DURING the past 30 years the industrial world has spent more than $200 billion in attempts to produce useful energy from nuclear fission. Many of the seminal events and personalities in this unprecedented effort have already passed into legend . There was the drama of the converted University of Chicago squash court where, under the leadership of the virtually canonized Enrico Fermi, a group of scientists operated the world's first atomic reactor. There was the poetry of J. Robert Oppenheimer's recollection of the ominous lines from a sacred Hindu text two and one-half years later at Alamogordo. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One . . . . I am become [...]
