I was fascinated to see this article in WaPo, starting off with:
Charles Komanoff was for decades an expert witness for groups working against nuclear plants, delivering blistering critiques so effective that he earned a spot at the podium when tens of thousands of protesters descended on Washington in 1979 over the Three Mile Island meltdown.
Komanoff would go on to become an unrelenting adversary of Diablo Canyon, the hulking 37-year-old nuclear facility perched on a pristine stretch of California’s Central Coast that had been the focal point of anti-nuclear activism in America. But his last letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in February, was one Komanoff never expected to write. He implored Newsom to scrap state plans to close the coastal plant.
“We’re going to have to give up some of our long-held beliefs if we are going to deal with climate,” Komanoff said in an interview. “I am still a solar and wind optimist. But I am a climate pessimist. The climate is losing.”
Komanoff’s conversion is emblematic of the rapidly shifting politics of nuclear energy. The long controversial power source is gaining backers amid worries that shutting U.S. plants, which emit almost no emissions, makes little sense as governments race to end their dependence on fossil fuels and the war in Ukraine heightens worries about energy security and costs. The momentum is driven in large part by longtime nuclear skeptics who remain unsettled by the technology but are now pushing to keep existing reactors running as they face increasingly alarming news about the climate.
It’s indicative that, despite the proclamations of some cultural warriors, the left can be flexible when reality gets ready to hit them in the face.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean nuclear energy, even though I’m in favor of exploring it further, is part of the future. Reporter Michael Brooks in NewScientist (28 May 2022, paywall) explores the cloudy future of nuclear energy and comes to an ambivalent conclusion:
It remains to be seen if such innovations can pick up the slack. And herein lies the problem when it comes to making your mind up on nuclear: so much depends on things we don’t know for sure. On the one hand, why bother with it, given its drawbacks, if we can meet our net-zero targets with nothing but renewables? “I tend to believe we can do 100 per cent renewables,” says [M. V. Ramana at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver]. On the other hand, why put all your eggs in one basket? “It’s not an either-or situation: we’ve got to do them both,” says [Jacopo Buongiorno, director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at MIT]. Even among those with all the facts at their disposal, those fault lines remain. Add in the fact that nuclear weapons make things even more complicated (see “The weapons connection“), and it is clear why nothing is clear. Whatever call we make, some people will say it is wrong. The only thing we can do is be sure that we don’t make the call too late.
But the flexibility displayed by Komanoff is key. Nothing is guaranteed, but keeping an open mind and exploring options is part of the overall strategy of survival – not clinging to ideological/theological positions.
