Eastern Connecticut news., 1946-09-02

kini test we shall see blast which may have an even wider area of destruction, travelling as it will through earth and water, rather than air.
 Bishop: The whole idea of such a weapon is, to put it mildly, ghast- ly. Unless there is possibility. for constructive works of the same magnitude as the potentialities for destruction, it seems to me that atomic research should be out laWed.
 Spinrad: If there were no such possibilities, I would agree with you. But there are. The proper use of atomic energy could give us more abundant life, with the pos sibiIity of cOnQuering many di- seases, and possibility also of ACHIEVING ENTERTAINMENT TRAVEL.
 When it is perfected, and I know it shall be perfected, atomic energy will be available to all regions as a power source. Imagine desert areas brought to life by irrigation using pumped water with power for the pumps furnished by atomic energy! Imagine the opportunities for developing, and inhabiting fruitfully, desolated areas, freed from the necessity of proximity to coal or water power.
 Imagine powerful research tools for chemistry, biology, and medi- cine, in the various artificially ra- dioactive elements obtainable from a pIutonium pile. Genetic research and cancer are but two of the prob lems which may be immeasurabIy aided.
 And for the more distant future, we may imagine atomic powered space ships, carrying the human race to the moon, Mars, and be- yOnd!
 Bishop: Point granted. But how can the same source be used for both bombs and constructive purposes?
 Spinrad: That's easy. In a bomb the atomic charge blows up all at once-in matter of small fractions of second. Take the same charge, dilute it, make the fashionable ma terial disintegrate slowly, and you have power. That is what a uran- ium pile does.
 Bishop: My understanding of the function of uranium pile is to produce material for atomic bombs. Does that mean that any peacetime use of atomic energy produces bomb material which can be di- verted to atomic armament?
 Spinrad: That's about it; unless we can eliminate war or the threat of war from the international code of morality, there's no way of get ting around it. The Baruch plan and the Acheson-Lillienthal reports, however, do provide a basis for making sure that the building of atomic weapons is abolished.
 Bishop: We have been hearing a great deal about political man. euvers in regard to the Baruch plan. But the substance of the plan has been published only few times, and some of us may have missed it. Could you tell us something about it?
 Spinrad: The plan calls for the setting up of an international de- velopment authority which shall have control over all sources of uranium and thorium Chats an- other material useful for atomic energy, and all atomic production plants. It shall have the power to license for private or industrial use, to persons Or governments, quantities of denatured plutonium, which is plutonium diluted so as to make it difficult to separate the fashionable material for use in bomb, but still concentrated enough to be a good power source. With the license goes the right for in- vestigators of the authority to en- ter any part of the plant, to check possible violations.
 These investigators are supposed to be scientists, whose main func- tion in an above-board plant would be as consultans. The atomic au- thority would also have it's own re- search laboratories, so as to be able to lead the field in new dis