Energy for productivity

In pre-history humans learnt how to engage the energy of fire rather than to flee in fear. This gave them a level of productivity that distinguished them from other creatures. Nevertheless, life remained short and miserable, and the population low. Sources of fuel were restricted, and other forms of energy that humans learnt to use were weather-dependent and notoriously unreliable.

The Industrial Revolution changed that. The combustion of energy-dense fossil fuels powered engines able to convert heat energy into mechanical effort. The availability of this heat and work, in quantity, on site and on demand, transformed productivity and the quality of human life. It took time for the benefits to be realised, but for two hundred years political and economic activity has focussed on access to these fuels and the engines that use them. Unfortunately, fire can be difficult to control – it can "catch alight" in a runaway process and even explode. And emissions, not only of carbon dioxide, but of carbon soot and nitrogen oxides too, are discharged in vast quantities into the atmosphere and oceans where they accumulate over periods up to a century. So the international community has agreed that the combustion of fossil fuels should be curtailed soon – implicitly while maintaining the world economy.

Hence the search for a cleaner fuel to support higher productivity in the medium and longer term – ideally "hotter" than fire, widely available, controllable, compact and safe. Surprisingly there is a candidate solution to this wish list, one that Winston Churchill pointed out already 93 years ago. Writing in the Strand Magazine he compared the productivity of human effort, coal and nuclear energy

"The coal a man can get in a day can easily do 500 times as much work as the man himself. Nuclear energy is at least one million times more powerful still. The discovery and control of such sources of power would cause changes in human affairs incomparably greater than those produced by the steam-engine four generations ago."

Though nobody knew how to extract and control this million-fold energy in 1931, it is explained as a simple consequence ofquantum physics and already by 1954 it was safely powering the submarine, Nautilus.

Unfortunately, in 1945 nuclear energy had been used as a weapon. Like for gunpowder and TNT in earlier days, the increase in destructive energy was received with fear. And then, to the evident danger of blast and fire, was added worries over the health effects of radiation. Without any knowledge to the contrary, this radiation scare story was socially devastating and rapidly demonised nuclear energy. This had the welcome effect of discouraging the deployment of nuclear weapons, so that none has been used since 1945. Nevertheless, the health threat from radiation on the scale feared is not confirmed by supporting evidence.

If society had overcome this fear, as it did long ago when the fear of fire threatened human advancement, the full benefit of nuclear energy might have been enjoyed for the past 70 years. But no attempt was made to explain and convince everyone that radiation and nuclear energy are more easily and safely controlled than fire, as can be done today. Instead, public apprehension was treated with regulations designed to minimise personal exposure to nuclear technology – except for the life-saving health benefits initiated by Marie Curie. These regulations lack any sound scientific basis and appeal to a philosophy of unqualified caution. Technically, they encourage over-design and add hugely to the costs and delays of deploying nuclear power.

Until recently these artificial hurdles were still widely cited as reasons to discourage nuclear energy as a replacement for fossil fuels. Instead, the instinctive reaction was to revert to the weak and unreliable sources that depend on the weather and had proved inadequate before the Industrial Revolution. Deployed today with modern technology their voracious appetite for land and resources adds to their unreliability and negative environmental impact.

But the benefits of nuclear power for productivity that Churchill imagined remain, as do simple reassuring facts:

• the Evacuation Zone at Chernobyl, far from being an uninhabitable desert, is thriving with wildlife;
• nobody was hurt at all by the radiation released in the accidents at Fukushima and Three Mile Island;
• overall, nuclear power has a better safety record than any other source;
• healthy human tissue recovers from an exposure to radiation, even after radiotherapy treatment with 40,000 times the annual exposure set as "safe" by ultra-cautious regulations;
• natural radiation in the environment varies by large factors from place to place around the world with no adverse health effects for the inhabitants.

The world has deluded itself for the past 70 years that nuclear energy is especially dangerous. The reasons for its unexpected safety are well understood today and the public view is gradually changing. Discussion about risks and safety in the environment – including that radiation does not multiply like infection or fire – is a matter for schools. The cultural shift will take a few years, but so also will the wider rollout of nuclear power. The ADVANCE legislation , enacted by President Biden on 9^th July with bipartisan support, brings a more open policy to nuclear development, deployment and international engagement. Currently nuclear technology offers many plant designs under development, all competing for permission to build, but held back until now by a risk-averse culture.

There is room for considerable optimism that nuclear power will contribute a major uplift in future productivity – as it could have earlier if the world had not been scared.