Pod Insights Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe Is nuclear power good for the environment? (ft. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow) About this episode Daniel and Kelly talk to Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, author of "Atomic Dreams", a new book that tracks the complex relationship between environmentalism and nuclear power.
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1:41 Daniel Whiteson? Today, we're going to be talking about a pretty divisive technology. One that produces stable power without emitting greenhouse gases, but also produces waste that's toxic for thousands of years. It contributes to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But over 50 years, it may have actually saved millions of lives. It's dangerous and poses a threat to nearby communities, but it also generates electricity for decades from a few small rocks. These are all true statements about nuclear energy. It has incredible, unique benefits to offer and terrifying, toxic dangers. Where does that all shake out? Should nuclear power be a part of our energy portfolio, or should we shut it all down?
2:26 Daniel Whiteson? Today, we'll be asking that question, is nuclear power good for the environment? And talking to Becca Tuhustabrow, author of a fantastic new book, Atomic Dreams, on the rise of the pro-nuclear environmental movement. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary, complicated universe.
2:57 Kelly Weinersmith? Hello, I'm Kelly Wiener-Smith. I study parasites and space, and I grew up pretty close to a nuclear power plant, and I still only have two eyes.
3:08 Daniel Whiteson? Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I grew up at the home of atomic power, Los Alamos, New Mexico. And I won't comment about whether I glow in the dark.
3:17 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, interesting. So what is the closest you've ever lived to a nuclear power plant? Does Los Alamos have one?
3:24 Daniel Whiteson? Los Alamos doesn't have an operating nuclear power plant, but we have an operating nuclear power plant in the basement of the chemistry building next door. It's about 200 feet from me right now as we speak.
3:34 Kelly Weinersmith? Really?
3:35 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah, it's super cool. You can get a tour of it. You can see the blue glowing water from the Turekoff radiation. It's super awesome.
3:41 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, that is super cool. I didn't know that. I would totally want that tour. When am I coming to visit, Daniel?
3:47 Daniel Whiteson? I don't know. Come visit. I will hook you up with a tour. I've actually used it for science because it's a nice source of certain kinds of radiation if you need to calibrate things. So it's pretty awesome. It's sort of like a teaching reactor for nuclear engineers, for chemical engineers to learn how it works and this kind of stuff. Pretty cool, right?
4:04 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, that's awesome. I grew up in Ohio, sort of near the Davis-Bessei Power Plant, and I thought I was gonna win. But no, no, you win. And congratulations. May it never melt down.
4:17 Daniel Whiteson? Wow, now I'm worried about it. I wasn't until you said that. Thanks, Kelly.
4:20 Kelly Weinersmith? It's fun spending time with a catastrophizer.
4:25 Daniel Whiteson? But nuclear power is amazing, both scientifically and socially, you know, it evokes such strong feelings among people about how dangerous it is, but how it reflects the hubris of science, or how it's going to usher in a new era of humanity.
4:40 Kelly Weinersmith? And there is a fantastic new book that talks about the social and political issues around nuclear power called Atomic Dreams, and we had the pleasure of interviewing the author.
4:51 Daniel Whiteson? We certainly did. It's a fascinating tale about how environmentalists were for nuclear power, and then they were against it, and now some of them are back to being for it, including a wonderful group called Mothers for Nuclear.
5:03 Kelly Weinersmith? Mm hmm. Boy, the stunts they pull are interesting.
5:08 Daniel Whiteson? And so we're gonna have a chat with Becca in a moment, all about the history of the environmental movement's complicated relationship with nuclear power. But first, I was wondering what listeners thought, whether they saw nuclear power as something that was good or bad for the environment. As usual, it's not possible to boil down a super complex topic into five second soundbites, but that's what I asked our listeners to do, and they stepped up.
5:32 Speaker 05 So yes, nuclear power is environmentally responsible, at least until we get cold fusion.
5:38 Speaker 02 While some people might think it is better for the environment than fossil fuels, it is still not really good for the environment.
5:45 Speaker 06 Do things like coal. Nuclear power is better for the environment. I wouldn't say good.
5:53 Speaker 05 On the whole, avoiding the CO2 release is worth it.
5:56 Speaker 07 Nuclear power is amazing for the environment until Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima.
6:02 Speaker 02 Nuclear power, on average, is going to be a lot better for the environment than fossil fuels.
6:06 Speaker 01 The mining and extraction of nuclear fissile materials are actually what concern me the most, especially given how much processing. But compared to the immediate damage from petroleum-based fuels, I would always lean towards nuclear.
6:21 Speaker 05 I think it's one of the better alternatives. I think that's worth it in order to cut down on the amount of carbon we're putting into our environment. Nuclear power plants are not good for the environment. They have contaminated
6:32 Speaker 02 groundwater, they have contaminated our land and will continue that way for thousands and thousands of years. Would you put your farm on a piece of land before the nuclear reactor was there or after the nuclear reactor was there?
6:42 Speaker 05 There is no better way to produce enormous amounts of electricity without carbon emissions or other toxic pollutants than nuclear power.
6:49 Speaker 01 I say no because of the radioactive waste product that has to be stored somewhere and it's usually in the ground and the threat of nuclear meltdowns that would affect our air, water and everything else.
6:57 Speaker 02 As long as they're well designed and the waste materials are properly handled, but I think we need to push for fusion. On net, I think it's good because current reductions in emissions will pay dividends
7:08 Kelly Weinersmith? in the future, whereas problems like nuclear waste can probably be solved. Until we can find a way to convert or reuse spent nuclear fuel, I would say that the overall answer is no.
