During the heated Pinhead Town Talk on August 7th entitled, “Is it Science? Global Warming, Intelligent Design, the Anthropic Principle, and Einstein’s Moon,” speaker Dr. Michael Kellman drew a charged response from climate change scientist, University of Arizona Professor and part-time local, Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, in a standing room audience of 120 people at the Conference Center.

Overpeck challenged Kellman’s vocal qualms with climate change science by stating that there was one-hundred-percent certainty among his colleagues that climate change is caused by human activity. Further, Overpeck repeatedly pressed Kellman to answer his question, “Why do respected scientists feel compelled to speak publicly on subjects outside their expertise, carrying with them the authority of science?” Kellman did not take the bait. Overpeck nearly walked out.

Clearly, the topic of climate change packs an emotional charge, especially for those like Overpeck working passionately to stem what they see as the imminent demise of our cherished planet.

This week’s Pinhead Town Talk, the final presentation of the 2007 season, may be as controversial as Kellman’s. Entitled, “Climate Change and Nuclear Power: Choosing a course beyond emotion,” Dr. R. Stephen Berry, James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at University of Chicago and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is likely to encounter criticism of his position on nuclear power.

Berry, who raises no challenges to predictions of global warming, is very public about his pro-stance on nuclear energy. His debate with Rocky Mountain Institute chairman and chief scientist, Amory Lovins, can be read online at The Bulletin Online: Global Security News & Analysis discussion group at http://www.thebulletin.org/roundtable/nuclear-power-climate-change/. Berry is a committee member on the Review of the DOE's Nuclear Energy Research & Development project and has worked on problems of energy efficiency since 1969. He believes nuclear energy is a necessary part of the market basket – an immediately available, abundant source of energy that will contribute minimal CO2 emissions into our already carbon-rich environment.

But nuclear power is as emotionally charged a topic as climate change. Accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 still resonate in the minds of the public. Problems with accidents at nuclear power plants, safe waste disposal, and the potential for proliferation of nuclear weapons is still considered too dangerous a price to pay by many, like Amory Lovins. Lovins advocates the use of renewable resources such as wind and solar without resorting to nuclear power. Berry sees this as idealistic.

Recent data released from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, indicate that a complete melting of sea ice of the Artic Circle could occur by 2030, rather than previously predicted 2070, stunning scientists. “We're living in a dangerously dynamic situation and must pursue all the plausible paths we know,” Berry wrote recently. “Abandoning nuclear power would be as foolish as halting efforts toward energy efficiency. While no energy source is risk-free, nuclear power probably represents the safest electricity source in overall costs of human life – and also the most reliable. Nuclear reactors now perform at about 90 percent of their theoretical limits; 20 years ago, it was roughly 60 percent.”

Despite higher efficiency of nuclear power and alarming new data on climate change, locating new sites for nuclear power plants may be primarily a social hurdle. Many communities in America will take the “not in my backyard” stance.

Berry suggests that society make a portfolio, a list of things to do. “We need to develop more efficient energy,” he says, “and develop renewable energies such as wind power. Biofuels are still controversial. Solar is not yet a technologically, economically viable solution. Nuclear is available now and the potential supply of this fuel is enormous. We have some uranium, but lots of thorium.”

Durango mechanical engineer, Dustin Sullivan of ME&E Engineering, confirmed that solar power is not yet economical. “A typical office building of 10,000 square feet powered by solar energy has a payback of 100-plus years. Those costs include labor, materials, equipment, overhead, and profit, but not architectural or mechanical design costs.” Thus far, in the building industry, the cost of carbon emissions is not part of the cost equation. “That would change things,” Sullivan said. “That would be helpful information.”

“The emotional reaction to resist nuclear power is an interesting analogue to the emotional reaction to deny the likelihood of human-generated climate change,” Berry wrote. “The two positions have remarkable similarities, at opposite ends of a common scale. Let's hope there's enough rationality for us to make our way in a healthy, sustainable manner between those emotional extremes.”

Come join the fiery conversation Tuesday night at the Conference Center at 6:00 p.m. For more information call Nana Naisbitt at 970-708-0004 or visit www.telluridescience.org or email nana@telluridescience.org.

