Speech from 1957 Predicting Peak Oil
Posted on July 2, 2007 by Gail Tverberg
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave an amazing speech in 1957 that predicted many of the energy-related issues we are now dealing with. Among other things, the speech talks about
• The relationship between fossil fuels and economic growth.
• The relationship between fossil fuels and military power.
• The fact that oil, natural gas, and coal are expected to peak, and the approximate timeframe.
• The responsibility of Rickover’s generation to tell later generations about the fact that fossil fuels will deplete, so that they can start very early making plans for the difficult transition away from fossil fuels.
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover is known as the father of the nuclear submarine. He was also instrumental in getting the United States started using nuclear power to generate electricity. He was an advisor to Jimmy Carter, who is known for his interest in renewable energy. The world would no doubt be much different if we had listened to Mr. Rickover’s ideas from more than 50 years ago and acted on them.
This speech was posted in December 2006 on the Energy Bulletin. This speech was made available by the work of two people: Theodore Rockwell, author of The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference, who had this article in his files, and Rick Lakin, who sought out the article and converted it to digital form.
This is the text of Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover’s May 14, 1957 speech to the Minnesota State Medical Association:
Energy Resources and Our Future
I am honored to be here tonight, though it is no easy thing, I assure you, for a layman to face up to an audience of physicians. A single one of you, sitting behind his desk, can be quite formidable.
My speech has no medical connotations. This may be a relief to you after the solid professional fare you have been absorbing. I should like to discuss a matter which will, I hope, be of interest to you as responsible citizens: the significance of energy resources in the shaping of our future.
We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age. Today coal, oil, and natural gas supply 93% of the world’s energy; water power accounts for only 1%; and the labor of men and domestic animals the remaining 6%. This is a startling reversal of corresponding figures for 1850 – only a century ago. Then fossil fuels supplied 5% of the world’s energy, and men and animals 94%. Five sixths of all the coal, oil, and gas consumed since the beginning of the Fossil Fuel Age has been burned up in the last 55 years.
These fuels have been known to man for more than 3,000 years. In parts of China, coal was used for domestic heating and cooking, and natural gas for lighting as early as 1000 B.C. The Babylonians burned asphalt a thousand years earlier. But these early uses were sporadic and of no economic significance. Fossil fuels did not become a major source of energy until machines running on coal, gas, or oil were invented. Wood, for example, was the most important fuel until 1880 when it was replaced by coal; coal, in turn, has only recently been surpassed by oil in this country.
Once in full swing, fossil fuel consumption has accelerated at phenomenal rates. All the fossil fuels used before 1900 would not last five years at today’s rates of consumption.
Nowhere are these rates higher and growing faster than in the United States. Our country, with only 6% of the world’s population, uses one third of the world’s total energy input; this proportion would be even greater except that we use energy more efficiently than other countries. Each American has at his disposal, each year, energy equivalent to that obtainable from eight tons of coal. This is six times the world’s per capita energy consumption. Though not quite so spectacular, corresponding figures for other highly industrialized countries also show above average consumption figures. The United Kingdom, for example, uses more than three times as much energy as the world average.
With high energy consumption goes a high standard of living. Thus the enormous fossil energy which we in this country control feeds machines which make each of us master of an army of mechanical slaves. Man’s muscle power is rated at 35 watts continuously, or one-twentieth horsepower. Machines therefore furnish every American industrial worker with energy equivalent to that of 244 men, while at least 2,000 men push his automobile along the road, and his family is supplied with 33 faithful household helpers. Each locomotive engineer controls energy equivalent to that of 100,000 men; each jet pilot of 700,000 men. Truly, the humblest American enjoys the services of more slaves than were once owned by the richest nobles, and lives better than most ancient kings. In retrospect, and despite wars, revolutions, and disasters, the hundred years just gone by may well seem like a Golden Age.
Whether this Golden Age will continue depends entirely upon our ability to keep energy supplies in balance with the needs of our growing population. Before I go into this question, let me review briefly the role of energy resources in the rise and fall of civilizations.
Possession of surplus energy is, of course, a requisite for any kind of civilization, for if man possesses merely the energy of his own muscles, he must expend all his strength – mental and physical – to obtain the bare necessities of life.
Surplus energy provides the material foundation for civilized living – a comfortable and tasteful home instead of a bare shelter; attractive clothing instead of mere covering to keep warm; appetizing food instead of anything that suffices to appease hunger. It provides the freedom from toil without which there can be no art, music, literature, or learning. There is no need to belabor the point. What lifted man – one of the weaker mammals – above the animal world was that he could devise, with his brain, ways to increase the energy at his disposal, and use the leisure so gained to cultivate his mind and spirit. Where man must rely solely on the energy of his own body, he can sustain only the most meager existence.
Man’s first step on the ladder of civilization dates from his discovery of fire and his domestication of animals. With these energy resources he was able to build a pastoral culture. To move upward to an agricultural civilization he needed more energy. In the past this was found in the labor of dependent members of large patriarchal families, augmented by slaves obtained through purchase or as war booty. There are some backward communities which to this day depend on this type of energy.
Slave labor was necessary for the city-states and the empires of antiquity; they frequently had slave populations larger than their free citizenry. As long as slaves were abundant and no moral censure attached to their ownership, incentives to search for alternative sources of energy were lacking; this may well have been the single most important reason why engineering advanced very little in ancient times.
A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life. For example, exhaustion of wood fuel is believed to have been the primary reason for the fall of the Mayan Civilization on this continent and of the decline of once flourishing civilizations in Asia. India and China once had large forests, as did much of the Middle East. Deforestation not only lessened the energy base but had a further disastrous effect: lacking plant cover, soil washed away, and with soil erosion the nutritional base was reduced as well.
Another cause of declining civilization comes with pressure of population on available land. A point is reached where the land can no longer support both the people and their domestic animals. Horses and mules disappear first. Finally even the versatile water buffalo is displaced by man who is two and one half times as efficient an energy converter as are draft animals. It must always be remembered that while domestic animals and agricultural machines increase productivity per man, maximum productivity per acre is achieved only by intensive manual cultivation.
It is a sobering thought that the impoverished people of Asia, who today seldom go to sleep with their hunger completely satisfied, were once far more civilized and lived much better than the people of the West. And not so very long ago, either. It was the stories brought back by Marco Polo of the marvelous civilization in China which turned Europe’s eyes to the riches of the East, and induced adventurous sailors to brave the high seas in their small vessels searching for a direct route to the fabulous Orient. The “wealth of the Indies” is a phrase still used, but whatever wealth may be there it certainly is not evident in the life of the people today.
