Mr. KELLY. I would hope that within the level of effort provided in our research and development category that we can continue some study of the nuclear-excavation technology, that we can identify some experiment or some project and be planning it on a preliminary sort of basis, so that if the decision is made in the subsequent fiscal year to fund for this kind of experiment, that we can proceed within a year. Perhaps we could do it as quickly as 6 or 9 months.

Representative PRICE. I assume that most of these people will be willing to come back, leave other assignments and come back to the program, or would there be entirely new personnel?

Mr. KELLY. I think it would be some of both. The laboratory people could answer that.

Representative PRICE. What do you think about that, Dr. May? Dr. MAY. It would be some of both, Mr. Chairman. I know that under the present $8 million funding the total strength of the Plowshare program at Livermore will go down from about 200 people to about 120 people. Of that difference of about 80 people, a significant fraction, or about 45, are engineers and scientists.

We are going through a reduction in force at Livermore, not only due to the cuts to Plowshare but also due to a 7-percent cut in the weapon program. Some of the people have already left the Laboratory. Most of them will have gone on to other assignments.

My feeling about the worst effect of stopping work on excavation altogether, so far as the Laboratory is concerned, is that the team of scientists that has been designing the explosive, the very special lowfallout, low-radioactivity explosive that is necessary for cratering, that team will be disbanded. We won't fire those people. They are very good people. But since they won't have any experiments for the year, not even a device-design experiment, that is an underground fully contained device test, they will lose a lot of the immediate knowledge they have now that permits them to go ahead and design the experiment.

The design of a device is not a completely codified thing. It requires continuous adjustment of the calculation and the code. A lot of the expertise will be lost. It will take some time to recoup this stability and get things going again.

I would like to comment on how long it would take to do an excavation application if there were such a hiatus. I think that would depend on the size of the application and the size of the device that would be needed. If the application were to require devices of different yields than we now have, there might have to be quite a delay before proceeding.

Representative PRICE. Thank you, Dr. May.

RESEARCH FUNDS FOR EXCAVATION

What portion, Mr. Kelly, of your research and development fund in fiscal 1971 will be used for the excavation program?

Mr. KELLY. I don't think we have it precisely defined. It would be in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars, perhaps a half million dollars.

Representative PRICE. From $100,000 to a half million dollars would be available for the excavation program?

42-051 0-70-pt. 2-9

Mr. KELLY. Directly applicable to excavation work.

Representative HOSMER. In that connection, has it been stated what funds would be needed if a reasonable excavation program were to be added to this fiscal year 1971 budget? The whole $6.5 million or what?

Dr. THOMPSON. I would like to ask Dr. May to answer the question. Dr. MAY. Is the question the cost of a reasonable excavation program?

Representative HOSMER. Yes.

Dr. MAY. Of course, that is a subjective personal opinion as to what is "reasonable."

Representative PRICE. One of the figures used was the Division's $36.1 million request, and the other is the request that went to the Bureau of the Budget.

Dr. MAY. We are proposing here a supplementary program to the committee, which includes $5.1 million for excavation. This would do two things:

First, it would provide for an underground, fully contained test of a device that would be useful for excavation at higher yields. That would require the bulk of the money.

Second, it would continue our capability to study the most likely looking applications in the coming fiscal year. I think that these two items constitute the minimum necessary to avoid a complete hiatus. You could spend more money, but that is all we are proposing under the circumstances.

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

Representative PRICE. Will you describe the scientific experiments involving superheavy elements which have been canceled for fiscal 1971 and explain what will be lost as a result?

Mr. KELLY. This has been in the scientific experiments category. It has been one of the continuing parts of our Plowshare program. An attempt has been made to use the very high neutron flux one gets in several scientific ways.

The most concentrated effort has been on using these neutrons to bombard very heavy materials, such as uranium 238, sequentially capturing the neutrons to make isotopes of very heavy materials.

