One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

Dr. Coward eventually became the Director of Safety in Mines Research, Ministry of Fuel and
Power, Great Britain. Certainly the work of Dr. Coward and his collaborators was important in
preventing gas explosions in coal mines, but the results were also widely applicable in
metallurgical, petroleum, gas production, and other industries [Coward and Jones 1952]. The
collaboration of the Bureau with the Safety in Mines Research Board continued for many years
and also included advancements in mine rescue apparatus, fundamental studies of flammability
of coal dust, and rock dusting to prevent coal mine explosions.
Bureau technology for the coal mining industry was also applied to a wide range of potentially
explosive and flammable materials of interest to other industries and government agencies,
including the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the Department of Transportation, the Coast
Guard, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Bureau’s
Bruceton Experimental Mine did preliminary work on the explosive trigger for the atomic
bomb—specifically, the first experimental work on cylindrical implosions.
Bureau scientists also developed methods for determining flammability hazards of combustible
materials. Standard tests to determine auto-ignition temperatures, flammability limits, and
minimum ignition energies, developed by Bureau personnel, were adopted by the American
Society for Testing and Materials. Fundamental research investigated the manner in which
flames and explosions originate, propagate, and are quenched.
In the second half of the 20 th century, the Bureau’s Bruceton Experimental Mine made major
contributions to the formulation of new military explosives and to the development and safe use
of fuels and fluids for conventional aircraft, jet engines, and space vehicles. Projects for the
military and NASA included research for the destruction of earthen tunnels in Vietnam; the
effect of the extraterrestrial environment on Apollo attitude control engines; investigations on the
safe handling of hazardous materials on oil tankers; the storage and transport of liquid natural
gas, liquid hydrogen, and liquid chlorine; the safest method for ejecting burning fuel from a
space capsule at an altitude of 100,000 feet; and the effect of extraterrestrial atmospheres on the
performance of explosives [Tuchman and Brinkley 1990]. Dr. Robert W. Van Dolah of the
Bureau was one of an eight-member board that investigated the disastrous fire aboard an Apollo
space capsule in 1967 in which three astronauts were killed.
3.5.2 Metals Research
Titanium metal, which is high strength and light weight, could not be produced in practical
quantities before World War II. Therefore, in 1943, the Bureau began research efforts to
produce the metal in large quantity. Researchers developed an improved process based on one
originally created by Dr. Wilhelm Kroll, who had fled the Nazis to America. The Kroll process
was enhanced and in 1944 the Bureau began to produce titanium metal at a pilot plant in Boulder
City, NV. Further research by the Bureau perfected the process so that production of titanium
metal by the private sector was begun in 1948.
Bureau research on zirconium, with desirable properties similar to titanium, took place at its
laboratory at Albany, OR, with the goal of producing practical quantities of zirconium by way of
a process adapted from that used for titanium. As a result, beginning in 1945, the Bureau
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