1954-02-27 — Page 7

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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