How to Break the Crust and Come Back Again

While Physicist William Mansfield Adams was working at the atomic Energy Commission's Livermore laboratory in California, he heard a lot about Project Mohole, and he did not believe what he heard. Mohole's goal is to drill through the earth's crust to see what the earth below is made of, and Adams questioned whether conventional drilling methods could reach much deeper than five miles, one-quarter of the desired distance. The doubting physicist worked out a radically different scheme for doing the job.

Adams' crust piercer, which he patented and assigned to the AEC, is a high-temperature nuclear reactor designed to melt its way into rock. The reactor is 2 ft. to 3 ft. in diameter, and its active material (uranium oxide) is enclosed in a cylinder of beryllium oxide, which serves as a heat insulator. The lower point, mostly tungsten, is heavy, while the upper point, mostly beryllium, is light.

Puddle of Lava. The "Needle Reactor," as Adams calls it, will be placed in a shallow shaft before its nuclear reactor is allowed to go critical. Quickly the temperature will rise to about 1,100DEG C. (2,012DEG F.), which is hot enough to melt most rock. Because of the insulation around the midsection, most of the heat will flow downward; soon the lower point will be surrounded by a puddle of lava. The needle reactor will gradually drop into this plastic stuff, and the lava will close over it and solidify.

The reactor will sink toward the center of the earth, moving in a bubble of molten rock. Pressure on its sides will rise enormously, but Adams is not afraid that it will be crushed; it will have no inner cavities to collapse. He figures it can penetrate about 20 miles before pressure and temperature get too high for its comfort. Then it will automatically start to rise.

Blowing Whale. The heavy lower point, Adams explains, will be attached in such a way that the pressure or temperature at a predetermined depth will release it. Freed from this ballast, the needle will be lighter than molten rock, and it will float instead of sinking. At last it will surface like a blowing whale, bringing with it samples of deep-down lava that have forced their way into depressions in its shell.

Adams estimates that a needle reactor will need about three months to drop 20 miles. He thinks the best place for a trial run would be one of the rock salt domes that poke to the surface along the Gulf of Mexico shore; the needle reactor should bubble through them as carelessly as a skindiver. Later models can tackle the sterner granite and basalt that form most of the rest of the earth's crust.

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