Within three years, the Atomic Energy Commission expects to be running one of the Navy's fast new submarines on an atomic power plant. Before summer, a task force will test late-model atomic bombs at the atoll of Eniwetok, the AEC's proving ground. Scientists have been quoting 1955 as the target time for cheap atomic-generated electric power. Three years of AEC work are nearing the payoff.

The AEC was set up by Congress in 1946 to take over the Army's atomic energy program. The new commission inherited a uranium plant at Oak Ridge, military laboratories at Los Angeles, a research program mainly directed towards weapon development, and a small supply of atomic bombs. David E. Lilienthal was appointed chairman; the Senate confirmed his appointment after a bitter and vindictive fight.

Lilienthal found his legacy tied to some annoying problems. Perhaps the most serious was the balancing of military security against the release of scientific information. Even after the release of the Smyth report, a publicly available how-to-do-it manual on the breeding and use of atomic energy--originally authorized by the Army, military officials in the atomic weapons program wanted the AEC to classify almost all atomic information. They also wanted to weed out all scientists not meeting rigorous security standards. At the same time, some very able men were quitting their jobs under the AEC because they found existing security gags in compatible with their own conceptions of free scientific development.

The conflict broke last summer when Iowa's Senator Hickenlooper accused Lilienthal of "incredible mismanagement" in handling the security program More than two months of Congressional sifting cleared Lilienthal, but a powerful Military Committee still looks over the AEC's shoulder, working to keep declassification of information as limited as possible.

Another of Lilienthal's problems was deciding what portion of AEC's resources should go to non-military use. An original estimate of a six-to-eight year head start in atomic bomb production allowed the AEC to go ahead with power-plant and medical research projects; intelligence reports and scientific evidence filtering out of Russia last summer indicated that the estimate was wrong. President Truman's September announcement that Russia had produced an atomic explosion fathered continuing military demands that the AEC concentrate almost entirely on making bombs and improving them. Other questions which Lilienthal worked over while in office were international atomic controls (Russia and the U.S. promptly put forth apparently incompatible plans), and the role of private industry in the atomic program (there are strong and stubborn lobbies still working to get a large part of AEC production and development under their own control).

Just over a week ago, President Truman regretfully accepted Lilienthal's resignation. This loss leaves the AEC looking for a chairman to carry it through what will probably be a tremendous period of expansion. We are now committed to an atomic armament race until some sort of an international control is created. This means increased production and hopped-up bombs; rumors of a six-times-more-powerful-than-Nagasaki weapon have been indirectly confirmed by the forthcoming Eniwetok tests. Electric generators run by atomic piles are well off the drawing boards; so are propulsion units for ships and even aircraft. Some laboratories are gingerly experimenting with radioactive gas as a weapon.

When asked about atomic energy, Mr. Arbuthnot, Frank Sullivan's cliche expert, said "humanity is at the crossroads." The AEC's next chairman had better be prepared to direct a lot of traffic.