A Problem of Power

When scientists first learned how to release atomic energy, they wanted it quickly and in staggering quantities--for the atom bomb. Later, and at more leisure, they were able to study controlled reactions--the relatively slow burning of fissionable fuel. They learned to build breeder reactors that can produce more fuel than they consume. They also built an atomic engine for a submarine, and they got to work on an atomic power plant for aircraft. But for all their concentration on military applications, scientists continued to hope that by splitting atoms in an orderly fashion, they could produce large amounts of useful commercial power.

Technical Tricks. Last month at Cumberland, England, British workmen broke ground at last for what may well be the world's first atomic-power station. This week, in the U.S., North American Aviation Inc., builders of the famed F-86 Sabre jet, announced that it has completed the designs for an experimental pilot power plant that is ready for public test--if the tester can be found to take it on.

For five years North American experts have been trying to design a practical atomic aircraft engine. So far, they have been unsuccessful. Such an engine cannot be flown, they say, until man learns more about shielding an atomic power plant. But the technical tricks they have learned by their failures have taught them how to turn nuclear energy into large amounts of electricity--on the ground.

Like Britain's Cumberland station, North American's plant will also be able to produce atomic fuel, i.e., plutonium. But its main purpose will be the study of practical production of electric power. Liquid metal (probably sodium) circulating through the reactor will absorb the tremendous heat generated by atomic fission. Piped through a water boiler, the superheated metal will produce steam. The steam, in turn, will drive a conventional turbogenerator.

2,600,000 lbs. This system for changing nuclear energy into electric power has long been known. The trick is to do the job economically. A single pound of U-235 fuel contains as much potential energy as 2,600,000 lbs. of coal. The U-235 fuel is expensive, and to use it in a reactor requires a critical mass, enough to generate a chain reaction. Providing the critical mass is much the same as stockpiling the potential power in 10 million tons of coal before a single shovelful is used.

Automatic safety devices and a host of unpredictable technical problems will raise the price of the electricity produced. But the solution to these problems may also mean an answer to man's dwindling reserves of coal and fuel oil. In an ideal nuclear power plant, says Dr. Chauncey Starr, North American's director of atomic research, 10 lbs. of fissionable material a day could produce electric power equal to the ultimate capacity of Hoover Dam.

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