NEI Nuclear Notes

1. The 60th anniversary of Atoms for Peace (and NEI, too) – President Dwight Eisenhower gave the Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953. I’ve heard different thoughts about how to date the beginning of the domestic nuclear energy industry – the four light bulbs illuminated by Experimental Breeder Reactor I on December 20, 1951, the first successful use of nuclear energy to generate electricity, is a good candidate – but Atoms for Peace seems correct because the speech makes the moral and ethical, not just a technical, case for nuclear energy. That’s important and it makes 2013 the 60th anniversary of the industry. Atoms for Peace came about as a response to the rising tide of the cold war and Eisenhower’s perception that the world could embrace “the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.” Against this nihilistic view, Eisenhower propose...

Whether or not NEI is involved, we’re sure to see coverage, even celebration, of the 60th anniversary of the domestic nuclear energy industry. C.T. Carley of Mississippi State University decides to be the one that gets it going with an op-ed: Now, 60 years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his historic “Atoms for Peace” address to the U.N. General Assembly, history has shown that the world has benefited from nuclear energy. That’s pretty nice. More, please: “A great boon for the benefit of mankind” is on the horizon if that energy is harnessed for peace. His [Eisenhower’s] proposal took the form of an ambitious Marshall Plan for nuclear energy, a program of international pooling of nuclear technology and fissionable materials. The editorial goes on to mention the five reactors being built here and 68 other ones being sited around the world. Nuclear plants supply more clean energy than any of the alternative power sources. Despite billions of dollars in government...

Eben Herrell has written an interesting – and in some ways, a rather lovely – article for Time that further explores the issue of fear and nuclear energy. He ties it to Hiroshima, trying for a historical, even cosmic, linkage, but this bit struck me particularly: Since the dawn of the atomic age, proponents of nuclear power have tried to use the fact that binding energy can power cities as a balance or absolution for the fact that it can also destroy them. Eisenhower dubbed it "atoms for peace" and spoke of turning nuclear swords into nuclear plowshares. It's a beautiful vision… It is a beautiful vision – the modern swords into plowshares program is called megatons-to-megawatts – you can read more about it here – and it’s worked exceptionally well. Herrell says some things I don’t find particularly agreeable, but this part works well enough: It seems perfectly reasonable to me to argue that we should continue to support nuclear power as an alternative to f...