7:21 Speaker 01 I think if something goes wrong, then it can be really bad for a long, long time.
7:25 Speaker 03 We should all be choosing nuclear power and believing in science. If it can be properly managed, the benefits are greater than the losses. There's no such thing as clean oil. So yeah, I'd say let's go nuclear power.
7:38 Kelly Weinersmith? One of these days, I think we should have a discussion about cold fusion because I see it mentioned a lot and I'm under the impression that it is a bit silly, but I would love to hear you give me all the science behind it. But this was a really nice set of answers that covered, you know, the risks and the promises of nuclear. Way to go, D K E U folks.
8:00 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah, I think you hear a lot of folks saying that obviously it's not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives and some people still being scared of it. So I think that really nicely sets the stage for our conversation with Becca about whether we should be excited or scared of nuclear power or both.
8:17 Kelly Weinersmith? Let's jump right in.
8:21 Daniel Whiteson? All right. So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast Becca Tuhus De Brow. She's a journalist based in Southern California and her articles have appeared in illustrious places like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation and The Washington Post. She's also my neighbor here in Irvine and a friend. So I'm very glad to have her on the podcast. Becca, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much.
8:43 Speaker 03 For having me.
8:44 Kelly Weinersmith? We're so excited to have you on the show. I absolutely loved Atomic Dreams. It was really well-written, really informative. I laughed out loud a couple of times. It was fantastic.
8:52 Speaker 03 Thank you.
8:53 Kelly Weinersmith? I think we should start by discussing a bit the history of the anti-nuclear movement. Is that sort of just how the general public felt about nuclear power from the beginning? Or was it in response to some particular event?
9:07 Speaker 03 Great question. Yeah, I think we might tend to assume that the public was always primed to lean anti-nuclear because it was always associated with the atomic bomb. But that's actually not the case. It was more complicated. So, of course, the first time the public learned about atomic science in general was after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. And that led to a lot of fear and horror and disorientation. But the prospect of civilian nuclear plants, that was actually presented as almost redeeming
9:50 Speaker 03 the destruction of the bomb. It was like, this is clearly an incredibly promising new area of science, and what can we do to use it for beneficial purposes rather than destructive purposes? And among conservationists, that's what environmentalists were called at the time, in the 50s and early 60s, they actually were particularly receptive to nuclear power, at least a lot of them were, largely because it promised an alternative to dams, which may be surprising, because now I think dams, hydro, you know, seems relatively innocuous to us. It seems like one of the more preferable forms of energy generation.
10:34 Speaker 03 But at the time, when conservationists were really focused on preserving natural landscapes, wilderness, scenery, dams were anathema. And so, nuclear power seemed to present the opportunity to generate electricity in a different way. So, yeah, at the beginning, attitudes were actually generally more favorable.
10:58 Kelly Weinersmith? When did we start worrying about carbon and climate change?
11:03 Speaker 03 So, there were a few isolated scientists who sort of realized
11:08 Speaker 03 What the effects of carbon dioxide might be pretty early, going back to, I think, even the 1800s. And in the 60s, it started to be known among some scientists and government. But in general, it wasn't an issue back then. The public wasn't generally aware of the risk of climate change until the late 80s.
11:30 Daniel Whiteson? So nuclear power was good before it was bad, before it's good again. It's like, wow, how many times can this thing switch sides?
11:37 Speaker 03 To simplify it, yes. So it was considered good by a lot of people, but there were concerns that started to emerge. There was the fallout controversy in the early 50s when Americans learned that because of nuclear atmospheric weapons testing, radioactive debris was basically getting spewed through the air and getting into the food system and getting into our teeth and bones, which obviously is a really disturbing idea. And I think that did raise concerns about radiation and nuclear power plants also emit radiation, low levels.
12:19 Speaker 03 Workers and the public can be exposed to quite low levels during routine operations. And then there's the creation of highly radioactive waste, which is something else I'm sure we'll talk about. And then there's also the risk of accidents, which can be catastrophic and expose people to higher levels of radiation. So I think during the 60s, there were a few sort of dissident scientists who started to raise the alarm about some of this. And there were two scientists in particular, John Gothmann and Arthur Tamplin, who in 1963 were asked by the Atomic Energy Commission.
12:59 Speaker 03 That was the agency, the entity that was responsible for kind of overseeing both weapons and civilian uses of nuclear power. And that agency doesn't exist anymore. But at the time, they asked these two very well-respected scientists to basically look into the risks of power plants, nuclear power plants. And they did. And they basically said, actually, this is super dangerous. This is much more dangerous than you've been telling the public. And they wrote a book, the AEC tried to suppress their findings, but they went public. And they were basically these courageous scientists who didn't really seem to have any interest
13:42 Speaker 03 other than protecting public health. And they wrote a book published in 1971 called Poisoned Power, The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants. And that was very influential.
13:51 Daniel Whiteson? Wow. So it only took like 15, 20 years for the shine to come off of nuclear energy. I mean, I'm not young enough to remember this, obviously, but I have a sense that nuclear energy and of course, nuclear weapons are connected to this feeling of like a modern era, the atomic age.
14:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:07 Daniel Whiteson? And we're entering a time when science and technology are going to transform the way we live. And like, yay, frozen meals and microwave ovens and, you know, all this cool stuff. And we're excited about the future. And so that must be something like a big letdown socially or culturally to feel like, oh, actually, maybe we're poisoning ourselves and science has overstepped. You know, how long does it take to go from that book you mentioned to like the 90s, where The Simpsons, for example, portray nuclear power as this like insanely dangerous, staffed by idiots, you know, three-eyed fish in the river. You know, to me, The Simpsons is like a measure of the average Joe's sense of what nuclear power can do.
