Word: absorbingly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...core of their blast hot enough to burn ordinary steel like paper. The planes themselves are approaching speeds at which aluminum aircraft skins would lose their strength, then melt. Nor is heat the only problem. Building of the first atomic reactors disclosed the fact that most metals absorb or "eat up" the atomic neutrons needed to provide the fission and motive power...
...third lighter, is encroaching on aluminum's domain (Douglas's 1,238-m.p.h. Skyrocket has a magnesium-sheet fuselage). In the field of atomic power the most important metal, next to uranium, is zirconium. Reason: it is one of the few metals yet found which will not absorb atomic neutrons. But it is a frightening metal to process; in powder form it is so unstable that it will ignite from the motion of just being transferred from one dish to another. Its ores are more plentiful than tin, but the metal itself is still scarce...
This is what has been done at Arco under the direction of Dr. Walter Zinn of the Argonne National Laboratory. The AEC has given few details, but the reactor certainly used new structural materials (such as zirconium) which absorb very few neutrons, leaving enough to breed an excess of plutonium. It must have been running long enough to prove that it actually "breeds...
...World War II, the FRB also had to peg bond prices to enable the Treasury to float the tremendous additional debt ($226,500,000,000) to finance the war. The issues were so huge that only banks, rather than individuals, could absorb most of them. This "monetized" the debt, for banks did not pay for the bonds outright. They simply created a deposit for the Government to draw checks against it. Receivers of these checks deposited them in their own bank accounts. From these increased deposits, the banks could lend about $5 for each $1 received. Thus credit, and inflation...
Like Britain's Cumberland station, North American's plant will also be able to produce atomic fuel, i.e., plutonium. But its main purpose will be the study of practical production of electric power. Liquid metal (probably sodium) circulating through the reactor will absorb the tremendous heat generated by atomic fission. Piped through a water boiler, the superheated metal will produce steam. The steam, in turn, will drive a conventional turbogenerator...