Word: reactor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hoping to float a nuclear-powered tanker by 1961, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Maritime Administration last week awarded design-study contracts totaling $400,000 to General Electric Co. and Manhattan's George G. Sharp marine-engineering firm. The plan is to install a boiling-water reactor in a conventional T-5 tanker, now being built by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. at Pascagoula, Miss. The Sharp company also is designing the first U.S. atomic passenger and cargo ship, the N.S. Savannah, for launching in 1960. The Government hopes that lessons learned in building the Savannah will make the power...
...including a smaller 5,000-kw. plant it built at Pleasanton, Calif, to get experience. G.E., like the others, thinks that if it could build three big plants in a row, it could learn enough to produce competitive power. But G.E. has no plans at the moment. As one reactor builder says: "Private industry has found that there is no money in atomic energy and no prospect of making any money...
...commercial nuclear power is so new, so complex and so costly that private companies cannot carry the burden alone. Says President Newton I. Steers Jr., of the Atomic Development Mutual Fund, Inc. (assets: $45 million), a onetime AEC official and longtime private-power advocate: "There isn't a reactor manufacturer in the U.S. who doesn't favor Government assistance to get them over the hump...
Last week the argument revolved around whether the U.S. ought to design and build an entirely new aircraft for nuclear power (time estimate: four to six years) or install a reactor to power an existing-type plane (time estimate: three years). The Navy said that it could adapt several of its seaplanes, including the experimental Martin P-6M multijet Sea-master or the old Mars, now up for sale, added that it would be safer to test a nuclear plane over sea than over land areas, where a crash might expose civilians to explosion and radiation. The Air Force said...
...this week took another step down the road toward generating electricity from atomic fuels at a cost competitive with hydroelectric power or coal power. The Argonne National Laboratory at Lemont, Ill. announced its experimental boiling water reactor, put in operation a year ago and originally designed for an output of 20,000 kw. of heat had been safely operated at a level of 50,000 kw., cutting the estimated cost of electricity per kw-h from 5.2? to 3.2?. while that price is still too high to be of commercial use, Argonne estimates that four boiling water reactors like...