ABSTRACT
It has become a commonplace that the release of atomic energy (or, more strictly, nuclear energy) by the agency and for the purposes of man ushered in a new age. There can, indeed, be no disputing that a new factor of immense importance was introduced into international affairs, and into any assessment of the future of civilisation, with the explosion of the first atomic bomb. Because military considerations are present in so many decisions of policy, whether in the political or the economic field, it is therefore safe to say that the atomic bomb will in many ways modify the economic life, as well as the political future, of the world. It is not, however, with this that the present chapter is concerned ; its starting-point is not the explosion of the first atomic bomb, but the moment on December 2, 1942, when a graphite-uranium pile in Chicago gave rise to the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction ever produced by human agency—producing energy by the fission of uranium nuclei at the small initial rate of half a watt.
