The Atom: Rowe's Reactor

A few years ago, in Rowe, Mass, (pop. 260), a one-store mountain town on the Deerfield River not far from the old Mohawk Trail, they put up a brand-new nuclear reactor that turned out to be one of the U.S.'s largest. Owned by the Yankee Atomic Electric Co., a combine of a dozen New England utility firms, the reactor is worth $57 million; last year it hummed out more than a billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. It is by far Rowe's biggest industry, and Postmaster Wendell Bjork—who owns the town's general store—estimates that the utility company pays 93% of Rowe's taxes.

Last week Rowe's reactor became a pawn in disarmament negotiations in Geneva. The U.S. announced that henceforth the reactor would be open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, an 86-member organization set up in 1957 as part of Dwight Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace plan. Adrian S. Fisher, U.S. delegate to the 17-nation disarmament conference, explained that I.A.E.A. inspection of Rowe's reactor will be a permanent arrangement "whether or not other states reciprocate." Fisher pointed out that three smaller U.S. reactors—two at Brookhaven, N.Y., and one at Piqua, Ohio—have been under I.A.E.A. surveillance since 1962. Said Fisher: "The U.S. does not believe that opening these reactors to international inspection is a derogation of its national sovereignty, nor is the safeguard system onerous."

The main purpose of allowing international inspection of the Rowe reactor was to pull the Soviet Union into active use of international inspection and control over peaceful fissionable materials. But by week's end, the only Russian word was from Semyon Tsarapkin, chief Soviet disarmament delegate in Geneva, who said: "You know this is a very difficult subject. We are very sensitive about controls." That everyone knew, even in Rowe.