“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In Chapter 5 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see Note 2 for the 899th session, of February 6, 1980. I wrote that in April engineers were scheduled to enter the contaminated containment building housing the damaged reactor [Unit No. 2] at the Three Mile Island nuclear power generating plant in southeastern Pennsylvania. The engineers were to gather radiological data to be used in decontaminating the crippled facility. To insure the safety of all workers, however, the plan is that over a period of several weeks a large quantity of radioactive krypton gas must first be vented into the atmosphere from the containment building. This proposed venting is still arousing much strong opposition.¹

1. I also wrote in my note for Session 899 that in relation to TMI, “once again consciousness proliferates and explores itself in new ways.” Last March, a year after the accident, Pennsylvania’s governor asked a respected scientific organization to propose alternatives to the krypton-venting plan. In May the group recommended scientifically acceptable alternatives, but it now appears unlikely that either the company owning TMI or the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will adopt any of them—and so the arguments continue. Evidently the psychological factors associated with the venting idea will be ignored as long as there’s no foreseeable chance that physical harm will be done to the population surrounding TMI. This conclusion is, of course, extremely unsatisfactory to many people.

Following the accident at TMI, and aside from the great fears “generated” by it, a host of problems began accumulating for the nuclear power industry—involving everything from poor plant design (as Seth commented in the 914th session for Chapter 7 of Dreams), to enormous cost overruns and the fear of default on bond issues, shoddy construction and quality control, human and mechanical error, the disposal of radioactive waste, conflicts with antinuclear and environmental groups, arguments over evacuation plans at various nuclear-plant sites, a greatly expanded list of steps (numbering in the thousands) that the NRC is compiling for utilities to take in order to increase the safety of their plants, and even governmental concern over the possible manipulation and falsification of plant safety records. The last nuclear plant was ordered in 1978. So far this year our country’s consumption of electricity has increased less than 2 percent, and it is now expected to actually decrease next year. Unheard of, in view of all of those predictions that we must continue to build nuclear power generating plants to meet projected demands!

However, let us remember that when creating and experiencing a challenge, on any scale, consciousness may choose a predominantly positive or negative focus, or it may seek to achieve a balance. While some utility companies in the United States are in trouble with their nuclear plants, then, other companies do own plants that perform very well and very economically. They have excellent safety records. Those companies are to be congratulated. There’s talk that the nuclear power industry will fail in our country, but Jane and I don’t think it will. What haunts many people, especially those living downwind from nuclear facilities, are the horrifying consequences that could result from an accident that released unchecked radioactivity into the environment. This chance, no matter how remote it may be, exists in every country in the world that has even one nuclear establishment. It’s just as real for those nations that are even thinking of going the nuclear way. So consciousness is really exploring the nuclear question in global terms, even though here in Dreams I usually deal with its “local” aspects.