The Atom and the Ocean

by E. W. Seabrook Hull

The ATOM and the OCEAN

By E. W. SEABROOK HULL

SEEKING ANSWERS

Historians of the future will record that man almost simultaneously unlocked the secret of atomic energy and ventured into new domains beneath the closed doors of the world ocean, in one of the greatest exploration endeavors of all time.

History may also show how these two efforts to benefit mankind became closely interthreaded—how nuclear energy, in its many forms and applications, played a major role in the efforts to explore and exploit “the other three-quarters” of our planet, and moreover, how the very development of a nuclear technology enforced our need to know more about the sea around us.

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. 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.

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).

Nuclear energy has at last enabled us to realize the predictions of Jules Verne’s adventure tale, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and to build a true submarine—a craft whose submerged existence is limited only by the physiological and psychological endurance of its human crew. This fact in itself has added greatly to our need to learn much more about the ocean, for the sea is an opaque and strange environment in which the deadly game of hunt-and-be-hunted will be won by whoever knows the ocean best.

The very fact that we have nuclear energy means we have nuclear wastes; many of these inevitably find their way into the ocean, as all things do. We need to know more about the watery world before we can safely allow this inflow to continue.