Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

I ran ill in li> NIKA LASKY JERUSALEM — Several week:- before Israel cel ebrated her first birthday and im mediately after the blue-and-white flan was hoisted over Elath, on the Red Seat, a neology instructor at the Hebrew University was asked whether he would like to go and find out what natural resources the Negev holds. The 2,500,000 acre rock desert was fairly unknown. Bedouin and wild gazelles and cam els wandered around in it, but there were few roads and even fewer houses. The instructor was delighted. With a colleague from the Haifa Te bn ion, a small band of students and a large band of guards he set out to map the Negev, rock by rock, wadi by wadi. And every now and then we read in the papers that phosphates, clay, gypsum, glass sands, iron and other ores had been found, were being further explored, already exploited. We never heard that Dr. Ya'acov K. Bentor also found uranium. That came to light only a few weeks ago when Israel’s chief dele gate to the U. N. told the Political Committee of the General Assem bly of Israel’s progress in nuclear research. And maybe he wouldn't have talked about it — and we would not know that there is ura nium m the Negev — had not the French delegate talked first about Israel’s work in this field of re- searc :. For French and Israeli nu clear physicists have become part ners when the atomic energy com missions of the two countries sign ed agreements to this effect, and they are working closely together all the time. T*.e geologists found uranium in the phosphate deposits (which have been named ’’Oron’’). When they found it nearly five years ago, they did not know that all phosphates contain low-grade uranium; every country jealously guarded its dis- coveiies in nuclear research and development, and only a year or so later did it become common knowledge. So called “rich” ura nium ores, of which there are very few, contain 0.1 percent uranium; phosphates contain “a few grains per ton," says Dr. Benton. Using a special process, a local pilot plant has produced small quantities of uranium from these phosphates. But it is feasible to produce uranium on an industrial The Southern Israelite in Israel scale, and with this process, explo itation of low-grade ores should be no more expensive than the pro cedure in use in other parts of the would for rich uranium. The discovery of uranium alone would have been enough to fire Israelis’ excitment. But that is not all by a long way. Mr. Eban spoke of many other scientific discoveries as he addressed the UN Political Committee; all are connected in one way or another with nuclear research. He mentioned above all, a pro cess — by a chemical method — of producing heavy water, one of the materials used in the splitting of the atom, developed by 42-year- old Dr. Israel Dostrovsky, head of the Isotope Research Department of the Weizmann Institute. Heavy water is a substance chemically identical with ordinary water, but containing also deuterium, the iso tope of hydrogen, which has dou ble the atomic mass of ordinary hydrogen and contains a charge- less neutron in addition to its pro ton. It is the deuterons which are used in the atom splitting process as the bombarding agents which release energy. Hitherto, heavy water has been produced by means of infusion into water of enormous amounts of elec trical power. Dr. Dostrovsky sub stitutes a chemical process for the electrolytic one, thus cheapening production for those countries (Is rael included) which have no elec tric power to spare. This discovery, which, it is said, is not yet as far advanced as that of cheap uranium extraction, is at present being tested on pilot-plant level both in Israel and in French atomic research laboratories. In retrospect, people now under stand why so many physicists of would renown, among them Nobel Prize winner Dr. Nils Bohr, have been calling at the Weizmann In stitute these past few years. When they came, Israelis connected their visits with the country’s strides in scientific research generally. They did not know anything beyond the fact that two years ago, the then Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, had appointed a four-man atomic energy commission, with himself as a member. And they interpret ed this merely as a safety measure. It seems none of those involved in nuclear research here were at all pleased with the revelations in BEDROOM — KITCHEN — MIRRORS NORTH STATE Manufacturing (Jo. THOMASVIIXE, N. C. (5)