A world living with the atomic bomb last week heard two notes of modest cheer.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announced that plutonium, core of the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki, had, to a certain extent, been tamed. It would still be a long time before atomic energy would turn a wheel or drive a plane, but the new "fast reactor" (see SCIENCE) was a long step beyond the apocalyptic vision of Bikini.
President Truman got ready to offer the world's scientists free access to an atomic byproduct—the radioisotopes produced in Oak Ridge's atomic piles, generally considered the most important aid...
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