a mainstay, the Laboratory increasingly
focused on applications and safety of nuclear energy: how
commercial nuclear power could help curb air pollution and chemical
contamination resulting from burning fossil fuels and produce fresh
water from the seas for agricultural and industrial applications.
The Laboratory had been a nuclear science center from its
inception; in 1961, it took the first steps toward becoming a
national laboratory in a broader sense. Before 1961, all Laboratory
funding came from the AEC. A decade later, about 14% of its $100
million annual budget came from agencies outside the AEC, mostly
for programs connected with civil defense, desalination, space
travel, and cancer research.
INFORMATION PLEASE
An immediate local result of Weinberg's service on was the
development of programs to manage the scientific "information
revolution." A historian in 1961 pointed out that the first science
journal was published in 1665; the number climbed to 100 in 1800,
10,000 in 1900, and 40,000 by 1961. Science was being buried under
a blizzard of new publications. This information explosion, along
with increasing specialization and a threatened shortage of
scientists, the historian predicted, could cause the collapse of
science by 1970. Plaorian predicted, could cause the collapse of
science by 1970. Placed in charge of a presidential task force
investigating this ominous trend, Weinberg echoed the historian's
sentiments when he said scientists were "being snowed under by a
mound of undigested reports, papers, meetings, and books."proposed
the creation of information centers. Rather than traditional
libraries with stacks of books and shelves of journals available to
researchers, these centers would consist of scientists who would
read virtually everything published in their specialty, review the
data, and provide their colleagues with abstracts, critical
reviews, and bibliographic tools. In addition, these scientific
"middle people" would contribute to science directly by uncovering
new intellectual ties and applications during their in-depth
reviews of the literature in their fields.
The recommendation of the Weinberg panel, outlined in the Science,
Government, and Information report (dubbed the Weinberg report),
received broad acceptance. Nationally, more than 300 science
information centers were formed, including a dozen at the
Laboratory. Among the early Laboratory information centers was the
nuclear data group, begun at the Laboratory in the mid-1940s by Kay
Way as a continuation of her nuclear data work at the University of
Chicago. In 1949 Way moved the nuclear data project to Washington,
D.C., under sponsorship of the National Bureau of Standards and
later the National Academy of Sciences. In 1964 Weinberg brought
Way and her team of seven physicists back to the Laboratory, where
they continued the systematic collection and evaluation of nuclear
data, publishing it in tabulated form for use by researchers.
Other Laboratory information centers specialized in the fields of
accelerators, atomic-collision cross sections, charged particles,
engineering, isotopes, nuclear safety, materials research,
radiation shielding, toxic substances, and the environmental and
life sciences. Coordinated by Walter Jordan and Francois Kertesz,
these centers disseminated the information they collected largely
by publishing review journals such as Nuclear Safety, annotated
bibliographies, charts, and digital computerized information.
Widely acclaimed, many of these publications and services have
continued to be useful sources of information for researchers.
DESALTING THE WATERS
Although less successful in the long run than the information
centers, research into removing salt from seawater to produce fresh
water for drinking and agriculture attracted the most public and
political attention of all the Laboratory endeavors to achieve
"balance."
As a result of its research into fluid-fuel reactors and the
chemical processing of nuclear fuels, the Laboratory in 1961
employed some of the world's foremost solution chemists. Some of
these chemists had become intrigued by the chemistry involved in
desalinating seawater. They voiced support for desalination as a
new Laboratory mission in Weinberg's advanced technology seminars,
and a committee headed by Richard Lyon explored its potential with
the Office of Saline Water, a research arm of the Department of the
Interior.
In Washington, D.C., Weinberg discussed desalination with other
presidential science advisers. He also met with Secretary of the
Interior Stuart Udall. Managers at the Department of the Interior's
Office of Saline Water were not thrilled about funding desalting
research at the Laboratory, but Udall and Glenn Seaborg, chairman
of the AEC, orchestrated a "shotgun marriage" between the two
federal agencies.
Funded initially at $600,000 a year by the Office of Saline Water
and the AEC, a team of Laboratory chemists and engineers led by
Kurt Kraus investigated the physical chemistry of seawater,
focusing on hyperfiltration (reverse osmosis) to remove salts and
contaminants from water. Development of dynamic membranes for rapid
production of fresh water from seawater earned the team wide
recognition.
A second phase of the desalting work originated with Philip
Hammond, who contended that large nuclear reactors could produce
power and heat cheaply enough to desalt seawater, providing
electricity for industry and fresh water for agriculture.
Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson judged desalination to
be in the national interest. Johnson, in fact, sought to make it an
instrument of foreign policy, hoping to build nuclear desalination
centers in arid regions such as the Middle East to reduce
international competition for natural resources. Echoing the
president, Weinberg said, "I can think of few major technical
achievements, including manned exploration of space, that would
have as much beneficial political impact as would making the
deserts bloom with nuclear energy."
At the 1964 United Nations Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic
Energy in Geneva, President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev viewed the Laboratory's proposed nuclear
agro-industrial complexes favorably. Dubbed "nuplexes" by the
media, these blueprints called for huge nuclear reactors to produce
fresh water from the ocean to irrigate crops and generate electric
power. With international support, Laboratory staff in 1964 began
to travel to Israel, India, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Mexico, and the
Soviet Union to assist with plans for desalination plants.
