On March 23, 1954, Walter Zinn held a farewell lunch at his laboratory for Alfonso Tammaro, who had been Zinn’s local Atomic Energy Commission manager in Chicago. My impression is that there had many tussles been Zinn, the scientist, and Tammaro, an engineer, but that there was also plenty of respect and amity. I found this letter to Alfonso: Dear Al, I have made just a few of these paper. . .
In the Idaho desert in early March, 1954, Hyman Rickover’s STR Mark I, a land-based prototype for a submarine nuclear power reactor, is being tested by engineers from Argonne. Rickover hates Argonne (and Argonne’s Zinn hates Rickover; Zinn’s name isn’t even on the distribution list below, although his trusted lieutenant John West is) and will soon expel those engineers. . .
Lewis Strauss, American nuclear kingpin in the mid-1950s, was devious and smart, but also often notably clumsy. Here a couple of reporters describe how he extemporized, to terrible effect, after a March 1954 thermonuclear test went badly: President Eisenhower and AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss held a joint press conference in an attempt to put the March 1 blast into proper perspective. … A REPORTER:. . .
In the 1950s, a Harwell scientist, Brian Jay, wrote a few books describing English nuclear efforts. They were a mix of propaganda and technical elucidation, but remain useful. Here he is describing a feature of future breeder reactors that he, and the other pioneers, marveled at: We remarked earlier that the small size of a fast reactor core means that the heat flux (that is, the rate at which. . .
It’s been three months since I’ve posted. The gap has been simple: I’m drafting new words at the moment, putting chapters down, and during this phase, no discards or leftovers pop up. Everything I deal with, I need, so nothing for this blog… Well, now I’m sorting out data and items of interest do reveal themselves. Take this book, Nuclear Power from Underseas to. . .