A nuclear bridge to the 22nd Century
By James Munson and Cory Franklin
The Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment released recently by a team of U.S. federal agencies to the public provides a stark picture of manmade global warming attributable to greenhouse gas emissions. The earth has warmed more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. A majority of that warming has come in the last 40 years coincident with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, a result of burning fossil fuels for energy.
Most climate models project that by the year 2100, the United States will be between three to 12 degrees hotter on average than today, depending on the earth’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions and how aggressively efforts are made to curb them. The study says, “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities … the impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future — but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changes that will occur.”
The Climate Assessment forecast a number of devastating outcomes including melting snowcaps, rising sea levels (especially if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses), catastrophic heat waves, and collapsing infrastructure, all of which could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. If the models are accurate, this will be a difficult challenge with profound consequences for the country.
As the situation stands, the currently favored solutions will be too little, too late. The most popular green solutions suffer from technical shortcomings, in that energy derived from solar and wind is intermittent and fails to provide enough power during times of peak demand, often requiring fossil fuel supplement. In addition, at present these modalities need significant subsidies to remain economically competitive. Without some breakthrough technology in energy storage, they are unlikely to solve the nation’s energy demands alone. Meanwhile, it would take decades of technical development in hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, and cleaner fossil fuels to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to levels climate models predict will be acceptable.
Until these other technologies mature sufficiently, a clean bridge with the demonstrated ability to provide power is needed, and there is one proven technology capable of being that bridge: nuclear energy. Nuclear energy releases no carbon emissions and produces reliable levels of energy longer than any current renewable energy source while emitting less radiation into the atmosphere than coal.
With the goal of encouraging greater use of renewables, environmentalists discourage nuclear power by emphasizing its downsides. These ever-present downsides merit serious consideration, yet they are generally overstated. Often unnoticed, nuclear energy is ubiquitous in first-world countries. Hospitals safely employ a vast array of nuclear-based imaging equipment. More than 150 nuclear powered ships and subs, many belonging to the U.S. Navy, routinely traverse the world’s oceans without incident. For decades, France has produced 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy without a single major accident. Today, the U.S. relies on nuclear energy for 20 percent of its electricity production.
Nuclear reactors were first built in the early 1950s. Since then, although there have been a number of nuclear accidents internationally, the total number of direct fatalities is less than 100, fewer than the number associated with conventional energy sources by orders of magnitude. This includes the three most highly publicized accidents: Chernobyl in Ukraine, Three Mile Island in the U.S., and Fukushima in Japan. The radiation released from these three accidents occurred in highly populated areas, but only the Chernobyl incident resulted in deaths outside those of accident site workers, and in that case the number of civilian deaths was less than ten. Long-term deaths from radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident could rise in the future.
Making nuclear a greater part of American energy policy will require top-quality engineering, honest and independent regulation, a culture of safety and self-scrutiny, and a continual evaluation of the radiation exposure risks. Advances in waste disposal make it less likely that it will present a serious impediment to nuclear. Meanwhile, the cost of nuclear energy is immeasurably lower than a full accounting of the health and economic costs of fossil fuels.
The U.S. does not receive sufficient credit for the fact that from 2005 to 2017 worldwide CO2 emissions increased but energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. decreased by 14 percent, even as its economy grew by 20 percent. This was largely the result of the conversion from coal to cleaner natural gas for electricity. By itself, this trend is not remotely enough to reduce global CO2 emissions to “safe” levels. The rest of the world, especially the Third World, would have to follow suit, and that threatens many fragile economies. Alternatively, the U.S. must cut its level of CO2 production to a degree that is currently impossible to achieve.
For decades, the United States has been the world’s leader in nuclear technology. As long as global warming from greenhouse gases remains a significant threat, the nation will benefit immeasurably from modernizing the design, construction, operation, and regulation of nuclear energy plants as a bridge to the 22nd Century. It bears remembering that all life on Earth, and all its energy as well, comes from the sun, and the sun is essentially nothing more than a massive thermonuclear reactor.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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