In private, however, Weinberg warned AEC Chairman Seaborg that
desalination publicity had outrun the program's technical
capabilities and that the Laboratory needed increased research
funding "so that the technical basis for the politicians' speeches
always remains as firm as possible."
By 1965, when President Johnson announced his "Water for Peace"
program, 100 ORNL researchers were studying desalination. One
important development was a set of vertical evaporator tubes four
times more efficient at producing fresh water from seawater than
earlier models. In addition, the Rockefeller Foundation, which
funded research into disease- and drought-resistant seedlings to
nurture the Green Revolution, became interested in nuplexes as
potential food factories in poverty-stricken nations. Former
President Eisenhower and former AEC Chairman Strauss endorsed a
desalination plant in the Middle East sponsored by private funds
funneled through the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The desalination bubble burst as quickly as it had formed. By 1968,
the costs of nuclear plants had escalated so rapidly that
desalination plants no longer seemed economically feasible. As
nuclear power costs skyrocketed and the country's social and
environmental concerns moved to the forefront, the media and
political leaders lost interest in nuplexes. None was ever built,
and funds for desalination research dried up as new grain varieties
that could be grown with little water staved off famine.
"Solving today's social and economic problems with tomorrow's
technology is risky," Weinberg lamented near the close of this
Laboratory effort to become more "balanced." Yet, the information
obtained from desalination research later proved valuable for
Laboratory technologies developed to treat contaminated water and
sewage. Furthermore, a desalination pilot plant planned for a power
station near Los Angeles draws extensively on ORNL evaporator tube
technology.
BIG BIOLOGY
Alexander Hollaender's Biology Division prospered enormously during
Laboratory efforts to "balance" its research programs. Staffed by
experts who studied the genetic and physical effects of radiation
on living organisms, the division also hoped to shed light on
radiation's impact on the environment.
When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, it
stimulated intense public concern about the role chemical agents
might play in biological and environmental degradation. This
widespread worry prompted increased research funding for the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose managers soon received
visits from Hollaender, Weinberg, and other Laboratory staff. The
discussions--and subsequent funding--bore fruit during the 1960s in
the form of increased biological understanding and improved tools
for science and medicine.
With support from the National Cancer Institute, the Biology
Division opened a Biophysical Separations Laboratory, taking
advantage of centrifuge designs by Paul Vanstrum and fellow
researchers at the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The team
there had devised improved centrifuges to produce enriched uranium
for nuclear reactor fuel, and in 1961 a biology team headed by
Norman Anderson, with advice from Jonas Salk of polio vaccine fame,
adapted centrifuge technology to separating viruses from human
leukemic plasma, hoping to identify a cure for leukemia. This
striking use of nuclear separations technology to advance science
and medical research led in several directions.
A hollow cylinder subdivided into sectors, which creates a zonal
centrifuge whirling at high speeds, can separate substances at the
molecular level into their constituents according to size and
density. Anderson and his team experimented with centrifuges
whirling up to 141,000 revolutions per minute and learned the
machines could separate impurities from the viruses causing polio
and Hong Kong flu. By cleansing vaccines of foreign proteins, the
zonal centrifuge could produce a vaccine pure enough to minimize
the fever reactions that often accompanied immunizations. By the
late 1960s, commercial zonal centrifuges based on the ORNL
invention produced vaccine for millions of people and purified
rabies vaccines for their pets.
Peter Mazur and Stanley Leibo, both of the Biology Division,
pioneered the freezing and transplanting of embryos, successfully
implanting the thawed embryos of black mice in white female mice in
1972. With other cryobiologists, they developed methods to preserve
embryos from superior cattle and implant them into the uteruses of
inferior animals, helping to spur a revolution in animal husbandry
that increased the quality and abundance of meat.
In a project jointly sponsored by the AEC and NIH, the Molecular
Anatomy (MAN) Program managed by Norman Anderson sought to identify
the metabolic profiles and chemical characteristics of all cell
constituents. Charles Scott and associates in the MAN Program
devised portable centrifugal analyzers commonly used later in
medical clinics across the nation. Spinning at high speeds, these
analyzers could assay components of blood, urine, and other body
fluids in minutes, recording the data on computers for medical
diagnosis. The best known of these machines was the Laboratory's
GeMSAEC, so named because its development was funded jointly by the
NIH's General Medical Sciences Division and the AEC. Using a rotor
that spun 15 transparent tubes past a light beam, GeMSAEC displayed
the results on an oscilloscope and fed the data into a computer,
completing 15 medical analyses in the time it previously took to
perform 1 analysis.
Another eye-catching development in the Biology Division emanated
from the Laboratory's search for powerful microscopes able to view
and photograph objects the size of a few atoms.
After the Biology Division built an experimental microscope with
high resolution in 1967, Oscar Miller and Barbara Beatty placed
frog eggs under it and photographed genes in the act of making RNA.
"I never expected to see the thread of life, the mysterious stuff
that poets conjured long ago to explain the passage of the
heartbeat from generation to generation across the eons," mused
John Lear of Saturday Review of Literature, who came from New York
to peer into the microscope. "Yet today the thread lies clearly
visible before me, under the lens of an electron microscope, here
in the Tennessee hills."
