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A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales

The nuclear age Cautionary tales

Apr 30th 2009 The Economist …………….The expectation of electricity “too cheap to meter” brought hopes in some quarters of an end to world poverty. Yet nuclear power proved costly and far from risk-free. Some presumed that by the turn of the 20th century there could be more than 500 fast-breeder reactors, fuelled by expanding stockpiles of plutonium.

By the millennium’s end not a single fast-breeder was in commercial operation (the necessary experimental forerunners produce plutonium in quantities useful for bomb-making). The Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership sought to revive the breeder idea (renaming it a fast-burner), but plans had to be shrunk due to cost, technological complexity and the danger of proliferation.

Whatever the nuclear technology used, the by-products thus far have been accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were among the worst but there have been plenty of others), pollution and piles of nuclear waste. Meanwhile technologies and materials acquired to keep the lights on can be misused in weapons.

Spread around generously in the 1950s and 1960s, “atoms for peace” helped get Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and others started in the bomb business. (Other secretive programmes—in Iran, Libya, North Korea—thrived mostly on black-market connections.)

Now, once again, nuclear suppliers are signing up governments with nuclear ambitions, arguing that co-operation will help ensure the technology is put to proper use. But history suggests that no one can be sure where all this will lead.

A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales | The Economist

May 1, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium