PLUTONIUM FOR FRANCE

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30062, 21 February 1963, Page 3

PLUTONIUM FOR FRANCE

Sales By U.S. And UK.

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) UXTDON, Feb. 19. Britain and the United States are to sell plutonium to France. The Britislh share of the most powerful atomic explosive in the world is expected to be 1981b—Which, at £14,000 a lb, will cost £2,722,000, says the “Daily Mail.” The British Atomic Energy Authority says the plutonium is for peaceful uses in a research reactor called Rapsodie. But the British sale could enable Franca to release enough of her homemade plutonium to make more than 20 atom bombs or trigger cores for the same number of H-bombs, The deal between the Atomic Energy Authority and the French Atomic Energy Commission has reached the “final stages of negotiation.” This will help President de Gaulle to speed up stockpiling his own plutonium and to fulfil his decision to create an independent nuclear strike force. British plutonium is a highgrade material wtaidh can be burned in atom furnaces. By selling a consignment to France, Britain has spared French atom scientists the trouble of supplying their own nuclear reactor fuel. Military grade plutonium can be made more easily and quickly than the element which burned in the reactors. France has been making plutonium at Marcoule, near Avignon, but the reactors are thought to have produced not much morn than enough for the Sahara atomic bomb tests. Mr Richard Miav4i, a Labour member of Parliament. has tabled a question in the Commons asking why the Government has allowed the sale of the atomic explosive to France at this time. In America, the United States Atomic Bmngy Oommisaion has approved the supply of plutonium for the new French reactors. The decision awastß Presidential and Oongresskmal approval. Death After Three Months. —A speedboat driver, Mr Guy Witeon, died in hospital at Glendale last mtdrt nearly three months' after his craft cartwheeled and crashed on top of him at 95 miles an hour.—Glendale (California), Fetaurar 18.