The new green

Nuclear increasingly seen as promising option for climate turnaround

Last year, President Barack Obama announced a move to cut carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants. The rules would reduce emissions by 30 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. The plan has massive support from the Environmental Protection Agency, and recent Supreme Court rulings have sanctioned strong regulatory action.

Obama also recently announced a joint environmental initiative with China—a partnership that could transform international climate change dynamics. Now the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases (not accounting for cumulative emissions, for which the U.S. is primarily responsible), China had previously rejected sustained efforts to address climate change. Broad engagement with China might make it easier to fuel new markets and technologies that can begin to counter climate change. China is already ground zero for demonstration projects orchestrated by Bill Gates’ atomic startup firm TerraPower. 

The president’s China compact is informal, but it details joint goals for U.S. and Chinese carbon reductions and other efforts to rein in emissions. But the China effort and the domestic power plant push might not be enough. 

Emptying the tank

Oklahoma has a longstanding, tentpole position in the fossil fuel economy. We’re a hub for the fracking and horizontal drilling methods that have transformed the sourcing and pricing of fossil fuels—an economic tsunami that has (until lately) boosted employment and economic growth here. Though it produces a fraction of the greenhouse emissions from conventional oil and diesel, natural gas still has a sizable carbon footprint. Recent studies argue that methane leakage (natural gas is mostly methane)—unavoidable when producing and using gas—mitigates the carbon savings when compared to coal. Natural gas might be the “blue bridge” to our energy future, but it’s still only a bridge—not a final destination. 

For more than a decade, solar and wind—and, to a lesser extent, biofuels—have been the mainstay in our battle to decrease electrical usage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Both solar and wind have exploded in scale and dropped enormously in unit pricing. But, even accounting for sophisticated reductions in power consumption of consumer electronics and industrial machines, these alternatives aren’t matching the pace needed to avoid a climate crisis of vast proportions. 

Re-thinking nuclear

What else can we do to dramatically lower our use of fossil fuels and the carbon gases they produce? Former NASA climate guru James Hansen is among the high-profile thinkers embracing nuclear energy as a singular turnaround strategy. A 2013 profile from Slate described Hansen’s approach:

“No. 1, solar and wind power cannot meet the world’s voracious demand for energy, especially given the projected needs of emerging economies like India and China,” journalist Keith Kloor wrote. “and, No. 2, nuclear power is our best hope to get off of fossil fuels, which are primarily responsible for the heat-trapping gases cooking the planet.”

Oklahoma’s vast cultural entanglement with the oil field has made us largely oblivious to broader currents in the energy landscape. We also haven’t forgotten the historic work of Carrie Dickerson and others during the ‘70s and early ‘80s to prevent completion of Inola’s Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant. But if a powerful (but still minority) element in the climate change community is correct, nuclear energy might be our last hope against a future ravaged by climate change. 

Stewart Brand, author of 2010’s influential New Whole Earth Catalog: A Book For Eco-pragmatists, recently told inhabitat.com that a new perspective is in order.

“Things that we thought were against green, like nuclear and bio-technology and even geo-engineering are, in light of climate change, actually now green,” Brand said. “Nuclear replaces coal, and it works. And it’s clean as hell in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The key will be making nuclear power both safe and efficient as an alternative to traditional fossil fuels—and to overcome negative public perception about nuclear energy. Among those tackling these obstacles are some of the brightest young thinkers in the energy realm, Dr. Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie of Transatomic Power Corporation. Graduates of the MIT nuclear engineering program, Dewan and Massie are commercializing innovative nuclear reactors—smaller units, revolutionary methods to deal with waste, and more efficient safety measures than those employed by U.S. and Russian reactors (and by Japan’s Fukushima reactor site, which suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 2011). Their final hurdle is persuading companies to upend the energy industry and invest in these new technologies.

“The U.S. is still leading the world in nuclear technology,” Dewan told CNN in August. “But one of my biggest concerns is that that won’t always be the case. This is American technology. It was invented here 50 years ago, and we want the U.S. to gain the benefits of it first before we bring it somewhere else.” 

For more from Ray, check out his take on local efforts to battle climate change and his look at the increase in Oklahoma earthquakes.