Near the Tree

It was, snorted one Congressman, "the Government's biggest free offer to all comers since the opening of the Cherokee strip to the homesteaders in 1893." Indeed, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission started searching for a site for its new $375 million atom-smashing accelerator 21 months ago, 200 or so communities in 45 states came forward with a pitch. No wonder. The competition was for an installation that would mean 3,000 new scientific and technical jobs, 9,000 new residents and a $21 million-a-year payroll.

Last week the long suspense ended. The world's most powerful atom smasher, which will generate 200 billion electron volts of energy, will be built in Weston, Ill., a tiny (pop. 400) village 35 miles west of Chicago. A corn-belt community that began as a housing development only seven years ago, Weston is in for some very big changes. Its growth was stunted when the original promoter ran into financial difficulty and pulled out, and it remains so undeveloped today that it has no doctor, no school, no movie house, not even a store.

The huge atom smasher, which will occupy a 6,800-acre preserve, will be completely covered with earth for radiation shielding, is targeted to go into operation in 1975. Assuming that Congress appropriates the funds, construction will begin in two years. By enabling scientists to break down the atom into more fundamental pieces than ever before, the smasher could eventually produce discoveries on the magnitude of those of the electron and neutron.

Why did the nod go to little Weston? It made for intriguing speculation that among the six states under final site consideration (the others: California, Colorado, Michigan, New York and Wisconsin), Illinois by next month will be the only one with a Democratic Governor. But the Atomic Energy Commission insisted that the controlling factor was Weston's proximity to existing scientific centers. After all, the new atom smasher will be situated just 17 miles from the AEC's sprawling Argonne National Laboratory and less than an hour's drive from Chicago, where Enrico Fermi first split the atom in 1942. In a sense, the AEC's plum has fallen near the tree.

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