"A Great Mystery"

From within Washington's secrecy-walled atomic energy councils, a rumble of dispute occasionally bursts into notice like a volcano's reminder of subterranean turmoil. Such a rumble was audible in Washington last week in the debate over whether the U.S. should build another reactor to produce plutonium, a radioactive element now much needed for compact, low-fallout nuclear weapons. Yes, said Congress. No, said the President. Underlying the conflict was the chronic tension between the Administration's desire to avoid needless expenditure and military leaders' nagging fears that the U.S. is skimping on national defense.

Over the past two years, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have decided that the plutonium output of the U.S. Government's reactors at Hanford. Wash, and Savannah River, S.C. is not large enough to meet future needs for tactical nuclear weapons and air-defense missiles. This year, at the urging of the Joint Chiefs, the Atomic Energy Commission decided to put in a request for a third plutonium reactor. The nickel-nipping Budget Bureau, backed up by President Eisenhower and Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy, overruled the request.

Before making up its mind on the third-reactor issue, the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy held extensive closed-door hearings. A special panel of four outside experts, including onetime AEChairman Gordon Dean, unanimously concluded that "present and planned output of reactor products is substantially inadequate to meet the minimum future needs of the armed services," and a parade of witnesses agreed.

Convinced, the 18-member Joint Committee unanimously voted out a $145 million authorization for a third plutonium reactor, to be built near the 14-year-old veteran at Hanford. Last week, in the teeth of President Eisenhower's letter declaring that "there can be no justifiable basis to proceed" until the Administration decides that the third reactor is needed, both the House and the Senate lopsidedly approved the Joint Committee's bill.

Since data on U.S. plutonium output and estimated future needs are top secret, neither side in the dispute could lay out its case for the public to judge. But Joint Committee members considered the evidence so overwhelming that they found the Administration stand "a great mystery," as Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson put it. Actually, there was no mystery: faced with an embarrassingly huge deficit in fiscal 1959, the Budget Bureau wanted to postpone a third reactor until the need was unmistakably obvious.

But with farm programs costing the Federal Government $6 billion a year, and veterans' benefits $5 billion, plutonium production hardly seemed--especially in a week when the U.S. had to land troops in the Middle East--the best place for economizing.

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