In addition to funding from the NIH for centrifuge and microscope
research, the Biology Division received support in 1965 from the
National Cancer Institute for a Co-Carcinogenesis Research
Laboratory to investigate the complex biochemical events leading to
cancer growth. This work took advantage of the nearly
quarter-million mice on hand in the Biology Division. Biologists
Richard and Jane Setlow discovered that thymine dimers in
experimental animals blocked repair of cellular damage caused by
ultraviolet radiation. Arthur Upton and his associates used the
mice to study the physical effects of radiation and chemical agents
on the environment and on human health. The experiments largely
concerned airborne carcinogenesis, or the induction of lung cancer
by exposure to pesticides, sulfur dioxide, city smog, or cigarette
smoke, both singly and together. Mice exposed to these irritants in
an inhalation chamber were then placed in a clean environment while
scientists observed the formation of tumors. Upton later left the
Laboratory to become director of the National Cancer Institute.
At the time, the components of cigarette smoke were largely
unknown. To overcome this handicap, a Lung Cancer Task Force from
the Analytical Chemistry Division became involved in
carcino-genesis studies when they devised the "ORNL Smoking
Machine, Model Number 1." It smoked six cigarettes at a time, even
mimicking human inhalation. "This isn't an easy task by any means,"
commented Herman Holsopple, who built the machine. "Every component
in cigarette smoke must first be identified and then studied for
its biological effect on humans, and right now we're just trying to
identify some of the components." The same approach later was used
to determine the biological effects of synthetic fuels made from
coal and shale.
To assess how environmental hazards threaten human health required
big protocols, large epidemiologic studies, and expensive machines
supported by the latest advances in statistics--just the
requirements that Big Biology at the Laboratory could provide. By
the late 1960s, the Biology Division, which employed 450 people,
had become the Laboratory's largest division.
Medical knowledge and clinical machines developed at the Laboratory
with NIH funding stimulated the formation of a University of
Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Graduate School of
Biomedical Science. Thanks to grants from the Ford Foundation, the
Laboratory had entered a cooperative program with the University of
Tennessee during the early 1960s. As many as 50 Laboratory
scientists worked several days each week as Laboratory researchers
and spent the remainder of the week as members of the university
science faculty.
This cooperation laid the groundwork for a challenge presented in
1965 by James Shannon, director of NIH. Shannon planned a graduate
school in biomedical science near NIH headquarters at Bethesda,
Maryland, and as a condition for expanding NIH programs at the
Laboratory, he urged creation of a similar graduate school in Oak
Ridge.
After Weinberg, Clarence Larson, Alexander Hollaender, and James
Liverman obtained approval for such a school from the AEC
commissioners and Donald Hornig, President Johnson's science
advisor, Weinberg asked Andrew Holt, president of the University of
Tennessee, if he would be interested in developing the school
cooperatively. "Our location in Appalachia and the strong
contribution which a major new biomedical program would make to
President Johnson's Great Society," Weinberg told Holt, "should
enlist the aid of our U.S. senators and congressmen as well as the
president."
President Holt and university trustees approved the school in late
1965. Governor Frank Clement contributed $100,000 of state funds,
and Clarence Larson arranged a $100,000 contribution from Union
Carbide. In 1967, the UT-ORNL Graduate School of Biomedical Science
opened, with Clinton Fuller as its first director. It was staffed
chiefly by Biology Division personnel holding joint appointments
with the University of Tennessee and the Laboratory.
CIVIL DEFENSE
At the same time the Graduate School of Biomedical Science was
being organized, Weinberg explored formation of a Civil Defense
Institute at Oak Ridge. The origins of this concept may be traced
to the closing ceremony for the Laboratory's historic Graphite
Reactor in November 1963.
AEC Chairman Seaborg, Eugene Wigner, Richard Doan, and other alumni
of the Laboratory's wartime campaign returned to Oak Ridge for a
nostalgic ceremony formally deactivating the Graphite Reactor on
November 4, 1963, after 20 years of service. The next morning,
Wigner learned that he would receive the Nobel Prize for physics,
an award adding to his public visibility and prominence. At the
time, he was campaigning for improved national civil defense.
"According to the preamble to the Constitution, one of the purposes
of the Union was to provide for the common defense," said Wigner.
"It seems difficult to think of defense without making every effort
toward protecting what is most important: the lives of the people."
Confrontations with the Soviet Union over Berlin and Cuba had
spurred major funding for civil defense in the United States.
Schoolchildren practiced air-raid drills, and homeowners built
fallout shelters in their backyards. Although it seems a national
obsession in retrospect, the threat then was clearly defined by
U.S. and Soviet nuclear capabilities.
Wigner returned to the Laboratory in 1964 to organize a small, yet
vigorous, civil defense research project to assess national
vulnerabilities in the event of a nuclear attack and to explore
ways to reduce the impact of an atomic assault on America. After
organizing this effort, Wigner returned to Princeton, leaving James
Bresee as project director, although Wigner made monthly visits to
the Laboratory to provide broad programmatic direction.
