#atom (ukaea)

This is what is called “begging the question”.

Begging the question, or petitio principi, is a kind of error in reasoning when a starting assumption is wrongly identified as a conclusion. In this case — admitting that the form of society is shaped by the mode of energy provision — it is simply assumed, without much in the way of evidence or argument, let alone proof, that the social structure imposed by “decentralised and renewable energy production” is better and more desirable than that associated with central–station electrification and nuclear fission energy.

The fact that some people expressed fear that the widespread use of fast–neutron breeder reactors would lead to totalitarianism, likewise, does not constitute a reason to accept this as a necessary or even likely outcome. After all, the “large quantities of plutonium” referred to are still remarkably small — perhaps a thousand tonnes a year to satisfy all world energy needs, occupying an aggregate volume of about sixty cubic meters. When the problem is put in those terms, it certainly seems feasible to keep all that material under close guard without infringing civil liberties. With fuel reprocessing and fabrication facilities combined under one roof, there would be little need to transport plutonium except in the form of fuel assemblies, which would naturally be shipped to the power stations in the same flasks used to transport the discharged fuel. And those containers are tougher than a main battle tank.

It may even be feasible to locate the breeder reactor and its reprocessing plant together on one site, in which case, such a facility should be far less noticeable to the people living nearby than a military base, and its effects on people farther away, virtually nil.

Contrast this with the obvious fact that the facilities for any kind of “distributed energy” are, by definition, widespread. Even if the disturbance caused by each individual installation is small, far more people would be affected.

Sir Alan Cottrell FRS, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and sometime chief scientific adviser to HM Government, speaking at the opening of the “Atoms for Energy” exhibition in Birmingham, 1981 November. Sir Alan went on to say :

Here in Birmingham at the centre of a great industrial area huge amounts of iron, aluminium, glass, copper and other materials are worked up daily into all kinds of manufactured goods. What happens in these processes? The atoms themselves are not changed. Just as many iron, aluminium, copper and other atoms come out of a factory as go in. All that we do is move them about, mix them up and sort them out into various patterns and shapes. And the one thing that is absolutely essential for doing all this, and which is used up in the process, is the high quality energy that comes out of electricity lines, gas pipes, and coal and oil bunkers. Given enough energy, as well as the time and scientific and industrial skills to use it effectively, we can extract all our required minerals and turn them into metals and manufactured goods ; we can turn oil and gas into plastics, purify water, recycle scrap metals, and even turn carbon compounds into protein foods. High quality energy is truly the lifeblood of modern society.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, apparently for no better reason than to confuse people, produced multiple contemporaneous publications with the title “ATOM”.

These illustrated summaries of the annual reports, which were issued for a number of years, have proven very difficult to obtain — I have succeeded in buying only two, of which one was lost in the post.

—Sir Alan Cottrell, FRS, opening the “Atoms for Energy” exhibition in Birmingham, November 1981.

Here is the product of a considerable amount of dedicated scanning and typing : scans of a number of issues of the UKAEA magazine ATOM, titles of principal articles, and typed-out versions of book reviews.

This was a purchase, a little more than a year ago, that simply disappeared in the post on the way from Britain to Germany.

Sir John Hill, chairman of UKAEA and BNFL, speaking to the joint meeting of the Atomic Industrial Forum and American Nuclear Society, 13 November 1972, in Washington, DC, USA. Reprinted in ATOM 194 (1972 December).