Michael Shellenberger (2016)

Multiple a ha moments — in fact, I keep having them.

Stewart Brand and Michael Lind pressed on me privately to rethink nuclear.

In 2007 we wrote we might need to consider nuclear.

We included nuclear innovation as one of many things needed for climate in 2009.

But the more I learned about energy and its role in human development the more I understood why reliable and cheap electricity was key and in that department there's only two low-carbon options: hydro and nuclear.

That it's a literally one of the safest things humans do. It's not just the safest way to make reliable power. It's just one of the safest things in general that we do.

The idealistic nuclear visionaries of the fifties and sixties didn't know how to deal with the anti-nuclear zealots of the seventies and eighties, who didn't hesitate to lie and attack them personally. The response from the industry was to retreat into a kind of defensive crouch.

As usual, positive change is coming from younger folks who got concerned about global warming, figured out nuclear was the most important technology for addressing it, and became nuclear engineers.

China will almost certainly have built the most new ones.

The US is on track to lose half of its nuclear plants, so it could be us.

However, I reject the idea that the future is written. There were a lot of good reasons to believe that the future would inevitably be nuclear, but the concerted efforts by a small group of people have put the technology in an existential crisis.

I believe that the biggest environmental problem in the world is continued dependence on wood and dung by two to three billion people. This is a moral issue, since high amounts of energy consumption are required to free humans from drudgery, mafia rule and oppression. But it's also critical to saving forests and endangered species.

Poor nations where people still use wood and dung usually decide to build dams or burn coal, since they are simpler than nuclear.

But some big and important nations whose people still rely on wood and dung, like South Africa and India, could do a lot of nuclear in a way that would develop their own scientific and technical capacity and provide a cheap and reliable form of clean power for decades to come.

Yes, we address directly all of the most commonly repeated myths about nuclear energy on our web site, and continue to update it in response to queries.

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I wouldn't determined it in advance.

Our shared goal should be 100 percent clean power as soon as possible (timing is always constrained by cost-containment, in real world policies).

We need a framework that prioritizes clean energy, not a particular kind, even nuclear, in my view.

There are literally hundreds of scenarios of 100 percent renewables going back to the early 1800s. It was then that John Etzler proposed powering the US with 100% renewables. Henry David Thoreau was horrified at what it would do to the environment. The land use impact would be far, far greater than fossil fuels.

Ha. Well, genuine questions never make me mad unless they ask something that I explicitly addressed in my talk, which is remarkably common.

Yes, this is the same crisis I addressed in my TED talk.

Nuclear's decline is the main event when it comes to climate mitigation, and it's a huge event in terms of clean air generally.

The only reason we're not hearing more about it is that there's a tacit conspiracy of silence.

Anti-nuclear groups want to pretend like it's not a big deal to climate action.

The nuclear industry wants to whistle past the graveyard.

That Governor Jerry Brown was almost certainly behind it. I haven't met a single person who thinks that the President of the PUC would have — on his own — dictated San Onofre settlement terms to Southern California Edison without Brown having approved it and perhaps put him up to it in advance. Brown gets involved in all sorts of far smaller contracts. Inconceivable that Peevey would have kept him out of the loop.

What that means is that Brown has personally and through his people killed more nuclear power plants than any other individual in the world. Had Brown and his guys not killed nuclear plants — some built, some well-along in their planning — California would be 77 percent clean power today instead of 58.

In my TED talk I discussed why I think there's a lot of wishful thinking about them, and I say that as a fan.

I think the future of all nuclear everywhere depends centrally on the ability of the pro-nuclear environmental movement to help societies appreciate nuclear's transcendent moral purpose. I think NuScale, the main SMR company in the US, has a really cool and promising design, but it like all other nuclear designs, cannot succeed without higher public and thus market demand for nuclear.

I would ask him to publicly address the fact that nuclear energy is in a crisis and that dramatic steps are needed to save it, starting with a wake-up call to everyone in the nuclear community and intensified public engagement on the issue, from the President of the United States to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

I am optimistic long-term about getting nuclear added, but in the short-term the goal is simply for nuclear to survive the next few years. After we save existing nuclear we need to step up our efforts to add nuclear to RPSs.

I'm not aware that it played any role but maybe I'm uninformed. Do you think it did?

Thanks for asking! I think saving and building nuclear plants should be the highest priority for climate justice activists. They are zero-pollution and high-wage. They require the involvement of the whole society.

All energy decisions involve government and markets, democracy and capital, whether solar or nuclear. Because solar requires 150 times more land than nuclear, it often provokes much more local resistance than nuclear. There are very few things that can be imposed top down these days, certainly not a nuclear plant.

I'm really really meh on waste. I think it's fine being kept where it is, and monitored. Or moved. Whatever causes the least fuss. Reprocessing isn't needed for now, and adds to the cost.

Yes, there are new designs, and UK mostly uses carbon dioxide gas.

But the water impact is very low in my view.

Give it time, give it time.

I agree that a lot of energy subsidies and mandates are making things worse. Wind has been getting subsidized 23 years. Solar roofs get about 2/3 their cost subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers.

All this subsidized solar and wind is killing nuclear plants in Illinois and California, and so we end up paying higher electricity rates and taxes to make our air dirtier.

I'd like to see 100 percent clean power as the standard everywhere, allowing for clean energy sources to compete fairly. If that can't happen, then nuclear should at least be included in the support we give to other sources of clean energy, otherwise we'll be effectively killing off our largest and most important source of clean power.

Already is!

James Hansen is the stand-out pro-nuclear scientist.

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Honestly I'm fine where it is. I can see the benefits to a larger repository, but it's been outrageous to delay new nuclear plants because of some paranoid aversion to storing waste on site.