Introduction

The decision concerning nuclear power brings into focus numerous forces and factors. The sheer massiveness of the investment needed for research, development, and construction also relegates power plants using fissionable materials to a rather special category. The one great virtue of nuclear power technology is that, by substituting uranium and plutonium for dwindling supplies of petroleum, natural gas, and, eventually, coal, the era of fossil fuel use can be extended significantly. There is one final, quite remarkable characteristic of nuclear power we must keep in mind if we are to assess its eventual acceptability properly. The technology has neither responded to deep-seated socioeconomic and cultural change nor ushered in any meaningful qualitative shifts in our ways of life. The debate is complicated by the fact that normal operations form only a single link in a long energy cycle that reaches from the initial mining of ores to the ultimate disposal of radioactive wastes and the dismantling of the power plants.