The nuclear industry is a
death industry.
It's a cancer industry.
It's a bomb industry.
It's killing people and will for
the rest of time.
Well, why doesn't.
President Obama know this?
He's the intelligent man.
He's got two little girls he
loves.
What the hell does he think he's
up to supporting the nuclear
industry?
It's wicked.
Do you mind if I use the
"f" word?
Can I use the "f" word?
We get rid of all these fucking
nuclear plants right away
because we can switch to solar,
wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean
thermal.
All that energy is available to
do today.
We can shut all the nuclear
plants and all the coal, all the
oil, all the gas plants.
We can shut them down.
We have the technology.
It's called solartopia.
As a lifelong
environmentalist, I'm against
nuclear.
But what if what I've been
thinking all this time and what
my friends have been thinking
all this time is wrong?
It's been interesting to see
how people respond to my
pronuclear power position
because they respect me for my
books about nuclear weapons,
they know that I'm a liberal
democrat, and they're puzzled.
I was against nuclear power.
All I had to say was
"three mile island, chernobyl,
atomic bombs, atomic weapons."
My mind was made up,
definitely.
So, I needed a lot of input.
Research I did and scientists I
interviewed and so on... going
and visiting and seeing for
myself.
I was under no doubt that my
whole career and my whole
reputation as an environmental
activist, communicator, was at
risk if I talked publicly about
having changed my mind about
nuclear power.
I'd have been much better if I
was just to keep my mouth shut.
But I couldn't do that.
Whenever you change your mind
so radically, like those of us
that have become pronuclear have
changed our minds, you start to
wonder what you were thinking.
I mean, what exactly was going
on?
You know, the more you peel that
onion, the more strange things
you figured out.
...to the atomic radiation
issue in Tokyo from the nuclear
power plant at
fukushima daiichi.
Now, today 4 of the 6 reactors
there remain in states of
danger.
A nuclear accident is one of
the biggest media stories it's
possible to have.
...reactor number 3.
This is one whose fuel contains
a mix of plutonium.
In my first blog entry,
within the first 2 or 3 days of
it happening, I didn't know what
the scale of the radiation
release was going to be... I
didn't know whether people were
being injured.
...whether Japan is
underplaying this crisis...
The fact that this was
happening live on TV and that
there were explosions... you
know, this was a nuclear power
station blowing up... clearly,
the situation was out of
control.
The chief cabinet secretary
has asked the residents of Tokyo
not to hoard bottled water.
And so you have these awful
images of total devastation from
a Tsunami.
And the story was a nuclear
power accident.
It all got muddled together.
Some people on the west coast
of the United States worry that
radiation could travel 5,000
miles...
I hadn't been pronuclear all
that long before the
fukushima plant started to melt
down.
It's hard to watch that
happening and not start to
question whether or not this is
an energy source that is really
safe.
Radioactive isotopes will
likely reach California, but
experts say those levels are so
low, they certainly fall within
safe limits.
Now, a large network of radio
monitors is keeping close tabs
on all of this.
The long-term effects,
obviously... still to be
determined.
I thought, "I've got to keep
my head," you know?
"I could completely lose it
here, and I could just panic."
What do you think, Mark?
Feel like a bit of an idiot,
actually.
Why?
Um, I don't know.
'Cause it's sort of... I'm
wearing radiation clothing.
Shouldn't be necessary.
It must be absolutely awful to
have your town wiped by out by a
Tsunami and earthquake, and then
you can't even come back and
rebuild because the whole place
is contaminated by radiation.
Even if it's not massively
contaminated, it's contaminated
enough that it scares the shit
out of you, and I think
that's... you know, nobody can
look you in the eye and say,
"you shouldn't be worried."
And the... you know, and there's
no other energy source that does
this, that leaves huge areas
contaminated by this... this
strange, invisible presence,
which you know is potentially
deadly, you know?
Everything has its drawbacks,
everything has its risks, but
this is something which is
unique to... to nuclear.
I guess I can understand why
people are scared of nuclear
power more.
You know?
It's... it's kind of eerie.
So, yeah, I'm... I would say I'm
having a wobble.
I could see why we'd want to do
without nuclear power...
I really can.
Now, this parking lot is the...
The hottest spot in the... in
the whole exclusion zone.
This place got some serious
fallout, I think.
So, are you still pronuclear?
Am I... am I still
pronuclear?
Ask me in a... ask me in a few
days when I've had the chance to
get my head around it, all
right?
Are you still pronuclear?
To start the chain reaction,
all we need is one neutron.
I think you can see what is
going to happen.
Watch.
My first introduction to
nuclear power was quite nice.
It was a Disney movie called
"our friend the atom."
The atom was going to bring
about a wonderful revolution
in... in the way we got our
energy.
