The Pepsi Syndrome

Male Reporter #1: Yes. While the Constitution does not specifically exclude giants and behemoths from the presidency, is it not true that the Mr. Carter's enormous size really violates the spirit of-

Dr. Edna Casey: Look! There he is! It's the president!
(Saturday Night Live, The Pepsi Syndrome)

As horrifying as the thought of a 100 foot tall Jimmy Carter is, the actual reality is worse. While the skit from all those years ago made fun of a lot of things, some of what it was lampooning isn't really funny at all. The movie The China Syndrome came out just a few days before the real accident at Three Mile Island. The result was a perfect storm of negative press for the nuclear industry. And now, many of the same people who have screeched and wailed for decades about the danger of nuclear power are screeching and wailing about the dangers of CO2 emissions. That nuclear power could have helped eliminate, or at least curtailed significantly.

“The China Syndrome” opened on March 16, 1979. With the no-nukes protest movement in full swing, the movie was attacked by the nuclear industry as an irresponsible act of leftist fear-mongering. Twelve days later, an accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in south-central Pennsylvania.

Michael Douglas, a producer and co-star of the film — he played Fonda’s cameraman — watched the T.M.I. accident play out on the real TV news, which interspersed live shots from Pennsylvania with eerily similar scenes from “The China Syndrome.” While Fonda was firmly anti-nuke before making the film, Douglas wasn’t so dogmatic. Now he was converted on the spot. “It was a religious awakening,” he recalled in a recent phone interview. “I felt it was God’s hand.”

Fonda, meanwhile, became a full-fledged crusader. In a retrospective interview on the DVD edition of “The China Syndrome,” she notes with satisfaction that the film helped persuade at least two other men — the father of her then-husband, Tom Hayden, and her future husband, Ted Turner — to turn anti-nuke. “I was ecstatic that it was extremely commercially successful,” she said. “You know the expression ‘We had legs’? We became a caterpillar after Three Mile Island.”

The T.M.I. accident was, according to a 1979 President’s Commission report, “initiated by mechanical malfunctions in the plant and made much worse by a combination of human errors.” Although some radiation was released, there was no meltdown through to the other side of the Earth — no “China syndrome” — nor, in fact, did the T.M.I. accident produce any deaths, injuries or significant damage except to the plant itself.

What it did produce, stoked by “The China Syndrome,” was a widespread panic. The nuclear industry, already foundering as a result of economic, regulatory and public pressures, halted plans for further expansion. And so, instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country’s energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can’t help blaming those power plants — and can’t help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda.

Yeah, Jane is real proud of herself over this. But the reality is that nukes produce power for less than even coal plants. They also emit no CO2. So if global warming is really a crisis, why is the world not embracing nuclear energy. Well, actually, a lot of countries are. But the farce is still strong in this country.

France, which generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, seems to think so. So do Belgium (56 percent), Sweden (47 percent) and more than a dozen other countries that generate at least one-fourth of their electricity by nuclear power. And who is the world’s single largest producer of nuclear energy?

Improbably enough, that would be . . . the United States. Even though the development of new nuclear plants stalled by the early 1980s, the country’s 104 reactors today produce nearly 20 percent of the electricity the nation consumes. This share has actually grown over the years along with our consumption, since nuclear technology has become more efficient. While the fixed costs of a new nuclear plant are higher than those of a coal or natural-gas plant, the energy is cheaper to create: Exelon, the largest nuclear company in the United States, claims to produce electricity at 1.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 2.2 cents for coal.

Too much public policy is being driven by who can scream the loudest. This is no exception. The "environmentalists" who screamed about nuclear power have MoveOn-ed to screeching about global warming. But the demands for energy are increasing. If new nuclear plants are not built, the situation will become very grim as other "solutions" like the farce of biofuels are foisted upon the west. The orangutans will die, the rainforests will be burned and bulldozed and the sanctimonious will pat themselves on the back about how they saved the world. But it won't be worth much by then.

The linked article points to renewed interest in nukes, but also invokes Chernobyl.

Nuclear enthusiasm may be on the rise, but it can always be dampened by mention of a single word: Chernobyl. The 1986 Ukrainian disaster killed at least a few dozen people directly and exposed millions more to radiation. A new study by the economists Douglas Almond, Lena Edlund and Marten Palme shows that as far away as Sweden, in areas where the wind carried Chernobyl fallout, babies who were in utero at the time later had significantly worse school outcomes than other Swedish children.

Radiation – it's bad for learning now? Who knew? Put that aside for a moment. Let me point a few things out for folks. First, TMI released only a negligible amount of radiation. Because despite major design flaws, the unit had a containment. Chernobyl did not. This is an apples to oranges comparison and completely irrelevant. But the Pepsi Syndrome still dominates the discussion.

I really hope there are no 100 foot Jimmy Carters running about, though.

UPDATE: Oh heck. I wasn't the first to think of that SNL skit by several hours. Ed Driscoll beat me by a mile. Noel Sheppard also has a take on the article. Others: Brothers Judd, Right Thinking From the Left Coast, RD Savage, Dyspepsia Generation (great tagline: They disport — we deride),

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  By James Aach, September 17, 2007 @ 11:10 am

  It is rather silly to link a Hollywood icon with the problems experienced by an engineering industry. But there was some effect. As someone who’s worked over twenty years in the nuclear industry, I can attest to that. TCS still comes up in conversation all the time and for many people is still a primary factor in how they look at nuclear power, along with Chernobyl and The Simpsons. That doesn’t say much about the discriminating public, but it is true. And there are costs involved when 20 or 30% of the population in a democracy has a substantial fear of a product.

  One problem with The China Syndrome is that there has been no reasonable entertainment alternative covering the same ground – nothing out there that looked at nuclear from a more reasoned perspective with an insiders view, and is fun as well. As noted at Blue Crab before, there is now. “Rad Decision” is a technothriller novel that covers energy basics and the good and bad of nuclear in particular, all within the typical story of mayhem you would expect. It is available at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com (they seem to like it judging frm their homepage comments) and is also available in paperback at online retailers. (The author gets no royalties.)

  Stewart Brand, noted environmentalist, founder of The

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  By Whitehall, September 17, 2007 @ 11:13 am

  As a nuclear engineer, I would prefer that nukes NOT be endorsed because of their lack of greenhouse gas emissions.

  The global warming issue is still very much undecided (I’m skeptical and it would put $$$ in my pockets!) If it is exposed as another “the sky is falling!” hysteria and/or a financial scam for a carbon tax, then nuclear too would suffer.

  The fact that those most enthusiastic about fixes for “global warming” never mention nuclear power should give you a clue as to their seriousness.

  Please, consider nuclear because it is 1) pollution-free 2) fuel is plentiful, and 3) economic.

Other Links to this Post

1. Ed Driscoll.com — September 15, 2007 @ 9:42 pm