The UK's First Nuclear Energy Program Study

As the problems of energy crisis and environmental pollution become increasingly serious, the role of nuclear energy in history and in future gets people's more attention. In 1955, the UK made a programme of nuclear power which was the first in the world and because of this programme the UK became a leader in the use of nuclear power. Therefore, we can learn well about the programme of nuclear power and its status and influence through this research, and it will be useful for our country's nuclear power development.The total paper includes three parts. The first part mainly introduces the origin of the programme of nuclear power. Most use of science and technology has its orgin in the military research and the use of nuclear power is a perfect model. As a matter of fact, the UK's nuclear research center was military at first, and the programme of nuclear power was born out of nuclear weapon programme.The second part reviews the process of the programme's making and implementation. After the Second World War the UK was in disaster and there must had many reasons to make up such a expense programme. At first, the precondition was that the UK had gained much knowledge about nuclear power during the war and the main driving force was the concern about its energy situation. Of course, the implementation of the programme had many problems and because of some reasons there had several revisions during this process. The revision in 1957 and 1960 was so huge that we must gave some careful analysis. However, the programme was finished in the early 1970s through it was subject to its time.The third part gives the programme a historical analysis. As this programme was affected by many factors, so it had many particularities in nuclear power plant, organization and its scale. And just because of this particularity the programme had many problems, such as the efficiency of nuclear power plant, the lack of flexibility in implementation and so on. Anyhow, the first programme had profound impacts on the power generation and the subsequent nuclear power development.The last is the summary of the paper. It points out that although the first nuclear programme of the UK is somewhat premature and therefore has some questions, it still has some rationality in consideration of the UK's situation. Of course, as a nuclear power country China should learn from the UK's first nuclear power programme.