Speaker 1: Today, we're going to be talking about a pretty divisive technology,
Speaker 1: one that produces stable power without emitting greenhouse gases, but
Speaker 1: also produces waste that's toxic for thousands of years, it
Speaker 1: contributes to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but
Speaker 1: over fifty years it may have actually saved millions of lives.
Speaker 1: It's dangerous and poses a threat to nearby communities, but
Speaker 1: it also generates electricity for decades from a few small rocks.
Speaker 1: These are all true statements about nuclear energy. It has incredible,
Speaker 1: unique benefits to offer and terrifying toxic dangers. Where does
Speaker 1: that all shake out? Should nuclear power be a part
Speaker 1: of our energy portfolio? Or should be shut it all down?
Speaker 1: Today we'll be asking that question, is nuclear power good
Speaker 1: for the environment? And talking to Becca to Housta Brow,
Speaker 1: author of a fantastic new book, Atomic Dream, on the
Speaker 1: rise of the pro nuclear environmental movement. Welcome to Daniel
Speaker 1: and Kelly's Extraordinary Complicated Universe.
Speaker 2: Hello. I'm Kelly Wiersmith. I study parasites and space, and
Speaker 2: I grew up pretty close to a nuclear power plant
Speaker 2: and I still only have two ice.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I grew
Speaker 1: up at the home of atomic power, Los Alamos, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and I won't comment about whether I glow in the dark.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting. So what is the closest you've ever lived
Speaker 2: to a nuclear power plant? Does Los Alamos have one?
Speaker 1: Los Almos doesn't have an operating nuclear power plant, but
Speaker 1: we have an operating nuclear power plant in the basement
Speaker 1: of the chemistry building next door. It's about two hundred
Speaker 1: feet f for me right now as we speak. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super cool. You can get a tour of it.
Speaker 1: You can see the blue glowing water from the trunkof radiation.
Speaker 1: It's super awesome.
Speaker 2: Oh that is super cool. I didn't know that I
Speaker 2: would totally want that tour. When am I coming to visit, Daniel.
Speaker 1: I don't know, come visit. I will hook you up
Speaker 1: with a tour. I've actually used it for science because
Speaker 1: it's a nice source of certain kinds of radiation if
Speaker 1: you need to calibrate things. So it's pretty awesome. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like a teaching reactor for nuclear engineers, for
Speaker 1: chemical engineers to learn how it works and this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Pretty cool, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I grew up in Ohio, sort of
Speaker 2: near the Davis Bessie Power plant. And I thought I
Speaker 2: was gonna win, but no, no, you win, and congratulations.
Speaker 2: May it never melt down.
Speaker 1: Wow, now I'm worried about it. I wasn't until you
Speaker 1: said that. Thanks Kelly.
Speaker 2: It's fun spending time with a catastrophizer.
Speaker 1: But nuclear power is amazing, both scientifically and socially. You know,
Speaker 1: devokes such strong feelings among people about how dangerous it is,
Speaker 1: but how it reflects the hue u Brisk of science,
Speaker 1: or how it's going to usher in a new era
Speaker 1: of humanity.
Speaker 2: And there is a fantastic new book that talks about
Speaker 2: the social and political issues around nuclear power, called Atomic Dreams,
Speaker 2: and we had the pleasure of interviewing the author.
Speaker 1: You certainly did. It's a fascinating tale about how environmentalists
Speaker 1: were for nuclear power and then they were against it,
Speaker 1: and how some of them are back to being for it,
Speaker 1: including a wonderful group called Mother's for Nuclear mm.
Speaker 2: Hm, boy, the stunts they pull are interesting.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna have a chat with Becca in
Speaker 1: a moment all about the history of the environmental movement's
Speaker 1: complicated relationship with nuclear power. But first I was wondering
Speaker 1: what listeners thought, whether they saw nuclear power as something
Speaker 1: that was good or bad for the environment. As usual,
Speaker 1: it's not possible to boil down a super complex topic
Speaker 1: into five second sound bites, but that's what I asked
Speaker 1: our listeners to do and they stepped up.
Speaker 3: So yes, nuclear power is environmentally responsible, at least until
Speaker 3: we get cold fusion.
Speaker 4: Well, some people might think it is better for the
Speaker 4: environment than fossil fuels, it is still not really good
Speaker 4: for the environment do.
Speaker 2: Things like coal. Nuclear power is better for the environment.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say good on the whole, Avoiding the CO
Speaker 3: two release is worth it.
Speaker 1: Nuclear power is amazing for the environment until three Mile
Speaker 1: Island Chernobyl Fukushima. Nuclear power on average is going to
Speaker 1: be a lot better for the environment than fossil fuels.
Speaker 5: The mining and extraction of nuclear fissile materials are actually
Speaker 5: what concerned me the most, especially given how much processing.
Speaker 5: But compared to the immediate damage from petroleum based fuels,
Speaker 5: I would always lean towards nuclear. I think it's one
Speaker 5: of the better alternatives.
Speaker 3: I think that's worth it in order to cut down
Speaker 3: on the amount of carbon roopremium to our environment.
Speaker 4: Nuclear power plants are not good for the environment. They
Speaker 4: have contaminated or grand water. They have contaminated our land.
Speaker 4: It will continue that way for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 4: Would you put your farm on a piece of land
Speaker 4: before the nuclear actor was there or after the nuclear
Speaker 4: reactor was there.
Speaker 3: There is no better way to produce enormous amounts of
Speaker 3: electricity without carbon emissions or other toxic pollutants than nuclear power.
Speaker 1: I say no because of the radiactive waste product that
Speaker 1: has to be stored somewhere, and it's usually in the ground,
Speaker 1: and a thought of nuclear meltdowns that would affect our air,
Speaker 1: water and everything else.
Speaker 6: As long as they're well designed and the waste materials
Speaker 6: are properly handled.
Speaker 1: But I think we need to push for fusion on net.
Speaker 5: I think it's good because current reductions and emissions will
Speaker 5: pay dividends in the future, whereas problems like nuclear waste
Speaker 5: can probably.
Speaker 2: Be solved until we can find a way to convert
Speaker 2: or reuse spent nuclear fuel. I would say that the
Speaker 2: overall answer is null. I think if something goes wrong,
Speaker 2: then it can be really bad for a long long time.
Speaker 2: We should all be choosing nuclear power and believing in science.
Speaker 6: If it can be properly managed, the benefits are greater
Speaker 6: than the loss. There's no such thing as clean oil,
Speaker 6: So yeah, I'd say let's go in nuclear power.
Speaker 2: One of these days. I think we should have a
Speaker 2: discussion about cold fusion, because I see it mentioned a lot,
Speaker 2: and I'm under the impression that it is a bit silly,
Speaker 2: but I would love to hear you give me all
Speaker 2: the science behind it. But this was a really nice
Speaker 2: set of answers that covered, you know, the risks and
Speaker 2: the promises of nuclear way to go dKu folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you hear a lot of folks saying
Speaker 1: that obviously it's not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives,
Speaker 1: and some people still being scared of it. So I
Speaker 1: think that really nicely sets the stage for our conversation
Speaker 1: with Becca about whether we should be excited or scared
Speaker 1: of nuclear power or both.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in, all right.
