Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI, opines that Joseph J. Romm, a former assistant secretary of energy for efficiency and renewables, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has criticized James Hansen, the climatologist who issued the clarion call warning about global warming way back in 1988. Romm says that Hansen puts too much emphasis on nuclear power as a tool to reduce the carbon-loading of our atmosphere.
For people worried about climate (including Wald) it is distressing to see the attack, because the two men agree on the fundamental point, that we need a vigorous global campaign to prevent an awful destabilization of the climate. It is a shame to see supporters of that idea falling out with each other when their key point is not yet a universally-held view.
But Romm has never liked nuclear power, and perhaps we should feel encouraged that he acknowledges any productive role for the technology. He is praising us with faint damn.
Romm and others suffer from a silver-bullet syndrome. They argue that nuclear plants take years to build, and that recently they have been added at a slow rate, so nuclear will not solve the problem; therefore it is time to move on to technologies that are growing faster, like solar panels and wind turbines, they argue.
But there are two problems with the argument: it is wrong and it is counterproductive. Romm is correct that we are not building a lot of new reactors in this country right now, despite concern about global warming. But that is mostly because the price of natural gas, a competitor to uranium, has collapsed. Using natural gas to replace coal guarantees a modest reduction in carbon emissions. But it also guarantees that the reduction will be only modest, because per kilowatt-hour, burning natural gas emits roughly three times as much carbon dioxide as our 2050 goal allows. Wind and sun are heavily subsidized, with dollars. Good read ....
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