Billy, Not quite sure what you mean. Terrorism has certainly been a threat, but for most of the recent past it has been a relatively low level threat.
I think you under-estimate the effect that these green-peace type people have had on public opinion and thus the levels of support for public funding of any technology that they decide doesnt pass muster with them.
As an example not related to nuclear power, I attended some sort of fair, bazzar a year or so ago. Green peace had a booth there that I visited out of interest. Their main project at that time was biotech foods. Biotech foods may be good or bad, that wasnt really the thing I remember most about it. The tactic that green peace was using was what I found most interesting.
Apart from a number of quite frightening displays that they had up, they had a brochure printed up claiming that all the items listed with product name and manufacturer, were all containing biotech foods of some sort. I looked at it and I was surprised at the huge number of products, that I was currently buying, that I didnt know contained biotech foods and was naturally quite concerned.
When I asked a few questions about it, I found out that actually the products listed in their brochure might or might not have contained any biotech products.... greenpeace finally confessed that they didnt really know the details about most of the products in the brochure.
They knew the details about a few items that didnt seem to be shown as clearly seperated from the main bulk of products which they admitted they knew nothing about.
As I managed to tease the story out line by line, it was just that the manufacturers had not certified to greenpeace that their products listed were free of any biotech products in the time schedule that greenpeace had set for their brochure was printed and distributed.
This detail was as far as I remember, written in very small print in some obscure part of the brochure.
So the greenpeace tactic here was obvious.... take an emotional issue that all people will be concerned about especially if it is presented in an alarming light, and create even more confusion by spreading misleading facts and mixing those misleading facts with truths.
I was unnerved by this tactic as I left the booth, but the memory came back to me as I looked at the turn around from one of the prominent greenpeace pioneers regarding nuclear power.
I am not sure if you remember the movement to stop development of nuclear power, but it was a big one a number of year ago.
Anyway, I was never much more than a fence sitter when it came to nuclear power... I was as worried about the risks as much as anyone else, but I always thought we should be studying it further rather than trying to stamp out the idea as these greenpeace types seemed to be doing.
