Part 5

_Return to Bikini_, 50 minutes, sound, color, 1964. Produced by the Laboratory of Radiation Biology at the University of Washington for the AEC. This film records the ecological resurvey of Bikini in 1964, 6 years after the last weapons test.

_Desalting the Seas_, 17 minutes, sound, color, 1967. Produced by AEC’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Describes various methods of purifying saline water through the use of large dual-purpose nuclear-electric desalting plants.

PHOTO CREDITS

Page 2 U. S. Navy (USN) 3 University of Pennsylvania Museum—National Geographic Expedition 5 USN 6 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) 7 Diagram, WHOI; photo, S. Hull 9 Top, Oregon State University (OSU); bottom, University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) 10 Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University 12 USN 15 SIO 19 R. H. Backus. _Physics Today_ (November 1965), “Sound Reflections In and Under Oceans,” J. B. Hersey 20 U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological Laboratory, Honolulu, Hawaii 22 USN 24 Laboratory of Radiation Biology, University of Washington (LRB) 26 Jan Hahn 27 Franklin GNO Corporation 28 George D. Grice, WHOI 31 SIO 33 OSU 35 Monsanto Research Corporation 37 USN 38 Lane-Wells Company 39 Research Triangle Institute 43 USN 46, 47 & 48 Martin-Marietta Company 49 The Photo Mart 53 Top, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; bottom, Bechtel Corporation 55 U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Fish and Wildlife Service; inset, Brookhaven National Laboratory 56 Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo, Norway, courtesy The Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia 57 National Science Foundation 61 S. Hull Cover photo courtesy James Butler, USN Author’s photo courtesy General Dynamics Corporation Frontispiece from Jan Hahn

THE COVER

The ship on the cover is the trim _Atlantis_ riding the waves about 200 miles south of Bermuda. The first craft built by the United States as an oceanographic research vessel, she traveled more than 1,200,000 miles across the seven seas for a period of 30 years. She “ran” over 6000 hydrographic stations and was used for innumerable dredging, coring, biological, physical, and acoustical research operations. After she was retired from active service at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, she was sold to Argentina, where she has resumed her role as an oceanographic research vessel.

THE AUTHOR

E. W. SEABROOK HULL is an experienced writer and editor in technical and engineering fields. He is the author of _The Bountiful Sea_, published in 1964 by Prentice-Hall, and _Plowshare_, another booklet in this Understanding the Atom Series. He is the editor of _Ocean Science News_ and editor and publisher of _GeoMarine Technology_.

Footnotes

[1]For a description of how these will work, see _Controlled Nuclear Fusion_, another booklet in this series.

[2]These devices, which will be frequently mentioned later in these pages, are described in detail in a companion booklet _Power from Radioisotopes_.

[3]See _Nuclear Reactors_, another booklet in this series, for a description of the fission process and how reactors operate.

[4]For a full discussion of other aspects of this topic, see _Fallout from Nuclear Tests_, another booklet in this series.

[5]For a full discussion of this topic, and the safety measures taken by the AEC in connection with it, see _Radioactive Wastes_, another booklet in this series.

[6]Radioisotopes, unstable forms of ordinary atoms, are distinguishable by reason of their radioactivity, not by their biological or chemical activity.

[7]The time in which half of the atoms in a quantity of radioactive material lose their radioactivity.

[8]For more details of these studies, see _Atoms, Nature, and Man_, a companion booklet in this series.

[9]Gamma rays are high-energy electromagnetic radiation, similar to X rays, originating in the nuclei of radioactive atoms.

[10]Instruments that detect and measure radiation by recording the number of light flashes or scintillations produced by the radiation in plastic or other sensitive materials.

[11]A method involving use of nuclear reactors or accelerators for identifying extremely small amounts of material. See _Neutron Activation Analysis_, a companion booklet in this series.

[12]A picogram is one trillionth (10⁻¹²) of a gram.

[13]For an explanation of how similar instruments work, see _Radioisotopes in Industry_, a companion booklet in this series.

[14]For a discussion of proposed nuclear merchant submarines, see _Nuclear Power and Merchant Shipping_, another booklet in this series.

[15]These are described in _Power Reactors in Small Packages_, another booklet in this series.

[16]See _Power from Radioisotopes_, a companion booklet in this series, for a more complete discussion of radioisotopes in use.

[17]For an explanation of how these will function, see _Nuclear Energy for Desalting_, another booklet in this series.

[18]See _Food Preservation by Irradiation_, another booklet in this series, for a full account of this installation.

[19]Details are described in _Plowshare_, another booklet in this series.

This booklet is one of the “Understanding the Atom” Series. Comments are invited on this booklet and others in the series; please send them to the Division of Technical Information, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D. C. 20545.

Published as part of the AEC’s educational assistance program, the series includes these titles:

_Accelerators_ _Animals in Atomic Research_ _Atomic Fuel_ _Atomic Power Safety_ _Atoms at the Science Fair_ _Atoms in Agriculture_ _Atoms, Nature, and Man_ _Books on Atomic Energy for Adults and Children_ _Careers in Atomic Energy_ _Computers_ _Controlled Nuclear Fusion_ _Cryogenics, The Uncommon Cold_ _Direct Conversion of Energy_ _Fallout From Nuclear Tests_ _Food Preservation by Irradiation_ _Genetic Effects of Radiation_ _Index to the UAS Series_ _Lasers_ _Microstructure of Matter_ _Neutron Activation Analysis_ _Nondestructive Testing_ _Nuclear Clocks_ _Nuclear Energy for Desalting_ _Nuclear Power and Merchant Shipping_ _Nuclear Power Plants_ _Nuclear Propulsion for Space_ _Nuclear Reactors_ _Nuclear Terms, A Brief Glossary_ _Our Atomic World_ _Plowshare_ _Plutonium_ _Power from Radioisotopes_ _Power Reactors in Small Packages_ _Radioactive Wastes_ _Radioisotopes and Life Processes_ _Radioisotopes in Industry_ _Radioisotopes in Medicine_ _Rare Earths_ _Research Reactors_ _SNAP, Nuclear Space Reactors_ _Sources of Nuclear Fuel_ _Space Radiation_ _Spectroscopy_ _Synthetic Transuranium Elements_ _The Atom and the Ocean_ _The Chemistry of the Noble Gases_ _The Elusive Neutrino_ _The First Reactor_ _The Natural Radiation Environment_ _Whole Body Counters_ _Your Body and Radiation_

A single copy of any one booklet, or of no more than three different booklets, may be obtained free by writing to:

USAEC, P. O. BOX 62, OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE 37830

Complete sets of the series are available to school and public librarians, and to teachers who can make them available for reference or for use by groups. Requests should be made on school or library letterheads and indicate the proposed use.

Students and teachers who need other material on specific aspects of nuclear science, or references to other reading material, may also write to the Oak Ridge address. Requests should state the topic of interest exactly, and the use intended.

In all requests, include “Zip Code” in return address.

Printed in the United States of America USAEC Division of Technical Information Extension, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Transcriber’s Notes

—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.