Asia failed to keep technological pace with the needs of her growing populations and sank into such poverty that in many places man has become again the primary source of energy, since other energy converters have become too expensive. This must be obvious to the most casual observer. What this means is quite simply a reversion to a more primitive stage of civilization with all that it implies for human dignity and happiness.
Anyone who has watched a sweating Chinese farm worker strain at his heavily laden wheelbarrow, creaking along a cobblestone road, or who has flinched as he drives past an endless procession of human beasts of burden moving to market in Java – the slender women bent under mountainous loads heaped on their heads – anyone who has seen statistics translated into flesh and bone, realizes the degradation of man’s stature when his muscle power becomes the only energy source he can afford. Civilization must wither when human beings are so degraded.
Where slavery represented a major source of energy, its abolition had the immediate effect of reducing energy consumption. Thus when this time-honored institution came under moral censure by Christianity, civilization declined until other sources of energy could be found. Slavery is incompatible with Christian belief in the worth of the humblest individual as a child of God. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire and masters freed their slaves – in obedience to the teaching of the Church – the energy base of Roman civilization crumbled. This, some historians believe, may have been a major factor in the decline of Rome and the temporary reversion to a more primitive way of life during the Dark Ages. Slavery gradually disappeared throughout the Western world, except in its milder form of serfdom. That it was revived a thousand years later merely shows man’s ability to stifle his conscience – at least for a while – when his economic needs are great. Eventually, even the needs of overseas plantation economies did not suffice to keep alive a practice so deeply repugnant to Western man’s deepest convictions.
It may well be that it was unwillingness to depend on slave labor for their energy needs which turned the minds of medieval Europeans to search for alternate sources of energy, thus sparking the Power Revolution of the Middle Ages which, in turn, paved the way for the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. When slavery disappeared in the West engineering advanced. Men began to harness the power of nature by utilizing water and wind as energy sources. The sailing ship, in particular, which replaced the slave-driven galley of antiquity, was vastly improved by medieval shipbuilders and became the first machine enabling man to control large amounts of inanimate energy.
The next important high-energy converter used by Europeans was gunpowder – an energy source far superior to the muscular strength of the strongest bowman or lancer. With ships that could navigate the high seas and arms that could outfire any hand weapon, Europe was now powerful enough to preempt for herself the vast empty areas of the Western Hemisphere into which she poured her surplus populations to build new nations of European stock. With these ships and arms she also gained political control over populous areas in Africa and Asia from which she drew the raw materials needed to speed her industrialization, thus complementing her naval and military dominance with economic and commercial supremacy.
When a low-energy society comes in contact with a high-energy society, the advantage always lies with the latter. The Europeans not only achieved standards of living vastly higher than those of the rest of the world, but they did this while their population was growing at rates far surpassing those of other peoples. In fact, they doubled their share of total world population in the short span of three centuries. From one sixth in 1650, the people of European stock increased to almost one third of total world population by 1950.
Meanwhile much of the rest of the world did not even keep energy sources in balance with population growth. Per capita energy consumption actually diminished in large areas. It is this difference in energy consumption which has resulted in an ever-widening gap between the one-third minority who live in high-energy countries and the two-thirds majority who live in low-energy areas.
These so-called underdeveloped countries are now finding it far more difficult to catch up with the fortunate minority than it was for Europe to initiate transition from low-energy to high-energy consumption. For one thing, their ratio of land to people is much less favorable; for another, they have no outlet for surplus populations to ease the transition since all the empty spaces have already been taken over by people of European stock.
Almost all of today’s low-energy countries have a population density so great that it perpetuates dependence on intensive manual agriculture which alone can yield barely enough food for their people. They do not have enough acreage, per capita, to justify using domestic animals or farm machinery, although better seeds, better soil management, and better hand tools could bring some improvement. A very large part of their working population must nevertheless remain on the land, and this limits the amount of surplus energy that can be produced. Most of these countries must choose between using this small energy surplus to raise their very low standard of living or postpone present rewards for the sake of future gain by investing the surplus in new industries. The choice is difficult because there is no guarantee that today’s denial may not prove to have been in vain. This is so because of the rapidity with which public health measures have reduced mortality rates, resulting in population growth as high or even higher than that of the high-energy nations. Theirs is a bitter choice; it accounts for much of their anti-Western feeling and may well portend a prolonged period of world instability.
How closely energy consumption is related to standards of living may be illustrated by the example of India. Despite intelligent and sustained efforts made since independence, India’s per capita income is still only 20 cents daily; her infant mortality is four times ours; and the life expectance of her people is less than one half that of the industrialized countries of the West. These are ultimate consequences of India’s very low energy consumption: one-fourteenth of world average; one-eightieth of ours.
Ominous, too, is the fact that while world food production increased 9% in the six years from 1945-51, world population increased by 12%. Not only is world population increasing faster than world food production, but unfortunately, increases in food production tend to occur in the already well-fed, high-energy countries rather than in the undernourished, low-energy countries where food is most lacking.
I think no further elaboration is needed to demonstrate the significance of energy resources for our own future. Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is – in the long run – none.
The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot. Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume.
In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift.
Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.
Engineers whose work familiarizes them with energy statistics; far-seeing industrialists who know that energy is the principal factor which must enter into all planning for the future; responsible governments who realize that the well-being of their citizens and the political power of their countries depend on adequate energy supplies – all these have begun to be concerned about energy resources. In this country, especially, many studies have been made in the last few years, seeking to discover accurate information on fossil-fuel reserves and foreseeable fuel needs.
Statistics involving the human factor are, of course, never exact. The size of usable reserves depends on the ability of engineers to improve the efficiency of fuel extraction and use. It also depends on discovery of new methods to obtain energy from inferior resources at costs which can be borne without unduly depressing the standard of living. Estimates of future needs, in turn, rely heavily on population figures which must always allow for a large element of uncertainty, particularly as man reaches a point where he is more and more able to control his own way of life.
Current estimates of fossil fuel reserves vary to an astonishing degree. In part this is because the results differ greatly if cost of extraction is disregarded or if in calculating how long reserves will last, population growth is not taken into consideration; or, equally important, not enough weight is given to increased fuel consumption required to process inferior or substitute metals. We are rapidly approaching the time when exhaustion of better grade metals will force us to turn to poorer grades requiring in most cases greater expenditure of energy per unit of metal.
