4
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1954.
HARNESSING ATOMIC POWER
PRACTICAL USES
T will be recalled from
previous articles that the devices in which atomic fuels are burn-
frequently furnaces."
A
ure
long, because it had no cooling system and no shield.
One Purpose
compared
was the first research reactor to produce enough heat at a sufficiently high tempera- tare to permit the generation of some usable power, but it has never been used for this purpose. The cooling air leaves the reactor at a temperature of 330 degrees F-hot enough to operate a email steam power plant, but not hot enough to operate it efficiently.
FOR
Chapter 8 of an interesting, revealing series by GORDON DEAN, Chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1950-53
mactor
For Planes
The achievement
now
must be
held
A
Page
CHILD SINGERS CRY WAY
TO A FORTUNE
********** from
DONALD LUDLOW
New York. Korea and Mommy Cries All Day;" and "Three and Four in Eight."
ita teristic that makes it well worth with other power capacity
kilowatts, or diesel engines, and, to use of 250 available in the Northwest.
enough to supply several blocks diesels, which requo oxygen working towards, is the almost This reactor, completed in of modern homes. In case you anki Since construction of the first
produco an
it unlimited range it promises to exhaust,
One give our military aircraft. pile at Chiengo in 1942, the 1950 as a research facility for would like one on your street, must surface. Manhattan Engineer District and the Brookhaven
National however, I think you abould With an atomie engine, how might think in terms of several trips around the globe without ed are called nuclear reac- the Atomic Energy Commission Laboratory, is generally similar know that the EBR cost nearly over, which requires no ofry the necessity of refuelling. But tora. Since many people are have built more than score of to the Oak Ridge Graphite $3,000,000, exclusive, of the cbet and which can operate for very
research and
periods development Reactor, except that it is larger of fuel. This is an example of long
of time accustomed to thinking of a
under there are a host of problems not encountered In ather atomic or encoun without reactors, as well as a number and operates at a much higher usable power, but it is a for water
refuelling nuclear reaction in terms of of reactors dosigned
a major for the power level-30,000
the vessel has power applications, and
GROUP of precocious kilowatts. cry from economically fenable recharging. also sole fire, they
producing Đ purpose
It uses natural
range
the one is to design a shield that is uronlum as fuck
limited power.
only by called "atomic plutonium. To gain a feeling and graphite as the neutron Completed at Oak Ridge in
endurance of the crew.
light enough to be taken aloft child singers in the and will at the same time United States are well on for the trend of reactor devolop- moderator, The shield is of 1952, the homogeneous ment over the past ten years, iron and concrete, and the experiment (HRE) early this
protect the crew from dangerous their way to becoming mil- radioactivity.
lionaires before they leave. There are about as many It might be profitable to con- cooling agent is air.
year became the second known reactor in the world to produce
Shielding usually means lead, kinds of nuclear reactors as wider some of the projects that
This are now play-
useful electric
The oil have played, or
power.
of atomic and lead is very heavy; and school-eome before they there are coal, gas and
ing, a key role in its advance
power it produces is enough to powered flight is one of the obviously in an acropane weight are old enough, even, to supply electricity to about fifty longest range projects furnaces. Some are compact, ment.
to a minimum. read the fine print in their with fuel receptacles no
homer, but, like the EBR, it
being worked on in the Beld These problems will be salvoa. fat contracts. football, bigger than
would be expensive electricity. of atomic energy. It is also one however, and we shall some day The reactor itself cost $1,000,000 at the most difficult and ex- ste on aeroplane powered by a while others are as large as
Work is
reactor. neverthelesa and it took about $3,000,000 la pensly develop it. u house.