And there was a nuclear powered
submarine, the nautilus, that
went under the north pole, and
us kids were really enthusiastic
about that.
And then, when I was in my
early teens, admiral rickover
came to give a speech.
And my dad knew I was interested
in science, so he took me.
Watch the control rods come
out.
As the control rods come out,
the reactor starts.
The water starts in circulating
through here.
The steam starts...
He was a wonderful speaker,
and he was very inspiring about
American technology and about
the future.
And he talked about nuclear
energy being used to light up
cities, not just run submarines.
So, it was a generally positive
notion.
I got into the nuclear
business in early 1948.
Prior to that, I was working on
engines for the Tucker
automobile.
Everything we had done up until
that time to produce energy was
by burning something.
The enticement in the nuclear
business was the fact that it
was a new source of energy, a
new way to generate heat.
But the equivalency is huge.
One pound of uranium, which is
the size of my fingertip, if you
could release all of the energy,
has the equivalent of about
5,000 barrels of oil...
And that, to me, is amazing.
I worked at
argonne national laboratory in
Idaho, which really was the
headquarters in the world for
nuclear power at the time.
We were building this
first-in-the-world experimental
breeder reactor.
Ebr-i was an experiment just to
prove that the concept made
sense, scientifically.
Everything happened just like
we expected it to.
The reactors went critical.
"Critical" means you just...
You have enough uranium so that
it generates heat.
All the reactor does is
generates heat.
The end product is steam, and
then, once you have steam, it's
the same whether you generate
the electricity with oil or coal
or gas or... just as long as you
have a source of heat.
So, we generated electricity,
and then we hooked up four light
bulbs, and we lit the light
bulbs from atomic energy.
Nobody else had done it before.
But the fact that the whole
nuclear business, atomic energy,
was started for a bomb and used
as a bomb, and I think that put
the negative side on it.
I'm just old enough to have
conscious memory of
world war ii...
And the ending of world war ii.
Nuclear bombs were not just a
weapon... they were a little
window into some kind of
armageddon.
The photographs and the films
and the stories that came out of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
Those things cut pretty deep.
So, you had this very strong
residue of, "oh, this is not
primarily an energy source...
This is primarily a weapon,"
that we feel very badly about.
And then the testing went on and
on.
We were hearing about the
radiation from that and
strontium 90.
And then the Russians were doing
tests.
The Chinese were doing tests.
And before it really slowed
down, there were over 2,000
tests of nuclear weapons.
I grew up having nightmares that
my hometown was bombed into
oblivion and I was the only
survivor.
Us kids were in school doing
duck-and-cover routines under
the desks and... the backyard
fallout shelters and all this
stuff made it all pretty
personal.
I grew up in an antinuclear
family.
You know, my parents were
children of the '60s.
They were liberals and
environmentalists.
To... to actually believe in
nuclear power was, by
definition, to be a dupe.
Every step along the way,
measures will be taken to
guarantee that our plant at
Connecticut yankee contributes
to the beneficial and harmonious
development of
the Connecticut valley.
The haddam neck site will be
artfully landscaped so that the
buildings harmonize with its
wooded background.
Plans even call for an
information and educational
center for those wishing to
visit the haddam neck project.
And I actually visited a
nuclear power plant with my
buddies in high school.
And we knew enough to have a
very sarcastic attitude toward
the tour they gave us.
They would say, "it's this
clean source of energy.
It's really safe.
It doesn't have anything to do
with nuclear weapons," and we
would just laugh.
We just thought that they were
all tools, stooges of the...
Of the nuclear industry and its
propaganda campaign.
* the Simpsons
of course, that gets
reinforced for people in my
generation with
"the Simpsons"...
Warning.
Problem in sector 7-g.
7-g? Good god, who's the
safety inspector there?
...where the evil character
is the c.E.O. Of the nuclear
power company.
Simpson, eh?
Good man? Intelligent?
And homer Simpson is bumbling
while the whole thing is melting
down.
D'oh! Who'd have thought a
nuclear reactor would be so
complicated?!
90 seconds...
You just always had the sense
that nuclear power was something
sinister, something that was a
lurking danger.
I was against nuclear power
because I was an
environmentalist.
I am an environmentalist.
And the two things go together.
Certainly, that always seemed
to be the case.
Looking back, I suppose you
could say I was a hard-core
activist.
It's almost like being in a
battle zone, you know?
It's the kind of experience
that most people never have,
where you're battling the, you
know, the... the forces of evil
almost on a day-to-day basis...
Evil being the big corporations,
those who are making profit out
of this destruction, and good
being us.
The... the slogan was
"no compromise in defense of
mother earth."
That's the... that was the...
That was the original
earth first! Slogan, and it's
one that I still subscribe to at
a very deep level, I think.
Well, I mean, nuclear power was
evil... no doubt about it.
