Why James Hansen Is Wrong About Nuclear Power

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 07/07/16

Joe Romm opines that climatologist James Hansen argued last month that nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change. Romm claims he is wrong. As the NEA and IEA explained in a major report last year, in the best-case scenario, nuclear power can play a modest, but important, role in avoiding catastrophic global warming if it can solve its various nagging problems, particularly high-construction cost, without sacrificing safety. Hansen and other climate scientists Romm respect, e.g., Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley, and Kerry Emanuel, present a weak argument in which new nuclear power achieves and sustains an unprecedented growth rate for decades. The one quantitative illustrative scenario they propose, a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonize the global electricity system, is far beyond what the world ever sustained during the nuclear heyday of the 1970s, and far beyond what the overwhelming majority of energy experts, including those sympathetic to the industry, think is plausible. They ignore the core issues that the nuclear power industry has essentially priced itself out of the market for new power plants because of its 1) negative learning curve and 2) inability to avoid massive delays and cost overruns in market economies. This is doubly problematic because the competition, renewable power, electricity storage, and energy efficiency, have seen steady, stunning price drops for a long time. Hansen, et al., also continue the myth that somehow nuclear power is being held back by environmental opposition, rather than its own marketplace failures. Those interested in what new nuclear power can and cannot plausibly contribute to stopping global warming should start with the most objective, independent, and comprehensive analysis done in recent years, the 2015 Technology Roadmap from the IEA and NEA. But ... new nuclear power can play an important but limited role. a pro-renewable proponent.