I'm not looking for agreement, just a little conversation.

Daniel B. Poneman is clearly an advocate for the industry and, as previously mentioned, I’m inclined to view nuclear energy as a useful and probably necessary tool in turning back climate change, but even if  I were skeptical, I believe I’d find some of these points persuasive.

All of this goes back to the broader issue of the fundamental unseriousness of the way we discuss serious problems such as global warming, income inequality, the resurgence of fascism, racism and sexism, the systematic undermining of democracy, and the general rise of bullshit.

This is not a question of disagreements. If anything it’s the opposite. We treat clowns and charlatans as important thinkers based on their positions, not on the weight of their evidence or the force and logic of their arguments. We’ve lost all respect for the process, the idea that it is more important to contribute to an honest, factually grounded, productive debate than to reach the “right” conclusion.




In a serious discussion of climate change, prematurely shutting down our leading source of carbon-free energy would be a major topic.


From Scientific American:

Nuclear energy is the largest source of carbon-free energy in the U.S. by a huge margin and it has a major role to play in confronting the global climate challenge. But we must also be vigilant about the prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes.

The threat of nuclear proliferation abroad should not lead us to abandon nuclear energy at home. Indeed, American nuclear leadership has always been critical to guiding the safe, responsible use of civilian nuclear energy around the world.

For example, a number of American companies are developing advanced generation-reactor technologies that offer a host of safety and nonproliferation advantages. These advanced designs would have “walk away” safety, meaning they do not need any backup power or external cooling systems in the event of an accident. And since many of the new reactor designs would rarely if ever need to be refueled, the risk of diversion of fuel from uranium-enrichment or plutonium-reprocessing plants to a bomb program would be greatly diminished.
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The 98 reactors in our nuclear fleet are the workhorse of the clean-energy sector. They provide one fifth of our electricity. Unfortunately, over the past few years six reactors have been prematurely shut down, and another 12 are set to close in the next seven years.

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Nuclear plants are not only emissions-free and carbon-free, they are by far the most reliable assets in our power generation mix, operating 93 percent of the time—even during extreme weather events when some fossil fuel plants may be forced to shut down or curtail their operations. Under current rules, electricity markets are not allowed to value these attributes, even though they are clearly valuable.

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Preserving existing reactors may not sound exciting, but it is a critical first step if we take the climate challenge seriously. Consider that for every reactor that prematurely shuts down, our carbon dioxide emissions rise by about 5.8 million metric tons per year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Equivalencies Calculator, that equals the emissions from burning more than 648 million gallons of gasoline—the equivalent of filling up an NFL stadium with gasoline and setting it on fire. To offset those carbon emissions, we would need to plant over 95 million trees. Or we could install solar panels on one million homes and figure out a cost-effective way of storing the electricity so it is available day and night.