Speaker 1: So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast. Becca
Speaker 1: too Hoo's de brow. She's a journalist based in southern California,
Speaker 1: and her articles have appeared in the llus Chase, places
Speaker 1: like The New Yorker, The New York Review, of books,
Speaker 1: The Nation, and The Washington Post. She's also my neighbor
Speaker 1: here in Ervine and a friend, so I'm very glad
Speaker 1: to have her on the podcast. Beca Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: We're so excited to have you on the show. I
Speaker 2: absolutely loved Atomic Dreams. It was really well written, really informative.
Speaker 2: I laughed out loud a couple of times. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I think we should start by discussing a bit the
Speaker 2: history of the anti nuclear movement. Is that sort of
Speaker 2: just how the general public felt about nuclear power from
Speaker 2: the beginning, or was it in response to some particular event?
Speaker 6: Great question.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think we might tend to assume that the public
Speaker 6: was always primed to lean anti nuclear because it was
Speaker 6: always associated with the atomic bomb, but that's actually not
Speaker 6: the case. It was more complicated. So of course, the
Speaker 6: first time the public learned about atomic science in general
Speaker 6: was after the atomic bomb were dropped on Hairishima and
Speaker 6: Nagasaki and forty five, and that led to a lot
Speaker 6: of fear and horror and disorientation. But the prospect of
Speaker 6: civilian nuclear plants that was actually presented as almost redeeming
Speaker 6: the destruction of the bomb. It was like, this is
Speaker 6: clearly an incredibly promising new area of science, and what
Speaker 6: can we do to use it for beneficial purposes rather
Speaker 6: than destructive purposes? And among conservationists that's what environmentalists were
Speaker 6: called at the time, in the fifties and early sixties,
Speaker 6: they actually were particularly receptive to nuclear power, at least
Speaker 6: a lot of them were, largely because it promised an
Speaker 6: alternative to dams, which may be surprising because now, I
Speaker 6: think dam's hydro, you know, seems relatively innocuous to us.
Speaker 6: It seems like one of the more preferable forms of
Speaker 6: energy generation. But at the time, when conservationists were really
Speaker 6: focused on preserving natural landscapes, wilderness scenery, dams were anathema,
Speaker 6: and so nuclear power seemed to present the opportunity to
Speaker 6: generate electricity in a different way. So, yeah, at the beginning,
Speaker 6: attitudes were actually generally more favorable.
Speaker 2: When did we start worrying about carbon and climate change?
Speaker 6: So there were a few isolated scientists who sort of
Speaker 6: realized what the effects of carbon dioxide might be pretty early,
Speaker 6: going back to I think even the eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 6: in the sixties, it started to be known among some
Speaker 6: scientists and government, but in general it wasn't an issue
Speaker 6: back then. The public wasn't generally aware of the risk
Speaker 6: of climate change until the late eighties.
Speaker 1: So nuclear power was good before it as bad. It's
Speaker 1: good again, Yeah, going things wich side.
Speaker 6: To simplify it. Yes, so it was considered good by
Speaker 6: a lot of people, but there were concerns that started
Speaker 6: to emerge. There was the fallout controversy in the early
Speaker 6: fifties when Americans learned that because of nuclear atmospheric weapons testing,
Speaker 6: radioactive debris was basically getting spewed through the air and
Speaker 6: getting into the food system and getting into our teeth
Speaker 6: and bones, which obviously is a really disturbing idea, and
Speaker 6: I think that did raise concerns about radiation and nuclear
Speaker 6: power plants also commit radiation low levels. Workers and the
Speaker 6: public can be exposed to quite low levels during routine operations.
Speaker 6: And then there's the creation of highly radioactive waste, which
Speaker 6: is something else I'm sure we'll talk about. And then
Speaker 6: there's also the risk of accidents which can be catastrophic
Speaker 6: and expose people to higher levels of radiation. So I
Speaker 6: think during the sixties there were a few sort of
Speaker 6: dissident scientists who started to raise the alarm about some
Speaker 6: of this. And there were two scientists in particular, John
Speaker 6: Goffman and Arthur Tamplin, who in nineteen sixty three were
Speaker 6: asked by the Atomic Energy Commission. That was the agency,
Speaker 6: the entity that was responsible for kind of overseeing both
Speaker 6: weapons and civilian uses of nuclear power. And that agency
Speaker 6: doesn't exist anymore, but at the time they asked these
Speaker 6: two very well respected scientists to basically look into the
Speaker 6: risks of power plants, nuclear power plants, and they did,
Speaker 6: and they basically said, actually, this is super dangerous, this
Speaker 6: is much more dangerous than you've been telling the public.
Speaker 6: And they wrote a book that AEC tried to suppress
Speaker 6: or findings, but they went public and they were basically
Speaker 6: these courageous scientists who didn't really seem to have any
Speaker 6: interest other than texting public health. And they wrote a
Speaker 6: book published in nineteen seventy one called Poisoned Power, The
Speaker 6: Case against Nuclear Power Plants, and that was very influential.
Speaker 1: Wow, so it only took like fifteen twenty years for
Speaker 1: the shine to come off of nuclear energy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not young enough to remember this obviously, but I
Speaker 1: have a sense that nuclear energy and of course nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: are connected to this feeling of like a modern era,
Speaker 1: the atomic age. Yeah, and we're entering a time when
Speaker 1: science and technology are going to transform the way we
Speaker 1: live and like yay frozen meals and microwave ovens and
Speaker 1: you know, all this cool stuff, and we're excited about
Speaker 1: the future. And so that must be something like a
Speaker 1: big letdown socially or culturally to feel like, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: maybe we're poisoning ourselves and science has overstepped you know,
Speaker 1: how long does it take to go from that book
Speaker 1: you mentioned to like the nineties where The Simpsons, for example,
Speaker 1: portray nuclear powers is like insanely dangerous, staffed by idiots,
Speaker 1: you know, three eyed fish in the river. You know.
Speaker 1: To me, the Simpsons is like a measure of the
Speaker 1: average Joe's sense of what nuclear power can do. What
Speaker 1: happened between the publication of that book and then like
Speaker 1: the late nineties to give nuclear power this like pretty
Speaker 1: terrible pr status.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 6: Think you mentioned the sort of excitement about modern life.
Speaker 6: I think that started to sour for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 6: and the counter culture in the sixties a big part
Speaker 6: of that was, of course, you know, questioning authority and
Speaker 6: just basically being against the system and the man and
Speaker 6: going back to the lands and small was beautiful, and
Speaker 6: starting to question nuclear power, which was sort of the
Speaker 6: quintessential sort of establishment technology, and it was complex and
Speaker 6: it was hard to understand, and it wasn't something that
Speaker 6: you could sort of be individually empowered to do, you know,
Speaker 6: to make your own like on your commune, like you
Speaker 6: could with a solar panel.
