The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon: Adjusting to Troubled Times by Glenn T. Seaborg, Benjamin S. Loeb

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 217 use. By the 1960s, ESDs led to the construction of permissive action links (PALs), mechanical or electromagnetic locks on the warheads. These use-control devices generally required five or more numbers to be entered; they grew quite sophisticated and eventually incorporated locks that would stay closed after a few failed attempts to open them (by a terrorist, for example). The numbers are widely believed to be held only by the president, but in fact they are found at various levels of command. PALs are now deployed on all weapons except those at sea (where communications from headquarters might be impossible), and the PAL concept has been extended to delivery vehicles, such as aircraft and missiles, to prevent dropping or bring even unarmed warheads. The brst third of Guarding the Guardians is a political science essay, with a conventional amount ofjargon, on the theory of civilian control of nuclear weapons. Feaver advances several propositions that form his model of control, a model that frankly seems to consist of commonsense statements. The rest of the book is a history of custodial policy from the administration of Truman to that of George Bush, with far greater emphasis on the earlier years. While this monograph is intrinsically interesting, its focus is not on technology, and the discussion of PALs and the trade-off in constructing weapons that always work when wanted and never work when unauthorized leaves the reader wishing for more. Lawrence Badash Dr. Badash is professor of history of science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His primary interests are the history of nuclear physics and the nuclear arms race. He is the author of Kapitza, Rutherford, and the Kremlin (Yale University Press, 1985) and Scientists and the Development ofNuclear Weapons (Humanities Press, forthcoming). The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon: Adjusting to Troubled Times. By Glenn T. Seaborg, with Benjamin S. Loeb. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Pp. xx + 268; illustrations, notes, glossary, appendix, bibliography, index. $39.95. The story in this work is not a happy one. Based on a voluminous journal kept by Democrat Glenn T. Seaborg, the book spans the years the author chaired the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) during the Richard M. Nixon administration (1969—71). It is the last in a trilogy of semiautobiographical volumes documenting key events while he served as commission chairman (1962—71). Unlike his earlier books, which dealt with arms control (Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban [Berkeley, 1981] and Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in theJohnson Years [Lexington, Mass., 1987]), this one is broader in scope and is less upbeat. Throughout, Seaborg’s concern with the Republican admin­ istration’s handling of science and technology policy is evident. 218 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Although he was not at the center of many policy decisions (Nixon told him he was more interested in his technical judgment than his political judgment), Seaborg’s AEC chairmanship placed him in a position to observe the changing and often tumultuous times of that era and the troubles that accompanied them. The development of nuclear energy for peaceful and for weapons purposes as well as Seaborg’s continuing interest in arms control highlight the first third of the book. The commission’s peaceful nuclear projects under its “Plowshare” program seem naive in today’s environmentally concerned context. Seaborg provides an insider’s view on the massive projects to use nuclear explosions to dig deep­ water harbors, release natural gas from embedded rock formations, and possibly to construct a new transisthmian canal. His judgment that Plowshare died during the Nixon years due to a lack of support rather than merely dwindling budgets is an inadvertent tribute to the growing public concern over the environment. If there was one issue above all that helped dampen the short love affair Americans had with nuclear energy, it was the subject of radioactivity and the standards the government used tojustify its use. It came to a head during this period through the revelations, however misguided, of scientists Earnest Sternglass, John W. Gofman, and Arthur R. Tamplin. By challenging the government’s standards, they raised the nuclear issue to a level of public discontent...