“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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!

(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

(Early last Wednesday an ominous development began unfolding at Three Mile Island, the nuclear power generating plant located on an island in the Susquehanna River below Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [...] 2, one of the plant’s two nuclear reactors, overheated, discharging radioactive water into the river, and began releasing small amounts of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. [...] 1 had already been shut down for refueling.] By now the situation is much more serious, however: There’s a chance of catastrophic “meltdown” of the uranium fuel rods in the damaged reactor’s core — the worst possible accident that can occur in such circumstances short of an explosion, and a kind that proponents of nuclear power have long maintained “almost certainly cannot happen.” [...]

Look at your nuclear-reactor troubles at the plant by Harrisburg (Three Mile Island). The entire idea of nuclear power was first a dream — an act of the imagination on the part of private individuals — and then through fiction and the arts, a dream on the part of many people. [...]

Nuclear power stands for power, plain and simple. [...] Nuclear energy in fact, then, comes as a dream symbol, and emerges into the world as something to be dealt with.

2. Jane and I try to understand both the advocates of nuclear power and those who are against it. At the moment we’re sure of but one thing: A nuclear reactor meltdown, like that threatened at Three Mile Island, is just not acceptable in our society under any circumstances. [...] Jane and I passionately believe that instead of concentrating primarily upon nuclear power the United States should be making massive efforts to utilize many other sources of energy — at least until the risks and technologies involved with generating nuclear power are understood much more thoroughly. [...] We think such alternate sources should be pursued even if they cost more in economic terms than nuclear power, either initially or continually, for surely none of them could produce the horrendous results — and enormous costs — that would follow even one massive failure at a nuclear power plant.

(Right now, a week after it began to manifest itself, the situation at the crippled nuclear power plant near Harrisburg is still very tense. [...] Federal nuclear safety advisors call the dilemma “stable,” and today the President visited Three Mile Island in an effort to reassure people — yet the chance of a meltdown of the overheated reactor core of Unit No. [...]

Coupled with our reservations about the uncertain state of the art concerning nuclear power, Jane and I deeply mourn the shameful fact that for some 30 years now our country’s government and industry have neglected to develop safe methods for the transportation and permanent storage of radioactive waste materials; some of these will remain highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years, and thus pose potential threats to many many generations. [...] There may never be, and failure in these areas alone could ultimately dictate the demise of the entire nuclear endeavor for any peaceful (or even military) use at all.

Even the damage that potentially can stem from a peacetime nuclear accident, as at TMI, can be great indeed. In Note 1 for Session 933, in Chapter 10 of Dreams, I speculated about nuclear energy being an earthly analog of the illimitable loving being of All That Is. [...] I relaxed by watching a television travelog; I saw a great waterfall in an isolated jungle setting; the cameraman zoomed in on the foaming, surging water leaping at the base of the waterfall—and staring at that eruption of energy I suddenly realized the obvious: It’s not the force of any nuclear reaction that we fear, but the consciousness of the event. We must mature quickly enough to learn to “control” the contradictory potentials of the nuclear energy that we’ve helped guide into being. [...] I believe, then, that unwittingly we’re translating compartmentalized glimpses of All That Is through the extraordinary consciousness of nuclear energy. [...]

I last discussed the cleanup at Three Mile Island, and nuclear power challenges in general, including safety and costs, in the opening notes for the 936th session, with its Note 2. That was almost three months ago, in November 1981; see Chapter 11. Lesser accidents, or “events,” as they are called within the nuclear-power industry, have continued to happen within the context of that primary accident at TMI—the loss of coolant for the nuclear reactor of Unit No. [...]

Our relationship with nuclear energy, then, as it has been with warfare, is mainly adversarial: We still crave protection from our own creations. Now no one on earth is “safe”—in this probable reality our species has given at least unconscious permission (through the dream state, for example) for the great nuclear experiment to continue.

(Early last Wednesday an ominous development began unfolding at Three Mile Island, the nuclear-power-plant located on an island in the Susquehanna River below Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It seems that through a combination of mechanical failures and human error, unit 2, one of the plant’s two nuclear reactors, overheated and discharged radioactive water into the river, and began releasing small amounts of radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. [The entire plant is idle, since unit 1 had already been shut down for refueling.] By now the situation is much more serious, however: There’s a chance of a catastrophic “meltdown” of the uranium fuel rods in the damaged reactor’s core—the worst possible accident that can occur in such circumstances, short of an explosion, and a kind that proponents of nuclear power have long maintained “almost certainly cannot happen.” [...]

[...] “Strange,” I mused to Jane, “that of all the nuclear power plants in the world, we end up living that close to the one that goes wrong….”

Look at your nuclear reactor troubles at the plant by Harrisburg (Three Mile Island). The entire idea of nuclear power was first a dream—an act of the imagination on the part of private individuals—and then through fiction and the arts a dream on the part of many people. [...]

[...] The short story referred to above was reported on a TV program about Three Mile Island: Jane and I caught a glimpse of, I believe, a local newspaper or magazine in the Harrisburg area that had printed a short story about a nuclear accident at that plant, on the same day that the troubles began at Three Mile Island. [...]

(I might as well use this opportunity to point up what I think is an obvious connection between the nuclear mishaps at Three Mile Island, and the mass suicide at Guyana [Jonestown] earlier this year. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) When can the search for the good have catastrophic results, and how can the idealism of science be equated with the near-disaster at Three Mile Island, and with the potential disasters that in your terms exist in the storage of nuclear wastes, or in the production of nuclear bombs?