Speaker 1: I mean, the professor made a nuclear reactor, which is
Speaker 1: a couple of coconuts on the island. And isn't that true? Right?
Speaker 2: Was that Gilligans?
Speaker 1: That's Gigan's Island reference. Yes, man, I found something really
Speaker 1: fascinating in your book which is sort of echoes of
Speaker 1: what we're seeing today with like skepticism about science and
Speaker 1: the scientific establishment. Is this quote from your book that
Speaker 1: really struck me. It said the nuclear industry had been
Speaker 1: aggressively promoted and massively subsidized by the government, and in
Speaker 1: its early years, those working in nuclear science had acquired
Speaker 1: a reputation for secrecy and condescension. So basically, those smug
Speaker 1: nuclear scientists thought they knew how to organize our world,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't really thought it through. Is that the
Speaker 1: sense we had already like back in the seventies.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And what's super interesting I think is that a
Speaker 6: lot of that skepticism was on the political left back then,
Speaker 6: and now we see it more on the right. So
Speaker 6: that has a lot of implications. But you know, the
Speaker 6: politics of nuclear power in general tend to be quite
Speaker 6: complex and not as straightforward as you might think. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I think one thing that happened was that nuclear power
Speaker 6: it sort of became a symbol of everything that was
Speaker 6: wrong with modern society. So there were all of these
Speaker 6: different segments of the anti nuclear movement that agreed that
Speaker 6: nuclear power was terrible, but they had sort of different
Speaker 6: angles on it. There was like a feminist aspect. There
Speaker 6: were some feminist groups that sort of saw it as
Speaker 6: this very masculine, dominating impulse, you know, and there were
Speaker 6: anti war groups that basically saw nuclear power and nuclear
Speaker 6: weapons as part of the same monster. And Ralph Nader
Speaker 6: was a big anti nuclear advocate. He was, you know,
Speaker 6: a consumer, a health advocate, and at the time, it
Speaker 6: just seemed like this symbol of a society gone wrong.
Speaker 2: So let me know, if this question is too far Afield,
Speaker 2: because I don't think you dealt with it in the book.
Speaker 2: But I have this vague memory of Project Plowshares, where
Speaker 2: scientists were using nuclear weapons to bomb harbors into existence,
Speaker 2: and I wonder if part of the condescension, as I
Speaker 2: remember there being like local communities saying no, we don't
Speaker 2: want this, and a scientist being like, it's cool. Yoh.
Speaker 2: And so I'm wondering to what extent did things like
Speaker 2: Project Plowshares play into this sense that scientists are secretive
Speaker 2: and condescending about nuclear power and its promises.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I note that there were plans and that some
Speaker 6: scientists thought this was a great idea to use basically
Speaker 6: bombs for peaceful purposes. I don't know to what extent
Speaker 6: that actually happened, but yeah, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 6: very easy to relate to this sense of indignation and
Speaker 6: anger that people felt. I mean, even just from fallout
Speaker 6: for example, just you know, the idea that this radioactive
Speaker 6: material that had never existed in nature before was now
Speaker 6: drifting through the air and getting into our bodies and
Speaker 6: that's like a real invasion and it's not as salient
Speaker 6: for us now. But we think more about microplastics, and
Speaker 6: there are a lot of other sort of contaminants now
Speaker 6: that we're aware of, but I think at the time
Speaker 6: it was pretty shocking to people and kind of filled
Speaker 6: them with this sense of dread and that like, what
Speaker 6: are we doing to our world?
Speaker 1: I've heard sort of a pop history accounting that Hollywood
Speaker 1: is also to blame. You know, this movie that China
Speaker 1: Syndrome came out like just before the Three Mile Island
Speaker 1: disaster and sort of preparing the public, priming them to
Speaker 1: think that nuclear power is out of control and probably
Speaker 1: going to kill you and make your children have twelve
Speaker 1: fingers and stuff like this. Is that over sold or
Speaker 1: is that really a big part of the story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good question, because when I finally did
Speaker 6: watch that movie, I was like, this actually is pretty tame.
Speaker 6: Like there isn't even a major disaster that happens. It's
Speaker 6: just set largely at this fictional nuclear plant in California,
Speaker 6: and there's sort of an incident where there's some shaking,
Speaker 6: but it's not anything that dramatic, and the message is like, yes,
Speaker 6: nuclear power is a little sketchy. There were some people
Speaker 6: at the plants who were trying to cover up safety
Speaker 6: issues and you can't really trust them. It wasn't nearly
Speaker 6: as just dramatic as I was expecting. That said, it
Speaker 6: was this major Hollywood movie that came out just two
Speaker 6: weeks before the accident at Three Mile Island, so I'm
Speaker 6: sure it did have some effect.
Speaker 2: Do you tell us a bit more about the Three
Speaker 2: Mile Island incident and how big of a deal that
Speaker 2: was and when it happened.
Speaker 6: That was in March of nineteen seventy nine, and there
Speaker 6: was a partial meltdown at one of the two reactors
Speaker 6: at this plant in Pennsylvania, and it was really scary
Speaker 6: because it wasn't even clear to the authorities quite what
Speaker 6: was going on, and so there were these sort of
Speaker 6: inconsistent messages to the public, and eventually well over one
Speaker 6: hundred thousand people ended up evacuating, and in the end,
Speaker 6: a very small amount of radiation escaped. There are definitely
Speaker 6: people who say that it was more than the authorities claimed,
Speaker 6: but basically, from what I can tell, it seems like
Speaker 6: disaster was averted. And there have been epzemiological studies that
Speaker 6: have mostly not found any public health effects other than
Speaker 6: the public health effects of nuclear accidents actually tend to
Speaker 6: be largely psychological effects. It's extremely stressful, and it's tricky
Speaker 6: to talk about because that makes it sound like it's
Speaker 6: all in your head. Don't worry about it. That is
Speaker 6: what a lot of pro nuclear advocates believe that the
Speaker 6: dangers of radiation have been really exaggerated, And we do
Speaker 6: a disservice to people when we exaggerate the dangers and
Speaker 6: cause people to live in fear about exposure they might
Speaker 6: have experienced, even if that exposure is unlikely to lead
Speaker 6: to physical health effects. So radiation science is very contentious still,
Speaker 6: and I didn't come out of all my research with
Speaker 6: a strong opinion one way or the other. But I
Speaker 6: did come to understand the way that advocates on both
Speaker 6: sides see it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fascinating how you track sort
Speaker 1: of the progression of the discussion inside the Sierra Club,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the nation's pre eminent conservations
Speaker 1: or environmentalist movements. Can you give us a snapshot of
Speaker 1: what those arguments were. Why was this air club against
Speaker 1: nuclear power? What were they arguing about?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, initially a lot of them were for it
Speaker 6: for the reasons I mentioned earlier that it could be
Speaker 6: an alternative to Damns essentially, And David Brower was the
Speaker 6: leader of the Sierra Club starting in late nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 6: He was the first paid executive director and the Sierra Club,
Speaker 6: he was the pre eminent conservation group in the country,
Speaker 6: and it was at the time still a relatively small
Speaker 6: California based organization, and they were mainly focused on outings
Speaker 6: and rock climbing and these ten day camping trips in
Speaker 6: the Sierra Nevada.
