char, I haven't the faintest idea what you are saying...
Then let me explain it to you slowly, when the quick version doesn't communicate.
Prudence never has been an American virtue.
Americans as a nation are reputable for their pragmatism, their willingness to not wait for second thoughts and just do their thing. Dare something. It can be a refreshing entrepreneurial spirit. It can also be mindlessly foolish recklessness.
Risk it, (cow)boys & girls! Residually risk it ...
The notion of 'residual risk' is a technical term associated with the use of nuclear energy. Because the possibility of nuclear contamination cannot possibly be ruled out for sure, one needs to weigh the long-term risk of damage against the short- and mid-term benefits. The 'residual risk' is the probability of an uncontrollable failure of the nuclear reactor which will lead to widespread nuclear contamination of the environment.
... like the Japs did...
As you may not have noticed, the Japanese nation has heavily invested in nuclear energy. The general idea was that the residual risk sketched above is manageable, that nuclear energy use will not lead to environmental disasters because of the low probability of a failure.
However, last year, an earthquake and a tsunami led to a serious failure of the four nuclear reactors in a Fukushima power plant, which is located in Japan. The whole region is now contaminated to a degree that for thousands of years, mammal life there is going to be extremely cancer-ridden - i.e., incompatible with our modern ideas of living a decent life. For many hundreds of years, industrial production in the area is impossible because of the health risk to workers and the impossiblity to sell the products. Livestock cannot be kept there and crops cannot be grown there because of the health risk to consumers.
In many sane people's minds, the message of this disaster is that residual risk is not a virtual risk, but very tangible. Picture it like winning in the lottery. Your individual chance may be one in a billion to win - but when a billion people play, there will always be one winner. The chance that an individual nuclear power plant blows up may be quite small. But the more you build, the higher the chances are that at least one of them will blow up.
The hard way to unequivocally clean energy apparently is way too hard...
Unequivocally clean energy is energy that in its production does not involve risks to the environment. There currently is no such thing, everything has side environmental effects: wind energy turbines need to be produced first, same holds for solar panels, water energy often comes with reduced environmental quality for the river animals, etc. -- Bottomline: a sustainable way of living is a difficult task for us as modern nations. No wonder some nations prefer to just deny any problem and shirk the challenge.
Well, Gail... Do you now at least have "the faintest idea" what I am saying? It is much more complex than what fits into a simplistic policy conviction. The topic does not warrant a reductionist standpoint.
