I’m almost 50, and if you’re age is anywhere near mine, and you’ve lived in the U.S.A., you probably have a really bad attitude toward electricity created by nuclear power.  Back in the 1970s electric utilities set about building nuclear power plants which cost up to 10 times (not 10% more, 1,000% more) than they forecast.  As a result, electric rates were shooting up beyond everyone’s expectations in order to pay for these enormous cost overruns.  Additionally, construction timelines were extended out 2x to 5x expectations, causing power shortages which further drove up rates.  And then, on top of all of this, serious concerns about safety developed as we saw various problems in nuclear operations – not the least of which was the core exposure at Three Mile Island which put a scare in everyone across the U.S.A.  as we all genuinely feared a Chernobyl-style meltdown and radiation leak.

The electic utility leaders of the 1970s made a series of mistakes when they went about implementing nuclear power.  Not the least of these was a complete lack of standardization.  As a famous study at the time reported, in the U.S.A. no two nuclear power plants were the same.  Successful nuclear programs in France, Germany and Japan had demonstrated that by utilizing the same engineering, the same plans, and learning from each and every build then improving those plans, they had developed extremely cost effective nuclear powered electricity which was proving to be extremely safe.  As a Harvard Professor (definitely not a hotbed of support for nuclear power) reported, the French program was producing electricity at rates so low that you could completely encase the spent fuel rods in platinum 3 foot thick and blast it into outer space, or bury it into a core hole 15 miles below the earth surface, and the added cost would still make their cost per kilowatt hour a fraction of the cost of fossil fuel generators in the U.S.

But, that was then.  What about now?  As recently reported (see Chicago Tribune article here), nuclear power is starting to make a U.S. comeback.  Fossil fuels are more expensive than ever.  And, this time the industry seems to be intent upon utilizing all the lessons from the past 50 years.  Yes, that’s right, we’ve been making electricity from nuclear fuel for 50 years (the U.S. wasn’t first, but even here nuclear power is over 40 years old).  But will this program move forward? 

That all depends upon our Lock-in.  As a country, we can choose to remain locked-in to our previous assumptions about nuclear power.  Assumptions based upon a single history (the U.S. experience versus the global experience), and based upon a very poor implementation.  Or, we can view recent world events as a Disruption to our thinking.  We can view the 5 year old war in Iraq as at least partially connected to our need for secure fossil fuel reserves.  We can view the breakdowns in domestic offshore supplies from storms in the Gulf of Mexico as indicative of the risks inherent in our fossil fuels based supply system.  We can view the ongoing reports of global warming as having at least the potential of being accurate (and if so, potentially deadly).  We can utilize these market challenges to our energy supply strategy as creating within us a need to disrupt our approach to energy production in the U.S.A.

If we do this, we then can see the validity in using White Space to restart a nuclear energy program domestically.  We should not wholesale change strategy – we need to learn.  We should set aside Permission for a handful of companies to utilize all the accumulated knowledge on nuclear power to begin implementing some new plants.  We should observe these projects closely.  Monitor their progress and results.  Learn from them as much as possible.  And ADAPT in these White Space projects to develop solutions which work.  Then, we can begin to MIGRATE toward a nuclear power as an effective part of our national energy policy.

As a nation, we’ve been Locked-in to an "anti-nuclear" energy strategy.  But, 30 years have passed since Three Mile Island, and a lot has been learned.  Our approach, our strategy, is being Challenged by a range of forces.  What we must do now is see these Challenges as reason to Disrupt ourselves – our approach – and realize we must move beyond our Lock-in.  We can use White Space to give Permission for trying a new solution, and potentially develop a new Success Formula for American energy supply.