1. Climate Won’t Wait
1. We use the terms global warming and climate change interchangeably. Global warming produces climate change. Opinion polling shows the public does not differentiate the terms. See Riley E. Dunlap, “Global Warming or Climate Change: Is There a Difference?,” Gallup News, April 22, 2014, http://news.gallup.com/poll/168617/global-warming-climate-change-difference.aspx.
2. J. G. J. Olivier, K. M. Schure, and J. A. H. W. Peters, Trends in Global CO2 and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2017 Report (The Hague: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, December 2017).
3. Joeri Rogelj et al., “Paris Agreement Climate Proposals Need a Boost to Keep Warming Well Below 2°C,” Nature 534 (June 30, 2016): 631–639; Glen P. Peters et al., “Key Indicators to Track Current Progress and Future Ambition of the Paris Agreement,” Nature Climate Change 7 (2017): 118–122.
4. World Bank data. See Figure 18 in Chapter 5.
5. BP, BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, 9.
6. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [core writing team, R. K. Pachauri and L. A. Meyer, eds.] (Geneva: IPCC, 2014).
7. Johan Rockström et al., “A Roadmap for Rapid Decarbonization,” Science 355, no. 6331 (2017): 1269–1271.
8. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “2016 Marks Three Consecutive Years of Record Warmth for the Globe,” January 18, 2017, www.noaa.gov/stories/2016-marks-three-consecutive-years-of-record-warmth-for-globe.
9. Climate Central, “Extreme Sea Level Rise and the Stakes for America,” April 26, 2017, www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-sea-level-rise-stakes-for-america-21387.
10. Derek Watkins, “China’s Coastal Cities, Underwater,” New York Times, December 11, 2015.
11. National Snow and Ice Data Center, “Quick Facts on Ice Sheets,” https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html.
12. John Vidal, “‘Extraordinarily Hot’ Arctic Temperatures Alarm Scientists,” Guardian, November 22, 2016.
13. D. A. Smeed et al., “Observed Decline of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, 2004–2012,” Ocean Science 10 (2014): 29–38; Quirin Schiermeier, “Atlantic Current Strength Declines,” Nature 509 (2014): 270–271; Robinson Meyer, “The Atlantic and an Actual Debate in Climate Science,” Atlantic, January 7, 2017.
14. Angela Fritz, “Boston Clinches Snowiest Season on Record amid Winter of Superlatives,” Washington Post, March 15, 2015.
15. David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” New York, July 10, 2017.
16. Michael L. Klare, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Natural Resources (London: Picador, 2012); Shlomi Dinar, ed., Beyond Resource Wars: Scarcity, Environmental Degradation, and International Cooperation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
17. See, for example, https://climateandsecurity.org/; and Joshua S. Goldstein, “Climate Change as Global Security Issue,” Journal of Global Security Studies 1, no. 1 (2016).
18. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Joshua S. Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide (New York: Dutton, 2011).
19. Solomon M. Hsiang, Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel, “Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict,” Science 341, no. 6151 (2015): 1212.
20. Bhadra Sharma and Ellen Barry, “Quake Prods Nepal Parties to Make Constitutional Deal,” New York Times, June 9, 2015: A6; Andrew M. Linke et al., “Rainfall Variability and Violence in Rural Kenya,” Global Environmental Change 34 (2015): 35–47.
21. Jan Selby et al., “Climate Change and the Syrian Civil War Revisited,” Political Geography 60 (September 2017): 232–244.
22. Adrian E. Raftery et al., “Less than 2ºC Warming by 2100 Unlikely,” Nature Climate Change 7 (2017): 637–641.
23. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global Warming of 1.5°C, Special Report, October 6, 2018; James Hansen et al., “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations That 2ºC Global Warming Could Be Dangerous,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 3761–3812.
24. James Hansen et al., “Young People’s Burden: Requirements of Negative CO2 Emissions,” Earth System Dynamics 8 (2017): 577–616; James Hansen et al., “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 12 (2013): e81648.
25. Juliana v. United States. See ourchildrenstrust.org.
26. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 10.
27. George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
28. While trained and active as a nuclear engineer, Qvist currently leads a solar energy initiative in East Africa. Goldstein has solar panels on his roof.
29. Christiana Figueres et al., “Three Years to Safeguard Our Climate,” Nature 546 (June 28, 2017): 593–595.
30. C-ROADS model at www.climateinteractive.org/tools/c-roads/or the New York Times version at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/29/opinion/climate-change-carbon-budget.html. Scientific review of the model is at www.climateinteractive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/C-ROADS-Scientific-Review-Summary1.pdf.
31. This is a simple linear reduction from the baseline value in 2020 rather than a running reduction.
32. This calculation is based on the 2ºC scenarios in Glen P. Peters et al., “Key Indicators to Track Current Progress and Future Ambition of the Paris Agreement,” Nature Climate Change 7, no. 2 (2017): 118–122.
33. S. Pacala and R. Socolow, “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies,” Science 305, no. 5686 (2004): 968–972; Steven J. Davis et al., “Rethinking Wedges,” Environmental Research Letters 8 (2013): 011001.
34. Peter J. Loftus, “A Critical Review of Global Carbonization Scenarios: What Do They Tell Us About Feasibility?,” WIREs Climate Change (2013), doi:10.1002/wcc.324.
35. In addition to converting to electric heating, industrial facilities and district heating networks can use heat created in the process of generating electricity in low-carbon-emissions thermal power plants that use steam to generate electricity.
36. US Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook, 2018 (February 6, 2018), 81, www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2018.pdf.
2. What Sweden Did
1. Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Potential for Worldwide Displacement of Fossil-Fuel Electricity by Nuclear Energy in Three Decades Based on Extrapolation of Regional Deployment Data,” PLoS ONE 10, no. 5 (2015): e0124074.
2. The first outright ban from the Swedish government on hydroelectric power expansion passed in April 1970, effectively ending the period of expansion that lasted from the late 1800s.
3. Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (New York: Vintage, 2007), 60.
4. A typical reactor producing 6 TWh per year is equivalent to burning 2.75 million tons of coal, with a railcar holding 100–120 tons.
5. Bruno Comby, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (1994; English translation, Paris: TNR Editions, 2001), 45.
6. A recent review estimates nuclear power’s “total spatial footprint” (including uranium mining) at about 1/13th that of coal power (and, at most 1/4 that of wind, 1/50th that of solar photovoltaics and 1/1500th that of biomass). Vincent K. M. Cheng and Geoffrey P. Hammond, “Energy Density and Spatial Footprints of Various Electrical Power Systems,” Energy Procedia 61 (2014): 578–581.
7. Sven Werner, “District Heating and Cooling in Sweden,” Energy 126 (2017): 419–429. In the 1960s, most Swedish buildings used fuel oil for heat; district heating accounted for only 3 percent of the heat market in 1960. Today, district heating accounts for 58 percent of the energy for heating buildings (2014), while fuel oil accounts for less than 2 percent. The remaining heat sources consist of electricity used for electric heating and heat pumps and a very small amount of methane.
8. Qvist and Brook, “Potential for Worldwide Displacement of Fossil-Fuel Electricity.” See note 1.
9. In 2016, with shutdowns for maintenance and upgrades, Sweden’s plants produced electricity at an average 75 percent of capacity.
10. https://corporate.vattenfall.se/om-oss/var-verksamhet/var-elproduktion/ringhals/ringhals-nuclear-power-plant/.
11. See comparisons in Comby, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, 61–62.
12. Mara Hvistendahl, “Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste,” Scientific American (December 13, 2007).