An emotionally charged approach, which has characterized the issue of climate change and its attendant solutions, will get us nowhere, Berry suggests by the title of his talk. “If the anti’s were to win,” he said in a recent interview, “it would be suicide to the kind of society we know. The potential for making large parts of the now habitable world, uninhabitable is a real worry. It is not a negligible worry.”

CONTRARY VIEW

Posted by: Peter A. Bradford
Instead, too many nuclear proponents have turned to their old playbook-- pushed power plants; postponed problems. Nuclear power's asserted comeback in the United States rests not on newfound cost competitiveness, but on an ancient formula: licensing shortcuts, risks borne by customers and taxpayers, political muscle, and ballyhoo. Climate change has replaced oil dependence as the bogeyman from which nuclear power can save us.

Those who assert, "Nuclear energy just may be the energy source that can save our planet from catastrophic climate change," "It could save the Earth," or "Clean, green atomic energy can stop global warming," are inviting us into a dangerous la-la land in which nuclear power will be oversubsidized and underscrutinized while more promising and quicker responses to climate change are neglected.

Proliferation is a particularly troublesome prospect.

Asserting that nuclear power answers climate change is like asserting that invading Iraq answers 9/11.

Nuclear is more reliable, safer than before ” Berry

Using the art of logic, Berry wants to achieve two things: Have people accept the idea that the probability of climate change being a reality is very high, whether or not you are certain. The probability of the consequences of climate change being very bad is also high. The prudent course at this time is to act on the basis that we have a very serious problem. Certainty scientifically. First step is to weigh the costs of doing nothing versus doing something. The cost of doing nothing and being wrong is very high. Cost of doing something and being wrong is very low. We need to develop efficient ways of using energy. Specifically in such a way that we are not introducing any more co2 into the atmosphere. Better is we developed energy that removed co2. Step two, make a portfolio of things to do. First, develop efficient use of energy; secondly. Develop renewable energies such as wind power. Biofuels are controversial because at best they break even on the emissions of co2. Solar is not yet a technologically, economically viable solution. Nuclear is available now and the potential supply of this fuel is enormous. We have some uranium but lots of thorium. Nuclear power and climate change are co-joined. We need a market basket of necessary components. Some arguments against NP are simply wrong, some are handle-able. Currently, the direct cost from using coal are a half or two-thirds of nuclear energy. But if a carbon tax was imposed, almost immediately nuclear and coal would cost the same. China is building four coal plants to every one nuclear.

born 1931, raised in Denver CO
Committee member: Review of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research & Development eview of DOE's Nuclear Energy R&D Program--First Meeting
August 24, 2006 - August 25, 2006

Town Talk to address Nuclear Energy as Possible Mitigator of Climate Change

Three Mile Island The Three Mile Island accident was the most significant in the history of the American commercial nuclear power generating industry, although it resulted in no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community 1979

Although 25,000 people lived within five miles (8 km) of the site at the time of the accident,[2] no identifiable injuries due to radiation occurred, and a government report concluded that "the projected number of excess fatal cancers due to the accident... is approximately one." However, the accident had serious economic and public relations consequences, and the cleanup process was slow and costly. It also furthered a major decline in the public popularity of nuclear power, exemplifying for many the worst fears about nuclear technology and, until the Chernobyl disaster seven years later, it was considered the world's worst civilian nuclear accident. The TMI accident also had a psychological effect on the nation. Before the accident, 70 percent of the general public approved of nuclear power. After it, support for nuclear power across the country fell to about 50 percent, where it remained for decades. Recently, public support for nuclear power has been on the rise, and the George W. Bush administration has been particularly supportive of nuclear power, encouraging power companies to begin considering plans for the first new nuclear reactors in the United States in decades.[13]

Viewed from the west, Three Mile Island currently uses only one nuclear generating station, TMI-1, which is on the left. TMI-2, to the right, has not been used since the accident.

Viewed from the west, Three Mile Island currently uses only one nuclear generating station, TMI-1, which is on the left. TMI-2, to the right, has not been used since the accident.

The TMI cleanup started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, having cost around US$975 million. From 1985 to 1990 almost 100 tons of radioactive fuel were removed from the site. However, the contaminated cooling water that leaked into the containment building had seeped into the building's concrete, leaving the radioactive residue impossible to remove. TMI-2 had been online only three months, but now had a ruined reactor vessel and a containment building that was unsafe to walk in — it has since been permanently closed. Many similar Babcock and Wilcox reactors on order were canceled — in total, 51 American nuclear reactors were canceled from 1980 to 1984.