14:49 Daniel Whiteson? What happened between the publication of that book and then like the late 90s to give nuclear power this like pretty terrible PR status?
14:57 Speaker 03 Yeah. Well, I think you mentioned the sort of excitement about. About modern life, I think that started to sour for a lot of reasons. And the counterculture in the sixties, a big part of that was, of course, you know, questioning authority and just basically being against the system and the man and going back to the land and small is beautiful and
15:20 Daniel Whiteson? Right.
15:21 Speaker 03 starting to question nuclear power, which was sort of the quintessential sort of establishment technology. And it was complex and it was hard to understand. And it wasn't something that you could sort of be individually empowered to do, you know, to make your own, like on your commune, like you could with a solar panel.
15:40 Daniel Whiteson? I mean, the professor made a nuclear reactor, which is a couple of coconuts on the island. Isn't that true?
15:46 Kelly Weinersmith? Was that Gilligan's?
15:47 Daniel Whiteson? That's Gilligan's Island reference, yes.
15:49 Speaker 03 Okay.
15:49 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, man.
15:51 Daniel Whiteson? I found something really fascinating in your book, which was sort of echoes of what we're seeing today with like skepticism about science and the scientific establishment. There's this quote from your book that really struck me. It said, "The nuclear industry had been aggressively promoted and massively subsidized by the government. And in its early years, those working in nuclear science had acquired a reputation for secrecy and condescension." So basically, those smug nuclear scientists thought they knew how to organize our world, but they hadn't really thought it through. Is that the sense we had already, like back in the seventies?
16:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. And what's super interesting, I think, is that a lot of that skepticism was on the political left back then. And now we see it more on the right. So that has a lot of implications. But
16:40 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 03 you know, the politics of nuclear power in general tend to be quite complex and not as straightforward as you might think. But yeah, I think one thing that happened was that nuclear power, it sort of became a symbol of everything that was wrong with modern society. So there were all of these different segments of the anti-nuclear movement that agreed that nuclear power was terrible, but they had sort of Different angles on it. There was like a feminist aspect. There were some feminist groups that sort of saw it as this very masculine dominating impulse, you know, and
17:20 Speaker 03 there were anti-war groups that basically saw nuclear power and nuclear weapons as part of the same monster.
17:30 Daniel Whiteson? Mm hmm.
17:31 Speaker 03 And Ralph Nader was a big anti-nuclear advocate. He was, you know, a consumer, a health advocate, and at the time, it just seemed like this symbol of a society gone wrong.
17:45 Kelly Weinersmith? So let me know if this question is too far afield because I don't think you dealt with it in the book, but I have this vague memory of Project Plowshares where scientists were using nuclear weapons to bomb harbors into existence. And I wonder if part of the condescension is I remember there being like local communities saying, no, we don't want this. And the scientist being like, it's cool, you know?
18:08 Kelly Weinersmith? And so I'm wondering to what extent did things like Project Plowshares play into this sense that scientists are secretive and condescending about nuclear power and its promises?
18:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, I know that there were plans and that some scientists thought this was a great idea to use basically bombs for peaceful purposes. I don't know to what extent that actually happened. But yeah, I mean, I think it's very easy to relate to this sense of indignation and anger that people felt. I mean, even just from fallout, for example, just, you know, the idea that this radioactive material that had never existed in nature before was now drifting through the air and getting into our bodies. And that's like a real invasion. And it's not as salient for us now, but we think more about microplastics. And there are a lot of other sort of contaminants now that we're aware of.
19:02 Speaker 03 But I think at the time it was pretty shocking to people and kind of filled them with this sense of dread and that like, what are we doing to our world?
19:10 Daniel Whiteson? I've heard sort of a pop history accounting that Hollywood is also to blame. You know, this movie, The China Syndrome, came out like just before the Three Mile Island disaster and sort of preparing the public, priming them to think that nuclear power is out of control and probably going to kill you and make your children have 12 fingers and stuff like this. Is that oversold or is that really a big part of the story?
19:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's a good question because when I finally did watch that movie, I was like, this actually is pretty tame. Like, there isn't even a major disaster that happens. It's just set largely at this fictional nuclear plant in California and there's sort of an incident where there's some shaking, but it's not anything that dramatic. And the message is like, yes, nuclear power is a little sketchy. There were some people at the plants who were trying to cover up safety issues and you can't really trust them. It wasn't nearly as just dramatic as I was expecting. That said, it was this major Hollywood movie that came out just two weeks before
20:17 Speaker 03 the accident at Three Mile Island. So I'm sure it did have some effect.
20:22 Kelly Weinersmith? Could you tell us a bit more about the Three Mile Island incident and how big of a deal that was and when it happened?
20:27 Speaker 03 That was in March of 1979 and there was a partial meltdown at one of the two reactors at this plant in Pennsylvania. And it was really scary because it wasn't even clear to the authorities quite what was going on. And so there were these sort of inconsistent messages to the public and eventually well over a hundred thousand people ended up evacuating. And in the end, a very small amount of radiation escaped. There are definitely people who say that it was more than the authorities claimed, but basically from what I can tell, it seems
21:10 Speaker 03 like disaster was averted and there have been epidemiological studies that have mostly not found any public health effects, other than the public health effects of nuclear accidents actually tend to be largely psychological effects. It's extremely stressful and it's tricky to talk about because that makes it sound like it's all in your head. Don't worry about it. That is what a lot of pro-nuclear Advocates believe that the dangers of radiation have been really exaggerated. And we do a disservice to people when we exaggerate the dangers and
21:49 Speaker 03 cause people to live in fear about exposure they might have experienced, even if that exposure is unlikely to lead to physical health effects. So radiation science is very contentious still, and I didn't come out of all my research with a strong opinion, one way or the other, but I did come to understand the way that advocates on both sides see it.