But the most significant distinction between optimistic and pessimistic fuel reserve statistics is that the optimists generally speak of the immediate future – the next twenty-five years or so – while the pessimists think in terms of a century from now. A century or even two is a short span in the history of a great people. It seems sensible to me to take a long view, even if this involves facing unpleasant facts.
For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account. Oil and natural gas will disappear first, coal last. There will be coal left in the earth, of course. But it will be so difficult to mine that energy costs would rise to economically intolerable heights, so that it would then become necessary either to discover new energy sources or to lower standards of living drastically.
For more than one hundred years we have stoked ever growing numbers of machines with coal; for fifty years we have pumped gas and oil into our factories, cars, trucks, tractors, ships, planes, and homes without giving a thought to the future. Occasionally the voice of a Cassandra has been raised only to be quickly silenced when a lucky discovery revised estimates of our oil reserves upward, or a new coalfield was found in some remote spot. Fewer such lucky discoveries can be expected in the future, especially in industrialized countries where extensive mapping of resources has been done. Yet the popularizers of scientific news would have us believe that there is no cause for anxiety, that reserves will last thousands of years, and that before they run out science will have produced miracles. Our past history and security have given us the sentimental belief that the things we fear will never really happen – that everything turns out right in the end. But, prudent men will reject these tranquilizers and prefer to face the facts so that they can plan intelligently for the needs of their posterity.
Looking into the future, from the mid-20th Century, we cannot feel overly confident that present high standards of living will of a certainty continue through the next century and beyond. Fossil fuel costs will soon definitely begin to rise as the best and most accessible reserves are exhausted, and more effort will be required to obtain the same energy from remaining reserves. It is likely also that liquid fuel synthesized from coal will be more expensive. Can we feel certain that when economically recoverable fossil fuels are gone science will have learned how to maintain a high standard of living on renewable energy sources?
I believe it would be wise to assume that the principal renewable fuel sources which we can expect to tap before fossil reserves run out will supply only 7 to 15% of future energy needs. The five most important of these renewable sources are wood fuel, farm wastes, wind, water power, and solar heat.
Wood fuel and farm wastes are dubious as substitutes because of growing food requirements to be anticipated. Land is more likely to be used for food production than for tree crops; farm wastes may be more urgently needed to fertilize the soil than to fuel machines.
Wind and water power can furnish only a very small percentage of our energy needs. Moreover, as with solar energy, expensive structures would be required, making use of land and metals which will also be in short supply. Nor would anything we know today justify putting too much reliance on solar energy though it will probably prove feasible for home heating in favorable localities and for cooking in hot countries which lack wood, such as India.
More promising is the outlook for nuclear fuels. These are not, properly speaking, renewable energy sources, at least not in the present state of technology, but their capacity to “breed” and the very high energy output from small quantities of fissionable material, as well as the fact that such materials are relatively abundant, do seem to put nuclear fuels into a separate category from exhaustible fossil fuels. The disposal of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants is, however, a problem which must be solved before there can be any widespread use of nuclear power.
Another limit in the use of nuclear power is that we do not know today how to employ it otherwise than in large units to produce electricity or to supply heating. Because of its inherent characteristics, nuclear fuel cannot be used directly in small machines, such as cars, trucks, or tractors. It is doubtful that it could in the foreseeable future furnish economical fuel for civilian airplanes or ships, except very large ones. Rather than nuclear locomotives, it might prove advantageous to move trains by electricity produced in nuclear central stations. We are only at the beginning of nuclear technology, so it is difficult to predict what we may expect.
Transportation – the lifeblood of all technically advanced civilizations – seems to be assured, once we have borne the initial high cost of electrifying railroads and replacing buses with streetcars or interurban electric trains. But, unless science can perform the miracle of synthesizing automobile fuel from some energy source as yet unknown or unless trolley wires power electric automobiles on all streets and highways, it will be wise to face up to the possibility of the ultimate disappearance of automobiles, trucks, buses, and tractors. Before all the oil is gone and hydrogenation of coal for synthetic liquid fuels has come to an end, the cost of automotive fuel may have risen to a point where private cars will be too expensive to run and public transportation again becomes a profitable business.
Today the automobile is the most uneconomical user of energy. Its efficiency is 5% compared with 23% for the Diesel-electric railway. It is the most ravenous devourer of fossil fuels, accounting for over half of the total oil consumption in this country. And the oil we use in the United States in one year took nature about 14 million years to create. Curiously, the automobile, which is the greatest single cause of the rapid exhaustion of oil reserves, may eventually be the first fuel consumer to suffer. Reduction in automotive use would necessitate an extraordinarily costly reorganization of the pattern of living in industrialized nations, particularly in the United States. It would seem prudent to bear this in mind in future planning of cities and industrial locations.
Our present known reserves of fissionable materials are many times as large as our net economically recoverable reserves of coal. A point will be reached before this century is over when fossil fuel costs will have risen high enough to make nuclear fuels economically competitive. Before that time comes we shall have to make great efforts to raise our entire body of engineering and scientific knowledge to a higher plateau. We must also induce many more young Americans to become metallurgical and nuclear engineers. Else we shall not have the knowledge or the people to build and run the nuclear power plants which ultimately may have to furnish the major part of our energy needs. If we start to plan now, we may be able to achieve the requisite level of scientific and engineering knowledge before our fossil fuel reserves give out, but the margin of safety is not large. This is also based on the assumption that atomic war can be avoided and that population growth will not exceed that now calculated by demographic experts.
War, of course, cancels all man’s expectations. Even growing world tension just short of war could have far-reaching effects. In this country it might, on the one hand, lead to greater conservation of domestic fuels, to increased oil imports, and to an acceleration in scientific research which might turn up unexpected new energy sources. On the other hand, the resulting armaments race would deplete metal reserves more rapidly, hastening the day when inferior metals must be utilized with consequent greater expenditure of energy. Underdeveloped nations with fossil fuel deposits might be coerced into withholding them from the free world or may themselves decide to retain them for their own future use. The effect on Europe, which depends on coal and oil imports, would be disastrous and we would have to share our own supplies or lose our allies.
Barring atomic war or unexpected changes in the population curve, we can count on an increase in world population from two and one half billion today to four billion in the year 2000; six to eight billion by 2050. The United States is expected to quadruple its population during the 20th Century – from 75 million in 1900 to 300 million in 2000 – and to reach at least 375 million in 2050. This would almost exactly equal India’s present population which she supports on just a little under half of our land area.