The Laboratory's civil defense research initially focused on
underground tunnels to protect urban populations and on related
issues such as how to rid the tunnels of body heat; protect them
against firestorms and blasts; and provide them with power, air,
and other utilities.
Designing civil defense systems required demographic knowledge,
such as the number and probable age distribution of the people to
be protected. To uncover this information, the Laboratory hired
demographers Everett Lee and William Pendleton and joined Oak Ridge
Associated Universities in sponsoring formation of the Southern
Regional Demographic group in 1970.
The research also required understanding the reactions of people
under the stresses that would accompany emergency use of
underground shelters. To explore this problem, the Laboratory hired
its first social scientists.
The potential effects of nuclear fallout on the natural environment
became a major concern of Stan Auerbach and his fellow radioecology
scientists. Auerbach had attended early civil defense conferences
with Wigner because of public concerns about the ecological
consequences of a nuclear war. As one result, in 1967 small plots
of land at the Laboratory were treated with cesium-137-coated
particles to observe the environmental effects of simulated
radioactive fallout. This experiment proved to be the last
large-scale, fresh field application of radionuclides at the
Laboratory, although radiotracer studies continued in previously
contaminated sites.
During the late 1960s, Weinberg explored with the University of
Tennessee and state officials the formation of a Civil Defense
Institute in Oak Ridge, similar to the Space Science Institute
established at Tullahoma, Tennessee. This effort proved unfruitful,
but the Laboratory's studies of emergency technology continued
under Conrad Chester in the Energy Division, concentrating on
evacuation and sheltering from chemical hazards. The group also
evaluated the theory that nuclear war could cause major fires,
resulting in "nuclear winter" that could plunge much of the world
into cold and darkness as the smoke and dust block out sunlight. At
the outbreak of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, military authorities
thought it worthwhile to reexamine the Laboratory's old civil
defense reports on chemical and biological weapons.
LAB IN SPACE
In the early 1960s, Alvin Weinberg expressed his concerns about
prospects of a "scientific olympics" with the Soviets that focused
on launching manned spacecraft. He thought the space race had
little connection with the well-being of people, and he worried
about shielding spacecraft crews against solar radiation. Despite
Weinberg's reservations, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) supported Laboratory studies of radiation
shielding and the biological effects of solar radiation. NASA also
partially funded the AEC Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power for
long-distance space exploration. In fact, the space race brought $3
million into the Laboratory budget in 1962, and by 1966, the
Laboratory had 160 personnel in 10 different divisions
participating in the space olympics.
The Biology, Health Physics, and Neutron Physics divisions received
assignments to assay the biological effects of radiation from the
Van Allen Belt and solar flares and to devise lightweight shields
to protect crews of the Apollo spacecraft. In addition to ground
research, the Biology Division sent boxes containing bacteria and
radioactive phosphorus aboard Gemini 3 and 11 and also placed blood
samples aboard satellites to assess radiobiological effects in
space. The Health Physics Division exposed small animals and
plastic phantoms resembling humans to fast-burst radiation in the
Health Physics Research Reactor, thereby estimating the radiation
doses to internal organs that might await the Apollo crews. Fred
Maienschein, Charles Clifford, and others in the Neutron Physics
Division used data from the Tower Shielding Facility and linear
accelerators to design lightweight shielding for the Apollo
spacecraft.
The AEC Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power program, begun in 1956,
aimed to design compact, maintenance-free power generators for use
in remote locations at sea, on land, and in space. Under AEC
assignment, the Laboratory undertook studies of two types of
generators: miniature nuclear reactors and radioisotope generators.
Arthur Fraas led a team studying a small reactor that used molten
potassium to spin a turbine, generating electricity for use in
airless, weightless environments. Although not adopted by the AEC
for space missions, its boiling- potassium technology found
applications in other scientific endeavors.
The Isotopes Division received a major assignment from the AEC to
produce massive blocks and pellets of radioactive curium isotopes,
which became incandescently hot as they decayed and provided power
for thermoelectric generators. Most of these isotopes went into
portable power generators built by Martin Marietta Corporation to
supply power to weather stations in the Arctic and to Navy
navigation buoys and beacons at sea. Because deep space exploration
required too many panels for the use of solar energy in the
spacecraft, some tiny space probes launched toward the outer
planets of the solar system during the 1970s used radioisotopic
heat sources capable of producing electricity for as long as 30
years without refueling. These survey craft returned spectacular
pictures of the outer planets back to Earth a decade or more later.
As planning for NASA missions to the moon began, the Laboratory
lost personnel to NASA, including P. R. Bell, who, as director of
NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, requested assistance
from his friends in Oak Ridge. Neil Armstrong in July 1969 and
other astronauts who later landed on the moon carried telescoping
scoops for collecting moon rocks; these scoops were designed by
Union Carbide's General Engineering Division and fabricated by the
Plant and Equipment Division in Oak Ridge. Richard Fox of the
Laboratory's Instrumentation and Controls Division--one of the
veterans of the 1942 Fermi experiments in Chicago--designed the
vacuum-sealed boxes that housed lunar rock samples after their
return to Earth; some of those samples came to the Laboratory for
intensive study.
