Britain's Drive for Atomic Power

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ENERGY is one of the fundamental concepts of the physicist--perhaps the fundamental concept. Power, which is the rate at which energy is supplied, is almost equally important to the statesman. In the modern world, power is a need hardly less vital than food and water.

A nation's per capita consumption of energy is a very good indication of its economic standing. Strictly speaking, consumption is the wrong word, for energy cannot be consumed, it can only be transformed. But it is often changed from a readily available form to one which is useless, as when the power supplied to the engines of an airplane is transformed, as it all ultimately is, into heating the air through which the plane flies. This illustrates an important feature of the use of energy. In most cases (though there are exceptions), what men want is not actually energy but some change which occurs as a kind of by-product of its transformation; in the case of an airplane this is the rapid carriage of people or goods from one place to another. For this reason it is difficult to say categorically just how much power a nation must have at its disposal to achieve a particular standard of living. One can use power wisely or wastefully. While the amount of food necessary to live in health is measurable, one can hardly say the same for power.

However, the history of the last century shows a steady increase in per capita power for the leading nations and there is good reason to suppose that this increase will continue at a rate close to 3 percent per annum.^[i] Any country which cannot achieve this increase must expect to be severely pinched, to have its development retarded, and probably to face a declining standard of living...