It is an awesome thing to contemplate a graph of world population growth from prehistoric times – tens of thousands of years ago – to the day after tomorrow – let us say the year 2000 A.D. If we visualize the population curve as a road which starts at sea level and rises in proportion as world population increases, we should see it stretching endlessly, almost level, for 99% of the time that man has inhabited the earth. In 6000 B.C., when recorded history begins, the road is running at a height of about 70 feet above sea level, which corresponds to a population of 10 million. Seven thousand years later – in 1000 A.D. – the road has reached an elevation of 1,600 feet; the gradation now becomes steeper, and 600 years later the road is 2,900 feet high. During the short span of the next 400 years – from 1600 to 2000 – it suddenly turns sharply upward at an almost perpendicular inclination and goes straight up to an elevation of 29,000 feet – the height of Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest mountain.
In the 8,000 years from the beginning of history to the year 2000 A.D. world population will have grown from 10 million to 4 billion, with 90% of that growth taking place during the last 5% of that period, in 400 years. It took the first 3,000 years of recorded history to accomplish the first doubling of population, 100 years for the last doubling, but the next doubling will require only 50 years. Calculations give us the astonishing estimate that one out of every 20 human beings born into this world is alive today.
The rapidity of population growth has not given us enough time to readjust our thinking. Not much more than a century ago our country – the very spot on which I now stand was a wilderness in which a pioneer could find complete freedom from men and from government. If things became too crowded – if he saw his neighbor’s chimney smoke – he could, and often did, pack up and move west. We began life in 1776 as a nation of less than four million people – spread over a vast continent – with seemingly inexhaustible riches of nature all about. We conserved what was scarce – human labor – and squandered what seemed abundant – natural resources – and we are still doing the same today.
Much of the wilderness which nurtured what is most dynamic in the American character has now been buried under cities, factories and suburban developments where each picture window looks out on nothing more inspiring than the neighbor’s back yard with the smoke of his fire in the wire basket clearly visible.
Life in crowded communities cannot be the same as life on the frontier. We are no longer free, as was the pioneer – to work for our own immediate needs regardless of the future. We are no longer as independent of men and of government as were Americans two or three generations ago. An ever larger share of what we earn must go to solve problems caused by crowded living – bigger governments; bigger city, state, and federal budgets to pay for more public services. Merely to supply us with enough water and to carry away our waste products becomes more difficult and expansive daily. More laws and law enforcement agencies are needed to regulate human relations in urban industrial communities and on crowded highways than in the America of Thomas Jefferson.
Certainly no one likes taxes, but we must become reconciled to larger taxes in the larger America of tomorrow.
I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America’s youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women. This means that we must not delay building more schools, colleges, and playgrounds. It means that we must reconcile ourselves to continuing higher taxes to build up and maintain at decent salaries a greatly enlarged corps of much better trained teachers, even at the cost of denying ourselves such momentary pleasures as buying a bigger new car, or a TV set, or household gadget. We should find – I believe – that these small self-denials would be far more than offset by the benefits they would buy for tomorrow’s America. We might even – if we wanted – give a break to these youngsters by cutting fuel and metal consumption a little here and there so as to provide a safer margin for the necessary adjustments which eventually must be made in a world without fossil fuels.
One final thought I should like to leave with you. High-energy consumption has always been a prerequisite of political power. The tendency is for political power to be concentrated in an ever-smaller number of countries. Ultimately, the nation which control – the largest energy resources will become dominant. If we give thought to the problem of energy resources, if we act wisely and in time to conserve what we have and prepare well for necessary future changes, we shall insure this dominant position for our own country.
source:
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“the never-ending challenge” by H. G. Rickover
metals engineering quarterly
february, 1963
pp.1-6
Progress ── like freedom ── is desired by nearly all men, but not all understand that both come at a cost. Whenever society advanced ─ be it in culture and education or science and technology ─ there is a rise in the requirements man must meet to function successfully. The price of progress is acceptance of these more exacting standards of performance and relinquishment of familiar habits and conventions rendered obsolete because they no longer meet the new standards.
To move but one rung up the ladder of civilization man must surpass himself.
The simple life comes “”naturally“”. The civilized life compels effort.
In any advancing society some elements will accept the advantages of life at a higher plateau yet ignore its obligations. This is readily seen when backward people seek to modernize their society. Sociologists call it a “culture lag”. something akin to culture lag exists even in highly developed countries such as the united states. And, because all parts of a modern society are interdependent, failure to meet rising standards in any sector becomes a brake on general progress and harms society as a whole.
I need not spell out to this audience that we have no choice but to keep up in the forefront of civilization. Progress today is the sine qua non [Latin, without which not; an essential condition; indispensable thing; absolute prerequisite] of national survival. It is the paramount national interest. Since our country is a self-governing democracy, this paramount national interest is in the safekeeping of each and everyone of us. If we do not look after the national interest, no one else will. In this instance, moreover, civic duty is strongly reinforced by private interest. Were the nation to falter in its forward movement, we should all suffer dire consequences in our most private lives. The nation's paramount interest coincides with every citizen's paramount self-interest.
It follows that the existence of a “culture lag” in any important sector of our society is the legitimate concern of every citizen. In so far as special competencies allow us to do so, we each have a right and a duty to call attention to factors seriously impending progress, and to suggest ways and means for overcoming these obstacles. I submit that in my own field of reactor technology we have a culture lag in that many involved with this new technology fail to recognize that to exploit the power locked in the atom we must rise to a higher technological plateau. And that consequently a more exacting standard must be met in everything pertaining to this new source of power. Failure to understand this reduces the benefit the nation obtains from nuclear power.
Take the ways we make use of our nuclear power potential or how we operate nuclear power plants. If this is to be done wisely persons in authority must possess an unusually high degree of general and technical knowledge and competence. Unfortunately decisions affecting this field are sometimes made by people who have little knowledge of nuclear engineering and of science. There is danger this may lead to errors highly damaging to the position of the united states or to the health and safety of the american people.