Although less than 4% of the Laboratory's budget came from NASA
programs, the personnel involved took pride in helping win the
space race. In reflecting on the Laboratory's work for NASA at the
end of the 1960s, Weinberg observed that its scientific aspects had
been challenging and its management even more so. NASA and other
non-AEC projects were subject to micromanagement by the agencies
providing the funding, and the Laboratory often missed the
budgetary flexibility that AEC-funded programs allowed.
ENVIRONMENT
Because the AEC had no firm policy on performing work for other
agencies, the Laboratory during the 1960s approached external
efforts one at a time, gaining approval from AEC headquarters for
each venture. By 1969, 14% of the Laboratory's programs consisted
of non-nuclear work for agencies other than the AEC. Argonne,
Brookhaven, and other laboratories then had less than 1% of their
work funded outside the AEC.
In 1967, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to further
encourage work for other agencies by AEC laboratories. The AEC,
along with Congressman Chet Holifield of the Joint Committee on
Atomic Energy, urged the laboratories to initiate studies of
environmental pollution, then an increasingly popular and
well-funded program under the Federal Water Pollution Control
Agency. Weinberg advised the AEC's general manager that Auerbach's
ecological studies and Kraus's water research placed the Laboratory
in a strategic position to attack water pollution by identifying
water pollutants and assessing their effects on aquatic and
terrestrial life. Technology developed during the desalination
studies, moreover, could be adapted to improve sewage wastewater
treatment. Also, Laboratory capabilities in analytical chemistry
could be applied to investigations of atmospheric pollution, and
biologists could expand their analysis of the effects of chemical
agents on living organisms.
The Federal Water Pollution Control Agency did not accept the
Laboratory's first proposal in 1967 to investigate stream
eutrophication. Auerbach and his ecologists then proposed to the
AEC that it approve Laboratory study of the impacts of heated water
released from power plant cooling facilities into aquatic systems.
When the AEC approved this initiative, Auerbach recruited Chuck
Coutant, an expert on aquatic thermal effects, to lead this
research effort.
For environmental research at the Laboratory, 1967 was literally
and figuratively a watershed year. The AEC approved Daniel Nelson
and James Curlin's proposed development of the Walker Branch
Watershed research facility, a small stream basin near the main
Laboratory complex, as an experimental center for studies of the
relationships between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. With
instruments located both above and below ground for precise
measurement of stream flows, the Walker Branch facility, Auerbach
later recalled, marked the beginning of educating Laboratory
personnel about the requirements of large-scale environmental
research. Also in 1967, the National Science Foundation appointed
Auerbach director of the ecosystems component of an International
Biological Program for the eastern United States. Funded at about
$1 million annually for eight years, this was the first major
program supported by the National Science Foundation at an AEC
laboratory.
As the 1960s waned, national awareness of ecological damage and the
threat of pollution increased. As the environmental movement
fermented, the Laboratory's potential as a center for environmental
research received more and more recognition. Auerbach, William
Russell, and other Laboratory ecological and life scientists went
on the road to public hearings where they found people concerned
about the environmental and health impacts of nuclear energy.
Although spearheading investigations of environmental pollution,
the Laboratory, along with the AEC and the nuclear industry, found
itself on the defensive against charges leveled by environmental
activists. Questions about the safety of nuclear reactors became
increasingly pertinent to Laboratory research programs.
NUCLEAR SAFETY
By the end of the 1960s, 20% of the Laboratory's reactor budget was
devoted to nuclear safety. The Laboratory operated a nuclear safety
pilot plant to test fission-product release and fuel transport. It
developed a mock-up facility to test fast breeder reactor fuel
bundles and a heat-transfer facility to test fuel element behavior
in the event of loss-of-coolant accidents. It also devised filters
to contain radioactive iodine that might be released during
accidents and participated in the design of auxiliary cooling
systems for reactors to prevent meltdowns.
The Laboratory's Heavy-Section Steel Technology Program, under Joel
Witt and Graydon Whitman, closely examined reactor pressure vessels
to ascertain their performance under stress. Early steel pressure
vessels in reactors had ranged from 8 to 25 centimeters (3 to 10
inches) thick, but the larger vessels designed by 1968 were as much
as 35 centimeters (14 inches) thick. The Heavy-Section Steel
Technology Program's task was to investigate this armorlike steel
and devise safety codes and standards for its use in reactor
vessels.
Private nuclear industry shared the costs of heavy-section steel
investigations and other nuclear safety programs with the AEC, but
these studies were not considered work for other agencies. Instead
they were viewed as key Laboratory initiatives, rooted to the
institution's historic concerns and mandated by the broad nuclear
policy responsibilities granted to the AEC.
LAB OF TOMORROW
To address possible future roles, the Laboratory obtained National
Science Foundation funding for summer seminars in environmental
sciences during the late 1960s. These seminars began in 1967 with
a multidisciplinary study of a nuclear agro-industrial complex and
expanded in 1968 to include investi-gations by Laboratory,
Tennessee Valley Authority, and university scientists and engineers
of the Middle East, its resources, and the health and education of
its people. Milton Edlund and James Lane headed the Middle East
studies and visited this distant region to explore potential
developments there.
