Missing the Nuclear Target by a Populist Mile

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 04/07/15

NEI reports that The Boulder Daily Camera offers what can only be called an economic populist objection to nuclear energy, such as - ......On the economic side, we have this Darwinian capitalism that emphasizes profit at all costs. Nothing can ever be done without everybody slurping at the trough, somewhat of an unstated mandate to always put the risk on the other guy and not pay for it ourselves, and the disastrous need for short-term profits. This would force the operators and owners to cut corners on maintenance and safety, use low-cost unqualified labor, try to circumvent the rules, and pull the profit out in terms of money early in the endeavor so as not to put the profits at risk...... You can see where this argument, if valid, could go in the nuclear energy sphere. Movies such as The China Syndrome and even the more sophisticated Cloud Atlas showed capitalistic greed trumping good sense in nuclear energy - actually, Cloud Atlas made the villains the coal industry out to crush a nuclear plant. But this argument, and these movies, are, at best, populism gone berserk. In order to develop his angle, writer Glenn Bennett wears blinkers that are alarmingly thorough in blocking reality. Nuclear energy has operated in the U.S. since the mid-50s and the number of people it has seriously harmed or irradiated is zero. There have been industrial accidents at nuclear plants, but even those are very few and are industrial not nuclear, the kinds of mishaps that could happen at a wind farm - well, more like a coal plant.