Word: reactor
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...disadvantage of tritium is that it does not exist in nature. It has to be made at fantastic cost in nuclear reactors. Optimistic physicists hoped that a small priming of tritium would ignite large amounts of light elements that are not so hard to come by. Pessimists feared that too much tritium would be required. They pointed out that each atom of tritium manufactured in a nuclear reactor costs about one atom of U-235 or plutonium, which could be used to better advantage, they thought, in old-style fission bombs...
...getting into the AEC's atomic-power program, will explore one of five proposed methods (TIME, March 22) of producing electricity from the atom. Under a deal with AEC, North American will put $2,500,000 of its own money towards designing and building an experimental, $10 million reactor with a capacity equal to 20,000 kw. of heat which, with generators added, would light a town of 5,000, will have it ready for testing...
...Novel Reactor. The other reactors will be more unusual. One will be a "breeder" designed to make more fissionable fuel (plutonium) than the U-235 that it consumes. It will generate 15,000 kw. of electricity (the experimental breeder at Arco, Idaho generates only 170 kw.), and its pumps and other components will be big enough for a full-scale breeding power plant...
...high temperature (which favors efficiency) without high pressure, another reactor will have heat-resistant graphite as its moderator and will be cooled by a molten sodium-potassium alloy. Still another will have a novel gimmick. Its cooling water will be allowed to boil, and the steam generated will be used directly to drive a 5,000-kw. turbine. This cuts out the conventional heat exchanger used in the reactor of the submarine Nautilus to generate nonradioactive steam. Dr. Smyth did not say so, but the turbine will probably become so radioactive that it cannot be approached by humans...
Thorium Breeder. The most radical of the reactors will be "homogeneous," i.e., its uranium, instead of being in the form of solid rods, will be a solution of uranye sulfate. Dr. Smyth did not say in what liquid its uranium will be dissolved. A fair guess is that it may be heavy water. Since the reactor will be a breeder, it must be economical of neutrons, and heavy water does not absorb as many neutrons as ordinary water does. Instead of breeding U-238 into plutonium, the excess neutrons from its reacting core will be absorbed in thorium, turning...