Please Help Me Make Sense of the Nuclear Energy Industry

When I would travel as a young man, I recall encountering two types of people in airports, both offering ideas, selling books, and gathering support. One was a varying set of religious groups, and other was the supporters of nuclear energy. I remember thinking to myself, "Well, I understand the religious people; they want to share their beliefs about salvation. Who wouldn’t want to encourage others to get on the path they believe leads to righteousness, heaven, and all that good stuff? But what’s the motivation of all those clean-cut young Republicans vigorously promoting a certain form of energy?"

It was not unusual for me to chat briefly with these folks if I happened to have a few minutes before boarding my flight. I recall being impressed with how smart and facile with the language they were. One self-satisfied young fellow quipped, "More people died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in the sum total of all nuclear reactor incidents." (Keep in mind that this was the early 1970s.)

"Is that a fact?" I replied, wondering what drove him to want to spend his time convincing others of the safety – and overall importance -- of nuclear. I wondered if all these people owned stock in one or more nuclear companies; that would have provided a clear motive for this behavior. But those kids were my age (college), and it was very rare for young people to be in the market back then.

Here I am, 40 years later, still wondering about the pro-nuclear people. Who are they? What’s the attraction?

If nuclear were cheap, I’d at least be able to understand the appeal. I could reason, OK, these guys want to lower our electric bills, or bring electricity to the people of developing nations who can’t afford it currently. For some reason, they believe that the hazards of operation and storing nuclear waste are negligible, and they want to do right by the world.

But this is clearly not the case. The amortized cost of building, operating, and decommissioning a nuclear facility is fantastically high. So, if you don’t mind paying the cost, why not go directly to renewables -- a direction that’s truly clean and safe? There are dozens of flavors of solar and biomass, as well as wind, hydrokinetics and geothermal – all of which, while they may be expensive right this minute, at least don’t wind you up with spent fuel rods that need to be isolated from all life forms for the next 500,000 years. They won’t be safe to be around until the year 502,011. How feasible are we to think this is?

So I’m lost here. Of course, there are other things that the human race apparently finds attractive, the appeal of which is lost on me -- auto racing, pro wrestling, and rap music come to mind immediately. Maybe it’s just one of those phenomena. But maybe there’s an underlying answer that I’m not seeing. I hope readers will comment.

Craig Shields is editor of 2GreenEnergy.com, and author of Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies (published by Clean Energy Press, 2010).