Disastrous Stewardship: Hollifeld

Even well intentioned policies can fail to accomplish lofty goals because the personal demons that drive them into political careers may not be consistent with the lofty ends of policies which they advocate. Contradictions are a part of the human condition, and stories which point them out should be viewed as cautionary tales.
At the end of World War II, the World War II establishment, referred to as the Manhattan Engineering District, became an anachronism. Administratively the Manhattan Project was subordinated to the United States Army, and the District's head administrator was a Major General, Leslie Groves. Even Groves believed that management of the US atomic energy program should be shifted to civilian control. However, Groves favored the May-Johnson bill which while creating a facade of civilian control over the US atomic energy program, still left a considerable measure of military control in place. However there was considerable Congressional support for greater civilian control than provided by the May-Johnson bill. There was wide agreement on this, and through the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the United States Congress acted to put the American Nuclear program under civilian, rather than military control. Congress in voting for this act, was lead in no small measure by Liberal California Congressman, Chester "Chet" Hollifield. The Act called for,

A program for the control of scientific and technical information which will permit the dissemination of such information to encourage scientific progress, and for the sharing on a reciprocal basis of information concerning the practical industrial application of atomic energy as soon as effective and enforceable safeguards against its use for destructive purposes can be devised;

and added

the dissemination of scientific and technical information relating to atomic energy should be permitted and encouraged so as to provide that same interchange of ideas and criticisms which is essential to scientific progress,

But the act contained a fairly long and detailed account of what was called restricted data, which could include

any document, writing, sketch, photograph, plan, model, instrument, appliance, note or information involving or incorporating restricted data-

Defined so broadly, even gossip wich touched on a restricted matter could be considered a violation of restrictions. The act further defined

The term "restricted data"...means all data concerning the manufacture or uti1ization...the use of fissionable material in the production of power...

The Act established a civilian Atomic Energy Commission that was to manage both military and Civilian aspects of Atomic Energy. The AEC was established as a part of the Executive Branch of the Government. The Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) was also established in 1946 with the purpose of preparing legislation for related to atomic energy to Congress. The committee was unusual in that the House of Representatives and the Senate traditionally formed separate committees, and each body was also traditionally jealous of its purgatives. The joint committee was empowered to receive restricted information from the AEC, and to restrict information about its own deliberations. This meant that the committee did not need to worry about public knowledge of

Holifield was to remain a fixture on the Joint committee from 1946 until he left congress in 1974. He was a champion of the use of atomic energy in the generation of electricity throughout his career, and he was determined to use his position on the joint committee to further that cause.

Holifield is often described as the Joint Committee Chaiman. In fact he was chairman on three separate occasions, but the chairmanship rotated. But among Joint committee members, Holifield was the best informed about issues at the AEC and nucear policy matters. Holifield also appears to have exercised control over the joint committee staff.

The joint committee had very considerable power in the development of nuclear technology for military purposes. This power could and was exercised to disrupt the usual military chain of command and give military officers power and influence. The most conspicuous example was that of Hyman Rickover. Holifield was in a position to operate as Rickover's political patron. Not only was Holifield a member of the joint committee, but he was also a member of the House Military Operation Subcommittee. Rickover was both Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ship and Chief of the Naval Reactors Branch, Division of Reactor Development of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

Any patronage relationship operates in both directions, the patron supplies support to his client's aspirations, while the client can be counted on to support the patron's overall exercise of power. Thus Rickover was a very powerful ally of Holifield, who owed much of his power to Holifield's support. In addition to their power relationship, Rickover and Holifield also shared a vision of a nuclear future, with reactor produced electricity. Neither could be said to have a horse in the breeder race, although Rickover did show an interest in a breeding project involving thorium in a light water reactor. Rickover took something of a conservative view of nuclear power. He appears to have regarded most of the problems of nuclear power as having been solved by his team. Since Holifield was anxious to move nuclear power technology forward, he was willing to accept the Rickover-Shaw view of nuclear safety. Milton Shaw was a protegee of Rickover, and while I have as of yet been unable to document Rickover and Holifield's role in Shaw's appointment to the AEC, it is not a big leap that they did play a significant role. Shaw had risen to prominence in Rickover's team, and he was indoctrinated in the Rickover system. Shaw appears to have been a central member of Holifield's AEC regime, and does not appear to have ever offered resistance to Holifield's wishes. It is not clear to what extent Shaw was Rickover's client in his AEC role, but Shaw acted in areas in which Rickover had no direct interest, although Rickover most likely had views. Alvin Weinberg suggested that Milton Shaw acted on orders, but Weinberg offered no hint about whom gave Shaw orders.

