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AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss last week tried to head off mounting congressional criticism on the slowness of U.S. reactor development. Dedicating the AEC's $17 million experimental sodium reactor in the Santa Susana Mountains near Los Angeles, which will supply 6,500 kw. of electricity to the Southern California Edison Co., Strauss indicated that more Government money would now go into such advanced plants. Present plans already call for a $1 billion investment by the mid-1960s "in some 18 or 20 nuclear power plants serving homes and industries across our nation."