Imagine the dawn of the 17th Century, when the first, most primitive steam engines emerged. Decades of innovation followed, leading to railroads and factories, efficiency sky-rocketed, and soon the invention was celebrated as the key to a Utopian future. But then, suddenly and disastrously, horrific accidents began to occur. Fear spreads, casting a shadow over progress, and as we know, "Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate." In this case, hate manifested as widespread public opposition, halting innovation and causing emissions to rise.
But it's not the steam engine we are talking about here; it's nuclear power. Now imagine how immense the loss would have been if we’d let fear stall the steam engine's development. We would have crippled our transportation future and stunted the growth of the industrial revolution. What kind of opportunities have we forfeited, and continue to forfeit, by allowing nuclear power to destabilize on the global stage?
It's challenging to theorize an answer to this question. Perhaps it’s more prudent to revisit the key facts and events that transformed what was once hailed as "The Energy Source Too Cheap to Meter" into the "genius but problematic child" of the energy industry. This article will explore just how rational our fear of nuclear power truly is.
Why Nuclear Equals Fear?
This is Trinity, the first man-made nuclear explosion. When it was detonated on the morning of July 16, 1945, the impact was felt over a 100-mile radius (160 km), with a mushroom cloud rising 7.5 miles (12.1 km) high. The black dots visible within the yellow rings? Those are trees. It’s images like this one, along with memories of the hundreds of thousands who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that have shaped humanity’s first impressions of nuclear energy. Hence, the term: radiophobia.
However, to “paint” nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons with the same brush is like calling all domestic kittens “lions.” Both may be felines, but one is clearly more dangerous, while the other is low-maintenance and energy-efficient.
“The one similarity between nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons is that they both operate on the fission principle,” explains Thanh Tat Nguyen, Head Representative for Contract and Technical Control at Framatome, France. “This is when fissile isotopes, commonly Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239, split apart upon the insertion of neutrons.” The atoms break into smaller fission products, releasing more neutrons, which are then absorbed by safety rods or by other nuclei to continue the reaction, producing vast amounts of energy in the process.
The difference lies in the rate and purity of this energy release. The energy from a nuclear reactor’s fission process is harnessed gradually, over an extended period, while a nuclear weapon releases its energy quadrillions of times faster, in a single, devastating burst. A nuclear weapon’s fissile material is also almost pure, comprising about 90% fissile isotopes, while reactor fuel commonly contains less than 5% of these isotopes. Imagine: one device wraps itself with explosives and far more fissile material, aiming to unleash as much energy as widely as possible, while the other is designed to contain and secure its core at every level. Nuclear energy reactors are surrounded by round-the-clock law enforcement, a system of safety rods within the core, and containment domes engineered to withstand even airplane crashes. Few engineering projects receive such intense safeguarding.
Hollywood, also has been a potent source of fear-mongering. From the infamous radiated monster Godzilla to the far-fetched Chernobyl Diaries, with mutated monsters and escaped patients turned mutants, all contributed to hurting the already misunderstood industry. But perhaps the most acclaimed, and opportunistic, of nuclear disaster films is The China Syndrome. This American thriller tells the story of a nuclear plant nearly experiencing a meltdown due to corporate cover-ups and corruption. But what does a nuclear reactor in the U.S. have to do with China?
The ‘genius’ of the title lies in the absurd suggestion that a meltdown could get so hot the uranium fuel would melt through the Earth, from the U.S. “all the way to China” on the opposite side. How ‘genius’ that is!
The film also exploited a primal fear, that of mothers worried their children might consume radioactive milk. This fear played a prominent role in some of the earliest anti-nuclear movements, notes Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress. A campaign led by David Pesonen (a former Sierra Club member) and some local dairy farms stoked this fear, warning that “nuclear fallout would create death dust” that would contaminate milk and poison people. This tapped into maternal anxieties and helped ignite the flame of the anti-nuclear movement.......
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