Densive. under way to develop an atom.c altcraft engine for the U.S. Air Force, and a test facility is now under construction at the Com- mission's Heactor Testing Station The submarine thermal reactor in Idaho, Completed In 1951 at the
18 the Lend based Atomic Energy Commission's (STR)
The great appeal of the air- Reactor Testing Station in prototype of the engine that will
God the enure ced in the world to produce power launched at Groton, Connecticut, submarine, the USS Nautilus, Idaho, this was the first reactor go into the first atomic-powered craft reuctor, and they Fun! on neutrons slowed
to generate electricity. Although by
The graphite.
the electricity has been
used to
which recently to The prototype, reactors ure severni stories light the laboratory and operate began
is located at high and contain thousands of
Energy Commission's equipment, including peg blocks of graphite and
the the Atomating, thou-
Testing pumps that circulate the cooling sands of cylinders of uranium
model agent through the reactor, the first seagoing (called "slugs") which are re- ail there is to this atomic p; moved after months of nuclear subsidiary to the main purpose house Corporation at the Com-
power production experiment la construction by the business why don't we just cooking 90 that the newly build ourselves
of the-e
created plutonium can be ex- stoke them tracted. atomic furnaces, good with atomic fuel, thro in a pallful or two of heave water, and let them go to wisk for us?"
UnG
The first of these went into service In 1944, The Hanford reactors have been designed for List one purpose: to produce neutrons from U-235 for chang- ing uranium-238 into plutonium
The kind of reactor uste chooses to bulld depends largely wishes to do upon what with it. If the objective i produce a dense atmosphere ui for bombs. They are fed with neutron to chunge uranium- natural uranium, which contains 230 into plutonium, that is one both the uranium-235 fuel and thing; if the objective is develop a compact, high-powered the uranium-238 that is needed,
engine for a submarine, that quite another.
1
have heard some
Slowling Bay, upon described to them:
Rome
B **]
ไป
reacken that as
First Reactor
Lx
dif-
of its
The reactors are cooled by purified water from the
nearby Columbia River. So much heat is generated that a good part
It
A
of the reactor and is carried on for research purposes only.
Breeding
رما
Atom Sub
Station In Idaho. The
as
ת!
is under
Westing-
PHLS- loo for
W
(Copyright by Gordon Dean)
11
in
ns
The children-Jimmie Boyd Baby 14: Gayla Peevey eight; Pam, seven (plus a few others with such unlikely names
Molly Texas Sunshine Ruby, Bee, Sonny Boy, Nelly Honey and Kansas Pete)-now all the
air-waves from New York to San
Francisco.
more
The singers, from five- A curious aspect of this new year-olds to teenagers, are fad is that people are prepared lisping, sighing and cry to pay fantastic sums for what punish- ing their way through such many consider sheer
ment. (Monday: Look behind the immortal compositions
Jimmie Boyd, for example, iron curtain---what our Intel-"I Want a Hippopotamus has cleared more than half a ligence and scientists KNOW for Christmas"; "Too Old million dollars in little
has Russia
accomplish- for Toys, Too Young for then a year,
He has seven men working ed in atomic energy field).Boys"; "My Daddy is
for him--manager, booking agents, publicists, secretaries.
His parents have hired a full- time tutor to prevent his school. Ing interfering with his money- making efforts, and vice versa. The tutor recently was flown to Las Vegas, Nevada, to join Jimmie when the boy appeared on a three-week engagement at a combined hotel and gambling
I NEED A SUIT, SAYS THE PRIME MINISTER
By
Salisbury, South Rhodenia. WELL, how does it feel to be a Prime Minis- I asked the man who the South Rhodesian General Election,
ter?
won
"I suppose I'll have to gel a new suit," he sold.
James Wynter
acals in the House. Indepen- dents got the other four.
How does a man get from a
station to the mission
top of
move-up
seven years heckled Sir
the Government?
For Mr Todd the started one night
when he ago Godfrey Huggins.
Sir Godfrey was impressed and invited him to join the
He United Party,
became an
mission's laboratory
and it is not burgh, behind the prototype.
For fuel, the STR UBES uranium enriched In U-235 in the form of solid pieces of metal The main purpose of this ex- submerged in a tank of highly
ordinary breeder
water reactor purified
that Columbia of the
perimental muas be
both (EUR) is investigate the serves
cooling
agent pumped through them, and the
known
The heat pro and moderator. "breeding. temperature of the river below process
will be produced by a duced by the reactor the Hanford plant is raised by The neutrons This is, of course, an obvine.
