Contribution of Nuclear Energy

All the recent attention to the 40th anniversary of atomic energy graphically reminded us of the potential threat that nuclear weapons represent. Regrettably, though, it overlooked the way that nuclear energy has helped to preserve the peace. Its use to generate electric power has helped industrialized countries to reduce their dependence on imported oil and, quite possibly, in the future, it may avoid a war.

After the 1973 oil embargo virtually all industrialized nations rapidly began developing substitutes for imported oil. That usually mean nuclear energy. As a result, nuclear electric power now provides more than 60% of the electricity in France, more than half the electric power in Belgium, and more than 20% in Japan, West Germany, Switzerland and several other countries. Without nuclear power in 1984, the world would have needed the energy of another 5 billion barrels a day to provide fuel for electric power plants.

Even in the United States nuclear power has become the second largest source of our electric power. It is providing more than half of the electricity used in five states and more than one-fourth in six others.

If nuclear power had not been developed and proven when we hit the energy crises of the 1970s, history might, in fact, have told quite a different story. But rather than having to compete for a limited supply of oil, the nations of the world were able to begin a historic shift to the first large-scale energy source that can take us beyond the fossil-fuel age.

This major contribution of nuclear energy to the world’s economies--and perhaps to world peace as well--should not be unnoted.

FREDERICK SEITZ

HANS A. BETHE

MIRO M. TODOROVICH

New York