Book Reviews from ATOM — 1980

1979 • 1981

Number 284, June

Most technical books appearing on the market these days are well written but — often — poorly illustrated. It is very satisfying to review a well presented book with excellent colour illustrations, particularly on such an important topic as energy and the future.

David Hardy is a leading space artist and was co–author (with Patrick Moore) of a book, Challenge of the Stars, for which he produced 36 paintings. He has both written and illustrated this new book on energy — a very wide–ranging subject for a mere 107 pages.

The book is written for an intelligent lay–person with appreciable amounts of information that would interest A–level students. However, the high standard of illustration makes it understandable by a much younger audience. Unusually, the book is set out not in chapters but under 50 topic headings all carefully listed on the contents page ; there is also a comprehensive index.

The first half of the book is a basic treatment of thermodynamics, atomic structure, electricity, radiation, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. All these topics are explained in a simple and precise manner marred only by the factual error on page 49 that the neutron absorbing control rods in an atomic pile are of calcium (instead of cadmium).

The real treatment of energy starts on page 52 with a comprehensive review of fossil fuels including their formation, usage, reserves, and finally North Sea oil and gas. Again, this section is well presented.

There is a short but useful section on the nuclear alternatives including thermal reactors, breeder fast reactors and fusion.

The last 25 pages are a courageous attempt to describe the present position on geothermal energy and on renewable energy sources — solar energy, wave power, wind energy, tidal barriers and biomass ending with a sensible summary of the overall energy position. It is clear that the author has done his researches carefully.

This is a very useful general book on energy which many will be pleased to have on their shelves and which fills a very obvious gap in the market. The high standard of presentation and use of colour is reflected in the comparatively high cost which must limit the total circulation. A paper–back edition with monotone illustration could have a much wider market ; but the energy situation is changing rapidly and all these books need revision every couple of years.

This is a good little book. As a reviewer, and from my seat as editor of ATOM, I am only saddened to think that it will probably not reach the people it should : the recent emergence of sundry anti–nuclear campaign groupings in Britain augurs a closing of minds to the sorts of argument the Hoyles deploy. To paraphrase Huxley, the great tragedy of the environmentalist movement could be (if only they would let it happen!) the slaying of beautiful hypotheses by ugly facts* — and this book is full of them.

They start with the proposition that historians of the future may well see the discovery of nuclear energy as the most important event of the 20th century. The world population had risen by the end of the 19th century to a level at which energy requirements could no longer be met by what are nowadays called renewable resources — wood grown in forests, wind, and water. Society could only continue by making a raid on fossil fuels, first on coal and then on oil ; the raid was savagely pernicious in that it served to drive up the world’s population to higher levels still, so that the prospect was one of arriving at fuel exhaustion at the very moment when the population attained by far its greatest number in human history.

Nuclear energy changed what had become an apparently hopeless situation within a couple of momentous decades, they write. The following paragraph from their introduction is worth quoting in full.

It is ironic that, whereas people hardly troubled themselves about the previously–threatened disaster, as soon as the seemingly inevitable prospect of an energy collapse was removed people began to worry. Only an immensely powerful technology could have lifted society almost in an instant out of its previous impasse, and it is the nature of every technology to have negative as well as positive implications. Although nuclear bombs and nuclear energy for civil use both came from the same body of new knowledge, there has never been any question of their practical technologies becoming inadvertently mixed. At a political level, however, there is an important way in which the bad and the good really can become intertwined. If the developed nations really do run into a desperate energy shortage, the tensions arising from the lop–sided geographical distribution of dwindling fossil fuels are only too likely to lead to presently–existing bombs being launched on the world. Energy shortage seems a sure prescription for nuclear war.^NOTE

So much for the preamble. The rest of the book contains some useful stuff on nuclear technology, but this is far less important to the argument than the evidence the Hoyles present for the hazards inherent in the use of other energy sources, and the myths surrounding them that they destroy. Witness : after recalling the tone of comments made immediately after the Flixborough disaster (It is completely amazing. We cannot understand it.) they note drily that if the chemical industry had traditionally employed a fraction of the care which the nuclear industry has taken from its beginning, the cause of the Flixborough disaster would not have seemed so amazing... [T]he one thing which came intact and safe through the holocaust was a container of radioactive material. Witness : A few months ago with thick snow outside the window, with an icy wind blowing from the Arctic, solar stood absolutely nowhere. Yet one can argue that the energy requirement of society is a mere 1/100 of 1 per cent of the energy of all the sunlight coming through the Earth’s atmosphere to ground level... Snag number one : if solar energy is used to heat domestic hot water, the warm water needed on a cold winter day cannot normally have been heated the same day, or even heated the previous week or month... This means that the warm–water storage tank must retain heat for about six months. It may be possible to acheive this. Yet a tithe of the effort needed for such a project, applied to insulation within the home itself, would cut fuel consumption in a marked degree. They then consider the use of solar energy for electricity production, and conclude that unless solar power stations in space can be developed in the long term, there is no satisfactory high–technology method for adapting solar to the more sophisticated needs of modern society. The problem is not of energy quantity but of energy concentration. To be industrially effetive, an energy source must be compact, which is precisely where nuclear wins and solar fails.

