Nuclear power: How lost its way

With all of nuclear power’s environmental benefits, many have wondered at the intensity behind the antinuclear movement. History shows how influential ideologies shaped the early movement. Today, however, some are beginning to rethink old dogmas.

By Paul Lorenzini With the current concerns about cli- nuclear power remained broad-based into mate change, some environmentalists the early 1960s. or four decades, nuclear power ad- have begun to challenge this dogma, as During the next decade, all of that vocates have been fighting—and, for highlighted by Robert Stone’s 2013 docu- would change. By 1974, a full-fledged Fthe most part, losing—an ideological mentary, Pandora’s Promise. It is not just anti­nuclear movement had become well battle. Today, the nuclear power industry carbon emissions that are involved, as organized and had begun mobilizing a na- faces policy-imposed challenges ranging recent studies have shown that the exclu- tional resistance, including plans in 1976 from legislated prohibitions, to punitive sion of nuclear power from current energy for antinuclear initiatives in seven states. economic policies, to mandates and stat- policies is posing an unreasonable threat In spite of these efforts, public opinion was ed policy goals that specifically push re- to .[2] But nuclear still faces still supportive of nuclear power, as evi- newable energy to the exclusion of nuclear an uphill battle. After years of intellec- denced by the sound rejection of all sev- power. The specter of the premature closing tual, political, and financial investment, en of those antinuclear ballot measures. of perfectly good operating plants because opposition to nuclear power has become Frustrated by their defeat, the movement flawed economic markets do not properly a legacy within environmentalism that is took to the streets with marches, sit-ins, value their attributes is the most glaring deeply entrenched and, for new entrants, civil disobedience, and physical trespass indicator of these policy failures. These rote. at nuclear plants across the country. Still, policies have been imposed over a period of How did environmentalism get so lost? public attitudes would not begin to turn decades, largely at the insistence of a pow- until 1980, in the wake of the 1979 acci- erful environmental lobby reinforced by a A rising antinuclear movement dent at Three Mile Island. Added to this, campaign to intentionally exploit public Today, the opposition to nuclear pow- there were increasing economic problems fears. The nagging question is why. er from environmentalists is taken for with new plant construction, exacerbat- It is fair to say that nuclear power car- granted, but it was not always so. During ed by slowing electricity demand, record ries unique risks, so some opposition the 1950s, the supported nu- high interest and inflation rates, plant might be expected. But the intensity and clear power with the slogan “Atoms, not cancellations, and post-TMI regulatory single-mindedness of the opposition, giv- dams,” and only adopted its antinuclear changes.[6] en nuclear’s environmental advantages—a policy in 1974 after years of internal de- So what changed between 1962 and small ecological footprint, a noncarbon bate and in the face of pressure from a 1974 to account for the single-minded em- high-energy potential resource, and mini- broader environmental community.[3] brace of antinuclear policies by a new en- mal emissions—have been hard to explain. Even then, the vote of the Sierra Club’s vironmental movement that was only then By the early 1980s, scholars studying the board was 9–4, with the two scientists finding its identity? The answer lies with observed that on the board opposing the policy on the understanding the period during which “opposition to nuclear power has for many grounds that it would mean more envi- all of this occurred, when the antinucle- environmentalists become the key issue” ronmental damage from coal—which, in ar movement grew from virtually nothing and that nuclear power was “the most fact, did occur.[4] Similarly, in 1962, the to an entrenched movement. We refer to emotional and divisive of environmental radical Students for a Democratic Society that period today as “the Sixties,” the span concerns.”[1] in its Port Huron Statement said, “Atom- of time from the early 1960s through the ic power plants must spring up to make early 1970s. Paul Lorenzini () is a cofound- electrical energy available.”[5] To those er of NuScale Power and has been involved in the who wish to attribute nuclear power op- The new environmentalism nuclear controversy since the 1970s. This fall he is position to fears of nuclear weapons, it The Sixties has become a kaleidoscope teaching a colloquium for the Oregon State Uni- should be recalled that no generation of images—the Free Speech Movement; versity Honors College on the historical tension faced the immediacy of that threat more campus protests against the war in Viet- between the sciences and the humanities. than this generation, and yet support for nam; the counterculture, including psy-

