Enough Bombs?

In a speech to members of the American Bar Association at San Francisco last week, Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, made a startling announcement: the U.S. may soon have all the bombs it needs to defeat any enemy, and it can then turn a much bigger part of atomic research and development to peacetime projects.

"I think it is quite obvious," he said, "that the current atomic-arms race can not go on forever. Somewhere along the line ... we will have acquired all the weapons we would possibly need to destroy not only the industrial ability of an aggressor to make war . . . but also his forces in the field. When this point is reached, and it is not in the unforeseeable future . . . [will] it enhance our chances to have enough [weapons and fissionable material] to defeat him 20 times over? I think not ... regardless of the number he may have."

After that point, Dean predicted, military "competition" will turn to other phases--"developing . . . new and effective means for delivering weapons and for preventing their delivery against us . . . such items as guided missiles, artillery, supersonic aircraft, electronic devices, radar . . ." What then of the vast atomic laboratories and plants? They should be used, he felt, to develop peaceful uses of atomic energy.

The AEC, Dean said, is already doing what it can to anticipate the day when private industry will be allowed to use atomic energy. He noted that eight utility and chemical companies had been participating in the AEC program for more than six months to explore the feasibility of power production from atomic energy. All were intensely interested in the fact that nuclear reactors could, theoretically, produce power while producing plutonium for weapons.

There is already real hope, he said, that small atomic-power plants can be built cheaply enough to be used in supplying electricity to isolated areas, where present power costs are high.

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