Papers presented by Maria Padovan since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"How (Not) to Build a Fast Breeder Reactor within Euratom: A French-Italian Perspective (1957-1969)"

Abstract:

In 1957, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was established. According to its Treaty, the main goal was to build a strong nuclear European industry, capable of competing with foreign powers on the international nuclear market. However, Euratom failed to achieve this aim: a few years after its creation, Euratom faced a political and economic crisis (1965), which later developed into a phase of stagnation (1967-69). In the following years, Euratom focused its efforts on nuclear research such as fusion, abandoning the ambition to create an industrial policy and a Community commercial reactor. Surprisingly, business and economic historians have written very little on the attempt at nuclear integration via Euratom. Since the Suez Crisis (1956), it was made clear the fragile position in which energy dependence was putting Western European countries and electronuclear energy has been strongly supported by the Commission in every energy crisis that the EC has faced. So, the question comes naturally: why was it not possible to find a common industrial policy in the nuclear field? Which factors prevented the realization of a Community commercial reactor? This paper aims to capture the perspective of the industrial world by focusing on the Italian and French electronuclear industries, starting from the assumption that the heterogeneity of industrial and economic infrastructures among the Member States constituted an important liability both to the creation of a Community industrial policy in the nuclear sector and the conception of a Community reactor design. The focus is on the development of the Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) design within the context of Euratom’s industrial goals. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, this nuclear design appeared as the promise of inexhaustible energy, leading to several industrial opportunities and catching enthusiastic responses from the Euratom Commission and engineers, governments, and enterprises of the Member States. Although the Euratom Commission made efforts to build a 1.000 MW FBR plant under the Community's umbrella until 1969, Italian, French, and West German utilities ultimately decided to realize it outside the Community framework.

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