I was invited by Hofstra University to participate in this year's Pride and Purpose debate on the topic "Should Nuclear Energy be Expanded to Help Create a More Sustainable Future?" I was proud to be able to represent the American Nuclear Society (ANS) who were approached to provide a participant for this topic. It is new territory for the ANS to engage in an event like this, and also new for me. Although I am more comfortable giving a public lecture than I am in a debate setting, I thought that the formal structure of this debate would offer me some comfort.
Little did we know, however, that our opposition would include Arnie Gundersen, a professional anti-nuclear activist with a wealth of experience in settings such as these. Arnie was paired with Heidi Hutner, Associate Professor of English and Sustainability, and Director of Environmental Humanities, Sustainability Studies Program, at Stony Brook University. My partner was J. Bret Bennington, one of Hofstra's own, Professor and Chair of Geology, Environment and Sustainability.
All of us agreed before we began that the goal was to dramatically reduce our reliance of fossil fuels in the quest for a low carbon energy system, and that this was an urgent need. Where we disagreed was on just how to accomplish that.
My proposal was a simple one: put a price on carbon to squeeze out fossil fuels and use every low-emission technology we have available. Hydro, geothermal, wind, biomass, and solar will all have important roles to play in any low-emission future, but nuclear energy cannot be ruled out. Nuclear energy is clean, reliable and proven - there is nothing else like it! At the heart of my proposal to rely on an expanded role for nuclear energy is the fact that all signs point to an ever increasing need for baseload electricity generation, and nuclear energy is the only low-emission (clean) source that can provide baseload (reliable) power and be expanded at the rate necessary to make a difference (proven).
Professor Bennington reinforced this point by laying our the severity of climate change and the urgency with which we need to act. He wondered why we would ever want to rule out a technology that would be useful in combating this grand challenge.
The position of the opposition was somewhat predictable. Among other things they argued:
Little did we know, however, that our opposition would include Arnie Gundersen, a professional anti-nuclear activist with a wealth of experience in settings such as these. Arnie was paired with Heidi Hutner, Associate Professor of English and Sustainability, and Director of Environmental Humanities, Sustainability Studies Program, at Stony Brook University. My partner was J. Bret Bennington, one of Hofstra's own, Professor and Chair of Geology, Environment and Sustainability.
All of us agreed before we began that the goal was to dramatically reduce our reliance of fossil fuels in the quest for a low carbon energy system, and that this was an urgent need. Where we disagreed was on just how to accomplish that.
My proposal was a simple one: put a price on carbon to squeeze out fossil fuels and use every low-emission technology we have available. Hydro, geothermal, wind, biomass, and solar will all have important roles to play in any low-emission future, but nuclear energy cannot be ruled out. Nuclear energy is clean, reliable and proven - there is nothing else like it! At the heart of my proposal to rely on an expanded role for nuclear energy is the fact that all signs point to an ever increasing need for baseload electricity generation, and nuclear energy is the only low-emission (clean) source that can provide baseload (reliable) power and be expanded at the rate necessary to make a difference (proven).
Professor Bennington reinforced this point by laying our the severity of climate change and the urgency with which we need to act. He wondered why we would ever want to rule out a technology that would be useful in combating this grand challenge.
The position of the opposition was somewhat predictable. Among other things they argued:
- Nuclear energy emits more carbon that renewable energy when considering the full life cycle (ie. not clean)
- We are moving to a different energy system that doesn't need baseload power (ie. who needs old reliable?)
- It will take too long to build enough nuclear power plants (ie. not so proven)
Perhaps in future posts, I'll go into more detail on these and other points that came up, but let me offer a quick summary here.
Clean: Nuclear energy does have to take responsibility for some carbon emissions when considering mining, enrichment, construction, disposal, and everything else it takes to generate nuclear electricity. However, when the same factors are considered for renewable energy, the differences between nuclear and renewables is in the noise compared to either natural gas or coal. Some studies show nuclear energy to be less than wind and solar while others studies show the opposite. For us to bicker about this point is "fiddling while Rome burns" as I said at the time.
Reliable: Arnie invoked analogies to the transition from landline to cell phones and the transition from mainframes to laptops as evidence that our society was moving to a distributed world. Those analogies fall flat for a number of reasons. Regarding cell phones, we won't be beaming electricity around wirelessly any time soon and those phones are rapidly becoming extensions of our networked computerized life. More importantly, the value of our network of laptop computers and smart phones is enabled by energy hungry data centers and a growing array of wires and fiber into our homes that looks much like the electric grid. Decentralization is simply not a characteristics of our modern communication economy! Another key factor is the fact that our global populations are ever more urban and the high population density of our cities is not conducive to distributed renewable generation. As we build up rather than out, we'll need concentrated sources of energy to support those high density living arrangements.
Proven: I was fortunate to have seen a recent analysis by the Breakthrough Institute just a week before the debate that showed clearly that when various national energy initiatives were compared, only nuclear energy policies showed rapid introduction of low emission energy. Add to that the recent evidence of Germany's failing EnergieWende, and there is no evidence that renewable energy can take us where we want to go. It was no surprise that our opponents claimed that nuclear would be too expensive and take too long, but had no response to my question about the cost and timeline for achieving our shared goal without nuclear energy. There is no question that changing our energy system away from fossil fuels will be expensive, but so is the general upkeep of our aging electricity infrastructure.
One question I should have been more prepared for was the generic question about nuclear safety. I knew it would come up and I had practiced some answers, but when the time came I really missed an opportunity to make a clear point.
After the debate, all four of us went to dinner with some Hofstra students, my host Bob Brinkman, and rhetoric professor Philip Dalton. Most people I know are intensely curious about how this went given the contentious atmosphere of the debate. It was no surprise to me that we had a lovely time with a variety of interesting conversations. In the end, all of the debate participants are really interested in the same thing, and their day-to-day lives are filled with similar experiences - helping children with homework, worrying about their drivers license exams, and awaiting news of new grandchildren. I sat next to Professor Hutner and I think we began what I hope can be a longer conversation on the impacts of nuclear energy in our world today and in the future.
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