Speaker 1: Sounds awesome, yeah.
Speaker 6: But they were sort of forced to become more political,
Speaker 6: I guess in the fifties because of all of these
Speaker 6: changes in the country population growth, economic growth, which led
Speaker 6: to lots of plans for logging and development that would
Speaker 6: encroach on the wilderness they loved so much. And dam
Speaker 6: was of course, and David Brower was just this incredibly passionate,
Speaker 6: eloquent defender of wilderness and he really was kind of
Speaker 6: monomoniacal about it when he was fighting specific dams, like
Speaker 6: one that was proposed for the Grand Canyon. They defeated
Speaker 6: that plan, but he said, well, instead of this dam,
Speaker 6: why don't we build a nuclear power plant instead? Yeah,
Speaker 6: which is really interesting. But over time some members of
Speaker 6: the club really turned against nuclear and some remained relatively favorable.
Speaker 6: One of the latter was a guy named William Siri,
Speaker 6: who was actually a nuclear physicist himself, I believe, and
Speaker 6: he had worked on Manhattan Project. And he has a
Speaker 6: really striking quote that I came across in the archives,
Speaker 6: a little bit related to what we were just saying
Speaker 6: about nuclear accidents. He said, you know, I think eventually
Speaker 6: we will have nuclear accidents, but we'll kind of get
Speaker 6: used to it, and eventually we'll just see on the news, Oh,
Speaker 6: there was a nuclear accident, and then we'll just go
Speaker 6: back to watching baseball or whatever.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: So that gives you a sense of, yeah, the range
Speaker 6: of use. But David Brower eventually became very anti nuclear,
Speaker 6: and that was partly because he learned more about the
Speaker 6: risks at every stage of the fuel cycle, from mining
Speaker 6: to waste disposal. Also, he had a very classic environmentalist worldview.
Speaker 6: He wanted to limit our use of resources. He wanted
Speaker 6: to limit growth, limit population growth. You know, it's a
Speaker 6: very sixties and seventies era view. But he saw nuclear
Speaker 6: power as kind of wrapped up in this ethos of
Speaker 6: endless growth. So he didn't think it was a good
Speaker 6: thing to have virtually unlimited energy, because it would just
Speaker 6: kind of feed into all our other sort of desires
Speaker 6: for expansion and end up wreaking habit on the planet.
Speaker 1: All right, So we've heard about the origins of nuclear power,
Speaker 1: how it was very exciting initially for the public to
Speaker 1: think about limitless nuclear power in our modern age, and
Speaker 1: how very quickly the shine came off of it, and
Speaker 1: environmentalists went from being in favor of nuclear power to
Speaker 1: being again nuclear power because of all of its dangers.
Speaker 1: And we're going to take a break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to hear about how some environmentalists
Speaker 1: are now pro nuclear again.
Speaker 2: All right, and we're back. We were talking about the
Speaker 2: rise of the anti nuclear movement, but then at some
Speaker 2: point the pro nuclear movement sort of came back with
Speaker 2: a vengeance. What drove the growth of the more recent
Speaker 2: pro nuclear environmental movement.
Speaker 6: In a word or two words, climate change. I think
Speaker 6: that was the biggest factor because as that came to
Speaker 6: really take precedence on the environmentalist agenda, one feature of
Speaker 6: nuclear that had been kind of overlooked before was that
Speaker 6: it doesn't generate greenhouse g aids directly, a caveat is
Speaker 6: that all energy sources, there's some greenhouse gas emission in
Speaker 6: the whole life cycle, but if you look at you know,
Speaker 6: mining and waste disposal, but nuclear power is a low
Speaker 6: carbon energy like solar, like wind, like hydro, so that
Speaker 6: became much more salient when we started to be really
Speaker 6: worried about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Speaker 2: We've talked about how the anti nuclear movement is concerned about,
Speaker 2: you know, human health effects, what to do with the
Speaker 2: waste the creation of nuclear weapons. Yeah, what are the
Speaker 2: counter arguments that the pro nuclear community uses. Maybe let's
Speaker 2: just pick one of them to start with. So the waste,
Speaker 2: what are the counter arguments to the problems associated with waste?
Speaker 6: The pro nuclear view of waste is really counterintuitive. They
Speaker 6: will actually say nuclear waste is the best kind of waste,
Speaker 6: and they and the reasons are one. It's really small
Speaker 6: volume that's generated, and that's because nuclear is very dense,
Speaker 6: like the uranium is extremely energy dense, which is a
Speaker 6: really important thing to keep in mind. That relates to
Speaker 6: a bunch of different arguments for nuclear But that also
Speaker 6: means that the volume of waste is very small, even
Speaker 6: though it's also highly radioactive.
Speaker 1: Do you know what kind of volumes we're talking about?
Speaker 1: Should people be imagining like, you know, I can fit
Speaker 1: all of it in my pocket, or it's like a
Speaker 1: swimming pool, or it's like the Grand Canyon, small in
Speaker 1: the scale.
Speaker 6: So one image that you hear a lot is basically
Speaker 6: that if we consolidated all of the nuclear waste that
Speaker 6: has ever been generated from civilian plants in this country,
Speaker 6: it would all fit in a football field.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: You would have to stack it to some degree. But yeah,
Speaker 6: and I feel like I should say I don't know
Speaker 6: if I can completely vouch for that, but that is
Speaker 6: something that you will hear a lot if you talk
Speaker 6: to pro nuclear advocates. I think it's basically accurate. And
Speaker 6: another comparison I've heard something like if all of the
Speaker 6: waste that generated from the electricity that like you, as
Speaker 6: an individual would use throughout your lifetime would fit in
Speaker 6: a coke cam is another image that I've heard.
Speaker 1: Wow, so individuals really could carry around with them all
Speaker 1: of the nuclear waste that they personally generated. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: don't we just do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Don't drink that coke cam, though.
Speaker 1: I think that is important for people to realize because
Speaker 1: they imagine this problem of nuclear waste and long term
Speaker 1: storage specifically. I know is still an open question, but
Speaker 1: it's important to think about, like how much we're actually
Speaker 1: talking about you do not need to store like the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon filled with waste, or the amount of waste
Speaker 1: produced by other sources of fuel, for example. So it
Speaker 1: really is quite small, which changes the kind of technologies
Speaker 1: we need to think about in the places we need
Speaker 1: to think about for storing.