There is one final member of the Holifield AEC team, James T Ramsey who was nominated by President Kennedy in 1992 to serve as an AEC Commissioner. Ramsey came from the Joint Congressional Committee staff, and was a friend of Holifield. In practice Ramsey was responsible for coordination between the AEC and the Joint Committee. It is probably not unfair to describe Ramsey as another Holifield client, and one who had been seconded from the Joint Committee. to the AEC, and that he acted as Holifield's personal agent on the AEC.

The Joint Committee's power over the AEC lay in its role in the appropriation process. Through appropriations, the Joint Committee had the ability to veto AEC projects and policies that it did not like. In theory the AEC was part of the Executive Branch of the Government, but until the end of the first Nixon administration, the AEC in many respects was administered more as if it were under Congressional rather than Executive control. Between 1972 and 1974, the Nixon Administration moved to break up Holifield's power over the AEC. Ramsey was not reappointed to the AEC, Rickover had had his wings - or perhaps more appropriately his fins - clipped. Newly appointed AEC chairman Dixie Lee Ray out maneuvered Milton Shaw by stripping him of authority over nuclear safety, and Shaw resigned. Finally at the end of 1974, Holifield, his power over the AEC spent, resigned from Congress.

When the Atomic Energy Act was under consideration in 1946 its was intended to shift control of atomic energy from the United States Military to Civilian leadership. But as it eventually emerged, the attempt to demilitarize atomic energy weakened the role of science and scientists in the development of American atomic energy policy, and handed Congress unique and constitutionally questionable powers in the field of atomic energy. In practice power over the American nuclear establishment and national policy devolved to a small circle surrounding Congressman Chet Holifield. My view is that the control over United States nuclear policy by this small group was a disastrous failure, that it ignored the advice of the scientific community in its pursuit of private goals. That the consequence of their attitude toward scientists was to jeopardized the reputation of nuclear power as a socially acceptable form of energy. In addition the decisions of the Holifield clique tended to inhabit the emergence of advanced nuclear technology that could solve the problems that lead to public concern about nuclear power. The Holifield clique's attitude toward proposed efforts to promote the evolution of nuclear technology had the effect of further eroding public confidence in science.

Rickover on Academic Reactors and the Case of Amory Lovins

In his recent essay, "New" Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story, Amory Lovins quoted from testimoney which Hyman Rickover gave to Congress in 1953 on "real" and "academic" reactors. Lovins stated:

No new kind of reactor is likely to be much, if at all, cheaper than today’s LWRs, which remain grossly uncompetitive and are getting more so despite five decades of maturation. “New reactors” are precisely the “paper reactors” Admiral Rickover described in 1953:

But in fact in 1953 Rickover described the mistaken concepts about reactors by poorly informed, self styled experts, who seek by posing as authorities on issues about which they know nothing, to mislead decision makers and the public. Alexander De Volpi a retired nuclear scientist who spent his career ant Argonne National Laboratory researching nuclear weapons control and proliferation issues recently observed abour Lovins:

when it comes to his renderings on nuclear-reactor life-extensions, subsidies, capacities, performance, underfilled expectations, unauthorized Chinese reactors — and so on, all without caveats —Lovins’ strident anti-nuclear messages come off as a stalking horses for an evangelical agenda.

In short, Lovins’ latest publication, “The Nuclear Illusion,” lacking the fundamentals of a scientific discourse, would be better titled, “The Nuclear Illusionist.”

Here then are Rickovers 1953 words to Congress.

Rickover continued

ideas in reports and orally to those who will listen. Since they are unaware of the real but hidden difficulties of their plans, they speak of with great facility and confidence. Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experience, speak less and worry more.

Yet it is incumbent on those in high positions to reach wise decisions, and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible. Although it is impossible to have reactor ideas labled as "practical" or "accademic" by the authors, it is worthwhile for both the authors and the audience to bear in mind this distinction and to be guided thereby.

Thus if we are to follow Dr. De Volpi's line of reasoning, it is Amory Lovins himself, who is expressing what can best be described as "academic" views on reactors.

A Primer on Nuclear Safety: 1.2.2 Heat, Water and Zirconium

1.2.2 Hear, Water and Zirconium

The United Sttes Navy had been buildig sips with boilers when Hyman Rickover arrived in Oak Ridge. They United States Nay is a very proud orgabization, and not the leastcause of its pride was its boiler technology. Hyman Rickover and his team were imerced in the Navy's boiler technology tradition.