13. Calculated from Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Environmental and Health Impacts of a Policy to Phase Out Nuclear Power in Sweden,” Energy Policy 84 (2015): 1–10.
14. Calculated using emissions intensity factors from the IPCC Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the average Ringhals Power Plant production for 1999–2016 of 24.1 TWh per year.
15. The operation of kärnkraft produces no emissions at all (just like wind, solar, or hydroelectric power), but all sources of energy have associated “life-cycle” emissions, taking into account the emissions of, for instance, mining for the materials that make up the energy production unit. According to Swedish state utility Vattenfall, kärnkraft has the lowest total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of any known energy source.
16. The “capacity factor” of wind farms varies with technology, location, and type (offshore or onshore), between a low of around 14 percent (for poorly located onshore wind farms) up to 55 percent for the best-performing offshore wind farms. The production-averaged global wind capacity factor is around 33 percent.
17. Countries that have abundant hydroelectric power reservoirs can relatively cost-effectively ”store” intermittent energy by simply running the hydro power less and saving water for later. Such opportunities, unfortunately, exist in only a few lucky countries.
18. Estimates about triple this size are in Nuclear Energy Institute, “Land Requirements for Carbon-Free Technologies,” June 2015, www.nei.org/CorporateSite/mediafilefolder/Policy/Papers/Land_Use_Carbon_Free_Technologies.pdf.
19. OECD, “Radioactive Waste Management and Decommissioning in Sweden, [2012], 10–12, www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/profiles/Sweden_report_web.pdf. Twelve thousand tonnes of spent fuel, over fifty years from all Swedish reactors; 160,000 cubic meters of all waste, over fifty years. Current rate is 1,000–1,500 cubic meters per year. Spent fuel receiving capacity is 300 cubic meters per year. Ringhals accounts for 44 percent of the national total.
20. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (New York: Viking, 2009), 111.
21. While operational emissions are nearly zero, kärnkraft units do emit tiny amounts of CO2 during ancillary operations such as testing backup diesel generators.
3. What Germany Did
1. Clean Energy Wire, “Germany’s Energy Consumption and Power Mix in Charts.” Data from AG Energiebilanzen 2017.
2. Melissa Eddy, “Missing Its Own Goals, Germany Renews Effort to Cut Carbon Emissions,” New York Times, December 4, 2014, A6.
3. Vattenfall [utility company], “Energy from Lusatia: Jänschwalde Lignite Fired Power Plant,” fact sheet, www.leag.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-en/fb_kw_jaewa_10seiter_engl_2013.pdf. In an average year, Ringhals’s electricity output is about 20 percent higher than that of Jänschwalde.
4. Ibid. Capacity is 82,000 tons daily, but the plant does not operate at capacity all the time. Based on electrical output and heat content of lignite, we estimated about 50,000 tons on average. In addition, large amounts of coal are burned to dry out the lignite and to operate the mining equipment.
5. Fifty thousand tons of lignite times 2,792 pounds of CO2/ton based on US Energy Information Administration, “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Coefficients,” February 2, 2016.
6. From Anil Markandya and Paul Wilkinson, “Electricity Generation and Health,” Lancet 370 (2007): 981. Their estimate of 32.6 annual deaths and 298 serious illnesses per TWh for European lignite is multiplied by Jänschwalde’s 20 TWh of production.
7. World Wildlife Federation, “Dirty Thirty: Ranking of the Most Polluting Power Stations in Europe,” May 2017, http://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/european_dirty_thirty_may_2007.pdf.
8. Clean Energy Wire, “State Secretary Baake—Last German Lignite Plant Likely to Be Switched Off Between 2040 and 2045,” News Digest Item, October 20, 2016.
9. LEAG, “The Lignite Power Plants,” www.leag.de/en/business-fields/power-plants/.
10. Hubertus Altmann in Vattenfall, “Flexible and Indispensible: Lignite-Based Power Generation in the Energiewende,” 2015, www.leag.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-en/brosch_flexGen_en_final.pdf, 27.
11. Power Engineering, “Best Solar Project: GP Joule and Saferay’s Solarpark Meuro in Germany,” www.power-eng.com/articles/slideshow/2013/november/2012-projects-of-the-year/pg001.html.
12. Power Technology, “Fantanele-Cogealac Wind Farm,” www.power-technology.com/projects/-fantanele-cogealac-wind-farm/.
13. Production in 2013 was about 1,250 gigawatt-hours.
14. Average wind capacity factors vary widely from region to region and are generally increasing with new and more efficient technology, new sites in very windy regions, and an increasing fraction of offshore wind. Individual offshore wind farms in ideal locations are able to reach capacity factors as high as 50 percent (Anholt-1 in Denmark), while the global average wind capacity factor today is about 23 percent (using generation data from BP Statistical Review and capacity data from Global Wind Energy Council, both for 2016). GWEC uses 30 percent capacity factor as a future, post-2030, average. See GWEC, “Global Wind Energy Outlook, 2016.” Thirteen 600 MW wind farms operating at 30 percent capacity factor could potentially supply the same total electricity over a year as Jänschwalde (20 TWh/year).
15. Stanley Reed, “Power Prices Go Negative in Germany, a Positive for Consumers,” New York Times, December 26, 2017, B3.
16. Calculated from national data on renewables production, mostly from grid operators.
4. More Energy, Not Less
1. Ranked ninth in World Bank 2015 data, energy use per capita.
2. The perceived relative “energy efficiency” of certain developed nations may also be deceptive. Britain uses comparatively little energy per GDP, but this is mainly because a large fraction of its economy today is based on services rather than industry. Since British consumption of goods is not decreasing, it has simply outsourced its industrial production and, along with it, parts of its energy consumption and emissions, to China and other countries.
3. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018), 139–142; Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018), 339–347.
4. Individual lifestyle changes of high-income environmentally conscious people unfortunately have relatively low impact on overall emissions. Research shows that “individuals with high pro-environmental self-identity intend to behave in an ecologically responsible way, but they typically emphasize actions that have relatively small ecological benefits.” For instance, a detailed study of one thousand representative Germans finds that “energy use and carbon footprints were slightly higher among self-identified greenies.” The primary determinant of a person’s actual ecological footprint is income, followed by geography (rural versus urban), socioeconomic indicators (age, education level), and household size. The variables that most predict carbon footprint are “per capita living space, energy used for household appliances, meat consumption (so going vegetarian does indeed have real climate impact!), car use, and vacation travel.” From Stephanie Moser and Silke Kleinhückelkotten, “Good Intents, but Low Impacts: Diverging Importance of Motivational and Socioeconomic Determinants Explaining Pro-environmental Behavior, Energy Use, and Carbon Footprint,” Environment and Behavior (June 9, 2017).
5. David J. C. MacKay, Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air (Cambridge: UIT Cambridge, 2008), 68.
6. Kenneth Gillingham, David Rapson, and Gernot Wagner, “The Rebound Effect and Energy Efficiency Policy,” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 10, no. 1 (2016): 68–88.
7. Matt Piotrowski, “U.S. Shatters Record in Gasoline Consumption,” The Fuse, February 28, 2017, http://energyfuse.org/u-s-shatters-record-gasoline-consumption/.
8. Shashank Bengali, “One Appliance Could Determine Whether India, and the World, Meet Climate Change Targets,” Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2017.
9. International Energy Agency, The Future of Cooling: Opportunities for Energy-Efficient Air Conditioning (Paris: OECD/IEA, 2018), 59.
10. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “EIA Projects 48% Increase in Energy Consumption by 2040,” May 12, 2016, www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26212.
