Renewable Revolution

1955: Why the US Chose Nuclear Energy Over Solar    

Snippet 1:

This amazing excerpt from the book, Let It Shine: The 6000-Year Story of Solar Energy, provides fascinating context to energy choices the US made in the 1950s. It was a pivotal moment for the advent of solar energy, but the US supported nuclear instead.

What's most interesting is all-out backing the US government gave the nuclear energy industry to get it off the ground. Similar histories are likely written about government support for oil and gas when they first emerged. Renewable energy industries have had no such support - infinitesimal by comparison. It's a testament to pioneers in the solar and wind industries and a handful of supportive governments that they are nearing grid parity today.


Snippet 2:

With fuel apparently so abundant and cheap, electric companies expanded to meet demand. Liberal government policies made it easy to procure capital to build larger and more efficient power plants. Utilities encouraged greater consumption because the costs of building new plants and installing electric lines could be recovered more easily if customers used more energy.

"Once you had the lines in, you hoped people would use as much electricity as possible," a utility executive remarked. "You wanted to get as much return on your investment as you could." Gas companies took a similar approach - "if you sell more you make more." 

Agelbert NOTE: REMEMBER THAT every time you hear a pro-nuclear power or fossil fuel propagandist states that WE CREATED THE DEMAND BECAUSE WE ARE THE PIGGIES and fossil fuelers and nukers are JUST ACCEPTING OUR WHINING and being LOYAL SERVANTS. LOL!

Snippet 3:

Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, making available at no cost to the industry "the knowledge acquired by 14 years and $10 billion worth of government research." In this act, the government pledged to undertake for the private sector "a program of conducting, assisting, and fostering research and development to encourage maximum scientific and industrial progress." In other words, the government paid all the expenses and took all the risks for the nascent nuclear energy industry. 



Snippet 4:

Solar energy received virtually no support in the ensuing years, and by 1963 the association (of scientists for the  development of solar energy) found itself bankrupt.  
The governments of Israel, Australia and Japan deliberately aided the solar industry,        but the US Congress and White House sat on the sidelines. True, as early as 1952 the President's Materials Commission, appointed by Harry Truman, came out with a report, Resources for Freedom, predicting that America and its allies would be short on fossil fuels by 1975. It urged that solar energy be developed as a replacement.

"Efforts made to date to harness solar energy are infinitesimal," the commission chided, despite the fact that the "US could make an immense contribution to the welfare of the free world" by exploiting this inexhaustible supply. They predicted that, given the will to go solar, there could be 13 million solar-heated homes by the mid-1970s.

Atoms For Peace                                                


The Commission advocated for a 50-50 split for nuclear and solar contributions to America's energy future, but the US government lavished billions on atomic power research while spending a pittance on solar. International cold war politics more than technological advantages accounted for the difference.

Agelbert NOTE: Yep there is ALWAYS a government STUDY out theIr that states that 4 minus 5 equals a negative number. LOL! But we all know that ONLY TOKEN efforts were made to develop solar and ONLY because they needed panels on space vehicles, PERIOD.

And that's the story of HOW the nuclear industry defrauded (and still defrauds!) the American Public in our Darwinian Descent to Civilizational Suicide in the Service of Profit over Planet Dirty Energy.
Have a nice day.

1955: Why the US Chose Nuclear Energy Over Solar