22:12 Daniel Whiteson? I thought it was really fascinating how you track sort of the progression of the discussion inside the Sierra Club. You know, this like one of the nation's preeminent conservation store environmentalist movements. Can you give us a snapshot of what those arguments were? Why was the Sierra Club against nuclear power? What were they arguing about?
22:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, initially, a lot of them were for it. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, that it could be an alternative to dams essentially. And David Brower was the leader of the Sierra Club, starting in late nineteen fifty two. He was the first paid executive director. And the Sierra Club was the preeminent conservation group in the country. And it was, at the time, still a relatively small California-based organization. And they were mainly focused on outings and rock climbing, these ten-day camping trips in the Sierra Nevada.
23:06 Daniel Whiteson? Sounds awesome.
23:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. But they were sort of forced to become more political, I guess, in the fifties because of all of these changes in the country, population growth, economic growth, which led to lots of plans for logging and development that would encroach on the wilderness they loved so much, and dams, of course. And David Brower was just this incredibly passionate, eloquent defender of wilderness. And he really was kind of monomaniacal about it. When he was fighting specific dams, like one that was proposed for the Grand Canyon, they defeated that plan. But he said, well, instead of this dam, why don't we build a nuclear power plant instead?
23:49 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, wow.
23:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, which is really interesting. But over time, some members of the club really turned against nuclear and some remained relatively favorable. One of the latter was a guy named William Siri, who was actually a nuclear physicist himself, I believe. And he had worked on Manhattan Project. And he has a really striking quote that I came across in the archives. A little bit related to what we were just saying about nuclear accidents. He said, you know, I think eventually we will have nuclear accidents, but we'll kind of get used to it. And eventually we'll just see on the news, oh, there was a nuclear accident. And then we'll just go back to watching baseball or whatever.
24:29 Daniel Whiteson? Wow.
24:30 Speaker 03 So that gives you a sense of, yeah, the range of use. But David Brower eventually became very anti-nuclear. And that was partly because he learned more about the risks at every stage of the fuel cycle, from mining to waste disposal. Also, he had a very classic environmentalist worldview. He wanted to limit our use of resources. He wanted to limit growth, limit population growth. You know, it's a very sixties and seventies era view. But he saw nuclear power as kind of wrapped up in this ethos of endless growth. So he didn't think it was a good thing to have virtually unlimited energy,
25:12 Speaker 03 because it would just kind of feed into all our other sort of desires for expansion and end up wreaking havoc on the planet.
25:19 Daniel Whiteson? All right, so we've heard about the origins of nuclear power. How it was very exciting initially for the public to think about limitless nuclear power in our modern age and how very quickly the shine came off of it. And environmentalists went from being in favor of nuclear power to being against nuclear power because of all of its dangers. And we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to hear about how some environmentalists are now pro-nuclear again.
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27:58 Kelly Weinersmith? All right, and we're back. We were talking about the rise of the anti-nuclear movement, but then at some point, the pro-nuclear movement sort of came back with a vengeance. What drove the growth of the more recent pro-nuclear environmental movement?
28:11 Speaker 03 In a word, or two words, climate change. I think that was the biggest factor, because as that came to really take precedence on the... Environmentalist agenda. One feature of nuclear that had been kind of overlooked before was that it doesn't generate greenhouse gases directly. A caveat is that all energy sources, there's some greenhouse gas emission in the whole life cycle, but if you look at, you know, mining and waste disposal, but nuclear power is a low carbon energy like solar, like wind, like hydro. So that became much more salient when we started to be really worried about
28:57 Speaker 03 greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
28:59 Kelly Weinersmith? We've talked about how the anti-nuclear movement is concerned about, you know, human health effects, what to do with the waste, the creation of nuclear weapons.
29:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:08 Kelly Weinersmith? What are the counter arguments that the pro-nuclear community uses? Maybe let's just pick one of them to start with. So the waste, what are the counter arguments to the problems associated with waste?
29:19 Speaker 03 The pro-nuclear view of waste is really counterintuitive. They will actually say nuclear waste is the best kind of waste and they mean that.
29:31 Speaker 03 And the reasons are, one, it's really small volume that's generated and that's because nuclear is very dense, like the uranium is extremely energy dense, which is a really important thing to keep in mind that relates to a bunch of different arguments for nuclear. But that also means that the volume of waste is very small, even though it's also highly radioactive.
29:57 Daniel Whiteson? Do you know what kind of volumes we're talking about? Should people be imagining like, you know, I can fit all of it in my pocket? Or it's like a swimming pool or it's like the Grand Canyon, really small on the scale.
30:07 Speaker 03 So one image that you hear a lot is basically that if we consolidated all of the nuclear waste that has ever been generated from civilian.
30:20 Speaker 03 In this country, it would all fit in a football field.
30:25 Daniel Whiteson? Wow.
30:25 Speaker 03 You would have to stack it to some degree, but yeah. And I feel like I should say, I don't know if I can completely vouch for that, but that is something that you will hear a lot if you talk to pro nuclear advocates. I think it's basically accurate. And another comparison I've heard, something like if all of the waste that generated from the electricity that like you as an individual would use throughout your lifetime would fit in a Coke can. Is another image that I've heard.
