Atomic Dividends

Under the incurious eyes of a flock of wild geese, a portentous countdown ran its course last week on the isolated Essex marshes in southeastern England. Inside a long, concrete control room, white-coated engineers made final adjustments on the No. 1 reactor of the Bradwell nuclear power plant and started delivering electricity to London, 45 miles away. Bradwell and the newly opened Berkeley plant in Gloucestershire are the first fruits of the world's most ambitious atomic power program: Britain's drive to build ten reactors capable of meeting 10% (4,000,000 kw.) of British electricity needs by 1968.

U.S. utility men, who are currently trying out eight different kinds of reactor in search of the most efficient design, tend to question the speed of the British program. They argue that the government-owned British power industry was too quick to freeze on a single type of gas-cooled reactor, and point out that even after Bradwell hits full stride, the U.S. will still produce more atomic electricity (1,001,000 kw. v. 935,000 kw.) than Britain. But the U.S., with its abundant coal, oil and water power, regards its nuclear power program as mainly experimental, and does not expect it to account for much more than 1% of the nation's electricity needs even in 1980.

Britain has a more pressing problem. By the mid-1970s, British electricity consumption is expected to double. To supply the extra 50 million tons of coal that this would require each year is probably beyond the capacity of the nationalized British coal mines, and the 1956 Suez crisis indelibly etched on Britain's consciousness the risks and expense of relying on imported oil. To reduce to a minimum their dependence on imported fuel, the British hope by the 1970s to make atomic reactors second only to coal as a power source in Britain.

So far, the British have not been much more successful than U.S. utilities in bringing the cost of atomic electricity down to competitive levels; the power produced at Bradwell and Berkeley still costs substantially more than electricity generated with coal. But some time between 1970 and 1973, when the construction costs of the nuclear plants are finally paid off, the longer life of atomic fuel should even things up. This ten-year wait for a payoff does not worry the British.

Explains a government economist: "Our nuclear program is like life insurance. You pay heavy premiums over a number of years, but eventually you collect good dividends."

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