Speaker 6: It, right, Yeah, and in terms of storing it, so
Speaker 6: we do not have a permanent underground repository for storing it.
Speaker 6: We did have a plan to store it at Yucca Mountain,
Speaker 6: but that plan fell apart. The Obama administration basically killed
Speaker 6: that plan.
Speaker 1: Why what happened to yucka Mountain? I was talking to
Speaker 1: my kids about this book, and they were like, what
Speaker 1: happened to that plan? Why don't we just store it underground?
Speaker 6: So I would say the biggest reason is that the
Speaker 6: plan was imposed on Nevada and they didn't have any
Speaker 6: say in the matter, and they were very resistant. It
Speaker 6: became known as the screw Nevada Bill, and that's why
Speaker 6: I had a great name.
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing at that. That's not funny. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: to screen na No, but I guess the idea is
Speaker 1: find the place with like a lot of land and
Speaker 1: fewer votes in Congress. Yeah, that was the plan basically, right.
Speaker 6: And what's his name, Harry read Harry Reid. Yeah, it
Speaker 6: was this very powerful, long serving center and he was
Speaker 6: an ally of Obama's and it was basically seen as
Speaker 6: a favor to him to kill this project. And there
Speaker 6: were I think debates about how suitable the site actually was,
Speaker 6: but I would say the fundamental reason was they hadn't
Speaker 6: really consulted Nevada. And now the buzzword is consent based sighting,
Speaker 6: So getting the buy in of whatever community and state
Speaker 6: you want to place the repository in. But that of
Speaker 6: course is challenging.
Speaker 1: Yeh, who's going to say yes to that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Would you'd be surprised? There have been communities that do
Speaker 6: say yes or that actually are interested if the deal
Speaker 6: is right, but often states step in and block it
Speaker 6: because it's sort of seen as stigmatized.
Speaker 2: So the Yunga Mountain plan fell through, But that doesn't
Speaker 2: make the waste disappear. So where is the waste? Right now?
Speaker 6: It is being stored securely at sites around the country
Speaker 6: about eighty different sites, mostly retired and operational nuclear plant sites.
Speaker 6: So when it comes out of the reactor, it's first
Speaker 6: stored in cooling pools for several years, and then it's
Speaker 6: moved to what's called dry cask storage, so it's in
Speaker 6: these steel casks and then within these concrete enclosures that
Speaker 6: blocks radiation from escaping. So basically it hasn't even though
Speaker 6: we fear it so much, and it is really dangerous,
Speaker 6: Like if you were in the same room as nuclear
Speaker 6: waste straight out of the reactor, you would get a
Speaker 6: lethal dose of radiation very quickly, so it's not like
Speaker 6: our fear that is irrational, but precisely because it's so hazardous,
Speaker 6: we've developed these systems to store it very securely, and
Speaker 6: it really, as far as I can tell, like there
Speaker 6: are no documented cases of you know, deaths or harm
Speaker 6: associated with it, which is really astonishing actually when you
Speaker 6: think about it in contrast to other forms of waste
Speaker 6: and all the harms they cause because we don't treat
Speaker 6: them in the same way, but especially obviously fossil fuel
Speaker 6: waste emissions pollution, which causes millions of depths from air
Speaker 6: pollution every year and climate change, So that I think
Speaker 6: is one very interesting way of looking at the comparison
Speaker 6: of different kinds of waste.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're storing the waste on site basically where
Speaker 1: we're making it, which also limits the transport. Right, you're
Speaker 1: not putting in the truck driving across the country. Just
Speaker 1: has to go like across the plant. And it's not
Speaker 1: high volume, so you have space. It's not like you're
Speaker 1: creating a fast new facility. Why don't we just keep
Speaker 1: it there forever? Why ever drive it around? What's unsuitable
Speaker 1: about storing it on site?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think there is an argument that it's actually
Speaker 6: okay as it is. But another argument is, you know,
Speaker 6: these communities where it's stored didn't sign up for that.
Speaker 6: The federal government does legally have the responsibility to deal
Speaker 6: with it and to bury it in the repository, and
Speaker 6: over time, the casks therein don't last forever. And there's
Speaker 6: also the question of reprocessing or recycling waste, which is
Speaker 6: rather complicated and I don't know if we want to
Speaker 6: get into that now, but that is another possibility, but
Speaker 6: it's very controversial.
Speaker 1: Another argument I've heard for why nuclear waste is the
Speaker 1: best kind of waste is that it does decay a
Speaker 1: way over time. Yeah, we're used to thinking that as
Speaker 1: a negative, like, oh my god, it takes a thousand
Speaker 1: years before this becomes not dangerous. But the toxins produced
Speaker 1: by coal and whatever are literally forever right, like infinitely deadly,
Speaker 1: and so it's actually a benefit that after five thousand
Speaker 1: years or something, this is no longer dangerous. It's amazing
Speaker 1: to me how much of this is political or how
Speaker 1: much of this is like how you sell it, you know,
Speaker 1: how much of this depends on your perspective. I was
Speaker 1: struck by this quote in your book by Lovelock, who
Speaker 1: said that opposition and nuclear energy is based on irrational fear,
Speaker 1: fed by Hollywood style fiction, the green lobbies, and the media.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like that's fair? Do you feel like
Speaker 1: we have a balanced view of these dangers or that
Speaker 1: we've been sold a bill by the environmental movement against
Speaker 1: nuclear waste and we don't see it clearly.
Speaker 6: I don't think the fear is irrational exactly. I think
Speaker 6: it's understandable. I do think it tends to be more
Speaker 6: visceral than I think of this a lot, because we see, unfortunately,
Speaker 6: so many disasters these days, and the Los Angeles fires
Speaker 6: that happened just a couple months ago, there were not
Speaker 6: only the absolutely devastating effects people lost their homes and
Speaker 6: people died, but the toxins in the air from all
Speaker 6: of the plastic and all of this other material that burned.
Speaker 6: I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone knows right
Speaker 6: now what the long term public health effects will be.
Speaker 6: I know there's at least one study ongoing it's going
Speaker 6: to look at that. But I do think even though
Speaker 6: we know there are these toxins that have gotten into
Speaker 6: the air and into the soil, nobody would ever suggest
Speaker 6: evacuating la because of that. And you know, there are
Speaker 6: arguments about whether evacuations are warranted in the aftermath of
Speaker 6: nuclear accidents. I just think that we do have a
Speaker 6: more visceral reaction to you know, a nuclear accident like
Speaker 6: radiation than to other toxins, even though it's not always
Speaker 6: clear that the other toxins are less of a threat
Speaker 6: to public health.
