Nuclear Power: How Environmentalism Lost Its Way
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Nuclear power: How environmentalism 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 environmentalists 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 anti nuclear 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 biodiversity.[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 Sierra Club 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 environmental movement 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 (<[email protected]>) 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 Washington, 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 modernity.[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 United States 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 culture 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, literature, 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 United Nations in Trilling, an “adversary culture,” marginal- 1962, when Rachel Carson raised alarms December 1953. Falling on receptive ears, ized, on the outside looking in, and hostile about pesticides in Silent Spring, 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 Earth Day 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.