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Questions on the CONAES report

1. Did they consider that views are not just individual reactions to
situations but are the results of political and ideological movements?

2. Did they consider that different people are entitled if possible
to pursue different life styles and that preferences partially
determine "needs"?

3. What about new nuclear reactor designs apart from the presently
contemplated breeder and other reactors?  Are there not chances for
significant innovations?

4. 24:1 I am surprised that no-one stood up for shale more strongly,
and stood up for "technological risks and possibly compromise of
environmental and safety standards".
This appears to be a vulgar compromise in the committee.  Did it secure
Boulding's vote for something else?

30:-1 Unless the social scientists suggest that anti-nuclear is the
spearhead of anti-technology and anti-capitalist thought, they aren't
doing their job, and they aren't.

46 Again no hint that anti-nuclear sentiment is a meme.  One might
add to the values listed, one that hates to see decisions made on
the basis of superstitions.  Once superstition gets an institutional
hold, it will be very hard to get rid of it again.  Other technologies
will be banned "just in case".

5. In general, the report doesn't emphasize the flexibility that
would allow for completely new energy consuming technologies.

58:3 The main advantage of fusion is that it hasn't yet attracted
the enemies that fission has.  Some of the same social mechanisms
that produced the enemies would tend to produce enemies for fusion
also, but facilitating circustances, like the Vietnam war, might
not exist at the critical time.

72:3 Again no attention to the movement aspect of the sociopolitical
issues.  Nuclear energy may receive as much benefit from Chappaquiddick
as it lost from Three Mile Island.
CONAES couldn't deal seriously with these sociopolitical issues without
serious ad hominem arguments within the group.

	Perhaps my overall reaction to the report is that it isn't
really serious about the energy problem.  When the crisis hits, all
the finicky considerations will be irrelevant, and there will be a
crash program.