[ RadSafe ] Overcoming America's nuclear power phobia

[Muckerheide, James]

Friends,
 
This article presents a constructive view of the nature of the
radiation-phobia perpetrated by regulators and their anti-nukes.
 
Regards, Jim Muckerheide
=====================
 
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which
follows. 
To view this item online, visit 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44194 

Tuesday, May 10, 2005


________________________________

Overcoming America's nuclear power phobia

________________________________

Posted: May 10, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern



By Josh Gilder

________________________________

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com 

What would you say about someone whose fear of flying prevents him from
taking commercial aviation, but who regularly guzzles a quart of vodka before
getting in his car and cruising down the highway at high speed? 

To put it kindly, you might say that such a person has a disproportionate
sense of the risks involved. You might also say that such a person is an
idiot whose reckless behavior is endangering his life and the lives of
everyone else around him. 

Both observations would also fairly characterize current U.S. behavior when
it comes to nuclear power. 

Like a drunk driver, we regularly tank up on foreign oil, pumping
petrodollars into the hands of unstable Middle Eastern regimes, terrorists
and fanatical Wahabbi schools that teach virulent hatred of the West and the
United States in particular. At the same time, our attitude toward nuclear
power can only be described as phobic - a phobia, as defined by Webster's,
being an "irrational, excessive and persistent fear." Just like the drunk
driver who's afraid to fly despite ample statistical evidence demonstrating
the safety of commercial aviation, the American people have been subjected to
so much fear-mongering and hysteria on nuclear power over the last quarter
century that they can no longer think straight on the issue. 

Part of our phobia stems from the idea - encouraged by the anti-nuclear lobby
- that radiation is somehow alien and that exposure to any amount is an
exceptional, and very possibly deadly, experience. In fact, we're exposed to
radiation every day: cosmic radiation from the sun, radiation from the Earth
itself - particularly radon gas - even from our own bodies, which provide
about 10 percent of the typical American's annual radiation exposure of 360
millirem. 

To put this into perspective, if you're living next door to a nuclear power
plant, you receive almost as much radiation - about one millirem - from your
television as you do from the plant. The average American receives some 200
times as much from radon gas coming up from the ground, and if you move to a
location with a lot of granite rock, like northeastern Washington state,
you'll be exposed to about 1,700 times as much. 

Last March, a tragic explosion in a Texas oil refinery killed 15 workers,
though it hardly showed up as a blip on the national news, as fatalities
associated with oil production and transportation happen with relative
frequency. In comparison, at Three Mile Island in 1979 - the most serious
accident in a U.S. commercial nuclear plant - the containment vessel operated
as it was designed to and prevented any significant release of radioactivity
into the surrounding environment. There were no appreciable adverse health
effects to workers or the public. (The reactor at Chernobyl, which was
constructed and operated by the then-Soviet Union with typical disregard for
safety, was an unstable design that could never have been licensed in the
United States. Even so, had there been a U.S.-style containment structure, no
radiation would have escaped and there would have been no deaths or
injuries.) 

The last new nuclear power plant in the United States was ordered in 1973.
Since then, technological advances are enabling ever more efficient and safer
designs. Some would operate at the high temperature needed to extract
hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons, enabling hydrogen powered automobiles,
whose only waste product is water. All would provide the electricity needed
if America is going to transition in a major way to hybrids, which today can
already get up to 60 miles per gallon, and offer the greatest hope for
decreasing our dependence on foreign energy sources. ("Renewable" energy
sources won't get us there. After decades of heavy subsidies, renewable
energy sources other than hydroelectric power account for a measly 1 percent
of our electricity generation.) 

To his credit, President Bush has been trying to put U.S. nuclear energy
policy on a more rational footing, proposing regulatory changes and insurance
proposals for companies that take on the economic risks of building new
nuclear plants in a political atmosphere still ruled by anti-nuclear
hysteria.   

In his recent energy speech, President Bush even held up the example of
France as one, in this respect at least, our nation should emulate. When the
oil price shocks of the 1970s hit, the French government decided that it
could no longer afford to leave its economy vulnerable to vagaries of Middle
East politics. While our nation continued to dig itself deeper into that
particular hole, France built some 50 new nuclear power plants. Today, that
France's nuclear reactors provide 80 percent of that country's energy needs. 

An analogous investment in nuclear power in the United States would
essentially free us from the tyranny of having foreign dictators play havoc
with the price of energy - and with our economy. As Franklin Roosevelt said
in another context, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 

________________________________

Josh Gilder is a Visiting Fellow at the Lexington Institute