CORPORATIONS: Opening the Door

For months, Monsanto Chemical Co. has been knocking on the door of the Atomic Energy Commission, trying to get it to open its program to private enterprise. Last week AEC let Monsanto in. It gave Monsanto the job of determining whether private industry can build and operate a plant to use atomic energy to generate electric power, the first such contract AEC has handed out.

Monsanto thought that if anyone could do the job, it could be done by Executive Vice President Charles Allen Thomas, 51. A brilliant scientist (D.Sc., M.I.T. ’33), Thomas had helped develop no-knock ethyl gasoline, was awarded the civilian Medal for Merit for his work as project director of the Oak Ridge A-bomb plant during World War II, is now boss of several AEC projects being carried out by Monsanto. Thomas is confident that private industry can develop atomic power more cheaply than the Government. Said he: “It will serve the additional purpose of giving the country a check on what bureaucracy—namely, the AEC—is doing.”

Only a month ago, AECommissioner Sumner Pike said he doubted whether atomic power plants could ever make electricity cheap enough to be commercially feasible. Thomas thinks he can do it.

In his projected plant, he will use uranium supplied by AEC, charge AEC a fee for turning it into plutonium. The tremendous heat, now a waste byproduct of the process, will be used to run a steam generating plant. By charging a fee for making the plutonium, Thomas thinks that the cost of producing electricity can be brought down to current commercial rates. By using the cheap electric power to manufacture chemicals, he thinks Monsanto can afford to make plutonium at a lower cost than in AEC’s own plants.

Monsanto has another string to its bow. There are big phosphate beds in such remote areas as southwestern Idaho, and Thomas would like to develop them. To do so requires plenty of electric power, and there is no practical method of supplying it now. Thomas believes that an atomic power plant is the answer.

If Monsanto decides that the plan is practical, and AEC approves, it still has some high fences to hurdle. For one, it must raise from $25 to $40 million in private capital. But Thomas thinks the fences can be cleared. Said he: “If everything works out. . . the plant might well be in operation in three years.”