The case for nuclear electric power

Summary What role should the United States play in the energy economy of the world? Do we want to be uninvolved? Do we sit back and let the other industrial countries supply the rest of the world with nuclear power? Already, the world with four billion people and too high a growth rate is headed for trouble that could engulf us all. Four of five decades from now, when the population will have doubled to eight billion, the low sophistication level of today's energy users will very likely have run the total energy use very high. We in the United States will not only have our own energy problems; there will be an imperative need for a world energy policy, and we should be part of the negotiation. The United States will have to be more than self-sufficient. Power from uranium and thorium will expectably be our backbone. both at home and abroad. Among other things, Americans cannot afford to have profligate worldwide use of fossil fuel, with the expected movement of good crop weather northward, away from the best food-producing areas. American agriculture might be hit the hardest. Problems like these are world problems, and they just won't go away. We are part of them. Is it not to our own interest to have our own energy situation under control, so we can help shape the global outcome? This article is reprinted (excerpted) with the permission of Education Development Center, Inc., from “The Case for Nuclear Electric Power”, Occasional Paper No. 1 by Saville R. Davis and Jerrold R. Zacharias of the Energy in Perspective Project, funded by the Business Roundtable, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, For Biographic sketches of the Authors please see pages 305–306.