The Nuclear Age

Scientists, government officials, and engineers put the force of the atom to economic use, especially in the form of nuclear power, and the dramatic boost in available energy helped continue postwar economic expansion into the 1960s and beyond. The USSR built the world’s first civilian nuclear power station, in the town of Obninsk, in 1954; Britain and the United States soon followed suit. During the 1960s and 1970s, nuclear power for industrial and household use multiplied a hundredfold—a growth that did not include nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, which also multiplied during this period.

Because of the vast costs and complex procedures involved in building, supplying, running, and safeguarding nuclear reactors, governments provided substantial aid and even financed nuclear power plants almost entirely. “A state does not count,” announced French president Charles de Gaulle, “if it does not . . . contribute to the technological progress of the world.” The watchword for all governments building nuclear reactors was technological development—a new function for the modern state. The USSR sponsored plants throughout the Soviet bloc as part of the drive to modernize, but it was not alone—Western nations, too, funded nuclear power. In 2006, France produced some 80 percent of its energy, and the United States 20 percent, via nuclear power plants. More than thirty countries had substantial nuclear installations in the twenty-first century, with new ones under construction.