Chernobyl disaster V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station 1986 which has been widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Large areas within Europe became contaminated with radiation and different kinds of cancer have been on the rise in Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, which received the greatest amount of fallout.

Nuclear power and climate change

In Progress: 1 August 2007

When considering ways to limit carbon dioxide emissions, experts argue that all options should be considered—including nuclear power. But with nuclear power comes concerns about proliferation, waste disposal, and cost. R. Stephen Berry, the former Special Advisor to the Director of Argonne National Laboratory for National Security, Amory B. Lovins (PDF, 35 KB), the chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, consider the feasibility of nuclear power as a remedy to climate change in the Bulletin Online’s inaugural roundtable.

Pinhead Town Talk
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
6:00 – 7:15 p.m.
Conference Center
Free admission, Cash bar

PRESENTATION

“Nuclear Power and Climate Change: Choosing a Course Beyond Emotions"
By R. Stephen Berry, James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at University of Chicago and a member of the National Academy of Sciences

“The basket” -- Maybe the necessary carbon reductions will come from transportation, efficiency, coal sequestration, and renewables.

Using the art of logic, Berry wants to achieve two things: Have people accept the idea that the probability of climate change being a reality is very high, whether or not you are certain. The probability of the consequences of climate change being very bad is also high. The prudent course at this time is to act on the basis that we have a very serious problem. Certainty scientifically. First step is to weigh the costs of doing nothing versus doing something. The cost of doing nothing and being wrong is very high. Cost of doing something and being wrong is very low. We need to develop efficient ways of using energy. Specifically in such a way that we are not introducing any more co2 into the atmosphere. Better is we developed energy that removed co2. Step two, make a portfolio of things to do. First, develop efficient use of energy; secondly. Develop renewable energies such as wind power. Biofuels are controversial because at best they break even on the emissions of co2. Solar is not yet a technologically, economically viable solution. Nuclear is available now and the potential supply of this fuel is enormous. We have some uranium but lots of thorium. Nuclear power and climate change are co-joined. We need a market basket of necessary components. Some arguments against NP are simply wrong, some are handle-able. Currently, the direct cost from using coal are a half or two-thirds of nuclear energy. But if a carbon tax was imposed, almost immediately nuclear and coal would cost the same. China is building four coal plants to every one nuclear.

Sequestration? I am very uneasy about this approach. Is it safe? I have spoken with geologists about this and they say these things blow up all the time.

Is climate change human caused? That is probably. There is only a little serious challenge in determining the amount of human contribution. If climate change is in large part caused by green house gases that we can do something even if it is not human induced.

What is the cost of keeping these issues emotionally charged? If the anti’s were to win, it would be one of the most dangerous cases of ‘Pediatric Marksmenship,’ or shooting oneself in the foot, although in this case it would be lethal. It would be suicide to the kind of society we know. The potential for making large parts of the now habitable work, uninhabitable is a real worry. It is not a negligible worry. Ecosystems, including humans, are very fragile. We can only live in a very narrow band of conditions. If we change those conditions we may not be able survive as we do now. The Neanderthals may have been able to survive them, but modern man is not well suited for a big shift in conditions.

My point is that no single approach will accomplish the goals of reducing the impact we have on the environment, improving the living standards of people throughout the world, and providing the basis of a sustainable human society. We certainly need to move to energy-efficient technologies, but we also need to provide energy to people who don't have clean, reliable water supplies, adequate (or even any) electricity or motor transportation. We need to recognize that India and China are on growth trajectories that make our energy growth curve look flat. China is planning to build roughly one nuclear plant per month, while building one coal-based generating station every week! It's impossible for the efficient technologies that Amory correctly advocates to be available on a timescale or size scale that could accomplish what the Chinese power plants will provide.

We will need careful cost and cost-benefit analyses that account for externalities, examine varieties of scenarios, and recognize the ranges of uncertainties in order to choose the proper path. However, it would be a serious mistake to close off potentially important contributors to our overall energy program. Therefore, abandoning nuclear power would be as foolish as halting efforts toward energy efficiency.

