Ken Silverstein | Nov 05, 2013

Two things are happening this week that will re-infuse nuclear energy, perhaps giving it a more prominent position in the global energy portfolio: A compelling letter released by four high-powered scientists and the national showing on Thursday night of Pandora’s Promise by CNN.

The push to put nuclear energy back in the limelight after the Japanese disaster in March 2011 can either be seen as ill-timed or perfectly-timed. The scientists in their letter are acknowledging that the fuel has downsides -- like all others, for that matter -- but they are emphasizing that the need is urgent to back the carbon-free energy source. They, in turn, are asking their environmental brethren to quit viewing nuclear energy from the perspective of 1979 when Three Mile Island occurred and to start seeing it as weapon against climate change.

“Renewables like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires,” write the scientists. “While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.”

The authors: Ken Caldeira, senior scientists for the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution, Kerry Emanuel, atmospheric scientists at MIT, James Hansen, climate scientist at Columbia University Earth Institute and Tom Wigley, climate scientist at the University of Adelaide and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Hansen is considered to be the one who raised concerns over climate change to a global pitch.

Their letter has been released -- coincidentally -- to appear just before CNN's showing “Pandora’s Promise” that features some well-known environmentalists who are making the same argument as the scientists. “I made this film in order to illuminate what I see as the ‘elephant in the room’ when it comes to the ongoing debate about how to tackle climate change,” says Robert Stone, who directed Pandora’s Promise. “We have a moral imperative to lift billions of people out of poverty, while at the same time dramatically reducing carbon dioxide emissions. How to do that is the central issue of our time and that led me to take a second look at nuclear energy.”

One of those appearing in the documentary is Michael Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute, which is a think tank based in Oakland, Calif. that is considered to be a modern-thinking environmental movement. After numerous conversations with him that include being a guest over the summer at the Breakthrough’s annual dialogue, the scholar's message is clear and consistent: Nuclear is the only base-load fuel that can run around-the-clock that is currently positioned to displace coal-fired electricity. Natural gas is also viable option for the same reason but it, too, still releases harmful emissions that are regulated under the Clean Air Act.

“We have heavily subsidized renewables and thus far, they have not  displaced fossil fuels or reduced emissions,” adds Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough's chairman. “Really, we are just moving to cheap gas. So, we need to publicly support innovation and to build new nuclear plants. There is lots of hand-waving from environmentalists, who say that the market should decide -- ironic, given that they want subsidies for wind and solar. If we want environmental outcomes, we need to back nuclear. The environmental movement needs to get out of the way.”

Soul Searching

For three-plus decades, nuclear plants had become reliable and efficient, running at 90-plus percent capacity rates — more than any other form of electric generation. To top it off, no major accidents had occurred here, or elsewhere. Then Fukushima happened. And that caused the world community to pause and to re-examine its nuclear energy options.

The United States is soul-searching, again. Four notable closures have happened: Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Generating Station in Southern California, Duke Energy’s Crystal River in Florida, Dominion Resources’ Kewaunee Plant in Wisconsin and Entergy’s Vermont Yankee in Vermont. The first two were caused by ongoing maintenance issues while the latter two were caused by low natural gas prices.

In the case of Southern California Edison, the two mothballed reactors had provided 17 percent of the region’s electricity. That power will largely be replaced using fossil fuels, namely imported natural gas. As a result, the Breakthrough Institute is pointing out that the state’s carbon emissions will rise by at least 8 million metric tons a year.



All this occurring while the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest findings that conclude with 95 percent certainty that humans are mostly responsible for global warming. In 2007, it made the same assertion but with 90 percent assurance.

To be sure, nuclear energy has some well-publicized shortcomings: The high price tag tied to construction; the inability to find a long-term home for nuclear waste; the subsidies and loan guarantees given to those developers and, the previous nuclear accidents that have been enormously threatening.

“(T)oday's nuclear plants are far from perfect,” the scientists write. “Fortunately, passive safety systems and other advances can make new plants much safer. And modern nuclear technology can reduce proliferation risks and solve the waste disposal problem by burning current waste and using fuel more efficiently ...

“Quantitative analyses show that the risks associated with the expanded use of nuclear energy are orders of magnitude smaller than the risks associated with fossil fuels. No energy system is without downsides. We ask only that energy system decisions be based on facts, and not on emotions and biases that do not apply to 21st century nuclear technology,” they conclude.

More than likely, those scientists and environmentalists will not persuade their colleagues to change camps -- especially after the Fukushima accident. But they may soften the opposition just enough to allow a few more nuclear plants to get built in this country. That’s a start, the scholars say. But will it be enough to avert what they say will be the worst effects of climate change? 

Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein

 

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