As with solar energy, so with natural gas (nearing exhaustion), and coal. Coal, they note, has always been an inconvenient material ; it has always been dangerous to win out of the ground, and it has always been a source of pollution. Above all, they claim an overwhelming argument against a long–term reliance on coal, in that it is not distributed uniformly over the world. While the USSR and USA might contemplate a long–term reliance, the rest of the industrialised world cannot do so — at any rate without becoming energy–dependent on the USSR and USA. The Hoyles acknowledge that world resources of nuclear fuels are not uniformly distributed either, but they are better distributed than coal ; and by using breeders the need for more than small quantities of nuclear fuel can eventually be avoided.

Ahah, but what about the nuclear waste disposal issue? Here, the Hoyles deploy the arguments the nuclear industry has been trying to get across for some time ; testily, they write : One might think that, in the face of these arguments, the protestors would now desist. They do not desist, however, because their aim is not to make correct scientific statements but to make emotional propaganda. There is almost no end to the imaginary scenarios which a deliberately obstructive critic can invent, and responsible people who understand that an energy crisis is fast approaching must at some point lose patience.

This book is something of a briefcase stuffed with position papers on energy sources, as noted, and rather oddly on the putative disaster in the Urals, breeders and the US Non–Proliferation act, and who is doing the proliferating? (sovereign states, in short, and not very many of them). Even more oddly, perhaps, the book ends by recalling the situation of the railway industry in 1825, psychological very similar to that of the nuclear industry today. That industry survived ; the Hoyles write : We all know that George Stephenson was a hero in his own generation. So too will be the men who make the first commercial breeder reactor in our own generation. Well, maybe. At least we can hope so.

* T.H. Huxley, Collected Essays : Biogenesis and Abiogenesis : The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Number 287, September

Bertrand Goldschmidt, whose new book Le Complexe Atomique has recently appeared in France, is himself one of the pioneers of nuclear energy. He worked first at the famous Curie Laboratory in Paris from 1934—40 and then during the war, on detachment from the Free French Forces, he took part in atomic research in the United States and Canada. From the first setting up of the French Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique he was one of its leaders until his recent retirement — first as head of the Chemistry Division and later as head of International Relations. He has been a Governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency since it was set up in 1957 and was elected Chairman of the Board of Governors for 1980. Thus throughout his working life he has been involved not only in the technical progress of nuclear energy but also in national and international deliberations on the problems involved in its use.

As an actor in the story rather than a mere spectator he is therefore in a favoured position to produce a book on the history of atomic energy, a position which he uses to full advantage. In the foreword to his book he describes it as a political history of atomic energy. It is indeed far more than a mere chronology of events. It offers a personal insight into the causes and effects of the complicated history of the development of atomic energy (the complexe atomique of the title) and the contributions of some strong personalities in both scientific and political circles.

M Goldschmidt’s own personality ensures that ennui is kept at bay while the story is told. With a natural emphasis on developments in France, the book covers the whole history of atomic energy from the discovery of the fission of uranium in 1938 to the SALT II agreements and the re–launching of civil nuclear power which Goldschmidt sees as already beginning in the 1980s. It is written with admirable clarity. Technical explanations are few and readily understandable by the layman.

Goldschmidt tells his story as a series of episodes and his titles for these episodes give a good idea of his approach. The first part of the book deals with the military application of atomic energy and is divided into three episodes. The Alliance covers the years 1939—45 — the development of the uranium and plutonium bombs and the decision to use them to end the war against Japan. The second episode, The Club, 1945—64, covers the spread of nuclear weapons capability — despite US efforts to prolong their monopoly — to the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. The third episode, Renunciations, covers the years 1963—79, the agreement to limit nuclear tests, the Non–Proliferation Treaty and finally the SALT I and SALT II agreements.

In the second part of the book, devoted to civil applications, the first episode is entitled Hope 1945—1954 and describes the first adventures in prototype reactors in various countries and the dawning of the realisation of what nuclear power might offer. The second, Euphoria, describes the enormous technical advances of the period 1954—64 ; the setting up of the IARA and the establishment of international supervision of nuclear materials and installations. The third episode (1964—74), entitled Industrial Rise, explores the beginning of opposition to nuclear power and the emergence of obstacles to progress in many countries including Britain (the analysis of the reactor choice issue in the UK — which admittedly achieved an outstanding degree of complexity — is somewhat over–simplified). The title of the fourth episode, Confusion 1974—79, is all too apt. Goldschmidt’s controversial analysis of the difficulties which have hampered the development of nuclear power in recent years attributes a substantial share to what he calls la politique Carter.

The book ends on a hopeful note with a section entitled The re–launch of nuclear power in the 80s. Goldschmidt feels strongly that it is essential that nuclear power continue to be developed no in order to fill the energy gap which he sees as unavoidable. As he says*, there is no energy as dangerous as no energy. France, he suggests, is setting an example that the rest of the world should follow ; the risks of proliferation and accident must of course be reduced to a minimum but the development of nuclear power must continue so that it will be available in time. Goldschmidt fears that however many articles appear in newspapers or programmes on radio and television the public will never easily be able to grasp the complexity of the issues presented. This may be so : but his book — although written, as he says, tout en réservant un sort particulier aux aspects français — will do more than most to assist readers not only in France but also in other countries.

* Paraphrasing Homi Bhabha, who at the first Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1955 declared that There is no energy as expensive as no energy.

Man and Atom Notes

• We note that renewable energy resources are also most unevenly distributed over the world. If Europeans propose to get their energy by paving North Africa with solar collectors, for instance, what say will the Moroccans and Libyans have in the matter?