Yesterday I stumbled across a great headline from an unusual source Nuclear Power for Everyone!. (The stumbling occurred via one of my usual methods – the link to the story was delivered to me by my daily Google alert which searches news sources on the web for “new nuclear power plants”.)
The fact that I thought the headline was from an unusual source is that it appeared on a blog titled ArmsControlWonk.com. In my experience in the business of promoting nuclear power I have always thought of the arms control community as part of the problem. It has always seemed to me that they care so much about restricting the spread of nuclear weapons that they try to bind up all nuclear material in ways that it cannot be used for either weapons or economical power.
I think that philosophy borders on evil paternalism; the potential benefits of nuclear power are huge, and the fact is that nuclear weapons exist already in large quantities. Encouraging “have-not” countries to give up those benefits for a goal that is probably not reachable – preventing the spread of all weapons-useful aspects of the technology – seems to be a very short-sighted and selfish policy.
However, once I arrived at ArmsControlWonk.com I realized that there is an opportunity to engage with that community in a completely new way. First of all, the blog is beautifully designed and has one of the best commenting mechanisms (with previews of the HTML results) that I have ever run across.
(I am waiting, however, for my first comment to be approved. I presume it will, but one of the hazards of a moderated site is that the time delays for editors can be significant.)
The operators of the site seem to be reasonable people and have a good dialog going. Check it out; perhaps we can help to make it a great dialog.
