Word: reactors
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reactor was beautifully simple. It was called a "pile," and it was literally that-a 500-ton pile of carefully machined bricks made of pure graphite. Imbedded in some of the bricks, in a precisely calculated pattern, were little cubes of uranium or uranium oxide. Long control rods, plated with the metallic element cadmium, were so set up that they could be withdrawn from, or inserted into, deep holes in the graphite...
Atomic batteries to power radio transmitters have already been used in U.S. space satellites, and an AEC project is developing a special reactor for use inside space vehicles (see SCIENCE). Before many years, AEC predicts, nuclear engines will be propelling vehicles through space, as they already propel submarines, surface warships, and the nuclear merchant ship Savannah. AEC's Project Rover is actively working toward that...
...report, AEC urged heavier stress on development of "breeder" reactors, which will create more nuclear fuel than they consume. Present-model nuclear reactors operate through fission of scarce and costly uranium 235. Natural uranium is mostly U-238; less than 1% of it is U-235. Breeder reactors would convert nonfissionable U-238 into fissionable plutonium, or convert the fairly common element thorium into fissionable U-233 (neither plutonium nor U-233 is found in nature). A few days before the 20th anniversary of the first chain reaction, AEC announced that its experimental plutonium reactor had achieved a self-sustaining...
...first built has been abandoned; U.S. authorities no longer feel driven to solve the enormously difficult design problems of a nuclear-powered aircraft. But the Pratt & Whitney engineers who sweated over the complexities of the atom plane's engine are still determined to get some sort of nuclear reactor aloft. They are working for AEC now, and last week the commission allowed them to give a glimpse of their top-secret labs...
White-Hot Metal. The most striking Middletown project is SNAP-50, a lightweight nuclear-power reactor designed to operate in space. Incorporating technical know-how gained on the airplane-engine project, this SNAP (for Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) contains liquid lithium and gaseous potassium, tricky fluids that would drive most engine designers to seek liquid solace. Molten lithium is frightening stuff; it corrodes almost anything, and bursts into flame on contact with oxygen. Gaseous potassium, while not quite so bad, is hot and explosive...