Last year we had an experiment such as this that was conducted in conjunction with another test, in which we were able to make some significant amounts of fermium 257, but not beyond that. This indicated that we had 19 successive captures of neutrons. We think this was a very interesting experiment. We have a great deal of hope for it, like the excavation work. And we had hoped to do a full-scale test of this in fiscal year 1971.

However, the budget stringencies do not permit this. And, as in the excavation program, it means a hiatus of planning this kind of experiment and running the risk of the scientists who are most knowledgeable in this area being diverted and used elsewhere. Whether they will be available to come back to this program when we get additional funds, it is hard to say.

Representative HOSMER. This fermium 257, what is the half-life on that? It is short, is it not?

Representative HOSMER. Are you trying to manufacture something with a long enough half-life that you can recover and put to use—is that what these trans-plutonium experiments are for?

Mr. KELLY. Really what we would hope is to verify the theory that there are islands of stability in some of the heavier elements. That would be the epitome of success in this region. We are not going to get there in one task.

Representative HOSMER. Trying to beat the machine people?

Dr. THOMPSON. Not necessarily to beat them, but to work with them. These would be the target materials, which you would then put into a particle-bombardment system to jump ahead from that point. But it could be

Representative HOSMER. Real heavy, and you hope to reach the predicted islands of stability?

Dr. THOMPSON. To try to add more nucleons without having too many boil off. That is the problem.

Representative HOSMER. If you are going to bombard with superheavy elements to begin with, you are going to have a super-super heavy element with some instability, which I would suppose would soon decay back to 121 or 114.

Dr. THOMPSON. Target materials might be something like curium 250 or fermium 257, and then we would bombard these with intermediate mass elements, but not of the order of mass of curium, but something that would boost the final compound nucleus up to the right region with a few extra nucleons to boil off.

Representative HOSMER. Thank you.

Representative PRICE. Will you proceed with your statement, Mr.

Kelly?

SEA-LEVEL CANAL CONSTRUCTION

Mr. KELLY. I would like now to speak to the committee's question on the likely course of events related to the study of building a new transisthmian sea-level canal by nuclear means. As you know, the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission's report must be submitted, in accordance with its legislation, to the President and Congress by December 1, 1970. However, since all the necessary nuclear cratering experiments will not be completed by that time, it is uncertain as to what conclusions the Canal Commission will be able to reach regarding the feasibility of employing nuclear explosions for canal excavation.

However, it is likely that a decision to begin actual construction of a new canal, if one is found to be needed, will not be made for a few years at the earliest. During this period we plan to continue development, and begin engineering, of cleaner and improved nuclear explosives for excavation purposes.

We also plan to conduct the necessary cratering experiments to determine the feasibility of excavating canals, harbors, dams, and other similarly useful projects with nuclear explosions.

Also during this period, it is quite possible we may receive a proposal to conduct a harbor or some other useful earthmoving experiment. Such a demonstration experiment could probably be designed to include the objectives of at least one of the cratering experiments

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still necessary. These include experiments in the hundreds of kilotons range in saturated hard rock; in the megaton range in hard rock; with a row charge of several explosives in hundreds of kilotons in varying terrain and media; connecting row charge; and of varying yields in wet, weak materials.

Development of a nuclear excavation technology in the immediate future would make possible a more definitive determination on the most useful size and lowest cost of a new transisthmian canal and its application for useful projects in other countries in consonance with various commitments.

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS SINCE APRIL 1969

Since my appearance before this committee last April in connection with the fiscal year 1970 authorization hearings, several significant events have occurred within the Plowshare program which I would like to highlight for the committee's information. Later on in my testimony I plan to expand on some of them.

On September 10, 1969, the Commission safely and successfully executed Project Rulison, the second experiment to investigate the use of a nuclear explosion to increase the recovery of natural gas.

The results to date from the natural-gas-flow tests at Gasbuggy make it clear that the experiment was completely successful in every respect, including stimulation. In addition to this welcome bit of news, I would also like to add that the Gasbuggy chimney is capable of storing 150 million cubic feet of gas, which at the high-flow rates possible from the chimney, clearly demonstrates the potential of such cavities for natural-gas storage.