Amory Levins: Thus, Berry thinks we must divert far more investment into new nuclear plants, which added only 4 percent of the world's new 2005 capacity, even though they'd cost 2-10 times as much per delivered kilowatt-hour as the winning competitors that added more than 50 percent. He apparently thinks this small, costly increment is vital because we need everything. Pursuing an expensive, slow option instead of a big portfolio of cheap, fast options will make climate change worse, not better. And though I agree with his call for pricing carbon, doing so will equally advantage efficiency and renewables and partially advantage cogeneration, so carbon pricing won't relieve nuclear power's profound uncompetitiveness.

Energy efficiency alone won't work

Response: 24 May 2007
Posted by: R. Stephen Berry

Amory is quite correct that there are many ways to reduce energy use and retain at least the same level of services we have now. And it is very sensible to try to adopt such means. But Amory is always delightfully optimistic about the rates of diffusion and acceptance of new technologies.

In the real world, when a new technology requires major changes in our manufacturing and distribution system, it's adopted slowly. One circumstance can change that--a major crisis. When an event such as World War I comes along, then we always find a way to implement innovation, i.e., airplanes!

The problem we face today is vividly exposed in a new Proceedings of the National Academy article, "Global and Regional Drivers of Accelerating CO2 Emissions." The authors show that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are actually rising faster than the highest predictions made in the late 1990s by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We simply can't afford to pursue the adiabatic path of an optimum, equilibrium-model economy. We're living in a dangerously dynamic situation and must pursue all the plausible paths we know. At present, nuclear power is more expensive than fossil fuels. But if we were to internalize the costs of fossil fuels, instead of leaving them as externalities, we would apply taxes, "cap and trade," or some other ingenious method to make us pay the real costs of using fossil fuels. If we do that, nuclear power will immediately be at least as cheap as fossil-generated power. Moreover, the next generation of light water reactors, the type of reactors that power companies are planning to build as soon as they get licenses, will be cheaper, safer, and more reliable than the reactors we're using now.

Just one other specific concern with Amory's idealistic vision: Whatever we do in the United States in the coming decades to adopt more energy-efficient devices, it's hard to believe that developing nations will go along with it. No matter what kind of micropower we invent, China will build large electric power generating stations to supply power to its growing cities and power-starved rural population. The future of the world will be in much less jeopardy if those power stations use nuclear power instead of coal power.

Multiple pathways and a flexible choice of options are the keys to maximizing stability. We can't afford to bet on only one roulette number.

Nuclear is more reliable, safer than before

Response: 10 April 2007
Posted by: R. Stephen Berry

There is every reason to pursue increased energy efficiency. There are even justifications for subsidizing capital investments in energy-efficient technology. After all, the discount rates used by corporate managers who choose those investments are, in effect, considerably larger than the discount rates implicit in governmental decisions. The former are based on near-term returns and stock prices, while the latter are based on a society's long-term sustainability.

But, despite some beliefs to the contrary, all of our past experience and evidence tells us that we'll need to generate more energy in the coming years. If the standard of living rises in underdeveloped countries, this is an absolute certainty globally--regardless of the efficiency in the United States, Europe, and even China and India. It's also terribly dangerous to the sustainability of humanity as we know it to allow the concentrations of human-generated greenhouse gases to grow at even a moderate fraction of their current rates--Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe notwithstanding. Hence, our response to the sustainability challenge must include better energy generation methods than those we rely on today--both in terms of their impact on climate and human life.

There are probably places where wind power is reliable and not harmful to the environment, increasing its usefulness. Biofuels provide a "break-even" means of slowing greenhouse gas concentrations, but they don't help reduce those concentrations. And biofuels only make sense if they're made from plants that don't double as food. Hydropower is virtually saturated and (perhaps surprisingly) the deadliest source of electric power because people live in the floodplains below dams, which occasionally break. Direct solar power, either as heat or electricity, is a marvelously attractive goal that we currently can't achieve at a cost that would make it available to a large part of the population. There's plenty of motivation for us to invest in solar power research, making it a realistic component of the overall energy picture. But that's not going to happen for many years.

Nuclear power has become more and more reliable and increasingly safe. While no energy source is risk-free, nuclear power probably represents the safest electricity source in overall costs of human life--and also the most reliable. Nuclear reactors now perform at about 90 percent of their theoretical limits; 20 years ago, it was roughly 60 percent. New designs of conventional light water reactors will be safer still, because they'll have inherent, gravity-driven self-quenching that won't require active steps by operators if something goes wrong.

