Dear Arjun,
I hear all kinds of claims about nuclear power. How can I compare it to fossil fuels or to renewable energy sources like wind and solar power?
-- Wondering in Wyoming

Dear Wondering:

Once upon a time, people made claims when they wrote to insurance companies for damages. Now that the government has provided free insurance for nuclear power plants, much of the claims business has moved to Madison Avenue.

Madison Ave. claims for nuclear power plants are as follows:

1. Severe accidents happen only in the former Soviet Union and can't happen here.
2. Nuclear power plants produce no emissions.
3. Nuclear power plants produce electricity too cheap to meter. (oops, obsolete ad)
4. Nuclear power plants can be made inherently safe.
5. An energy economy based on nuclear power plants can be made proliferation proof.
6. Nuclear power is a good way to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no particularly polite way to accurately describe the first five of these claims. In plain English, one could call them balderdash. For more scientific descriptions, see the editorial and Science for the Critical Masses in this issue, the table comparing fossil fuels and nuclear power, and the book Nuclear Power Deception, wherein there are also large numbers of references.

The one claim that merits more detailed discussion is whether nuclear power plants might be a good way to eliminate the build-up of greenhouse gases. In theory, nuclear power plants emit relatively small amounts of carbon dioxide compared to coal-fired power plants. However, the matter of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is only partly a technical matter of choosing technologies that can do the job. Even apart from increases in energy efficiency, many energy supply technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions: wind and solar energy are supply technology examples. Sequestration of carbon dioxide, that is, storage of carbon dioxide in various ways so that it does not vent to the atmosphere, is also technically possible.

One of the primary constraints is economic: which set of technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions for a given amount of money? Seen in this light, nuclear power is most assuredly not the answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The other essential question is: what are the other liabilities that the reduction to greenhouse gas emissions will produce for future generations? Central to this is the vulnerability of nuclear power to catastrophic accidents, the problem of long-lived nuclear wastes, and the proliferation potential associated with all nuclear power systems (in varying degrees). While there are some impacts associated with every energy source, such severe long-term and irreversible liabilities can be avoided with renewable energy technologies implemented with the proper attention to ecological issues from the start.

For information on nuclear power and global climate change, refer to Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998.