The Atom & the Potato

Little as he may have sought the distinction, no man in recent years has done so much to stimulate European progress as Gamal Abdel Nasser. Living luxuriously on the memory of the day when Britain and Western Europe between them produced three-quarters of the world's industrial energy, most Europeans complacently accepted the fact that Britain must import 12% of her total energy requirements and Western Europe nearly a quarter. But when Egypt's Nasser seized the Suez, he forced all Europe to face up to the significance of these imports: Europe had lost her industrial independence and, with it, much of her power and security.

Shortly after the Suez invasion, and quite independent of it, Europe's Little Six, the Euratom countries,* set up a committee of three experts to study Europe's future energy supply. Last week the three brought in a surprisingly bold 20-page report.

By implication they went far beyond U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who recently suggested that "an appreciable proportion" of Europe's power needs could be met by better integration of hydroelectric and other conventional power sources. Europe today abounds in such schemes, including one for an interchange of electricity between Britain and France by submarine cable (Britain's peak load occurs at 8 a.m., France's at noon). Even if all these schemes were exploited to the fullest, warned the three experts, the six European nations would have to double their fuel imports within ten years, treble them within 20.

The answer is the atom--which, declared France's Louis Armand, one of the three, "will change our way of life just as much as the introduction of the potato." Noting that Britain has already launched a nuclear-energy program which by the end of 1965 will be producing roughly a quarter of Britain's electricity, the three experts said that the Euratom countries must do likewise. Since their population is three times Britain's, their target must be substantially greater. They called for 15 million kw. of nuclear electricity by 1967.

To meet their ambitious target, the six nations must first ratify the Euratom Treaty, and then ante up more than $6 billion. Even so, a decade hence, Europe, said the three, will still be far from self-sufficient in power.

* West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux nations.

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