“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There’s plenty of action outside the Three Mile Island, however, with all of the investigations into the accident underway or planned. Scary stories abound about our nuclear dilemmas, ranging from tales of poorly designed plants, control rooms, and instruments, to the failure to promptly report potentially serious accidents, to the fact that in 1978 every one of the country’s more than 70 nuclear power plants had at least one unexpected shutdown because of procedural errors, mechanical failures, or both. The increasing dependence of the United States upon nuclear power is being deeply questioned, even though that energy is supposed to help alleviate our growing reliance upon foreign oil. There’s worry about the plants emitting constant radiation, and about their vulnerability to damage by sabotage, earthquakes, and — more likely — fires. There’s debate about who’s to pay for expensive nuclear accidents. Suits and countersuits are inevitable, processes that can continue for years. There will be fines and many tighter industry rules and regulations. And in all of this concern for safety there’s much irony: for Three Mile Island, and the people of eastern Pennsylvania, were saved not by the plant’s emergency cooling systems, but by nonsafety-related equipment that plant operators finally used to improvise cooling of the reactor’s overheated core.

Beneath all of the frustrations and upsets we may feel at their surface manifestations, Jane and I are caught up in the deeper meanings of events like those at Jonestown and TMI, for they represent great challenges that our species has set for itself, through this century and beyond. Science and religion must ultimately be reconciled if we are to progress. These challenges aren’t just national, of course, but worldwide: The scientific rationale embodied in TMI runs headlong into the western world’s reliance upon energy supplies — mainly oil — from nations that are largely religiously oriented, and that profess all kinds of antipathy for social orders other than their own. In our lifetimes Jane and I look forward to our species at least making a start at grappling with such large areas of its own activity as science and religion. We must come to terms with those challenges we’ve created — and are creating.