The direct cost of nuclear power now is indeed higher than that of coal-, oil-, or gas-generated electric power. But this wouldn't be the case if the indirect costs of environmental damage from greenhouse gases were formulated into the cost, which would happen if a carbon tax were introduced. Even without a carbon tax, at least one extensive economic study found that the cost of nuclear reactors will drop after the first three or four new nuclear reactors are built, making nuclear competitive with fossil-fueled generating plants.

The emotional reaction to resist nuclear power is an interesting analogue to the emotional reaction to deny the likelihood of human-generated climate change. The two positions have remarkable similarities, at opposite ends of a common scale. Let's hope there's enough rationality for us to make our way in a healthy, sustainable manner between those emotional extremes.

Nuclear is not an essential solution

Response: 23 March 2007
Posted by: Peter A. Bradford

Proliferation is a particularly troublesome prospect.

Asserting that nuclear power answers climate change is like asserting that invading Iraq answers 9/11.

A sensible approach to climate change would put a significant price on fuels according to their carbon content. It would offer nondiscriminatory, governmental support to technologies according to their ability to achieve reductions rapidly, economically, and acceptably to the public. It would insist that any nuclear power growth occur in ways that diminish the association between nuclear power and proliferation.

Instead, too many nuclear proponents have turned to their old playbook-- pushed power plants; postponed problems. Nuclear power's asserted comeback in the United States rests not on newfound cost competitiveness, but on an ancient formula: licensing shortcuts, risks borne by customers and taxpayers, political muscle, and ballyhoo. Climate change has replaced oil dependence as the bogeyman from which nuclear power can save us.

Those who assert, "Nuclear energy just may be the energy source that can save our planet from catastrophic climate change," "It could save the Earth," or "Clean, green atomic energy can stop global warming," are inviting us into a dangerous la-la land in which nuclear power will be oversubsidized and underscrutinized while more promising and quicker responses to climate change are neglected.

Nuclear power may not even be an essential part of the solution to global warming. A widely noted paper (PDF, 1 MB) by Princeton professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow introduces the useful concept of a "wedge," defined as any measure that would lead to a global reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions relative to business-as-usual over the next 50 years. Under optimistic assumptions, some seven wedges are needed to avoid dangerous climate change; this number could increase significantly under less optimistic assumptions.

The study provides a list of 15 measures involving technologies that exist today and could be scaled up to become one or more wedges. Energy efficiency comprises three wedges, alternatives to business-as-usual transportation account for another four, and increasing natural sinks provides two wedges. Generating electricity in less carbon intensive ways contributes four wedges. Of the latter, a worldwide tripling of nuclear power would contribute one wedge at most, and that's if the new plants replace only coal and old nuclear units.

In addition, a nuclear wedge requires fuel enrichment (perhaps an additional 15 plants), waste repositories (perhaps the equivalent of 14 Yucca Mountains), and possibly reprocessing plants.

Nothing resembling such a massive scaling up of nuclear construction is underway. Indeed, when retirements are netted against new nuclear plants, the worldwide annual megawatt growth rate is about 5 percent, far under the 15 percent that a wedge will require.

Nuclear power is more expensive and controversial than other ways of generating electricity and other ways of cubing carbon emissions, so this trebling can only be done through substantial governmental assistance. The subsidies enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2005 are limited to a few plants. Many successful years of construction and operation will have to pass before these few plants can become a basis for a stream of privately financed orders.

A nuclear ramp up necessary to provide a wedge will not be some idealized future in which the problems are solved before the plants are built. Massive construction commitments will have to be made long before present waste and proliferation problems are resolved.

Proliferation is a particularly troublesome prospect. Aspects of civilian nuclear power programs have been implicated in every recent proliferation example, but particularly India, Pakistan, and potentially, Iran. Given a trebling of worldwide nuclear capacity, other countries of proliferation concern will have nuclear power programs. (For example, see Richard Beeston's Times Online article, "Six Arab States Join Rush to Go Nuclear.") International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards are not adequate for separated plutonium, which is directly useable in nuclear weapons. Two Bush administration initiatives--the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and the nuclear arrangement with India--contain elements that undermine aspects of the already strained nonproliferation regime.

