Word: reactors
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Nautilus. By Rickover's hard-driving methods and the work of his equally hard-working staff, the nuclear submarine (named Nautilus* almost by necessity) made spectacular progress. The hull and the radical propulsion system were designed simultaneously. Most iffy item, of course, was the nuclear reactor itself...
Engineer Rickover freely concedes that the reactor of the Nautilus will not be the best conceivable. "Sure," he says, "the scientists can think up thousands of reactors. But the Navy wanted a nuclear submarine, and it wanted one fast. We picked a simple type of reactor that we knew a lot about already. If we'd waited for the scientists, we'd still be fooling around...
...uranium would ultimately be used for peace or war depended on many questions and many men. But U.S. businessmen would be ready for either eventuality, thanks to something that happened on a chill May day last year in Arco, Idaho. That was the day a new kind of atomic reactor, built by Westinghouse, was first operated successfully. The reactor, pilot model of a plant to power the world's first atomic submarine, solved a key problem. The problem: since less than 1% of the world's uranium is fissionable, it might soon be exhausted as a fuel...
...strength of that success, the Atomic Energy Commission selected Westinghouse to build a "fullscale power reactor" capable of producing a minimum of 60,000 kw. of electrical energy for industrial use. Thus atomic power for industry, until 1953 merely a scientist's dream, had actually started. Onetime Investment Banker Lewis Strauss, new chairman of AEC, and his fellow commissioners agree that the best way to make atomic power plants an everyday reality is to end the Government monopoly and let private industry do more...
...companies have branched out into other field, and require men with additional skills. A typical company, North America Aviation Corporation, has become interested in guided missile and atomic energy research. Their primary needs are graduates of technical schools who specialize in "autocontrols, propulsion fuels, reactor, sold state, and irradiation physics, and reactor engineering." The process of specialization has penetrated this industry so much that two men may work on similar problems, one on rocket fuel and the other on design of the rocket motor, and never come in contact with each other. The industry-wide proportion of the various specialties...