ATOMIC ENERGY FOR COMMERCIAL USE: TEN YEARS AT LEAST

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1947, Page 7

ATOMIC ENERGY FOR COMMERCIAL USE: TEN YEARS AT LEAST

LONDON, October 14.

The Geneva correspondent of The Times says: “The opinions of experts on the prospects of the early development of atomic energy for commercial purposes formed the subject of a memorandum circulated on Monday by the committee on electric power of the Economic Commission for Europe. These opinions were delivered to the world power conference held at The Hague last month, but have not previously been made public. “Among the opinions was a. statement by Professor J. D. Cockroft (Britain), who emphasised the number of highly technical problems to be'solved before nuclear energy could be used as an economic source of power. He pointed out that pre-war production of uranium would be sufficient only to supply Britain’s annual production of energy, from which it might be inferred that nuclear energy was unlikely .to displace the more common forms of power production. ‘Mr D. Davidson (United States) in his statement sought to correct some of the more optimistic and highly coloured visions of atomic energy as a panacea for energy problems. Such comparative costs as were available was likely to be more expensive than thermal energy for some time to come, and that nuclear energy was unlikely to be available commercially in less than 10 years.”