Atomic Power and LSD

I was in a conversation the other day about whether we—as a country, a global society—ought to build more nuclear plants to meet our insatiable need for energy. While my own view on this is still informed by a knee-jerk tree-hugger distrust of atomic power, I found some of the points made in defense of greater reliance on nuclear to be pretty persuasive—in particular that way more people die every year from pollution created by traditional methods of generating power than ever died in any nuclear power plant accident. And I also had to agree that modern nuclear power plants are designed more safely than those that have had problems in the past.

In response to this, there is, of course, the very difficult problem of radioactive waste disposal, but then again, as was pointed out to me, this has to be balanced by the global warming caused by the disposal, if you will, of carbon into the atmosphere from burning coal and gas.

Additionally, as many have argued, we shouldn’t think it’s an either/or choice between coal or gas and nuclear; we all ought to work on reducing our energy needs first and then explore smaller, more localized solutions like wind and water power.

My own thinking is that the only way it’s really going to work is to develop a mix of all these technologies, including an increased reliance on nuclear.

If we do this, though, I think it’s incumbent upon society to re-legalize LSD. As the hippies routinely pointed out, Albert Hofman synthesized the drug at essentially the same time as the scientists involved in the Manhattan project created the atom bomb. Their stoned conjecture was that God or whomever had thus given humanity the twin tools to either destroy or save ourselves simultaneously.

I don’t buy the cosmology, but do think that if society could safely re-introduce LSD to ourselves, then we might be ready for nuclear power plants, too.