At what point in the 20th Century could we have started reducing our dependence on fossil fuels in favor of cleaner means to run our electricity, transportation, etc.
Late 1970s/early 1980s. Ford or Reagan in '76, followed by a worse three mile island and some dem wins in 1980 on that platform.
Late 1970s/early 1980s. Ford or Reagan in '76, followed by a worse three mile island and some dem wins in 1980 on that platform.
Cool. By the early 80's what would be the cheapest renewable energy sources?
Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.
Cool. By the early 80's what would be the cheapest renewable energy sources?
The fact that nuclear energy is a great economic bridger to keep the system running until one can develop cost-effective means of running the power grid on wind and solar (Assuming you can even scrape up the absurd amount of capital that would be needed) suggests you'd have a lot smoother transition that's less likely to see backlash/rollbacks if nuclear power gets a boost rather than a moratorium. Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.
Nuclear power might as well be renewable, and it's definitely very, very low on the pollution end of the spectrum. Uranium (or thorium) mining certainly isn't though, but it's the earliest and easiest way to transition away from fossil fuels.
It's unfortunate there never was a major "yellow environmentalist" movement back in the day, given how opposed they were to many hydro dams (which was basically the only cheap and reliable source of renewable energy).
Nuclear power itself requires such a huge capital investment you probably wouldn't even bother to transition to renewable power. Once your uranium-fueled plants reached the end of their lifespan (or supplies of uranium were running low/too expensive), you'd probably have long since planned to switch to thorium, and that will (almost) never run out.
we're talking about americans, all you need is image and if they get enough fear about three mile island they'd vote accordinglyThe fact that nuclear energy is a great economic bridger to keep the system running until one can develop cost-effective means of running the power grid on wind and solar (Assuming you can even scrape up the absurd amount of capital that would be needed) suggests you'd have a lot smoother transition that's less likely to see backlash/rollbacks if nuclear power gets a boost rather than a moratorium. Besides, Three Mile Island was really more of a PR scare story than an actual crisis; people got more background radiation from the sun that day than they did from the minor leakage.
Indeed, if we could remove the Three Mile Island incident nuclear power would be more popular and we'd be better off for it. It's safe, clean, reliable and most importantly cost-effective, something that can't be said for other alternative energy sources.
we're talking about americans, all you need is image and if they get enough fear about three mile island they'd vote accordingly
By "we", I assume the OP is referring to the US.
Fossil Fuel costs need to increase in order for serious adoption of alternatives to occur (serious adoption" by my definition is solutions that scale to meet a large percentage of demand). Humans didn't adopt fossil fuels because the had to - we did it because they (Fossil Fuels) are "better" than what we were using (from an energy/cost perspective). It's basic economics. When the price of fossil fuels enter a pattern of terminal increase, society and industry will start to look at alternatives. I'm ruling out adoption to concern over climate change and pollution because humans are notorious for putting off long-term and invisible problems for acute ones. Short of ASB ("The Day After Tomorrow" level events or humans suddenly becoming 100 times more sensitive to pollution) I don't see that motivating behavior changes in the US public and/or industry beyond what has occurred in OTL.
Also, Presidents don't make these decisions: economies (Capital Investors, Industry etc) and geopolitical climates do. Alternative energy adoption in the US didn't die because Regan was elected. It never flourished because the economic conditions that spawned it existed for a short time and then passed and the old economic conditions returned. I'm referring to the decline in US domestic conventional oil production that started in 1970 coupled with the OPEC crisis - both of which were mitigated by the Brent Crude and Alaskan North Slope coming online. This pattern continues today with fracking and shale-oil/tar-sands. Coal production a whole different story... We have a lot of it.
We need to find a POD that introduces blindingly-evident long-term economic and geopolitical drivers for a shift to alternative energies. The challenge is that the POD also needs to occur in a way that a.) doesn't wreck the economy before new technologies are available (it takes a lot of money to develop technology that scales to meet the needs for 250-300 M people) and it takes a lot of capital to build out the infrastructure) and b.) provides enough compelling evidence early enough for viable and scalable alternative energy technologies to be developed in the first place and c.) galvanizes the political and economic will of the nation towards solving the challenge. This will be tough to find.
Upfront, nuclear energy is relatively clean and safe. Reactor designs are generally very safe today. Of course, treating a reactor as an experimental platform against the advice of the people that understand it (Chernobyl) and building plants in Tsunami Zones (Fukushima) are generally going to cause nasty problems. These types of accidents/leaks are what scare most people (any yes, neither had occurred in the early 80s). However, on the tail-end, there is a bigger issue: Disposal of the spent fuel. And by "Disposal" I mean converting to an inert/safe material, firing it at the sun etc. Storage is the only solution we have today and only postpones the real cost indefinitely. Yucca Mountain has a regulatory compliance term of 10,000 years - twice that of recorded history - when I head that, I hear the sound of a can being kicked down a road and not a "real" solution. My point being that: until there is a solution to the safe disposal (by my definition, above) of spent fuel, it's impossible to determine the long-term costs, and how safe nuclear energy really is.
Sure, I could see TTL having 20-30 more nuclear reactors than OTL before the usual scare stories and lawyers using them kill the expansion.