Critics Blast Climate Scientists Going To Bat for Nuclear Power

[kristopher]

16. Joe Romm responds to Hansen etal

To Those Who Want To See Nuclear Power Play A Bigger Role In Climate Action
BY JOE ROMM ON NOVEMBER 4, 2013 AT 5:41 PM

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As a practical matter, environmental groups have had little impact on the collapse of nuclear power in America. The countries where nuclear has dead-ended are market-based economies where the nuclear industry has simply been unable to deliver a competitive product (see “Two Years After $500 Billion Fukushima Disaster, Nuclear Power Remains Staggeringly Expensive”). Indeed, despite having U.S. taxpayers swallow most of the risk for the high-cost of new nukes through the loan guarantee program and most of the risk of a major nuke disaster through the Price Anderson act, the industry has been unable to provide a competitive product.

Objectively, then, the groups who have been most successful in thwarting the much-hyped nuclear renaissance are those who blocked efforts to make nuclear power more cost-competitive. And the best, most market-based way to make nukes more cost competitive is to put a serious and rising price on carbon pollution that starts to reflect the harm it does to public health and a livable climate.

So those like Hansen, Emanuel, Wigley and Caldeira who want nuclear power to be a major contributor to solving the climate problem should be addressing themselves to those who are blocking serious climate action, not those who have been devoting vast resources to trying to put a price on carbon.

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(regarding LFTR technology - k) It would be astounding if a technology that exists only in PowerPoint presentations — magical small, cost-effective, fail-safe nuclear reactors — could possibly be researched, developed, demonstrated, and then scaled up faster than a host of carbon-free technologies that are already commercial today. And remember, most of those technologies, like solar and wind, have actually demonstrated a positive learning curve, unlike nuclear reactors!

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More at http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/04/2882671/nuclear-power-climate/