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was or would soon become cheaper than coal-fired power. The other was that power demand would continue to grow at about 7 percent annually. Both beliefs turned out to be wrong. The bandwagon market collapsed because the forecasting fallacies eventually became clear as time passed. However, in the energy business, mistakes often survive. The surviving-mistake phenomenon is also discussed in chapter 4.
Synthetic fuel companies, unlike the monopolized utilities, must compete in the fuel/oil market. They are, therefore, sensitive to cost. Although the similar belief-based decision-making mechanism from time to time leads private companies to invest in synfuels, they always back out quickly when the business outlook turns gloomy. The ideological support behind synfuel was weak in the first place, and the business environment was relatively unfavorable. Mistakes in the fuel industry also survive, but the mistakes were far fewer to start with. Therefore, despite its comparable economic potential, the commercial penetration of synfuel is by no means comparable to nuclear power.
A shared belief is not an isolated happenstance. It is also not entirely a product of state manipulation. Beliefs and values are interconnected phenomena within a sociocultural system. A system of beliefs is often called a “worldview.” The modernist worldview largely underlies the pronuclear beliefs, while the antinuclear viewpoint generally has shown a suspicion and distrust of modernity. A conflict of these two competing worldviews culminated in the 1970s. It was a larger cultural confrontation behind the nuclear controversies. A close examination of this pronuclear and antinuclear cultural war (chapter 5) not only provides a deeper insight into this important sociopolitical movement but also illustrates a peculiar risk in long-term energy planning. That is, an energy facility/technology is often so long-lived that it may outlive its supporting zeitgeist.
A dramaturgical analysis of sociopolitical movement also provides important policy lessons. Powerful sociopolitical dramas, such as the Cold War and the antinuclear movement, often follow the factional good vs. evil melodramatic format. Opposing sides of a factional melodrama typically fail to see debate as a cooperative endeavor. The war metaphor usually leads a controversy to a destructive path. I am hoping a better