March 15, 2011
“If the competent and technologically brilliant Japanese can't build a completely safe reactor, who can?” syndicated columnist Anne Applebaum asks today. Applebaum’s question is perhaps the one that will be most discussed and debated in the months and years ahead.
Just as important is who’s asking it. Applebaum is no classic anti-nuke type. Far from it. She previously served, for example, as an adjunct fellow at the influential American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington’s foremost neo-conservative think-tank.
Bottom line: If some good number of conservatives and neo-conservatives begin to publicly question the efficacy of nuclear power, then its future as an energy source – already a big question mark – is doubtful, if not doomed.
