E. W. Seabrook Hull

“ The atom is the most concentrated source of energy, and one of the most diverse. Thus, not only are we able to do familiar things better with nuclear energy (the nuclear-powered submarine is a dramatic example) , but we are also able to do things never before possible (such as studying the diffusion of dissolved salts in the open ocean or extending the useful life of seafoods through irradiation) . ”

“ The sea is a chemistry, too. Over 60 elements have been discovered in measurable amounts in solution or in suspension in the ocean. Many of these are in the form of salts, making seawater a highly efficient electrolyte, and a most corrosive fluid. The study of corrosion and techniques for combatting it is a continuous one in which nuclear energy already has a principal role.
Because the sea is so much a chemistry, it is a potential source of minerals for the world’s growing industrial appetite. All of our magnesium and most of our bromine already are extracted directly from seawater. ”

“ To work effectively in any environment, we must first know and understand it. This is the job of science. In the quest for knowledge and understanding of the ocean, nuclear energy provides scientists with better instruments to put down into the depths and wholly new techniques for the direct study of the many oceanic processes. ”

“ Understanding the Atom Series
i The Understanding the Atom Series
Nuclear energy is playing a vital role in the life of every man, woman, and child in the United States today. In the years ahead it will affect increasingly all the peoples of the earth. It is essential that all Americans gain an understanding of this vital force if they are to discharge thoughtfully their responsibilities as citizens and if they are to realize fully the myriad benefits that nuclear energy offers them.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission provides this booklet to help you achieve such understanding. ”

“ Men already have lived experimentally for weeks at a time on the bottom of the ocean. Both sea floor laboratories and military bases are being planned or, in a few cases, installed. Sea floor mining complexes are in the conceptual design stage. It is only a matter of time before recreational “aquotels” are built safely below the sea’s restless surface. Private sports submarines are an actual, though costly, reality. It is not inconceivable that in the 12 not-too-distant future human beings may overflow the land into complete, self-sufficient communities below the oceans. ”

“ But what of this environment into which, armed with the atom, we plunge with such enthusiasm and expectations? A portrait is in order, which must be brief, for not all the books ever written about the sea have yet described it fully.
The world ocean covers 70.8% of our planet. It contains 324,000,000 cubic miles of seawater. Living in it are upwards of a million different species of plants and animals. ”

“ In much of the ocean there is an acoustic “floor”, known as the deep scattering layer (because of what it does to sound waves) , which is believed to consist primarily of zooplankton. Every 24 hours the layer migrates up and down through several hundred feet of water. At night the countless small animals graze in the rich sea-plant pastures near the surface; during daylight, back at the lower level, they undoubtedly are heavily fed upon by larger animals. Over a period of time, the layer accounts for considerable vertical transport of materials. ”

“ Just how much radiation is introduced? In what form? Where geographically? How are these radionuclides dispersed or concentrated physically, chemically, biologically, and geologically? What is the net result in each case now, and what will it be many years hence?
These questions are not answered easily. There is, as yet, no satisfactory laboratory substitute for the open ocean. Research for the most part must be conducted at sea, where tests and measurements are difficult at best, and where results therefore are often suspect. ”

“ To this extent, nuclear energy is universal, as applicable in the sea as it is on land or in outer space. Wherever man goes and whatever he does, he requires energy to get him there and energy for his work or play when he arrives. Some of the places he now seeks to pioneer are hard to investigate by anyone encumbered with bulky traditional energy sources—coal, fuel oil, or storage batteries. The ocean in its full three-dimensional scope is one of these places. ”

“ Nuclear energy is a fundamental physical phenomenon, like the actions of the wheel, the lever, or the inclined plane. Like chemical combustion or electricity, it is but another means for men to do useful work, whether that work be in the interests of science, commerce, recreation, or war. ”

“ The world’s greatest resource of water is the ocean, but energy is required to remove the salt from it and make it potable or even useful for agriculture and industry. The energy produced by nuclear reactors is considered economical in the large quantities that soon will be required. ”

“ Along its land edges, the sea is constantly working on the shore—sometimes gently, sometimes violently—breaking down rock cliffs, opening bays and harbors, closing channels and inlets, smashing breakwaters and seawalls, and moving sand up and down and to and from beaches. ”

“ Further, if we are to study the effects of man-induced changes in a natural environment, it would have been advantageous to have known the nature of that environment before the changes were introduced—which, by and large, in the case of the ocean we do not. ”

“ Yet among the elements the sea’s plants and animals concentrate are the very materials with which we are apt to be most concerned: Strontium, cesium, cerium, ruthenium, cobalt, iodine, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, iron, chromium, and others. Radioisotopes [6] of all these elements occur as by-products of human nuclear activities. Many concentrating organisms are microscopic in size and are frequently impossible to raise in captivity. It is apparent that we are faced with a research program of considerable challenge and proportion. ”

“ The ocean, by and large, is an opaque fluid through which light travels only a few hundred feet and most other radiant energy not much more than a few yards; yet through this same fluid, sound waves, by contrast, have been transmitted and received over distances of many thousand miles. ”

“ Even if the two essential components of combustion—fuel and oxygen—could be delivered economically to an undersea base or craft, the extreme back pressure of the depths would present serious exhaust problems. Yet deep beneath the sea is just where we now propose to do large amounts of work requiring huge supplies of reliable energy. ”