Speaker 2: So there's Three Mile Island, there's Chernobyl Fukushima. Is there
Speaker 2: an estimate for how many lives have been lost due
Speaker 2: to all the nuclear accidents that have happened so far
Speaker 2: that could be like compared to estimates for coal powered
Speaker 2: power plants, for example.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the official estimates are very low. So for a
Speaker 6: three mile islands zero for Chernobyl, there's a range, but
Speaker 6: the high end of the range from the sort of
Speaker 6: official sources like the WHO, is in the thousands that
Speaker 6: people might eventually die of cancers that could have been
Speaker 6: related to the accident.
Speaker 1: Do do like the cloud of radioactivity that drifted over Europe.
Speaker 6: So the WHO estimated that four thousand people at least
Speaker 6: in the most affected areas could eventually die of cancers
Speaker 6: that were related to exposure. Some people think that estimate
Speaker 6: is actually much too high, and some think it's much
Speaker 6: too low, But the estimate of people who actually have
Speaker 6: died so far as a result of Chernobyl is several
Speaker 6: hundred and Fukushima there was one worker who died of
Speaker 6: lung cancer in twenty eighteen, and that may or may
Speaker 6: not have been a direct result of the accident, but
Speaker 6: according to the official count that there were no other
Speaker 6: desks that were related to radiation exposure. There were a
Speaker 6: couple of thousand deaths related to the evacuation, and there
Speaker 6: are debates over whether the evacuation should have happened and
Speaker 6: should have happened in the way it did. A lot
Speaker 6: of the people who died were elderly people living in hospitals,
Speaker 6: who are hospitalized or living in nursing homes, so sort
Speaker 6: of a hasty evacuation to unsuitable sites. It was just
Speaker 6: a terrible situation. Again, I'm not as confident as some
Speaker 6: people that we can know exactly how many people died
Speaker 6: or had adverse health effects as a result of this
Speaker 6: dispersal of radiation. And you know, something you hear from
Speaker 6: anti nuclear advocates or scientists is like, just because we
Speaker 6: can't measure it for sure, doesn't mean there weren't effects.
Speaker 6: Like a lot of things can increase the risk of cancer,
Speaker 6: and cancer is very common, so it can be really
Speaker 6: hard to tell for sure. But the official numbers are
Speaker 6: actually shockingly low. A lot of people hear those numbers,
Speaker 6: they're very surprised in your heart to believe.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a break and when we get back,
Speaker 2: we'll talk a little bit more about the groups that
Speaker 2: are advocating for nuclear power. All right, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting groups that you talked about
Speaker 2: in the book is Mom's for Nuclear And actually can't
Speaker 2: remember if this example was a person from Mom's for Nuclear,
Speaker 2: but you talked about a woman who was pregnant and
Speaker 2: it pressed her belly up against one of the waste casks,
Speaker 2: which I can't say I would do myself, but it
Speaker 2: was an interesting way to prove how committed she was.
Speaker 2: But can you tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 2: Mom's for Nuclear group?
Speaker 6: Yeah, technically Mother's for Nuclear is the name, and yeah,
Speaker 6: that young woman who pressed her baby bump against a
Speaker 6: waste caasp was not part of that group. But the
Speaker 6: pro nuclear community scene is very small and kind of incestuous,
Speaker 6: and everyone knows each other, so she definitely knows them.
Speaker 6: But yeah, Mothers for Nuclear was founded on Earth Day
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen by two women who both worked and still
Speaker 6: work at Diablo Canyon Power Plants, which is the last
Speaker 6: nuclear plant that's operating in California. It's on the Central
Speaker 6: coast and it's kind of the through line. The narrative
Speaker 6: arc of my book follows the story of that particular plant,
Speaker 6: and Heather Hoff and Kristen Zates they were the founders.
Speaker 6: They both were sort of very classic environmentalist, tree hugger types.
Speaker 6: Heather grew up in a trailer in Arizona and would
Speaker 6: i'm clamberon rocks near the trailer, and her dad would
Speaker 6: sprinkle her and her sister with a watering can instead
Speaker 6: of showering, and she was always just very acutely aware
Speaker 6: of resource use. And she kind of ended up working
Speaker 6: at Diablo Canyon by accident because she was looking for
Speaker 6: a good job and it was basically the main option
Speaker 6: that she was aware of in San Luisibispo, where she
Speaker 6: was living at the time after college, and she thought,
Speaker 6: if nothing else, she'd be a spy. He kind of
Speaker 6: like the Aaron Brokovich of nuclear energy, and Kristen Zeits
Speaker 6: had a pretty similar background. She grew up in California
Speaker 6: and she would go camping and sleep under the stars,
Speaker 6: and she was really into breastfeeding and very kind of
Speaker 6: crunchy type, and basically would expect them to be anti nuclear.
Speaker 6: Everything else in their biography would have led them to
Speaker 6: be anti nuclear, and they were, I mean, they weren't
Speaker 6: anti nuclear activists, but they were definitely very skeptical of
Speaker 6: nuclear power. But both ended up working at Diablo Canyon
Speaker 6: in Kristen's case, she was a civil engineer and got
Speaker 6: an internship there, even though like whether she's kind of
Speaker 6: dubious about it, but she was like, well, I'll just
Speaker 6: do this internship to learn about civil engineering and then
Speaker 6: I'll leave and do something else. But they both ended
Speaker 6: up staying and learning more about it and basically becoming
Speaker 6: really true believers, really passionate supporters of nuclear because they
Speaker 6: decided that it was actually consistent with their environmentalist values.
Speaker 1: And is that because they understood the greenhouse gas situation
Speaker 1: or because they changed their views on the dangers and
Speaker 1: the waste, you know, from like the simpsons three Mile
Speaker 1: Island view to more sort of balanced, nuanced understanding of
Speaker 1: the risks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'd say both. They were both very concerned about
Speaker 6: climate and learns that this was a low carbon energy
Speaker 6: source and that it had because of its density, it
Speaker 6: had a very small footprint. So we haven't really talked about,
Speaker 6: you know, what its advantages might be over renewables. But
Speaker 6: whereas renewables like wind and solar, they're just not as
Speaker 6: energy dens so you just need more of them and
Speaker 6: you need more space to generate the same amount of energy,
Speaker 6: and so for them because they really loved like hiking
Speaker 6: and camping, and so they thought that, you know, the
Speaker 6: energy density was a big virtue for them, and they
Speaker 6: also started to think that the risks had been overstated.
Speaker 1: If we can dig into that for a minute. I
Speaker 1: know that there's a debate in the environmental community about
Speaker 1: whether we need something beyond renewables like our wind and
Speaker 1: solar enough. And some people, as you say in the book,
Speaker 1: like Friends of the Earth, the vision for the California's
Speaker 1: future is both nuclear free and fossil free, just like
Speaker 1: wind and solar. But then I talked to folks like
Speaker 1: Steve Davis, who a friend of both of ours, is
Speaker 1: a professor of Earth system science, and he says that
Speaker 1: it's totally impractical to have just wind and solar because
Speaker 1: they don't run all the time. Right. If you don't
Speaker 1: have wind, and if you don't have sun, and batteries
Speaker 1: are just not practical. He told me once. It's possible
Speaker 1: to do it, but it's ridiculously expensive. And the best
Speaker 1: case scenario is like eighty ninety percent renewables with some
Speaker 1: baseline from something you can turn off and on quickly
Speaker 1: to provide power when you don't otherwise have it is
Speaker 1: that the crux of the debate within the environmental community.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there are people who think that we can do
Speaker 6: it all with renewables. There are people who think we can't.
