The notion that nuclear power can play a significant role in dealing with the current climate crisis has received a lot of unfortunate attention, coming from vocal and high-profile individuals like respected climatologist James Hanson, former President Obama, and fake environmentalists like Michael Shellenberger. Misleading statements about environmentalists reconsidering the use of nuclear power abound — just as fake advertising trumpeting that “Most doctors smoke Camel cigarettes” abounded when the tobacco industry was trying to deceive the public about the health risks of smoking.

However, it’s the accuracy of the information, not the messenger, which is most important in making rational decisions about what energy sources to use in a climate disrupted world.

In the debate about solving climate disruption, the public is often given a false, misleading choice between continuing with some form of coal — and nuclear power. Renewable energy is marginalized or not discussed. But before making choices about what to do, we first need to consider what the most urgent tasks are, and then evaluate the best ways to complete them.

When the lookout on the Titanic yelled, “Iceberg!”, it was not an invitation to hold a conference on bulkhead metallurgy on the quarter-deck; it was a call to ready the lifeboats, NOW! A crisis demands immediate, focused action, prioritizing what will work NOW, and what needs to be done FIRST. It is with this urgent prioritization in mind that we have to consider and follow the “rules” for best meeting the Climate Crisis.

Fighting Climate Disruption?  Follow the “Rules”!

If this is really about low-carbon energy fighting climate disruption, then we have to follow the rules!

The “2 x 4 Rule” for Fighting Climate Disruption:

 Our “2” major constraints (we’re short of BOTH) are:

• Time
• Money

The “4” Rules of  Prioritized Action – the energy resources we use MUST:

• Remove the most amount of carbon…
• In the quickest time (like, now or yesterday)…
• At the lowest cost possible…
• Without creating, substituting or worsening equally planetary threatening, environmentally damaging, socially unjust or unacceptable alternatives (like nuclear proliferation, terrorism, war, waste, etc.)

Based on these obvious priorities, nuclear power comes up way short.  Nuclear Power FAILS ALL of these conditions.

Using Nuclear Power Plants Will:

• Break the bank: They’re not remotely cost-effective in carbon displacement compared to other currently available means; there are simply better, faster and cheaper ways to do the job of reducing greenhouse gases in a timely manner (IPCC study, May 9, 2011; 5-Labs study; Natural Capitalism).
• Take too long to become operational to be effective, both compared to other available energy options, and to the 15-year deadline (i.e. by 2029) the 2014 IPCC report gives us for effective climate intervention.
• Increase nuclear power’s currently unsolved problems like:
  • creating more high-and low-level radioactive wastes
  • increased accident probability, unintentional leaks, more uranium mining, other contamination
  • proliferation of technology, expertise, materials, and ultimately nuclear weapons
  • increased risk from terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities in a post-9/11 world, or becoming possible targets in wars (e.g. the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the Middle East, India/Pakistan, China/Taiwan/Japan, North Korea/South Korea, ISIS)

• Produce less electricity, and be increasingly vulnerable to more frequent shut-downs under expected global warming conditions (higher water temperature; rising coastlines; more frequent and violent weather events (e.g., Pilgrim NPP in January, 2018); unpredictable availability of water (e.g. summers of 1988; 2005-06-09)), while creating other unacceptable environmental damage (e.g., increased thermal pollution to waterways).
• Stifle development, implementation, and expansion of real climate disruption fighters — true local, sustainable and renewable energy resources, and energy efficiency that are ready, working and expanding today. In addition, they tie up inordinate amounts of increasingly scarce investment capital that could be put to better and immediate use expanding renewable resources.
• Proliferate internationally the same set of unsolved problems nuclear power already plaguing developed countries, to countries that lack the capital, expertise, security, and political stability to manage and safeguard nuclear power even at our current level of questionable standards.
• Vastly increase the likely negative health and genetic effects from allowable radiation releases during routine operation, accidental releases, and statistically expected increases in major accidents.
• Engender a form of economic dependency at best, nuclear “neo-colonialism” at worst in currently non-nuclear reliant nations, especially in the developing world.

Nuclear Power Itself Contributes to Global Warming!

While nuclear industry spokesmen are fond of pointing out that nuclear power plants release no greenhouse gasses while in operation producing electricity, they always fail to point out nuclear power’s sizable “carbon footprint”; and that uranium enrichment historically accounts for huge percentages of some chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) released in this country.

For example, United States Enrichment Corporation’s sites in Ohio and Kentucky released 800,000 pounds of CFC-114 in 1999. CFC-114 lasts 300 years in the atmosphere, and causes 9800 times more global warming per pound than CO2. So US enrichment activities in 1999 released the equivalent of 3,920,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In addition to global warming, CFC’s in the atmosphere cause another problem. They destroy the ozone layer. CFC-114 is one of the worst substances know to man in terms of ozone destruction. This is all just more evidence that nuclear power is not a clean technology!

Nuclear Power Won’t Work in a Global Warming World

Nuclear power plants require water. Lots and lots of cooling water. The majority of surface water used for any purpose in Illinois in a given year – more that 75% – is used by power plants of all types to produce steam, or as nuclear reactor coolant.

What happens when global climate change results in more hot, dry summers punctuated by violent storms which create runoff but don’t raise river levels for longer than a few days? With increasing electricity demand for air conditioners, higher environmental temperatures and less water in the rivers, the reactors will have to shut down or cook the fish. It has already happened here in the U.S., and in France in 2005. NEIS has a two-page report discussing the ways in which nuclear power plants can’t operate in a global warming world.

Read more about how drier rivers in a global warming world make nuclear power unworkable.