'Chapter 8: from Expertise to Advocacy: the Seabed Disposal Of
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8 From Expertise to Advocacy: The Seabed Disposal of Radioactive Waste In March 1961, the US Navy articulated a ten- year plan for its “entire ocean- ographic effort . including basic and applied research, ocean surveying, un- dersea research vehicles, instrumentation, ship construction, facilities, and the training of oceanographic manpower.” The document, known as TENOC, for the Ten Year Program in Oceanography 1961– 1970, summarized the Navy’s aspirations for oceanography: “Advancing our knowledge of the oceans and thereby increasing the effectiveness, within the oceanic environment, of na- val operations, weapon systems, and ship and equipment design.”1 The argu- ment was simple: because the navy operated in the sea, it need to understand the sea: “The successful design, construction, and operation of a powerful modern Navy depends . on how well the environment is understood.”2 In 1945, this argument might have been controversial, but by the 1960s it was conventional wisdom. Past investments in oceanography had pro- duced “significant” results, and “future investment can be anticipated to re- turn manifold benefits in weapon and equipment improvements and more efficient and safe operations.”3 Research funds (mostly from the ONR) would triple over the following decade, from just over $10 million dollars in 1961 to more than $33 million in 1970 (fig. 8.1). Including funding for ships, facili- ties, surveys, and information dissemination, the total research and devel- opment budget would grow to over $91 million. Roughly one- third of that flowed to just three institutions: $12.6 million to Woods Hole, $10.5 million to Columbia and Lamont (including the Hudson Laboratories), and $9.6 mil- lion to Scripps. By 1971— the end of the TENOC decade— there was no question that sci- entific understanding of the ocean environment had greatly advanced. Long- standing questions about ocean circulation and chemistry, about the struc- ture and origins of ocean basins, and about the character of the seafloor had been answered and Navy support was a crucial component of that success. Uncorrected Proofs for Review Only From Expertise to Advocacy 345 Figure 8.1 Gross summary of TENOC funding, table 18. From Navy Department of the United States, Department of the Navy Ten Year Program in Oceanography: TENOC, 1961– 1970 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Opera- tions, 1961). Without the funds, equipment and logistical support provided by the US Navy, scientists would simply not have been able to collect the data, explore the realms, or complete the analyses that they did. Yet by the early 1970s, Navy- academic bonds were fraying. For one thing, the personal ties forged during World War II that had linked Columbus Iselin, Maurice Ewing, Roger Revelle, Paul Fye, Bruce Heezen, Harry Hess, and Bill Menard to admirals and other officers had become largely the stuff of legend.4 By the late 1970s, Iselin, Ewing, Hess, and Heezen were dead; Revelle and Fye had retired; and Menard had moved to scientific adminis- tration. A new generation of scientific leaders had emerged, who generally lacked the military experience that had helped their predecessors forge alli- ances with active- duty officers. The “golden age” of Cold War Navy- sponsored oceanographic work was tied to a particular generation of men who had ei- ther fought in World War II or worked closely with those who did. It was, in this sense, at least as much the result of World War II as the Cold War, a prod- uct of the affinities and affiliations that had been forged during the former and remained robust into the latter, but only for two decades. Navy support had never been a blank check, but in the 1950s and early Uncorrected Proofs for Review Only 346 Chapter eigHt 1960s it sometimes seemed as if it were: funds had flowed freely within broad mandates and with only modest oversight. By the 1970s, this was no lon- ger the case. With the 1970 passage of the Mansfield Amendment, Congress insisted that military research and development funds be assigned to proj- ects whose military character was clear; no doubt this caused some military officials to scrutinize their budgets and allocations more carefully. Among oceanographers, however, the amendment received little mention; no project discussed here was explicitly reduced or curtailed with reference to the Mans- field Amendment. However, a concern that appeared with increasing fre- quency in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the problem of too many ocean- ographers competing for too few funds. The TENOC document was based on the recommendations of the scien- tists on the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on Oceanography, who wanted to breed more of their kind. In 1945, Harald Sverdrup had con- sidered it a top priority to increase the number of trained oceanographers; fif- teen years later this theme was repeated in TENOC. One of ten specified