THOMAS E. MURRAY, COMMISSIONER

CARLETON SHUGG, ACTING GENERAL MANAGER

WALTER J. WILLIAMS, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF PRODUCTION

JAMES S. RUSSELL, CAPTAIN, USN, ACTING DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF MILITARY APPLICATION

DR. LAWRENCE R. HAFSTAD, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF REACTOR DEVELOPMENT

SPOFFORD G. ENGLISH, ACTING DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF RESEARCH JESSE C. JOHNSON, MANAGER, RAW MATERIALS OPERATIONS OFFICE

JOSEPH VOLPE, JR., GENERAL COUNSEL

EVERETT L. HOLLIS, DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL

FRANCIS J. McCARTHY, JR., DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR BUDGETS, FINANCE DIVISION

JAMES A. MILLER, ASSISTANT CHIEF FOR BUDGETS, FINANCE DIVISION

RODNEY L. SOUTHWICK, DIVISION OF PUBLIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE

FOR THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

GENERAL OMAR N. BRADLEY, CHAIRMAN

ADMIRAL FORREST P. SHERMAN, CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR THE MILITARY LIAISON COMMITTEE

ROBERT LEBARON, CHAIRMAN

MAJ. GEN. F. EVEREST, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

REAR ADM. T. B. HILL, UNITED STATES NAVY

MAJ. GEN. K. D. NICHOLS, UNITED STATES ARMY

Mr. THOMAS. It is nice to see so many of our friends from the Armed Services and the Atomic Energy Commission.

I am going to ask Mr. Gore to preside.

Before we start on the regular budget, I would like to hear a few words from General Bradley and Admiral Sherman and some of their military people. These two gentlemen want to get away as quickly as possible, and we won't delay them too long.

NECESSITY FOR CONSTRUCTION OF NEW FACILITIES

General Bradley, the purpose of this hearing is to go into the question of the need of $260,000,000 as contained in House Document No. 635 for the Atomic Energy Commission to start construction of new

facilities. In a general way I am sure you are familiar with the proposition, but we would like to know from you and in your official capacity the need or the necessity or the desirability of this project. If you are in a position to give us your opinion or your ideas on it now, we would be delighted to hear from you either on the record or off the record. Perhaps it had better be off the record.

(After discussion off the record:)

Mr. THOMAS. General Bradley, we thank you very much for coming up, as I know you have some important engagements.

General BRADLEY. I appreciate your letting me come at this time, because I promised some time back to go to the Senate committee at 10:30.

Mr. THOMAS. Now, gentlemen, we have with us Admiral Forrest Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations.

Admiral, will you give us the Navy's point of view on this expansion of the Atomic Energy Commission's activities? I am sure you are familiar in detail with it.

(After discussion off the record:)

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Admiral.

The finest job I have seen any branch of this Government do was done by the Navy in laying up our fleet. I have seen hundreds of the ships, have been in them, and it is unbelievable what dehumidification did and the excellent shape the ships are in.

Now, assuming you have not all of the manpower in the world but on the basis of the manpower you now have and its condition in training, how long will it take you to recommission an average cruiser or a medium-sized carrier?

(After discussion off the record:) Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Admiral. and you have been very generous to us. and we are all very proud of you.

You were nice to come over,
You have done a fine job,

Admiral SHERMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Dean, do you have a preliminary statement for the committee before we go into the estimates?

GENERAL STATEMENT

Mr. DEAN. Mr. Thomas, it occurred to me it might be useful and you might prefer to have something on the record at the outset, and I have attempted to prepare a very short statement here so that it might be on the record. One of the purposes of the statement is to explain how difficult it is to really go on the record on this subject and talk about the details of it. So, if I might go into that, paraphrasing perhaps in the interest of time, I can then give the full statement to the reporter, and then go into the classified material.

