Nuclear Energy: Achievements and Problems

Abstract

The everyday and by now even "commonplace" nature of construction of nuclear power plants often beclouds the significance of various events in the development of this new and important branch of energy production in our country. But we become conscious of things by a process of comparison. The Soviet nuclear energy industry is now putting generating facilities into operation at the rate of about 2 million kilowatts a year. Is that much or little? Unquestionably much when one considers that only 1.5 million kilowatts of nuclear power generating capacity was put into service in the USSR from 1954, when the world's first nuclear power plant (NPP) was put on line, through 1970 (i.e., 16 years).