Word: aec
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Greatest Deterrent. Physicist Taylor's warning has not been lightly taken; his credentials are impressive. During his seven years at the AEC's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, he specialized in the design of compact and efficient A-bombs. Though Taylor admits that the fabrication of such devices is beyond the capability of basement bombsmiths, he feels that the manufacture of less sophisticated and powerful weapons...
...become an increasingly common reactor fuel. As a result, traffic in the stuff will swell. It will be shipped from processing plants to fabricating plants (where it is made into fuel rods that are unusable for weapons), to nuclear installations, and then back again for reprocessing. In addition, the AEC's highly touted "breeders," a new generation of reactors that produce considerable amounts of plutonium, will increase the "ploot" supply. According to some estimates, by the year 2000 the annual production of plutonium in the U.S. will be 600,000 Ibs.-and most of this will be in commercial...
With so much of the material around, terrorists might not find it too difficult to get their hands on it. Hijacking could be relatively easy even though shipments are accompanied by armed guards. The AEC is tightening its security measures against theft, but some weapons-grade material is lost during processing and merely written off as MUF (materials unaccounted for). If an employee-conspirator decided to accumulate a critical amount of plutonium by helping himself to a little MUF at a time, the loss might never be detected. Weapons-grade material could also be taken by force in a direct...
Nader discussed the potential hazards of using nuclear reactors to produce electricity, and said that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has been attempting to suppress reports that indicate that nuclear power plants are unsafe...
Henry W. Kendall, a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Boston and professor of Physics at MIT, said before Nader spoke that nuclear power plants in the U.S. have been built hastily, through "massive mismanagement in the AEC...