HARNESSING H-POWER

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27735, 12 August 1955, Page 11

HARNESSING H-POWER

Predictions At Geneva GENEVA. August 10. Britain is trying to harness for peaceful uses the immense energy produced by the thermo-nuclear reaction of the hydrogen bomb. Sir John Cockcroft, director of the Harwell Atomic Energy Establishment, told a press conference this today. But although the lid has been well taken off,this subject at the international conference in Geneva on the peaceful uses of atomic energy, he naid he could say no more about British H-bomb research beyond: “When you work you make progress.” He thought that no-one could make a forecast how of when this great power would be harnessed. [Dr. Homi Bhahba, the conference president, fixed the time at 20 years hence, in a speech in Geneva on Monday] * The British delegates had talked with Russian scientists inside and outside the conference chamber, said Sir John Cockcroft. But he told a questioner: “We have not had any formal invitation from the Russians to visit the Soviet Union and see their atomic plants. We have quite enough material given to us here to keep us occupied for a long time ahead.’* Sir George Thomson, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, representing the Royal Society, told correspondents that H-fuel for peaceful purposes was bound to come in the end. Dr. John Dunworth, head of the reactor physics group at Harwell, said the big obstacle of harnessing Hpower was the difficulty of combining the high temperatures involved with “ordinary materials we have in the world.”