New Plant in Ohio

Last week U.S. taxpayers got another reminder of the high cost and complexity of arms in the atomic age. From Washington came an announcement that the Atomic Energy Commission was planning to spend $1.2 billion on construction of a 6,500-acre installation in Pike County, Ohio, approximately 80 miles east of Cincinnati.

Like the original atomic-energy plant at Oak Ridge, the Pike County installation will produce U-235, the radioactive isotope whose fission can produce the energy for an atomic-bomb blast. A major step in the current U.S. program to speed up atomic stockpiling in the light of Soviet possession of the atom bomb, construction of the Pike County plant is expected to take four years, though some units of it will go into operation earlier than that.

Chosen as a plant site because of the availability of water and, potentially, of power, Pike County is rolling farming country, where the last big excitement was during Prohibition, when "Feds" roamed the hills looking for corn-liquor stills. Last week most of the 17,000 residents of Pike County, assured that they wouldn't run any serious risk of radiation sickness, greeted the new federal invasion with unalloyed enthusiasm. Land prices were already soaring in anticipation of an eventual influx of 4,000-5,000 permanent employees of the new plant and 30,000 construction workers who will be brought in by major contractor Peter Kiewit Sons' Co. of Omaha (see BUSINESS) and a covey of architects and designers. In Piketon, the owner of a small hotel announced that she had been offered $30,000 for her business, added thoughtfully: "It isn't worth $15,000." Said County Sheriff Jesse Foster: "The very first thing we'll need will be a new jail."

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