[MrZongle2]

"Remind me again why we can't have nuclear power?"

Ignorance and fear.

The Three Mile Island accident (1979) took place less than two weeks after the release of the movie The China Syndrome, the plot of which featured a coverup of a major nuclear accident. Activists seized the opportunity, and then-President Jimmy Carter (who had personal experience with nuclear engineering) failed to properly rein in public fears or beliefs about the accident (https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sM1RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=W20D...). Despite a tenuous-at-best link between the accident and human health (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Hea...), for the longest time it was considered a "disaster". Growth of the nuclear industry in the United States took a major hit at this point.

Subsequent films such as Silkwood and general Cold War nuclear war fears did little to change the opinion of the layman that nuclear == bad.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident further reinforced these beliefs. People focused on the aftermath of the explosion and the Soviet coverup and generally ignored the underlying causes such as the antiquated design of the reactor and operator error. This incident had a major negative effect on the nuclear industry.

The 2011 Fukushima accident was an trainwreck of corporate negligence and insufficient government oversight. The facility, which had been operating since 1971, performed as intended when the earthquake struck but the subsequent tsunami breached the insufficient (identified as such since 2008) seawall and took out the generators powering the shutdown.

All these incidents demonstrate cases where negligence or antiquated design can lead to disaster. But few take a look at the successes. France, for instance, is a major user of nuclear energy and has avoided catastrophe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accide...).

Fear of nuclear power is akin to "reefer madness" nonsense in the 1940s and 1950s.

[CamperBob2]

Wow, that Post-Gazette article is illuminating. I knew Carter was a nuclear engineer, but I wasn't aware of how well-positioned he was to argue against people like Jane Fonda and Ralph Nader, and how ineffective he was at doing so. What an unfortunate lost opportunity.

I wonder if Nader's work fighting against nuclear power has ultimately cost more lives than he saved through auto safety advocacy.