The wondrous world of uranium

Radioactive materials may have a key role in solving a looming energy crisis, but the fruits of nuclear research have already opened up a treasure house of benefits way beyond fuel alone. By John Player.

Three anniversaries next year will evoke both the hopes and fears associated with radioactive materials. Looking back at the rapid advance of the “peaceful atom” during the twentieth century, scientists may reflect with some pride over what has been achieved, but can only speculate about a future that will be shaped by political and economic forces.

Fifty years ago in 1956, the UK commissioned the world’s first commercial scale nuclear power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria, setting in train a nuclear power programme that provided two generations of power stations (Magnox and advanced gas cooled) that have operated safely and reliably.

Thirty years later in 1986, the Chernobyl explosion, at a nuclear power station in the Ukraine, killed 32 people immediately and exposed serious flaws in a reactor of Soviet design. Chernobyl and the earlier partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the USA were major setbacks for nuclear power, and ever since then the industry has had to battle uphill to restore its reputation (see Uranium resurgent, Rio Tinto Review, December 2004).

But the third anniversary, a centenary, is the most poignant. It marks the death of Marie Curie’s husband Pierre in 1906 when a tragic street accident cut short one of the most successful partnerships in scientific research.