THE ATOM: The Long-Run Carrier

Four years ago, the U.S. Navy began toying with a design for an aircraft carrier of unprecedented range, to be powered by an atomic engine. Last week the Atomic Energy Commission gave the plan a bright green light, contracted with Westinghouse Electric to build an atomic reactor “suitable for propulsion of large naval vessels, such as aircraft carriers.”

The contract signified White House and Pentagon approval of the Navy’s three-year campaign to get started on the revolutionary carrier, a campaign bound up in the argument between Navy and Air Force over the Navy’s persistent attempts to edge into the Air Force’s field of strategic bombing. In 1948, Navy Captain Hyman Rickover, an engineering officer and atomic specialist working on an atomic submarine design (TIME, Sept. 3, 1951), convinced Navy brass that an atomic carrier was possible too. The Navy held its fire until it had sold the submarine plan to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knowing that the early developmental work on the submarine could apply as well to the engine for the new carrier. Then, a year ago, Navy Boss Admiral William Fech-eler took the carrier plan to the Joint Chiefs, argued with the Air Force for three months, and finally won J.C.S. approval on the ground that an atomic carrier had a logical place in the Navy’s role of keeping control of the seas.

If Westinghouse’s dry-land development of the atomic engine is successful, the seagoing version probably will be fitted into a flush-deck carrier of the new 60,000-ton Forrestal class.

The atomic carrier will be able to dispense with fuel oil tanks and bulky engine flues. This will make it considerably more watertight than its predecessors, will greatly increase the storage space available for fuel and bombs for its jet planes. The atomic engine will run a steam turbine, which, in turn, will drive four screws and put out a speed upwards of 40 knots. The extra speed will allow the carrier to land and launch heavy Douglas A3D attack bombers (which can carry A-bombs).

Last week in its twelfth semi-annual report, the AEC gave the U.S. a few other dazzling glimpses of atomic energy plans. Items:

¶ I The U.S. will soon add to its foreign sources for uranium (now principally the Belgian Congo and Canada) by imports from Australia and South Africa. ¶ Domestically, the AEC has developed uranium mines on the Colorado Plateau (where it is building 783 miles of new roads), has found good prospects in the Black Hills of South Dakota. ¶ In Joliet, Ill., the Blockson Chemical Co. will soon begin full-scale production of uranium from a new source, phosphoric acid. ¶ Barely started on its new $3.5 billion expansion program, the AEC already employs about 3% of the total construction force of the nation.