Science: Atomic Energy

Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis L. Strauss held a press conference last week (his first since taking office 14 months ago) and laid down some bits of scientific news:

¶ AEC will supply nuclear fuel elements (presumably uranium enriched with fissionable 11-235) to Atomic Energy, of Canada, Ltd. After use in Canada’s new heavy-water reactor, AEC will purify the fuel elements chemically and will buy some of the products (presumably plutonium) extracted from them.

¶ The U.S. will continue (despite objections) to test nuclear weapons in the Pacific, but no tests are scheduled at present.

¶ As chairman of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Strauss saw no reason why Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer should not continue as director of the institute. The suspension of Oppenheimer’s security clearance, said Strauss, “is not a criterion for that position.”

¶ Early next year, the U.S. will call an international conference of nuclear physicists. All interested countries, including the U.S.S..R., will be invited. Strauss did not say how Russian physicists would gain entrance to the U.S. Many scientists from friendly countries have been excluded under the McCarran (immigration) Act because of contacts recent or remote with Communism.