11. The World Bank estimate for 2014 is 86 million (based on household surveys), while the International Energy Agency differs somewhat (based on utility connections). See World Bank, Global Tracking Framework: Progress Toward Sustainable Energy, 2017, annex 2.1, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/energy/publication/global-tracking-framework-2017, 37; International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 2016 (Paris: OECD/IEA, 2016), 92. Population growth is currently about 83 million per year.
12. US Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook, 2016 (Washington, DC: US Energy Information Administration, 2016), 81–82.
13. Gayathri Vaidyanathan, “Coal Trumps Solar in India,” Scientific American/ClimateWire, October 19, 2015.
14. Government of India, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), India Three Year Action Agenda, 2017–18 to 2019–20 (August 2017), http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/coop/India_ActionAgenda.pdf, 99.
15. John Asafu-Adjaye et al., “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,” April 2015, www.ecomodernism.org.
16. IEA/OECD statistics for 2014, from World Bank database.
17. World Bank data.
18. Clyde Haberman, “The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion,” New York Times, Retro Report (online), May 31, 2015; Mann, Wizard and Prophet, 165–200; Gregg Easterbrook, It’s Better than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018), 3–11.
5. 100 Percent Renewables?
1. See, for example, https://environmentmassachusettscenter.org/programs/azc/100-renewable-energy.
2. David J. C. MacKay, Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air (Cambridge: UIT Cambridge, 2008).
3. Eduardo Porter, “Why Slashing Nuclear Power May Backfire,” New York Times, November 8, 2017, B1; Frankfurt School–UNEP Collaborating Centre / Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment, 2018 (Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, 2018).
4. Junji Cao et al., “China-U.S. Cooperation to Advance Nuclear Power,” Science 353, no. 6299 (2016): 548. A critique of this article—Amory B. Lovins et al., “Relative Deployment Rates of Renewable and Nuclear Power: A Cautionary Tale of Two Metrics,” Energy Research & Social Science 38 (2018): 188–192—contains a factor-of-ten error in the growth rate of nuclear power that negates the critique’s conclusion.
5. Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen, Climate Gamble: Is Anti-nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future?, 3rd ed. (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2017), 34–35 (from Finnish edition, Janne M. Korhonen and Rauli Partanen, Uhkapeli Ilmastolla [Communications Agency CRE8 Oy, 2015]).
6. One-quarter of the 130 new TWh per year referenced in the last chapter.
7. US Energy Information Administration, “Chinese Coal-Fired Electricity Generation Expected to Flatten as Mix Shifts to Renewables,” September 27, 2017, www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33092.
8. “BP Statistical Review of World Energy,” June 2017, www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2017/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2017-full-report.pdf. These numbers have been adjusted to account for the fact that solar and wind produce electricity directly, not through the conversion of heat: “The primary energy… from renewable sources [has] been derived by calculating the equivalent amount of fossil fuel required to generate the same volume of electricity in a thermal power station, assuming a conversion efficiency of 38% (the average for OECD thermal power generation).” Without this adjustment, renewables’ share would be even lower.
9. “Requiem for a River: Can One of the World’s Great Waterways Survive Its Development?,” Economist (2017), www.economist.com/news/essays/21689225-can-one-world-s-great-waterways-survive-its-development.
10. BBC News, “Laos Dam Collapse: Many Feared Dead as Floods Hit Villages,” July 24, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44935495.
11. European Wind Power Association and European Commission, “Wind Energy: The Facts,” 2009, www.wind-energy-the-facts.org, 219; Erik Magnusson, “Lillgrund ger ägarna stora förluster,” Sydsvenskan, January 23, 2017.
12. “Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis—Version 11.0,” November 2017, www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-110.pdf, 2–3.
13. Eva Topham and David McMillan, “Sustainable Decommissioning of an Offshore Wind Farm,” Renewable Energy 102, no. B (2017): 470–480.
14. www.dongenergy.co.uk/news/press-releases/articles/dong-energy-awarded-contract-to-build-worlds-biggest-offshore-wind-farm; www.morayoffshore.com/moray-east/the-project/. More problematically, the lower wind price sparked demands to cancel Britain’s new nuclear plant. See “Nuclear Plans ‘Should Be Rethought After Fall in Offshore Windfarm Costs,’” Guardian, September 11, 2017. See also UK Government, Department of Energy and Climate Change, “Investing in Renewable Technologies: CfD Contract Terms and Strike Prices,” December 2013, www.gov.uk/government/publications/investing-in-renewable-technologies-cfd-contract-terms-and-strike-prices, 7; and Partanen and Korhonen, Climate Gamble, 88.
15. Mark Harrington, “Wind Farm’s Long-Term Cost Will Be High for Power Projects,” Newsday, February 19, 2017; Diane Cardwell, “Way Is Cleared for Largest U.S. Offshore Wind Farm,” New York Times, January 26, 2017, B3.
16. Peter Fairley, “Why China’s Wind Energy Underperforms,” IEEE Spectrum (May 23, 2016).
17. www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=true.
18. Ivan Penn, “California Invested Heavily in Solar Power. Now There’s So Much That Other States Are Sometimes Paid to Take It,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2017.
19. Ivan Penn, “Solar Power to Be Required for New Homes in California,” New York Times, May 10, 2018, B10.
20. Pilita Clark, “Renewables Overtake Coal as World’s Largest Source of Power Capacity,” Financial Times, October 25, 2016.
21. US Energy Information Agency, “Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook, 2017, April 2017, www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf, 7.
22. Peter Maloney, “How Can Tucson Get Solar + Storage for 4.5¢/kWh?,” Utility Dive, May 30, 2017, www.utilitydive.com/news/how-can-tucson-electric-get-solar-storage-for-45kwh/443715/.
23. “Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis,” 2–3. See footnote 12.
24. Varun Sivaram, Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).
25. Ibid., 73.
26. Electricitymap.org/.
27. Sivaram, Taming the Sun, 56–57, 78.
28. Ibid., 76.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 64; Michael Shellenberg; “If Solar and Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?,” Forbes, April 23, 2018.
31. Costs are dropping toward around $340 to store 1 kWh. O. Schmidt et al., “The Future Cost of Electrical Energy Storage Based on Experience Rates,” Nature Energy 2 (July 10, 2017). An installed Tesla Powerwall is about $563/kWh. www.tesla.com/powerwall. (That’s $6,200 equipment cost plus “$800 to $2,000” for installation, for 13.5 kWh.) Prices will likely drop further in the coming years.
32. “Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis, Version 3.0,” November 2017, www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-storage-2017/, 12.
33. From about 4.5 cents/kWh to 8.2 cents. Ibid., 2.
34. BP Statistical Review, 2017, 46.
35. Brett Cuthbertson and Will Howard, “Backing Up the Planet—World Energy Storage,” Office of the Chief Scientist, Australian Government, www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Battery-storage-FINAL.pdf.
36. Geoffrey Smith, “Bill Gates Is Doubling His Billion-Dollar Bet on Renewables,” Fortune, June 26, 2015.
37. “Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy.” See footnote 12.
38. Mark Z. Jacobson et al., “Low-Cost Solution to the Grid Reliability Problem with 100% Penetration of Intermittent Wind, Water, and Solar for All Purposes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (2015): 15060–15065.
39. Mark Z. Jacobson et al., “100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World,” Joule 1, no. 1 (2017): 108–121.
40. Christopher T. Clack et al., “Evaluation of a Proposal for Reliable Low-Cost Grid Power with 100% Wind, Water, and Solar,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 26 (2017): 6722–6727; Eduardo Porter, “Traditional Sources of Energy Have Role in Renewable Future,” New York Times, June 21, 2017, B1.
41. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/29/opinion/climate-change-carbon-budget.html.