34 • Nuclear News • November 2016 www.ans.org/nn chedelics, drugs, and liberated sex; the science will also bring high standards of The backlash of the Sixties 1963 March on , Freedom living, will lead to the prevention or cure Resistance to Enlightenment thought Riders, Selma, and race riots in various of diseases, will promote conservation of has a long history, going as far back as cities; the 1968 Democratic convention in our limited natural resources, and will as- Jean-Jacques Rousseau and later the Ro- Chicago; yippies and hippies—it is a long sure the means of defense against aggres- mantics, ultimately framing what was to be list. It is difficult to appreciate the intensi- sion.”[7] a defining tension in Continental philoso- ty and raw energy that characterized the While Hiroshima and Nagasaki had phy throughout the 19th century. In many period, a rare time when people probed exposed the ugly side of science, in De- respects, it came to a head with Friedrich beyond traditional comfort zones and ex- cember 1945, within months of the bomb Nietzsche’s attacks on .[11] Ox- plored deeper questions of meaning and detonations and at the urging of President ford historian J. W. Burrow writes: “By the purpose. Truman, Sen. Brian McMahon (D., Conn.) end of the century it was becoming both a It was out of this setting that a new envi- introduced a bill that would ultimately be cliché and a mark of some intellectual so- ronmentalism arose. What had historical- enacted as the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. phistication to speak of the limitations of ly been a concern with conservation and He declared it to be “the policy of the peo- the scientific method and even, fostered by preservation was to change as a sense of ple of the that development Nietzsche, of the obstacle the cult of scien- impending crisis caused many to rethink and utilization of atomic energy shall be tific detachment presented to life.”[12] the breadth and depth of the problem. If directed toward improving the public This thinking would migrate to America the environment were to be saved, the fab- welfare, increasing the standard of living, early in the 20th century, embraced by an ric of the would need to change— strengthening the free competition among intellectual avant-garde and a rising sub- our social structures, our personal behav- private enterprises so far as practicable, culture of the “Beats.” Expressed largely iors, our conceptions of growth, and our and cementing world peace.”[8] through art, music, , poetry, and visions of what it would mean to create a President Eisenhower drew from this even architecture, it was called, by Colum- sustainable society that was humanly ful- when he later delivered his “Atoms for bia University humanities professor Lionel filling. Concern had been brewing since Peace” speech to the in Trilling, an “adversary culture,” marginal- 1962, when raised alarms December 1953. Falling on receptive ears, ized, on the outside looking in, and hostile about pesticides in , and peak- there was a collective hope that it could to existing “bourgeois” values.[13] ed eight years later in February 1970 when be true that these new atomic discover- It was a stance nurtured and reinforced Time magazine devoted a single issue to ies could be used the environment, which it called “Nixon’s for something good. When plans to build the first new issue.” The first was held Americans, although on April 22, 1970, drawing support from sobered by the threat commercial nuclear plant 20 million people across the country, and of nuclear weapons, later that year the Environmental Protec- were almost exuberant outside Pittsburgh were tion Agency was formed, with William about the possibilities announced in September 1954, Ruckelshaus being confirmed as its first that these new myster- administrator on December 2, 1970. ies would hold for hu- the Denver Post ran with the Modern environmentalism grew out mankind. When plans of this sense of urgency that few would to build the first com- headline, “Dream Come True.” question today. Damage was being done mercial nuclear plant and things needed to change. But why did outside Pittsburgh were announced in Sep- by two of the most influential thinkers of those changes result in such intense hos- tember 1954, the Denver Post ran with the the period, C. Wright Mills and Herbert tility to the one resource that could have headline, “Dream Come True.”