AHC: Pro-Nuclear Early Environmentalist Movement in the United States

This study (or rather the one it is reporting on) seems to support that. Perhaps not the mercury claims specifically (though it does state that a considerable amount of the stuff is emitted from plants in the Midwest and on the East Coast), but between mining and burning the stuff it's pretty bad.


Oh you :p

I've never opposed nuclear power on technical grounds, only on political and economic ones.

Mining anything carries many risks just because of the way it works so it really doesn't matter if it is coal or iron or copper or bauxite still a dangerous profession. Solar is still much more expensive per kilowatt hour and requires relatively expensive processes to manufacture and still runs into the problems of being insufficient on cloudy days when there is limited production. Solar would be good as a supplement to the base capacity but could never entirely replace it unless we get orbiting solar power satalites. Nuclear is good for base load because it generally can run 24 hrs a day for years without changing anything and still work fine and produces much less waste than coal plants which are used in many areas for the base load electricity.

I can show the calculations that were used to come up with the amount of coal needed to power a 100MW coal plant if you want. it is a problem assigned to thermodynamics students in pretty much every course you would take on the subject.
 
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Another PoD involving one of my favorite people would involve Henry Wallace having an influence on early environmentalism, either by being President, or being more of a writer (either in "The New Republic" or "Wallaces' Farmer"). OTL, not only was he in favor of nuclear research for power, but he himself did some experiments growing plants with radioactive fertilizer, and growing plants that had mutations due to exposure to radiation.
 
Another PoD involving one of my favorite people would involve Henry Wallace having an influence on early environmentalism, either by being President, or being more of a writer (either in "The New Republic" or "Wallaces' Farmer"). OTL, not only was he in favor of nuclear research for power, but he himself did some experiments growing plants with radioactive fertilizer, and growing plants that had mutations due to exposure to radiation.

I once ran across some information on how Wallace wanted the AEC to be organized. It's been a while, so I may be misremembering, but IIRC he wanted the "Commission" itself to consist of government officials such as the Secretary of Defense, etc., who would effectively have a primarily advisory/general policy role, while the Director would actually run the Commission in practice. IOTL, while the Commission's role was primarily policy-oriented rather then administrative, they were much more involved in AEC operations then I expect a Commission of officials busy with their own departments would be. I'm not sure what the consequences of a more unitary AEC command structure would be, but it's interesting to wonder.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Yeah, but then again, it's waste that's going to be toxic and dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, and is dangerous in gram amounts.

Fast breeder reactors will fix that.

More importantly, the shutdown of nuclear reactors won't fix that:

As others have said, the volume of the highly radioactive waste is small compared to a typical deep geological repository, so running out of space is no issue. And as for long term toxicity: The containment time is typically 10-20 times half-life. If we double the amount of waste, only one more half-life is added to that.

Can anyone explain to me why we should give up the chance to reduce the containment time by a factor of 10 to 100 (depending on how far the technology is improved) for a barely significant reduction of the safety problems?
 

Delta Force

Banned
If the nuclear program had moved in a more cautious manner and energy consumption had still continued on its project path through the 1970s and 1980s, might nuclear power have looked more favorable? The safety issues likely would have been recognized before a larger roll out of the technology, and coal and petroleum burning power plants would be providing all of the energy. The issue for 1980s would be that the nation was starting to reach the limits of how much coal could be shipped on the national railway network, and the issue with petroleum would be the shortages that would occur as the result of any external system shock such as an embargo, war, labor dispute, or industrial incident.

Would butterflying the roll out of nuclear power and/or the onset of the energy crises by a decade lead to it becoming a prominent policy alternative? During the 1970s no one seemed to think that the economy could become as energy efficient as it did in a short period of time starting in the 1980s, so perceptions of an energy and perhaps even environmental crisis would be far more acute.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Dixy Lee Ray didn't like hippies (not my words, she really didn't like hippies), but she was trained as a zoologist. Any chance she could somehow come to head of the Sierra Club or hold a similar position and make it pro-nuclear? My understanding is that it was a bit more conservative leaning prior to the late 1960s/early 1970s.
 
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