Thus, when persons who are authorized to deal with nuclear power as an instrument of national policy are technical ignorant, they may incorrectly appraise its importance. They may underrate the value to our nation of the near monopoly we currently enjoy in reactor technology and in consequence fail to guard this asset with sufficient care. Again, when persons who are authorized to administer nuclear power plants are technically ignorant, they may under estimate the hazards and in consequence fail to understand that nuclear power plants cannot be operated safely except by highly competent and rigorously trained men. Reserving this task to persons so qualified may run counter to traditional personnel policies based on equalizing career opportunities. Administrators unfamiliar with nuclear science and engineering frequently resist change in established practices. They do this because they have little conception of the potential danger to large numbers of people if nuclear power plants are handled ineptly. If they understand the dangers of radiation they would realize that safety must take precedence over their otherwise laudable desire to give everyone a chance at running a nuclear plant.
As I have said, some elements of society will accept the advantages of life at a higher plateau, yet ignore its obligations.
My remarks today concern the harmful results caused by failure of american industry to live up the exacting standards of reactor technology. We depend on private industry to supply the materials and equipments for our nuclear power plants. Current industrial practices are, on the whole, not geared to the standards imposed by this new technology.
While it has not been too difficult to focus management attention on the nuclear reactor itself, which represents a novel development, it has been extremely
p.2
difficult to get management to give effective attention to the conventional components of these plants. Routine manufacturing and engineering practices continue to be followed, even though experience has shown these practices to be inadequate.
Successful operation of a nuclear power plant depends on the reliability of all its parts, the reactor as well as the conventional components──the heat exchangers, pressure vessels, valves, turbo-generators, etc. Although these are all designed and manufactured by long established procedures and so should present no special difficulty, delivery and performance of these conventional items have been less reliable than of the nuclear reactors themselves. Senior people in the naval reactors group must therefore devote much of their time solving ever-recurring problems in the design, materials and workmanship of conventional components.
Compared with the complexity of nuclear engineering itself these problems individually are minor in nature, yet they occur so frequently as to require a disproportionate amount of our time. If we are to build successful nuclear plants at reasonable cost and in reasonable time, the whole plateau of industrial workmanship, engineering inspection, and quality control must be raised well above the present level. This is the responsibility of management. Management's technical function, after all, is to see to it that production meets the customer's requirements.
We are altogether too prone in this country to expect magical breakthroughs and short-cuts through science and engineering. We naively expect that the mere expenditure of large sums of money by government will rapidly and automatically solve our technical problems and assure continued growth of our technology. We place too much emphasis on streamlined techniques such as computer programmed management, instead of realizing that present technical problems are less a matter of generating new ideas than of carrying them out in a straight forward, methodical and painstaking manner. Only in this way can the new scientific advances be turned to practical use. There is no substitute for constant personal supervision of production work management. The higher we advance technically, the more important becomes the personal attention of the manager, the less can he rely on merely issuing orders.
Too often management is satisfied to sit in plush offices, far removed physically and mentally from the design and manufacturing areas, relying on paper reports for information about the status of design and production in the plant itself ── the real center of the enterprise. This lack of first hand evaluation results in poorly designed and manufactured equipment, late delivery, or both. During the past few years, hundreds of major conventional components, such as pressure vessels and steam generators, have been procured for naval nuclear propulsion plants. 30 per cent were delivered 6 months to a year or more later than promised. Even so, reinspection of these components after delivery showed that over 50 per cent of them had to be further reworked in order to meet contract specification requirements.
We have tried to improve matters by sending representatives of the naval reactors group to manufacturer's plants to make on-the-spot checks of engineering and production progress. Often our men discover extremely unsatisfactory conditions of which management is unaware. The usual management reaction is to disbelieve the facts submitted to them.
Corrective action is therefore often taken too late. The most prevalent inadequacy found in our audits is failure to recognize that timely production of high quality components requires almost infinite capacity for painstaking care and attention to detail by all elements of the organization, both management and non-management; this is as true for a so-called conventional “old-line” product as for a new one.
Fortunately, some companies are forward looking and receptive to new ideas and try out our suggestions. For example, one company agreed to move the offices of their executive and supervisory personnel to the plant manufacturing areas. I would like to quote from a letter I received recently from that company:
“”While we expected to obtain significant benefits from this move, the actual results achieved to date have been far beyond our expectations. As a result of this move, communications have been greatly improved among all levels of supervisotry personnel and issues can be resolved face-to-face with shop personnel in a expeditious manner. We now have considerably less internal memoranda and telephone calls, and we have actually reduced the size of our secretarial staff.
“”The fact that management personnel now have the opportunity to observe from their office windows most of our manufacturing areas has improved the attention being given to the work by operating personnel. Further, the close proximity between engineering and operating personnel has improved relationships and understanding of problems at all levels in the company; this has resulted in improved quality, better cost control and shorter fabrication time.“”
Failure of management to meet the standards required by advancing technology reduces the benefit our nation obtains from huge investments in research and development. Of an annual total of about $16 billion, nearly $12 billion come out of the tax payer's pocket. The size of these expenditures places a great responsibility on industry. It must get people into management who have the competence to make certain that stockholders and taxpayers receive full value for the money invested in new technology, and that the nation's technical resources are effectively used. Yet, time and again I have found that management is reluctant to depart from outdated practices; that it is not informed of what is actually going on in the plant; that it fails to provide the informed and strong leadership necessary to bring about improvements in engineering and production. It is not well enough understood that conventional components of advanced systems must necessarily meet higher standards. Yet it should be obvious that failures that would be trivial if they occurred in a conventional application will have Serious consequences in a nuclear plant because here radioactivity is involved. Even in the non-nuclear parts of our plants we must have full reliability if the great endurance of nuclear power is to be realized.
Management has a responsibility not only for successful engineering and production in its own plant; it also has a responsibility for accuracy of the data it supplies. These data are often used by other organizations when they design components. I recall one case where the elevated temperature mechanical strength properties of a common material, as given by the manufacturer and used in the ASME Boiler and
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Pressure Vessel Code, were found on test to be 30 per cent too high. Checking this we discovered that the machanical properties data presented as being firm were based on a limited test that had been conducted 10 years previously and on but one heat of material which had been given but a single fabrication heat treatment. We often found it necessary to run our own tests to determine the true physical properties of many conventional materials under varying conditions. And this, despite the fact that these materials have been in wide spread industrial use for over 30 years. This experience does not speak well of management or of the effectiveness of technical societies in seeing to it that correct technical data are available, and that salesmanship does not over shadow technical excellence.