42. Sanghyun Hong, Staffan Qvist, and Barry W. Brook, “Economic and Environmental Costs of Replacing Nuclear Fission with Solar and Wind Energy in Sweden,” Energy Policy 112 (January 2018): 56–66.
43. Swedish Television, “Misslyckat projekt med sol-och vindkraft i Simris,” 2018, www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/misslyckat-projekt-med-sol-och-vindkraft-i-simris. The Simris microgrid performance can be seen live here: https://les.eon.se. As of March 12, 2018, 83 percent of Simris electricity has been supplied by the national electricity grid and 17 percent from the renewable microgrid itself.
44. Johan Aspegren, head of communications, EON. See also Swedish Television, “Misslyckat projekt med sol-och vindkraft i Simris.”
45. According to the Swedish state utility Vattenfall, the lowest life-cycle-emission sources in Sweden are nuclear power and hydroelectric. They make up more than 80 percent of the national grid production but none of the Simris microgrid production.
46. Paul Hawken et al., Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (New York: Penguin, 2017), 220.
47. Ibid., 21.
48. Pew Research Center, Spring 2015 Global Attitudes Survey, question 84.
49. International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017 (Abu Dhabi: IRENA, 2018).
6. Methane Is Still Fossil
1. See www.uniongas.com/about-us/about-natural-gas/Chemical-Composition-of-Natural-Gas.
2. Keith Bradsher, “Even Spandex Is Hit by an Energy Squeeze,” New York Times, December 13, 2017, B2.
3. Steven Lee Meyers, “In China’s Coal Country, Shivering for Cleaner Air,” New York Times, February 11, 2018, A5.
4. Nicholas Kawa, “Gas Leaks Can’t Be Tamed,” Atlantic, September 18, 2015.
5. Robert W. Howarth, “A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas,” Energy Science & Engineering 2, no. 2 (2014): 47–60; Gayathri Vaidyanathan, “How Bad of a Greenhouse Gas Is Methane?,” Scientific American (December 22, 2015).
6. P. J. Gerber et al., Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock: A Global Assessment of Emissions and Mitigation Opportunities (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013); Matthew J. Vucko et al., “The Effects of Processing on the In Vitro Antimethanogenic Capacity and Concentration of Secondary Metabolites of Asparagopsis taxiformis,” Journal of Applied Phycology 29, no. 3 (2017): 1577–1586.
7. M. Saunois et al., “The Growing Role of Methane in Anthropogenic Climate Change,” Environmental Research Letters 11 (2016): 120207; Stefan Schwietzke et al., “Upward Revision of Global Fossil Fuel Methane Emissions Based on Isotope Database,” Nature (October 6, 2016).
8. www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/blast-gas-station-rocks-ghana-capital-accra-171007211009348.html.
7. Safest Energy Ever
1. Associated Press, “Onagawa: Japanese Tsunami Town Where Nuclear Plant Is the Safest Place,” Guardian, March 30, 2011.
2. “The results suggest that… it was not advisable to relocate any of the 162,700 actually relocated. This is because the inhabitants’ gain in life expectancy, even in the most contaminated settlements… would have been insufficient to balance the fall in their life quality index caused by their notional payment of the costs of relocation.” I. Waddington et al., “J-Value Assessment of Relocation Measures Following the Nuclear Power Plant Accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi,” Process Safety and Environmental Protection 112 (2017): 35.
3. Koichi Tanigawa et al., “Loss of Life After Evacuation: Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Accident,” Lancet 379 (March 10, 2012): 889–891.
4. A. Hasegawa et al., “Emergency Responses and Health Consequences After the Fukushima Accident: Evacuation and Relocation,” Clinical Oncology 228 (2016): 237–244; Yuriko Suzuki et al., “Psychological Distress and the Perception of Radiation Risks: The Fukushima Health Management Survey,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 93 (2015): 598–605.
5. Hasegawa et al., “Emergency Responses and Health Consequences,” 241.
6. Seth Baum, “Japan Should Restart More Nuclear Power Plants,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (October 20, 2015).
7. Lost nuclear generation in Japan and Germany after 2011 was about 400 TWh per year. In Japan about 21 percent of the lost nuclear power was replaced with coal and another 14 percent with oil. See www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japan_energy_2016.pdf. Death estimates are based on the formula in Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Environmental and Health Impacts of a Policy to Phase Out Nuclear Power in Sweden,” Energy Policy 84 (2015): 1–10. See also Mari Iwata, “Japan’s Answer to Fukushima: Coal Power,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2014; and Edson Severnini, “Impacts of Nuclear Plant Shutdown on Coal-Fired Power Generation and Infant Health in the Tennessee Valley in the 1980s,” Nature Energy 2 (2017), article no. 17051.
8. David Ropeik, “The Dangers of Radiophobia,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 72, no. 5 (2016): 311–317.
9. The Chernobyl Forum (International Atomic Energy Agency et al.), Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental, and Socio/Economic Impacts, rev. ed. (Vienna: IAEA, 2006), 8.
10. Colin Barras, “The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Is Arguably a Nature Preserve,” BBC, April 22, 2016.
11. The number of justifiable evacuations is estimated at 9 percent to 22 percent of those actually evacuated. See Waddington et al., “J-Value Assessment of Relocation Measures.”
12. Extrapolated from Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (New York: Vintage, 2007), 140–141.
13. Sammy Fretwell, “Santee Cooper Will Be Awash in Excess Power If SC Nuke Project Is Completed,” State, July 19, 2017; Mark Nelson and Michael Light, “New South Carolina Nuclear Plant Would Cut Coal Use by 86%, New Analysis Finds,” Environmental Progress (July 31, 2017).
14. “Nearly Completed Nuclear Plant Will Be Converted to Burn Coal,” New York Times, January 2, 1984.
15. International Energy Agency, “Tracking Progress: Coal-Fired Power,” 2017, www.iea.org/etp/tracking2017/coal-firedpower/.
16. Coal deaths for Europe are the average of estimates for lignite (the majority of coal in Europe), at thirty-three deaths per TWh and hard coal at twenty-five. The comprehensive European Union study ExternE is summarized in Anil Markandya and Paul Wilkinson, “Electricity Generation and Health,” Lancet 370 (September 13, 2007): 979–990. The China estimate is from Eliasson Baldur and Yam Y. Lee, eds., Integrated Assessment of Sustainable Energy Systems in China (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003).
17. Duane W. Gang, “Five Years After Coal Ash Spill, Little Has Changed,” USA Today, December 22, 2013.
18. www.greenpeace.org/archive-international/en/news/features/coal-ash-spills-expose-more-of/.
19. See note 16.
20. Extrapolated to 2017 from P. A. Kharecha and J. E. Hansen, “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power,” Environmental Science & Technology 47 (2013): 4889–4895.
21. Markandya and Wilkinson, “Electricity Generation and Health.”
22. Ibid.
23. www.sfgate.com/news/article/Biggest-dam-failures-in-U-S-history-10928774.php.
24. David A. Graham, “How Did the Oroville Dam Crisis Get So Dire?,” Atlantic, February 13, 2017; Mike James, “Tens of Thousands Evacuated Amid Failing Dam Crisis in Puerto Rico,” USA Today, September 22, 2017.
25. Gloria Goodale, “Nuclear Radiation in Pop Culture: More Giant Lizards than Real Science,” Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 2011.
26. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 72–73; Bruno Comby, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (1994; English translation, Paris: TNR Editions, 2001), 231–233.
27. M. Ghiassi-Nejad et al., “Very High Background Radiation Areas of Ramsar, Iran: Preliminary Biological Studies,” Health Physics 82, no. 1 (2002): 87–93.
28. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 98.
29. Public Health England, “Ionising Radiation: Dose Comparisons,” March 18, 2011, www.gov.uk/government/publications/ionising-radiation-dose-comparisons/ionising-radiation-dose-comparisons.
30. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 73.
31. Public Health England, “Ionising Radiation: Dose Comparisons.”
32. A. D. Wrixon, “New ICRP Recommendations,” Journal of Radiological Protection 28, no. 2 (2008): 161–168.
33. World Health Organization, Health Risk Assessment from the Nuclear Accident After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, Based on a Preliminary Dose Estimation (Geneva: WHO, 2013).
34. L. E. Feinendegen, “Evidence for Beneficial Low Level Radiation Effects and Radiation Hormesis,” British Journal of Radiology 78, no. 925 (2005): 3–7.
35. Angela R. McLean et al., “A Restatement of the Natural Science Evidence Base Concerning the Health Effects of Low-Level Ionizing Radiation,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (September 13, 2017); M. P. Little et al., “Risks Associated with Low Doses and Low Dose Rates of Ionizing Radiation: Why Linearity May Be (Almost) the Best We Can Do,” Radiology 251 (2009): 6–12; M. Tubiana et al., “The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data,” Radiology 251 (2009): 13–22.
36. www.icrp.org/icrpaedia/effects.asp
37. www.grandcentralterminal.com/about. The figure of 750,000 for twenty minutes each is equivalent to 10,000 around the clock, which delivers 50,000 mSv per year in the aggregate at 5 mSv per year. With 1 percent cancer death risk for each 200 mSv (ICRP), the result is 2.5 fatalities yearly.
38. World Health Organization, Health Risk Assessment, 32, 59, 56.
39. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 228–229, 235; Nuclear Energy Institute, Deterring Terrorism: Aircraft Crash Impact Analyses Demonstrate Nuclear Power Plant’s Structural Strength (Washington, DC: Nuclear Energy Institute, 2002).
8. Risks and Fears
1. David Ropeik, How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), 345–346; Scott L. Montgomery and Thomas Graham, Jr. Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 209–243.
2. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5, no. 2 (1973): 207–232; Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
3. G. Gigerenzer, “Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents,” Psychological Science 15, no. 4 (2004): 286–287.
4. Yoshitake Takebayashi et al., “Risk Perception and Anxiety Regarding Radiation After the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident: A Systematic Qualitative Review,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14, no. 11 (2017): 1306.
5. Robert Jay Lifton, “Beyond Psychic Numbing: A Call to Awareness,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 52, no. 4 (1982): 619–629.
6. Similarly, more scientific information about climate change does little to change people’s biases. See Dan M. Kahan et al., “The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks,” Nature Climate Change 2 (October 2012): 732–735; Ezra Klein, “How Politics Makes Us Stupid,” Vox, April 6, 2014.
7. Paul Slovic, “Perception of Risk,” Science 236 (April 17, 1987): 280–285.
8. Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein, “Facts and Fears: Societal Perception of Risk,” Advances in Consumer Research 8 (1981): 497–502.
9. Weart, Rise of Nuclear Fear, 188–189.
10. Andrew Newman, “The Persistence of the Radioactive Bogeyman,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 23 (October 2017).
11. David Ropeik, “The Rise of Nuclear Fear—How We Learned to Fear the Radiation,” Scientific American blog, June 15, 2012.
12. See, for example, the photo of a demonstration against nuclear power illustrating an unrelated article about nuclear weapons: Max Fisher, “European Nuclear Weapons Program Would Be Legal, German Review Finds,” New York Times, July 5, 2017.
13. There are many examples of the same phenomena; the Titanic did not end the operation of passenger ships.
14. “No New Record-Low for Road Deaths in Sweden,” Local, January 9, 2017, www.thelocal.se/20170109/no-new-record-low-for-road-deaths-in-sweden; “Why Sweden Has So Few Road Deaths,” Economist, February 26, 2014.
15. Reynold Bartel, Thomas Wellock, and Robert J. Budnitz, “WASH-1400, the Reactor Safety Study,” Technical Report NUREG/KM-0010, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, August 2016.
16. “Scientists Criticize U.S. on Nuclear Safety Data,” New York Times, November 18, 1977.
17. Alvin M. Weinberg, “A Nuclear Power Advocate Reflects on Chernobyl,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (August–September 1986): 57–60.
9. Handling Waste
1. Both coal and nuclear data from Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 9.
2. See SKB.com.
3. It gained a critical, though not final, regulatory approval in 2018. Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, “Swedish Radiation Safety Authority Issues Pronouncement on Final Disposal,” January 23, 2018, www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/en/press/news/2018/swedish-radiation-safety-authority-issues-pronouncement-on-final-disposal/.
4. http://posiva.fi/en; Elizabeth Gibney, “Why Finland Now Leads the World in Nuclear Waste Storage,” Nature (December 2, 2015); “To the Next Ice Age and Beyond,” Economist (April 15, 2017).
5. Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen, Climate Gamble: Is Anti-nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future?, 3rd ed. (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2017), 64–66.
6. Swedish Radio, “Slutförvar under Rönnskärsverken,” 2017, http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1650&artikel=6660810.
7. Boliden initially fought against the requirement to even store this material underground at all, saying that the “cost is not in proportion to the environmental benefits.” Ny Teknik, “Boliden tar strid mot regeringen om kvicksilvret,” 2003, www.nyteknik.se/digitalisering/boliden-tar-strid-mot-regeringen-om-kvicksilvret-6448341.
8. SKB, “Ny kostnadsberäkning för hanteringen av kärnavfallet,” 2017, www.skb.se/nyheter/ny-kostnadsberakning-for-hanteringen-av-det-svenska-karnavfallet/.
9. www.andra.fr/international/.
10. http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/waste/high-level-waste/index.cfm; www.nwmo.ca/.
11. Extrapolated by ten years from Cravens, Power to Save the World, 269.
12. “Put Yucca Mountain to Work: The Nation Needs It” (editorial), Washington Post, July 15, 2017.
13. Ralph Vartabedian, “Nuclear Accident in New Mexico Ranks Among the Costliest in U.S. History,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2016.
14. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 280–285.
15. www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html.
16. No health effects have resulted from the very rare minor accidents that have occurred. Kevin J. Connolly and Ronald B. Pope, “A Historical Review of the Safe Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” U.S. Department of Energy, August 31, 2016, FCRD-NFST-2016-000474, Rev. 1.
10. Preventing Proliferation
1. Isotopes are variants of chemical elements with different numbers of neutrons. Uranium in nature mostly has a large nucleus with 238 neutrons and protons (U238), but less than 1 percent is the isotope U235, with three fewer neutrons, which is much more likely to fission and allow a chain reaction.
2. William J. Broad, “From Warheads to Cheap Energy,” New York Times, January 8, 2014, D1.
3. World Nuclear Association, “Military Warheads as a Source of Nuclear Fuel,” updated February 2017, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/military-warheads-as-a-source-of-nuclear-fuel.aspx.
4. Cravens, Power to Save the World, 148–152.
5. William C. Sailor et al., “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change?,” Science 288 (May 2000): 1178.
6. Nicholas L. Miller, “Why Nuclear Energy Programs Rarely Lead to Proliferation,” International Security 42, no. 2 (2017): 40–77.
7. Byung-koo Kim, Nuclear Silk Road: The Koreanization of Nuclear Power Technology (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2011).
8. Robert H. Socolow and Alexander Glaser, “Balancing Risks: Nuclear Energy and Climate Change,” Dædalus (Fall 2009): 31–44. See also Steven E. Miller and Scott D. Sagan, “Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Proliferation” (special issue introduction), Dædalus (Fall 2009): 7–18.
9. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/31/world/middleeast/simple-guide-nuclear-talks-iran-us.html.
10. www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/the-iaea-leu-bank.pdf; Mariya Gordeyeva, “U.N. Nuclear Watchdog to Open Uranium Bank that May Have No Clients,” Reuters, July 11, 2017.
11. Daniel B. Poneman, “The Case for American Nuclear Leadership,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017): 44–47.
12. www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx.
13. Lower-scale or shorter armed conflicts (or both) between states, such as Russia-Georgia and Russia-Ukraine in recent years, do occur but are far less lethal than the sustained, high-level interstate wars of the past.
11. Keep What We’ve Got
1. Richard K. Lester and Robert Rosner, “The Growth of Nuclear Power: Drivers and Constraints,” Dædalus (Fall 2009):19–30.
2. The nuclear production of 800 TWh/year is 57 percent of the nonfossil electricity. Reactor total is for February 2018.
3. www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics/World-Nuclear-Generation-and-Capacity; www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3.
4. Ann S. Bisconti, “Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy: What Influences It,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (April 27, 2016); Demoskop [polling company], “Rapport: Attityder till kärnkraften Ringhals,” Vattenfall [utility], November 5, 2017, 14, https://corporate.vattenfall.se/globalassets/sverige/nyheter/attityder_till_ringhals_2010.pdf_16643410.pdf.
5. Bisconti, “Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy.”
6. Nuclear Energy Institute, “Nuclear Power Plant Neighbors Accept Potential for New Reactor Near Them by Margin of 3 to 1,” October 12, 2005, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nuclear-power-plant-neighbors-accept-potential-for-new-reactor-near-them-by-margin-of-3-to-1-55167507.html. However, the opposite may be true of planned plants, at least in China. See Yue Guo and Tao Ren, “When It Is Unfamiliar to Me: Local Acceptance of Planned Nuclear Power Plants in China in the Post-Fukushima Era,” Energy Policy 100 (2017): 113–125.
7. Robert Surbrug, Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974–1990 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 19–98.
8. Report to Vermont Department of Public Service on Vermont Yankee License Renewal, Chapter 12, 4, www.leg.state.vt.us/jfo/envy/7440%20Alternatives%20Report.pdf.
9. James Conca, “Who Told Vermont to Be Stupid?,” Forbes (September 1, 2013); Scott DiSavino, “Massachusetts OK’s Cape Wind / NSTAR Power Purchase Pact,” Reuters, November 26, 2012.
10. Roger H. Bezdek and Robert M. Wendling, “A Half Century of US Government Energy Incentives: Value, Distribution, and Policy Implications,” International Journal of Global Energy Issues 27, no. 1 (2007): 42–60, esp. 43. Of the nuclear power support, 96 percent was for research and development, whereas for fossil fuels only 8 percent was for R&D, with most of the rest being giveaways making operations cheaper. The limited support for renewables before 2003 was split between R&D and operations.
11. Jack (Anthony) Gierzynski, The Vermont Legislative Research Service: Federal and Vermont State Subsidies for Renewable Energy (Burlington: University of Vermont, 2016).
12. Bob Salsberg, “Massachusetts Taps Northern Pass for Hydropower Project,” AP News, January 25, 2018; Michael Cousineau, “Northern Pass ‘Shocked and Outraged’ by Application Denial,” New Hampshire Union Leader, February 1, 2018.
13. Vamsi Chadalavada, Cold Weather Operations: December 24, 2017–January 8, 2018 (ISO New England [grid operator], January 16, 2018), www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2018/01/20180112_cold_weather_ops_npc.pdf.
14. Energy Information Administration data: www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=MA.
15. Mary C. Serreze, “Closure of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Boosted Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New England,” Republican, February 18, 2017, www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/02/report_closure_of_vermont_yank.html.
16. Electricity costs rose by $350 million and carbon emissions rose by 10 million tons. Lucas Davis and Catherine Hausman, “Market Impacts of a Nuclear Power Plant Closure,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 8, no. 2 (2016): 120.
17. “Joint Proposal of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Friends of the Earth,… to Retire Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant,” www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/safety/dcpp/JointProposal.pdf.
18. Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (New York: Vintage, 2007), 247.
19. Rachel Becker, “New York City’s Closest Nuclear Power Plant Will Close in Five Years,” Verge, January 9, 2017.
20. Geoffrey Haratyk, “Early Nuclear Retirements in Deregulated U.S. Markets: Causes, Implications and Policy Options,” Energy Policy 110 (2017): 150–166; Devashree Saha, “Nuclear Power and the U.S. Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy Future,” Council of State Governments, July 7, 2017, knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/nuclear-power-and-us-transition-low-carbon-energy-future.
21. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in Japan,” May 24, 2017, www.world-nuclear.org.
22. These fossil imports drain the Japanese economy of at least $35 billion every year.
23. Geert De Clercq and Michel Rose, “France Postpones Target for Cutting Nuclear Share of Power Production,” Reuters, November 7, 2017.
24. Meanwhile, in 2017, voters in Switzerland decided to ban new nuclear reactors but keep four existing reactors running (a fifth will close in 2019), while investing heavily in renewables. Michael Shields and John Miller, “Swiss Voters Embrace Shift to Renewable Energy,” Reuters, May 21, 2017.
25. Byung-koo Kim, Nuclear Silk Road: The Koreanization of Nuclear Power Technology (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2011). See especially Chapter 9 on standardization. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in South Korea,” updated February 2017, www.world-nuclear.org.
26. Michael Shellenberger, “Greenpeace’s Dirty War on Clean Energy, Part I: South Korean Version,” Environmental Progress (July 25, 2017).
27. Sang-hun Choe, “In Reversal, South Korean President Will Support Construction of 2 Nuclear Plants,” New York Times, October 21, 2017, A4.
28. Michael Shellenberger et al., “The High Cost of Fear: Understanding the Costs and Causes of South Korea’s Proposed Nuclear Energy Phase-Out,” Environmental Progress (August 2017).
29. Darrell Proctor, “Ringhals Delivers Record Output Despite Tough Economics,” Power (November 2, 2017).
30. Sanghyun Hong, Staffan Qvist, and Barry W. Brook, “Economic and Environmental Costs of Replacing Nuclear Fission with Solar and Wind Energy in Sweden,” Energy Policy 112 (January 2018): 56–66. See also F. Wagner and E. Rachlew, “Study on a Hypothetical Replacement of Nuclear Electricity by Wind Power in Sweden,” European Physical Journal Plus 131 (2016): 173; and Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Environmental and Health Impacts of a Policy to Phase Out Nuclear Power in Sweden,” Energy Policy 84 (2015): 1–10.
12. Next-Generation Technology
1. The 1.2 GW VVER-1200.
2. Jessica Lovering, Loren King, and Ted Nordhaus, How to Make Nuclear Innovative: Lessons from Other Advanced Industries, Breakthrough Institute, March 2017, https://thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/How_to_Make_Nuclear_Innovative.pdf; Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why a Green Future Needs Nuclear Power (Cambridge: UIT Cambridge, 2014), 61–73; Richard K. Lester, “A Roadmap for U.S. Nuclear Energy Innovation,” Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 2016): 45; Elisabeth Eaves, “Can North America’s Advanced Nuclear Reactor Companies Help Save the Planet?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017): 27–37.
3. Richard K. Lester, “A Roadmap for U.S. Nuclear Energy Innovation,” Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 2016): 48.
