Don't Play

When I was a boy and first began gambling my father wasn’t very pleased, but as he had been a gambler all his life, he was not in a position to forbid me from doing it. Instead he offered me two pieces of advice, “Don’t play with strangers,” and “If you can’t afford to lose, don’t play.” I have always found this to be sound advice.

One might think it would be equally sound advice for our nuclear energy program. It seems no one is going to take seriously not playing in the nuclear energy game, so we should probably beware of strangers from France and Japan who are eager to build us all the nuclear plants we might want. And given the potential dangers involved you might think we might well risk losing more than we can afford. Unfortunately this sage advice is not relevant in this case. It is irrelevant first, because the players in this game are not playing with their own chips and don’t have to worry about losing. As private lenders have shown little interest in taking risks on nuclear plants they will be subsidized by the government (aka taxpayers). In fact these plants probably could not financially survive without subsidies. But if they fail the promoters and builders don’t stand to lose as it wasn’t their money in the first place. What makes this far worse is that not only money is involved but people’s lives. Lots and lots of lives can be potentially lost and these losses cannot be redeemed by anyone. Thus, while you would think the risks not worth taking, remember the lives at risk, just like the money, have nothing to do with the sponsors of these incredibly stupid projects.

Gamblers are also known to be superstitious, that is, magical thinkers. They have to compulsively stack their chips only in a certain way, have to blow on the dice precisely three times, carry a rabbit’s foot, avoid wearing opals, watch out for black cats, broken mirrors, and hundreds of other behaviors they believe have something to do with “luck.” When they have a losing night at the tables they can usually find an explanation for their loss, “I forgot my lucky four-leaf clover,” “If it hadn’t been for that woman in the low-cut gown I wouldn’t have made the mistake,” and etc., etc. That is, there was nothing wrong with playing, something mysteriously interfered. I think this is also true of criminals. You know, “We would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that off-duty policeman, or if the car had started, or something. There is nothing wrong with crime, just some sort of bad luck.

It seems that people more generally are also given to magical thinking. Nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the energy business. “The plant would have done fine if it hadn’t been for the earthquake, or if we had built the generators on higher ground, or if there hadn’t been human error, or if the dikes had been properly constructed, and so on. The assumption is there is nothing wrong with building the plants in the first place, it’s just that something unanticipated interfered with the plan, “Next time it’ll be different.” Those who favor building nuclear plants are apparently never going to be convinced the risks are too great as they don’t stand to lose much of anything. All we need is more study of all the failures we have already experienced and then we’ll be successful. If a few thousands, or hundreds of thousands of lives are lost in the process, well, chalk it up to experience, we guarantee it won’t happen again. I submit this is simply a variety of magical thinking. It applies to deepwater drilling as well as to nuclear plants, and probably to the idea of “clean coal” as well. As there are available other sources of energy without the same risks involved you might think we would quickly embrace them. While there are moves in this direction they do not seem to constitute much in the way of fervent love or high priorities.

What happened in the Gulf of Mexico not long ago, and what is happening at this very moment in Japan should be taken as not at all unusual in the energy business, but they probably will be. We already know we are still engaged in deepwater drilling, and although the plants in Fukushima will never be rebuilt, other nuclear plants will be built. They will not be completely safe no matter what their promoters promise, at best they will cost the taxpayers enormous sums, at worst they will provide further disasters. Henry Waxman or someone else will hold hearings on the safety of nuclear energy, it will conclude that if designed properly they are safe, and building them will continue as if Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile never happened. As I don’t believe in magic this will be the inevitable outcome. Sigh!