Is nuclear power good for the environment? (ft. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow)

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
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 fifty years it may have actually saved millions of lives.

(00:26):
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

(00:47):
of our energy portfolio? Or should be shut it all down?
Today we'll be asking that question, is nuclear power good
for the environment? And talking to Becca to Housta Brow,
author of a fantastic new book, Atomic Dream, on the
rise of the pro nuclear environmental movement. Welcome to Daniel
and Kelly's Extraordinary Complicated Universe.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hello. I'm Kelly Wiersmith. I study parasites and space, and
I grew up pretty close to a nuclear power plant
and I still only have two ice.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh interesting. So what is the closest you've ever lived
to a nuclear power plant? Does Los Alamos have one?

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Los Almos 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 two hundred
feet f for me right now as we speak. Really, yeah,
it's super cool. You can get a tour of it.
You can see the blue glowing water from the trunkof radiation.
It's super awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Oh that is super cool. I didn't know that I
would totally want that tour. When am I coming to visit, Daniel.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, that's awesome. I grew up in Ohio, sort of
near the Davis Bessie Power plant. And I thought I
was gonna win, but no, no, you win, and congratulations.
May it never melt down.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Wow, now I'm worried about it. I wasn't until you
said that. Thanks Kelly.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's fun spending time with a catastrophizer.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
But nuclear power is amazing, both scientifically and socially. You know,
devokes such strong feelings among people about how dangerous it is,
but how it reflects the hue u Brisk of science,
or how it's going to usher in a new era
of humanity.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
You certainly did. It's a fascinating tale about how environmentalists
were for nuclear power and then they were against it,
and how some of them are back to being for it,
including a wonderful group called Mother's for Nuclear mm.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Hm, boy, the stunts they pull are interesting.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
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 sound bites, but that's what I asked

(03:54):
our listeners to do and they stepped up.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
So yes, nuclear power is environmentally responsible, at least until
we get cold fusion.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, some people might think it is better for the
environment than fossil fuels, it is still not really good
for the environment do.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Things like coal. Nuclear power is better for the environment.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
I wouldn't say good on the whole, Avoiding the CO
two release is worth it.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Nuclear power is amazing for the environment until three Mile
Island Chernobyl Fukushima. Nuclear power on average is going to
be a lot better for the environment than fossil fuels.

Speaker 5 (04:31):
The mining and extraction of nuclear fissile materials are actually
what concerned me the most, especially given how much processing.
But compared to the immediate damage from petroleum based fuels,
I would always lean towards nuclear. I think it's one
of the better alternatives.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
I think that's worth it in order to cut down
on the amount of carbon roopremium to our environment.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
Nuclear power plants are not good for the environment. They
have contaminated or grand water. They have contaminated our land.
It will continue that way for thousands and thousands of years.
Would you put your farm on a piece of land
before the nuclear actor was there or after the nuclear
reactor was there.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
There is no better way to produce enormous amounts of
electricity without carbon emissions or other toxic pollutants than nuclear power.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I say no because of the radiactive waste product that
has to be stored somewhere, and it's usually in the ground,
and a thought of nuclear meltdowns that would affect our air,
water and everything else.

Speaker 6 (05:22):
As long as they're well designed and the waste materials
are properly handled.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
But I think we need to push for fusion on net.

Speaker 5 (05:29):
I think it's good because current reductions and emissions will
pay dividends in the future, whereas problems like nuclear waste
can probably.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Be solved until we can find a way to convert
or reuse spent nuclear fuel. I would say that the
overall answer is null. I think if something goes wrong,
then it can be really bad for a long long time.
We should all be choosing nuclear power and believing in science.

Speaker 6 (05:53):
If it can be properly managed, the benefits are greater
than the loss. There's no such thing as clean oil,
So yeah, I'd say let's go in nuclear power.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
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 dKu folks.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Let's jump right in, all right.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast. Becca
too Hoo's de brow. She's a journalist based in southern California,
and her articles have appeared in the llus Chase, places
like The New Yorker, The New York Review, of books,
The Nation, and The Washington Post. She's also my neighbor
here in Ervine and a friend, so I'm very glad
to have her on the podcast. Beca Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 6 (07:06):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
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?

Speaker 6 (07:31):
Great question.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (07:33):
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

(07:55):
was after the atomic bomb were dropped on Hairishima and
Nagasaki and forty five, 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
the destruction of the bomb. It was like, this is

(08:18):
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 fifties and early sixties,
they actually were particularly receptive to nuclear power, at least

(08:41):
a lot of them were, largely because it promised an
alternative to dams, which may be surprising because now, I
think dam's hydro, you know, seems relatively innocuous to us.
It seems like one of the more preferable forms of
energy generation. But at the time, when conservationists were really

(09:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
When did we start worrying about carbon and climate change?