In the summers of 1969 and 1970, seminars organized by David Rose,
who came to the Laboratory from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and by Laboratory staff members John Gibbons, Claire
Nader, and James Liverman, addressed environmental issues and the
general role of science in the formation of public policy. In
retrospect, these far-ranging seminars were pivotal events in the
formation of the Laboratory's Environmental Sciences Division and
Energy Division, which employ most of the Laboratory's social
scientists. Out of these seminars grew a proposal to create
national environmental laboratories, or at least one in Oak Ridge.
Declaring that "ecologists have displaced the physicists and the
economists as high priests in this new era of environmental
concern," Weinberg formed a National Environmental Concept
Committee under David Rose. This committee of ORNL thinkers
conceived of the need for "national environmental laboratories" to
examine environmental problems holistically. Rose wrote a
controversial paper calling for such institutions and suggesting
that ORNL might be one of them. The committee delivered a copy of
The Case for National Environmental Laboratories to Senator Howard
Baker of Tennessee, who had it printed as a congressional document.
Weinberg and Rose then met with senators Baker and Edmund Muskie to
discuss it. In early 1970, a House committee added $4 million to
the National Science Foundation budget earmarked for studies at the
Laboratory of sewage hyperfiltration, air pollution, waste
management, and chemical toxicity, and senators Baker and Muskie
sponsored a resolution establishing a National Environmental
Laboratory at Oak Ridge. Momentarily, it appeared that the
Laboratory might jump into the forefront of environmental science.
Congressman Chet Holifield of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
surprised the Laboratory's staff when he blasted the Baker-Muskie
resolution. Rumor had it that he said, "Let Muskie get his own
laboratories!" Holifield added a rider to the 1970 AEC
authorization that read:
The Joint Committee sees signs that ambition to acquire new
knowledge and expertise in fields outside the present
competence and mission of an AEC National Laboratory, in order
to attain and provide wisdom which this country needs in
connection with non-nuclear environmental and ecological
problems, is spurring at least one laboratory to solicit
activities unrelated to its atomic energy programs and for
which it does not now have special competence or talents.
Thus chastised, Oak Ridge saw its chances of becoming the National
Environmental Laboratory fade. Nevertheless, with enactment of the
National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and formation of the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Laboratory moved into
environmental research on a broader scale. In March 1970, shortly
before the first Earth Day celebrations, Weinberg expanded
Auerbach's Ecology Section into an Ecological Sciences Division.
Then, in 1972, with the addition of radiological assessment and
geosciences groups, the Ecological Sciences Division became the
Environmental Sciences Division. The national requirement that
environmental impact statements be prepared for new federal
projects brought the new division considerable work, and the
division formed an Environmental Sciences Information Center to
support preparation of impact statements. It also participated in
a multidisciplinary study, led by Bill Fulkerson, Wilbur "Dub"
Shults, and Bob Van Hook, that examined environmental impacts
associated with fossil-fuel power plants.
In new buildings constructed at the west end of the Laboratory
grounds, the expansion of the Environmental Sciences Division at
the Laboratory continued into the 1990s. If not in name, the
Laboratory became in fact a national environmental assessment
laboratory.
CONSTRAINTS
As early as 1967, Weinberg recognized that the costly Vietnam War
was constraining the national budget for science. "Because of
Vietnam, we shall be lucky to get as much money as we had this
year," he told the staff. "We can only hope that Vietnam will be
resolved quickly; and that, as peace is restored, we can devote
ourselves and our expanding technologies to the creation of a
better world."
The war did not end quickly, and in 1968 budgetary constraints
forced retrenchments. Weinberg adamantly denied that the
Laboratory's non-nuclear efforts were intended to counter
reductions in nuclear science budgets; in fact, he reminded critics
that those efforts had begun long before the budgetary shortfalls
of the late 1960s. Although Laboratory funding remained constant
from 1965 to 1970, inflation eroded the funding's value by as much
as 25%.
Other factors, in addition to the costs of the war, had a role in
the declining budget. Because the AEC was determined to proceed
with the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor, it slashed funding from
the Laboratory's molten-salt thermal breeder program. As part of
the social upheaval of the 1960s, strong antiscientific sentiment,
marked by confrontations even at professional scientific
conventions, also affected congressional support for research.
Weinberg and Laboratory staff saw several demonstrations against
science by disillusioned youth. After witnessing one in Boston in
1969, Weinberg wrote:
We in Oak Ridge, living as we do in a sheltered and pleasant
scientific lotus-land, just don't know what our colleagues in
the beleaguered universities are up against. What a shock it
is to go to the hub of the intellectual universe for what one
expects to be a rather routine scientific meeting, and to run
smack into a full-scale confrontation between the scientific
establishment and the Angry Young People. I haven't had such
an exciting time in years, certainly never at a scientific
meeting.
At Christmas 1969, the Bureau of the Budget ordered
across-the-board cuts at the Laboratory, reducing staff from 5300
to less than 5000. Its thermal breeder program was cut by
two-thirds, and its proposed new particle accelerator, known as
APACHE, was scrapped entirely. Departing friends made the 1969
holiday season in Oak Ridge as gloomy as that of 1947. In the
close-knit Oak Ridge community, when friends lost their jobs, they
usually had to leave to find work elsewhere.
"Our vast scientific apparatus is deployed against scientific
problems--yet what bedevils us are strongly social problems,"
Weinberg noted. "Can we somehow deploy our scientific
instru-mentalities, or invent new instrumentalities, that can make
contributions to resolving these social questions?"
