Til samfundets tarv: Forskningscenter Risos historie (In the advantage of society: the history of Research Centre Riso) (review)

Nuclear energy for civilian purposes only emerged in the shadow of nuclear military power, which has been a major factor in world policy since the Second World War. In the late 1940s, nuclear energy research began in military settings, even in small countries like Norway and Sweden. Though the Danish government funded the Niels Bohr institute for theoretical physics at Copenhagen University, it did not engage in practically oriented nuclear research, civilian or military. The reasons have never been analyzed and call for study.

The years 1952–53 put nuclear energy for civilian purposes on the agenda. Great Britain and the United States started to produce reactors for civilian power production, and President Eisenhower addressed the United Nations on this issue. In Denmark nuclear energy became a part of the government’s strong program of managed improvement of society, and in 1955 the Research Centre Risø was established to facilitate the transfer and adaptation of this technology. Three test reactors bought from the United States and Great Britain became operational between 1957 and 1960.

The completion of the test reactors made topical the question of the purpose of the institution and its position in Danish engineering and science research and within power production. Risø scientists envisioned Risø unfolding into a producer of nuclear power plants, an idea cultured until 1970 within reactor construction projects, first independently and later in cooperation with Sweden and Norway. Risø found curtailed support among Danish industrial producers, as few companies had the size and capability to embrace significant sections of nuclear power plant production. The Danish power producers were owned by the consumer-owned power supply companies. During the 1960s, they were hostile to Risø for two reasons: they saw the building of nuclear power plants as a basis for state intervention or, even, nationalization, and they were not prepared to finance a national capability in nuclear power plant construction that never would become reasonably profitable. The power producers wanted well-tested reactors from an experienced producer.

The abolition of reactor construction changed the relationship of the power producers into one of cooperation. In 1971, the power producers approached Risø as the responsible authority on reactor safety to get help in selecting locations for nuclear power plants. This moved the question of building nuclear power plants onto the national agenda at a time of growing awareness among the population of the risks implied, which counterbalanced rising fuel prices. A long and protracted national debate followed, ending in 1985 with the parliament’s decision not to build any nuclear power plant in Denmark.

This removed Risø’s original raison d’être, but the institution managed to change the direction of its research. This evolved gradually after 1978. Risø applied the knowledge accumulated through work on nuclear energy in several fields, such as industrial risk analysis, fluid bead coal burners for thermal power plants, and windmill research, which proved crucial to the emerging Danish windmill industry. It was a shift from free basic research to managed applied research. Today, Risø is a national laboratory for research in science and technology in cooperation with government, universities, and industry.

This big book is mainly based on the extensive material in the archives of the research center and its board of governors, plus seventeen interviews. The four authors present the history of the Research Centre Risø in seven chronological chapters, each composed of three parts: first, brief introductions to the international and domestic developments of the period; second, the center’s institutional history, which constitutes the main part; lastly, reviews of the research at the center. In addition, there are twelve separate sections on major research projects, often cutting across several chapters. The book includes no English summary.

The authors supply a thorough and most informative account of Risø’s history according to its own self-conception. Brief introductions to international and domestic developments supply frames to the Risø story, but there is no in-depth analysis of the...