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Conflict Highlights
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Cover of May 1988 booklet, How Practical Is Nuclear Power Now and for the Future?
The pro/con statements below indicate the great depth of disparity in the nuclear power debate, and to our core question, "How practical is Nuclear Power now and for the future?"
  Pro Nuclear Power Con Nuclear Power
1.

In Japan, where nuclear power supplies 27 percent of the country's electricity, new nuclear plants are being deployed at the fastest rate in the world.

-- U.S. Department of Energy;
"Energy Security: A Report to the
President of the United States"

In Sweden, where nuclear power supplies 42 percent of the country's electricity, voters passed a referendum to close all of the country's nuclear plants.

-- Thomas B. Johnson;
Nuclear Waste From Nuclear Power Plants
Berkeley; University of California Press, 1983
2.

Throughout the world, nuclear power is an inexpensive generating option.

-- Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc. in their 1986 factsheet, "Plant Cancellations and the Economics of Nuclear Power."

Between 1971 and 1985 the cost of building new nuclear plants in the U.S. rose sixfold.

-- New England Journal of Public Policy; "The (Mal)practice of Nuclear Power Economics," Charles Komanoff, 1985
3.

The potential hazards of nuclear reactors have been reduced to an extremely low level of actual risk.

-- Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc., 1988

A nuclear power plant accident could cause 50,000 early fatalities and $314 billion in property damages.

-- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; "Nuclear Safety: Risks and Regulations," William C. Wood, 1983

4.

The small volume of high-level waste makes it highly controllable, compared to other industrial wastes.

-- U.S. Committee for Energy Awareness; "Nuclear Energy: Moving Ahead," 1988

No technology for the safe, permanent containment of radioactive wastes has been developed and tested.

-- Scott Fenn, The Nuclear Power Debate, (New York: Prager Publishers, 1981), p. 176

5.

In the U.S., no commercial nuclear power plant worker has ever exhibited clinical evidence of serious injury from radiation.

-- Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc., "Nuclear Reactor Safety," April 1983

Nuclear power's occupational hazards are manifested more in long-term cancer than in immediate lethality.

-- Nader and Abbotts, op. cit. p. 165
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