"We lost our innocence in 1969," Bill Fulkerson, the Laboratory's
associate director for Energy and Environmental Technologies
recalled years later. Realizing that scientific problems had social
contexts as well as technical components, the chastened Laboratory
entered the 1970s less innocent but more ready to meet the
challenges of this tumultuous decade--one in which the nation would
experience two energy crises and federally sponsored environ-mental
programs that would forever alter the way the Laboratory conducted
its business.
SIDEBARS
SMOKING OUT THE FACTS
The Laboratory entered the field of smoking research in 1968 to
support the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) goal of producing a
"less hazardous cigarette." The NCI asked Laboratory researchers to
participate in a new program coordinated by the Tobacco Working
Group, which included government and tobacco industry scientists
and administrators.
W. T. Rainey, Jr., headed the first team in the Analytical
Chemistry Division at the Laboratory.
Commercial cigarettes could not be used in the studies because
their exact compositions were trade secrets, so the tobacco
industry produced more than 100 kinds of cigarettes specifically
for experimental purposes. Later, the University of Kentucky
produced a standardized cigarette, called the Kentucky Reference
Cigarette, to be used in the tests. These standardized cigarettes
were burned on large smoking machines that smoked 360 cigarettes at
a time and produced tar by the kilogram. While other contractors
used the tar for animal studies, Laboratory researchers performed
chemical analyses on the tar and smoke.
In the early 1970s, the NCI wanted inhalation studies done, but at
that time no devices were available to replicate the way a smoker
actually inhales. The Analytical Chemistry Division set to work on
this problem. Its researchers developed one inhalation apparatus
that the NCI used extensively and also contributed to development
of several others for the tobacco industry.
One of the biggest problems with inhalation studies is that the
rodents typically used in these studies naturally breathe through
their noses. Because the substances of interest in the tobacco
smoke were trapped in the test rats' nasal passages, they did not
reach the lungs as the researchers intended. To solve this problem,
the Laboratory's Biology Division devised an intratracheal cannula --
a tube that could be inserted into the rodent's mouth to put the
smoke directly into the lung.
In the late 1970s, biological "smoke" studies became a smaller part
of Laboratory research. The focus shifted to chemistry--isolating
and identifying the constituents of smoke that cause cancer and
mutations. Laboratory researchers provided support for other NCI
contractors all over the country. Roger Jenkins, Bob Gill, and Brad
Quincy, all of the Analytical Chemistry Division, traveled
frequently during the late 1970s, taking their expertise in tobacco
smoke chemistry, inhalation toxicology, and inhalation exposure
monitoring on the road from laboratory to laboratory.
In December 1978, the U.S. govern-ment committed itself to
analyzing all commercial brands of cigarettes for carbon monoxide
in addition to tar and nicotine. The Federal Trade Commission
laboratory had unforeseen instrument problems, though. The
automated infrared system government scientists used for the carbon
monoxide analysis failed, and it began to look as though the
project would not be completed on time. The Analytical Chemistry
Division was asked to help out by analyzing as many of the
cigarette brands as possible before the deadline. The Laboratory
successfully analyzed some 75 different brands of cigarettes.
Some support for the Laboratory's smoking research has been
provided by the tobacco industry through its research consortium,
the Council for Tobacco Research. The American Cancer Society has
also sponsored research at the Laboratory, including a study done
by Jim Stokely in which he measured the concentration of
radioactive polonium-210 in cigarettes.
Today the emphasis in smoking research is on so-called passive
smoke, or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), and the Laboratory
continues in its supporting role. At the University of California
at Davis, Laboratory expertise in designing smoke inhalation
systems is being put to use in a study of the health effects of ETS
on fetal and newborn rats. Results from scientific studies of ETS
may help policymakers clarify a still-cloudy issue.
Beyond the research, the Laboratory in 1991 became a smoke-free
environ-ment after an extensive informational and educational
program designed to help staff members break the habit.
IN THE NATION'S DEFENSE
In the early 1960s, the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis hung
over the land. Many Americans feared that the country was on the
brink of nuclear war.
Schoolchildren practiced air raid drills--knees bent, heads bowed;
store owners dusted off their air raid shelter signs--faded yellow
backgrounds, black lettering, arrows usually pointing downward;
suburbanites turned portions of their backyards into air raid
shelters--holes dug deep, stocked with canned goods and bottled
water. Civil defense, in short, was a national obsession.
In retrospect, the public reaction seems eerie and irrational, but
at the time the fears were real and the threat was clearly defined
by the nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union.
The Laboratory joined this effort in 1964 by organizing a small but
vigorous Civil Defense Research Project led by one of the
Laboratory's founding fathers, Eugene Wigner. Wigner believed that
a strong civil defense could reduce the possibility of a nuclear
confrontation by blunting the force of imprudent adventures. Other
physicists were surprised by Wigner's commitment to the civil
defense initiative. A Hungarian by birth and an American citizen by
choice, Wigner viewed communism not only as a political challenge
but a personal affront.
The Civil Defense Research Project assessed the nation's
vulnerabilities in the event of a nuclear attack and explored ways
to lessen the impact of the unthinkable--an atomic assault on
American soil.
