You may have noticed recently that capitalism is heading for another of its periodic crises. This time it is over the supply, or rather the lack, of energy. As world energy consumption increases at a rate of five per cent. per year (see Table 1) it has been predicted that power failures may become commonplace and transport and industry grind to a halt as the industrially advanced nations gobble up the planet’s remaining fossil resources.
Having recklessly squandered much of their indigenous fossil fuel supplies, literally without a thought for the future, some countries are finding themselves increasingly dependent on imported energy supplies. Britain’s dependence on imported energy rose from 25 per cent. in 1960 to 45 per cent. in 1970. The EEC as a whole in 1970 imported 63 per cent. of its energy requirement. Shell estimate that by 1985 Western Europe will be importing 900 million tons of oil yearly — the North Sea oilfield output of 250 million tons will be far short of demand.
The position in the United States appears to be even more critical. Three years ago Federal Power Commissioner Carl Bragge declared: “We may have to face up to the rationing of electricity as a matter of policy’’. President Nixon announced in February of this year that America was now consuming more energy than it produced. And it has been estimated that by 1980 America will be importing one third of its energy; even so it has a long way to go to catch Japan where some 90 per cent. of their energy demand is now imported.
Naturally fears have been expressed about the uncertainty over future prices of fuels which might affect trade and profits. In a debate in the House of Lords recently Liberal peer Lord Tanlaw said that
. . . as a nation which depends upon trade, it is vital that we should not let our energy costs get substantially out of line with those countries with whom we have to compete in international markets.
(Hansard 28 February 1973 col. 650)
This is particularly relevant in basic industries such as iron and steel and cement where direct fuel costs make up respectively 15 and 25 per cent. of the gross value of industrial output.
What the capitalist class requires are energy supplies which are secure and which will meet the foreseen needs of the economy at the lowest possible cost. These requirements are “planned for” in a state of international anarchy in which the best laid capitalist plan can come unstuck. For example the government’s 1967 White Paper on Fuel Policy made the exceedingly rash assumption that oil prices would remain stable. The intervening period has seen the producing countries gang together to hike up the price and the consumers have had to comply. But because the ruling class and their governments look at the problem with these narrow commercial priorities they see only the present short-term energy crisis. This will be solved, at least temporarily, by such measures as increased investment and by governments lowering protective trade barriers and underwriting the search for new supplies of the old fuels.
However there is a much more serious long-term energy crisis which capitalism has not yet faced up to. The present world set-up is unlikely to be able to provide the massive amounts of energy that will be necessary to raise the living standards of the world’s desperately poor majority even to the miserable level of the “affluent” west. Further, as industrialism spreads tensions are likely to develop over the control of present and possible future sources of energy supplies with the outbreak of war an ever-present possibility.
Assuming, and there is very strong evidence for doing so, that there are enough fossil fuel resources to last for at least the next one hundred years (see Table 2), is there in the longer run an alternative to the energy starvation predicted by some scaremongers? It is clear that to survive man must develop other sources of energy, for without energy man will be unable to continue to change the world around him for his own benefit. The present expansion of nuclear fission programmes may provide a short-term stop-gap but as a long-term solution it looks like being a non-starter. To succeed in replacing conventional fuels by nuclear power sufficient to meet demand in the year 2000 one 1,000 megawatt station a week should be built from now till then. As it is, half the power stations on order in the US are nuclear, and in 15 to 20 years one-third of the electricity in Europe will come from nuclear fission in an attempt to keep up with electricity consumption which doubles every ten years. In England and Wales output of electricity is now 50,000 MWe. By 2000 it is expected to be 160,000 MWe, half of it nuclear.
But in the long run the reliance on nuclear fission has serious drawbacks, the most important of which is the production of highly dangerous radioactive waste by-products, some of which remain dangerous to human life for tens of thousands of years. (The rather frivolous suggestion that these might be shot off to the sun aboard a space rocket is not really on). Such waste products are dangerous even at very low levels and by the end of the century will present us with the problem of what to do with six-billion plus curies of Strontium 90 — thirty times as much as would be released by a nuclear war and enough to contaminate all the fresh water in the world. Still, it is possible that capitalism will decide that the economic considerations outweigh the risks of contamination. Obviously we must look elsewhere for future energy resources.
The most promising alternative so far is nuclear fusion. In the fission process a heavy nucleus is split into two parts and energy is released. In the fusion process on the other hand, two lightweight elements combine to form a heavier and more tightly bound nucleus with the simultaneous release of significant amounts of energy. This energy-releasing rearrangement collision can occur between various common isotopes of hydrogen. The beauty of it is that these isotopes are in virtually inexhaustible supply. For example there is estimated to be one Deuterium isotope for every 5,000 atoms of hydrogen. So abundant is this substance in sea water that to reduce the present concentration by a mere one per cent, would be equivalent to consuming 500,000 times the world’s initial supply of fossil fuels. One third of a cubic mile of sea water would equal the energy consumed by man up to 1960. Gram for gram several times more energy is released by fusion than by fission. In addition the fusion process would produce virtually no pollution problems from radioactive waste. The contamination of equipment would have a very short half life, and would form fuel for further energy-producing cycles. In fact it would be so safe that it might be possible to have the nuclear fusion stations near the centres of population.
