Evacuees dressed in protective suits offer flowers and prayers for victims on the anniversary of Japan Tsunami. Photo: Reuters

The first anniversary of Japan’s nuclear disaster is a good time to take stock. Opponents and proponents of nuclear power are doing so, and they have come to the same conclusion: “We were right all along.”

The meltdown at the Fukushima power plant is certainly grist for the mill of the anti-nuclear crowd. It forced the evacuation of 300,000 people and will cost as much as $250 billion to clean up, according to the Japan Center for Economic Research. If a natural disaster can trigger such a dangerous, disruptive and expensive crisis in a country as advanced as Japan, then it’s impossible to guarantee safety anywhere. Efforts to do the impossible will make nuclear power even more expensive and, by some analyses including that of the Worldwatch Institute, it already costs more than solar energy.

The technical and economic data, though, may offer less support for the anti-nuclear brigade than the images from Fukushima, including explosions, mass evacuations to escape the deadly and invisible threat of radiation, and workers in white safety suits. The pictures reinforce the visceral fear that radioactivity is just too hot to handle.

Proponents of nuclear plants haven’t exactly been comforted by Fukushima, but they argue that a cool look at the situation actually supports their case. After all, the damage from a near worst-case scenario at a badly managed, ageing plant is proving to be quite bearable. This case is strengthened by the Japanese government’s minimum estimate of direct clean up costs – something like $15 billion, spread out over several years. That’s less than 10 percent of the highest estimates of damage, and of the expected non-nuclear cost of the earthquake and tsunami which overwhelmed the Fukushima plant.

Besides, the pro-nukes say, the affected plant was too old to be relevant for future investment decisions. New plants are safer by design. Fukushima won’t significantly alter the result of the studies promoted by the World Nuclear Association, which conclude that atomic energy is relatively cheap. Enthusiasts, who have always dismissed atomic phobia as illogical and exaggerated, are quick to point out that Fukushima has nothing to do with Hiroshima. The chain of activities required to generate, say, coal-fired power can be shown to cost more lives, too.

What Fukushima really teaches is that the gap between the two sides of the nuclear argument is too wide to be bridged by evidence. Whatever happens, many opponents will always see an intrinsically dangerous technology which people should not try to tame. And however expensive the last plant or accident, most proponents will continue to believe that nuclear power is a wonderful technology, needed for humanity’s long-term comfort, and with risks that can be managed.

I think the factual arguments hide a deeply philosophical disagreement– about just how much control man can and should have over the hidden forces of nature. The same fundamental discord embitters arguments about global warming, biotechnology, assisted reproductive technology and the population the earth can durably sustain. In such heartfelt debates, facts and pseudo-facts are sought largely as weapons to be thrown at the other side. Fukushima seems to provide a fair supply.

The philosophical issue is important. There are surely technologies which really do cross a fairly clear moral line, and the natural world should not be exploited blindly. But nuclear power is no longer an appropriate field for this ideological combat.

That was not always the case. In the 1950s, the destructive power of atomic fission was clear, while the human ability to make it beneficial was not. After more than a half-century of operating nuclear plants with only a few accidents – none of them killing as many people as the 1984 explosion at the Bhopal chemical factory in India – it’s no longer appropriate to consider this technology as beyond the moral pale.

On the other hand, nuclear costs have consistently failed to plummet as predicted for the past 50-plus years. So the technology cannot be considered a potential wonder-cure for energy woes. It is never going to live up to a U.S. promoter’s 1954 dream that it would be “too cheap to meter”.

How does nuclear power look once it is freed from the weight of ideology and dreams? Neither clearly better nor clearly worse than gas, coal or solar. It’s certainly competitive, thanks largely to low operating costs – uranium is much cheaper than coal or oil – but comparisons that consider all types of associated expenses are inevitably highly subjective. The problem is ignorance of the future.

Nuclear plants last four to six decades, far too long for accurate predictions of fuel prices and technological developments. They are a diversifier away from coal, oil and gas generation. But there’s no way to foresee, let alone calculate with anything like precision, whether nuclear power will prove more or less expensive, safe, clean or reliable than its rivals.

