The [design](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/03/20/out_of_options/) of many of the world's nuclear reactors &#x2013; like the one at the center of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant &#x2013; were thought to be risky from very early on. But warnings by officials were repeatedly ignored, under the significant political, industrial and commercial pressures that fed the rise of nuclear power in America, Britain and the Soviet Union.

A Is for AtomThis episode was named after a 1953 General Electric propaganda film that explained nuclear power and features artfully chosen footage from this film.[5] The episode is an insight into the history of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. For business reasons, General Electric and Westinghouse decided that the types sold would be versions based on the reactors used in nuclear submarines, but sold with dubious claims made about their cost effectiveness and safety.

However, in 1964, at AEC it was found that while small reactors were safe, the bigger core sizes as used in power plants were potentially susceptible to China syndrome—an accident where the reactor core could melt through the bottom of the reactor containment vessel. A study showed that this could potentially happen, and if it did it would cause very large damages. These concerns were largely kept from the public. The episode goes into some detail over attempts to find solutions for the China Syndrome issue.

In the Soviet Union, reactors were considered too expensive until Brezhnev came to power. Under his reign, Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov designed cheap reactors that were produced at high speed, with very few safety features, sometimes not even containment vessels. This was publicly criticised by experts, but the experts were sidelined.

In Britain, by 1974, delays of its native advanced gas cooled reactor powerplant caused Britain to adopt the American PWR design of reactors.

However, in America it was being discovered that safety systems that had to work to avoid meltdown could not be guaranteed to work reliably in the complex circumstances in a nuclear reactor. Tests run on the emergency core cooling systems to deal with pipe breaks, performed on AECs test models in Idaho in 1971, repeatedly failed; often the water was forced out of the core under pressure. It was discovered that the theoretical calculations had no correspondence with reality. Nevertheless, they had not necessarily proved that they wouldn't work on a real reactor, so they decided to carry on with mandated safety systems, that the best evidence suggested, may well not function in the event of an accident.

Engineers and scientists and regulators that tried to publicise the potential issues found that their concerns were not published, and these issues remained largely unknown to the public, and nuclear power had a high degree of confidence with the public.

Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 which changed public views on the safety of this new technology. It revealed that the industry had hid the problems and unpredictable nature of these types of reactors, and that they had imposed risks on the public, without consultation.

The documentary ends with the points that the forms of the reactors were chosen only for business reasons. There are very broad range of scientific and engineering options which were not explored. Therefore, perhaps nuclear power should be led by public decisions and redeveloped, but from a more morality-centred point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_Box_(television_documentary_series)

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A Is For ATOM (Adam Curtis)

In the wake of atomic energy disasters like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, the often controversial documentarian Adam Curtis focused on the subject as part of his 1992 BAFTA\-winning series on politics and science, "Pandora's Box." The hour-long episode, "A is for Atom," was named cheekily after [the old propaganda film](http://motherboard.tv/2011/3/23/this-1953-propaganda-cartoon-depicts-our-happy-future-with-atomic-energy--2) on atomic energy. Watch it above to see Curits' typically genius use of archival footage and hear sobering comments like this one, from the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, speaking about General Electric and other plant manufacturers:

I don't think we had the power to stop them. We could have refused to license them, but again I think that in the context of that time, it's not a question that makes much sense.

The film's a big, disconcerting lesson in innovation: technologies aren't simply inevitable outcomes of science and rationality. They are designed and controlled by people with particular interests &#x2013; interests that don't always coincide with those of the public.

After you're done, read Leon Neyfakh's excellent recent piece on the technological "lock-in" of ['light water' reactors](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/03/20/out_of_options/).

*   [The Atomic Motherboard](http://motherboard.tv/search/posts?keyword=atomic&commit=Search)

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The "design":http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/03/20/out_of_options/ of many of the world's nuclear reactors - like the one at the center of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant - were thought to be risky from very early on. But warnings by officials were repeatedly ignored, under the significant political, industrial and commercial pressures that fed the rise of nuclear power in America, Britain and the Soviet Union. In the wake of atomic energy disasters like Chernobyl or Three Mile...

FYI.

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Adam Curtis' "A Is For Atom": A Documentary About the Risky Business of Nuclear Energy

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FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Adam Curtis' "A Is For Atom": A Documentary About the Risky Business of Nuclear Energy

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