4. Bill Gates, “Innovating to Zero!,” TEDtalk, February 2010, www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates; Jason Pontin, “Q&A: Bill Gates,” Technology Review (April 25, 2016).
5. Actually, the revised design essentially moves the fuel through a stationary wave. John Gilleland, Robert Petroski, and Kevan Weaver, “The Traveling Wave Reactor: Design and Development,” Engineering 2, no. 1 (2016): 88–96.
6. Stephen Stapczynski, “Nuclear Experts Head to China to Test Experimental Reactors,” Bloomberg Technology (September 21, 2017).
7. Richard Martin, Superfuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012).
8. See lftrnow.com; thorconpower.com; and Robert Hargraves, Thorium: Energy Cheaper Than Coal (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2012).
9. J. Buongiorno et al., “The Offshore Floating Nuclear Plant Concept,” Nuclear Technology 194, no. 1 (2016): 1–14.
10. Eric Ingersoll, personal communication, May 2018.
11. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 2009), 1–22.
12. On bipartisan support for the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, see www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/neima. This bill passed in 2018.
13. iter.org/newline/-/2837.
14. Lev Grossman, “Fusion: Unlimited Energy. For Everyone. Forever,” Time, November 2, 2015, 32–39. See also generalfusion.com.
15. Ashley E. Finan, “Strategies for Advanced Reactor Licensing,” Nuclear Innovation Alliance, April 2016, www.nuclearinnovationalliance.org/advanced-reactor-licensing.
16. David Keith et al., “Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering Without Ozone Loss,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 52 (2016): 14910–14914; James Temple, “The Growing Case for Geoengineering,” Technology Review 120, no. 3 (2017): 28–33.
17. Janos Pasztor, “Cooling-Off Period,” Technology Review 120, no. 3 (2017): 10; James Temple, “China Builds One of the World’s Largest Geoengineering Research Programs,” Technology Review (August 2, 2017).
18. David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).
19. www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Record ID=02102015.
20. James Temple, “Potential Carbon Capture Game Changer Nears Completion,” Technology Review (August 30, 2017).
13. China, Russia, India
1. www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx.
2. Edward Wong, “Coal Plants Threaten China’s Climate Efforts,” New York Times, February 8, 2017, A8.
3. Hiroko Tabuchi, “As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants,” New York Times, July 2, 2017, A10.
4. Junji Cao et al., “China-U.S. Cooperation to Advance Nuclear Power,” Science 353, no. 6299 (2016): 547–548.
5. Jessica R. Lovering, Arthur Yip, and Ted Nordhaus, “Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power Reactors,” Energy Policy 91 (April 2016): 371–382. For critical responses, see Energy Policy 102 (March 2017): 640–649.
6. International Energy Agency and OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Projected Costs of Generating Electricity, 2015 Edition (Paris: IEA, 2015), 17, 41, 49, 83; Geoffrey Rothwell, “Defining Plant-Level Costs. Presentation at OECD Workshop,” Paris, January 20, 2016, 16; Geoffrey Rothwell, Economics of Nuclear Power (London: Routledge, 2015).
7. Also the CAP1000.
8. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China,” updated April 20, 2017, www.world-nuclear.org.
9. Stephen Chen, “Warships to Be Powered by Cold War Era Reactor,” South China Morning Post, December 6, 2017.
10. Peter Fairley, “A Pyrrhic Victory for Nuclear Power,” IEEE Spectrum (October 2017).
11. Matthew Cottee, “China’s Nuclear Export Ambitions Run into Friction,” Financial Times, August 2, 2017.
12. In ten locations, 27 GW total.
13. For this section, see World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in Russia,” updated July 27, 2017, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/russia-nuclear-power.aspx.
14. This role is not always welcomed in the United States. See Nick Gallucci and Michael Shellenberger, “Will the West Let Russia Dominate the Nuclear Market?,” Foreign Affairs (August 3, 2017).
15. Sentaku Magazine, “Russia Unrivaled in Nuclear Power Plant Exports,” Japan Times, July 27, 2017.
16. Information from World Nuclear Association supplemented by Daniel Westlén, personal communication.
17. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in Russia,” “Transition to Fast Reactors” section.
18. Government of India, Ministry of Power, Central Electricity Authority, “Draft National Electricity Plan,” vol. 1, December 2016, www.cea.nic.in/reports/committee/nep/nep_dec.pdf, 2.10.
19. Geeta Anand, “Until Recently a Coal Goliath, India Is Rapidly Turning Green,” New York Times, June 3, 2017, A1.
20. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2017.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 4 (2017). India has air-, land-, and sea-based delivery systems.
21. To date, India has primarily constructed “heavy water” reactors, not the “light water” reactors mostly used around the world. (Light water is regular H2O, while “heavy water” contains deuterium, which is a hydrogen isotope with an added neutron.) Heavy-water reactors can run on natural (not enriched) uranium, making them an ideal choice for nations cut off from access to the enriched uranium market.
22. “Way Forward Agreed for Jaitapur Reactors,” World Nuclear News (March 12, 2018).
14. Pricing Carbon Pollution
1. Justin Gerdes, “How Much Do Health Impacts from Fossil Fuel Electricity Cost the U.S. Economy?,” Forbes, April 8, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/justingerdes/2013/04/08/how-much-do-health-impacts-from-fossil-fuel-electricity-cost-the-u-s-economy/#612d87edc679.
2. N. Gregory Mankiw, “A Carbon Fee That America Could Live With,” New York Times, September 1, 2013, BU4.
3. U. Chicago Booth School, IGM Forum, “Carbon Tax,” December 20, 2011, www.igmchicago.org/surveys/carbon-tax.
4. Eduardo Porter, “Counting the Cost of Fixing the Future,” New York Times, September 11, 2013, B1.
5. William Nordhaus, The Climate Casino: Risk, Economics, and Uncertainty for a Warming World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 177.
6. Ibid., 263.
7. Ibid., 225.
8. CDP North America, “Global Corporate Use of Carbon Pricing,” September 2014, 10; Tamara DiCaprio, “The Microsoft Carbon Fee: Theory and Practice,” Microsoft, December 2013; Georgina Gustin, “U.S. Rice Farmers Turn Sustainability into Carbon Credits, with Microsoft as First Buyer,” Inside Climate News (June 26, 2017).
9. World Bank, Ecofys, and Vivid Economics, State and Trends of Carbon Pricing, 2016 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016); Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, Carbon Pricing Leadership Report, 2016–2017, http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/183521492529539277/WBG-CPLC-2017-Leadership-Report-DIGITAL-Single-Pages.pdf.
10. James Temple, “Surge of Carbon Pricing Proposals Coming in the New Year,” Technology Review (December 4, 2017).
11. www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2016/05/16/when-it-comes-to-emissions-sweden-has-its-cake-and-eats-it-too.
12. Eurostat, “Electricity and Heat Statistics,” June 2017, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_and_heat_statistics.
13. Eduardo Porter, “British Columbia’s Carbon Tax Yields Real-World Lessons,” New York Times, March 2, 2016, B1.
14. www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/planning-and-action/carbon-tax.
15. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en.
16. The share of free allowances is dropping toward 30 percent by 2020, although it remains above 80 percent in the aviation sector.
17. Alissa De Carbonnel, “Sweden Proposes Measures to Strengthen Carbon Prices,” Reuters, October 17, 2016.
18. Dale Kasler, “California’s Cap and Trade Program Is Costly, Controversial. But How Does It Work?,” Sacramento Bee, July 19, 2017.
19. Chris Buckley, “China’s Leader Pushes Ahead with Big Gamble on a Carbon Trading Market,” New York Times, June 24, 2017, A4.
