The Atom: Ready to Go

Throughout the week a small army of engineers, painters, technicians and nuclear physicists worked on the sleek, white-hulled ship lying in her slip at Camden, N.J. Early next month the N.S. (for nuclear ship) Savannah* the world's first atomic-powered merchant ship, will go to Yorktown, Va., for dockside tests, then head out into the Atlantic for sea trials. Said Dr. Marvin M. Mann, project manager of the ship's nuclear power plant: "For all practical purposes, the Savannah is completed."

President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955 asked Congress for money for a nuclear-powered merchant vessel, partly for the technological payoff, partly to...

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