POWER May 2012 - 96

NUCLEAR POWER
It is typical of the dilemma of this civilization
that masses of men humbly accept the
fact of Einstein's genius, but only a handful
understand in what it consists. They have
heard that, in his Special and his General
Theories of Relativity, Einstein finally
explained the form and the nature of the
physical universe and the laws governing
it. They cannot understand his explanation.
To a small elite of mathematicians and
physicists, the score of equations in which
Einstein embodied his picture of the universe
and its functioning are as concrete as
a kitchen table. To the layman they are as
staggering as to be told, when he is straining
to make out the smudge which is all he
can see of the great cluster in the constellation
Hercules, that the faint light that strikes
his eye left its source 34,000 years ago.
Time concluded that most people would
never understand much about Einstein's theories-the
fundamental ideas behind nuclear
energy-beyond this limerick:
There was a young lady called Bright,
Who could travel much faster than light;
She went out one day, in a relative way,
and came back the previous night.
Much of this wonder and incredulity grew
out of the secrecy of the atomic adventure. As
it emerged after the war, the story of the Manhattan
Project was a revelation. The largest
engineering and military production effort in
history had occurred in the United States over
a period of nearly five years, completely under
the unknowing noses of the American public.
It had all been hidden in veils of secrecy, and
now the story was beginning to unfold.
Just how secret? The vice president of the
United States, Harry S. Truman, didn't know
about the atomic bomb until after his boss,
President Roosevelt, died in April 1945. Four
months before the two bombs fell on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and only three months before the
successful Trinity test at Alamogordo in the New
Mexico wilderness, Truman listened in astonishment
when he got his first briefing. With only
sketchy understanding of what had been going
on, he soon had to make the fateful decision to
let the atomic demon loose on the world.
Gen. Leslie Groves, the career military
man who ran the project, describes in his 1962
memoir, Now It Can Be Told, how the military
bamboozled Congress on the program through
1943. The enormous atomic bomb project was
buried in a series of War Department sub-accounts
within the impenetrable military budget.
Even the War Department bureaucrats responsible
for allocating the money were largely in
the dark. Groves talks about a " bad moment in
late 1943, " when Rep. Albert J. Engel (R-MI)
96
throughout the twentieth century-the former
Soviet Union. Stalin and his spymasters knew
a great deal about the secret endeavor and were
quickly able to demonstrate their own explosive
prowess with atomic science.
The Manhattan Engineering District-the
cover name for the atomic bomb program-created
what Groves called the " country's greatest
single scientific success. " It also created a couple
of enduring myths. First, the bomb builders'
success fed the notion that large, governmentdirected
and -funded scientific and engineering
programs can overcome almost any technical,
political, or social obstacles. The later success of
the Apollo moon project reaffirmed that belief.
The residue of that notion of government-driven
science can be seen in the subsequent history of
public policy in the twentieth century, and today.
The Nixon administration's hopelessly hubristic
War on Cancer in the early 1970s exemplified
the lingering paradigm of the Manhattan Project,
as did the Carter administration's support
for creating a giant synthetic fuels industry in
the 1980s, which turned into a colossal flop.
Today, in the bowels of the Department of Energy,
the Manhattan mentality remains, fueling
research and development in such areas as: how
to capture and stuff into the ground carbon dioxide
from coal-fired power plants; how to economically
turn sunlight directly into electricity;
and how to midwife a new generation of nuclear
power technologies.
Almost immediately after the atomic
bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
United States went nuts over nukes. The shadowy
world of the atom, rumored in technical
journals and occasional " gee-whiz " newspaper
or magazine article in the pre-war press,
burst onto the scene in 1945. The result was a
tidal wave of enthusiasm for anything and everything
atomic. Anyone associated with the
atom was a rock star; the atom was the future
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the Atom, a " general euphoria " about atomic
energy. Ford linked that feeling to the undercurrent
of guilt left from the bombings.
" Instead of reflecting on the horrors visited
upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki or on whether
the bombs should have been used in the first
place, " Ford wrote, " news reports helped to
alleviate the nation's feelings of repulsion
and guilt by focusing public attention on the
more congenial aspects of 'the new force.' "
A mere two weeks after bombs fell on Japan,
Newsweek gushed that " even the most conservative
scientists and industrialists were willing
to outline a civilization which would make the
comic-strip prophecies of Buck Rogers look obsolete. "
In December of 1945, just four months
after the attack on Japan, Popular Science magazine
proclaimed in a cover story headline " We
can harvest the Atom. " The article went on to say,
" you will soon see mobile engines running on
U235, and cities heated by steam from stationary
graphite piles. " A 1953 Look magazine article by
Gordon Dean, one of the original members of
the postwar Atomic Energy Commission, was
titled " Atomic Miracles We Will See. "
Over the years, the hyperbole rolled on.
The military, the civilian government, and
the popular press touted nuclear power as a
panacea to many of the military and domestic
problems that faced the nation. Bizarre notions
of the prospects of nuclear energy for enriching
civilian life took hold in these influential circles.
Take the family sedan. Ford Motor Co. in 1958
created a concept car, called the " nucleon, " designed
to be powered by a tiny nuclear reactor. It
existed, of course, only on drawing paper and a
3/8-scale clay mockup. But the Ford nucleon is
evidence of how the atom was the dream of the
age in the 1950s and 1960s.
Even comic strip characters were enlisted in
the army of atomic acolytes. One was Dagwood
Bumstead, the harried and harassed, suburban,
POWER | May 2012
got wind of a major construction project in the
Tennessee woods at a place called Oak Ridge.
Engel wanted to make a trip to Oak Ridge to
see what was going on. " In reply, " Grove writes,
" he was told that this work was highly secret,
and that the information he wanted could not be
given to him; eventually, he was persuaded to
forget his contemplated visit. "
Ironically, while Groves and his atomic bomb
babysitters were able to keep most of Congress,
the vice president, most of the war and foreign
policy bureaucracy, and all of the American
people in the dark, that didn't work with
our sometimes ally and long-term adversary
of the universe; and the United States seemed
the master of that universe. The nation was
enthralled by hyper-optimistic notions about
what the atom could do, beyond blowing
up enemy cities and spreading radioactive
fallout around the globe. Trains, boats, and
planes would be atom-powered. Tiny atomic
reactors would sit in our basements and heat
our houses. Government would beat into
peaceful plowshares the most terrible sword
humankind had ever developed.
Writer Daniel Ford, who covered nuclear
energy for the New Yorker twenty-five years
after Hersey, described in his book, Cult of
. . . misguided policy, misunderstood
history, misapplied engineering, and
mistaken economics.
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POWER May 2012

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