30:55 Daniel Whiteson? Wow. So individuals really could carry around with them all of the nuclear waste that they personally generate.
31:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:01 Daniel Whiteson? Why don't we just do that?
31:04 Kelly Weinersmith? Don't drink that Coke can though.
31:07 Daniel Whiteson? I think that is important for people to realize because they imagine this problem of nuclear waste and long term storage specifically, I know is still an open question. But it's important to think about like how much we're actually talking about. You do not need to store like the Grand Canyon filled with waste or the amount of waste produced by other sources of fuel, for example. So it really is quite small, which changes the kind of technologies we need to think about and the places we need to think about for storing it, right?
31:34 Speaker 03 Yeah. And in terms of storing it, so we do not have a permanent underground repository for storing it. We did have a plan to store it at Yucca Mountain, but that plan fell apart. The Obama administration basically killed that plan.
31:51 Daniel Whiteson? Why? What happened to Yucca Mountain? I was talking to my kids about this book and they were like, what happened to that plan? Why don't we just store it underground?
31:59 Speaker 03 So I would say the biggest reason is that the plan was imposed on Nevada and they didn't have any say in the matter and they were very resistant. It became known as the Screw Nevada Bill. And that's why.
32:16 Kelly Weinersmith? Had a great name.
32:17 Daniel Whiteson? I'm not laughing at that. That's not funny. Nobody wants to screw Nevada. No, but I guess the idea is find the place with like a lot of land and fewer votes in Congress.
32:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:27 Daniel Whiteson? That was the plan, basically.
32:28 Speaker 03 Right. And what's his name? Harry?
32:31 Daniel Whiteson? Reed.
32:31 Speaker 03 Harry Reid, yeah. He was this very powerful, long-serving senator and who was. Ally of Obama's and it was basically seen as a favor to him to kill this project. And there were, I think, debates about how suitable the site actually was, but I would say the fundamental reason was they hadn't really consulted Nevada. And now the buzzword is consent based citing. So getting the buy in of whatever community and state you want to place the repository in. But that of course is challenging.
33:04 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah, who's going to say yes to that, right?
33:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, would you be surprised? There have been communities that do say yes, or that actually are interested if the deal is right. But often states step in and block it because it's sort of seen as stigmatized.
33:19 Kelly Weinersmith? So the Yucca Mountain Plan fell through, but that doesn't make the waste disappear. So where is the waste right now?
33:27 Speaker 03 It is being stored securely at sites around the country. Think about 80 different sites, mostly retired and operational nuclear plant sites. So when it comes out of the reactor, it's first stored in cooling pools for several years. And then it's moved to what's called dry cask storage. So it's in these steel casks and then within these concrete enclosures that blocks radiation from escaping. So basically it hasn't, even though we fear it so much and it is really dangerous.
34:07 Speaker 03 Like if you were in the same room as nuclear waste, straight out of the reactor, you would get a lethal dose of radiation very quickly. So it's not like our fear of it is irrational, but precisely because it's so hazardous, we've developed these systems to store it very securely. And it really, as far as I can tell, like there are no documented cases of, you know, deaths or harm associated with it, which is really astonishing actually when you. Think about it in contrast to other forms of waste and all the harms they cause because we don't treat them in the same way, especially obviously fossil fuel waste, emissions, pollution,
34:49 Speaker 03 which causes millions of deaths from air pollution every year and climate change. So that I think is one very interesting way of looking at the comparison of different kinds of wastes.
35:00 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah, so we're storing the waste onsite, basically where we're making it, which also limits the transport, right? You're not putting it in a truck, driving it across the country, it just has to go like across the plant. And it's not high volume, so you have space. It's not like you're creating a vast new facility. Why don't we just keep it there forever? Why ever drive it around? What's unsuitable about storing it onsite?
35:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think there is an argument that it's actually okay as it is. But another argument is, you know, these communities where it's stored didn't sign up for that. The federal government does legally have the responsibility to deal with it and to bury it in the repository. And over time, the casks they're in don't last forever. And there's also the question of reprocessing or recycling waste, which is rather complicated. And I don't know if we want to get into that now, but that is another possibility, but it's very controversial.
35:59 Daniel Whiteson? Another argument I've heard for why nuclear waste is the best kind of waste is that it does decay away over time. Like, we're used to thinking of that as a negative, like, oh, my God, it takes a thousand years before this becomes not dangerous. But the toxins produced by coal and whatever are literally forever, right? Like infinitely deadly. And so it's actually a benefit that after 5,000 years or something, this is no longer dangerous. It's amazing to me how much of this is political or how much of this is like how you sell it. You know, how much of this depends on your perspective? I was struck by this quote in your book by Lovelock, who said that opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the green lobbies, and the media.
36:42 Daniel Whiteson? Do you feel like that's fair? Do you feel like we have a balanced view of these dangers? Or that we've been sold a bill by the environmental movement against nuclear waste and we don't see it clearly?
36:54 Speaker 03 I don't think the fear is irrational, exactly. I think it's understandable. I do think it tends to be more visceral than I think of this a lot because we see unfortunately so many disasters these days. And the Los Angeles fires that happened just a couple of months ago, there were not only the absolutely devastating effects. People lost their homes and people died, but the toxins in the air from all of the plastic and all of this other material that burned. I don't know, and I'm not sure anyone knows right now what the long-term public health effects will be.