Nuclear power plants are made safe by combinations of vigilance and careful engineering and construction. If, in an effort to improve their dubious economics, we again freight the technology with unrealistic demands and expectations this safety can be seriously compromised.

Proliferation is a particularly troublesome prospect.

Asserting that nuclear power answers climate change is like asserting that invading Iraq answers 9/11. This is policy making built on distraction, bolstered by deception, burdened by debt, and bound for disillusion. Both nuclear power and the country deserve better.

Nuclear can help

Response: 22 March 2007
Posted by: R. Stephen Berry

Given Earth's inevitable and imminent climate change and the rapid development of previously underdeveloped nations, humanity faces a novel challenge. Whether the climate will change slowly enough that we can respond at familiar rates or the change will happen so abruptly that we need new modes of adaptation, we don't know. Whether China, India, and other fast-developing nations can find pathways to sustainable lifestyles is another unanswered question, but one that perhaps we can help guide.

At the very least, given that we now live with these uncertainties, we can identify things that we recognize as necessary. But we certainly can't tell whether they're sufficient to enable humanity as we know it to survive and continue improving. The core issue is to find a way to use nature's resources that allows us to improve the human condition globally. Naturally, the first resource on our list is energy.

The most obvious, universally accepted--but not universally adopted--action we can take is to use energy more efficiently. Here, the problem is not whether to follow such a path but how to make it happen. So another given is that we will somehow discover and adopt creative ways to use energy efficiently.

The next problem is based on the unavoidable course that we've adopted to improve our lives (nationally and globally) by using considerably more energy per capita. Whether it's inevitable that per capita energy consumption will rise in developed nations is open, even controversial. But there's no arguing the global need, if the human condition is to improve everywhere.

From there, we move to the question of how to meet that need, which relates directly to the efficiency of how much or how little we will need to supply. Perhaps it would be better to phrase that question in terms of how much energy is needed if certain levels of efficiency were attained--and if certain levels of improved living conditions were our goal.

Suppose we're able to make a rough prediction of how much energy we'd need to supply in 2015, 2025, and 2050. Suppose we're even able to set rough upper and lower limits on these estimates. We'd then be in a position to rationally decide what energy source to choose. We have a list already, including all of the available sources:

• Coal, oil, and gas (with some means of avoiding carbon emissions);
• Hydroelectric (with safe and environmentally acceptable dams);
• Solar;
• Environmentally acceptable wind;
• Environmentally acceptable geothermal;
• Possibly tidal;
• Safe and secure nuclear.

But when would we have the information to make a well-guided, information-based decision? The difficult problem now is that the world is changing faster than we can generate the information needed to make well-guided decisions.

A kind of negative benefit-cost analysis could help deal with this dilemma. That is, we can estimate benefits and costs of different pathways in the conventional way, and then go a step further by estimating the costs of choosing a pathway and making a mistake. For example, we can ask what the costs of pumping carbon dioxide into underground storage wells would be if the wells were safe and if the wells sometimes exploded. Likewise, we can estimate the costs of accidents at nuclear plants if we made an incorrect assumption about their safety level. Such an analysis gives us an "insurance" perspective to help guide choices.

This leads me to posit that the mix of energy sources for the next many, many years must include a significant component of nuclear power--and much more than we have now. The nuclear power issue divides naturally into a near- and long-term aspect. The near-term addresses the question of how to reduce carbon emissions relatively soon (say in 10 or 15 years) in a way that's at least as safe as the ways we provide energy now. The present generation of light water reactors (LWRs) has proven more durable, efficient, secure, and safe than the LWRs from the 1960s and 1970s. We will need to build many more LWRs during the next 20 or 30 years, while finding ways to safely deal with their waste.

The long-term problem combines dealing with nuclear wastes and making more efficient use of potentially fissionable nuclear materials. This is the challenge of reducing the volume of nuclear wastes by orders of magnitude and increasing the energy derived from uranium by an equal amount.

At present, there is a potential pathway to do this that looks very promising, but it's still far from realization. This pathway would combine recycling nuclear fuel with reactors using fast neutrons. (Our current reactors use slow, "thermal" neutrons.) This will require years of research and development and takes into account safety and security from proliferation. In my view, this makes nuclear power one of those necessary, but not sufficient, components of our energy future in the near and long terms.

Contact Nana Naisbitt
970-708-0004 cell
nana@telluridescience.org