Is the nuclear option really the answer to climate change?

By Dave Rochlin - originally posted on care2.com

In President Obama's recent state of the union speech, he called for "building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country." While he specifically called out what he referred to as clean energy, the speech made no mention of renewables, and gave only token acknowledgment to the idea of conservation. Is the nuclear option really our best option?

The issue of expanding nuclear power is a divisive one, even within the environmental movement. Greenpeace responded to the President's speech by saying:

"Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's "clean." For years, nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation."

To prove their point, they highlighted a recent New York Times article covering the rapidly rising levels of radioactive tritium in the groundwater surrounding Vermont’s sole nuclear power plant. This has raised doubts in the minds of many former supporters of the plant.

On the other side of the issue, one of the co-founder of Greenpeace - Patrick Moore - is now co-chairman (along with former Bush-era EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman) of the Nuclear Energy Institute's Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

As Moore told Wired Magazine:

"We failed to distinguish between the beneficial uses of the technology and the evil uses of the technology...Greenpeace is against fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power. Those three technologies produce over 99 percent of world energy. What kind of a path to a sustainable future is that? We're bringing people at the municipal and state levels together to help convince the American public that nuclear energy is a key technology for the future."

He also told another interviewer:

"Even though nuclear does create waste, that waste is very successfully contained – it is not leaking out, it is not harming anybody. On the other hand, emissions from fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation are harming people."

A few other environmental champions have also take this positon.

But while Mr. Moore declares success, is he wrong to ignore Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the 100,000 gallon radioactive coolant leak at TVAs Sequyah plant, or the smaller incidents in Japan, France and the former Soviet Union? Or are the rest of us burying our head in the sand about the realistic options for reducing fossil fuel consumption?

My own views are best captured by a recent episode of The Simpson's, which describes nuclear power as:

"The cleanest energy there is, except once in a while, but then lookout."

That pretty much says it all.

There's been amazing progress in solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable technologies, and conservation and forest preservation have tremendous potential. But apparently the lure of energy that is clean and "too cheap to meter" continues to divert attention from these ideas. Or perhaps the President is offering his opponents a uranium-enriched olive branch in order to get a climate bill passed. But with the track record and unanswered questions about storage of nuclear waste, I don't think that "mostly safe and clean" is good enough. Let's at least try to find and fund some better ideas.

Tough lessons for Dell

In June of 2007, Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell set out to make his computer company the greenest technology company on the planet, through a variety of initiatives including tree planting, energy efficiency, recycling and offsetting.

By August of 2008, Dell declared itself to be carbon neutral. The Wall Street Journal decided to investigate this claim, and their damning criticism highlights the many challenges facing firms and individuals seeking a carbon neutral path.

In calculating their footprint, a lack of clarity and standards around what to include led the Journal to conclude that Dell was missing the boat. A great interactive graphic is available here , and a static graphic is shown below. First off, Dell should be applauded for their transparency in the process; it shows their commitment. But what should Dell include in their total carbon emissions? Our methodology would say that to be totally carbon neutral, Dell should force their suppliers to deliver carbon neutral (part of the a product input) , but that users should take responsibility of energy used to run their Dell products...not Dell. Whatever the answer, clearly explaining the methodology is important so that the rest of use can choose to agree or disagree with their claims.

In offsetting, Dell fell into some obvious traps in choosing how to offset. They ended up supporting projects without clear additionality, and failed to take a personal interest in where the money was going. The wind projects supported clearly did not result in any less GHG...their wind partners reported that they certainly would have built the wind farms regardless of whether they had been able to sell RECs. This means that Dell's money had no impact on the climate, it only enriched the Windmill operators. This is unfrotunate, since there are plenty of projects for which this is not the case. ClimatePath wants to create a more direct and transparent connection between projects and ofsetters, and the ClimatePath Ecologic Fund exists to make sure that credits and credit issuers deliver, and avoid this sort of commercial transaction with questionable benefit to the planet.

In this instance, Dell learned the hard way that carbon credits are no more of a commodity than are microprocessors: There is a difference.