ABSTRACT
Generating electricity involves technologies that form a key platform of modernity, and which are linked to societal affluence. Nuclear-electric power is favoured by ‘ecomodernists’, who have been described as the environmental ‘centre-left’ of the political spectrum. The downside also concerns the proliferation of nuclear weapons material, the high cost of the power plants including construction, operation and decommissioning, the risk of nuclear terrorism and the difficulty of radioactive waste disposal. Understandably there is extreme political sensitivity about the establishment of a nuclear waste dump. The first reactor producing electricity was built in 1951, and the first commercial nuclear power plant was opened at Windscale in the United Kingdom in 1956. In the United States, part of the nuclear-electric public relations effort has involved setting up industry funded pro-nuclear front groups. Exposure at significantly more than the level of natural background radiation is therefore cautionary.
