INTO THE ATOM AGE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF NUCLEAR INDUSTRY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27463, 24 September 1954, Page 12

INTO THE ATOM AGE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF NUCLEAR INDUSTRY

[By ••LVNCEUS ,t of the “Economist”!

London, September 7.—lf we look forward to- the economics of the twenty-first century, or even to the closing decades of the twentieth, it is the development of atomic power that dominates the prospect. The re search and invention of the last la years and the halting progress now being made in the peace-time industrial applications of this new knowledge constitute one of the great turning-points in the economic history of mankind. We now know that a day will come when the world will be relying mainly on nuclear fuels for its sources of industrial power, heat, and light. Sir Francis Simon, Professor of Thermodynamics at Oxford, guts the date at about 2050. But long efore that the encroachment of atomic energy on the now conventional fuels, coal and oil, and on the less efficient sources of hydro-electric power will be making itself felt. In Britain work is already proceeding on the construction and trial operation of two experimental nuclear power stations which will feed electricity to the grid. The first station will come into operation in 1957. Its initial contribution to the generation of power will be minute. Also, it will be an expensive and immediately uneconomic contribution. But the initial estimates of costs calculated during the primeval stages of atomic development can be of very little value. In fact, plans are already in preparation for large-scale construction of nuclear power stations to begin about 1965; and by, the final decade of this century there will be a really large take-over by atomic power from the now conventional fuels. Problem of Protection It should be emphasised that as far as. can be foreseen the main use of atomic power will be in producing heat and raising steam for the propulsion of electricity generating stations. Protection against radioactivity is likely to demand such elaborate and heavy devices that we probably shall not see the day when a few grains of uranium will provide the power with which to drive a motor-car or even a locomotive. The Americans are building a submarine, that will be driven by atomic power: but even there the problem of encasing the source of power ha the required thickness of protective lead is prqving a serious problem. And so, through the gradual adaptation of our conventional power stations to the use of atomic energy, we shall probably make the greatest and most normal use of this new form of power. The economic implications of this development are immense. They are in the first place direct—namely, the discovery of new sources of nuclear materials, the building or adaptation of power stations, and the manufacture of nuclear equipment. But there are also wider indirect implications, particularly those deriving from the effect of atomic power on the locations of industry. The greatest industrial powers of the world today owe some of their greatness to their proximity to the conventional sources of power—mostly coal. But the nuclear fuel required to drive the power stations of a great nation will be so small that the siting of those stations and of the industries they serve will in the distant future have no relation to the source of that fuel. A given weight of uranium is thermally equivalent to 2,600,000 times its weight in coal. The fuel consumed by the British Electricity Authority last year could have been produced by 14 tons of uranium. All this means that in a relatively near future the considerations that determine the location of industry will be revolutionised. The older industrial areas—such as Britain, the Rhine basin, and the Pittsburgh district-will have to look to

their laurels. They will no longer command the now inestimable advantage of proximity to coal, that bulky, relatively inefficient, but hitherto best available source of power. We can, therefore, look forward to a far greater dispersion of industry than we have had in the past. Certain of the older industries will be attacked by newer competitors. But the heavy engineering industries, those that provide the capital equipment that will be needed by the newer areas, are likely to have full orders books in the decades to come. Uranium Mining

Then there are the direct implications. These include the discovery and production of nuclear fuel, the building and adaptation of the power stations that will be run on atomic energy, and the manufacture of the specialised equipment which this new industry will require. It is a vast field, the fringes of which have only been touched. As to the source of the new fuel, the scientists tell us that uranium is the only natural element which can be used to provide atorpic energy. Deposits of uranium are fairly well scattered throughout the world, but the metal itself forms only a minute part of the ore in which it is normally found. Even when it hag been refined to the high degree of purity which is required in atomic work, less than 1 per cent, of uranium metal is the “uranium 235” which is the element directly used in the process of nuclear fission.

Uranium is now produced mainly in the Belgian Congo,.Canada, and South Africa. In South Africa it has been found in the ores which previously had been mined for gold, and it has come as a very timely saviour of the South African goldmining industry which, but for the discovery of uranium, would today be facing a rather grim future. Very little is known about the production of uranium, the channels through which it is distributed, and the prices paid for it. All these are matters of highly secret information and of inter-governmental dealings. This secrecy is an inevitable relic of the military uses for which nuclear fission was first developed, but it seems probable that as the peace-time uses of atomic energy are extended a great deal of this veil of secrecy will be lifted.

Immense Field for Industry It is evident that a new segment of the engineering industry will develop to tend this rapidly growing means of producing power. Here in Britain most Of the large manufacturers of electrical equipment are already busy on orders for power stations designed to handle this new form of power. There are one or two specialist firms in the engineering industry which have set up what are called “nucleonic divisions.” These manufacture generators, lead shielding, radiation monitors, and geiger counters. It seems likely that a day will come when every individual will have to carry one of these small counters in order to detect and warn him of the proximity of radioactive substances or wastes. There is certainly an immense field of development which, as years go by, will occupy more and more of the engineering industry of this and other great industrial countries. Atomic power certainly opens up a new and as yet dimly perceptible future in the history of man’s harnessing of the forces of nature. Let us hope that humanity will allow itself to use this new source of energy and all the benefits it can convey, and will not allow its knowledge, as it could so easily, to blast itself into nothingness or, as Dr. Edgar Adrian has just said in (his presidential address to the British Association, to perish gradually in a slow, radioactive contamination of the world by atomic explosions.