Their challenge was to find a way to to transform Weinberg's tiny water moderated e Materials Testing Reactor mock-up into a  reactor powerful enough to power a submarine.

Before I discuss this challenge I need to explain a little more about Wienberg's toy reactor, the Low Intensity Test Reactor, which was what the original mock-up was called when it was converted into a real reactor.  Although the 1.7 billion year old Oklo mine reactors had not been discovered yet, Weinberg and company had designed a reactor that mimicked the major features of the Oklo reactors. Like the OKLO reactors, the Low Intensity Test Reactor contained uranium with a high enough U-235 ratio, that it would go critical in the presence of water. Thus far from being unnatural, Weinberg's little water cooled reactor unwittingly emulated nature. In both the Oklo reactor and Weinberg's toy reactor, water slows stray neutrons down enough to promote a chain reaction with fuel that had only modestly U-235 to U-238 ratios. This slowing down of neutrons is called moderation. Because the toy reactor generated so little heat, it was fueled by aluminum clad uranium metal plates.

So the Rickover's first step was to use a water moderator. The second step was to produce enough power to boil water. That meant that Rickover's reactors had to be more powerful in order to produce much more heat. But here Rickover encountered a potential road block. The uranium used in a reactor had to be kept separate from the water for a number of reasons. One was that the uranium would corrode. Also radioactive fission products could escape from the uranium into the the cooling-moderating water. This was true whether the uranium was in metal form, or if it had been oxidized and baked into a ceramic, and had undesirable consequences. Rickover's ship board reactor clearly required that the Uranium fuel have a cladding and safety was no small consideration.

Aluminum had some good features, and had been the preferred cladding material, but it had a corrosion problem at higher temperatures, and it was was too weak a metal to be be rupture proof in a high performance reactor. Aluninum only maintain strength up to 300°C, and melt at 650°C. This proved safe in Weinbergs toy reactor, but the short comings of aluminum as a fuel cladding were dramatically demonstrated over and over, beginning in 1952 during an accident in the Canadian water cooled NRX reactor ruptured. Due to an operator error, control rods were accidentally lifted. Further errors occurred when operators attempted to shut down the reactor. Shut-off rods failed to fully descend into the reactor core. Reactivity and heat shot up. Aluminum clad fuel elements ruptured. Hydrogen gas was generated, and exploded. The lid of an inner reactor containment dome was blown off, and radioactive materials leaked into the environment. Jimmy Carter, then one of Rickover's boys, participated in the clean up.

Failure of alunium fuel cladding in the Windscale reactor played a major role in the 1957 fire that released a great deal of radioactive material into the environment. An accident with the Canadian NRU reactor in 1958 further illustrated the dangers of aluminum cladding. Several aluminum clad fuel elements inside the reactor over heated and burst, One caught on fire. While being extracted from the reactor it was torn in two. The fragments fell into a pit, and continued to burn. The resulting release of radioactive materials created quite a mess.

Clearly then aluminum cladding would not be up to snuff as fuel cladding for Rickover's reactors.

Alvin Weinberg suggested to Rickover that Zirconium had potential as a reactor fuel cladding. Zirconium is stronger than aluminum, had good heat transfer properties, can tolerate 1,800° C heat and does not corrode in the presence of water and heat. There was one rub. Radiation testing of zirconium samples show them to be a neutron poison. Using zarconium as a reactor fuel element cladding would kill a chain reaction, or so it was thought. But Oak Ridge scientist Herbert Pomerance, Herb to those who cultivated his friendship, traced the problem to hafnium, a chemically similar element that was present as a natural contaminant in zirconium.

Thus if zirconium could be separated from the hafnium, it would give Rickover his safe reactor cladding. The task of industrial sale separation of zirconium from hafnium was given to a group of three Y-12 chemists under Warren Grimes. Grimes asked Lyle Overhoiser to work on the problem, but when Lyle needed some assistance from an analytic chemist, my father, C.J. Barton, Sr., was brought in to help. My father and Lyle had been Lab mates as chemistry graduate students at the University of Virginia, and they worked well together. At that point my father stopped being an analytic chemist, and became an industrial chemist. With the assistance of John W. Ramsey, George Parker, Cyrus Feldman, and many others, they were able to identify a method that could be scaled up to zirconium separation Industrial levels of production. While Rickover was said to be the father of the atomic submarine, Oak Ridge chemists, including my father, broke the prophylactic: for him.