[9] Marcuse. Both saw the affluence of the and should have been part of the solution? And so, when opposition began to 1950s and the wealth of advanced techno- The answer lies in the context, one in surface in the early 1960s, it caught the logical society as seductive drugs that led which established institutions were no industry off guard. In 1963, Nucleonics to political apathy, with minions losing longer trusted and traditional values were wrote that the nuclear industry had so any sense of what it means to be truly hu- being questioned. Central to these values far not seen “unreasoned fear” and that man and becoming pawns of a corporate was a conception of progress that em- there was a general belief that “public ac- power structure that was being allowed to braced the legacies of the Enlightenment— ceptance would not be a problem.” But run amok because no one cared. People its confidence in science and its belief that during the prior year, the “industry had were content with their new-found afflu- science would give humans a better life. It been shaken” to find some in the public ence. Mills called them “cheerful robots,” was out of that context that nuclear power “suddenly speaking out against proposed and Marcuse called for a “Great Refusal,” had been placed on the American political nuclear stations,” specifically projects at a massive rebellion against affluent apathy agenda in the first place. Ravenswood, in City, and at Bo- and the advanced technological society dega Bay, Malibu, and San Onofre, all in that had given rise to it.[14] “Enlightenment America” .[10] While these were not part The Sixties can be understood in ma- For much of the country’s history, of any network of opponents, it was, in a ny ways, but as a shift in the culture, the Americans believed that human progress sense, the canary in the coal mine. During changing role of this adversary culture is would be achieved through advances in the next decade, a national movement symptomatic of its underlying character. science, and this belief informed the ear- would form and become fully organized Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell, writing in ly enthusiasm for peaceful nuclear power. by 1974. What few realized at the time 1976, contended that the adversary culture Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office was that the spirit of this movement was had moved to the mainstream and taken of Scientific Research and Development, grounded in a different vision—one that control of the reins of cultural power—­ had expressed this view forcefully in 1945, challenged the Enlightenment’s confi- “the publishing houses, museums, and writing that science was key to our fu- dence in science and that emphasized the galleries; the major news, picture and cul- ture and that it would mean “more jobs, darker sides of modernity and associated tural weeklies and monthlies; the theatre, higher wages, shorter hours, more abun- them with much that was going wrong in the cinema, and the universities.”[15] dant crops, more leisure. . . . Advances in America. Continued

November 2016 • Nuclear News • 35 Conceptions of progress that had relied and impossible standard of zero expo- have more value than , so-called on science and and growing sures, a first indication of his predispo- anthropocentrism. He argued for a new wealth were now called into question. sition to oppose nuclear power under any ethic that would make humans and nature The periodical Daedalus was concerned circumstances. equal, replacing Christianity with a kind enough that its entire Summer 1974 is- Nuclear power becomes an archetype of spiritual pantheism and holding up sue was devoted to the topic “Science and for his much broader critique of our en- Buddhism as an example. its Public: The Changing Relationship.” vironmental crisis and its links to science White’s ethic caught hold and became Troubled by “suspicion voiced in many and technology. For Commoner, World a defining feature of the new environ- quarters about the legitimacy and utility War II was the great dividing line between mentalism. It was a central tenet of Deep of certain kinds of scientific endeavor” fol- “the scientific revolution that preceded it , which evolved in the early 1970s, lowing the Sixties, it was noted that some and the technological revolution that fol- weaving its way into any number of creed- feared that “science and technology have lowed it.”[19] The uncontrolled expansion al statements of philosophy for environ- taken a severe beating from which they of these new had so damaged mental groups and becoming a key plank will not recover,” that “faith in science and the environment that “the age of innocent in what sociologists have called “The New technology as an engine of social progress faith in science and technology may be Environmental Paradigm.”[22] By the has come to an end,” and that there was over,” he wrote. 1990s, public surveys showed that large a “deep distrust of science.”[16] The issue Nuclear energy seemed to singularly majorities were embracing the idea that had been prompted by Harvard’s Ger- epitomize this loss of faith. Coal burning is we humans are equal to nature and not ald Holton after he and others observed addressed in a single sentence that quickly special creations.[23] a dramatic drop in students interested in morphs into an indictment of nuclear pow- It was left to Australian philosopher science careers during the prior decade. er, emphasizing the hidden costs of power Raimond Gaita, writing about the con- Today, a continuing concern remains that production.