37:33 Speaker 03 I know there's at least one study ongoing that's going to look at that, but I do think even though we know there are these toxins that have gotten into the air and into the soil, nobody would ever suggest evacuating LA because of that. You know, there are arguments about whether evacuations are warranted in the aftermath of nuclear accidents. I just think that we do have a more visceral reaction to, you know, a nuclear accident, like radiation than to other toxins, even though it's not always clear that the other toxins are less of a threat to public health.
38:11 Kelly Weinersmith? So there's Three Mile Island, there's Chernobyl, Fukushima. Is there an estimate for how many lives have been lost due to all the nuclear accidents that have happened so far that could be like compared to estimates for coal-powered power plants, for example?
38:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, the official estimates are very low. So for Three Mile Island, zero. For Chernobyl, there's a range, but the high end of the range from the sort of official sources like the WHO is in the thousands that people might eventually die of cancers that could have been related to the accident.
38:51 Daniel Whiteson? Due to like the cloud of radioactivity that drifted over Europe?
38:53 Speaker 03 So the WHO estimated that 4,000 people, at least in the most affected areas, could eventually die of cancers that were related to exposure. Some people think that estimate is actually much too high and some think it's much too low. But the estimate of people who actually have died so far as a result of Chernobyl is several hundred. And Fukushima, there was
39:19 Speaker 03 One worker who died of lung cancer in 2018, and that may or may not have been a direct result of the accident. But according to the official count, that there were no other deaths that were related to radiation exposure. There were a couple of thousand deaths related to the evacuation. And there are debates over whether the evacuation should have happened and should have happened in the way it did. A lot of the people who died were elderly people living in hospitals who were hospitalized or living in nursing homes. So sort of a hasty evacuation to unsuitable sites. It was just a terrible situation.
40:00 Speaker 03 Again, I'm not as confident as some people that we can know exactly how many people died or had adverse health effects as a result of this dispersal of radiation. And, you know, something you hear from anti-nuclear advocates or scientists is like, just because we can't measure it for sure, doesn't mean there weren't effects. Yeah. A lot of things can increase the risk of cancer, and cancer is very common. So it can be really hard to tell for sure. But the official numbers are actually shockingly low. A lot of people hear those numbers, they're very surprised, and it can be hard to believe.
40:37 Kelly Weinersmith? Okay, let's take a break, and when we get back, we'll talk a little bit more about the groups that are advocating for nuclear power.
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42:56 Kelly Weinersmith? All right, and we're back. So one of the interesting groups that you talked about in the book is Moms for Nuclear. I actually can't remember if this example was a person from Moms for Nuclear, but you talked about a woman who was pregnant and had pressed her belly up against one of the waste casks, which I can't say I would do myself, but it was an interesting way to prove how committed she was. But can you tell us a little bit about the Moms for Nuclear group?
43:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, technically Mothers for Nuclear is the name. And yeah, that young woman who pressed her baby bump against a waste cask was not part of that group, but... The pro-nuclear community scene is very small and kind of incestuous and everyone knows each other. So she definitely knows them. But yeah, Mothers for Nuclear was founded on Earth Day 2016 by two women who both worked and still work at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which is the last nuclear plant that's operating in California. It's on the central coast and it's kind of the through line, the narrative arc of my book follows the story of that particular plant.
44:06 Speaker 03 And Heather Hoff and Kristin Zaitz, they were the founders. They both were sort of very classic environmentalist, tree hugger types. Heather grew up in a trailer in Arizona and would climb, clamber on rocks near the trailer and her dad would sprinkle her and her sister with a watering can instead of showering. And she was always just very acutely aware of resource use. And she kind of ended up working at Diablo Canyon by accident because she was looking for a good job and it was basically the main option
44:50 Speaker 03 that she was aware of in San Luis Obispo, where she was living at the time after college. And she thought if nothing else, she'd be a spy, be kind of like the Erin Brockovich of nuclear energy. And Kristin Zaitz had a pretty similar background. She grew up in California and she would go camping and sleep under the stars. And she was really into breastfeeding and very kind of crunchy type. And basically, we would expect them to be anti-nuclear. Everything else in their biography would have led them to be anti-nuclear. And they were. I mean, they weren't anti-nuclear activists, but they were definitely very skeptical of nuclear power.
45:33 Speaker 03 But both ended up working at Diablo Canyon. In Kristin's case, she was a civil engineer and got an internship there, even though like Heather, she was kind of dubious about it. But she was like, well, I'll just do this internship to learn about civil engineering and then I'll leave and do something else. But they both. Ended up staying and learning more about it and basically becoming really true believers, really passionate supporters of nuclear because they decided that it was actually consistent with their environmentalist values.
46:08 Daniel Whiteson? And is that because they understood the greenhouse gas situation? Or because they changed their views on the dangers and the waste? You know, from like the Simpsons Three Mile Island view to more sort of balanced nuanced understanding of the risks?
46:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'd say both. They were both very concerned about climate and learns that this was a low carbon energy source and that it had, because of its energy density, it had a very small footprint. So we haven't really talked about, you know, what its advantages might be over renewables. But whereas renewables like wind and solar, they're just not as energy dense. So you just need more of them and you need more space to generate the same amount of energy. And so for them, because they really loved hiking and camping. And so they thought that, you know, the energy density was a big virtue for them. And they also started to think that the risks had been overstated.
