Word: plutonium
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...producers" of radioactivity (reactor men and weapons makers) maintained that, with proper precautions, there was little to worry about. But from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's huge Hanford plutonium plant near the Columbia River in Washington, came a plain-spoken report of how even the tightest precautions have some leaks. Radioactive wastes from Hanford, e.g., phosphorous, got into the river in water that had been used to cool the Hanford reactors. The waste was first absorbed by diatoms, tiny simple-celled plants, then by the larvae of insects. Fish that ate the larvae registered a radiophosphorous concentration...
...Anderson, chairman of Congress' Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, observed: "Many things are not quite as secret as we thought." One prime example: for ten years, the U.S., Britain and Russia had independently (and secretly) measured the rate of neutron absorption by reactor fuels (U-235, U-233, plutonium); plotted on a graph at Geneva, each country's data produced precisely the same answer...
...thorium, an abundant metal once used in gaslamp mantles, as a replacement for uranium, which Britain must get at high cost from the U.S. While its atom cannot split like uranium, thorium can be converted by nuclear bombardment into fissionable U-233. In a breeder reactor seeded with plutonium or U-235, thorium could efficiently produce new fuel with compound interest. Moreover, the British announced, they are already operating a small, experimental "one-for-one" breeder reactor that produces one new neutron fuel for every neutron it consumes-well above the one-for-ten "reproduction rate" of U.S. breeder reactors...
Gentler Triggers. Although Bhabha was the first topflight scientist to predict the coming of H-power, the prospect has intrigued his brethren everywhere (TIME, July 25). Present atomic reactors all use the fission process: splitting nuclei of the heavier atoms, e.g., uranium or plutonium, to produce a controllable reaction. But fusion, used solely in the H-bomb, involves binding the nuclei of far more plentiful, lighter atoms (deuterium, lithium, etc.) under tremendous heat to produce an explosion...
...where electricity costs less than half (3 mills per kwh) the average in Britain, indicated in its Geneva revelations that it may be able to produce nuclear power at as little as 4 mills per kw-h by 1970, depending partly on how much byproduct plutonium and U-233 is bred from reactors. The first big U.S. nuclear power plant, a uranium-fueled, pressurized water reactor at Shippings-port, Pa., will start delivering 60,000 kw. to Pittsburgh...