Word: aec
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Within three years, the Atomic Energy Commission expects to be running one of the Navy's fast new submarines on an atomic power plant. Before summer, a task force will test late-model atomic bombs at the atoll of Eniwetok, the AEC's proving ground. Scientists have been quoting 1955 as the target time for cheap atomic-generated electric power. Three years of AEC work are nearing the payoff...
...AEC was set up by Congress in 1946 to take over the Army's atomic energy program. The new commission inherited a uranium plant at Oak Ridge, military laboratories at Los Angeles, a research program mainly directed towards weapon development, and a small supply of atomic bombs. David E. Lilienthal was appointed chairman; the Senate confirmed his appointment after a bitter and vindictive fight...
Wreckage at Zero. The effect would be strongest at "zero": directly under the burst. The AEC's own building, a solid modern structure with four thick concrete floors, would be completely wrecked, and 80% of the people in the building would be immediate blast casualties; others would die later from radiation. Windows and partitions would be hurled about as missiles. More fragile buildings like the White House would be crushed like cardboard...
Fiery Mop-Up. These immediate effects, the AEC pointed out, would be only the beginning. Through the wrecked or damaged buildings-littered with splintered timbers, furniture, papers and merchandise-fire would spring up and spread. Fire-fighting equipment would be trapped in demolished firehouses or hampered by rubble-choked streets. Even if it reached the fires, it would have no water to fight with: broken pipes would have reduced the pressure in the mains to near zero. The roaring flames, perhaps stirring up a "fire storm" as they did at a standard-bomb assault on Hamburg, would kill many people...
...AEC does not estimate how much greater damage would be caused by the vastly more powerful bombs developed since those were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it hints that an enemy might prefer to explode its bombs underwater to spray Washington with radioactive water. A spray of far-flying radioactive rubble from a bomb that penetrated the ground or buildings before exploding might be even more effective...