The first thing I should like to emphasize is that this request has to do with the construction of facilities which can either make materials for A-bombs, H-bombs, or fissionable material for use in power reactors. In other words, I think it is important at the outset to realize they are dual-purpose facilities if not triple-purpose facilities.

Mr. THOMAS. What you are saying is that the new plant requested can be used for the purpose of making materials for the hydrogen bomb or, if that does not prove feasible or is not desired, then can be used, maybe, with equal facility in the production of other fissionable materials.

Mr. DEAN. That is correct. That is why in the President's message to Congress he indicated this money is required for the construction of additional production facilities of new and advanced design-so designed that they can produce materials for A-bombs, H-bombs or, in the event that we secure evidence that peace is really wanted, materials for peacetime uses, such as in power reactors.

This point should be stressed. The new plant, while having a primary military purpose at this time, will add to our capacity to produce the fuels we may some day need to utilize atomic energy for useful power instead of in bombs. Our reactor development program is heavily committed to the development of power reactors, again with current emphasis on power for military purposes, but if we can whirl propellers with nuclear power, we can also turn dynamos to light cities. The economics of doing this is, of course, not at all clear. These are fuels which will last many thousands of years. Both the production plants and stocks of fissionable material can be coverted to peaceful purposes. If the new facilities are not needed for H-bombs or Abombs, they can produce the fuels needed to turn the wheels of industry. Furthermore, these new facilities are of advanced design and their operation will give us further information and understanding that will enable us to speed the progress of the atomic energy program both for weapons and peacetime purposes.

The money here requested is for construction and not for operation. We have transmitted to your committee three documents-an unclassified estimate, a more detailed estimate classified "secret, and a third document containing still more data and also classified "secret." We have had these classified and unclassified documents in past presentations to this committee. This is not a new practice.

This time, however, we have had great difficulty in drafting the unclassified version. It obviously does not give your committee the information which you must have and can get from the classified versions and from an off-the-record explanation which we are anxious to give to you today. If you will bear with me for a moment, I should like to explain some of our difficulty in talking about our program on the record. When we talk on the record here, we not only talk to the American people; we talk to the Kremlin as well.

Since the Russian explosion, the Commission had concluded that there is a considerable body of scientific information which has heretofore remained classified which now can be and should be, in the interest of our own progress in this country, declassified. At the same time, we are firmly convinced that there are two fields which we must carefully watch. The first is the technical know-how developed in certain of our key plants. The second-and this is the one that presents us with a problem when we talk to this supplemental-is information which would give to the Russians the rate and scale of our progress. This is the information for which their agents would pay the greatest price.

How much can be said publicly is a question which we have discussed at length within our agency, with the Military Liaison Committee, with a special committee of the National Security Council, and with the President. The conclusion is that at this time we should not reflect the precise processes we propose to use in these facilities, their size, output, and the target dates for completion, details as to what will be done in those various facilities, where certain operations

are carried out, and so forth. If, therefore, in answers to your onthe-record questions, I seem to measure my words too long, I hope you will appreciate that am trying to carry in my head the numerous discussions which we have had on precisely what may be said without hurting our national security.

Mr. GORE. Mr. Dean, this committee has, I think, exercised remarkable restraint. Back in February, for instance, we were given certain information about the progress being made in the development of tactical weapons by the use of atomic energy. Of course, we held it secret, as we were told it was, only to find a short time thereafter the military making public speeches about it. Now, a new situation could have arisen which caused the military to feel justified in making those revelations, but it places us in an absurd position to hold secrets in our bosom and then find them published on the front pages of the

newspapers.

In line with that, I notice here quite a detailed picture, which I hand to you. I wonder if that would be of any value to the enemy. This picture appeared in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. Mr. DEAN. This is a picture of a cosmotron at Brookhaven which is almost completed. It would give the enemy no information, I assure you.

Mr. GORE. Thank you.

