Israel is concentrating its nuclear energy research on combining natural uranium with heavy water in a search for means of utilizing uranium as it occurs in nature, Dr. Bergmann, chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, declared here today.
Dr. Bergmann, who is chairman of the substantial Israeli delegation to the third International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, now in session here under United Nations auspices, made the disclosure in a statement on Israel’s activities in the field. Uranium, the key material in nuclear energy production, must undergo a complex and costly refining process for use in making such energy.
Dr. Bergmann also reported that six of the 11 papers by Israeli scientists, accepted by the scientific secretariat of the United Nations conference, will be presented orally. Five of the Israeli papers are included in the official archives without reading. These papers will seek to present the program of research in Israel in the field of reactor physics and technology and related subjects, a program which Israel expects to provide the basis for future large-scale reactor development.
Dr. Bergmann said that the conference was of special interest to Israel because it was “about to enter the field of large atomic reactors, especially for desalting sea water.”
Among the subjects treated in the Israeli papers are new methods for removal of nitric acids from waste products of reactors, the chemistry of elements higher than uranium which have become available through operation of reactors, and the theory of fast reactors fuelled with plutonium. Dr. Bergmann said that successful combination of natural uranium and heavy water would yield plutonium as a by-product.
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