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NUCLEAR_HUMANS

                                                 May   14, 2014


Nuclear arguments:

A few slashdot comments recently,
take the line that "the human factor"
argues against nuclear power,
that something like a Fukushima is the
result of an upwelling of institutional
stupidity that can't be prevented.

I would make the points:

(1) we don't follow this reasoning in any
other areas: e.g. the Iraq war was an
upwelling of institutional stupidity
resulting in deaths and property damage on
a scale exceeding any nuclear incident.

Now one argues that this means the US
should disband it's military.               (Really: some might argue this,
                                            but they get very little traction.)

    Sure, it's bad when the
    military goes wrong, but
    also think about the
    potential downsides of
    not having one.

       Suddenly we think about reasonable
       tradeoffs, opportunity costs, etc.

(2)  It would be really cool if we could learn
     to prevent these upwellings of stupidity.
     Can we?



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