...generations!
Crimes against future
generations!
Who are the criminals?!
I was writing for national
magazines many years ago,
writing articles about the
dangers of nuclear power.
And I had the standard point of
view that I think many
journalists still have, that it
must be bad.
I came to realize they basically
avoided looking at the whole
picture and only looked at the
questions that seemed to prove
to them that nuclear power was
dangerous, as I had, too.
The only reason I changed my
mind is that I talked to
experts, physicists in
particular, who were the
pioneers of nuclear energy and
who carefully, one by one,
explained to me again and again
until it finally got through my
head why it wasn't what the
antinuclear activists felt it
was, believed it was.
I was right there at the
beginning of this.
It was my chance to do something
for humankind.
This, after all, was an
unlimited source of energy.
I assumed that all electrical
power, if we were successful,
would be generated by nuclear
means.
In the '50s, there were,
essentially, two kinds of
reactors being developed... the
breeder reactor, which ebr-i was
a prototype for, and the
light water reactor.
The breeder reactor breeds
plutonium and can recycle it
over and over again... it's a
very good fuel.
The light water reactor is a
much simpler reactor, but it
produces much more waste.
It was chosen by
admiral rickover to be the
reactor for the submarine.
There are many things to be
said for light water reactors
and there's some to be said
against them.
But with rickover's influence,
the light water reactor became
the principal commercial reactor
around the world.
We developed water reactors,
but we looked upon that as sort
of a near-term, short-range
stepping stone to real nuclear
power, the breeder reactor.
That's what we considered to be
the most likely real long-range
future for nuclear power.
But the water reactor got
marketed first.
This was partly a commercial
move on our part.
In the early 1950s, we were
concerned that the Soviet union,
which had kept pace with us in
the development of nuclear
reactors for power, would steal
a march on us and get the
commercial business in Europe.
So, president eisenhower
decided to share the benefits of
nuclear energy with other
countries.
It was called "atoms for peace."
We've had 50 years now of
water reactors, 400 of 'em,
roughly, all over the world, and
they've produced a hell of a lot
of waste that we didn't
anticipate.
You know, you mention
100,000 years of stuff that you
got to keep isolated from the
rest of the world, that's enough
to scare a lot of people.
That was, perhaps, the price we
paid for commercialization in
the sense that we didn't look
ahead.
Nuclear power was developed
as a kind of a boutique energy
source by utilities executives
who really didn't know very much
about it.
I talked to people who said,
"well, I heard about it on the
golf course from the guy who
runs the plant down the road.
He's gonna build one, and so I
thought I should, too."
The first commercial nuclear
power plant that was built in
the United States was built in
shippingport, Pennsylvania.
It was a modified version of a
large submarine reactor.
One of the major reasons the
power company wanted it was
because there was a lot of coal
pollution in Pittsburgh, and
nuclear energy looked to people
to be, as it is, a clean form of
energy.
The first power reactors were
fairly small, but the push by
the power and light companies of
america was to scale them up as
quickly as possible.
Safety, instead of being
inherent in the design of the
reactor itself, had to be
engineered around it, as it
were.
You had to have multiple core
cooling systems that had to be
added on to anticipate possible
breakdowns of various kinds.
The odds of "x" happening or
"y" happening were very small.
But unlike those smaller
reactors, they really couldn't
say it was impossible.
Late today, officials here
in Washington summarized briefly
what seems to have caused the
problem.
First, a pump in the generator
system broke down at 4:00 A.M.
Yesterday.
The reactor immediately shut
down.
Reactor operators decided to
open the valves and release
radioactive water from the
reactor.
That, apparently, may have been
the wrong thing to do.
When the emergency core cooling
system came on automatically, an
operator turned it off.
That, too, apparently, was a
mistake, for then high levels of
radiation were released inside
the containment building.
And not till three hours later
was it realized that radiation
was being released and, in fact,
was penetrating to the outside.
Three mile island happened.
And the first thing I thought
of is, "are those rays coming
out of three mile island gonna
come to New York and harm my
daughter?"
I remember standing in my
apartment and thinking, "what
can... you know, what can we
do?"
This is Jack godell.
We have a serious condition.
You get everybody into safety
areas and make sure that they
stay there.
Of course, two weeks earlier,
"the China syndrome" had come
out.
So I was already prepared to be
terrorized by this event.
The China syndrome.
The what?
If the core is exposed, for
whatever reason, the fuel heats
beyond...
The idea behind
"the China syndrome" is that the
nuclear power plant would melt
down... it would burrow a hole
all the way to China.
Never mind that.
China's not actually on the
other side of the earth as
the United States.
But that was the idea... that it
would... that... that the
worst-case scenario would be
apocalyptic.
