Here's what bugged me about Chuck's argument. If we placed the blame for certain technologies on capitalism, rather than industrialism, then we have to ask whether better technologies would have arisen under a different kind of industrialism. Could anyone actually make a good case that, under an anarcho-syndicalist industrialism, they'd have avoided coal and gas power entirely, and gone straight to solar and wind power?
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Just the question I wanted to ask.
Which leads me to the following...
Everyone, except for energy industry owners and enthusiasts amongst the general public, agrees that nuclear power is irredemiably bad. A belief in the essential badness of the use of reactors for power generation is one of the venerable pillars of the classic American left.
But all assumptions should be examined for accuracy.
So, let's examine nuclear power for a moment within the framework of a brief thought experiment.
....
Imagine for a moment a world in which the Curies, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and a legion of other talented minds who worked in the field of applied and theoretical physics did exactly the work they did in this one.
But, unlike in our world, these luminaries delivered their findings to a less war torn, socially and economically repressive set of governments. In fact, let's take our fantasy even further and say that fully democratic nations, completely at peace with each other are the norm in this alternative world.
At some point, around the mid to late 1930's Szilard and Fermi, among others, hit upon the idea that a controlled chain reaction can be used to create a means of electrical power generation. They dream of tremendous quantities of reliable power for the earth's teeming billions. They know that the sorts of power stations they're imagining are only the stepping stone to an even more ambitious type: the fusion reactor, a potentially limitless source of energy.
Through a democratic process a fully informed citizenry collectively decides that the benefits outweigh the risks and give their blessing for research into and development of a system of nuclear power stations.
The issue of safe and intelligent waste containment and disposal is tackled by a government body who must regularly report on the status of current waste and progress towards developing methods of disposal that won't harm present or future generations.
Remember, I said this was a fantasy world.
Now here's the question: in such a world, would nuclear power still be wrong? Would it bring with it, by its nature, an undemocratic beauracracy, secretiveness and hidden danger? Would it be a corrupting influence upon our democratic eden? Or would it be a choice among others for power generation for any sufficiently advanced industrial society?
Among my friends, the staunchest anti-nuke people seem to have turned, within their imaginations, all things atomic into a sort of dark lord, independent of the government/corporate systems that wield them.
It has always seemed to me that the problem with nuclear power (and other questionable tech) is not the idea itself but the cracked societies that implement it.
MIRV ICBMs, F-22 Raptors, Vulcan rail guns and Glock 9s have only one, unequivical purpose, well understood by everyone. But there is an ocean of tech that is potentially harmful but only when placed within the psychosis envelope of the society using it.
DRM
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