Speaker 6: Then there are also people who think maybe we technically can,
Speaker 6: but because of some of these issues I've mentioned about
Speaker 6: land use, and in terms of batteries, batteries are a
Speaker 6: really interesting part of the debate because yes, there's actually
Speaker 6: been incredible progress with battery technology recently, and batteries have
Speaker 6: been really spreading just in the past year or two
Speaker 6: and doing a lot more work of backing up renewables.
Speaker 6: There's still lenges I think with longer term storage more
Speaker 6: than a few hours, and so that is a real challenge.
Speaker 6: There's also, though, environmental issues with all of these technologies
Speaker 6: mining lithium for batteries. And there was actually a fire
Speaker 6: recently that you may have heard about, I think in
Speaker 6: central California, actually not far from Diablo Canyon. There was
Speaker 6: this kind of devastating fire and apparently when all these
Speaker 6: batteries pop fire and you don't put it out, I
Speaker 6: guess there's no way to put it out. You just
Speaker 6: have to let it run its course. And so all
Speaker 6: these toxins were released and similar to the fires in
Speaker 6: il it, you know, all these toxins in the air
Speaker 6: and in the soil. So I guess I just learned
Speaker 6: more that these technologies that environmentalists like me, you know,
Speaker 6: tend to like and just think sound more sort of
Speaker 6: natural and gentle. And it's not just sun, and it's
Speaker 6: not just wind. It's material infrastructure, and they all have
Speaker 6: their issues and their environmental issues. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 6: range of views, of course on the ideal portfolio. And
Speaker 6: also I should add that technology is advancing all the time,
Speaker 6: although of course we haven't talked about how dramatically this
Speaker 6: whole landscape has changed just recently because of the Trump administration.
Speaker 6: It's been actually really shocking, and you know, all this
Speaker 6: progress that was occurring has now really stalled. At least
Speaker 6: some renewables. There's actually bipartisan agreement to some extent on nuclear,
Speaker 6: which is something else we can talk about. But anyway,
Speaker 6: I would just say there's always progress that can happen,
Speaker 6: and there may be more progress with batteries and renewables.
Speaker 6: But I guess I came to think that nuclear because
Speaker 6: of its energy density and because it is what they
Speaker 6: call clean firm power. It's not variable or intermittent like
Speaker 6: wind and solar. It doesn't depend on weather conditions. That
Speaker 6: it kind of makes sense to have that as part
Speaker 6: of the mix and have these different energy forms that
Speaker 6: have different pluses and minuses.
Speaker 2: It'd be very interesting digging into the more recent political climate.
Speaker 2: So you know, the book does an amazing job of
Speaker 2: sort of tracking how opinions have changed over time and
Speaker 2: how political interest in this topic has changed over time.
Speaker 2: What has changed since the beginning of this year when
Speaker 2: the Trump administration took over.
Speaker 6: Well, Trump is trying to reverse and succeeding, I guess
Speaker 6: at least to some extent. He's blocking billions of dollars
Speaker 6: in grants that were already you know, contracts were already
Speaker 6: signed as part of Biden's landmark climate law, the Inflation
Speaker 6: Reduction Act. The purpose of that law was to encourage
Speaker 6: basically building all this clean energy infrastructure, and a lot
Speaker 6: of that has been blocked, at least for now. And
Speaker 6: Trump basically wants us to burn fossil fuels, and he's
Speaker 6: making it harder to deploy wind and solar. He and
Speaker 6: his administration are relative supportive of nuclear, which I guess
Speaker 6: could be sort of area of potential progress for building
Speaker 6: more low carbon energy, because in the past ten years
Speaker 6: or so, i'd say Democrats have also become very pro
Speaker 6: nuclear at the level of elected officials, you know, Democrats
Speaker 6: in Congress have been very supportive, and there have actually
Speaker 6: been a series of biparisan laws to kind of nurture
Speaker 6: nuclear and revive the industry.
Speaker 2: Talk about how progress is sort of being made in
Speaker 2: terms of keeping nuclear power plants going and discussing starting
Speaker 2: up some new ones. You feel like that momentum could
Speaker 2: continue over the next four years, even if it's not
Speaker 2: so good for wind or solar.
Speaker 6: It could, but there are also some warning signs. Basically,
Speaker 6: certainty is really good for you know, business in general
Speaker 6: and for investments, and especially in a major infrastructure project
Speaker 6: like a nuclear plants. So the chaos and uncertainty that
Speaker 6: have been introduced to the past couple of months are
Speaker 6: probably not good for seeing a nuclear revival. But I
Speaker 6: do think there is interest, and even just today there
Speaker 6: was an announcement from some of the major tech companies
Speaker 6: you know, committing to try to i think triple nuclear
Speaker 6: power by twenty fifty, which is a goal that the
Speaker 6: Biden administration sort of established that goal. So these tech
Speaker 6: giants are voicing their support for that, and they're of
Speaker 6: course very influential. So yeah, I think the momentum for
Speaker 6: nuclear could definitely continue, whereas the momentum for renewables there's
Speaker 6: a lot of questions about that now.
Speaker 1: I saw a discussion that like Microsoft was going to
Speaker 1: turn three Mile Island back on in order to power
Speaker 1: their data centers. You know, as our society gets more
Speaker 1: technological and we have more data, intel and so of computing,
Speaker 1: it uses a lot of energy, and so our thirst
Speaker 1: for energy it just grows and grows and grows, and
Speaker 1: nuclear power seems well suited to that. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I see a huge revival in the nuclear industry itself,
Speaker 1: their development of like small modular reactors, which could be
Speaker 1: easier to produce, easier to license, easier to transport. What
Speaker 1: do you see as the future of nuclear technology itself?