A Note on Alvin Weinberg, Hyman Rickover, and Milton Shaw

Yesterday I wrote about Hyman Rickover's attitude toward reactor safety. It is clear from A. Stanley Thompson's stories that Rickover was determined to silence scientists who were concerned about reactor safety in programs he had some control over. It is not that Rickover had no concern about reactor safety, rather he and his staff hads worked out an approach to reactor safety and believed that they had solved all of the problems. All that was left, in Rickover's mind was an almost fanatical adherence to Rickover's safety system. Rickover was paranoid. Scientist who questioned the Rickover's infallibility on safety, were the enemy in Rickover's book.

I have previously told the story of the Rise and Fall of Milton Shaw, here, here, and here. Shaw's attitude toward nuclear safety appears to be identical to Rickover. It now becomes apparent that Shaw's goals and methods were identical to Rickover's. This would explain Shaw's power. He was Rickover's man, and could be counted on to do what Rickover wanted. while writing my account of Shaw, I was unable to understand why Shaw, a Navy Department functionary, had received his appointment as reactor research boss at the AEC. But it is plausible that Rickover wanted the Shaw in the AEC as Rickover's long arm in control of reactor development. Shaw's great political clout, would have really been Rickover's then. It would also follow then that Rickover was behind Alvin Weinberg's firing as Director of ORNL.

But the nuclear safety controversy that Shaw's heavy handedness had created, was beginning to erode Rickover's power. Rickover had many enemies in the upper ranks of the navy. And some Rickover enemies were looking for an opportunity to clip his wings. Rickover had overreached, and Richard Nixon, already wounded by Watergate, had reached out to contain the festering sore, the nuclear safety mess at the AEC. In December 1973, Rickover received his 4th star. Richard Nixon spoke at a cerimony which marked Rickover's promotion. Nixon while ostensively honoring Ricjover, delivered a very different message:

"I don't mean to suggest by that that he is a man who is without controversy. He speaks his mind. Sometimes he has rivals who disagree with him; sometimes they are right, and he is the first to admit that sometimes he might be wrong."

Rickover must have have been grinding his teeth when Nixon said these words. Rickover lacked the modesty to admit that he might be wrong, and Nixon knew it. Nixon's words must have rankled him, as Nixon also knew they would.

Shaw was an all to faithful servant of Rickover, and by doing his master's bidding, he had begun Rickover's undoing , as well as his own.

A Primer on Nuclear Safety: 1.2.1 Heat, Water and Reactors

1.2 Heat and water
1.2.1 A history

The period of 1944-1945 was a period of intense ferment among the reactor designers at the University of Chicago "Metallurgy Lab". The great World War II reactor projects had passed the design phase. A couple of interesting minor reactor design projects were underway. One at Chalk River in Canada, and from this project was eventually emerge the Canadian CANDU reactor concept. The other project was was a most interesting one. Both Eugene Wigner and Enrico Fermi were interested in cooling a reactor with a water which contained a mud like uranium fuel in suspention. Thus the amazingly simple core of the only contained water and Uranium fuel in a mud or soup like suspention. The reactor was called the "Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor." It turned out to be one of the safest reactors ever designed, but it also turned out to have some problems that inhibited its development beyond the experimental stage.

Fermi built an Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor called the LOPO (for low power) at Los Alamos during World War II. By that time enriched uranium was beginning to flow from Oak Ridge, and the LOPO appears to have been the first reactor to run with enriched uranium fuel.

We have seen that the first two attempts to build water cooled reactors were not entirely successful. THe Hanford reactors had recognizable safety issues, which precluded the use of the design for civilian power plants in the West, but not the Soviet Union. The Uranium slurry fuel of the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor proved to be less than successful. But Wigner and his group of very bright young men had thought of another approach to water cooling reactors.  The idea as to build a reactor that was structurally similar to the graphite pile reactors, but without the graphite bricks.  Instead water would be used as both a moderator and a coolant.   The designed was quite feasible, with the exception of one technical problem.  

Alvin Weinberg was to be assigned the patent for the Light Water Reactor.  At Oak Ridge Wigner with Weinberg's assistance design of a water cooled and moderated reactor that was to be used for Materials testing.   The development went lead to the creation of a small prototype, the Materials Testing Reactor mock-up to test controls and hydraulic system.  The Mock-up had the capacity to go critical. 