The progress made in the nontechnical areas of the program has been as significant as the technical advances. Gasbuggy and Rulison provided invaluable concrete experience in how future commercial projects might be handled as well as demonstrating that Government and industry can successfully work together to develop this technology and that the partnership approach favored by the committee works in the Plowshare area to the advantage of the Government, the industry, and most importantly, the taxpayer.

A second key development in the nontechnical area has been the introduction by Representative Hosmer and other members of this committee of legislation-H.R. 477, S. 1885, H.R. 10288 during the last two sessions of Congress which would authorize the AEC to make peaceful nuclear-explosions services available to domestic and foreign users for commercial applications.

Another significant event in the nontechnical area is the reorganization of the AEC plowshare staff both in the field and at headquarters. Program management responsibility, including that for coordination and cooperation with industry, the public and other interested agencies and organizations, has been centralized in the Division of Peaceful Nuclear Explosives.

In addition, the AEC's Nevada Operations Office has established the Office of Peaceful Nuclear Explosives to serve as a central point for working with industry in the design of field operations for joint projects.

We believe both of these reorganizations will enable the Government to deal more effectively with the needs of the program and with our partners in developing underground technology.

Several meetings devoted solely to plowshare have taken place the past year. The most significant one was the ANS symposium on "Engineering With Nuclear Explosives," held in Las Vegas on January 14-16, 1970. Incidentally, both Commissioner Thompson and Congressman Holifield spoke at that symposium. More than 800 scientists and engineers attended the Las Vegas meeting. This number represented 117 U.S. industrial firms and, from 16 foreign countries, 18 foreign industrial firms, and five foreign government agencies. Also, 24 U.S. universities attended or participated in this symposium. We were especially pleased that Chairman Holifield provided the keynote address to the attendees.

Other specialized meetings were also held. One, a symposium on the "Public Health Aspects of Peaceful Nuclear Explosions," was sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service in Las Vegas on April 7-11, 1969, and was attended by 600 people. Here Congressman Hosmer was the keynote speaker. Just preceding the PHS symposium on March 31-April 2, 1969, the American Nuclear Society, the University of Arizona, and the Arizona Atomic Energy Commission sponsored a symposium on "The Education for the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosives" at the University of Arizona, which was attended by 200 people.

During the past year, the IAEA has also become more active in the field of peaceful nuclear explosions. A recent report by the IAEA Board of Governors on the Agency's role in connection with nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes concluded, among other things:

The agency should approach the subject on an evolutionary basis, devoting its energy initially to the exchange and dissemination of information.

Implementing this policy, the agency is conducting a series of technical panels on the status of the peaceful nuclear-explosion technology. The first panel being held this week will explore the phenomenology of peaceful nuclear explosions and includes the United States, U.S.S.R., France, and the United Kingdom among the participants. Recently a U.S. delegation headed by Commissioner Thompson met with a Soviet delegation in Moscow to continue technical discussions on peaceful uses of nuclear explosions which were begun last April in Vienna.

UNDERGROUND ENGINEERING

I would now like to expand on the segments of our Plowshare activities for which we are seeking authorization.

First, I would like to note that using nuclear explosions to aid in the recovery and utilization of various natural resources has stimulated considerable interest by industrial firms here in the United States and abroad. By capitalizing on this interest, I believe the U.S. Government is now in an excellent position to develop undergroundengineering technology for the benefit of this Nation and the world. A demonstration of the interest in Plowshare technology has been shown by the sponsorship of the Atomic Industrial Forum (AIF) and the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in three recent meetings: (1) the AIF workshop in Colorado Springs last November; (2) the San Francisco AIF-ANS national meeting in December; and, most recently, (3) the ANS symposium in Las Vegas. This expresses a broad base of interest, nationally and internationally, in the Plowshare program.