Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities

by Edward Teller; Albert L. Latter

This increase could be significant. Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket or a valve for some kinds of radiation. In the daytime we receive energy in the form of visible light from the sun. This form of radiation has no difficulty in penetrating the carbon dioxide gas. However, the incoming radiation is balanced by invisible heat radiation, which flows out from the earth into space day and night. This infrared radiation is quite similar in nature to light, only our eyes are not sensitive to it. Now the carbon dioxide gas acts like a barrier, though only a partially effective barrier, to this outgoing heat radiation. If the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere were to increase too greatly, it would act like the glass in a greenhouse and our climate would grow warmer.

A ten per cent increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere should have produced an observable rise in temperature. Such a temperature rise has not, in fact, been observed. The reason is that not all the carbon dioxide which has been generated in the processes of combustion has actually remained in the atmosphere. Most of it has found its way into the great reservoir of our oceans. Some of it is deposited as lime at the bottom of the oceans. However, some time is required for the carbon dioxide to be removed from the atmosphere and to reach the oceans. One would expect, therefore, that there would have been at least a slight increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Measurements show that this is the case and that the increase is about two per cent—which is too small to have changed our climate.

If we continue to consume fuel at an increasing rate, however, it appears probable that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere will become high enough to raise the average temperature of the earth by a few degrees. If this were to happen, the ice caps would melt and the general level of the oceans would rise. Coastal cities like New York and Seattle might be inundated.

Thus the industrial revolution using ordinary chemical fuel could be forced to end before the advantages of civilization have spread all over the earth. However, it might still be possible to use nuclear fuel. With nuclear fuel the industrial revolution and its countless benefits for man could continue to every part of the globe. The by-products of the nuclear age are less bulky and therefore are more easily handled than the by-products of our coal- and oil-economy. The main advantage of nuclear energy may yet turn out to be this: With proper care nuclear energy may turn out to be the cleanest among the available sources of power.

CHAPTER XIX
The Nuclear Age

The future depends on people. People are unpredictable. Therefore, the future is unpredictable. However, some general conditions of mankind depend on things like the development of technology, the control won by man over nature and the limitations of natural resources. These can be predicted with a little greater confidence. The future is unknown but in some respects its general outline can be guessed.

Such guesses are important. They influence our present outlook and our present actions.

The nuclear age has not yet started. Our sources of energy are not yet nuclear sources. Even in the military field, where development has been most rapid, the structure of the armed forces has not yet adjusted itself to the facts of the nuclear age in a realistic manner. In politics the atomic nucleus has entered as a promise and as a menace—not as a fact on which we can build and with which we can reckon.

Some technical predictions seem safe:

Nuclear energy will not render our older power plants obsolete in the near future. But nuclear energy will make it possible to maintain the pace—even the acceleration—of the industrial revolution. It will be possible to produce all the energy we need at a moderate cost. Furthermore—and this is the important point—this energy will be available at any place on the globe at a cost which is fairly uniform. The greater the need for power, the sooner will it be feasible to satisfy the need with the help of nuclear reactors.