Science: Russian Surprise

Big surprise of the latter part of the Geneva atomic conference was a 25-minute Soviet movie with ballet-music background. The Russians had given the impression that they had built no nuclear power plant except the small (5,000 kw.) job they completed in 1954, but the film showed a massive building in an unnamed Siberian town. Inside was a monster reactor yielding 100,000 kw. of electricity. Five more like it under construction will make the plant the world’s biggest. General consensus was that the Russians, put deep in the shade by the U.S. technical exhibit, made the late announcement-by-inovie as a Sputnik-like surprise.

U.S. and British reactor experts were not impressed. The Soviet reactor is remarkable chiefly for its size. In other respects it is oldfashioned, using graphite as moderator, and ordinary water for-cooling. Its operating temperature, 180° C (356° F.), is low and therefore inefficient for power production. Soviet Delegation Chief Vasily Emelyanov practically admitted that the reactor is a dual purpose one whose primary job is making plutonium for nuclear explosives.