I should like to discuss two areas that are in need continuous and pain staking attention to detail by management, by engineers, and by workmen. These are:
First, incomplete understanding of basic manufacturing and inspection processes, and
second, poor workmanship and poor quality control. Let me give you specific examples:
1. Incomplete understanding of basic manufacturing and inspection processes. When we design components for nuclear power plants we make every effort to utilize existing procedures. At first we assumed basic processes that have been in wide spread industrial use for many years would be well understood. Our experience showed this was not so. I will describe some of the types of difficulties we constantly encounter. They have to do with faulty welding, faulty radiography and defective casting; that is, with deficiencies in basic conventional processes of present day technology.
The press frequently reports malfunctions of advanced components or systems caused by failure of a weld, improper use of a routine process, or use of defective materials. Industry apparently considers such failure to be inevitable, since not enough is being done to correct the causes. The naval reactors and shipping port atomic power station programs have had their full share of these problems.
There are 99 carbon steel welds in one particular nuclear plant steam system. The manufacturer stated that these welds were radiographed and met specifications. Our own re-evaluation of these welds ── using correct procedures and proper x-ray sensitivity ── showed however that only 10 percent met ASME standards; 35 per cent had defects definitely in excess of ASME standards and the remaining 55 per cent had such a rough external surface that the radiographs obtained could not be interpreted with any degree of assurance. We found this conditions of unsatisfactory welds and improper radiography to be quite prevalent in many segments of industry. When we insisted that manufacturers meet the standards which had been established for many years as being necessary, very high rejection rates for weld resulted. One manufacturer, over a 3 month period, had to reject 47 percent of all carbon steel welds made in his shop; his rejection rate for weld made in the field, where conditions were less favorable, was even higher. In other types of welds a manufacturer had 85 to 100 percent rejection rates. I would like to emphasize that this unsatisfactory welding situation came to light only because we demanded that manufacturers prove to us they were meeting the standards which they themselves had accepted in the contract.
While many of these unsatisfactory welds might be attributed to poor workmanshiop, the underlying cause was management's failure to enforce standards. As a result there has been insufficent incentive to develop new processes and materials that would consistently produce acceptable welds. The blame for allowing the condition to exist rests squarely with the technical societies responsible for establishing standards, and with purchasers of equipment who do not insist that these standards are met.
We need to know a great deal more about welding. Take the case of unexplained variation in weld ability from one heat of stainless steel in another. Although stainless steel was developed 50 years ago and has been applied extensively throughout the world, I am constantly amazed how little is actually known about this material. Recently we encountered difficulty in welding stainless steel forgings for valve bodies; previously there had been no problems with these forgings. Investigating this we found that early this year the forging manufacturer had made what he considered a minor change in the composition of the material to improve its forge ability. His technical people failed to consider that this small change might cause the material to respond differently in subsequent manufacturing operations. Moreover, they did not even bother to test a sample forging of the slightly modified material to determine its accept ability. As a result, we now have more than 100 stainless steel forging which may have to be scrapped.
Casting is another basic process that is not fully understood. We often have to order two or three times as many casting as we need, because we have so much trouble obtaining satisfactory ones. Otherwise we may not have enough acceptable castings on time. Here is an example of the kind of difficulties we encounter: two low alloy steel casting 2.5 feet in diameter and 8 feet in length, were ordered. The castings were of a simple cylindrical shape and conventional in design. The manufacturer promised a firm delivery date. The first two castings, however, had to be scrapped because of internal defects. The manufacturer then made three more castings; these also were unsatisfactory. Because of this experience it became necessary to switch to forging in lieu of castings. meanwhile delivery of the equipment has been greatly delayed. The case is typical of failure to understand technical casting problems. Had we, at the start, fully realized how little the manufacturer actually knew about producing good castings, we could have ordered backup material and prevented the long delay.
There have been casting prolems with other common materials as well: for instance, we have been unable to obtain certain large valve castings. When we do receive acceptable castings, this is only after 200 to 300 weld repairs have been made on each casting. Although this sort of difficulty has existed for many years, industry has not yet developed adequate techniques for successfully producing large castings.
Radiography is another basic process of contemporary conventional technology where we are constantly troubled with problems. Extensive use of radiography for over 30 years led us to believe that this nondestructive testing technique for determining soundness of welds and castings was well understood, and that the sensitivity requirements of existing ASME and navy specifications were being met. We found this definitely not to be so. For years many of these requirements have been consistently violated.
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in consequence, large numbers of radiographs were of little or no value for determining integrity of welds and castings. There are several reasons for this state of affairs, some of which have wider implications. These include:
a. A general feeling or opinion that ASME and navy specification requirements are a desirable goal rather than a firm requirement. This has brought about deterioration of quality under pressure of production schedules and cost reduction drives.
b. Frequent lack of understanding as to what the specification requirements actually are and why it is important that they be met.
c. The personal opinion of an individual in the manufacturer's organization that a particular part of the specification is not necessary. In consequence no attempt is even made to meet the requirement, but the customer is not inform of this.
d. In some instances it was impracticable to conform to a particular specification requirement. We should have been advised that the requirement was impracticable. Instead, an individual would take it upon himself to waive the requirement without notifying his company or us.
e. A belief that radiography is such a highly specialized technology that persons outside this field are not capable of contributing to its interpretation or improvement. Actually, the highly unsatisfactory situation in radiography was brought to light by individuals in the naval reactors program trained in other disciplines. What was needed was to look into this field with an open and skeptical mind.
Radiographic practices used by industry have deteriorated. In many companies, small deviations such as incorrect placement of the radiation source or penetrameter or improper film developing technique produce radiographs of insufficient quality to show defects. Correction of this situation is the responsibility of industrial management. Nevertheless i have had to set up a special task force of representatives from government, component manufacturers and ship yards to clarify the techniques necessary to meet existing radiography requirements. When material previously considered acceptable was reinspected, using these correct techniques, a high percentage ── to up 90 per cent ── of the welds was found unacceptable.
Frequently these problems occur because inspection personnel lack the competence required to perform the highly skilled job of interpreting radiographs. We found that inspectors often were quite untrained. In fact, they were at times no better qualified to read radiographs than a layman is to interpret his own chest x-ray! we, the customer, have had to set up a special course to train personnel in the interpretation of radiographys!
Besides this unsatisfactory situation in welding, casting and radiography, practical application of nuclear power is also hampered by unresolved problems of fatigue in materials.
