<uneducated public and phobic fear against anything involving "radiation">
I agree, completely. But how much money has been spent, by industry and government, over the last 40 years, in an unsuccessful effort to educate? Is there any evidence the public wants to be educated? Or is even open to a discussion?
"Insanity in individuals is something rare -- but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
I'd like decisions to be made on the basis of numbers, reproducible results, and rational cost-benefit analysis. I'm a student of history, I've been reading for 50 years, and I've never read of any government (or any set of voters, or any group of people larger than 10) who ever made decisions that way.
I'd like to see the U.S. subsidize any and all technologies which have the potential to supply domestic LT energy. (R&D and start-up seed money only, with a strict time limit on how long subsidies last). We should be completely agnostic about technology: fund and encourage solar, wind, fission, fusion, deepwater and arctic drilling, and anything else even remotely plausible. If even one of them becomes a winner, it makes 10 dead-ends worthwhile.
But what I want, or what you want, makes no difference in what's going to happen. |
