Climate Change/Nuclear Energy Letter Receives Broad News Coverage

We mentioned the letter by four leading climate change scientists, James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Tom Wigley, and Ken Caldeira, on Monday [the post right below this one] and predicted it would get some pickup in the mainstream press. Prediction fulfilled: next up, this week’s lottery numbers.

The stories have included some other interesting information that bolster the notion that nuclear energy can make a decided difference in mitigating climate change. Here’s the Detroit News:

Stephen Ansolabehere, a Harvard professor who studies energy issues, said nuclear power is “very divisive” within the environmental movement. But he added that the letter could help educate the public about the difficult choices that climate change presents.

One major environmental advocacy organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, warned that “nuclear power is no panacea for our climate woes.”

Even the nuclear energy industry doesn’t call nuclear energy a climate woe panacea. I’m pretty sure no one does: and the letter does posit a role for renewable energy – it simply stresses that nuclear energy is here now.

The Hill catches this aspect, too:

Climate activists that oppose nuclear power say scaled-up use of green energy sources like wind and solar power, expanded efficiency, and other tools can bring steep carbon emissions cuts without constructing new nuclear plants.

And climate activists who support nuclear energy say: Do both. It’s not so complicated. It really doesn’t have to be an article of faith to support or oppose nuclear energy.

Ansolabehere has it right: where nuclear energy was once utterly rejected in the environmental movement, it is now “very divisive” – which may not seem like progress but is indeed. It allows scientists as prominent as these to make a case for nuclear energy and not have to give back their environmental decoder rings.

Gristmill’s John Upton writes about their prominence as a value:

Not everyone in the green movement is likely to unreservedly agree with these climate scientists’ call for nuclear action. But with voices of this pedigree getting behind nuclear, you can bet the debate will only get hotter starting … now.

And that’s because nuclear energy is now a permissible topic.

Ars Technical gives a straight report on the letter, but adds a note, again speaking to the issue of prominence: “Full disclosure: Ars has covered the work of Caldeira, Emanuel, Hansen, and Wigley multiple times in the past.” 

ThinkProgress took a look and, as you’d expect, did not like the letter much. Much of its response is just boilerplate anti-nuclear stuff with a bit of concern trolling, but this was striking:

A 2007 Keystone report concluded that just one wedge of nuclear power “would require adding on average 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, all the while building an average of 7.4 plants to replace those that will be retired” — plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste.

But we need at least 12 to 14 wedges to avert catastrophic climate change. So it’s pretty safe to say that most of those wedges will be non-nuclear — and most of those can begin aggressive deployment now.

The wedge game! There’s nothing wrong with the wedge game, created by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow to calculate the elements need to develop an effective carbon emission strategy. But people use it to make complex ideas simple, not to take the full measure of complex issues. Many factors weigh into policy and most of those factors don’t figure into the wedge game. (And I wonder how many turbines it takes – and land mass for those turbines – to make a wedge.)

All of the coverage has been highly respectful of the men who wrote it and their qualification, no matter how much the writers disagree with their view on nuclear energy. Fine – you would expect no less. But it’s great to see the issue engaged. That’s what we were hoping for when we saw this letter – and that’s what we’ve got.

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Four Noted Climate Change Scientists Say: More Nuclear Energy, Please.

Four of the world’s top climate scientists issued an open letter urging environmental groups and politicians worldwide to support nuclear energy as a primary way to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions known to contribute to global warming.

James Hansen

of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and formerly at NASA, Ken Caldeira, senior scientist in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tom Wigley, a climate scientist at Australia’s University of Adelaide, wrote that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy cannot by themselves stem the threat of global warming.

The letter agrees that:

Renewables like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires.

While the authors say that it is theoretically possible to achieve global carbon emission reduction goals without an increased use of nuclear energy, “in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.”

The letter echoes views shared by the nuclear energy industry. Responding to President Barack Obama’s climate change action plan earlier this year, NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel said,

As a nation, we cannot reach our energy and climate goals without the reliable, carbon-free electricity that nuclear power plants generate to power our homes, businesses and infrastructure.

Similarly, the scientists note the small risk associated with nuclear energy.