Speaker 6 (09:27):
So there were a few isolated scientists who sort of
realized what the effects of carbon dioxide might be pretty early,
going back to I think even the eighteen hundreds and
in the sixties, it started to be known among some
scientists and government, but in general it wasn't an issue

(09:48):
back then. The public wasn't generally aware of the risk
of climate change until the late eighties.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
So nuclear power was good before it as bad. It's
good again, Yeah, going things wich side.

Speaker 6 (10:02):
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
fifties when Americans learned that because of nuclear atmospheric weapons testing,

(10:24):
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 commit radiation low levels. Workers and the

(10:45):
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 sixties there were a few sort of

(11:06):
dissident scientists who started to raise the alarm about some
of this. And there were two scientists in particular, John
Goffman and Arthur Tamplin, who in nineteen sixty three were
asked by the Atomic Energy Commission. That was the agency,
the entity that was responsible for kind of overseeing both

(11:30):
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

(11:53):
is much more dangerous than you've been telling the public.
And they wrote a book that AEC tried to suppress
or findings, but they went public and they were basically
these courageous scientists who didn't really seem to have any
interest other than texting public health. And they wrote a
book published in nineteen seventy one called Poisoned Power, The
Case against Nuclear Power Plants, and that was very influential.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Wow, so it only took like fifteen twenty 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. Yeah, and we're entering a time when
science and technology are going to transform the way we

(12:36):
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 nineties where The Simpsons, for example,

(13:00):
portray nuclear powers is 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. What
happened between the publication of that book and then like
the late nineties to give nuclear power this like pretty
terrible pr status.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, well, I.

Speaker 6 (13:22):
Think you mentioned the sort of excitement about modern life.
I think that started to sour for a lot of reasons,
and the counter culture 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 lands and small was beautiful, and

(13:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
I mean, the professor made a nuclear reactor, which is
a couple of coconuts on the island. And isn't that true? Right?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Was that Gilligans?

Speaker 1 (14:12):
That's Gigan's Island reference. Yes, man, I found something really
fascinating in your book which is sort of echoes of
what we're seeing today with like skepticism about science and
the scientific establishment. Is 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

(14:32):
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.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
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 you know, the
politics of nuclear power in general tend to be quite

(15:10):
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

(15:31):
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 there were
anti war groups that basically saw nuclear power and nuclear

(15:51):
weapons as part of the same monster. 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.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
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, as I
remember there being like local communities saying no, we don't
want this, and a scientist being like, it's cool. Yoh.

(16:33):
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.

Speaker 6 (16:43):
Yeah, I note 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

(17:05):
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

(17:26):
that we're aware of, 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?

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I've heard sort of a pop history accounting that Hollywood
is also to blame. You know, this movie that 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 twelve
fingers and stuff like this. Is that over sold or
is that really a big part of the story.

Speaker 6 (17:56):
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,

(18:19):
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

(18:41):
weeks before the accident at Three Mile Island, so I'm
sure it did have some effect.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Do you tell us a bit more about the Three
Mile Island incident and how big of a deal that
was and when it happened.

Speaker 6 (18:52):
That was in March of nineteen seventy nine, 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

(19:14):
inconsistent messages to the public, and eventually well over one
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 like

(19:35):
disaster was averted. And there have been epzemiological 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

(19:57):
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
cause people to live in fear about exposure they might
have experienced, even if that exposure is unlikely to lead

(20:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
I thought it was really fascinating how you track sort
of the progression of the discussion inside the Sierra Club,
you know, like one of the nation's pre eminent conservations
or environmentalist movements. Can you give us a snapshot of
what those arguments were. Why was this air club against
nuclear power? What were they arguing about?

Speaker 6 (20:53):
Yeah, well, initially a lot of them were for it
for the reasons I mentioned earlier that it could be
an alternative to Damns 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,
he was the pre eminent conservation group in the country,

(21:16):
and it was at the time still a relatively small
California based organization, and they were mainly focused on outings
and rock climbing and these ten day camping trips in
the Sierra Nevada.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Sounds awesome, yeah.

Speaker 6 (21:33):
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 dam
was of course, and David Brower was just this incredibly passionate,

(21:55):
eloquent defender of wilderness and he really was kind of
monomoniacal 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? Yeah,
which is really interesting. But over time some members of

(22:18):
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

(22:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (22:54):
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.