Mnuclear Are cun be used to taken out by circulating water th! but it implies
a measurable amount. Not only question,
U-238 into change
bojler where steam will plutonium 10 everything
little simpler is power wasted in this way, and thorium into U-233. The be produced to operate a turbine than is actually the case, and but power must also be used to
idea of breeding" in to do this to power the submarine as well through the fue It
immense the
pump the water Ignores
No efficiently that more fuel is as a turbo-generator to produce therefore
In the created than is consumed in ferences between power per 20. reactors.
electricity. usable power, and economieally doubly wasteful process.
means of It will process a potential
not be economically feasible power.
mineable feasibic
the power but The trouble with the Hanford chinging
uranium and thorium in the trolling factor is military value, Every reactor that has ever reactors, 30 far as power pro-
value of the been built ha produced some duction is concerned, is that the world into fissionable fuel. The and the military
wil be its them is Commission announ ed in June atomic submarine produced in power in the form of heat. The heat
breeding 1953 that
entirely sub- had been ablilty to travel MOTC In terms of world's first reactor, the uranium measured
His United achieved in the EBR.
for thousands of miles. than of tem-
merged
stands and graphite pile built by Enrico quantity rather
EBR's fuel
The power plant of a normal which uranlum-235 Chicago in 1942, perature, and high temperature
between white Fermi
are submarine, while it is
is operating its cooling agents of is really level reached a top power
what is needed it and
und sodium.
under These
water, is its storage bat-men, about 200 watts of heat energy steam is to be made and useful potassium
An orthodox submarine is 10 be produced itquid metals leave the EBR at lories, (enough to light two average power
can therefore travel under water
theology and settled a temperature of 600 degrees F. The reactors could sized lamps) for a very short efficiently.
stcom at high speed for only a very period of time. It could not be no doubt be rigged up to pro- high enough
some usable power, but efficiently. The steam operates short period before Its batteries allowed to go any higher, how duce
To recharge. in turn drives need recharging. have studies not even
shown that
turb'ne that { ever, and it could
with д the submarine generator
must
ድ
It
stay at this low level for very would be extremely expensive an electric
the E11
to make
con.
This Premier with the human touch is Reginald Stephen Gar- tall and with field Todd eft, muscles which could have made him a boxer had he not pro- ferred to be a missionary.
Rhodesia
Party, for partnership men and black knocked out the Con- federate Party of Colonel. G. R. Musgrave, who champions racial separation,
So strong was the support for Mr Todd's policy of 'partnership USE ll- that his party won 2d of the 30
M.P. And when Sir Godfrey was elected first Prime Minister of the Central African Federn- Mr Todd tion last September, succeeded him as Prime Minin- ter of South Rhodesia,
1
this Now for B close-up of husky man. He came from New Zealand with
degree in with his wife at a mission in the birth.
Airl There they tended the cans in sickness and health- dressing sptar wounds, pulling
teeth, taking part in weidings, funerals too, and Binding what the African wanted and needed to keep him well and happy.
That Is part of Mr Todd's "The polley today. He African needs somewhere pro- per to live in with a
заув
family comfort
lease long-term
and
arcurity."
So the Premier
proposes bulid African settlements
to 15
nites from the towns and ected to them by swift cheap transport
tun-
and
at
casino.
POPULAR FAVOURITE Another popular favourite named Charlie Appiowhite, A 19-year-old who
towers
oft. 2in., recently eashed in on the child-singer craze
New in York,
Charlie, now a star of Milton Berle's weekly coast-to-coast television show moɑns in the manner of Johnny Ray for fee of £2,000
Little
week.
Pecvey,
4
an
Gayla Ethel Merman-voiced eight- year-old, whose singing of "I Want D Hippopotamus Lor Christmas" sold more than half
ச
This 46-year-old six-footer
million recorda just before with the burning eyes of a man with visions starts work Christmas, received her training commercials weather 7 a.m. in shirt elceves and types singing
over an Oklahoma radio station. his own policy statements,
Sometimes
breakfasts Her warbling of that balled he
milk-proved so plaintive that sym- alone
raspberry
pathetic Oklahomans banded chake and toasted cheese in a Salisbury milk bär.
together, with some help from There are, never any
agent, and bought armed her Press
to Gaylan poeing outside
£6,000 hippopotamus detectives guard him.
оть п
for Christmas.
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