Last week U.S. taxpayers got another reminder of the high cost and complexity of arms in the atomic age. From Washington came an announcement that the Atomic Energy Commission was planning to spend $1.2 billion on construction of a 6,500-acre installation in Pike County, Ohio, approximately 80 miles east of Cincinnati.
Like the original atomic-energy plant at Oak Ridge, the Pike County installation will produce U-235, the radioactive isotope whose fission can produce the energy for an atomic-bomb blast. A major step in the current U.S. program to speed up atomic stockpiling in...