DEVELOPMENT OF ATOM POWER

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27989, 8 June 1956, Page 8

DEVELOPMENT OF ATOM POWER

U.S. Race With Soviet Opposed

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 9 p.m.) PITTSBURG, June 6. Mr Lewis Strauss, chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, said last night it would be foolish for the United States to embark on an all-out programme of building atomic power stations just to keep ahead of the Soviet Union in a “kilowatt race.”

Speaking at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he sharply criticised proposals in Congress to launch a major Government-financed programme of building atomic power stations.

“The United States leads the world today in the state of its development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy, including the development of atomic power,” he said. “We are not engaged in a kilowatt race.”

Mr Strauss said the United States, with an abundant supply of conventional power, did not have the urgent need for nuclear power that existed in some countries.

Therefore, he said, it made more sense for the United States to devote its efforts to improving the technology of power reactors instead of freezing it by large monetary commitments to existing uneconomic types of reactors. Instead of diverting scarce manpower into an all-out programme of building reactors according to present primitive designs. Mr Strauss said, the commission planned to go ahead with its present programme of building experimental prototypes of every promising reactor concept, seeking to find the safest and most economic.