DBWI America doesn't go Nuclear

During the 1970s there was a big fight over nuclear power.

Environmentalists didn't want it around and were doing their level best to demolish it as a practice. The country was also hit hard by Opec around the same time. It was a daunting time in american history, but the nuclear industry fought back hard, with a PR push, information about certain environmentalists having soviet connections was also brought out which discredited the movement just enough for a big nuclear push.

The 1970s-80s would see america follow the french example and build nuclear powerplant's in every state in the union. A standard model was developed, new efficiencies and safe methods created, and the experement with Thorium a success.

Today around 80% of america's electricity comes from Nuclear but what if that push didn't happen what if america didn't go nuclear?
 
Americans would live more in harmony with nature... those chosen ones who were left around anyways.

... joking aside (since the US doesn't exist in a vacuum). Well, I guess the various coal mining towns in the Appalachia would get a new lease on life, probably with coal gasification or something to that effect.

Then again, there's also the option of subsidizing the oil industry to tap into previous unprofitable oil sources.

One way or the other the USA will get her energy independence, by fair means or foul.
 
We would not be facing the reality that at any moment a terrorist attack can destroy areactor and spread radioactive material over multiple states. Our military budget would be lower because we would not need to station surface to air missile batteries around every reactor to prevent planes been crashed into them.
 
Americans would live more in harmony with nature... those chosen ones who were left around anyways.

... joking aside (since the US doesn't exist in a vacuum). Well, I guess the various coal mining towns in the Appalachia would get a new lease on life, probably with coal gasification or something to that effect.

Then again, there's also the option of subsidizing the oil industry to tap into previous unprofitable oil sources.

One way or the other the USA will get her energy independence, by fair means or foul.

I'm a little skeptical about subsidizing the domestic oil industry; it was doing pretty well all told up through the mid-90's thanks to automobiles and exports to Europe, and stinks of the "Pink Commie-Corporatism" that the Republicans railed against during the 80's . Sure, the Feds will dump boatloads of cash into R&D and the Universities, or protect/make preferential terms for strategically-important industries like defense, but petrolium extraction techinques are as well-established as the eons-settled bedrock it drills into and by the time the industry could really use the help (following the commerical proliferation of the electric engine and the completion of fiscally viable mass transport in western Europe) the USSR would have either collapsed as it did in 1988 (removing the need to geopolitically counter her "gas weapon"), or been rendered impotent by its ever-shrinking budget.
 
I also think that there would be serious consideration by the late 1980's for nuclear power plants that don't need expensive-to-manufacture uranium-235 fuel rods as fuel. They certainly would have dusted off Alvin Weinberg's research into molten-salt reactors fueled mostly by commonly-found thorium-232 dissolved in molten fluoride salts and started building test reactors by the early 1990's, resulting in the first commercial MSR's going online before 2010.
 
It would have delayed but not prevented nuclear power. In the 1970s there were concerns about anthropogenic global cooling. We now know that the real threat is carbon induced global warming. Best way to do our part is to generate electricity from non-carbon sources, and the most efficient carbon-free source is nuclear. By running our grid on nuclear energy and, thanks to recent investments, running out mass transit on the grid, we've substantially reduced our carbon footprint without reducing our standard of living.
 
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