Word: aec
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Some of the volumes will be reserved for well-screened scientists working on AEC projects. But the volumes available to the general public (about 60) will contain information for which U.S. industry and science have been clamoring. During the war many of the nation's best scientists, working at skull-bursting pressure, concentrated on bombmaking. While they were about it, they were forced to solve innumerable lesser problems, which led to various new techniques, machines and instruments...
...AEC believes that full knowledge of these accomplishments will make U.S. technology more efficient. The only way to keep the U.S. safely ahead in the field of atomic weapons, AEC reasons, is to indoctrinate U.S. industry in the methods of nuclear science. Then, when other nations have our atomic "secrets" (or discover them on their own), the U.S. will still have a commanding lead...
Besides this down-to-earth motive, the AEC believes that the public needs a lot of education. At present, most plain citizens are almost superstitiously fearful of everything connected with the exploding atom. Their jitters keep them from reasoning calmly. When atomic knowledge has spread more widely, AEC believes, people will get their bearings and learn to live with the atom, which is here to stay...
While the AEC stood still, military staffs and armchair strategists toyed (that seemed to be the word) with the possibilities of the atom. One current and quite plausible notion of how to keep the Red Army from seizing Europe: drop intensely poisonous atomic dust to form a barrier between the U.S.S.R. and the land to the west of it. Such a cordon might last for years; it would not, however, prevent the Russians from developing bacteriological weapons, possibly more deadly than the atom (see MEDICINE), which could be sent across the barrier...
...AEC is supposed to work out control of germ warfare, too. It will get around to that when & if the Russians ever agree to atomic control...