Coming of Age

Little more than an hour after the experiment began, Physicist Enrico Fermi performed several rapid calculations on a three-inch slide rule, then turned to the 41 scientists gathered with him on a balcony. "The reaction," announced Fermi, "is self-sustaining." In celebration, the scientists broke out a bottle of Chianti and drank it from paper cups. Thus, in a squash court on Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, the promise of an atomic age was born 25 years ago last week.

Since that shining moment of man's ascendancy over nature, the atom's peril has more often overshadowed its promise. The U.S. alone has enough nuclear megadestruction stored in warheads to equal the explosive power of ten tons of TNT for every person on earth. Efforts to harness the atom's illimitable energy for peaceful uses have been as humble as its squash-court birth. Despite glowingly optimistic predictions, the atom has remained little more than an experimental tool in medicine, mining and a myriad of other fields. Only now is nuclear energy beginning to prove its promise.

"The takeoff in the last few years for using the atom commercially has been little short of phenomenal," declares the White House's Special Assistant on Science Robert Barlow. "Today it seems like any guess you make is wrong--everybody is drastically revising their estimates."

Into the Marketplace. The major advances have been in nuclear-power plants. Five years ago, experts estimated that atomic generators would be supplying 40 to 57 million kilowatts of electricity by 1980. Now they believe nuclear power will provide 120 to 170 million kilowatts by then--accounting for one-third of the expected power needs of the country. There are now 16 operable atomic-power plants in the U.S. capable of turning out 2,800,000 kilowatts of electricity (v. the nation's total conventional capacity of 258.3 million). So successful have they been that 17 more are under construction, 39 are on order and eleven others are planned. Altogether, they will increase the total capacity of atomic-fueled generators to 55 million kilowatts.

Reason for the surge in nuclear-power plant construction: they are finally becoming competitive with natural gas and coal. While the original atomic-power plants generated 60,000 kilowatts at a cost of eight mills per kilowatt-hour--v. four mills for power from coal and gas installations--new million-kilowatt plants may even undercut the costs of conventional electricity. Each of the Tennessee Valley Authority's two new 1,065,000 kilowatt private nuclear-power plants, to be built at Brown's Ferry, Ala., is expected to produce electricity at a cost of only 31 mills per kilowatt-hour. The new competitiveness of the atom, says one Government scientist, has "really put the fear of God into the coal industry."

Golden Age. With good cause. In a nation increasingly concerned with its natural resources, nuclear generators will not pollute the air-o and--within the next decade or two--may even reproduce uranium-based fuel to power atomic "furnaces." Being developed under top priority by the Atomic Energy Commission are "breeder" reactors, so called because in the process of generating power they will also create atomic fuel faster than they use it through a process of atomic conversion.

Breeder reactors are only the start of an atomic golden age envisioned by scientists. Already a $500 million dual nuclear power and desalination plant is scheduled for construction about 1969 off Huntington Beach in Southern California. It will produce 1,800,000 kilowatts of electricity and 150 million gallons of distilled water daily, enough to supply a city of 750,000. Such a plant, however, hardly taps the atom's bountiful potential.

Oak Ridge scientists foresee a multipie-purpose atomic plant that would generate 1,000,000 kilowatts of electricity, distill 400 million gallons of water daily, and, from the residue of the salt water, produce 2,000 tons of ammonia and 360 tons of phosphorus. One such plant could irrigate and fertilize 200,000 acres that in a year would yield 1 billion pounds of grain. That is sufficient food, says AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg, "to feed almost 2,500,000 people at a level of 2,400 calories per day. In addition, it could export enough fertilizer to cultivate 10 million more acres, enough to feed tens of millions of people."

By the time such "agroindustrial" nuclear centers are developed, scientists expect the atom also will have progressed apace in other fields. Thus a nuclear installation located on the seashore would be serviced by a port excavated by nuclear explosives. Fishermen would deliver their catch to be preserved by atomic irradiation. From the sea water would be processed potassium and magnesium, while excess electricity would be used to make steel and calcium carbide. Electrolysis would produce aluminum and copper, and other electrical techniques would turn out nitric acid and acetylene and ethylene.

To commemorate the achievement that, a quarter-century ago, made possible such dreams, scientists gathered last week at the University of Chicago to reflect on the atom's past and future. At exactly 3:36 p.m. Saturday, the time Fermi first announced the staggering accomplishment of a man-made chain reaction, a three-ton bronze sculpture by Henry Moore was unveiled at the site of the old squash court. Titled Nuclear Energy, the massive work of art looks like a destructive atomic cloud and, at the same time, like a skull symbolizing man's intellect and reason.

-oThough, like conventional generators, their expulsion of hot water into rivers threatens aquatic life and is causing concern among conservationists.

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