Word: pilings
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and successors were assured of an imposing domicile. For a permanent home for Ambassadors in London, the U.S. accepted a gift from dime-store Heiress Barbara Hutton: the Georgian-Colonial-style pile she built in Regent's Park ten years ago. (". . . thoughtful of you," wrote Harry Truman to Heiress Hutton.) With it went 14 acres of lawn and garden. Among the conveniences: an indoor swimming pool, a gym, a servants' playroom, gold-plated bathroom taps, a nursery with two toilets...
...press, eager but uneasy, got its first look last week at a uranium pile in operation. The occasion: the sale at Oak Ridge of a pile-made radioactive isotope, produced as a peaceful by-product of atom bomb plutonium...
Assuming that the power source is uranium or plutonium, such an engine would require: 1) a chain-reacting pile of several tons (which would provide energy in the form of heat); 2) boilers and other equipment for converting the pile's heat into steam; 3) massive shields to protect crews from the pile's deadly radiation; 4) a conventional turbine...
...would also need equipment for: 1) removing the pile's "ash" (fission products), which slows down the chain reaction and eventually stops it altogether; 2) periodic repurifying of the uranium in the pile; 3) making repairs by remote control in case the battleship's engine broke down...
Still, a naval atomic engine would have great advantages. A pound of pure natural uranium (U-238) in a pile produces 20-400 kilowatt-hours of usable energy. An atomic-powered ship could cruise almost indefinitely without refueling, could dispense with oil storage tanks and its great weight of fuel. Engineers guesstimate that uranium as fuel would be no more costly than oil or coal...