Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...U.S.S.R. showed a working model of the year-old 5,000-kw. power plant in operation about 50 miles outside Moscow, reported that a new 100,000-kw. reactor-probably of a similar design, and therefore behind U.S. models-will go into action within a year and will provide power on a competitive cost basis with coal-fed plants. The Russians also said that they are building the world's biggest atom smasher, one that will hurl protons (hydrogen nuclei) with energies as high as 10 billion volts against the nuclei of target atoms, enabling Soviet scientists to study...
...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...
...revealed that one U.S. town has briefly been supplied all its electricity by a small atomic reactor. In a special test, Arco, Idaho (pop. 1,200) was cut off from its regular power supply for an hour last July 17, drew its current solely from a 2,000-kw. boiling-water-type "Borax" reactor at the AEC's testing station 20 miles away...
...also came one of the few somber notes to temper Geneva's optimism. In a paper written with two co-workers (Roger McCollough, Mark Wells), the University of California's famed H-expert, Edward Teller, warned that science has not yet found sure ways to prevent peaceful reactors from blowing up. "[Despite] all the inherent safeguards that can be put into a reactor," said Teller, ". . . it is important to emphasize . . . the public hazard that might follow a reactor accident . . . [Because of leaking radiation] it may be necessary to evacuate a large city, to abandon a watershed and . . . make...