Pawanraj Sadhwani

In the beginning there was just, the word... And then came science... And then someone discovered radioactivity. Everyone found this interesting... Others extended the concept and discovered fission... Then things became really interesting...

That was the advent of nuclear energy...

Now there was a set of people who thought nuclear energy could be the new-clear source of energy. So they built reactors... A lot of people heralded the idea... But there was also a set of people who thought it was dangerous. They opposed it. There were demonstrations, pamphlets, speeches, conventions... The lot basically. The reactor-builders still went ahead and built reactors. There were accidents... and another round of demonstrations, pamphlets, speeches and conventions... The reactor-builders improved and built better and better reactors..

Of course, there was this other set of people which wanted to make nuclear bombs. That was scary... There were people who opposed the idea, organized demonstrations, conventions, speeches - you know the drill... And the bomb-makers continued to make bombs... and deploy them... They made them more and more sophisticated, bigger, "badder" as the clamour against them increased...

There was also this set of people who got nostalgic about the world before nuclear power. Presumably these were the set of people that also got nostalgic about the world before rapid industrialization (when that happened) and longed to go back to the time when the earth was flat. They advocated letting the U-235 disintegrate in peace. There were demonstrations, speeches, conventions and pamphlets.

People got confused, divided... And all this while, the bomb-makers made bombs... the reactor-makers made reactors, they won the preeminent science-prizes... And there continued to be demonstrations, pamphlets, speeches, conventions and peace-marches...