Present knowledge of material fatigue under thermal cycling stress is meager. in consequence, we in the reactor group have had to develop special test loops to conduct tests for determining the adequacy of conventional components. Based on results of these tests we have had to change the design of many equipments ── valves, nozzles, thermal sleeves ── all of which have been in use by industry for many years. Yet fatigue is not peculiar to nuclear propulsion: nor is it a new problem for industry. The civil aeronautics board reports that every year several commercial airplane accidents are caused by fatigue failure of propellers, landing gear, or hydraulic pressure lines. Reporting on a recent helicopter accident caused by fatigue cracking of a main rotor blade, the CAB warned that there was urgent need for better understanding of safe fatigue life of materials and for more conservative design.
2. Poor workmanship and poor quality control. Modern technology ── in nuclear power, in high speed aeronautics, or in high performance computers ── requires greater excellence in workmanship and in quality control than has been necessary in the past, and this even in the conventional components used in these advanced systems. This is particularly true for nuclear technology where hazards of radioactivity and difficulty of access for maintenance and repair require workman ship and quality control to be at a much higher level than in normal industrial applications. In the case of submarines, moreover, the crew lives and works between two dangerous environment ── the intense sea pressure outside the hull of the ship, and the hot, high pressure primary and secondary systems of the propulsion plant. If the boundaries of either of these pressure containments should fail, serious consequences would result. The reason why i emphasize and insist on design excellence and high quality workmanship is that our nuclear submarines have to operate submerged for long periods of time, even under the Polar ice cap where it may not be possible to come to the surface.
There have been many problems in material identification and control. Recently a reactor component failed to function properly. The plant had to be shutdown for several weeks in order to remove this component, determine the cause of failure, and correct it ── at considerable expense. We finally traced the cause of failure to the use of the wrong material in a small pin. The material actually used not as hard as the material specified; under adverse conditions it tended to fail. Yet this component had passed production tests and quality control inspection. The tests and inspection had obviously not been done properly. These problems are not unique to nuclear propulsion; similar incidents occur in other fields, often with serious consequences. The use of a mild steel pin instead of a special hardened steel pin in a ship's steering gear once caused collision of two surface ships during a replenishment operation at sea.
Recently we discovered that a stainless steel fitting had been welded into a nickel-copper alloy piping system. The fitting had been certified by the manufacturer as nickel-copper, and had all the required certification data including chemistry and inspection results. In fact the words “nickel-copper” were actually etched in the fitting. Yet it was the wrong material! The system was intended for sea water service; had it been placed in operation with this stainless steel fitting a serious casualty would have resulted. In checking with other customers of this manufacturer we found that they too had received fittings of the wrong material. The manufacturer simply had no effective quality control organization. As a result we now have to check every fitting ever supplied by this manufacturer. The check is only partially completed, but 12 fittings of incorrect material have already been discovered.
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I feel rather strongly about this problem. On more than one occasion i have been in a deeply submerged submarine when a failure occurred in a sea-water system because a fitting was of the wrong material. But for the prompt action of the crew, the consequences would have been disastrous. In fact I might not be here today.
Not long ago we discovered a mix-up in the marking and packaging of welding electrodes which also could have had very unfortunate consequences. Welding electrodes are purchased in cans, each supposedly containing electrodes of only one type. The cans and the electrodes are individually so marked. Early last year a shipyard reported that in one can several electrodes differed from the rest, even though they bore the same color code mark. During the next three months, while we were checking this matter in detail, we detected similar incorrect marking and packaging of electrodes in cans from nearly every major electrode manufacturer in the united states. At our instigation the welding electrode industry has now adopted an improved method of identifying each type of electrode; and has also tightened quality control. Here again industry did not fulfill its obligations. There was no reason why these corrective steps should not have been taken earlier by the manufacturers themselves since this type of electrode mix-up has been going on for years. What were the technical societies doing?
The cases I have given highlight the need for industry to pay more attention to proper identification of materials from the time of melting, through the various fabrication steps and until they are finally installed. Identification must be such as will readily be understood by inspection groups, and must provide means for checking the material right through to the final stage of fabrication.
Another quality control problem is caused by failure to follow specified procedures or drawings. Here is a case in point: material which had required a special heat treatment was delivered for a shipboard application. On examining the records, we found that the material had been processed at an incorrect temperature and had been in the furnace for an excessive length of time; also that the furnace temperature instruments had been out of calibration. The company concerned could not have done much worse. Replacement of this material resulted in considerable delay. In another case we ordered electrical components that are used to indicate whether a valve is open or closed. After several hundred of these had been installed several failure occurred. It was discovered that a small piece of insulation, required and specified in the drawings, had been left out by the manufacturer. In order to prevent failure of the installed components, they all had to be replaced. Again there was delay and additional cost.
Similar cases of poor quality control are prevalent in areas other than nuclear propulsion; areas where safety is just as important. About 10 per cent of commercial airplane accidents are traceable to poor quality control during maintenance. Take the following CAB report on one particular accident: a worn bolt was found in a control system during an overhaul and removed for replacement. But no new bolt could be found in the shop so the worn bolt was put back “finger tight”, with no locking pin, apparently to stay there until a new bolt could be ordered. No note was made of this, and during the next shift, the overhaul was completed and the airplane was checked out as satisfactory. On a flight next day, vibration caused the loose nut to back off, the pilot lost control and the plane crashed. In another case, a commercial airliner crashed during take-off after a major overhaul because the aileron control cable cables were reversed.
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These examples illustrate there is no such thing as a “detail” which does not require careful review by experienced people. In our program, we try to overcome our quality control problems by setting up special quality control evaluation teams. These teams visit our suppliers and audit the effectiveness of their quality control organizations. The teams discover many deficiencies. Some have been corrected, many have not. The same practice could profitably be applied by companies, both for internal quality control audits and for audits of their subvendors. I believe this would greatly improve the present situation.
Many quality control problems are traceable to lack of pride in workmanship. In one case a reactor component failure was caused by faulty brazing of two copper wires. We found the braze to be so poor that when the insulation was removed the two wires fell apart. This was a common type of joint, used extensively and successfully in electrical components. Obviously, little if any care had been taken to insure the joint was made properly. On rechecking all the components of this design, 10 per cent were found defective and had to be replaced.
To prevent poor workmanship, quality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation. What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromsing insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen ── and forestalled ── before it happens.
