188 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



the mass spectrometer, has been his powerful ally. By it he "scans" 

 the fission products and obtains results of surprising accuracy. 



INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS OF ATOMIC ENERGY 



The energy released in atomic fission is tremendous. From the 

 smashing of a single uranium nucleus come some 160 million elec- 

 tron volts. (An electron volt is the energy acquired by an electron in 

 moving through a potential difference of 1 volt.) Chemical action 

 might yield 2 or 3 electron volts. The fission of 1 pound of IJ-^^ would 

 yield 11,400,000 kilowatt hours of energy. 



Is it any wonder then that an atomic bomb can do such terrible dam- 

 age ? At 8.17 a. m. on August 5, 1945, there was a blinding flash in 

 Hiroshima — a piece of the sun instantaneously created. All buildings 

 within a radius of 2 miles were completely destroyed, roofs were off at 

 5 miles, and glass broken 12 miles away ; 95,000 people were killed or 

 missing, and 140,000 more injured. Of 600 girls from a Protestant 

 girls' school who were scattered over the city, 30 to 40 later returned. 

 The falling roof pinned 50 of those at school under it and they were 

 burned before the eyes of their principal. Such a bomb dropped on 

 the campus of the University of Toronto would wipe out everything 

 from St. Clair to the Lake, and from the Don halfway to High Park, 

 and glass would be broken in Port Credit. In a twinkling one-quarter 

 of the population of Greater Toronto would be killed or injured. And 

 now they can make bombs 1,000 times as powerful as that. 



But atomic energy could be and we trust will be a marvelous bless- 

 ing. Already estimates would indicate that atomic-energy plants can 

 deliver energy at 0.8 cents per kilowatt hour. (We pay 0.7 cents for 

 domestic use in Hamilton.) We cannot expect it to power our auto- 

 mobiles. The critical size of a pile to get any power at all, and the tons 

 of steel and concrete necessary to protect us from those penetrating 

 radiations, prevent us from just putting a gram of plutonium in our 

 car and running it for a lifetime. But such a pile could power an At- 

 lantic liner, and it could provide power in parts of the world where 

 there is neither coal nor hydro. 



Recently at McMaster I heard a fine address on Canadian Popula- 

 tion Trends by an authority. In all his prognosis the speaker was 

 careful to put in a qualifying "all conditions being the same." I re- 

 called a jocular remark made in an after-dinner speech by my old 

 professor, the late Alfred Baker. "It is customary for great men 

 at some time in their lives to make a prophecy. I will make mine now. 

 I predict that in 500 years the center of civilization will be in the Sas- 

 katchewan Valley." So in the question period I asked the speaker if 

 that were possible. He did not think so. Industrial concentration 

 was unlikely in a land where there was no iron and only poor-grade 



