The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1953-06-04
New Milestone I'm Atom Field
<'BREEDING'' OF
ATOMIC FUEL is
REVOLUTIONARY
DEVELOPMENT

ATLANTIC CITY 1.-THE United
States today announced the sue
ceSsful breeding OF atomic fuel
that is. the production of at least
as much, or more, new fashionable
material as is burned up in the
process of making it.
The development is one of the
most revolutionary in the entire
atomic program. 1t was disclosed
by Chairman Gordon Dean of the
Atomic Energy Commission in a
speech prepared for the Edison
Electric Institute.
Dean cautioned his audience Of
5000 electric and power men not
to assume that economic power
from atomic energy is here. But
he called the achievement mile
stone of progress and said it ''holds
out the promise of making civil
an atomic power industry even
more feasible and attractive in the
long range than it has hitherto APP
peared to be-"
The process, Dean said, was
worked out at the Aces reactor
testing station at Arco, Idaho. He
illustrated it this way:
ITO explain to you the impact of
reaching this new milestone, l
would like to use an analogy,
albeit greatly over simplified one.
Il would like to ask you to i'm
agine a world In which only one
hundred gallons Of gasoline existed.
When that gasoline was used up,
gasoline would forever be gone
from thS earth. But let us imagine
that we coald make gasoline out
of water by burning the gasoline
we had in the presence Of water.
Let us say. for example, that by
burning up our 100 gallons of gas
oline we could change so gallons of
water into new gasoline, and that
thereafter we could. by bnrning
gasoline in the presence Of water,
always make new gasoline equiva.
lent to 80 per cent Of that which
we burned. BY such a process we
stretch out our supply Of gasoline,
but we could hardly expect to
stretch il out indefinitely for we
would always be making a little
less gasoline than we consumed.
Ultimately we would run out of
gasoline before we ran out Of wa
ter, and all the rest Of the water
in the world would be useless to
us so far as gasoline production
was concerned.
''But to pursue our over-simpli.
fled analogy. still further. now let
us assume that we succeeded in
developing a way by which we
could produce 100 CT more gallons
Of new gasoline from water for
every 100 gallons we burned. Sud.
denly we would nave made il pos
sible for ourselves 10 change grad
uaily all OF the water in the world
into gasoline. Our gasoline short
age would have vanished"
Dean said that essentially is what
has happened al Arco.
Potentially, me achievement
opens the way - making use Of
the worlds supply Of uranium 23S,
which is la0 times more plentiful
than the fiSslonabis U-755, IS q
source Of fuel for power or for
bombs. Moreover, Il may open the
way To using an supplies Of an eIe-
ment called thorium which ia even
more plentiful than uranium ezss.
Telling Of the process woFked out
in q special reaetor or furnace 1t
Areo. Dean said
The reaetog Ii operating in such
a way that 1t Is banning up urani.
am-zs5, and. tn the nrpcexs. IL IL
changing non flzsuns he Uranium
lU-Zssl into fashionable plnt0nium
al rate that il al least equal 20
the rate af whlca the uranium zss
is bang consumed
While ne declared that The de-
velopmeni meant "brigging nN b
another Euaegtcns, Dean added:
Il think. hawsver. that we must
take care to see saat this eneourag-
iug development Is keps "a its prup.
sr perspective
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