Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
NUCLEAR
It should be obvious to anyone concerned about energy policy (or human health and safety)
that the once noble experiment of using nuclear electric generating technology safely is beyond
human capability, that it is simply too risky, and the stakes too high, for it to be in the public
interest, as distinct from the private interests of its proponents. No fair evaluation of the costs
of using nuclear energy technology has ever taken full account of the costs of radioactive
waste disposal and concluded that the benefits exceed the costs. Previous efforts to identify
permanent high-level radioactive waste disposal technology produced safety and site selec-
tion criteria that are conceptually flawed to the point of intellectual dishonesty. The desire to
use nuclear technology has simply outstripped the human capacity for reason in the search
for technological solutions to apparently unsolvable difficulties. Excluding foreseeable costs
from the analysis because they are unknown, or minimizing them because it is convenient,
or imposing them on the general public whatever they may be, is simply not intellectually or
morally defensible. When foreseeable natural disasters can render entire landscapes perma-
nently uninhabitable because of the presence of a nuclear reactor, it is clear that we can and
must make sounder energy choices.
FURTHER RESEARCH
This topic provides a conceptual framework for analysis of energy policy choices, but it is only
a start. Future academic research may fruitfully examine whether informed individuals find the
analytical framework useful by providing opportunities for a number of respondents to read the
material in each chapter and then apply a scoring instrument to verify results of the admittedly
subjective, but informed, scoring system used here. Respondents might be asked to read summa-
ries of the chapters here and then score each energy fuel technology on the basis of a five-point
Likert scale (high, moderately high, moderate, moderately low, low), applying a modified Delphi
technique to validate the results of this analysis. With a sufficient number of respondents, statistical
measures could then be applied to the results to determine if the overall assessment here reflects
the reasoning of a wider segment of the population.
There is no assurance this conceptual framework would produce similar results for other
nation-states. Broader research might be attempted using this conceptual framework to evaluate
energy policy choices for another nation-state, or a comparative evaluation of several nation-states
might be undertaken to determine if their differing economic, environmental, and national security
situations produce similar or different results. What seems appropriate for one nation-state is not
automatically appropriate for another, and it would be illuminating to examine similarities and
differences.
With some modifications, the conceptual framework might be applied to subnational state energy
policy decision making in the United States. Each state in the United States should have an energy
policy tailored to its climatic, natural resource, and economic circumstances within the context
of the nation as a whole. What is appropriate for California may not be appropriate (or economi-
cally feasible) for North Dakota or New Jersey, yet each state has something to contribute to our
national energy future. Some energy fuel technologies might be emphasized more in one state
than in another in order to move the entire country in a desirable direction. State by state policy
comparisons would also be of potential interest in advancing our knowledge of public policy and
perhaps even federalism and intergovernmental relations. The large number of national government
energy-related programs should be fertile ground for exploration of those issues.
 
 
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