What’s the best way to combat climate change?
James Hansen — one of America’s leading atmospheric scientists, who, in the late 1980s, was the first to tell Congress about the danger of global warming — says it is nuclear power. Since it accounts for more than 60 percent of America’s carbon-free electricity and is available around the clock, nuclear power is an obvious answer — one we’ve known for some time now. But it’s nice to hear it come from a highly regarded climatologist like Hansen.
With five new nuclear plants under construction in the U.S. and a new generation of small modular reactors on the horizon, nuclear power is positioned to play a central role in the effort to achieve a low-carbon energy future, despite a small, but vocal, opposition.
During the Paris climate talks late last year, Hansen, who was longtime head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, joined with three other prominent climatologists to say that “nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change.”
In a joint statement, Hansen and the other climatologists said that the “voluntary measures” in the Paris accord on climate change are a “welcome step,” but far from sufficient. “The climate issue is too important for us to delude ourselves with wishful thinking. Throwing tools such as nuclear power out of the box constrains humanity’s options and makes climate mitigation more likely to fail.” In fact, the climatologists said, “nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them.”
Previously, in a separate study, Hansen, who has solid environmental credentials, estimated that nuclear power has saved 1.84 million lives worldwide by reducing air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, and will save many more lives in the years ahead.
Despite this record, few policies have been put in place to spur an expansion of nuclear power in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering the idea of approving a second license renewal for nuclear plants deemed capable of operating for 80 years. And Congress recently increased funding for the development of small modular reactors that could be built for much less than the cost of a large power plant. But nothing yet has been done at the federal level to correct for abnormalities in the electricity market that are leading to the premature retirement of some existing nuclear plants.
Market reform is needed to ensure that the environmental and economic benefits of nuclear power are not taken for granted, and that existing plants are compensated for their zero-carbon electricity and grid reliability in the same way that solar and wind power receive support.
This is not to suggest that we should lessen our commitment to renewable energy sources. But we can’t achieve our clean energy goals by relying heavily on solar and wind, since they are intermittent energy sources that require backup power from fossil fuels on days when the weather isn’t cooperating. Despite federal tax credits and state mandates for solar and wind power, they supply only 6 percent of the nation’s electricity. Simply put, solar and wind power are starting out from a very small base and won’t be able to get us even halfway to where we need to be by 2030.
Now, after decades, we have a broad and widely accepted framework to address climate change. Hansen and other accomplished scientists who have spent their careers trying to solve the world’s biggest environmental problem say that nuclear power is the best approach to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Nuclear power is not the problem. It’s a key part of the
