Accentuate The Positive in the Nuclear Energy Debate

Recently in the online U.K. magazine, Spiked, Joe Kaplinsky advised that in order to advance the nuclear agenda, we're going to need to couch it in positive terms, rather than just a decision to stave off disaster:

[W]e have only just begun creatively to tap the possibilities of nuclear technologies, not just in power generation but in applications from space flight to medicine. By focusing on problems we narrow our horizons, missing out on the possibilities for future developments. If instead we ask about innovations that can satisfy new needs and desires, experience has shown that older problems become more manageable with our expanded capacities. This should govern our approach to the expansion of nuclear power.

The government clings to combating climate change as one of the few unquestioned moral absolutes today. But without a more positive motivation than staving off the effects of man's destructiveness, it seems unlikely that it can throw its weight behind a proper investment in nuclear power.

If this situation continues, we will all suffer the consequences of a decaying energy infrastructure - and will forgo as yet unimagined opportunities.

Something to think about.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Climate Change, Greenhouse Gases

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