Belief-based Energy Technology Development in the United States: A Comparative Study of Nuclear Power and Synthetic Fuel Policies
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Belief-based Energy Technology Development in the United States: ...

Chapter 1:  Two Stories
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President Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later. Japan surrendered a few days after that, and the Second World War ended.

Regret and Guilt

The first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Witnessing this atomic detonation, J. Robert Oppenheimer reportedly quoted from the Bhagavad-Gita, “Now I am become Death [Shiva], destroyer of worlds.” The feeling about the awesome destructive power of atom was widely shared by nuclear scientists. Although President Truman accepted the whole responsibility for the use of the atomic bombs, many scientists still felt that they shared varying degrees in that responsibility.

Nuclear scientists pursued two types of efforts to redeem their “sins:” arms control and the peaceful use of atomic energy. One of the nuclear scientists, Glenn Seaborg, wrote,

The soul-searching among the scientists of the Manhattan Project became abundantly clear as time went on—virtually all the major contributors later felt the need to participate in developing public policy with regard to the control of nuclear energy in its military and peaceful uses.3

Gerard Clarfield and William Wiecek, historians of nuclear power, pointed out that

many observers of the nuclear power industry conclude that a principal impetus for the development of civilian nuclear power was a sense of guilt over the role of science in the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by a desire to redeem science itself, by diverting military applications to peaceful uses.4

David Lilienthal, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), wrote that not only the scientists, but many who shaped America's postwar atomic program had been motivated by a grim determination that “the discovery that had produced so terrible a weapon simply had to have an important use.”5