“ More refined, electronic instrumentation has begun to appear in recent years, but most designs still fail to pass the test of use at sea. Even among those that do pass, there is persistent difficulty in separating desired information-carrying signals from background and system-induced “noise”. This has been a specific problem with current meters designed to be moored in the open ocean and also with one quite sophisticated gamma-ray detector. ”

“ Development of better instruments and devices for work and study in the ocean, development of ever-stronger national sea power, conversion of seawater to fresh water, possible modification of ocean boundaries, purely scientific studies to advance knowledge, and, indirectly at least, improving the state of oceanographic engineering. Among the technological products of the nuclear age are radionuclides, neutron sources and other radiation sources, radioisotope heat and electric generators, and nuclear reactors. ”

“ The U. S. is not alone in its use of nuclear energy as a tool of science. The United Kingdom has carried out radiological studies of the marine environment for many years, particularly concentrating on the effects of radionuclides from nuclear power plants on the sea immediately contiguous to the British Isles. Both the European Atomic Energy Community and the International Atomic Energy Agency also encouraged marine radiological studies. ”

“ Even fallout isotopes from nuclear tests enable us to trace important physical oceanographic events, such as the ponderous process known as overturning, which transports oxygen-rich surface water to the deeps and nutrient-rich bottom water to the surface. Radioisotope tracers also provide a tool for studying the mechanics of littoral transport, which continually tears down some beaches and builds up others. ”

“ Radioisotope-powered generators, capitalizing on the energy of disintegrating radioactive atoms, are almost the only devices capable of fulfilling these requirements. [2] Man also wants to do productive work under the ocean, such as drilling seafloor oil wells, mining, and salvaging for profit some of the tens of thousands of cargoes lost at sea during thousands of years of ocean commerce. Eventually, he even wants to farm the ocean floor. ”

“ Other life forms may move materials still farther down, or, in some instances, back up—as when the sperm whale descends to the depths to fight and best a giant squid, and then returns to the surface to eat it. ”

“ Zooplankton, mostly copepods, collected with automatic underwater sampling equipment on board the nuclear submarine Seadragon while cruising under the Arctic ice.
Other plankton research at Woods Hole uses radioactive carbon-14 and phosphorus-32 as tracers to evaluate rates of growth and nutrient assimilation by algae (floating green plants) . These investigations have revealed that the presence or absence of minute quantities of nutrient minerals in seawater affects the rate at which the algae produce oxygen by the process of photosynthesis. ”

“ OXYGEN ANALYZER The amount of dissolved oxygen in any part of the ocean is a basic quantity that must be determined before some kinds of research can be undertaken. For example, oxygen concentration is important in determining the life-support capability of seawater and in 40 measuring deep-water mixing. ”

“ In addition, there are many places in the world where the construction of a sea-level canal would provide shorter and safer routes for ocean shipping, expedite trade and commerce, or open up barren and unpopulated, but mineral-rich lands to settlers and profitable development. ”

“ Many more studies are needed. Always, the task is made difficult by insufficient detailed knowledge of the original natural environment, the limitations of laboratory experiments, and the mechanics of trying to follow the reproductive cycles of free-floating or swimming organisms in any statistically meaningful manner through successive generations.
One obviously important kind of research deals with the rate, pattern, and means by which radionuclides are distributed 19 into the sea from a point source, such as the mouth of a river or a nuclear test site. ”

“ Above three-quarters of the globe, water and air are in constant contact, continually exchanging heat and moisture. This is a major factor in the making of weather and climate. The sea constantly feeds electricity into the atmosphere, primarily through the electron-scrubbing action of tiny popping bubbles at the sea surface. ”

“ The ocean is constantly in motion—not just in the waves and tides that characterize its surface but in great currents that swirl between continents, moving (among other things) great quantities of heat from one part of the world to 8 another. Beneath these surface currents are others, deeply hidden, that flow as often as not in an entirely different direction from the surface course. ”

“ Throughout the world, more people are using more water for more purposes than ever before. Many areas of the world, including some that are densely populated, have been parched since the dawn of history. In others where water was once abundant, not only are natural sources being depleted faster than they are replaced, but many rivers and lakes have been so polluted that they can now scarcely be used. ”

“ Fishes and birds die by the millions. Commercial fisheries are closed. The beaches reek with death. El Niño is a stark demonstration of man’s dependence on the sea and why he must learn more about it. ”

“ Studies are being made of the reproductive efficiency and patterns of sea creatures in a radiation-contaminated environment, compared with those in an uncontaminated environment, to learn such things as the numbers, survival rates, and sex ratios of the offspring, and any genetic abnormalities or mutations. ”

“ An artist draws (using pencil and frosted plastic sheet) the position of objects in the wreck of a 7th century Byzantine ship 120 feet down in the Aegean Sea. Nuclear power will permit historians of the future to remain underwater for long periods exploring shipwrecks or old cities far below the surface. ”

“ The lack of reliable and extended duration power sources is perhaps one of the most critical requirements for expansion of underwater and marine technology. For example, the pressing need for measurements of atmospheric and oceanic data to support scientific, commercial, and military operations will in the future require literally hundreds of oceanographic and meteorological buoys deployed throughout the world to take simultaneous measurements and time-series observations at specific sites. ”

“ Gamma rays are absorbed in any material through which they pass, according to its density. A low radiation count at the detector indicates a high-density sediment: More radiation is absorbed and less is reflected back to the detector. Conversely, a high count indicates low density. Data are recorded on special cold-resistant film. A number of different sediment measurements can be made in several locations before the unit must be returned to the surface. ”