Held Back
In spite of the obvious advantages of having a safe, clean and abundant energy supply, progress toward fusion power is being blocked by a lack of money. William Gough and Bernard Eastland of the US Atomic Energy Commission are convinced that the remaining problems are merely technical ones. They say that
. . . continuing effort is sustained by the growing conviction that the eventual attainment of a practical fusion power reactor is not blocked by the laws of nature . . . (and that) . . . At present the main factor limiting the rate of progress toward fusion power is financial.
(Scientific American February 1971)
Their estimation of the date for the first fusion power reactor ranges from 10 to 50 years. Harold Furth, head of the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, is convinced that
Estimates based on recent experimental progress indicate that a demonstration of the scientific feasibility of controlled fusion may be achieved before the end of the 1970s.
(Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future, 1973.)
All this has been achieved virtually on shoe-string budgets. If the capitalists were really intent on solving the energy problem then massive research efforts on the scale of their various moon shots or their wartime search for the atomic bomb would be called for. Instead between the lot of them, they spend only a paltry £60 million per year world-wide on research into nuclear fusion. Compared with the massive “defence” budgets put up by all capitalist governments (£2,461 million by Britain alone in 1970) which have enabled strategists to build apparatus of death of such fiendish complexity that only a few years ago would have been considered totally impossible to build under any circumstances. These are the priorities capitalism fosters.
Cutting the Money
In this country nuclear fusion research suffered a serious set-back at the hands of the Labour government who were, it will be remembered, elected after promising to usher in the white-hot technological revolution. Wedgwood Benn demonstrated what a damp squib this promise was turning out to be. As Minister for Technology he was responsible for halving the research programme at Culham Laboratory despite the “outstanding quality and considerable scientific achievement” of the work done there in the field of nuclear physics for which it had a “high international standing.” Spending on this vital area of research declined from £4.5 million in 1966-67 to £3.9 million in 1969-70. When examined by a Select Committee on Science and Technology in March 1968 Dr. J. B. Adams had to admit that Culham Laboratory would have to reduce the amount of work on the fusion programme. In addition there would obviously be difficulties in maintaining the quality of that work, in maintaining the best of their staff, and in maintaining the morale of the staff.
The 1967 decision was made entirely on short-term economic grounds. It was argued that if fusion was going to be used it must come in because it is cheaper. (Remember the government were looking forward to a period of cheap stable-price oil supplies). All the other advantages were not considered worthy of financial support as fission reactors looked economically so attractive. In announcing the cuts Benn said:
. . . rapid progress has been made towards economic nuclear fission power. In particular the fast breeder reactor programme shows real promise. Consideration of this progress . . . leads inevitably to the conclusion that plasma physics and fusion research should be substantially reduced . . . I can understand . . . the need for focussing research on economic projects, which is very much part of the philosophy of my Department.
(Hansard 26 July cols. 644-647)
Keep it a Secret
Tom Boardman, Minister for Industry, told the House of Commons earlier this year that the Government had accepted recommendations of its fusion review committee to restore spending on fusion research almost to the 1967 level. To put this announcement in perspective it should be borne in mind that in this period the government spent £7 million annually on maintaining military bands. Still Culham Laboratory is lucky to survive at all. There was at one time (according to Jeremy Bray who was a Junior Minister at the time) a “. . . powerful body of opinion that the work should have been closed down altogether”. (Hansard 26 March 1968 col. 1441). When challenged he refused to give names but without losing ourselves in the realms of wild speculation we can suggest that they might represent the interests of a small minority group who wish to maintain the status quo — all those with investments in oil and nuclear fission technology for example. Such a group would see their capital investment devalued by a breakthrough in fusion research. Under capitalism the function of governments is to protect such investments in any way possible. Profits are put before human need, and now apparently before human survival!
This might also partly explain the starvation of funds for fusion research. It might also explain the more sinister developments now taking place in the United States. These involve the deliberate stone-walling over and attempted suppression of research into nuclear fusion. The experiences of Dr. LoDato and Professor S. A. Goudsmit, are cases in point. Dr. LoDato left the Rand Corporation to work on fusion power. He had been investigating the possibility of using beams of high intensity laser light to raise the nuclear fuel to a sufficiently high temperature for fusion to take place. This work was greeted enthusiastically by AEC scientists who were of the opinion that this represented a major breakthrough. Yet when he applied for a grant of $80,000 he was told that not only had his application been turned down but that all his work including his notebooks had been classified secret and that he was prohibited from discussing his work with anyone. Professor Goudsmit, editor of the highly specialized journal Physical Review Letters, sent an article submitted to him for publication to a “referee” for his comments. The referee replied that all but two paragraphs of his report could not be published in the journal until they had been declassified. Commenting on this cloud of what Goudsmit called “officially inspired reticence” the influential scientific journal Nature said:
. . . where laser-induced fusion is concerned, the AEC has apparently been trying to prevent independent authors from publishing their entirely independent research . . .
(Nature 16 February 1973)
Rehabilitation
At present, then, as The Times put it: “It certainly looks as if . . . ideas that may lead to new and better ways of generating electric power are not being allowed to be circulated” (21 February 1973). How successful these sectional interests within the capitalist class will be in thwarting future developments in this way is difficult to say. What we can be sure about is that Socialism, being a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by the whole community, such minority sectional interests could not possibly prevent the advance of knowledge by censoring the publication of the results of any kind of research. Socialism will be a society of abundance based on developments that are already taking place but which are warped and distorted by capitalism’s profit motive.
Given the scientific and technological possibilities plus the human priorities of Socialism we could have a world society of abundance and make a serious start to the big clean-up and rehabilitation of this degraded planet.
Gwynn Thomas
