Alan Neuhauser reports that Christine Todd Whitman could be called a realist. A former Republican governor of New Jersey and member of the George W. Bush administration, she joined 3 other former GOP-appointed Environmental Protection Agency administrators on Capitol Hill last June to urge Senate lawmakers to acknowledge the existence of climate change. Now, as co-chair of the nuclear advocacy group CASEnergy, she not only calls on utilities to invest in nuclear energy, she also recognizes the nuclear limits. Nuclear energy, she says, will likely never produce more than one-fifth (of the nation's electricity, and it might one day be overtaken by zero-emissions renewables like wind and solar. Fact check is needed here. I2M WP eds seriously doubt that CTW said such. But, she adds, that is not a bad thing, but for the next few (2,3, or 4?) decades, she adds, we will still need to rely on nuclear.
Nuclear, natural gas, solar and wind are all much cleaner than coal and cheaper than ever. With all these energy sources at our disposal, why should we still be investing in nuclear energy? Wind and solar are still not very efficient, but they are improving and the costs are coming down (still with subsidies) but they are still a tiny percentage of the overall energy mix. A 30% increase in electricity demand is expected by 2040. They are not going to be able to scale up to do that. They are not base-power, and we need power 24/7, so that gets you back to nuclear backed up by cheap natural gas. While natural gas is the resource that is putting the pressure on nuclear, where we have seen the low cost of natural gas and then the price has gone up. Natural gas is not as clean as nuclear, because nuclear releases no greenhouse gases or other regulated pollutants. And on a per-kilowatt basis, nuclear is in fact the least expensive, the safest, and not combustible (pipelines, plants, etc).
Original URL working: https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-manhattan-project/articles/2015/09/28/q-a-christine-todd-whitman-on-nuclear-powers-promise-and-its-limits
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