How America Lost the Atomic Age

To understand the possibilities that nuclear fission has opened for industrial civilization, we must first understand how industrialization became possible to begin with: the burning of vast amounts of coal for energy physically enabled nineteenth-century steam technology and economies of mass production. The reason for this is simple. Coal is around twice as energy-dense as wood, and in 1770 a typical coal mine could produce as much energy as a 5,500-hectare forest every year.