As a non-nuclear-specialist, trying to recreate or even imagine the history of reactors always slams against the technical aspects of this ferociously technical technology. As a layperson, I would have imagined that by 1957, one and a half decades into the technology’s history, everything would have been known about the most essential ingredient in a reactor, the fissile fuel. Not so, it seems.
In September of that year, A. R. Kaufman, presumably a metallurgist, once in charge of some form of metallurgical research at MIT but now a VP of Nuclear Metals, Inc. (a company I’d never heard of), penned an article “Reactor fuels: Which fuels for the future,” five pages of dense detail about solid fuels, fluid fuels, alloys, solutions, salts, slurries … you name it. But his final paragraph, instead of being a crowning climax, was an apologia, revealing that 1957 fuel knowledge was as yet in its infancy:
There is still only a small body of knowledge of nuclear fuels that is the result of extensive operating experience. Most of the existing data, with the exception of that on unalloyed uranium and a limited number of uranium containing alloys, are based on laboratory experiments or small-scale, in-pile tests. Under the circumstances, many of the statements made in this article must be regarded as opinion, perhaps prejudiced, that may well be altered by further developments in knowledge of materials, technology of nuclear reactors, availability’ of uranium and thorium, and cost of power from other sources.
Kaufmann, A. R. 1957. “Reactor fuels.” Nucleonics 15 (Sep.), pp. 142-146.
