The Brittanica Book of the Year 1972 included a special report Nuclear Power – Promise or Peril? (a oft-used title, if my. web search is any indication) which discussed – pushed? – that nuclear energy was the way of the future:
According to an AEC report to the 1971 UN international conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy, held in Geneva, the dates by which time it will become uneconomic to produce fossil fuels are the year 2000 for oil, 2015 for natural gas, and 2400 for coal. Thus, if ever an energy source could be said have arrived in the nick of time, it was nuclear energy. … [N]uclear fuel was by 1971 cheaper than coal at the moth of the mine. And the future economics favour the atom. New U.S. safety regulations have reduced the number of tons of coal produced per man-day from the 20 achieved in 1969 to fewer than 15 with the result, according to some estimates, that coal may double in price between 1971 ad 1980. Any hope that the situation might be improved by automation was dealt a severe blow by the British Coal Board’s experiences with the highly automated colliery at Bevercotes. So ultimately the public appears to be faced with a stark choice: get the oil lamps down from the attic and throw away your air conditioning, or accept nuclear power.
Obviously hindsight has perfect vision and nuclear power is not the panacea hoped for ( Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukashima accidents garnering world-wide attention), and now few are built and many decommissioned.
However, this has not tempered the world’s electric usage; in fact, according to the US Energy Information Administration electric consumption has tripled since 1971. While true that renewable energy and improved device efficiencies – especially lighting – help cover some of the increase, it’s a very small percentage. And electric consumption continues to grow with no signs of abating…..and no, I have not retrieved my prepper oil lamp from the attic!
Image Credit
“Vogtle nuclear power plant, Georgia, USA” by BlatantWorld.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
