ATOMIC POWER PRODUCTION

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28314, 27 June 1957, Page 13

ATOMIC POWER PRODUCTION

U.S. “Lagging Badly” NEW YORK, June 25. The United States was warned today that it was lagging badly in its efforts to produce low-cost atomic power. Senator Henry Jackson (Democrat, Washington), a member of the Congressional Joint Cbmmittee on Atomic Energy, told the Ameriqan Public Power Association’s annual 1 convention that the present policy of the Atomic Energy Commission did not meet adequately the challenge of the peaceful use of the atom. “Almost every one of the reactors we are building is behind schedule,” he said. Costs had far exceeded estimates. Safety problems remained unsolved. Senator Jackson said the A.E.C. policy was one which discouraged publicly-owned and financed large-scale experimental plants and favoured instead giving subsidies to private groups. “This policy finds the Government assuming a major portion of the cost of building plants, which, thereafter, belong only to private organisations,” he said. The association’s president (Mr William Peterson, of Los Angeles), said the United States atomic programme was about two years behind schedule.

“On the other hand,” he said, “programmes of other nations, notably that of Britain, are progressing with great rapidity.”