Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine in 1698. He used it to pump water out of coal mines.
Now, imagine that a few years later a steam engine exploded and killed some people.
No need to imagine because it happened. Steam engines blew up and killed people on a regular basis.
Now imagine something else. That as a result of steam engine accidents people stopped building them. "Too dangerous" said the imaginary Greens of the 18th century. Had that in fact happened there would have been no industrial revolution and no modern world.
And did we stop building airplanes after the first major accident. Or building cars because they also cnrash and kill people.
We didn’t do any of that.
We didn’t do any of that.
But that is what we did with nuclear energy. Two accidents — Three Mile Island and Chernobyl — and it was all over (Fukushima was just cream on the Greens’ pudding).. No matter that in both cases the design and technology were woeful; outdated and slapdash.
The Greenies fear-mongered and managed to shut down major nuclear programs around the world.
Had we instead continued with nuclear energy development, new generations would have improved the design, the technology and the safety. No matter. We did away with the single safest and most reliable source of energy on planet earth. For an ideology of fear. And as a result are now dealing with the whole CO2 thing.
Well done, Greens! Not.
The book reviewed below highlights the design and control problems of Chernobyl in late-stage Soviet Russia.
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In "Midnight in Chernobyl," the journalist Adam Higginbotham reconstructs the disaster from the ground up, recounting the prelude to it as well as its aftermath.
