The Presumptions of Expertise: The Role of Ethos in Risk Analysis

Abstract

The civilian nuclear power enterprise in the United States has had a short and not very happy life. There was an initial period of slow development from the late 1940s through the late 1960s, a very brief period of rapid growth that lasted less than ten years, and then an unforeseen rapid decline beginning in the mid-1970s that was only hastened by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979; this decline has been called "one of the most stunning reversals of fortune in the history of American capitalism."1 A Forbes article declared in 1985 that "for the U.S., nuclear power is dead," and the scientist who chaired the National Research Council's 1992 report on nuclear power declared a year later that the future of nuclear power in the U.S. "looks grim."2 Although some 20 percent of the nation's electric power in 2003 was supplied by 104 nuclear plants, nuclear power has not been prominent on the public agenda: in the 1990s, a slowed growth in the demand for energy, reduced funds for R&D, the deregulation of the power industry in 1992, and reduced prices for fossil fuels made the nuclear option less important.3 There has been some [End Page 163] talk of a "second nuclear era," with new plant designs that are "inherently safe," new approaches to regulation, and changed energy economics.4 However, no plants have been ordered since 1978, and all forty-one orders placed since 1973 were canceled or rejected by state governments; of 259 orders ever placed, 124 were canceled, the last two in 1995. The last operating license was issued in 1996, for a plant whose construction permit was originally issued in 1973.5