pri- orities was to “significantly ameliorate the manpower shortage in the field.”5 The 1960s and 1970s saw rapid growth in both the size and the number of academic programs in oceanography. By 1985, Woods Hole’s dean of graduate studies Charles Hollister estimated that US graduate programs were produc- ing sixty- five to seventy new physical oceanographers every year, and that did not include marine geologists or geophysicists.6 As the number of oceanographers swelled, so did competition for funds. By the mid- 1970s, anxieties over funding were cropping up in the notes, memos, and internal reports of academic oceanographers and institution di- rectors with an urgency not felt since the 1930s. Paul Fye described his sit- uation in July 1974: “We find ourselves in rather severe financial crisis . [in particular] the lack of money for ship operations.”7 Funding for scientific re- search continued to grow throughout the 1970s, but the number of oceanog- raphers competing for those monies and the number of ships that had to be maintained had increased even more.8 By the late 1980s, the Navy’s commitment to academic oceanographic sci- ence had decreased substantially, not just in relative terms but in absolute ones, too. Budgets for Navy-sponsored research were mostly flat from 1970 to 1983, and ONR- sponsored research had decreased significantly: in constant dollars from $6.4 million to only $4.1 million (fig. 8.2).9 The next generation of oceanographers found themselves working much harder for Navy support than their teachers had, and also searching for alternative funding sources.10 This chapter and the next examine the pitfalls and problems that befell Uncorrected Proofs for Review Only Figure 8.2 Funding for oceanographic research, 1970s to 1980s, based on materials prepared by Charles Hollister for the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Research and Development, Hearings on “Health of Basic Research in Oceanogra- phy,” March 1985. (a) Total Navy research support, 1969– 1985, in constant 1972 dollars. Sponsored research peaked in 1972 with a sudden increase in NSF support in that year, and then leveled off. (b) Total ONR support for oceanography compared with other dis- ciplines. ONR support for oceanographic research declined dramatically from the mid- 1970s to the mid- 1980s but was more or less compensated by increased NSF support. (c) Total dollars and constant 1971 dollars awarded and man- months [sic] of support pro- vided at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, 1971– 1984. As costs rose, similar budgets were able to sustain less research. (d) NSF marine science budget in nominal and real dollars, 1975– 1985. Ostensible budget increases were outpaced by inflation. (a– b) From Statement of Charles Davis Hollister, PhD, FAAAS, FGSA, Senior Scientist, Dean and Member of Directorate of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, before the Research and De- velopment Sub- Committee of the House Armed Services Committee on Health of Basic Research in Oceanography (SE 31) in the Office of Naval Research, pp. 5, 7, in Charles Davis Hollister Papers, 1967– 1998, MC- 31, “Congressional Testimony House Armed Services Committee, March 28, 1985,” Data Library and Archives, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (c– d) From Charles Davis Hollister Papers, 1967– 1998, MC- 31, “Congressional Testimony House Armed Services Committee, March 28, 1985,” Data Library and Archives, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Reprinted with permission of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Uncorrected Proofs for Review Only 348 Chapter eigHt Figure 8.2 (continued) oceanographers as they strove to adapt to the changing circumstances of oceanography. In this chapter, we explore how Woods Hole dean and ma- rine geologist Charles Hollister struggled to maintain support for his scien- tific program while the political exigencies that had inspired it were waning. In the final chapter, we examine how a group of physical oceanographers tried to adjust their research priorities in response to changing societal needs, only to find that a goodly portion of society did not want their help— at least not in the way they were offering it. We turn first to Charles Hollister. Charles Hollister and Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea Had he not died in a hiking accident at the age of sixty- three, Charles Hol- lister (1936– 1999) could have been said to have lived a charmed life. Smart, self- confident, and rich, he was born into California’s famous Hollister family, who arrived in the United States in the 1630s and in California in 1866, when Uncorrected Proofs for Review Only From Expertise to Advocacy 349 Figure 8.2 (continued) they purchased a huge tract of pristine California coastline just west of Santa Barbara.11 Raised on the family ranch and educated at the exclusive Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Hollister then studied at Oregon State University and earned his PhD at Lamont, working with Bruce Heezen.