The severity of the “event” at Three Mile Island has spurred antinuclear protesters into action in many areas of the country; and the proliferating state, federal, and industry investigations into the accident promise to generate a collective fallout of a kind that’s bound to have far more impact on the nuclear power industry, and society, than anything that’s come from the crippled plant itself so far. Jane and I believe that eventually this worst accident yet will be seen as a most fortunate occurrence, emphasizing — indeed, as it already has — the great dangers inherent in the growing worldwide emphasis upon nuclear power at this time. [...]

[...] Such situations bothered the individual far more than the threat of nuclear disaster, for they involved his contact with daily life: the products that he bought, the medicines that he took.

[...] 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 debate about who’s to pay for expensive nuclear accidents. [...]

[...] I picked up something about that, too: The real question, for example, isn’t one of planetary pollution, or nuclear wastes, but the beliefs that make such questions even arise, and the attitudes that see an idealized good worth such risks. [...]

[...] 2, one the two reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power generating plant, overheated and came close to a catastrophic meltdown of its uranium fuel. [...]

[...] Studies involving the psychology of the fear of nuclear power, irrational and otherwise, are growing, so once again consciousness proliferates and explores itself in new ways: When will a meltdown happen? people ask, even though some of the more than 200 nuclear power plants around the world have operated for more than 20 years now, without a single death caused by radiation. These studies are accompanied by the horde of challenges surrounding the still unresolved, unglamorous disposal of a constantly growing accumulation of nuclear waste products.

As for the nuclear power generating plant on Three Mile Island, engineers have not yet been able to enter the contaminated containment building housing the reactor—Unit No. [...]

[...] Pu²³⁸, a high-quality isotope consumed in commercial nuclear reactors, has a half-life of about 88 years. [...]

[...] Some government officials say that the reactor may never see service again, that it may end up junked, or as a sealed mausoleum, a mute symbol of our nuclear age. [...] And above all, our energy experts maintain that the United States has traveled too far along the nuclear path to turn back now.

[...] 2 nuclear reactor has evidently passed; engineers have dissipated the hydrogen bubble in the reactor’s core, but the core temperature is still considerably above normal, and children and pregnant women are still advised to stay out of the area.

[...] Just lately another event occurred — a breakdown and near disaster at a nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [...]

(Just before the session, we saw a newscast of a congressional committee in Washington, with some well-known scientists testifying as to the probable aftereffects of nuclear war—how the instigator would also eventually destroy itself even if the attacked never fired a retaliatory strike at all. [...]

(Seth’s comments re war and probabilities evidently mean that in his view Jane and I have moved into a probable reality where nuclear war will not happen. [...]

[...] Nuclear energy was supposed to transform life on our planet—until we began to encounter unexpected challenges with safety, the disposal of radioactive wastes, corrosion, cost, poor workmanship, aging equipment, and many other obstacles. Nuclear energy’s science and technology had always been isolated from most of us. [...]

[...] Many younger people [and not only in the United States] have become very fatalistic over the possibility of nuclear accident, or worse, war. [...] And most older people avoid seriously considering what nuclear war would really mean for them, out of fear closing their minds to certain aspects of that psychic atmosphere.

[...] I’d also mentioned the status of Three Mile Island, however, the nuclear energy generating plant located some 130 airline miles south of us, in Pennsylvania. [...]

[...] There are instead most beneficial groups in this country and abroad, who actually, actively, yet peacefully join together to work for worldwide nuclear disarmament, and also to tackle such questions as nuclear waste. [...]

[...] They also are connected with the much larger social issues, such as the uses to which your nuclear technology will be put.

[...] If you did not believe that energy was more naturally dangerous than beneficial, you would not have any difficulties at all concerning issues like nuclear bombs.

(9:34.) Instead, your natural creativity and your natural energies would some time ago have led you naturally (underlined) to a more productive use of nuclear force, to ways of rendering such use harmless in the short and long run, so that it could take its place in a loving technology. [...]

[...] It is bad enough to anticipate that most unfortunate situations will worsen rather than improve, but it is foolhardy indeed to believe that mankind is bound to destroy itself, or that nuclear destruction is nearly inevitable.

[...] There are ways of reacting to the dangers of nuclear energy that are far more healthy and beneficial, and we will discuss these later in the book.

[...] Right now, we’re very much aware of all of the good things the people of our world are providing for us and for millions of others, every minute of every day — yet a certain portion of our joint interest in that “outside” world is also directed toward the situation at Three Mile Island, the nuclear power generating plant located some 130 airline miles south of us. Four-and-a-half months ago, one of the two nuclear reactors at TMI malfunctioned and came close to a meltdown of its uranium fuel. The whole world was a spectator at the worst accident in the history of our country’s nuclear power program.

Like most of your allies, it is taken for granted that nuclear plants will ultimately be used in the manufacture of bombs that will ultimately certainly be used in a destructive fashion. At that level, therefore, Begin destroys a nuclear faculty before its damage can be done. [...]

Constant fears about nuclear destruction, or other such catastrophes can also fall under this classification.

[...] Many government officials and private analysts now believe that if the operating risks associated with nuclear power generating plants do not ultimately shut down many of them, their economic dilemmas will. I don’t know whether the nuclear power industry in the United States will die, but it’s in great trouble: Various studies show that around half of the 90 reactors under construction could be replaced by more economical coal-fired plants, containing excellent pollution-control equipment. By the late 1980s power from those new nuclear plants will be 25 percent more expensive than it would be if generated from coal.

[...] For example: The staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked the operators of more than 40 nuclear plants to check for cracks in the walls of the vessels encasing their pressurized-water reactors (which are the kind installed at TMI). [...]

Ever since the accident to the nuclear reactor of Unit No. [...]

[...] You think of nuclear destruction as energy uncontrolled, rampant. [...] The nuclear reality is instead a practical example of what can happen when the elements of the intellect do not understand their secure basis in nature, but see themselves as apart from it —alienated. [...]