THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270635
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
DARK SUN
The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
RICHARD RHODES
Simon and Schuster. 731 pp. $32.50.
Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the Atomic Bomb, published in 1986. In it, he told the familiar but gripping story of the Manhattan Project from conception - when Leo Szilard realized, crossing a London street in 1933, that atomic fission could create a big bang - to detonation, 12 years later over Hiroshima, Japan.
The story of the hydrogen bomb is a lot less familiar. And because the search took place in the context of a race between the Soviet Union and United States to outgun each other, Rhodes' Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb shifts back and forth between the two camps.
A super bomb based on fusion was first conceived at Los Alamos, N.M., but it didn't take long for the idea to reach the Soviets: The most secret project in history leaked like a sieve. The early chapters of Dark Sun show how Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Alan Nunn May, the Rosenbergs and others gave Stalin's physicists all the information they needed to duplicate the A-bomb and early clues concerning the H-bomb.
Dumb luck played as large a part as inspired espionage, it seems. It was pure accident that two Soviet sources - Fuchs and Greenglass - wound up ideally placed at Los Alamos to steal bomb secrets.
Even armed with stolen plans, the Soviets viewed atomic work as a low priority, according to Rhodes. The work was impeded by the Soviet society's closedness, the immense cost of defeating an invading Nazi foe, the poverty of the state, Stalin's paranoia and the decision to put the technologically ignorant security chief Lavrenti Beria in charge of the bomb project.
Until Hiroshima proved what the atom could do, the Soviet leadership apparently showed little interest. Only afterward did the stunned Soviets shift the project into high gear. When the Soviets detonated their own first device in 1949, it was the United States' turn to be stunned.
Physicists had known it was only a matter of time. Espionage or no espionage, building a bomb was no secret once it was shown that the process worked. But, Rhodes says, politicians and military men, used to regarding the Soviets as primitives, refused to believe them capable of sophisticated physics without cribbing from their rivals.
When it seemed the Soviets had caught up, panic set in, and anyone who opposed rapid development of the hydrogen bomb was regarded with suspicion. Robert Oppenheimer was the most prominent victim of the McCarthy-era mindset that equated doubt about building more and bigger nuclear bombs with disloyalty and subversion.
Yet even unquestioned patriots like Eisenhower initially flinched from the H-bomb and sought to back away from nuclear arms and to restrict their spread. It wasn't to be. Oppenheimer was purged. Qualms were overcome. As soon as a workable design was discovered, a bomb was built and it was off to the races. The first H-bomb rose like a dark sun in November 1952. The first Soviet H-bomb came just 10 months later.
By 1957, the American bomb program accounted for 34 percent of all U.S. stainless steel production and 6.7 percent of electric power consumption. The capital investment in bomb plants exceeded that of General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, U.S. Steel, Alcoa, DuPont and Goodyear combined.
From two bombs in 1945, Americans went on to create 298 in 1950, 2,422 in 1955 and 27,100 in 1962. In that year of the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviets were far behind with only 3,100. They eventually caught up, but long before they did, there were more warheads available than targets.
Dark Sun is a cautionary tale of fear outrunning logic, scientific capability outrunning common sense and power outrunning wisdom. Rhodes retells the familiar parts well, including the betrayal of Oppenheimer by Edward Teller, the self-promoting father of the H-bomb.
But Dark Sun also contains the ingredients of a spy thriller and a scientific mystery story. It sheds new light on Soviet espionage and describes the frantic American search for a fusion bomb after the first Soviet A-bomb test.
Above all, Dark Sun is notable for the picture it provides of life inside the Soviet Manhattan Project. There, great physicists - such as Igor Kurchatov, Yuli Khariton and Andrei Sakharov - worked in bleak surroundings, behind barbed wire, on reactors built by gulag labor. They were spurred on by fear of an inevitable atomic attack by the United States.
But they were also, literally, under the gun. Soviet police chief Beria, himself executed for treason after Stalin's death, left no doubt that if their attempt to overtake the Americans didn't succeed, it would be their last science project. MEMO: Keith Monroe is a staff editorial writer. by CNB