Publication Laka-library:
Nuclear energy: promises, promises
| Author | George L.Weil |
| Date | April 1973 |
| Classification | 6.01.0.00/06 (GENERAL) |
| Front | 
|
From the publication:
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has spent over three billion taxpayers' dollars to develop our current commercial nuclear power plants. It continues to subsidize directly or indirectly the growth of nuclear power at a rate of about 300 million tax dollars each year. And each year we must deal with enormous additional quantities of radioactive materials. In 1940, before the development of controlled fission, the world stock of refined naturally occurring radium amounted to only about 1000 curies. Now, a single nuclear plant may contain radioactive materials equivalent to 20 billion curies of radium! Of course, the AEC and the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) assure the American public that the benefits of nuclear power far outweigh the risks. They even promote this assumption - again at taxpayers' expense and with the help of the nuclear industry - by public relations features such as the film, "Nuclear Power: Service with Safety." Lulled by such assurances, most Americans have accepted on faith the self-serving policies and decisions of the AEC and the JCAE. Public discussion of nuclear power plants has never even approached the proportions of our debate on the Supersonic Transport (SST), even though U. S. nuclear energy and the SST are comparable programs with development costs of several billion dollars and annual expenditures of several hundred million dollars. Depending on the way commercial nuclear energy expands, it could have far more serious public and environmental consequences than the SST and therefore deserves, at the very least, the same kind of searching scrutiny from Congress, the media and the public.
This publication is only available at Laka on paper, not as pdf.
You can borrow the publication or request a copy. When we're available, this is possible for a small fee.