In 1946, as thinking about water cooled reactors was beginning to evolved in Oak Ridge, a maverick Naval officer, Hyman Rickover appeared on the scene. Eugene Wigner had decided to creat in Oak Ridge a sort of informal graduate school for training in the new nuclear technology, and Rickover was selected by the Navy to receive reactor technology. Rickover quickly made himself the man to go to about reactor issues in the Navy, and in 1947 he assigned by the Bureau of Ships with the task of exploring the use of reactors for ship propulsion. In 1949 Rickover was givena second assignment within Division of Reactor Development, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and then assumed control of the Navy's effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships. These dual assignments gave Rickover great power.

Rickover saw early on the potential of the water cooled reactor for ship propulsion. By the late 1940's the U.S. Navy had been using steam powered ships for over 100 years. The Navy prided itself on its technologically advanced boiler technology, a technology which gave U.S. Navy ships unusual cruising range without refueling. A range that helped it to defeat the Japanese Navy and eventually to destroy the Japanese empire. The reactor held the potential for Rickover and the Navy of extending the Navy's reach, at a time when the cold war was heating up.

Rickover needed to convert the water cooled reactor into a generator of steam. Working with Alvin Weinberg and the scientist and engineers of Oak Ridge a design for a pressurized water reactor was developed, and passed on to the Navy's reactor engineering labs, the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory founded in 1946, and the Bettis Lab, founded in 1948. Together these Labs produced the actual designs of the reactors that were to power US Atomic submarines, and were to play a major role in the development of the civilian power reactors.

The first civilian power reactor in the United States was a naval reactor that had been designed for aircraft carrier use, but which the Navy intended to keep on land for research purposes. Rickover arranged to hooked up a generator to the reactor, which was dubbed the Shippingport reactor, and donated it to President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. The Navy continued to conduct research with the Shippingport reactor until it was decommissioned in 1982.

Most subsequent civilian power reactors were scaled up and modified versions of the Shippingport reactor. The safety problems of civilian power reactors are inherited from their Naval predecessors, and have to be understood in that context.

There is little doubt that Rickover's influence played a pivotal role in the choice to concentrate reactor research on two reactor designs, the Light Water Reactor, and The Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor. Both reactor concepts have safety flaws. But Rickover was more introduced in producing quick results, than in building the safest possible reactors.

A. Stanley Thompson worked for North American Aviation during the 1940s and spent time in Oak Ridge during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion days. Thompson had a chance to observe Rickover in action during a conflict between Rickover and two officials of North American Aviation. Rickover traveled to the North American headquarters to meet with company officials on a Saturday in 1949. Officials were called in for the meeting, and everyone arrived with the exception of physicist Mark Mills, who was out on a tennis court. When Mills finally arrived, Rickover started chewing him out about a report Mills had written about the potential for chemical explosions in reactors. Rickover launched into a tyrade, and eventually Mills tired of the abuse,

"Sir, I resent your treatment of me. I will no longer stand for it. I'm leaving!" Mills said, and started to walk out.

Rickover also stood smilling, and said, "Mark, I think we now understand one another. You can get back to your tennis game."

After Mills walked our, Rickover commented to us, "Mills is now conditioned on reactor safety."

After the meeting, North American's Chauncey Starr complained to the AEC about Rickover's abuse of Mills.

Thompson continued:

"The next time I saw Rickover was in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at a conference on the nuclear propulsion of aircraft hosted by Alvin Weinberg, Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Rickover was there in his self-appointed capacity of keeping himself informed on everything in the nuclear business. Chauncey Starr gave a talk, for which he had been coached by aircraft engineers at North American, on the importance of Mach number, aircraft lift to drag ratio, and engine thrust to weight ratio for the design of an airplane and its nuclear power plant."

"In the evening we were invited to a friendly and welcoming dinner at the home of Marge and Alvin Weinberg with several of the senior members of Weinberg's staff and their wives. After dinner we were seated in a circle in the Weinbergs' living room. For a while, Rickover was directing at Starr on the opposite side of the circle a series of stinging remarks against which Starr was doing what he could to defend himself. The rest of the party had lapsed into a stunned silence. Finally one of the wives remarked, "You know, there's something going on here that I don't understand." Rickover addressed her, "I'll tell you what's going on. This man [pointing to Starr] has been knifing me in the back, and I don't like it." Word must have got back to Rickover that Starr had talked to people at the Atomic Energy Commission about Rickover's visit to North American. On the way down the hill from the Weinbergs' party, I saw Starr and Rickover walking arm-in-arm, and talking in a confidential manner. I assumed that Starr had now been "reconditioned" on interference with Rickover. I was impressed with Rickover's ability to turn on alternating charm and ferocious attacks, as suited his purpose at the moment."