ATOMIC ENERGY CONTROL

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26633, 19 January 1952, Page 8

ATOMIC ENERGY CONTROL

CHANGE SOUGHT IN BRITAIN (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, January 17. The views of five noted scientists on the future of Britain’s atomic energy project and on whether at so late a stage in development it should be taken out of civil service control are published in the current issue of the Journal of the Atomic Scientists’ Association. The scientists’ criticism is that the present atomic energy organisation is so strictly controlled by the civil service that it “can neither make good progress nor take the necessary security precautions.” There is a strong opinion among them that the present organisation should be taken .away from the Supply Ministry and put under a semiindependent commission like the Coal Board or the Medical Research Council. This opinion is led by Lord Cherwell. Others who contribute to the discussion are Professor Sir George Thomas, Professor H. W. B. Skinner, of Liverpool University, Professor M. H. L. Pryce, external consultant to the theoretical physics division at Harwell., and Professor H. S. W. Massey, of University College, London.

Lord Cherwell’s views repeat the substance of his speech in the House of Lords last year when he called for the reorganisation of British work on atomic energy and the setting up of a special organisation, more flexible than the normal civil service system. Both Professor Skinner and Professor Thomas support him. “Surgical Operation Necessary” Professor Skinner, a former Harwell executive, said it was unfortunate that the Atomic Energy Organisation was made to fit into the scientific civil s ® r 'C l .ce at all. It had led to "all kinds of difficulties and compromises in organisation.” Under the circumstances British scientists “did remarkably well, but I still believe that a surgical operation is necessary if the whole project is not to run down to eventual stagnation.”

Professor Thomas argued that Government departments were “wholly unsuited for large production jobs because they have not got the light organisation or. what is more important, the right mental attitude—a fact that has been realised in the aircraft inaustry for 30 years. “The United States has shown that atomic work can be well organised by contracts from big firms, which can be free, to a great extent, of petty restrictions and inter-departmental ■jealousies. The British organisation, by contrast, has been less satisfactory and the fact that the men at the top have been so good makes its failure more pointed.”

Professor Pryce and Professor Massey did not favour a great change in the organisation. Professor Pryce said that the popular view of scientitle workers at atomic energy establishments seemed to be that the civil service was not inefficient and that the workers derived many benefits from their present status. As far as he knew on no occasion had atomic energy progress been held up because of the rigidity of civil service financing.

Professor Massey said that it was the opinion of most physicists that Harwell had succeeded to a remarkable degree. Suggestions that a corporation could increase security, he thought, “particularly ill-timed.”