Arjun Makhijani

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours . . . . This is the forecast for an age of peace.

Lewis Strauss,
AEC Chairman, 1954

It is safe to say . . . that atomic power is not the means by which man will for the first time emancipate himself economically, whatever that may mean; or forever throw off his mantle of toil, whatever that may mean. Loud guffaws could be heard from some of the laboratories working on this problem if anyone should in an unfortunate moment refer to the atom as the means of throwing off man's mantle of toil. It certainly is not that!

C. G. Suits,
Director of Research,
General Electric, 1951

Atomic power was born of self-deception as well as deliberate deception. There were messianic pronouncements of paradise on Earth that began at the end of World War II. Such fervent and self-deceptive excitement seemed to slide seamlessly into deliberate propaganda that the government knew was false. For by 1954, when Lewis Strauss made his famous statement that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter," a number of government and corporate studies had concluded the contrary.

Nor was there any reasonable prospect based on basic engineering considerations that nuclear power could be so cheap. In the most optimistic scenario for nuclear power, it might be assumed that the fuel cost would be nearly zero. But that would still leave eighty-five percent of the costs of electricity for residential and small business consumers and sixty percent for the largest industrial users intact. The reason is that the bulk of the costs of electricity are related not to the fuel and the boiler (the functions served by the nuclear fuel and nuclear reactor), but by the power generating equipment, and the transmission and distribution network. Moreover, it was clear even then that (i) nuclear reactors would cost far more than coal-fired boilers, and (ii) it would be difficult to manage and dispose of nuclear waste. And of course, nuclear fuel was not free.

The West knows the costs of uranium fuel well. This is especially so in the Colorado Plateau, which is dotted with about two hundred million tons of radioactive mill tailings and possibly a comparable amount of uranium mine waste. These wastes have injured health, polluted precious water supplies, and resulted in billions of dollars in clean-up costs. And the liabilities will extend into the future for tens of thousands of years.

Yet the propaganda continues in the face of this radioactive mess. In a recent
Full article

Denis E. Beller

Many people in the nuclear power industry and academia at the beginning of the 21st Century have the same optimistic outlook as the founders did a half-century ago, and opponents of technology, especially nuclear technology, feel as if they're facing the same battles they fought in the 1970s and 1980s. For a variety of reasons that will be explained in this essay, young nuclear proponents have what appears to be a brilliant future, which might mean opponents do as well. At the same time, opponents of all things nuclear-energy as well as nuclear medicine; use of nuclear reactors to eliminate weapons materials; recycling of used nuclear fuel; irradiation to sterilize consumer products, medical equipment, and food; industrial applications; etc.-may believe they are hearing the same overly optimistic projections and claims as in the distant past, when nuclear technology advanced rapidly and a nuclear construction boom produced most of the reactors that now provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity. Those who have been the "pro" part of this battle for decades may feel like they are still hearing the same opposing arguments to which they have been listening for decades, akin to hearing the little boy cry "nuclear wolf" for thirty or forty years. But the little boy has grown old while the industry has proven itself to be the safest major source of electricity in the Western world; yet the old man is still crying.

One reason for the recent optimism in the nuclear industry is an ever increasing worldwide demand for energy. Demand for electrical energy leads that growth. Other recent trends and forces include demand for cleaner forms of energy in general and electricity in particular, as well as global pressure for sustainable development and reductions in carbon emissions, all of which support the need for increasing supplies of nuclear energy. Nuclear power is the only energy source that can be developed on a massive scale that will meet all the requirements for tremendous increases in generation. For economic and resource sustainability, new sources of energy must be clean, affordable, reliable, environmental, safe and secure, and sustainable. Before describing why Western nuclear power meets these requirements, let me tell you why we need to use more clean electricity and other forms of energy, not less.

Those of us who have it use energy to benefit humankind. We naturally seek to use energy to multiply our labor, increasing our productivity. In developed nations energy is used to build and light grammar schools and universities, to run hospitals and police stations, to purify water and produce medicine, to power farm machinery and mass transit, to drive sewing machines and robot assemblers, and to store and move information. A particular form of nuclear energy, nuclear radiation, is also used to sterilize mail in the nation's capital, consumer products found on grocery store shelves and elsewhere, and medical equipment used in every hospital and clinic in the nation. For the betterment of the human condition, the world needs massive additions of clean and affordable energy supplies. Development depends on energy, we use it to fight poverty and disease, to create and administer medicine, to grow and distribute food, and to provide the means for people to learn their way out of poverty, which is the most dangerous "thing" on Earth.

Energy Apartheid
Our global neighbors need much more energy to achieve the standards of living of the developed world. One-third of the
Full article