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The Demise of Nuclear Energy? - Lessons for Democratic Control of Technology (Paperback)
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The Demise of Nuclear Energy? - Lessons for Democratic Control of Technology (Paperback)
Series: Yale Fastback Series
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Three Mile Island, Seabrook, Diablo Canyon: their controversies
have come to symbolize the unhappy fate of American nuclear power.
Three decades of effort and an investment of several hundred
billion dollars have culminated in wide-spread public fear, huge
financial losses, an unworkable regulatory system, and a virtual
ban on new reactors. How did one of the world's most flexible
political and economic systems produce such a technological white
elephant? What does this enormous failure reveal about the
compatibility of democracy and technology? And what lessons can be
learned for future energy policy making? To answer these questions,
Joseph Morone and Edward Woodhouse offer a nonpartisan diagnosis of
the decision-making processes that led to the industry's current
state. What we think of as nuclear power, they argue, is just one
of many technical and organizational forms this energy source could
have taken. It was shaped by political and economic choices of the
1950s and 1960s, not by any internal dynamic of the technology. If
a few of those choices had been made differently--particularly
regarding the scale-up and diffusion of reactors--the nuclear
enterprise might have evolved far more acceptably. The ills of the
first nuclear era stemmed not from any fundamental incompatibility
between technology and democracy, but from a failure of democracy
to live up to its own standards of good decision making. Although
many nations have turned away from civilian nuclear power, problems
with fossil fuels--particularly climate changes from the greenhouse
effect--may lead to reappraisal of the nuclear option. A radically
altered form of nuclear power, together with alternative energy
sources and intensified conservation, could provide a more
acceptable and less environmentally destructive energy future--if
we learn from the failures of the first nuclear era.
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