Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Reactor. Industrial use of atomic energy is 20 years away, said Dr. Lyle B. Borst, boss of the Government's atomic project at Brookhaven, Long Island...
Hazardous Past. The tight-lipped Atomic Energy Commission did not tell all it knows about the new "reactor." The active substance is plutonium, which wrecked Nagasaki. This time it is under exact control. In operation since last November, the tame bomb can be throttled down until "the heat produced in the core of the reactor is no greater than that given off by a kitchen oven...
Hopeful Future. "The heart of the fast reactor," the report explains, "is a small vessel"; but apparently the vessel must be surrounded by a good deal of auxiliary apparatus. "Since the heat is generated in a relatively small region, special cooling provisions are required to prevent overheating of the center of the reactor...
...plutonium pile has been used only for research, where it has been extremely useful: "The fast reactor gives a more intense source of fast neutrons than physicists heretofore have been able to obtain, except during the brief time of the test of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert...
Keeping its secrets close to its chest, the A.E.G. hardly mentioned the practical possibilities. The fast reactor must be surrounded, like its predecessors, by a thick shield to protect the neighborhood from destructive radiation. This limits its use. But the comparatively small size is an obvious advantage. The new pile, further developed and allowed to run faster and hotter, may be the furnace of tomorrow's atomic power plant...