Liberal Talk Radio

The Plank asks:

Yesterday’s New York Times spotlighted the coming resurgence of the nuclear power industry. We know how Republicans feel about this (fission=good). What about Democrats? Does the liberal anti-nuke-folk-song sentiment still prevail within the party? Might some Democratic 2008 presidential candidate dare to make nuclear power an important part of his (or, um, her) energy-independence platform? And would that be a bad thing, substantively? Just asking….

God, I hope so. If you buy into the notion that the earth is fragile, that evil elements are out to destabilize the civilized world and that non-polluting, non-political energy production is the key to a sustainable peace, then it seems remarkable that we’re not thinking more seriously about nuclear power.

To that point, something Alistair Cooke wrote in 1973 for his America series really resonates. Basically, he was noting how amazing it was that the most horrible weapon of the 20th century begat the most promising technology for energy production. In 1973, at least, people were upbeat about nuclear energy:

As I see it, in this country — a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism — the race is on between its decadence and its vitality. There are the woes, which we share with the world, that you can see from your window: overpopulation; the pollution of the atmosphere, the cities and the rivers; the destruction of nature. I find it impossible to believe that a nation that produced such dogged and ingenious humans as Jefferson and Eli Whitney, John Deere and Ford, Kettering and Oppenheimer and Edison and Franklin, is going to sit back and let the worst happen. There is now a possibility, at least, that nuclear energy can help us to cure incurable diseases, to preserve our food indefinitely, and through breeder reactors, which renew more power in the act of spending it, can actually clean the cities and, let us pray, the oceans. And that would take us over a historical watershed that none of us has ever conceived.

So what happened? Or, if you’re Michael Crowley above, substantively, why was it such a bad thing?