ATOMIC ENERGY — OLIPHANT 233 



the application of liquid metals to the removal of fission-produced 

 heat at high temperatures. The second will produce significant 

 amounts of electric power from a reactor using neutrons in the inter- 

 mediate range of energies, and at the same time will determine whether 

 breeding is possible under these conditions. The heat will be re- 

 moved with liquid metal, and power will be generated from this by 

 conventional means. These breeder reactors, together with the ma- 

 terials-testing reactor, are estimated to cost about 70 million dollars. 

 The Ministry of Supply has not yet announced plans in Britain for 

 work on breeder reactors upon which the future of atomic energy for 

 useful purposes clearly depends. 



ECONOMIC COST OF NUCLEAR POWER 



It is not easy to estimate, as yet, the economic cost of nuclear power. 

 The energy derived from 1 pound of uranium, completely utilized in 

 a breeder reactor, is equivalent to that produced by burning 1,500 tons 

 of coal. The cost of uranium is about 1,000 times the cost of coal. 

 This leaves a factor of about 3,000 to cover the cost of converting the 

 uranium to a form suitable for use in a reactor and the greater cost 

 of a nuclear reactor over a coal furnace. In the absence of precise 

 data it is possible only to guess the ultimate answer. You will find 

 that many British scientists and engineers of repute believe that the 

 cost will always be too great for atomic energy to compete with coal 

 as a source of power, and that the new form of energy is of purely 

 military and scientific interest. I do not share this view. I feel 

 confident that atomic energy has a very important part to play in the 

 production of industrial power and that the cost will ultimately be 

 found to be competitive with, and probably much less than, the cost 

 of power from other sources. The time required to reach this stage of 

 development is unlikely to be less than 10 to 15 years and clearly it 

 depends on the relative efforts devoted to the military and industrial 

 objectives. Uranium is more widespread in occurrence than was 

 thought to be the case and, with the development of methods for ex- 

 tracting it from low-grade ores, there should be sufficient available to 

 provide a great contribution to the power resources of the world if it 

 is not used for the manufacture of military weapons. 



HYDROGEN AS A NUCLEAR FUEL 



Finally, we must consider the possibility that industrial power may 

 one day be produced from hydrogen. Long before the discovery of 

 the fission process it was realized that under conditions of extremely 

 high temperature and pressure, such as exist in the interior of the sun 

 and stars, hydrogen nuclei, or protons, might combine to give nuclei 

 of heavier elements, and that because the component parts of heavier 



