This article explains what I have been ranting about for years, unsuccessfully.
It has been one hell of a summer. Heat, drought, fire. Historic floods. Ninety–degree heat waves above the Arctic Circle. Sea levels rising at an ever-faster pace. Most of the world’s ocean reefs dead or dying. And while the ideological war still rages for some, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that global warming and climate change are real, and that atmospheric carbon is the primary culprit. Most frighteningly, all this is a sneak preview of the catastrophic consequences yet to come.
Why are we letting this happen?
We had the technology to stop these trends years ago. And we could have.
A half century ago, the United States was on a path that could have given us 100 percent carbon-free energy by the end of the last century. We were going to do it by rapidly expanding the fleet of nuclear power plants, eventually replacing fossil-fuel plants. Then we stopped. What happened?
Fear. Many of us, this author included, were terrified of nuclear anything: weapons, plutonium, isotopes, proliferation, waste. So it seemed to us that if a bunch of crazies succeeded in building more nuclear power plants, it would be global catastrophe just waiting to happen. We had to stop those plants. To do that we used fear. While it is true that cost and supply issues were factors, fear was the single most effective weapon against nuclear energy. We demonstrated, held rock concerts, wrote books, sponsored symposiums, predicted tens of thousands of cancers and sued.
We even made a movie—The China Syndrome. The campaign had already started to work when God sent Three Mile Island to answer our prayers. At Three Mile Island, He showed us that our greatest fear—a melt-down—could really happen. Fear had a new ally. We let all the World know we’d just barely escaped Armageddon. We predicted tens of thousands of cancers. Fear spread, and the scare worked. “Not In My Backyard” became the mantra of politicians (and citizens) everywhere. Most of the planned nuclear plants got cancelled. Even better, we massively up-regulated to make licensing and building future nuclear plants impossibly time consuming and expensive. And, of course, the country kept building more coal plants to feed its growing economy.
But did we make the right choice? What is it about nuclear that we were so afraid of that made us prefer, in effect, polluted air, acid rain, poisoned seafood, and even global warming? Our fears of nuclear were real, but were they justified?
Now, with more than 60 years of real-world experience behind us, 60 years of using nuclear power for ships, submarines, and some 440 nuclear power plants around the world, we do not have to guess. The most fearsome accidents imaginable have actually happened. We no longer need to rely on speculation. We have real data, we can see what actually happens in the worst nuclear accidents. Those data suggest we need to take a new look at the basis for our fears.
https://democracyjournal.org/argumen...energy-future/
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