Word: plutonium
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...wants to build a low-power nuclear reactor, the Atomic Energy Commission will tell him how. Last week the AEC, jointly with Britain and Canada, announced a new "Declassification Guide," which permits the release of such information. Still restricted, of course, is information about large-scale reactors (which make plutonium) and about atomic weapons themselves...
...against attack. In any future world war, Alaska would be a prize in transpolar air warfare. Here the U.S. would first intercept Russian planes curving eastward out of the Chukotsk bases (where the Soviets have been building up fuel supplies), bound for such atom-worthy targets as the Hanford plutonium plant in eastern Washington, or the West Coast aircraft plants-or possibly industrial targets in the upper Midwest. Offensively, Alaska was a strategic refueling point for transpolar...
...building the Government's $350 million Hanford plutonium plant during World War II, Du Pont agreed to a fee of $1. But it took Du Pont a long time to collect. Only last month did the Government pay off (because it took so long to terminate the contract). Last week Du Pont announced that it had signed up with the Atomic Energy Commission to make another dollar, this time by building the hydrogen bomb plant...
Last week, AEC Engineers John F. Newell and C. W. Christenson told about a promising solution of the waste plutonium problem. They found that certain "zoogleal" bacteria (which form gelatinous masses in sewage-disposal systems) have a hearty appetite for plutonium. So they filled a tank-with stones inoculated with bacteria, and trickled through it artificial sewage made of water, sugar, ammonium phosphate and flour. When the bacteria were well established, they were fed some of the deadly waste water. The helpful bugs removed from 90% to 95% of the plutonium. A series of such tanks could reduce the water...
Apparently the plutonium does the bacteria no harm. If the bugs get too "hot," the sludge in which they live can be dried to a small volume and disposed of more easily than a pondful of dangerous water...