Nuclear Power for Developing Countries: Attainable Within This Century?*

Abstract

To use or not to use nuclear power for generating electricity has, in many parts of the world, become as much an emotional issue as an economic or technical one. Probably this is even more so in developed than in developing countries. The menacing worldwide energy misallocations and shortages have been the subject of a number of conferences, workshops, articles, studies, and - in the United States at least - of pronouncements by advocates ranging in style and substance from Jane Fonda to Barry Commoner to Edward Teller. It is not necessary to take sides here on the narrower question of whether any country in particular should try to use nuclear power for electricity or should try to avoid it. But except perhaps for antinuclear diehards, surely anyone concerned with the plight of developing countries, whose other energy resources are often wholly inadequate, must be interested in finding a satisfactory way to open up for those countries, or to keep open, the nuclear option.