A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

4. Atoms for Peace

Nuclear technologies are, of course, far more than those of weapons. The development of civil nuclear power in the USA, the Soviet Union, Britain and France followed shortly behind the weapons programs. The world’s earliest nuclear reactor for electrical power was at Obninsk, Soviet Union (1954), followed by the first commercial-scale plant at Calder Hall, UK (1956). The first US power reactor was developed at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. These civil initiatives followed a major US push to internationalize the benefits of nuclear power via the “Atoms for Peace” process launched by President Eisenhower at the United Nations on 8 December 1953. The process yielded a series of celebrated exhibitions in far-flung places, some with dubious nuclear futures, such as Tehran, Iran, and Karachi, Pakistan (Weart [1988], p. 163).

Arguably the world’s most successful innovation in civil nuclear power has been the development of light water reactors (LWRs). These technologies use ordinary water as both a reactor coolant and a neutron moderator.⁸ Two main types exist – the Pressurized Water Reactor, developed as an offshoot of US naval propulsion research, and a later innovation, the Boiling Water Reactor. While early European reactors which used graphite as a moderator (e.g. the Magnox series) bear similarities to technologies previously developed for weapons plutonium production, the US LWRs had little or no connection with nuclear weapons. Interestingly, the LWRs ...