47:01 Daniel Whiteson? If we can dig into that for a minute, I know that there's a debate in the environmental community about whether we need something beyond renewables, like are wind and solar enough? And some people, as you say in the book, like Friends of the Earth, the vision for California's future is both nuclear free and fossil free, just like wind and solar. But then I talked to folks like Steve Davis, who, a friend of both of ours, is a professor of earth system science. And he says that it's totally impractical to have just wind and solar because they don't run all the time, right? You don't have wind and if you don't have sun, then batteries are just not practical. He told me once, it's possible to do it, but it's ridiculously expensive. And the best case scenario is like 80, 90% renewables with some baseline for something
47:45 Daniel Whiteson? you can turn off and on quickly to provide power when you don't otherwise have it. Is that the crux of the debate within the environmental community?
47:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, there are people who think that we can do it all with renewables. There are people who think we can't. Then there are all Also people who think maybe we technically can, but because of some of these issues I've mentioned about land use. And in terms of batteries, batteries are a really interesting part of this debate because, yes, there's actually been incredible progress with battery technology recently and batteries have been really spreading just in the past year or two and doing a lot more work of backing up renewables. There's still challenges, I think, with longer term storage, more than a few hours, and so that is a real challenge.
48:35 Speaker 03 There's also, though, environmental issues with all of these technologies, mining lithium for batteries. And there was actually a fire recently that you may have heard about, I think in central California, actually not far from Diablo Canyon. There was this kind of devastating fire and apparently when all these batteries caught fire and you don't put it out, I guess there's no way to put it out, you just have to let it run its course. And so all these toxins were released and similar to the fires in L A, you know, all these toxins in the air and in the soil. So I guess I just learned more that these technologies that environmentalists like me, you know, tend to like and just think sound more sort of natural and gentle.
49:19 Speaker 03 And it's not just sun and it's not just wind, it's material infrastructure and they all have their issues and their environmental issues. So yeah, there's a range of views, of course, on the ideal portfolio. And also I should add that technology is advancing all the time, although of course we haven't talked about how dramatically this whole landscape has changed just recently because of the Trump administration. It's been actually really shocking and, you know, all this progress that was occurring has now really stalled, at least. Renewables. There's actually bipartisan agreement to some extent on nuclear, which is something else we can talk about. But anyway, I would just say there's always
50:03 Speaker 03 progress that can happen and there may be more progress with batteries and renewables. But I guess I came to think that nuclear, because of its energy density and because it is what they call clean firm power, it's not variable or intermittent like wind and solar. It doesn't depend on weather conditions, that it kind of makes sense to have that as part of the mix and have these different energy forms that have different pluses and minuses.
50:29 Kelly Weinersmith? I'd be very interested in digging into the more recent political climate. So, you know, the book does an amazing job of sort of tracking how opinions have changed over time and how political interest in this topic has changed over time. What has changed since the beginning of this year when the Trump administration took over?
50:45 Speaker 03 Hmm. Well, Trump is trying to reverse and succeeding, I guess, at least to some extent. He's blocking billions of dollars in grants that were already, you know, contracts were already signed as part of Biden's landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The purpose of that law was to encourage basically building all this clean energy infrastructure. And a lot of that has been blocked, at least for now. And Trump basically wants us to burn fossil fuels and he's making it harder to deploy wind and solar. He and
51:27 Speaker 03 his administration are relatively supportive of nuclear, which I guess could be sort of area of potential progress for building more low carbon energy because in the past 10 years or so, I'd say Democrats have also become very pro-nuclear at the level of elected officials. You know, Democrats in Congress have been very supportive and there have actually been a series of bipartisan laws to kind of nurture nuclear and revive the industry.
52:00 Kelly Weinersmith? Talk about how progress is sort of being made in terms of keeping nuclear power plants going and discussing starting up some new ones. You feel like that momentum could continue over the next four years, even if it's not so good for wind or solar?
52:13 Speaker 03 It could, but there are also some warning signs, basically certain
52:19 Kelly Weinersmith? It's really good for, you know, business in general and for investments, especially in a major infrastructure project like a nuclear plant. So the chaos and uncertainty that have been introduced to the past couple of months are probably not good for seeing a nuclear revival. But I do think there is interest. And even just today, there was an announcement from some of the major tech companies, you know, committing to try to, I think, triple nuclear power by 2050, which is a goal that the Biden administration sort of established that goal. So these tech giants are voicing their support for that. And they're, of course, very influential.
53:05 Kelly Weinersmith? So, yeah, I think the momentum for nuclear could definitely continue. Whereas the momentum for renewables, there's a lot of questions about that now.
53:18 Daniel Whiteson? I saw a discussion that like Microsoft was going to turn Three Mile Island back on in order to power their data centers, you know, as our society gets more technological and we have more data intensive computing, it uses a lot of energy. And so our thirst for energy just grows and grows and grows. And nuclear power seems well suited to that. At the same time, I see a huge revival in the nuclear industry itself. Their development of like small modular reactors, which could be easier to produce, easier to license, easier to transport. What do you see as the future of nuclear technology itself? Is it going to change these discussions?
53:53 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, it's still an open question. There's definitely a whole bunch of startups working on different technologies. And there's particular enthusiasm for the idea of small modular reactors, as you mentioned. So I think it's just too soon to know what's going to pan out because there's one.
