Centralization was wrong for atomic power, the case of Britain and the US

The development of atomic power for the generation of electricity provides a useful illustration. In the mid-fifties major technical decisions had to be made with respect to the reactor types to be developed. There were many competing systems, each with highly articulate advocates, both in the scientific and in the industrial community. In Britain a centralized decision was made by the Atomic Energy Authority. Here private corporations and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission each made independent decisions.

 

At the time the decisions were made no one could be sure of the correct answer. Now, with the benefit of a dozen years of hindsight it seems quite clear that the British made the wrong choice. The technology which has achieved the widest acceptance was selected by two private corporations in the United States. They received substantial assistance from the AEC. However, they picked a technology which the AEC for some time did not consider to be the most promising. It is possible that if the American decision-making process had been as centralized as the British, the right technology might not have been chosen.

That was Fritz F. Heimann reviewing John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1967 book, “The New Industrial State.” The University of Chicago Law Review Vol. 35: 207.

Indeed, many scientists in the United States wanted to go for a complex solution and criticized Hyman Rickover’s preference for a water-cooled reactor. While one type of liquid metal-cooled reactor, based on sodium, was successfully built and used, such as on the USS Seawolf submarine, it also came with a number of downsides. History is replete with instances where the consensus choice at the project’s outset turned out to be wrong.

The dichotomy between the US’s pluralistic approach and Britain’s centralized approach also looks much like the interwar years, where the US Navy experimented with alternative force structure designs and had control over its own aircraft development with the Bureau of Aeronautics. The Royal Navy, by contrast, allowed itself to be more tethered to battleships and accepted direction in aircraft designs/procurement from the Royal Air Force.