Quantitative analyses show that the risks associated with the expanded use of nuclear energy are orders of magnitude smaller than the risks associated with fossil fuels,” the letter says, continuing that decision makers should be guided by “facts and not on emotions and biases that do not apply to 21st century nuclear technology.

Hansen, known for his high profile climate change activism while at NASA, told the Associated Press “They’re cheating themselves [environmentalists] if they keep believing this fiction that all we need” is renewable energy.”

Hansen has also been a noted supporter of nuclear energy. In a study published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, he and a co-author argued that nuclear plants saved 1.8 million lives by displacing coal facilities and held the potential to save 7 million additional lives in the next 40 years if nuclear energy facilities replaced coal plants.

So joining Hansen with three prominent climate scientists – and in different areas of the issue – gives this letter unusual heft and potential influence. Expect to see a good deal of coverage of it and, if we’re lucky, some discussion pro and con. The more the ideas in this letter get play, the better for nuclear energy. It has become increasingly clear that it is the logical way forward if we mean to get to grips with climate change.

UPDATE:

Fertel issued a statement specifically about this letter that broadens the perspective quite a bit:

“The letter puts an exclamation point on a phenomenon that has been unfolding for several years, namely the steady growth in support for nuclear energy from leading environmentalists – Stewart Brand, James Lovelock, Mark Lynas and Patrick Moore to name just a few. Greenhouse gas emissions would be vastly higher if nuclear energy facilities did not provide 40 percent of the electricity globally that is produced by carbon-free sources of power (63 percent in the United States).

“This is why James Hansen and the other scientists make this point: ‘In the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.’ There is ever-increasing recognition of this analysis.

“When the Robert Stone documentary ‘Pandora’s Promise’ airs this Thursday night on CNN, viewers will see environmental leaders who are embracing nuclear energy, and hear them explain why they’ve reached the conclusions they have regarding the value of nuclear energy to preserve our environment.”

CNN makes this connection, too, at the link holding the whole letter – as Fertel points out, the network is showing Pandora’s Promise this Thursday. There doesn’t seem to be any explicit coordination between the letter and the movie showing, but there doesn’t need to be any: they both make the same worthwhile point.

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Can You Make an Ethical Case for Nuclear Energy?

Over the course of the history of NEI Nuclear Notes, I've assiduously avoided sharing coverage from the financial press for a variety of reasons, foremost of which is the fact that we shouldn't be in the business of providing investment advice.

But this morning I'm compelled to share a clip from a U.K. publication called Financial Reporter after I read the following passage in a story by James Howard titled, "Ten reasons to go with ethical investments."

1. They can avoid the negatives. Ethical investment ensures their money isn’t supporting companies which engage in activities they might disapprove of, such as animal testing, deforestation, arms manufacture, or nuclear energy.

Now, I don't want to tell folks who have a beef with nuclear energy how to invest their own money, but I do have a real problem with anyone who tries to make the case that investing -- and by extension working in the nuclear energy industry -- isn't an ethical endeavor. In fact, it's impossible not to feel downright insulted at the suggestion.

Better still. thanks to climate scientist James Hansen, I've got the numbers to back up the emotion (thanks to our friends at Energy Northwest for the cool graphic):

And that's just the start. According to Hansen's projections, the widespread adoption of nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels could save up to 7 million more lives in the next four decades. If that's not an ethical energy choice, I don't know what possibly could be.

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Nuclear Energy Grabs Top Spot on Reddit ... On Earth Day

We've been recognizing Earth Day all day long here on all of our social media platforms, but I wanted to share one image that warmed my heart today like no other. If you pop over to the home page at Reddit, the link that's currently ranked #1 is a story that originally appeared at Scientific American on James Hansen's conclusion that the use of nuclear energy has saved millions of lives all around the world.

Click to enlarge.

For those of you who haven't read the paper from NASA's Godard Institute, here's the nut graph:

The authors come up with the striking figure of 1.8 million as the number of lives saved by replacing fossil fuel sources with nuclear.

They also estimate the saving of up to 7 million lives in the next four decades, along with substantial reductions in carbon emissions, were nuclear power to replace fossil fuel usage on a large scale.

Impressive. It's indeed a happy Earth Day.

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