Nuclear-Phobia

Irrational fears delay a necessary expansion of nuclear energy

By Nicholas Reshetnikov

The word “nuclear” conjures images of green ooze seeping into the ground, gray clouds pouring out of towers, and deformed children in hospitals. It is a signal of danger, assumed threatening and unsafe. There is good reason for all these ominous associations with the word. The terrible destruction wrecked in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II continues to weigh on American consciousness. The dark cloud of the Cold War and its fears of “nuclear winter” have not quite left the public psyche. The Chernobyl disaster and its horrific aftermath have become inseparable from the images of nuclear power plants. And every week there seems another report from Iran or North Korea, warning of nuclear weapon development. 

But at the same time, we are engulfed by cries for energy independence and “green” energy. We are told this is a national security issue, that we should stop our reliance on fuels controlled by our enemies. We are told that it is only a matter of time before we run out of these same fuels. We are even told that the survival of mankind rests on our ability to stop the carbon emissions created by the burning of these fuels. While there have been many alternatives suggested – solar, wind, geothermal, biodiesel, hydroelectric, among others – only one is efficient and reliable and green. Nuclear energy is the obvious solution to our energy demands, at least for the near future. It means less oil consumption and less green house gases. In one giant swoop, it treats worries of energy dependence, oil scarcity, and yes, even global warming. It is a solution that should be embraced by all Americans: those worried about national security as well as those worried about the environment—liberals and conservatives alike.

And yet when the issue came up during the Democratic primaries, the candidates were either completely opposed to expanding nuclear power plants or exceedingly cautious about it. Hillary Clinton called herself “agnostic” on the issue, while Barack Obama said nuclear energy should be merely part of the “energy mix.” Later Obama would declare that he is “not a proponent” of nuclear power (though not completely against it either). Despite its potential to address some of the central problems facing the United States, nuclear power seems to be drowning in the tides of public fear and political pressure. This is by no means a new trend. The last power plant to be built in the United States broke ground in 1977 and came online in 1996; there has been no new construction since that time.

Why this nuclear freeze? To really understand the opposition, it is worth considering the specific objections to expanded nuclear energy. Perhaps the most visceral objection—most important to the average American—is the perceived danger of nuclear power plants to their surrounding areas. After all, besides the horror at the Soviet plant in Chernobyl—an accident in 1986 whose aftermath is still felt by children born under the intense nuclear fallout—there was the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) accident much closer to home in Pennsylvania. 

These two incidents are the only two serious nuclear power accidents to have been documented. In both cases, the major fault was with the operators, who suffered from a mixture of inexperience and incompetence. Thanks to the effective design of the TMI plant, and in particular, the plant’s containment building, not a single person was harmed as a result of the TMI accident. On the other hand, the terrible aftermath of Chernobyl was mostly due to the Soviets’ choice of a cheaper, inherently unstable design for their reactors, exacerbated by the lack of a containment building. Without this safety structure, nuclear radiation spewed into the atmosphere and surrounding lands, reaching far across Eastern and even into Western Europe. To discard nuclear energy as an alternative fuel because of these two isolated, human-caused accidents is irrational. Rather than reflecting the danger of nuclear power plants as a whole, Chernobyl and TMI were wakeup calls. They were wakeup calls to complacent operators and plant designers, a reminder of the potential for disaster—a useful mindset to keep for any complex and powerful technology. 

There is still the persistent worry about nuclear waste produced by nuclear reactors. For although nuclear power plants do not have the carbon byproducts of, say, coal power plants, they inevitably leave radioactive byproducts from nuclear reactions. These byproducts decay very slowly overtime, some taking hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to reach safe levels. But this is not an insurmountable obstacle. It only means that unlike normal waste, nuclear waste must be insulated from the environment and stored more safely. Indeed, there are plans to use deep geological reservoirs for this very purpose. And if this solution seems like a perilous quick fix, a dangerous road to making our planet a nuclear waste dump, there are also methods of reusing and transmuting the nuclear byproducts to safer material. The only stumbling block is that all these techniques are expensive and economically infeasible at present—partly due to the political pressure that has stymied investment and research in the field.

In fact, cost is as much of an obstacle in the production of nuclear power plants as it is in the storage and disposal of nuclear waste. Not only do they cost billions of dollars, but they take nearly 20 years to build. While this is certainly an enormous commitment, the fact is this is a worthwhile commitment that will prove its worth to future generations.

As oil supplies dwindle and the infrastructure for new, untested alternative fuels is developed, there will need to be a sure, reliable, and efficient energy source to make the transition from fossil fuels. With so many technical and efficiency limitations to other alternative fuels, it would be truly negligent for America to continue to ignore nuclear energy. The longer we delay, the more vulnerable we grow to a future energy crisis. It is neither an ideological nor a partisan issue; it is an American and a human issue. We must take off our political visors, dispel our unfounded fears, and embrace the bounties of science and technology in the form of nuclear energy.