20. Keith Bradsher and Lisa Friedman, “China Plans Huge Market for Trading Pollution Credits,” New York Times, December 20, 2017, B1.
21. Nordhaus, Climate Casino, 240.
15. Act Globally
1. Raymond Pierrehumbert, “How to Decarbonize? Look to Sweden,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 72, no. 2 (2016): 105–111.
2. Government of Ontario, “The End of Coal: An Ontario Primer on Modernizing Electricity Supply,” November 2015, www.energy.gov.on.ca/en/files/2015/11/End-of-Coal-EN-web.pdf; Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen, Climate Gamble: Is Anti-nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future?, 3rd ed. (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2017), ix.
3. www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/canada-nuclear-power.aspx.
4. www.energy.gov.on.ca/en/files/2015/11/End-of-Coal-EN-web.pdf.
5. Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Potential for Worldwide Displacement of Fossil-Fuel Electricity by Nuclear Energy in Three Decades Based on Extrapolation of Regional Deployment Data,” PLoS ONE 10, no. 5 (2015): e0124074; David Biello, “The World Really Could Go Nuclear,” Scientific American (September 14, 2015); Pierrehumbert, “How to Decarbonize? Look to Sweden.”
6. David Stanway, “Annual Nuclear Power Investment of $80 Billion Needed to Meet Climate Change Goals: IAEA,” Reuters, April 27, 2017.
7. See Figure 57. South Korea’s export reactors in the UAE cost about double the domestic ones.
8. John Mecklin, “Introduction: Nuclear Power and the Urgent Threat of Climate Change” (special issue), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017).
9. James Hansen et al., “Nuclear Power Paves the Only Viable Path Forward on Climate Change,” Guardian, December 3, 2015; Dawn Stover, “Kerry Emanuel: A Climate Scientist for Nuclear Energy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017): 7–12.
10. Sarah Booth Conroy, “Farewell Gestures,” May 29, 1995, Washington Post, May 29, 1995.
11. Magdalena Andersson and Isabella Lövin, “Sweden: Decoupling GDP Growth from CO2 Emissions Is Possible,” World Bank blog Development in a Changing Climate, May 22, 2015, http://blogs.worldbank.org/climatechange/sweden-decoupling-gdp-growth-CO2-emissions-possible.
12. David Roberts, “The Key to Tackling Climate Change: Electrify Everything,” Vox, October 27, 2017.
13. www.ssab.com/company/sustainability/sustainable-operations/hybrit.
14. The fourth-generation “HTR-PM” reactor at Shiday Bay.
15. Jared Moore, “Thermal Hydrogen: An Emissions Free Hydrocarbon Economy,” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 30 (2017): 1–17.
16. Daisuke Miura and Tetsuo Tezuka, “A Comparative Study of Ammonia Energy Systems as a Future Energy Carrier, with Particular Reference to Vehicle Use in Japan,” Energy 68 (April 2014): 428–436.
17. Robert Rosner and Alex Hearn, “What Role Could Nuclear Power Play in Limiting Climate Change?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017): 2–6.
18. Framework Agreement between the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Moderate Party, the Swedish Green Party, the Centre Party, and the Christian Democrats, June 10, 2016, www.government.se/49d8c1/contentassets/8239ed8e9517442580aac9bcb00197cc/ek-ok-eng.pdf.
19. Staffan A. Qvist and Barry W. Brook, “Environmental and Health Impacts of a Policy to Phase Out Nuclear Power in Sweden,” Energy Policy 84 (2015): 1–10.
20. The figure is 805 TWh, 2016. www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics/Top-10-Nuclear-Generating-Countries.
21. Environmentalprogress.org; Breakthrough Institute, https://thebreakthrough.org; www.ecomodernism.org.
22. Meredith Angwin, Campaigning for Clean Air: Strategies for Pro-nuclear Advocacy (Wilder, VT: Carnot Communications, 2016); John Asafu-Adjaye et al., An Ecomodernist Manifesto (April 2015), www.ecomodernism.org/; Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (New York: Viking, 2009); Joshua S. Goldstein and Steven Pinker, “Inconvenient Truths for the Environmental Movement,” Boston Globe, November 23, 2015, A8.
23. Jessica Lovering et al., “Low-Carbon Portfolio Standards: Raising the Bar for Clean Energy. Breakthrough Institute and Environmental Progress,” May 2016, thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/energy/low-carbon-portfolio-standards; Jared Moore, Kyle Borgert, and Jay Apt, “Could Low Carbon Capacity Standards Be More Cost Effective at Reducing CO2 than Renewable Portfolio Standards?,” Energy Procedia 63 (2014): 7459–7470.
24. Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich, “The View from Trump Country, Where Renewable Energy Is Thriving,” New York Times, June 8, 2017, A20.
25. Coral Davenport and Marjorie Connelly, “Half in G.O.P. Say They Back Climate Action,” New York Times, January 31, 2015, A1.
26. Internationally, the politics of nuclear power are already very well developed. The IAEA and the NPT framework limit proliferation, along with technical measures administered by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The World Association of Reactor Operators shares experience and information to improve safety. The World Nuclear Association coordinates the industry worldwide.
27. John Mueller, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
28. http://environmentalprogress.org/global-overview.
29. Robert O. Keohane, “The Global Politics of Climate Change: Challenge for Political Science,” PS 48, no. 1 (2015): 19–26; Robert O. Keohane and David G. Victor, “The Transnational Politics of Energy,” Dædalus 142, no. 1 (2013): 97–109.
30. After large up-front licensing and construction costs, nuclear power plant operating expenses are lower than fossil-fuel plants, including methane, although higher than hydropower. See US Energy Information Administration, www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html.
31. Partanen and Korhonen, Climate Gamble, 78–89; Paul L. Joskow and John E. Parsons, “The Economic Future of Nuclear Power,” Dædalus (Fall 2009): 45–47.
32. Ik Jeong and Lee Gye Seok, “ROK’s Nuclear Policies and R&D Programs,” presentation by Republic of Korea Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, at Nuclear Energy Agency International Workshop on the Nuclear Innovation Roadmap (NI2050), OECD, Paris, July 7–8, 2015.
33. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power Economics and Project Structuring, 2017 Edition,” www.world-nuclear.org, 4.
34. Ibid., 16. See also World Nuclear Association, “The Economics of Nuclear Power,” updated April 2017, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx.
35. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in South Korea,” updated February 2017, www.world-nuclear.org. In the United States, Vogtle reactors 3–4, two AP1000s for $25 billion. www.utilitydive.com/news/vogtle-nuke-cost-could-top-25b-as-decision-time-looms/448555/. In the United Kingdom: “Hinkley Point: EDF Adds £1.5 Bn to Nuclear Plant Cost,” BBC News, July 3, 2017.
36. Energy Technologies Institute, “The ETI Nuclear Cost Drivers Project: Summary Report,” April 20, 2018. www.eti.co.uk/library/the-eti-nuclear-cost-drivers-project-summary-report.
37. However, innovation does also encounter resistance. See Calestous Juma, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
38. www.ecowatch.com/top-10-greenest-countries-in-the-world-1881962985.html; http://epi.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2016EPI_Full_Report_opt.pdf.
39. Alex Gray, “Why Sweden Beats Other Countries at Just About Everything,” World Economic Forum website, January 30, 2017, www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-sweden-beats-most-other-countries-at-just-about-everything/.
40. Number one in the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/innovation/facts-figures/scoreboards_en. Number two worldwide: www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2016/article_0008.html.
41. www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-sweden-beats-most-other-countries-at-just-about-everything/; www.helpage.org/global-agewatch/population-ageing-data/global-rankings-map/.