Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...There would be no radioactive fission products. This is important because the safe disposal of this dangerous material imposes a heavy cost burden on a uranium power reactor...
...fusion reactor might not contain a large amount of radioactive fuel, as uranium reactors do. If so, it would be less hazardous. The possibility, however remote, that a uranium reactor may explode and spray the neighborhood with radioactivity is a serious problem...
...portentous rumor is spreading fast through U.S. atomic industry: that a "controlled fusion" (hydrogen) reactor has been or may soon be achieved. Nothing has come into the open, and Atomic Energy Commission officials refuse, sometimes nervously, to answer questions touching remotely on the subject. But the rumors have enough substance to worry electric power companies. In the absence of assurances to the contrary, some of them are afraid that the fission (uranium) power plants they intend to build in the near future may be hopelessly outmoded before they are finished...
Intermittent Control. Ways of controlling the reaction are under debate too. One way would be to make it intermittent, with a very small amount of nuclear fuel present at a time. This would make the fusion reactor analogous to a reciprocating gasoline engine, where minute amounts of fuel are ignited and burned in series. But it might also be possible to make the reaction proceed at the desired rate by changing in some way the physical conditions in the reaction chamber...
...does not take a physicist to see that if a fusion reactor works with reasonable efficiency it would have great advantages...