Nuclear Energy:
"Before Three Mile Island, I was comfortable with the record of nuclear energy," writes Alvin M. Weinberg, one of the pioneers of atomic power. Yet long before the accident in Pennsylvania last March, Weinberg was worried about the siting, design, man- agement, and operation of the 70 commercial U.S. nuclear power plants that today provide more than 10 percent of the nation's electricity. Short on oil and coal, some countries, nota- bly France and South Korea, are "going...
S. David Freeman, now chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and a distinguished, if disparate, panel of advisers. It presents three very differ- ent "scenarios" for U.S. energy growth up to the year 2000 and dis- cusses the econonlic and social impli- cations of each.
A "Zero Energy Growth" option, involving substantial conservation and strong federal curbs on demand, is the one favored Freeman and the study staff. It is also the option described as ideologically motivated...
the possibility of large-scale radioactive contamination. Weinberg believes that solar energy and other "clean" approaches should be pushed; but none of them, he argues, can fully substitute for the "nuclear enter-prise." Here he reviews the history of atomic power and suggests what must be done to ensure its future.
Alvin M.Weinberg
A 1-million-kilowatt, pressurized-water nuclear reactor- the type widely used in the United States today-contains 15 billion curies of radioactivity. T...
's Indian heritage. Today, a bronze statue of the defeated Aztec emperor, C~iauhthoc ("Fall- i12g Eagle"), adorns the center of Mexico City. There are several well-known painti~zgs of the victorious Spaniard, Hemdn Cortis. The most popular (above) is by muralist Diego Rivera, who depicts the great Conquistador as a cross-eyed, syphilitic hunchback.
The Wilson Quarterly/Summer 1979
116
Mexico lost one-half of its national territory to the United States in the 19th century; two years...
City, is the site of the final victory of the Spanish over
the Aztecs. A nearby plaque reads: "On August 15, 152 1, heroi-
cally defended by [Emperor] Cuauhtkmoc, Tlatelolco fell to the
power of Hernan Cortks. This was neither a victory nor a defeat,
but the painful birth of the mestizo people that is today's
Mexico."
Like any country's mythology, Mexico's contains an ele-ment of truth. The birth of her mestizo people, part Spanish, mostly Indian, actually took three centuries....
. It were more desirable that she should come to us voluntarily; but as we shall have no peace until she be annexed, let it come, even though force be necessary, at first, to bring her. Like the Sabine virgins, she will soon learn to love her ravishers.
New York Herald, October 8. 1847
Fortunately for Mexico, not all of her national territory was annexed by the United States in the wake of the war that Ulysses
S. Grant would describe as "the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a...
Hernando Cartes, Spanish conquistadores invaded Mexico in 1519. Cortes and his men, mostly of humble origin, preached Chris-tianity, hunted for gold, and con-verted or killed the natives. The Aztec civilization succumbed in less than a decade, the crucial blow corn-ing when Cortes, with a force of 900 men, captured Tenochtitlan in 1521.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1498- 1593) was a foot soldier who rose to serve as an aide to Cortes and later became a government official in New Spain. In True History...
a coquette.
On a national level, unpredictable leftlright divisions are tantalizing: Americans seem immune to neat pigeonholing by political scientists. For example, a 1978 New York TimesICBS News survey found that those who described themselves as "lib- erals" were far more likely than self-described "conservatives" to support sending U.S. troops and equipment to halt Soviet advances in Africa.
As we edge toward the 1980 presidential election, cam- paigns are being mounted...
individuals
also acting in the name of groups, are
Public Opinion with capital letters.'
These definitions, from Public Opinion (Harcourt, 1922, cloth; Free Press, 1965, paper) are as precise as any we are likely to get. Writing long before the advent of TV news, Lippmann emphasizes the barriers to informed opinion, notably the "comparatively meager time avail- able [to citizens] in each day for pay- ing attention to public affairs' and "the distortion arising because events have to...
In November 1830, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney faced an audience of merchants, master craftsmen, and their families at Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. The people at Third Church were inheritors of New England Calvinism, and they knew that the world was beyond their con- trol. In 18 15, the town's Presbyterians had declared themselves impotent before a God who "foreordained whatsoever comes to
Copyright @ 1978 . Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang.
The Wilson...