Zell, Chris wrote:
We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years.
Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected
You are misconstruing a lot of things here.
Peak oil was predicted quite a long time back, as a result of modeling
available oil in the ground, and is not a conclusion based on watching
oil company behavior regarding new refineries.
In fact, it's the other way around -- we watch oil company behavior, and
say, "Oh, we can explain what they're doing by assuming they've seen the
peak-oil estimates too". Maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong; it's
an attempt at figuring out what's going on inside oil company
executives's heads and is therefore on far shakier ground than the
peak-oil conclusion itself.
There are obviously a number of reasons why people in many parts of the
world are opposed to nuclear plants, not least of which is the waste
problem, which appears to me to have been exacerbated by proliferation
fears, which make spent-fuel reprocessing and research into breeder
reactors much trickier political issues than they would be otherwise.
Another issue, which feeds into NIMBY-ism, is that trust in government
and industry is pretty low in a lot of quarters, and a lot of people at
the grass-roots level just don't believe they're safe when industry
plays with hazardous materials near their homes.
Interesting side note: Do you remember glow-in-the-dark digital
watches? They were really useful -- more convenient than the
push-the-button-to-turn-on-the-light things we've got now, IMHO. But
they vanished from the market right after Three Mile Island.
Once people get scared of something it's hard to get them to accept it
again, in any form.