Mr. DEAN. The only reason I mention at this point our difficulties in bringing to you an unclassified budget is because I am really apologizing for the watered-down version which we have submitted. I want to make clear on the record that the committee is going to get all of the information they want of a classified form later on in the hearing. I thought it would be useful to point out at the beginning why we find it difficult at this time to put these things on the record.

We

Mr. GORE. I am sure the committee is in entire sympathy with every effort you make to properly safeguard information. would not, however, be in sympathy with the withholding from the public of facts that could not be reasonably calculated to be of value to the enemy.

Mr. DEAN. We share that feeling.

Mr. GORE. Proceed.

Mr. DEAN. Before we get into a detailed presentation of this request, I should like to refer briefly to the thermonuclear program. The idea that a great amount of energy could be let loose if atoms of the light elements could be made to combine on earth, as they do in the sun and the stars, dates back into the 1930's. It developed naturally following the general acceptance of the theory that a series of nuclear changes in the hydrogen and helium of the sun and other bodies of the solar system was what gave out the radiant energy that we feel as light and heat. The theory held that this reaction could take place only under conditions of higher temperatures than, up to then, had been produced on the earth. The A-bomb gave us higher temperatures. And scientists, in the very midst of their efforts to perfect an A-bomb, turned their attention to the possibilities of a fusion reaction. How far they progressed I shall not indicate.

Suffice to say that the great effort during the war was on the perfection of the A-bomb. Even after Hiroshima, the great effort was and should have been on the A-bomb.

After the Russian explosion in September of 1949, the prospects for international control looked dimmer than they had in 1945 or 1947. This caused us to make a complete reevaluation of our strength.

The decision by the President to continue work on the testing of the feasibility of a thermonuclear explosion was not made lightly, and I happen to know it was not made with a light heart. It was made in January of 1950.

Before we commenced the task of scheduling our operations to determine the feasibility, this whole question was explored, not only by the Atomic Energy Commission, but by the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the National Security Council. Since then, the alternative approaches to the problem have been explored and reexplored by the best scientists available to us, by the best in American industry, and by the Commission, the Military, and the President. This course has not been arrived at lightly. That I would emphasize.

If I may then, Mr. Chairman, go off the record, we would like to give to you the details concerning the component parts of this program. (After discussion off the record:)

Mr. GORE. Proceed, Mr. Dean.

Mr. DEAN. Before I go off the record, I might introduce, if I may, the unclassified version of this presentation.

PURPOSE AND NEED FOR SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDS

Mr. GORE. The reporter will place in the record at this point page 2, the top of page 6, and page 7 of the justifications.

(The matter above referred to is as follows:)

PURPOSE AND NEED FOR SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDS

This supplemental appropriation is requested to implement further the directive of January 31, 1950, to the Atomic Energy Commission that it continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb. For this work, it is now necessary to expand production capacity, and this appropriation request is primarily for the construction of additional and more efficient plants and the necessary associated facilities. With these added facilities it will be possible to adapt our atomic energy program more closely to whatever requirements may arise in the future. These additional plants will provide materials for weaponseither the atomic bomb or the hydrogen bomb, should it prove feasible-or for fuels potentially useful for power purposes. The plants will be of advanced design and their operation will provide new knowledge that will speed the progress of the atomic energy program.

GENERAL STATEMENT

ADDITIONAL OBLIGATIONAL AUTHORITY REQUIRED IN FISCAL YEAR 1951

This request for a supplemental appropriation for fiscal year 1951 in the amount of $260,000,000, is primarily required for the construction of additional production facilities of new and advanced design. The amount required for these new facilities is $267,854,000 of which amount $7,854,000 is to be financed from a net reduction in other programs of the Commission for the fiscal years 1950 and 1951, and takes into consideration the reduction in the 1951 estimates approved by the House in its action on the 1951 general appropriation bill.

The following table is a summary of the changes in the estimated obligations for the fiscal year 1951 and shows the revised estimate of obligations to be incurred in 1951 and the amount of additional obligational authority required to finance this revised estimate.