Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, it’d be a surprise if anybody engaged in, or cleaning up after, nuclear-weapons production at Department of Energy sites across the country went to bed this week disappointed that atomic energy defense activities didn’t rate a few minutes on the presidential debate stage.
We might say the same about civilian nuclear energy — at least the back end of it.
Even in 2020, if you knew where to look, you’ll have found no shortage of nuclear professionals in Washington dutifully reminding the few who show up for the congressional hearings and now-virtual networking events that the U.S. has taken nuclear energy — in all of its forms — for granted since the 1990s.
Of course, as pundits are mostly likely to remind us in an election year, reality inside of the Capital Beltway isn’t the same as reality outside of it.
Most of your fellow Americans are probably unaware of the ongoing bustle in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration, significant parts of which have remained open for business, pandemic notwithstanding. Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons aren’t sexy, though the latter usually creep within the outer periphery of the public consciousness once every four years.
Outside of a few enlightened localities, nuclear issues and the people who deal with them don’t turn heads or win votes. Readers of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books know exactly what’s going on here: the public has put this stuff, more than $20 billion worth annually in the Department of Energy alone, behind the most powerful invisibility cloak in the known universe: the Somebody Else’s Problem field.
A lot of things could happen this November. At the Monitor, we’re sure only of two: there will be an election on the third of the month, and the nuclear waste and weapons will still be here on the fourth.
There’s a sort of zen in that thought. Nuclear professions, in government and industry, work with long timelines in mind — timelines that wilt concrete and rebar, and along which generations go by as quickly as mile markers on the side of the interstate.
Which is why folks in nuke world may shrug off the lack of a spotlight during prime time on the night of Sept. 29, 2020. Some of them might even have been at work.
