ABSTRACT
Unfortunately, the advantages of fission are much more readily quantified in the format of a benefit-cost analysis than are the associated hazards. Therefore, there exists the danger that the benefits may seem more real. Furthermore, the conceptual basis of benefit-cost analysis requires that the redistributional effects of the action be, for one or another reason, inconsequential. Here we are speaking of hazards that may affect humanity many generations hence and equity questions that can neither be neglected as inconsequential nor evaluated on any known theoretical or empirical basis. This means that technical people, be they physicists or economists, cannot legitimately make the decision to generate such hazards. Our society confronts a moral problem of a great profundity; in my opinion, it is one of the most consequential that has ever faced mankind. In a democratic society the only legitimate means for making such a choice is through the mechanisms of representative government.
