One of the most prominent “characters” in my book is Walter Zinn, reactor designer extraordinaire. He played a role in inventing most of the designs that would go forward. But he himself vacillated on the “best” design. He often spoke up in favor of American light water reactors, probably because they were, by 1957, leading the world and he was nothing if not a patriot, but behind the scenes, he was casting around for improvements.
I was frankly baffled when I came across this from official historians Hewlett and Holl:
During summer 1957 members of the atomic energy establishment maintained a tone of optimism in public, but behind the scenes there was growing concern. [Zinn], an old hand in reactor engineering and recently a consultant to [JCAE], privately expressed to Strauss his conviction that the United States was following the wrong path to nuclear power. In Zinn’s opinion, the decision to concentrate on [LWRs] had been a mistake. Zinn now favored natural-uranium reactors using a liquid coolant such as sodium. What bothered Zinn even more was the failure of [AEC’s] reactor development division to commit itself on any strategy while it waited for industry to make a decision by way of demonstration reactor proposals. In talking with Strauss, Zinn was careful to blame Davis and his staff for this failure to act, but he must have known that the fault rested more with Strauss than with Davis, who had heard similar complaints from others in the reactor industry.
Hewlett, Richard G. and Jack M. Holl. 1989. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission: Volume III: Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission. University of California Press, pp. 413-414.
One of the problems with “official” histories such as this one is that the sources, cited at the back, are often not available to the public, so I was not able to go back and see Zinn’s communication(s) with Strauss. Did he really criticize a working design (one that, mind you, he would go on to promote in a few years when working for a reactor manufacturer) in favor of probably the most radical design then around? I ended up ignoring this snippet, just couldn’t separate it from all the other historical material flying around.