Word: uranium
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...REACTORS. British, Dutch and U.S. scientists spelled out almost to "do-it-yourself" simplicity the operations of their most advanced reactor designs. Chief among them: AEC's Brookhaven liquid-metal fuel reactor, powered by circulating molten solution of uranium in bismuth, in a "blanket" of thorium-bismuth compound (Th 3 Bi 5 ). The thorium breeds U-233, which is recycled as fuel, making fuel costs "negligible...
...assure themselves of reactor fuel, the British are exploring the potential of thorium, an abundant metal once used in gaslamp mantles, as a replacement for uranium, which Britain must get at high cost from the U.S. While its atom cannot split like uranium, thorium can be converted by nuclear bombardment into fissionable U-233. In a breeder reactor seeded with plutonium or U-235, thorium could efficiently produce new fuel with compound interest. Moreover, the British announced, they are already operating a small, experimental "one-for-one" breeder reactor that produces one new neutron fuel for every neutron it consumes...
...delegation made fusion seem even more tantalizing by releasing for the first time cost figures for fuel, for fusion and for fission. One pound of heavy hydrogen costs only $140; one pound of pure uranium 235, used as reactor fuel, costs a whopping $11,000. Most important, a fusion reactor's fuel supply is as inexhaustible as the oceans-in every gallon of water there is one part deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to 5,000 parts of light hydrogen, easily separated by electrolysis...
...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...
Perhaps the most important U.S. contribution at Geneva was the declassification, some of it even after the conference opened, of a parade of precise details of the atomic process, e.g., how to extract uranium concentrates from raw uranium ore. With this new knowledge, other nations could save years of duplicating research, speed up their atomic programs with less cost and effort. For the small, underdeveloped nations, in particular, the rich buffet of know-how was a memorable feast. Waving a thick sheaf of scholarly reports, one Israeli scientist declared happily: "This'll keep me busy for years...