[20] The impacts of all renew- cerns of aboriginal peoples, to note that the role of science in modern America has able resources are ignored, and the reader no society has ever treated humans as been compromised.[17] is left to speculate about the underlying equal to nature, and we do not find this reasons for this. Perhaps it was inevitable, equality in ourselves, in spite of our Setting the tone given his opposition to All of this found its way into the envi- nuclear weapons and Almost without regard to ronmental conversation and influenced its his animosity toward outcomes. It can best be traced by focus- the Atomic Energy what one assumes about the ing on the role of three key figures: Bar- Commission after the ry Commoner, Lynn White Jr., and E. F. debates over radioac- health hazards of radiation, Schumacher. tive fallout, or perhaps nuclear power’s contribution nuclear power stood alone in his mind as is de minimis. This is of A biologist and professor at Washing- the icon of science ton University in St. Louis, Commoner and technology gone little regard to Commoner, had become influential enough that he wrong. Or perhaps who makes no effort to was featured on the cover of the February it was both of these. 2, 1970, issue of Time with the blurb “Ecol- But in the end, while consider proportionality. ogist Barry Commoner: The Emerging Commoner is a scien- Science of Survival.” In The Closing Cir- tist and stresses the role of scientists as a rhetoric to the contrary.[24] As he has cle: Nature, Man and Technology (1971), moral vanguard, there is very little science observed, the “preciousness of human Commoner expounds his view that the in his opposition to nuclear power, no real beings” is fundamental to our nature as ecological crisis was a consequence of sense of proportion, and no effort to defend human beings. We don’t treat killing our uncontrolled technology, with advanc- this indictment based on any comparative neighbor in the same way we treat swat- es rarely taking into account the unin- assessment of alternative resources. ting a fly. One can pretend to deny the tended effects on the environment.[18] significance of the distinction we place on While citing any number of examples—­ Lynn White Jr. human life, but it is hard to do so serious- such as pesticides and plastics—he can- Lynn White Jr. was a history profes- ly, leaving one to wonder if an emphasis didly observes that his concerns began sor at the University of California at Los on this ethic has elevated nature or deval- with nuclear weapons: “I learned about Angeles who wrote what has become a ued humanity. the environment from the United States landmark essay, “The Historical Roots of Yet as an ethic, it fed the ideal of “har- Atomic Energy Commission. . . . I was our Ecological Crisis” (1967).[21] He is mony with nature,” that together with an overwhelmingly concerned with the new, perhaps less well known, but in the realm animus toward science and technology enormously destructive force of nuclear of environmental ideology, few have been became in E. F. Schumacher an environ- energy born during the war.” By 1971, more influential. White blamed the envi- mental religion. these concerns had morphed into a rigid ronmental problem on Christianity, first opposition to commercial nuclear power, as the foundational basis for a scientific E. F. Schumacher a position that appears to have pivoted revolution leading to a society where sci- In 1973, E. F. Schumacher wrote the almost entirely around the issue of radia- ence and technology have flourished, and ideological gospel for a new environmen- tion and its health effects. second, because of its mandate in Gene- talism, Small is Beautiful: Economics as It is a curious issue. Almost without sis to “have dominion over nature.” Like if People Mattered.[25] Drawing from his regard to what one assumes about the Commoner, White associated the ecologi- experiences in India and Burma, Schu­ health hazards of radiation, nuclear pow- cal crisis with science and technology and macher became passionate about two er’s contribution is de minimis. This is of added the ethical dimension that humans things. First, he saw advanced technolo- little regard to Commoner, who makes have felt free to “exploit nature” for their gies being imposed on Third World coun- no effort to consider proportionality. For selfish purposes. In his view, this ethic was tries in ways that were destructive. It led nuclear power, he imposes an arbitrary critical—this Christian view that humans to a global “ move-