Speaker 1: Is it going to change these discussions?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's still an open question. There's definitely a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of startups working on different technologies, and there's particular
Speaker 6: enthusiasm for the idea of small modular reactors, as you mentioned,
Speaker 6: So I think it's just too soon to know what's
Speaker 6: going to pan out. Because there's one startup called Oaklow
Speaker 6: that was founded by this young charismatic couple they met
Speaker 6: as MIT graduate students, and that you founded this company
Speaker 6: largely out of climate concerns, and I visited their offices
Speaker 6: in Silicon Valley a few years ago, and their approach
Speaker 6: is very different in a bunch of ways. I don't
Speaker 6: know how much into the weeds we should get, but
Speaker 6: basically they are doing small, modular reactors, and the timelines
Speaker 6: are just really long. And that's one criticism of nuclear
Speaker 6: from some climate activists is that you know, we won't
Speaker 6: even have them in time to meet the deadlines that
Speaker 6: we need to meet to make a difference. And I
Speaker 6: think obviously the hope is that once we get some
Speaker 6: of the first of a kind built, then the timeline
Speaker 6: will accelerate for getting more built. But I think we're
Speaker 6: at a period now where we'll probably learn pretty soon
Speaker 6: whether that's going to happen or whether what the critics
Speaker 6: say is right, and it's just not going to be
Speaker 6: feasible to build these projects, you know, on time and
Speaker 6: on budget, and then maybe it will kind of fizzle.
Speaker 6: But I think that's something we'll probably find out more
Speaker 6: answers to in the next few years.
Speaker 1: And my question is about how we make these decisions
Speaker 1: politically and socially. Obviously, the technology is changing, and are
Speaker 1: standing of the situation scientifically is changing, But fundamentally it's
Speaker 1: a political decision, and politics should be informed by science,
Speaker 1: at least we hope so, but so much of it
Speaker 1: seems to be informed by scare tactics and misinformation. What
Speaker 1: do you think about the sort of state of scientific
Speaker 1: discourse in our country? Do you think our leaders have
Speaker 1: the information they need to make sort of unbiased, balanced
Speaker 1: decisions about these very important, very dangerous technologies that could
Speaker 1: potentially kill millions or save millions. Is your book a
Speaker 1: part of trying to get people on board to understanding
Speaker 1: how these things have changed? What do you think we
Speaker 1: should do to make sure people like understand the facts
Speaker 1: on the ground.
Speaker 6: I hope my book will contribute to just kind of
Speaker 6: laying out the questions and the issues and why people
Speaker 6: feel so strongly on both sides. And yeah, the state
Speaker 6: of scientific discourse, that's a big question, and I'm sure
Speaker 6: you guys know more about it than I do. I
Speaker 6: have a lot of concerns about it, especially again because
Speaker 6: of these days of the Trump administration, and I think
Speaker 6: in general just the state of the sort of information
Speaker 6: ecosystem is not very healthy. But another way of thinking
Speaker 6: about it is, Yeah, just trust in sort of authority
Speaker 6: and expertise, I would say, is the big theme of
Speaker 6: my book, and how that's changed over the decades, and
Speaker 6: how in recent years the right has become very distrustful
Speaker 6: of institutions and authority, and the left of these sort
Speaker 6: of mainstream liberals have become much more trusting. And we
Speaker 6: saw this, of course during COVID. It probably helps to
Speaker 6: explain why Democrats have come to be more open to
Speaker 6: nuclear because I would say that among experts and among
Speaker 6: sort of institutions like the International Energy Agency and the
Speaker 6: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these sort of major authoritative institutions,
Speaker 6: they are all saying, you know, nuclear should be on
Speaker 6: the table at least, And so I think, as someone myself,
Speaker 6: I guess I'm more inclined to trust expertise, which grows
Speaker 6: out of, you know, being really worried about climate change
Speaker 6: and feeling like the scientists were the ones who were
Speaker 6: speaking out and telling the truth, and so I trusted
Speaker 6: them on that, And then was when I learned that
Speaker 6: a lot of scientists were saying that nuclear has to
Speaker 6: be part of the solution. That kind of caught my
Speaker 6: attention and I thought, well, maybe I should at least
Speaker 6: hear them out on this as well. So I don't
Speaker 6: know if that answers your question, but those are some
Speaker 6: of my thoughts on the subject.
Speaker 1: Sort of an unanswerable question, but thanks for your thoughts.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, one of the things I really appreciated about your
Speaker 2: book is how nuanced it was and how you tried
Speaker 2: to dig into everybody's claims and see how valid they were.
Speaker 2: And so you've sort of hinted at the answer a
Speaker 2: little bit in the answer to your last question. But
Speaker 2: after doing all of this research, where do you stand
Speaker 2: on nuclear power and where nuclear power fits into solving
Speaker 2: our current issues with global climate change?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I would just reiterate that the main contribution
Speaker 6: I hope I'm making is to kind of explain the
Speaker 6: range of perspectives and you know, write a story that
Speaker 6: I hope is fun to read. You know, there are
Speaker 6: a lot of people with very strong opinions on this,
Speaker 6: and I am not really one of them. Just temperamentally.
Speaker 6: I tend to be more of a person who sees
Speaker 6: both sides, and I guess I came to think that
Speaker 6: largely because this is what a lot of the experts
Speaker 6: I trusted were saying, that it does need to be considered.
Speaker 6: It's not a panacea, but it can play an important
Speaker 6: role in our energy system because of certain distinctive characteristics
Speaker 6: that it has, and that could change as we have
Speaker 6: technological progress in other areas, even geothermal. You know, there
Speaker 6: may be a major breakthrough in geothermal that could make
Speaker 6: that a much bigger part of our portfolio than it
Speaker 6: has been until now. So I'm definitely not someone who
Speaker 6: thinks we need all nuclear, and you know, it's by
Speaker 6: far the most viable low carbon energy source. I think
Speaker 6: we have a range of options. I never thought like
Speaker 6: that it was something we should completely abandon. I thought
Speaker 6: that it had some really important strengths. I mean, I
Speaker 6: tend to be ambivalent because I'm sort of a classic
Speaker 6: environmentalist at heart myself, and part of me just thinks like,
Speaker 6: why can't we just live in cabins and use much
Speaker 6: less energy and just live humbly, and you know, not
Speaker 6: have all these data centers and not have AI, So
Speaker 6: that is kind of how I feel at heart. But
Speaker 6: first of all, I realized that that's not realistic, that
Speaker 6: that's not going to happen. So how can we meet
Speaker 6: our energy demand in a way that's not going to
Speaker 6: introeust the climate? So yeah, I ended up feeling like
Speaker 6: nuclear was one viable option among others.
Speaker 1: Well, we should all live in cabins, but we should
Speaker 1: still have enough energy to produce and distribute podcasts about science.
Speaker 1: Of course. Of course, that's priority number one in any society, and.
Speaker 6: Published books, that's right.
Speaker 2: Priority number two is for everyone to order their version
Speaker 2: of Atomic Dreams.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic book. It's a story well told. I laughed,
Speaker 1: I didn't cry, but I had a good time.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on the book, and thank you very much for
Speaker 1: coming on the podcast to answer all of our tough
Speaker 1: questions about it.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeart Reading.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you, We really would.
Speaker 1: We want to know what questions you have about this
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2: I want to know your thoughts on recent shows suggestions
Speaker 2: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get
Speaker 2: back to you.
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us
Speaker 1: at Questions at Danielankelly dot org.
Speaker 2: Or you can find us on social media. We have
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Speaker 1: Don't be shy right to us