I am not alone in my concern over the low quality of workmanship in conventional components. Last May, Mr. J. Lorne Gray, president of atomic energy of canada ltd., expressed the thought succinctly to the canadian nuclear association. He said:
“”Those of you who feel that you always supply equipment and make installation that satisfactorily meet the performance specifications should spend some time at NPD (the 20 EMW nuclear power demonstration reactor recently gone critical) or any nuclear plant, or even at some of the modern steam plants, during the start-up or running-in period. The very special equipment that has employed the newer materials to very close tolerances and advanced designs is not the major cause of our troubles; it is the poor workmanship in supply, installation and inspection of standard items.“”
Poor workmanship shows up glaringly in new technology such as nuclear power, missiles, satellites, but it is to be found everywhere, and everywhere it raises cost and causes delay.
In all the cases I have cited the chief responsibility for unsatisfactory delivery and performance rests with industry management. It is the management's business to establish proper quality control and to hire and train inspection and quality control personnel. Until recently many companies in our program had neither a formal quality control procedure nor a quality control organization. companies that did have such an organization often had it set up in such a way that the man in charge reported to the production manager. The production manager was thus
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placed in a position of checking and reporting on his own work ── a completely unacceptable state of affairs, on the face of it. Through the efforts of the naval reactors program, especially through our quality control audit teams, significant advances have been made. But we have only scratched the surface.
I assure you i am not exaggerating the situation; in fact, i have understated it. For every case i have given, i could cite a dozen more. The cost in time and money because of industry's failure to meet contractual specifications is staggering. Worse, with this time and with this money we could have developed improved nuclear power plants and produced many more of them. It is difficult for me to understand why management does not face up to its failure and its responsibility in this respect. Since contracts are sought for, they must be profitable. Despite talk of “the dead hand of government”, it is public money that has paid for all major technological advances made in the past two decades; and public agencies and officials have taken the lead in getting most developments started. Surely industry has as great a stake as every citizen in helping our nation move forward technologically. Industry can best do this by meeting the rising standards of new technologies when it supplies material and equipment.
I only wish i could tell you that the somber situation i have described no longer exists; that our efforts over the past 15 years have been successful in eliminating these problems. But i can't. As the naval reactor program grows in scope and more companies engage in manufacturing components for it, our difficulties with conventional components multiply; they get worse rather than better. I have no sweeping solution for this never-ending problem, but several things can be done:
1. More effective management and engineering attention should be given to the routine and conventional aspects of our technology. Nothing must ever be taken for granted. Management must get into the details of problems, look at hardware first hand, analyze the cause of trouble by personal investigation, and take prompt action to prevent recurrence. Management must also remember that things once corrected do not stay corrected. A credo of management ought to be that every human endeavor has a “half-life”.
2. Management and engineers must not conclude that their job is over once drawings have been completed and the first component successfully built and tested to these drawings. This is far from the whole sotry. To be satisfactory a component not only must perform its function, it must do so reliably and consistently. This requires that it be easy to manufacture, inspect and maintain in the field ── by personnel of average skills. This invariably demands simplicity of design, and usually requires redesign of the first model. I don't believe this concept of what makes a good design is well understood.
3. Industry must take responsibility for developing better understanding of many basic processes in use today. Technical societies such as yours can play an important part here. One way of reaching better understanding is by methodically investigating every problem so as to determine its cause. Customers must inform manufacturers of all deficiencies they discover in equipment. This will help manufacturers improve production performance. In the naval reactors program we make every defect or failure to meet specifications, no matter how small, the subject of a special report from the ship or shipyard. This is followed in detail until corrective action has been taken and all concerned are advised of the problem and also of its remedy.
4. Specifications and standards must be thoroughly understood, respected, and enforced by manufacturers as well as by customers. It should be of concern to us that specifications are normally written by the manufacturers and therefore usually represent the lowest standard of engineering to which all manufacturers are willing to agree. This should be changed. Specifications and standards should be set by the customer with manufacturers acting only in a consulting capacity. This is another area in which technical societies could play an important part. They ought to see to it that industry develops comprehensive specification requirements are consistently and rigorously enforced. Technical societies must carefully guard against becoming “kept” organizations.
5. Quality control must be recognized as an essential tool to enable management to meet today's technological imperatives. Customers must reject deficient equipment and insist that manufacturers meet their commitments. As long as manufacturers find that defective equipment is accepted it is difficult, if not impossible, to get them to improve ── to raise theirs plateau of engineering. One of the best ways you can help raise the level of technical excellence of american industry is by insisting, as I have, on high standards of design, workmanship and quality control.
I hope what I have said will not be dismissed as “unconstructive criticism” or petulant grumbling about difficulties that “ought to be expected”. Robert Hutchins has warned that “an uncriticized society will not endure.” The point I want to make is that, at the levels of technology to which we must rise, the kind of problems we in the naval reactors group have had with conventional components of nuclear plants ought not to be “expected”. They reveal human inadequacies that must be overcome if this nation is to be competitive with its Russian challenger and with the growing power of the European common market.
For the first time in our history we face competition without benefit of the special advantages we enjoyed in the past; geographic isolation; enormously greater per capita wealth in land and mineral resources; the largest internal market. From now on we must excel without these advantages.
What I have tried today is to give you an inkling of the factors that hinder progress in reactor technology and in other new engineering development projects as well. During the remainder of this 44th annual national metals congress you will be hearing about new advances in many fields, particularly in metallury. But much of the effort of the huge sums we are spending to achieve these advances will be wasted if problems in conventional and routine areas prevent us from making full use of these advances. It is a common place of history that great undertakings often founder [sp? flounder] because of negligence in some small detail, or because of some minor, obvious and easily corrected mistake.
I submit we must progress, and we must pay the price of progress. We must accept the inexorably rising standards of technology and we must relinquish comfortable routines and practices rendered obsolete because they no longer meet the new standards.
This is our never-ending challenge.
metals engineering quarterly
february, 1963
Rickover's speech at the National Metal Congress
new york, 1962, “the never-ending challenge”
source:
https://www.slideshare.net/hammankd/neverendingchallengeasm
(access 2022-09-01, website up)
Theodore Rockwell., The rickover efffect : how one man made a difference / 1992,
(The rickover efffect : how one man made a difference / Theodore Rockwell., 1. rickover, hyman george., 2. nuclear submarines ── united states ── history.
3. admirals ── united states ── biography., 4. united states., navy──biography, V63.R54R63 1992, 359.3'2574'092--dc20, united states naval institute, Annapolis, Maryland, 1992 )
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