Stay Away from My Door

The cheers were still echoing around the world for the men of the Nautilus and Skate, first submarines to sail beneath the North Pole, when a sudden unwelcoming noise was heard from Denmark. Socialist Premier H. C. Hansen abruptly announced that Skate would not be allowed to make a scheduled call on Copenhagen. His Cabinet, except for the Defense Minister, had agreed that to have the submarine's nuclear reactor in the harbor was too much of a risk to take.

Toward Manhattan. At first everyone, including much of the Danish press, pooh-poohed Denmark's decision, and some nations openly hooted. A spokesman for the French Atomic Energy Commissariat pronounced it "extraordinary and absurd in view of the fact that the crew has lived aboard the Skate for so long with no sign of contamination." Officials in The Netherlands and West Germany said they would be delighted to receive Skate. Washington fired off a barrage of reassurances. Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover declared that ''there has been a review of all possible mishaps," and that the submarine was safe. The State Department pointed out that Nautilus was even then steaming under water toward a welcome in New York City waters.

The Danes stood their ground. Their Atomic Energy Commission, which includes Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr, Denmark's grand old man of nuclear physics, had bluntly warned its government that should the Skate have a serious accident in the Copenhagen harbor, dangerous radioactive materials might be released. "If only one-fourth of the radioactivity aboard got out," said one physicist darkly, "all human beings within a mile around would perish." Suddenly Premier Hansen did not stand alone: it turned out that the British had also had qualms about the recent visit of the Nautilus. Sure enough, when asked, Her Majesty's government admitted to having welcomed the Nautilus at Portland (pop. 15,000) precisely because the port was small enough to be "suitable." British atomic authorities, who had been queried by the Admiralty, advised against letting the Nautilus go up the Thames (Greater London pop. 8,300,000) on the reasoning applied "to the siting of land-based reactors, namely, that until we have gained some years of practical experience it would be prudent to avoid heavily built-up areas."

"In the Unlikely Event . . ." For the U.S. builders of the submarines, not the question, but the sudden public interest in it, was new. Should a submarine be hit at top speed by another ship, the result might indeed be disaster. But in port, the experts argued, no ship would be traveling fast enough to penetrate the heavy shielding built around the reactor. "However," said Admiral Rickover, "in the unlikely event that a collision would be so severe and so precisely located as to penetrate the submarine's hull and its reactor system, the reactor is so located in the ship that water flooding into the ship would also flood the reactor, and prevent the release of any significant amount of radioactivity to the surroundings."

Without waiting for the reassurance, thousands of Norwegians turned out in Bergen (pop. 115,000) as the Skate made its first port after the North Pole.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.