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.
[Illustration: _In 1900 the U. S. Navy commissioned its first
submarine, the USS_ Holland, _which was built by John P. Holland. It
is shown in dry dock at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1898._]
[Illustration: _The USS_ Plunger, _named after an early John Holland
submarine, which is an example of the Navy’s present fleet of
nuclear submarines._]
In the waters of the seven seas are enough deuterium and tritium to
power tomorrow’s thermonuclear power plants[1] for millions of years.
These rare, heavy varieties of hydrogen, enormously abundant in the
vastness of the sea, comprise an energy source without limit for all
nations, which need only develop the technological ability to extract
them and put them to work.