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Photos of Dubner’s visit to Three Mile Island (TMI)
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The cooling towers at Three Mile Island
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The control room at TMI Unit 1
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Dubner in TMI Unit 1
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Abandoned control room in TMI Unit 2, scene of the 1979 accident
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TMI fact sheet
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TMI overview
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Chernobyl’s subclinical legacy: Prenatal Exposure to Radioactive Fallout and School Outcomes in Sweden
By Douglas Almond, Lena Edlund and Marten Plame
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Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island
In their Sept. 16, 2007, “Freakonomics” column, Dubner and Levitt look into the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda’s 1979 film The China Syndrome — i.e., how the anti-nuke movie may be partly to blame for global warming.
How could that be? Dubner and Levitt argue that the film skewed the public’s perception of the risk involved with nuclear power by popularizing the nightmare scenario of a nuclear meltdown. The near-meltdown of one of two reactors at Three Mile Island just twelve days after the release of The China Syndrome seemed to validate the film’s message.
But did it? The President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island found no deaths or negative health effects attributable to the accident. In fact, the damage was so limited that Three Mile Island’s other reactor continues to operate safely today — as Dubner saw firsthand on a recent visit (see photos at right). While the accident produced almost no radioactive fallout, the political fallout helped halt the growth of the U.S. nuclear power industry for almost three decades. That left coal-fired power plants to fill the gap in the country’s growing energy demand. In 2005, the coal-electric industry accounted for 40 percent of U.S. energy-related carbon emissions, making it one of the country’s single largest sources of greenhouse gas.
Today, nuclear power is making a comeback, in large part because it generates electricity without carbon emissions. The revival of the nuclear industry is described at length in this Fortune article, and in this article from The Economist. Is it because the uncertainty of global warming finally outweighs the risks we perceive in nuclear power? Economist Frank Knight might have thought so — his legendary theory on the impact of risk and uncertainty on decision-making is related gracefully by Peter Bernstein in his book Against the Gods. Dubner and Levitt also refer to a risk/uncertainty experiment known as the Ellsberg Paradox, which is discussed in greater depth here.
One country has already cast its lot with the risk of nuclear power, rather than face the uncertain consequences of greenhouse gas emissions — France produces nearly 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear reactors. And Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the U.S., argues that nuclear energy isn’t just cleaner than coal; it’s also cheaper, per kilowatt-hour.
Still, the risks associated with nuclear power remain. The 1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown in the Ukraine led directly to dozens of deaths, and has been implicated in more than 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer, according to the Chernobyl Forum Report. The accident spread radiation as far away as Sweden, where research has shown that children who were in utero at the time grew up to have significantly worse-than-average educational outcomes.
But even the Chernobyl deaths are dwarfed by the number of deaths attributable to coal mining — China reported 4,700 coal mining deaths last year. In the U.S., the Department of Labor reports coal mining deaths by state, an average of 33 a year.
For further reading on the pros and cons of nuclear power, try: The American Atom, by Robert Williams and Philip Cantelon; the essay collection Nuclear Power: Both Sides, edited by Michio Kaku and Jennifer Trainer; Helen Caldicott’s Nuclear Power is Not the Answer; and Nuclear Energy Now: Why the Time Has Come for the World’s Most Misunderstood Energy Source, by Alan Herbst and George Hopley.
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Calling this the “Jane Fonda Effect” is pure marketing, specious and cowardly. If the facts speak to your argument, then let them do that and don’t dress them in polarizing, empty rhetoric.
Expand the time line and effects of nuclear power and come back to us with some facts or informed speculation. I don’t know what you’re going to find out, but my sense is that every five years into the future, every new nuclear plant added, every accumulated amount of waste to deal with, the safety, efficacy and viability of nuclear power is diminished. And until you do this, objectively, as if you are actually searching for an answer rather than confirming your prejudices, I’ll think you are selling us a bill of goods.