In the face of this uncertainty, a reasonable policy choice is to temporise. The Chinese, who have made a serious commitment to nuclear power and several other technologies, paused to learn the lessons of Fukushima, and now look set to go on as before. That sounds about right.

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Edward Hadas is a Reuters columnist.

A capitalist analysis of any economic issue starts with capital, both physical capital – factories and land – and financial – shares and bonds. It is associated with free and competitive markets for goods and labour. And capitalism has come to designate a system where private property is the norm, with any exception needing some sort of justification. Capitalist analysis usually treats governments and unions as economic interlopers, and ignores the broader society.

That perspective is too narrow. Capital and markets are only two parts of the complex modern economic system. People don’t only matter because they bring their labour to the owners of capital – as in the original, 19th century definition of capitalism. And governments over the years have become regulators and keepers of the monetary order. Moreover, the economy is so closely integrated with modern society that no clear border separates the two. Social forces – such as the thirst for technological innovation, the work ethic and other moral values – play a fundamental part and influence the workings of the purely “capitalist” system.

A limited analysis often leads to unnecessarily grim prognoses. Think back to the 1960s, when environmental pollution was first identified as a serious problem. Many observers, enthusiastic capitalists among them, thought that the capitalist system couldn’t deal simultaneously with environmental goals and the search for profits. Economic disruptions were predicted. But changes in the law, technology, corporate priorities and cultural values combined to bring about a remarkable success in reducing noxious emissions, without noticeable harm to prosperity or profits. The system found a way to price externalities without endangering itself.

Half a century later, people, including enthusiastic capitalists, are again wondering whether the system can survive. Now they cite the long financial crisis, or issues such as the exorbitant privileges of the very rich. They are not wrong to be concerned. If the economy were simply or primarily capitalist, either of these problems could well be lethal. After all, neither factory nor financial capital can be expected to allocate income and wealth justly. And the financial system could be too wounded to heal itself.

But the separation of the rich from the rest in some countries isn’t basically a failure of either capitalism or free markets. At bottom, it is a sign of inadequate social solidarity. The more direct causes, from politicians and regulators’ complacency to society’s general indifference regarding corporate pay, are more social than economic problems. The solutions – new rules, taxes, and behavior – will have little to do with the functioning of the core capitalist system.

Similarly, the financial disorder may look like a crisis of capitalism, but its causes and cures are political and moral. Financial markets have failed because politicians tried to give citizens more wealth than they have earned, bankers forgot the common good, governments refused to live within their means and investors’ greed was celebrated rather than restrained. No solution limited to the technical operations of the financial system can work for long, unless it is a reflection of changed political and moral attitudes.

Words are not everything, but the unquestioned identification of the modern economy as “capitalist” tends to constrain economic arguments. The debate is almost completely stifled when hyper-capitalists assume that any impediments to free markets are regrettable signs of “market failure”. That dismisses most of the economy – from the government’s 40 per cent share of GDP to the 90 percent of the workforce employed in meritocratic bureaucracies. But the capitalist obsession also limits the insight of economists friendlier to government intervention and more skeptical about free markets. They tend to downplay social values and ethical analysis.

A new name for the modern economy might encourage a broader approach. Something bland might work – the business, or the industrial economy. I prefer a title that has a bit of spin on it. Acronyms are fashionable; perhaps it is time to introduce the BCRINCF economy — bureaucratic, competitive, regulated, innovative, collaborative and financial. But that’s a mouthful.

I suggest the “social market economy”. The term was coined in Germany after the Second World War to show that capitalism could be combined with a strong government presence, workers participation in company boards and an extended social safety net. The combination is still apt, as each of the two words captures something essential. “Market” takes in capital, competition and the eager striving for improvement. “Social” pays tribute to the human element and the need for economic activity to serve the common, social good. It is appropriate that social comes first in the title, because the modern economy is a largely a construction by and for the whole community. If it had been merely capitalist, it would not have lasted this long.

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Edward Hadas is a Reuters columnist.