(23:16):
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, because it would just

(23:38):
kind of feed into all our other sort of desires
for expansion and end up wreaking habit on the planet.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
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 again 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

(24:06):
are now pro nuclear again.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
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.

Speaker 6 (24:38):
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 g aids directly, a caveat is

(25:02):
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

(25:22):
worried about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
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. Yeah, 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?

Speaker 6 (25:46):
The pro nuclear view of waste is really counterintuitive. They
will actually say nuclear waste is the best kind of waste,
and they and the reasons are one. It's really small
volume that's generated, and that's because nuclear is very dense,

(26:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
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, small in
the scale.

Speaker 6 (26:34):
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 plants in this country,
it would all fit in a football field.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (26:52):
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

(27:15):
an individual would use throughout your lifetime would fit in
a coke cam is another image that I've heard.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Wow, so individuals really could carry around with them all
of the nuclear waste that they personally generated. Yeah, why
don't we just do that?

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Don't drink that coke cam, though.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
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

(27:55):
really is quite small, which changes the kind of technologies
we need to think about in the places we need
to think about for storing.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
It, right, 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.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Why what happened to yucka 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?

Speaker 6 (28:26):
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
I had a great name.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
I'm not laughing at that. That's not funny. Nobody wants
to screen na No, but I guess the idea is
find the place with like a lot of land and
fewer votes in Congress. Yeah, that was the plan basically, right.

Speaker 6 (28:56):
And what's his name, Harry read Harry Reid. Yeah, it
was this very powerful, long serving center and he was
an 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

(29:19):
really consulted Nevada. And now the buzzword is consent based sighting,
So getting the buy in of whatever community and state
you want to place the repository in. But that of
course is challenging.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeh, who's going to say yes to that?

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Right?

Speaker 5 (29:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (29:34):
Would you'd 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.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
So the Yunga Mountain plan fell through, But that doesn't
make the waste disappear. So where is the waste? Right now?

Speaker 6 (29:54):
It is being stored securely at sites around the country
about eighty 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

(30:15):
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,
Like if you were in the same room as nuclear

(30:38):
waste straight out of the reactor, you would get a
lethal dose of radiation very quickly, so it's not like
our fear that 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

(31:01):
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, but especially obviously fossil fuel
waste emissions pollution, which causes millions of depths from air
pollution every year and climate change, So that I think

(31:22):
is one very interesting way of looking at the comparison
of different kinds of waste.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, so we're storing the waste on site basically where
we're making it, which also limits the transport. Right, you're
not putting in the truck driving across the country. 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 fast new facility. Why don't we just keep
it there forever? Why ever drive it around? What's unsuitable

(31:47):
about storing it on site?

Speaker 6 (31:49):
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

(32:09):
over time, the casks therein 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.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Another argument I've heard for why nuclear waste is the
best kind of waste is that it does decay a
way over time. Yeah, we're used to thinking 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 five thousand

(32:47):
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 and nuclear energy is based on irrational fear,
fed by Hollywood style fiction, the green lobbies, and the media.

(33:09):
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.

Speaker 6 (33:21):
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 months ago, there were not

(33:42):
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.
I know there's at least one study ongoing it's going

(34:04):
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. And you know, there are
arguments about whether evacuations are warranted in the aftermath of
nuclear accidents. I just think that we do have a

(34:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
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.

Speaker 6 (34:53):
Yeah, the official estimates are very low. So for a
three mile islands 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

(35:16):
related to the accident.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Do do like the cloud of radioactivity that drifted over Europe.

Speaker 6 (35:21):
So the WHO estimated that four thousand 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

(35:42):
hundred and Fukushima there was one worker who died of
lung cancer in twenty eighteen, 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
desks that were related to radiation exposure. There were a

(36:03):
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 are hospitalized or living in nursing homes, so sort
of a hasty evacuation to unsuitable sites. It was just

(36:25):
a terrible situation. 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.

(36:46):
Like 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 in your heart to believe.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
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. All right, and we're back.

(37:28):
So one of the interesting groups that you talked about
in the book is Mom's for Nuclear And actually can't
remember if this example was a person from Mom's for Nuclear,
but you talked about a woman who was pregnant and
it 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.

(37:48):
But can you tell us a little bit about the
Mom's for Nuclear group?