Calling this the “Jane Fonda Effect” is pure marketing, specious and cowardly. If the facts speak to your argument, then let them do that and don’t dress them in polarizing, empty rhetoric.
Expand the time line and effects of nuclear power and come back to us with some facts or informed speculation. I don’t know what you’re going to find out, but my sense is that every five years into the future, every new nuclear plant added, every accumulated amount of waste to deal with, the safety, efficacy and viability of nuclear power is diminished. And until you do this, objectively, as if you are actually searching for an answer rather than confirming your prejudices, I’ll think you are selling us a bill of goods.
This web site is starting to turn into a Pro-Business Hack Site. Are Economists Inherently Biased?
I understand the pressure to publish for a deadline, but you’re 5 second analysis if an issue just isn’t good enough. Maybe you guys should write a Researched Weekly column.
As someone who lives 25 miles away from 3 Mile Island, let me tell you that the RISK of Nuclear is by far understated, how are you going to evacuate Harrisburg and Philadelphia? Then there’s the clean up cost. Storing dangerous Waste for 10,000 years? Let’s be honest, that’s impossible. The Nuclear Industry has to find a way to solve the waste problem.
Finally, Chernobyl: 4,000 deaths is also Grossly Understated. How do I know. There was and is a big emigration from Russia to the US, from the 1990′s to today, one of those emigrate’s worked for a small company I worked at. She was downwind of Chernobyl, she died of cancer. That’s what’s convenient about radiation poisoning. Let the people leave and it becomes someone else’s problem.
She isn’t counted in your statistics.
We may have to hold our noses and build one more generation of Nuclear Power, but let’s be HONEST about the risks.
This web site is starting to turn into a Pro-Business Hack Site. Are Economists Inherently Biased?
I understand the pressure to publish for a deadline, but you’re 5 second analysis if an issue just isn’t good enough. Maybe you guys should write a Researched Weekly column.
As someone who lives 25 miles away from 3 Mile Island, let me tell you that the RISK of Nuclear is by far understated, how are you going to evacuate Harrisburg and Philadelphia? Then there’s the clean up cost. Storing dangerous Waste for 10,000 years? Let’s be honest, that’s impossible. The Nuclear Industry has to find a way to solve the waste problem.
Finally, Chernobyl: 4,000 deaths is also Grossly Understated. How do I know. There was and is a big emigration from Russia to the US, from the 1990′s to today, one of those emigrate’s worked for a small company I worked at. She was downwind of Chernobyl, she died of cancer. That’s what’s convenient about radiation poisoning. Let the people leave and it becomes someone else’s problem.
She isn’t counted in your statistics.
We may have to hold our noses and build one more generation of Nuclear Power, but let’s be HONEST about the risks.
I don’t see any mention of two other issues with nuclear power-radioactive waste that is dangerous for many thousands of years and the possibility that more nuclear material will make it much easier to produce nuclear weapons such as might be used by terrorists (including not just foreign terrorists, but people such as those who bombed Oklahoma City).
I don’t see any mention of two other issues with nuclear power-radioactive waste that is dangerous for many thousands of years and the possibility that more nuclear material will make it much easier to produce nuclear weapons such as might be used by terrorists (including not just foreign terrorists, but people such as those who bombed Oklahoma City).
“Could it be that nuclear energy, risks and all, is now seen as preferable to the uncertainties of global warming?
France, which generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, seems to think so. ”
I don’t think so. I think France made this move long before global warming was an issue.
“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.”
There was another option. California, by emphasizing conservation, became much more energy efficient than the rest of the US. Conservation can help avoid both nuclear AND coal pollution AND is less expensive than either!
“Could it be that nuclear energy, risks and all, is now seen as preferable to the uncertainties of global warming?
France, which generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, seems to think so. ”
I don’t think so. I think France made this move long before global warming was an issue.
“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.”
There was another option. California, by emphasizing conservation, became much more energy efficient than the rest of the US. Conservation can help avoid both nuclear AND coal pollution AND is less expensive than either!