36 • Nuclear News • November 2016 www.ans.org/nn Nuclear Power: How Environmentalism Lost Its Way ment,” calling for common-sense wisdom iticians yearned to be seen absorbing our environmental thinking.[30] As not- to match technologies to the culture and [Schumacher’s] wisdom, even if they had ed earlier, even one of the more cherished social structures in which they were being little or no intention to do anything about environmental concerns, biodiversity, is deployed. it.” He argues, however, that Schumach- being compromised by the exclusion of His second thrust, however, was an ex- er was misguided on nuclear power: “His nuclear power. ample of utopian idealism run amok. See- attack on nuclear-generated electricity ing Third World countries as an example lacked any persuasive analysis of the costs, A value-driven approach of living in harmony with nature, with benefits, and risks of alternate energy sce- If we roll the tape back to the 1960s, the dubious claim that people were living narios; he chose instead to reject nuclear clearly there was a need to impose proper more satisfied lives, he called for a mas- power on dubious environmental grounds, boundaries on technological advance- sive restructuring of modern society to and also because its generation requires ment: the need to be aware of environ- model themselves after these “small” so- engineering complexity and large corpo- mental consequences and factor that cieties. What resulted was the attempted rate and governmental organization.”[28] into decisions, the need to match the force-­fitting of a set of ideas built on these This failure of balance and of any sense technology to culture and infrastructure premises into social structures that never of proportion virtually defines the histor- in developing countries, and the need to became small. ical opposition to nuclear power among become more efficient to minimize the Here, too, technology was the problem, environmentalists. The blind opposition stresses placed on resources. Thoughtful- in his view, an almost animate force that is nowhere more evident in Schumach- ly pursued, those boundaries would not was “out of control” yet taking us on a er than his willingness to embrace coal have driven us away from nuclear power destructive journey: “The modern world as an alternative: “What after all is the but toward it. If more rigorous scientif- has been shaped by technology. It tumbles fouling of the air with smoke compared ic principles had been followed, it would from crisis to crisis; on all sides there are to the pollution of the air, water, and soil have meant (1) a more critical response prophecies of disaster and, indeed, visi- with ionizing radiation,” which he calls to the simplistic notion that renewables ble signs of breakdown.” But Schumacher “an evil of incomparably greater dimen- are “peaceful, benign, and environmen- goes further and turns this to an animus sion than anything mankind has known tally friendly,” simply because they are toward science itself. Echoing themes ex- before.”[29] What we have here is not sci- “renewable”; (2) a more realistic assess- pressed by sociologist icon Max Weber in ence but superstition. Although dozens of ment of coal and the universal adoption his essay “Science as a Vocation,” he ar- studies have shown that coal has far great- of policies giving preference to nuclear gues that the study of science is a wasted er health and environmental impacts than power over coal; and (3) an appreciation life. “Science,” he says, “cannot produce nuclear power, environmental opposition of the environmental value of nuclear ideas by which we could live. . . . If a man had the effect of displacing nuclear power power, not just its low-pollution and non- seeks education . . . because his life seems with coal. carbon attributes, but more generally its to him empty and meaningless, [science] All of these analyses attack nuclear efficiency in utilizing natural resources. tells him nothing about the meaning of power yet spurn any rigorous assessment What is needed is a rethinking of original life and can in no way cure his estrange- of alternatives. Nowhere in Lovins’s essay, premises—one that appreciates the role ment and inner despair.” for example, is there any serious consid- of science and technology, that places its On the one hand, Schumacher and oth- eration of the and emphasis on meeting human needs while ers would insist that they are not opposed challenges associated with solar, wind, or minimizing our ecological footprint, to science and technology per se, just its any other renewable resource. It is taken and that culls out ideologies that may be unwise use. Yet their skepticism toward on blind faith that their “environmental working against the very goals that moti- science and technology, even toward sci- impacts are relatively small.” Meanwhile, vated a new environmentalism in the first entists themselves, sets a tone. Solutions nuclear power was singularly reviled. place. must be “soft” and must harmonize with The problem with understanding the a romanticized view of nature. It becomes early evolution of an antinuclear move- The “EcoModernists” what one thinker has called “sociological ment is the way it defies simple answers. Recently, a group of environmentalists, science”: As our confidence in science is The movement arose out of an ideological activists, and writers calling themselves weakened, “people find it easier to come alliance between the new environmen- “EcoModernists” have responded to this to whatever conclusions they desire for talism, a growing cultural skepticism of challenge. They have observed that we the sociological ends they wish to see science and technology, and, aligning have entered an era that places humans in achieved.”