54:15 Kelly Weinersmith? Startup called Oaklow that was founded by this young charismatic couple. They met as MIT graduate students and they founded this company largely out of climate concerns. And I visited their offices in Silicon Valley a few years ago. And their approach is very different in a bunch of ways. I don't know how much into the weeds we should get, but basically they are doing small modular reactors and the timelines are just really long. And that's one criticism of nuclear from some climate activists is that, you know, we won't even have them in time to meet the deadlines that we need to meet to make a difference. And I think obviously the hope is that once we get some of the first of a kind built,
54:57 Kelly Weinersmith? then the timeline will accelerate for getting more built. But I think we're at a period now where we'll probably learn pretty soon whether that's going to happen or whether what the critics say is right and it's just not, you know, going to be feasible to build these projects, you know, on time and on budget. And then maybe it will kind of fizzle. But I think that's something we'll probably find out more answers to in the next few years.
55:22 Daniel Whiteson? And my question is about how we make these decisions politically and socially. Obviously, the technology is changing and our understanding of the situation scientifically is changing, but fundamentally, it's a political decision and politics should be informed by science, at least we hope so. But so much of it seems to be informed by scare tactics and misinformation. What do you think about the sort of state of scientific discourse in our country? Do you think our leaders have the information they need to make sort of unbiased, balanced decisions about these very important, very dangerous technologies that could potentially kill millions or save millions? Is your book a part of trying to get people on board to understanding how these things have changed?
56:04 Daniel Whiteson? What do you think we should do to make sure people like understand the facts on the ground?
56:08 Kelly Weinersmith? I hope my book will contribute to just kind of laying out the questions and the issues and why people feel so strongly on both sides. And yeah, the state of scientific. Discourse, that's a big question and I'm sure you guys know more about it than I do. I have a lot of concerns about it, especially again because of these early days of the Trump administration. And I think in general, just the state of the sort of information ecosystem is not very healthy. But another way of thinking about it is, yeah, just trust in sort of authority and expertise. I would say is the big theme of my book and how that's changed over the decades.
56:52 Kelly Weinersmith? And how in recent years, the right has become very distrustful of institutions and authority. And the left, these sort of mainstream liberals have become much more trusting. And we saw this, of course, during COVID. It probably helps to explain why Democrats have come to be more open to nuclear. Because I would say that among experts and among sort of institutions, like the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, um, these sort of major authoritative institutions, they are all saying, you know, nuclear should be on the table at least.
57:36 Kelly Weinersmith? And so I think as someone myself, I guess I'm more inclined to trust expertise, which grows out of, you know, being really worried about climate change and feeling like the scientists were the ones that who were speaking out and telling the truth. And so I trusted them on that. And then was when I learned that a lot of scientists were saying that nuclear has to be part of the solution. That kind of caught my attention and I thought, well, maybe I should at least hear them out on this as well. So I don't know if that answers your question, but those are some of my thoughts on the subject.
58:13 Daniel Whiteson? Sort of an unanswerable question, but thanks for your thoughts.
58:16 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah. So one of the things I really appreciated about your book is how nuanced it was and how you tried to dig into everybody's claims and see how valid they were. And so you've sort of hinted at the answer a little bit in the answer to your last question. But after doing all of this research, where do you stand on nuclear power? And where nuclear power fits into solving our current issues with global climate change? Yeah, so I would just reiterate that the main contribution I hope I'm making is to kind of explain the range of perspectives and, you know, write a story.
58:51 Speaker 03 That I hope is fun to read. You know, there are a lot of people with very strong opinions on this and I am not really one of them. Just temperamentally, I tend to be more of a person who sees both sides. And I guess I came to think that largely because this is what a lot of the experts I trusted were saying, that it does need to be considered. It's not a panacea, but it can play an important role in our energy system because of certain distinctive characteristics that it has. And that could change as we have technological progress in other areas, even geothermal.
59:29 Speaker 03 You know, there may be a major breakthrough in geothermal that could make that a much bigger part of our portfolio than it has been until now. So I am definitely not someone who thinks we need all nuclear and, you know, it's by far the most viable low carbon energy source. I think we have a range of options. I never thought like that it was something we should completely abandon. I thought that it had some really important strengths. I mean, I tend to be ambivalent because I'm sort of a classic environmentalist at heart myself. And part of me just thinks like, why can't we just live in cabins and use much less energy and just live humbly?
1:00:11 Speaker 03 And, you know, not have all these data centers and not have AI. So that is kind of how I feel at heart. But first of all, I realize that that's not realistic, that that's not going to happen. So how can we meet our energy demands in a way that's not going to completely destroy the climate? So yeah, I ended up feeling like nuclear was one viable option among others.
1:00:38 Daniel Whiteson? Well, we should all live in cabins, but we should still have enough energy to produce and distribute podcasts about science, of course.
1:00:44 Kelly Weinersmith? Of course.
1:00:44 Daniel Whiteson? That's priority number one in any society.
1:00:48 Speaker 03 And publish books.
1:00:49 Kelly Weinersmith? That's right. And priority number two is for everyone to order their version of Atomic Dreams.
1:00:53 Speaker 03 Oh, thank you.
1:00:55 Daniel Whiteson? It's a fantastic book. It's a story well told. I laughed. I didn't cry, but I had a good time.
1:01:02 Kelly Weinersmith? I learned a lot.
1:01:02 Daniel Whiteson? Congratulations on the book. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast to answer all of our tough questions about it.
1:01:08 Speaker 03 Thank you so much. It's a lot of fun.
1:01:17 Kelly Weinersmith? Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.
1:01:22 Daniel Whiteson? We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe.
1:01:28 Kelly Weinersmith? We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.
1:01:34 Daniel Whiteson? We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at [email protected] .
1:01:41 Kelly Weinersmith? Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms you can find us at D and K Universe.
1:01:50 Daniel Whiteson? Don't be shy. Write to us.
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