Speaker 6 (37:52):
Yeah, technically Mother's for Nuclear is the name, and yeah,
that young woman who pressed her baby bump against a
waste caasp 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

(38:16):
twenty sixteen by two women who both worked and still
work at Diablo Canyon Power Plants, 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,

(38:36):
and Heather Hoff and Kristen Zates 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
i'm clamberon rocks near the trailer, and her dad would

(39:00):
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

(39:21):
that she was aware of in San Luisibispo, where she
was living at the time after college, and she thought,
if nothing else, she'd be a spy. He kind of
like the Aaron Brokovich of nuclear energy, and Kristen Zeits
had a pretty similar background. She grew up in California
and she would go camping and sleep under the stars,

(39:44):
and she was really into breastfeeding and very kind of
crunchy type, and basically 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. But both ended up working at Diablo Canyon

(40:07):
in Kristen's case, she was a civil engineer and got
an internship there, even though like whether she's 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

(40:27):
really true believers, really passionate supporters of nuclear because they
decided that it was actually consistent with their environmentalist values.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
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.

Speaker 6 (40:50):
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 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

(41:12):
energy dens 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 like 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.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
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 our wind and
solar enough. And some people, as you say in the book,
like Friends of the Earth, the vision for the 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

(41:53):
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. If you don't
have wind, and if you don't have sun, and 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 eighty ninety percent renewables with some

(42:14):
baseline from something 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.

Speaker 6 (42:23):
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 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 the debate because yes, there's actually

(42:47):
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 lenges I think with longer term storage more
than a few hours, and so that is a real challenge.
There's also, though, environmental issues with all of these technologies

(43:09):
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 pop 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

(43:30):
these toxins were released and similar to the fires in
il it, 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. And it's not just sun, and it's

(43:52):
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

(44:13):
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
some 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 progress that can happen,

(44:35):
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

(44:56):
have different pluses and minuses.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
It'd be very interesting 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.

Speaker 6 (45:16):
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

(45:39):
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
his administration are relative supportive of nuclear, which I guess

(46:03):
could be sort of area of potential progress for building
more low carbon energy, because in the past ten 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

(46:23):
been a series of biparisan laws to kind of nurture
nuclear and revive the industry.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
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.

Speaker 6 (46:44):
It could, but there are also some warning signs. Basically,
certainty is really good for you know, business in general
and for investments, and especially in a major infrastructure project
like a nuclear plants. So the chaos and uncertainty that

(47:04):
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 twenty fifty, which is a goal that the

(47:26):
Biden administration sort of established that goal. So these tech
giants are voicing their support for that, and they're of
course very influential. 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.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
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, intel and so of computing,
it uses a lot of energy, and so our thirst
for energy it 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,

(48:12):
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?

Speaker 6 (48:24):
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 startup called Oaklow

(48:47):
that was founded by this young charismatic couple they met
as MIT graduate students, and that you 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

(49:10):
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, then the timeline
will accelerate for getting more built. But I think we're

(49:32):
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 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.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
And my question is about how we make these decisions
politically and socially. Obviously, the technology is changing, and are
standing 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

(50:13):
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? What do you think we

(50:34):
should do to make sure people like understand the facts
on the ground.

Speaker 6 (50:38):
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

(50:59):
of these 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

(51:20):
my book, and how that's changed over the decades, and
how in recent years the right has become very distrustful
of institutions and authority, and the left of these sort
of mainstream liberals have become much more trusting. And we
saw this, of course during COVID. It probably helps to

(51:40):
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, these sort of major authoritative institutions,

(52:01):
they are all saying, you know, nuclear should be on
the table at least, 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 who were
speaking out and telling the truth, and so I trusted

(52:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Sort of an unanswerable question, but thanks for your thoughts.

Speaker 6 (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
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?

Speaker 6 (53:09):
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 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.

(53:31):
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

(53:53):
that it has, and that could change as we have
technological progress in other areas, even geothermal. 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'm 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

(54:17):
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

(54:38):
less energy and just live humbly, 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 realized that that's not realistic, that
that's not going to happen. So how can we meet
our energy demand in a way that's not going to

(54:59):
introeust the climate? So yeah, I ended up feeling like
nuclear was one viable option among others.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Well, we should all live in cabins, but we should
still have enough energy to produce and distribute podcasts about science.
Of course. Of course, that's priority number one in any society, and.

Speaker 6 (55:18):
Published books, that's right.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Priority number two is for everyone to order their version
of Atomic Dreams.

Speaker 6 (55:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
It's a fantastic book. It's a story well told. I laughed,
I didn't cry, but I had a good time.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
I learned a lot.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Congratulations on the book, and thank you very much for
coming on the podcast to answer all of our tough
questions about it.

Speaker 6 (55:38):
Thank you so much. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeart Reading.
We would love to hear from you, We really would.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
We want to know what questions you have about this
Extraordinary Universe.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I want to know your thoughts on recent shows suggestions
for future shows. If you contact us, we will get
back to you.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us
at Questions at Danielankelly dot org.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Don't be shy right to us