by Gwyneth Cravens
CravensPowertoSavetheWorld.com

As I looked out the window, and I saw the sun coming up and the curvature of the Earth, I thought, “Wow. The Earth is round.” But when I saw it with my own eyes, it meant something different to me. And looking at the Earth’s atmosphere and seeing how thin it is, you realize the Earth is a very fragile planet.
—Eileen Collins, space-shuttle commander

In a microcosm, Earth Day, 1970, had the effect of creating a community out of a New York City block full of isolated strangers. All over the country similar small miracles occurred. What had been an ignored commons was transformed and so, for a time, were we. Now it’s more evident than ever that what happens to the atmosphere or the ice caps and glaciers on one part of the globe becomes everyone’s problem. The increasing droughts in some areas due to temperature rise are putting dust in the lungs of children thousands of miles away. China’s smog drifts to California. We can’t survive as isolated, self-regarding entities. We’re linked to the destiny of all humans and the destiny of the earth, as Stewart Brand foresaw when he searched for a visual way to express that truth. Our personal destinies, and the destinies of our children, grandchildren, and remote descendants are intimately linked to choices we make today.

The environmental movement, misinformed, with good but terribly misguided intentions, scared the public about nuclear power. Nuclear plants that had been planned were not built. Others were shut down. My fellow protestors and I wanted the Shoreham nuclear plant closed, and it was. (As a result, almost all of Long Island’s electricity now comes from fossil fuels—mostly dirty, deadly diesel.) But anti-nuclear activists did not cause the hiatus. Problems abounded in the fledgling nuclear industry – cost overruns, increasingly longer construction times, lack of experience with the new technology among private-utility operators, and in some instances a lack of a safety culture. For all these reasons, we kept burning more coal and gas when a far better option, if wisely employed, was available. And in fact many American nuclear plants have been run very well, quietly and efficiently providing cheap electricity that otherwise would have come from burning coal.

When I began my nuclear journey I didn’t know about base-load electricity—the steady flow that reliably meets the minimum demand at all times. I thought we could get all the power we needed from wind, sunlight, conservation and efficiency. These all are useful, but the fact is that base-load comes from only a few sources: fossil fuel combustion (about 75%), hydroelectric dams (about 6%), and nuclear power (20%). Of these, nuclear power is the only clean, readily expandable resource and has the smallest environmental footprint. To reduce carbon emissions, fossil fuel plants must be replaced whenever possible with nuclear plants. We’re accustomed to thinking of them as gigantic, but in fact reactors actually come in a variety of sizes and can be adapted to a variety of needs. (The Nuclear Navy has demonstrated the flexibility of reactors. After the earthquake in Haiti, a nuclear aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, came to the rescue. Process heat from the ship’s reactor enabled the desalination of 400,000 gallons of seawater a day to keep people alive.)

Climate scientists use probabilistic risk assessment methodology to analyze climate change. Reactor scientists use the same methodology to determine reactor and fuel-cycle safety. So why do some people in the technical community remain skeptical of climate-change science, which is derived from a vast body of data and which is supported by nearly 100% of climatologists? And why do those in the environmental community who are convinced of climate change because of the science want to limit or obliterate nuclear power? There are good reasons that high-profile climatologists like James Hansen campaign for more nuclear plants.

No matter what our opinions, we all are participating in the huge release of carbon into the atmosphere with every keystroke, every flip of the switch in our households, every purchase of a doodad from China. Ocean acidification, destroyer of oxygen-producing marine life, and the rapid rise in the average global temperature will not wait while we argue about which side is right. It’s time to drop all that and become more conscious of our shared destiny.

We need to listen to one another. I look forward to a time when nuclear engineers routinely participate in Earth Day and understand that they in fact comprise the leading edge of the environmental movement. Because of my own experience about prejudices I harbored because of wrong information, I’d like to see every anti-nuclear activist tour a nuclear plant and learn about the extraordinary scientific, humanitarian, earth-friendly feat occurring within its sturdy walls. I encourage people on both sides of the debate to examine their biases and to help others make the transition from myth to science-based fact.

The power to save the world does not like in rocks, rivers, wind, or sunshine. It lies in each of us.

Gwyneth Cravens is the author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy and has written articles on science and other topics for The New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.

by Gwyneth Cravens
CravensPowertoSavetheWorld.com

Yesterday I mentioned some beliefs I once held:

• Manmade radiation is far more dangerous than natural radiation—cosmic radiation, for instance.
• Even a tiny speck of manmade radioactive material can kill you.
• Radiation from a nuclear plant can travel hundreds of miles and kill you.
• Nuclear plants are just ticking atomic time bombs. Without warning they can explode and kill millions and cause cancer, and mutations. The Chernobyl accident killed tens of thousands of people.
• Nuclear plants could easily be taken over by a few gunmen and the fuel in the reactor stolen and turned into an atomic bomb.
• The people who work in the nuclear field are indifferent to humanity and to the environment.
• A coal-fired plant is safer than a nuclear plant any day.
• Nobody knows what to do with nuclear waste. Mountains of it are piling up everywhere. It lasts forever and will turn huge tracts into radioactive wastelands.

