A Nuclear Future? | A Bit of Optimism #Podcast

Disney World in Florida has a license to build and operate a nuclear power plant.

No kidding.

It was almost like a technology that existed in a superposition of incredible potential, both for destruction and creation. But at the time, it was just like potential. And then the first use of the technology is weapons. So it kind of becomes firmly cemented.

And we have Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the famous mushroom cloud. The mushroom cloud that you see from the Manhattan Project or anybody who saw the movie Oppenheimer. That is the human race's introduction to nuclear power. And we spend the rest of the Cold War in a nuclear competition, fearing more nuclear war after we've seen from the nuclear bomb. So anybody who says, hey, what if we took that exact same thing and made safe electricity out of it? The brand is done.

And the US government in the early 50s really tried to push for nuclear electricity. President Eisenhower gave this famous speech at the UN when where he talked about how it was time to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes only. So that's electricity, that's agriculture, medicine, obviously, like radiation therapies.

So Eisenhower was the OG Nuclear electricity influencer.

Yes. What's so fascinating as well is even Walt Disney got involved in this pro nuclear campaign at the time. So for those who have seen, he made a whole movie called Our Friend the Atom. And. And in it he explains how nuclear fission works. You know, we started with the bomb, but there are all these amazing uses of this technology. And he was so obsessed with nuclear, and he thought nuclear was the future. And to this day, Disney World in Florida has a license to build and operate a nuclear power plant.

No kidding.

Yes. He wanted to power Disneyland with nuclear.