The Presidential emissary told King Saud that the U.S. would make its nuclear technology available to Europe if the Suez Canal was used as a tool of blackmail. The decision to encourage nuclear exports was made within months of the Suez Crisis of 1956. The diffusion plants’ capital cost had largely been assumed by the…
The history of nuclear power technology is often as much a political study as it is a technical study. Perhaps no other technological development has ever been so tied to the actions and interests of government bodies and foreign affairs. In this issue of AEI we will focus on the early market struggle between the…
In the period from 1966 to 1964, there were two basic reactor choices being offered for commercial electric power production. American companies were offering reactors that used ordinary water under pressure as the reactor coolant. British and French companies were offering reactors using pressurized CO2 gas as the reactor coolant. There were substantial technical differences…
For natural uranium reactors, primary selection criteria is a low neutron cross section. A material that absorbs more than its share of neutrons would prevent the reactor from being able to produce any power at all. After making the coolant and moderator choices, certain other details moved higher on the priority list. Core engineers needed…
In the early 1950s, PWR pressure vessels large enough for a submarine plant were within the capabilities of the existing manufacturing infrastructure, but vessels large enough for electrical power generating stations were not. Like the American pressurized water reactor systems, gas cooled reactors operate at elevated pressures. Unlike water, however, which is kept under extreme…
Interestingly enough, the first industrial scale nuclear power plant for electrical production was Calder Hall 1, a carbon dioxide cooled reactor that began supplying Great Britain in May, 1956. This reactor and others like it have been reliable, long-lived sources of electrical power. In the December 1995 issue we focused on the design decisions made…
During the period from 1946 until 1954, the single most important constraint governing the development of peaceful uses of atomic power was the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. This American law – passed after a failed attempt to establish an international control regime for nuclear materials – made it illegal to trade in nuclear knowledge…
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