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G.E. has the biggest stake in harnessing the atom for commercial use, simply because it is the biggest U.S. electrical firm and the world's biggest supplier of power equipment, concerned with power for everything from toasters to jet engines. Its stake has been defined in terms that every schoolboy can understand by G.E.'s chairman Ralph Jarron Cordiner, 58, a short (5 ft. 7½ in.), power-packed man with restless eyes that are always trained on the future, ever watchful for risk and opportunity. Says Cordiner: "The atom is the power of the future—and power is the business of General Electric."
Ralph Cordiner has thrown all of G.E.'s energy and know-how into the atomic future. The company has $1.5 billion in Government contracts and more than $100 million in private contracts, has committed more men (14,000) to atomics, and spent more of its own money ($20 million) to build research facilities, than any other company. So far it has not made a dime on commercial business, but its hopes for the future are bright.
To get ready for that future, G.E. is engaged in more than 30 widely different atomic activities. Items:
¶ At Vallecitos, G.E. built the nation's first privately owned and operated power reactor next to its new test reactor, which is used for testing fuel and materials for future power reactors. It is building the largest U.S. all-nuclear power station (cost: more than $45 million) at Dresden, Ohio for Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, and a $19.5 million reactor at Eureka, Calif, for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., has been selected to construct nuclear power stations in Switzerland, West Germany and Italy.
¶ At Richland, Wash., G.E. operates the Government-owned Hanford plutonium works, where every year it produces isotopes with 140 times the radioactivity of the world supply of radium, is conducting radiation studies on plants and animals.
¶ At Evendale, Ohio, G.E., the only company doing major work on the atomic-powered airplane, is going ahead at an $80 million-a-year clip in Government contracts. It has developed a direct-cycle engine (in which air is heated by direct contact with a nuclear reactor core), already successfully operated it on the ground.
¶ At its Knolls Laboratories near Schenectady, N.Y., G.E. is designing a twin-reactor, pressurized-water system for the world's largest submarine, the U.S.S. Triton. It is building a reactor system for the Navy's first nuclear destroyer, studying a boiling-water reactor for use in a merchant ship.
Power by 1965. General Electric's latest and most controversial contribution to atomics is a plan for U.S. industry to produce competitive commercial atomic power without Government subsidy—and produce it by 1965, a good five years before most estimates. Cordiner believes that U.S. industry can do it without the massive Government aid ($2 billion so far) that has spurred atoms-for-peace to date. Says he: "The job of developing commercial atomic power should be left to private enterprise."