Can nuclear energy solve the climate crisis?

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX) — On April 10 the Steamboat Institute hosted a debate on nuclear energy at the Colorado Mesa University campus. The focus: Does the United States need more nuclear energy?

Around 50 people attended Wednesday night’s debate around nuclear energy, including some college students with the Land and Energy Management club. Everyone WesternSlopeNow spoke to wanted to learn more about both sides of the nuclear energy debate.

The pro-nuclear argument

Jessica Lovering, Ph.D. argued the affirmative. Lovering has a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in engineering and public policy and has worked in the nuclear policy space for around 15 years among her accolades.

Nuclear energy can generate a lot of power with a small amount of material but some readers who remember Three Mile Island or Fukushima might have doubts about the safety of nuclear energy.

“An analogy I like to use is that it’s like air travel,” Lovering told WesternSlopeNow. “You see these big airplane accidents, like recent things happening with Boeing and it’s really scary, but when you look at the evidence flying is still the safest way to travel per mile. Safer than automobiles, which we get in every day, and nuclear is a lot like that. Even [in] these big accidents like Three Mile Island, no one died. In Fukushima no one died from radiation, people died from drowning from the tsunami.”

The Japanese government says one worker, so far, has died from lung cancer due to cleaning up the Fukushima meltdown.

Japan confirms experts met in China to ease concerns over discharge of treated radioactive water

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Lovering says putting new nuclear power plants at the sites of old coal operations would allow for new nuclear to take advantage of the infrastructure already set up. “You can take advantage of a lot of the infrastructure and also keep a ton of jobs local.”

What about just adding more solar and wind renewable energy? Lovering said while it would be technically possible, she doesn’t see it happening due to social and political restraints.

The anti-nuclear argument

Mark Jacobson, Ph.D. argued against the United States investing in new nuclear energy.

Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and researches air pollution, climate, and clean renewable energy solutions to those problems.

First, Jacobson says it takes too long to get nuclear power plants up and running when the climate crisis needs to be solved quickly. “There’s only one pair of nuclear reactors that have ever been commissioned in the United States in the last 20 years. Those are the ones in Georgia and it took them 18 years from planning to operation.”

Second, Jacobson says the cost of nuclear energy is too much. “The cost [of energy from the Georgia nuclear plant] was 35 billion dollars for 2.2 gigawatts, almost $16 a watt. New solar and wind are $1 a watt. So from a financial point of view, it doesn’t make any sense,” Jacobson told WesternSlopeNow.

Jacobson argued that money is better spent investing in wind and solar energy, even though some communities where solar or wind farms would be installed are delaying the process because they want a voice in the process or, are against those types of energy.

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