Last week, Musicians for Safe Energy — America’s leading anti-nuclear-energy musical group — released the long-awaited follow up to their 1979 debut album, No Nukes. While it would be hard to top most of the songs off No Nukes — "Plutonium is Forever" is my personal favorite — the new release might come pretty close. The video features Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Ben Harper, among others, all singing about the new energy bill.
Jackson Browne sums it up nicely; "Language has been inserted in the bill which supports nuclear power, which is not clean and not safe." Ben Harper adds, "You can’t protect this stuff, there’s no way. It’s been proven."
While it is admirable to see celebrities and potential role models passionate about a cause, these statements demonstrate what’s wrong with anti-nuclear sentiment in America. They could be described as misinformed at best, fear-mongering at worst. Nuclear power is not perfect, but under the right circumstances it can be not only clean and safe, but also practical — the United States already gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; France gets 80 percent, mostly because political opposition isn’t as strong.
One of the biggest advantages of nuclear power is that it doesn’t emit any carbon and therefore doesn’t contribute to global warming. This is a big deal; electricity production by conventional sources — coal, petroleum and natural gas — accounts for 39 percent of our country’s total CO2 emissions in the most recent figures. Nuclear energy also produces essentially no sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide or particulates, all of which make up the smog found in our cities today. Shifting toward cleaner sources of power like nuclear energy — and other, renewable sources — would be a huge step in our battle to combat climate change.
But limiting the emissions in electricity production is not going to be enough to combat climate change. A big part of the problem is all the oil and gasoline we burn up driving around every day. A way to address this could lie in electric plug-in vehicles, which have a traditional gasoline motor onboard only to recharge a battery once it runs down. GM recently unveiled the Chevy Volt, which runs purely on electricity for about 40 miles before the gasoline motor kicks in to recharge the battery. The Department of Transportation says that 78 percent of all commuters drive 40 miles or less to and from work each day. If they could recharge their vehicles every night, 78 percent of Americans would emit zero pollutants on their daily commute.
This isn’t a pipe dream — the Volt is expected to be on the market in 2010 and GM says it hopes to sell it for about $30,000. Some reports say as many as 60,000 may be built. This isn’t the only option, either; next year Tesla Motors will begin selling the Tesla Roadster, a fully electric sports car that accelerates from 0-60 mph in under four seconds, gets 245 miles on a single charge and costs about $100,000. Notable owners include Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney and Black Eyed Peas lead singer "will.i.am."
It’s an exciting time for innovation, and nice to see Detroit leading the way on this. But running 100 percent of our transportation off the grid won’t mean anything if we don’t have some way of producing mass quantities of clean power. At this point, nuclear energy is the best option for doing just that.
The real problem with arguments by the Musicians for Safe Energy and other critics is that they don’t offer any real workable alternatives. Most opponents are in favor of dumping nuclear power altogether in favor of renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power — which sounds fine — but these sources are intermittent, meaning they have problems when it isn’t windy or sunny. Scientists are working on the technological obstacles that prevent renewable energy from being viable in the short term, and it’s important that they do so, but we need to address climate change now, in large part by switching to technologies that already exist.
This isn’t to say nuclear power doesn’t have unique challenges and drawbacks; it produces radioactive waste, which is toxic for long periods and needs to be stored safely. There are also legitimate concerns about terrorism and nuclear proliferation, although I would point out any practical plans to reduce our dependence on foreign oil will necessarily have to involve an increase in nuclear power.
A common argument given by many critics of the nuclear industry involves its high start-up and capital costs. You can see this in the music video. "Why should the American people be subsidizing [this]?" Bonnie Raitt asks.
Ideally they wouldn’t have to. If people had to pay the true costs of other energy sources — the cost of cleaning up soot and sulfur from coal, the risk of conflict that comes with oil and the greenhouse gases associated with both — we wouldn’t have to subsidize anything. Two options would effectively address this problem: a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. Due to a monumental failure in political leadership, we are doing neither. Nuclear power is inherently different in that it involves far fewer externalities: The costs of building safe reactors, storing waste and even decommissioning the plant are already built right into its price. This is why nuclear power seems relatively more expensive than it really is.
Subsidizing clean energy, such as renewable or nuclear power, is a second-best alternative behind taxing or capping carbon, but in today’s political climate, it might be a choice we have to make.
Nathan Braun ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics.