[26] Science, in other words, be- with the New Left, a pervasive mistrust a new role with respect to planet Earth, an comes a means to manipulate support for of government and the role of corporate “Anthropocene” epoch in which the im- ideologically motivated ends. power. It was reinforced by a war-weary pact of humans is so great we are now, in While Schumacher, Commoner, and America whose peace activists were un- effect, “remaking the Earth.” Our modern White set the tone, in the end it was left to interested in distinctions between com- challenge is to adapt to this new reality, to rather brilliantly bring mercial nuclear power and nuclear weap- keeping in mind a clear goal: “Making life all of this together in his now famous 1976 ons. All of these were combined with a better for people, stabilizing the climate, Foreign Affairs essay, one that has largely sense of pending ecological catastrophe. and protecting the natural world.”[31] provided the framework for global energy Weighing into this as well was the leg- In doing so, they offer a twofold critique policies since, built around the three key acy of mistrust and radiophobia from of traditional environmentalism. First, themes of (1) energy efficiency, (2) renew- debates a decade earlier over radioactive we must embrace science and technology: able resources as a final end objective, and fallout. Today, as miles of mountain ridg- “Knowledge and technology, applied with (3) no nukes.[27] es are leveled for wind projects, and as wisdom, might allow for a good, or even large swaths of pristine desert lands are great, Anthropocene”; and second, we Losing their way condemned for solar projects with dev- must reject the premise “that human soci- Years later, in the preface to the 1989 astating effects on local biodiversity, we eties must harmonize with nature to avoid release of Small is Beautiful, a good friend are, as some have said, being “mugged economic and ecological collapse.” In par- speaks of Schumacher’s influence: “‘Small by reality” as the realization sets in that ticular, they challenge the romanticized is Beautiful’ became a rallying cry. Pol- something has been basically flawed in notion that “early human societies lived

November 2016 • Nuclear News • 37 Nuclear Power: How Environmentalism Lost Its Way more lightly on the land than do modern becoming increasingly clear that “Big E” Discontents: Nietzsche’s Critique,” at . their needs supported much lower living says they must, all the while losing sight 12. J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European standards with much higher per-capita of the real goal: minimizing our environ- Thought, 1848–1914, p. 60 (2000). impacts on the environment,” according mental footprint while we serve human 13. Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture: Essays on Lit- to the EcoModernists. To the extent that needs. Our task at this point is to tear erature and Learning, pp. ix-xx (1955; republished they seemed to have lighter impacts, it down the Berlin Walls of ideology that by in 1968). was largely because they were supporting have so divided us, engage serious envi- 14. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter much smaller populations. ronmental leaders and reopen a dialogue, Culture, 2nd edition, pp. xx–xxii (1995); Herbert Rethinking our framework means “de- realign our collective goals, merge our Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (1964). coupling” with nature, utilizing technolo- combined energies, and strengthen the 15. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of gy to maximize our use of resources while focus and execution of national policies , Basic Books, pp. 39–47 (1976). minimizing our environmental impacts. so as to place appropriate value on nucle- 16. Preface to the issue “Science and Its Public: that meets these condi- ar power. What we all want is to really, The Changing Relationship,” Daedalus, Vol. 130, tions is critical for improving the human truly achieve an economically viable, sus- No. 3, pp. v–vii (Summer 1974); Amitai Etzioni condition, and no resource accomplishes tainable environmental future. and Clyde Nunn, “The Public Appreciation of Sci- this better than nuclear power. ence in Contemporary America”, pp. 191–205 in Endnotes the same volume. What’s to be done? 1. Stephen Cotgrove, Catastrophe or Cornucopia 17. Michael D. Lemonick, “Are We Losing Our Pursuing this new framework requires (1982); Lester Milbraith, Environmentalists: Van- Edge?” Time (Feb. 13, 2006); Shawn Lawrence Ot- a radical rethinking within the environ- guard for a New Society (1984). to, “Science in America: Decline and Fall,” New mental movement of underlying goals 2. Barry W. Brook and Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Scientist (Oct. 26, 2011). and ideologies. While grassroots envi- “Key Role for Nuclear Energy in Global Biodi- 18. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Man, ronmentalists are already beginning to versity Conservation,” , Vol. Nature, and Technology, Alfred A. Knopf (1971). ask the hard questions and EcoModernist 00, No. 0, pp. 1–11 (2014). The Brook/Bradshaw 19. Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Sci- thought leaders are rising to the occasion, study was endorsed in “An Open Letter to En- ence of Survival: The Remaking of American Envi- corporate environmentalism—think “Big vironmentalists on Nuclear Energy,” signed by ronmentalism (2007). E”: the leaders of the old guard at the Si- 60 conservation scientists from throughout the 20. Commoner, op. cit., pp. 194 et seq. erra Club, the Natural Resources Defense world, available at Brave New Climate, . pp. 1203–1207 (Mar. 1967); a series of essays matic and resistant to change.[32] Partly 3. Raymond Wellock, : with rather complete historical references in the they have been locked into outdated para- Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958– accompanying notes can be found in Deep Ecol- digms, and partly they are held captive to 1978, p. 41 (1998). ogy for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philos- sources of funding that have been sold on 4. Minutes, Sierra Club Board of Directors, pp. ophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, those paradigms. Yet it is at that level that 3–6 (Jan. 12–13, 1974). George Sessions, ed., Shambhala Publications public policies are being influenced, and 5. James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets: From (Nov. 1995). so it is at that level that change will need Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, p. 359 (1987, 22. Riley E. Dunlap and Kent D. Van Liere, “The to occur. It is not enough simply to point 1994). ‘New Environmental Paradigm,’” The Journal of to obvious flaws as the EcoModernists are 6. William Rankin, Stanley Nealey, and Barbara , Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 19– doing; there is a need for an accompany- Deskow Melber, “Overview of National Attitudes 28 (Fall 2008); see “The Philosophy,” ing narrative that gives context and per- toward Nuclear Energy: A Longitudinal Analy- Greenpeace USA, . first place. Critical Masses? William R. Freudenburg and Eu- 23. Nuclear Energy Institute 1995 survey. It is, in a sense, a Bridge on the River gene A. Rosa, eds., p. 52 (1984); Jerome Price, The 24. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Think- Kwai moment. In the classic 1957 mov- Anti-Nuclear Movement, Twayne Publishers, pp. ing about Love and Truth and Justice (2000). ie starring Alec Guinness and William 18–19 (1982). California’s initiative was defeated 25. E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Econom- Holden, a British colonel (Guinness) in a in June and six others in November. See New York ics as if People Mattered, Blond & Briggs, London Japanese POW camp, after enduring tor- Times, Nov. 4, 1976, p. 22, col. 3. (1973). ture and other deprivations, seems to set- 7. Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier, 26. Francis A. Schaeffer,How Should We Then tle his differences with the Japanese com- U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Develop- Live? Fleming H. Revell Co., pp. 199–200 (Sept. mandant of the camp and oversees with ment, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Print- 1976). enthusiasm the construction of a bridge ing Office (1945). 27. Amory B. Lovins, “Energy Strategy: The Road for his captors, oblivious to the efforts by 8. Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate not Taken?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. British commandos (led by Holden) to and Public Participation in American Commercial 65–96 (Oct. 1976). destroy it. Finally, in the midst of a com- Nuclear Power 1945–1975, pp. 41 et seq. (1991). 28. E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Econom- mando attack, which at first horrifies him, 9. “Dream Come True: AEC ics as if People Mattered, HarperPerennial, pref- he has a “What have I done!” moment and in Pittsburgh May Mean Much to the West,” by ace to the 1989 edition by John McLaughry, p. xv. comes to his senses. It’s at that moment Robert Hansen, The Denver Post (Sept. 19, 1954). 29. Ibid., p. 149. when the light goes on, and we realize how See also Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of 30. Paul Lorenzini, “Saving the Environment far we have strayed from our original pur- Images, pp. 171–174 (1987). from Environmentalism, Part I: Must We De- poses. 10. “Big Hurdle for A-Power: Gaining Public Ac- stroy the Environment to Save It?” at (Sept. 14, 2015). but it has fallen on deaf ears because 11. Robert Solomon, Continental Philosophy 31. See “An EcoModernist Manifesto” at . fluenced by blinding ideologies. Yet it is (1988); Douglas Kellner, “Modernity and its 32. Lorenzini, op. cit.

November 2016 • Nuclear News • 39