The Need To Go Nuclear

Long time readers know that I view climate change as a major threat to the modern world.  If one is going to be consistent with that view, then I have to be open to other forms of energy that carry other (but lesser) risks.  David Biello writes about how James Hansen (climate change guru) has come to embrace nuclear energy:

In addition to reducing the risk of nuclear war, U.S. reactors have also been staving off another global challenge: climate change. The low-carbon electricity produced by such reactors provides 20 percent of the nation’s power and, by the estimates of climate scientist James Hansen of Columbia University, avoided 64 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution. They also avoided spewing soot and other air pollution like coal-fired power plants do and thus have saved some 1.8 million lives.

Nuclear power clearly has risks, as the article goes on to point out.  But those risks pale compared to climate change.  We need to spend money now on researching and then constructing safer reactors rather than delaying them through excessively burdensome permitting processes.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.