Wigner provided broad directional support for the 20-member
interdisciplinary staff during his once-a-month visits to the
Laboratory. James Bresee was appointed project director with
responsibility for the daily research efforts. Lawrence Dresner
built baffles that could weaken the shock waves expected to ripple
across the land after nuclear blasts. Cresson Kearny designed and
constructed a fallout shelter equipped with a fan to ventilate it
and drew blueprints for homemade dosimeters that could measure
radiation.
David Nelson studied the effects of nuclear explosions and fallout
on transistors and other electronic components. Conrad Chester
studied the threat of chemical and biological warfare agents. Davis
Bobrow examined why political officials failed to place civil
defense on the top of the policy agenda. And Claire Nader, sister
of political activist Ralph Nader, studied the problems that cities
would face in the event of nuclear attack. The program also tracked
the progress of Soviet civil defense efforts. Joanne Gailar headed
this effort, which included translation and publication of a
240-page handbook, Soviet Civil Defense.
Other areas of study included the feasibility and effectiveness of
blast and fallout shelters, methods of shielding livestock from
radiation (and decontaminating meat from irradiated cattle), and
human reactions to stress in the wake of a nuclear attack.
By the early 1970s, the nation's --and Laboratory's -- fears of an
imminent nuclear war were eclipsed by concerns about energy
shortages and skyrocketing energy prices. In 1974, the Laboratory
discontinued its Civil Defense Research Program and its staff
either left the Laboratory or found work in other areas. The
program's findings, thankfully, never found direct application;
however, many of the research results have been used by civic
defense organizations today in times of floods, earthquakes,
hurricanes, and other natural disasters.
The program's multidisciplinary approach foreshadowed the efforts
of the Energy Division and created an opening for the fields of
economics, political science, demography, and policy analysis--all
of which have gained increasing acceptance at the Laboratory during
the past two decades. This project was the first at any AEC
laboratory to include social scientists as members of the team.
NEUTRONS AND JFK
Most Laboratory personnel learned of the assassination of President
John Kennedy over the Laboratory's public address system on the
afternoon of November 22, 1963. A week later, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) asked the Laboratory to study fragments of the
bullets that struck the president and the paraffin casts taken of
the hands and face of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin.
This request was made because the Laboratory had facilities and
scientists available for performing neutron activation analysis.
When neutrons from a reactor activate the atomic elements in a
material, each element emits characteristic gamma rays, revealing
its presence and concentration in the material.
About five years after John Kennedy had admired the Oak Ridge
Research Reactor as a U.S. senator, evidence relating to his
assassination came to the Laboratory, where William Lyon, Frank
Dyer, and Joel Emery, all of the Analytical Chemistry Division,
tested it in the High Flux Isotope Reactor's neutron flux. The FBI
hoped Laboratory researchers could match gunpowder particles on the
paraffin casts with gunpowder from a rifle found at the crime
scene. The fact that Oswald had fired a pistol, killing a Dallas
policeman, the day of the assassination, and earlier tests made on
the paraffin casts complicated the research and made the
Laboratory's results inconclusive.
The FBI hoped that ORNL's neutron activation analysis of the bullet
fragments taken from the president's limousine could determine
whether the bullets were fired from a single weapon. Lead bullets
have traces of silver and antimony, and the Laboratory's analysis
of these traces indicated that the bullets did indeed come from the
same rifle. Later independent study by a University of California
neutron activation specialist confirmed the Laboratory's
conclusion. ORNL's Nuclear and Radiochemistry Analysis group
complied with many requests for neutron activation analysis in
connection with crimes until the 1970s when commercial laboratories
entered the field.
LABORATORY'S COLLECTIVE STRENGTH
"There is a general view, nurtured by members of the academic
community, that the really worthwhile basic research is research
done at universities. But those who hold this view are thinking of
research in a parochial and narrow fashion. They are thinking
mainly of the brilliant individual flashes of theoretical and
experimental insight which characterize the best university
research as performed by a gifted professor and his coterie of
students. They seem to overlook the other style of research,
perhaps originally exemplified by the German institute, where a
massive attack on a given set of problems is made by teams
representing different disciplines. No one member of the team may
be as brilliant as the best professor in a university. But the
members of the team bring a professionalism to their jobs that goes
much beyond what graduate students can do; moreover, cooperation is
much easier in such an institute than it is in a university. In the
institute the whole is greater than the sum of its parts since the
members of an institute interact so strongly with each other.
"Now the research style of the institute, rather than of the
university, characterizes basic research in the best of the large
government laboratories. The people in these laboratories are
usually not geniuses (although Eugene Wigner is spending a year
here at Oak Ridge), but they are competent and they are
professional. At Oak Ridge, and the other AEC laboratories, they
are given great freedom provided only that the area in which they
work is relevant to the mission of our supporting agency.
"My main point is to persuade you to state in unmistakable words
that the professionalism and interdisciplinary competence found in
the AEC laboratories is an extraordinarily valuable national
scientific asset."
--Alvin Weinberg to E. R. Piore of the President's Science Advisory
Committee and Naval Research Advisory Committee, February 2, 1965
(keywords: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, history)
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Date Posted: 2/22/94 (ktb)