This list of problems seemed to me a deal-breaker for nuclear power as an environmental savior. (I believed the information to be true because it had been told to me repeatedly by organizations responsible for good works, like saving whales and cleaning up birds caught in oil slicks.) And was Rip Anderson-the scientist who told me that if we were going to protect humanity and ecosystems from devastation we needed nuclear power–aware of its dangers? I knew nothing of his day job, which turned out to be leading the team that got the country’s first permanent, deep-geologic, nuclear waste repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, certified by the EPA and opened. I soon discovered that he was an expert in probabilistic risk assessment. He listened patiently to my concerns, and carefully explained that they lacked scientific basis. He introduced me to his colleagues—experts in physics, engineering, radiation biology, microbiology, radiology, epidemiology, geology, risk perception, and other endeavors—and he suggested I see for myself what went on in the nuclear world. That’s how the Nuclear America Tour began.
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Gwyneth Cravens
CravensPowertoSavetheWorld.com

The first Earth Day was proclaimed in 1970, and where I was living, in New York City on the Upper West Side, it was the first warm, sunny day in weeks. My neighbors and I and our children rather spontaneously crept out of our brownstone apartments, actually exchanged pleasantries, and swept the sidewalks and picked up litter. We felt better about ourselves and our neighborhood—and about the earth. Something momentous was occurring that fit right in with the optimistic social revolution that was underway. I’d read in the Village Voice about ecologist Stewart Brand’s insistent question: “Why haven’t we seen a picture of the whole earth?” Thanks to his campaign and his inspirational writings, we now have that beautiful icon to remind us to think globally while acting locally.
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I was thus motivated to adopt practices that benefitted the environment. For example, when I moved out of the city I started an organic garden and a compost heap. I recycled. I protested the opening of the Shoreham nuclear plant in Long Island. I sent donations to Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Fast forward to the late 1990s, and an encounter with a scientist, Dr. D. (Rip) Richard Anderson, who patiently led me to understand that it was only by looking at the whole picture regarding energy and the environment that we could begin to understand what’s at stake and what actions are needed to protect the only home in the universe that we have. Rip is an oceanographer, a chemist, and an expert in probabilistic risk assessment who has led several big projects for Sandia National Laboratories, and he’s also an organic gardener, a beekeeper, and an environmental activist alongside his wife, Marcia Fernández. They campaign on behalf of clean air, clean water, and open land in New Mexico, where they reside. Rip began to explain to me the alarming consequences of the human race’s transfer of vast quantities of carbon from underground into the atmosphere. Drawing on a paper napkin, he connected accelerated global warming and ocean acidification, which he considers the greater threat, to the choices we’ve made about the energy we use to run our world civilization.

“What should we do?” I asked. “Keep extracting oil and gas and coal and burning them until the planet becomes a living hell? Build a lot of wind turbines and solar arrays?”

“As soon as people’s beer gets warm,” he replied, “I expect they’ll choose nuclear power.”

I tried to mask my surprise and annoyance. No way could nuclear power be good for the environment. Having grown up during the cold war in New Mexico, where bomb scientists and engineers worked around the clock to win the arms race, I’d developed an aversion to anything nuclear and while in college there and in grad school in New York had participated in ban-the-bomb and Mothers for Peace events.

Here’s what my environmentally inclined, anti-nuclear, us-versus-them friends and I thought we knew about nuclear energy:

• Manmade radiation is far more dangerous than natural radiation—cosmic radiation, for instance.
• Even a tiny speck of manmade radioactive material can kill you.
• Radiation from a nuclear plant can travel hundreds of miles and kill you.
• Nuclear plants are just ticking atomic time bombs. Without warning they can explode and kill millions and cause cancer, and mutations. The Chernobyl accident killed tens of thousands of people.
• Nuclear plants could easily be taken over by a few gunmen and the fuel in the reactor stolen and turned into an atomic bomb.
• The people who work in the nuclear field are indifferent to humanity and to the environment.
• A coal-fired plant is safer than a nuclear plant any day.
• Nobody knows what to do with nuclear waste. Mountains of it are piling up everywhere. It lasts forever and will turn huge tracts into radioactive wastelands.

To be continued . . . .

Gwyneth Cravens is the author of “Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy” and has written articles on science and other topics for The New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.

From 80 + 1′s experts’ debate on nuclear energy vs. coal energy:

Nuclear has about the same carbon footprint as wind but is astronomically more compact and efficient and operates at 90 percent capacity (coal: 53 percent capacity; wind: 34 percent). Nuclear waste is therefore tiny in volume. The world’s entire annual inventory could fit in one large townhouse. Nuclear waste recycling, done abroad, drastically reduces volume, radioactivity, and the need for long-term disposal. Civilian nuclear plants have never produced atomic bombs.