Slight Thaw

ATOMIC'ENERGY

The Atomic Energy Commission, which last October put a freeze on new uranium mills until 1962, decided last week that a thaw is due. To Congress' Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. AEC Chairman Lewis L. Strauss announced a "limited'' step-up in AEC purchases of uranium concentrate from the 16 private mills now operating and the seven under construction. In addition. AEC said that four entirely new mills are needed. As Congress has pointed out. contracts for Canadian and African concentrates, which fill half of U.S. needs, will end in the early 1960s. In all, AEC wants to add about 3,000 tons of ore to the U.S. daily milling capacity of 20,400 tons previously planned for 1962. As a first move. AEC announced negotiations with International Resources Corp. to build a new mill in one of the Dakotas with a daily ore capacity of 600 tons.

Western miners and Congressmen who had complained bitterly about the freeze (TIME, March 10) were not entirely satisfied that the AEC has thawed enough. Milling capacity will be boosted only in areas where ore bodies were developed before last Nov. 1, thus giving no encouragement to the development of new finds or combatting the sharp decline in U.S. prospecting in the last six months. But Western miners hope that more thawing weather is on the way.

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