Generating Power: Nuclear Amnesia?

Long-time observers of the nuclear scene are watching with mounting alarm as yet another pathology becomes all too evident. One politician after another, one government after another, one journalist after another, one activist after another, seems to be succumbing to the insidious effects of nuclear amnesia. The symptoms are unmistakable. The sufferer expresses concern about, say, energy security, or rising electricity prices, or climate change – understandable concern, about issues immediate and pressing. Then, inexplicably, the sufferer asserts that the appropriate response is nuclear power. To any dispassionate onlooker even slightly familiar with history, such an assertion is incomprehensible.