Giant Stride

Across the U.S. last week, nuclear energy for peacetime use took a giant stride forward. From the Atomic Energy Commission, which two months ago revealed a $55 million project by the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York to build a 250,000-kw. atomic power plant near Peekskill, N.Y. (TIME, Feb. 21), came news that four more big public and private groups want to build atomic power stations in the East and Midwest.

The Yankee Atomic Electric Co., a group of twelve New England power companies, plans to build a 100,000-kw. nuclear plant in western Massachusetts, and hopes to have it finished by 1957. A second group of nine firms, including Detroit Edison Co., has asked permission to build another 100,000-kw. plant in the Detroit area by 1958. A third planner, Consumers Public Power District of Columbus, Neb., plans to have a 75,000-kw. nuclear reactor running in Nebraska a year later, while still a fourth group, including Chicago's Commonwealth Edison Co., wants to build a bigger 180,000-kw. nuclear power plant near Chicago by 1960.

All told, the four plants will cost $150 million, some 90% of which the public and private power groups are prepared to put up themselves. Together, they will add 455,000 kw. of electrical capacity to the

U.S. power total, enough to light 1,570,000 homes. Furthermore, the estimated costs of nuclear power are dropping rapidly. New York's Con Edison said that the electricity would cost only about 9 mills per kw-h v. 7.5 mills per kw-h for a standard, nonatomic power plant.

Besides the new plants, there was plenty of other progress on the atomic frontier last week:

P: In Hartford, Conn., United Aircraft's Pratt & Whitney Division revealed that it would start work on its supersecret atomic plane-engine laboratory for the Air Force this July, and that it will cost $30 million. The laboratory, to be paid for by the Government, will be finished by 1957, employ between 2,000 and 3,000 workers, 8.5% of P. & W.'s total Hartford work force.

P: In Pittsburgh, Westinghouse Electric Corp., which is already building a nuclear reactor for the world's first atomic power plant and a $2,000,000 atomic research center, announced a new plan to make Pittsburgh the "atomic capital of the world" by building a second $6,000,000 lab to do research and development work on peacetime uses for the atom.

P: In San Francisco, Stanford University's Research Institute and the Atomic Industrial Forum held their first conference on peacetime atomic energy, drew 530 businessmen, engineers and scientists from every corner of the U.S. At the conference, such companies as Kaiser Engineers, Glenn L. Martin Co. and American Machine & Foundry reported that they were expanding their nuclear laboratories by as much as 300%, spending up to four times as much money as before. One group of 33 companies, banded together in a combine called Atomic Power Development Associates, announced that it was upping its budget to nearly $4,000,000 this year (v. $2,500,000 in 1954) for research on breeder reactors for nuclear power plants.

No businessmen at the conference thought that the Atomic Age had already arrived. Everyone agreed that it might be years before research on nuclear projects showed up on profit sheets. But the prospects are dazzling. Before the businessmen, Gordon Molesworth, an atomic energy consultant for a Manhattan brokerage firm, laid out the requirements for power plants alone during the next 20 years. Said he: By 1975 atomic power plants will be producing 100 million kw. annually, some 25% of the U.S. total. To build them, U.S. industry will need a capital of at least $40 billion. Added Molesworth: "Beyond that, we have allowed nothing for domestic financing of power reactors and other nuclear facilities for the foreign market . . . For the investor there is no greater area of opportunity."

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