Nuclear Power, 1982: A Reprint

I’ve just posted my extensive 1982 article “Nuclear Power: The Unaffordable Option” in the Green Pieces blog on this site. I refer to the piece in this week’s Sunday column, and it has a certain historical interest.

When I re-read it, to be truthful, I was struck by how little has changed about nuclear power in general — although its new appeal to green consumers in the context of climate change is certainly a dramatic development.  But its problems today are the same problems — insurance, radioactive waste, huge cost over-runs — and the solutions being proposed today, after 29 years, start with the same solution: energy conservation. We know how much energy we use, but we have no idea how much we actually need — and we won’t know until we start treating energy as the scarce, precious resource that it truly is.

Twenty-nine years onward, we still haven’t tried that. We aren’t exactly quick on the uptake, are we?