The number of people killed
would depend on which way the
wind is blowing... render an
area the size of Pennsylvania
permanently uninhabitable, not
to mention the cancer that would
show up later.
That's when I think I began
to conflate nuclear power with
nuclear weapons.
...from a leaking nuclear
plant.
We don't want a radioactive
wasteland, whether it's from a
bomb or a nuclear plant.
That kind of... that's probably
the sort of thing I would have
answered.
It just seemed like, "okay,
nuclear anything is a bad idea."
I want to just say a few
words about the China syndrome,
my movie, "the China syndrome,"
because if we continue to place
our health and safety in the
hands of utility executives
whose main goal in life is to
maximize profits, then we will
see more harrisburgs, we will
see more leaks, and we will see
an increase in the cancer
epidemic that is already running
rampant in this country.
Stopping atomic energy is
practicing patriotism.
Stopping atomic energy is
fighting cancer.
Stopping atomic energy is
fighting inflation.
Stopping atomic energy is
saving this country.
* just give me the
restless power of the wind *
* give me the comforting glow
of a wood fire *
* but please take all your
atomic poison power away *
In the 1980s, my husband and
I were living in the east end of
long island.
And word gets out that this
nuclear plant is going to start
up.
And this is, of course, right
after three mile island.
That's very much in people's
minds.
The local pro-environmental
people, and I would be one of
those... just said, "yeah, we
got to stop shoreham, however we
can."
No one will survive!
Every day the plant operates,
radiation will be coming out of
the plant, right?
And it'll get into the food.
Women may be hard-wired to
protect our families.
Take them aside.
And it's just a natural
impulse.
You all have children!
And you all have children!
If something looks like it's
bad, we're holding up our hand
and saying, "no.
No, please.
We... we can't have that."
I remember these big scare ads
in the papers getting people to
organize rallies against
shoreham.
There were many things I didn't
know at that time that I've
learned since.
For one thing, it turns out the
ads were placed by the
oil-delivery industry... you
know, the companies that deliver
fuel to people in long island.
And, sure, the oil companies can
say, "go solar," 'cause they
know it's never going to replace
oil heat.
You cannot turn on the sun in
the winter and hope to warm up
your house.
Good luck.
Solar, solar... not nuclear.
Solar... not nuclear.
Yeah.
Sponsored by the
oil heat institute.
Yeah. No problem.
Yeah. "You don't need a furnace.
Just have solar panels."
They know... I mean, this is the
cynicism of the fossil fuel
industry.
Shoreham was actually
finished and started up, and
then immediately shut down by
the governor of the state and
basically mothballed.
It was this immense investment,
billions of dollars, in a
reactor which would have been of
great use to New York City, but
people were so afraid of it that
they simply said, "shut it
down."
And today, it's a mausoleum.
Those of us who were worried
about nuclear power perceived
that nuclear power wasn't really
needed.
And this, I think, is one of
the fundamental tragedies of the
antinuclear movement... to be
antinuclear is basically to be
in favor of burning fossil
fuels.
I had, finally, to change my
mind.
And I have seen friends of mine
change their minds, one of them
being Gwyneth cravens, who
started out rather antinuclear,
as I did, and ended up writing a
book about the benefits of
nuclear power.
The difference now is in the
scale of the damage we are
doing.
We are seeing a vast increase in
the amount of carbon dioxide
reaching the atmosphere.
It is mankind and his activities
which are changing the
environment of our planet in
damaging and dangerous ways...
Change to the sea around us,
change to the atmosphere above,
leading, in turn, to change in
the world's climate, which could
alter the way we live in the
most fundamental way of all.
That prospect is a new factor
in human affairs.
It's comparable in its
implications to the discovery of
how to split the atom.
Indeed, its results could be
even more far-reaching.
We can't just do nothing.
One of the key arguments
that... that climate deniers use
is, "oh, look, you know, the
climate's a huge thing.
You really say we're affecting
the weather... just us?
You know, we're just little
people," but we are.
We're beginning to see the kind
of destabilization and chaos
that you get, actually, when you
see this transition to much
warmer global temperatures.
And that process of change, of
very, very rapid climate change,
is going to wreak havoc on human
society.
Having children has made me even
more concerned about the future.
So it's... it's sort of deepened
my commitment to... to tackling
global warming.
Loving your children is about
loving the future and loving the
world that they're going to
inherit.
And so you've got to make sure
that that's right.
I had a sneaking suspicion
that nuclear was gonna have to
be part of the solution, simply
because it's... it's... it
doesn't produce carbon dioxide.
But I didn't want to go there.
Why?
Well, I was too scared.
I mean, it's... it's pathetic,
really, but... looking back.
But, you know, yeah.
You don't want to make enemies
of your main allies in the
environmental movement by
tackling something which is
difficult, controversial.
Ted and I spent basically
the entirety of our professional
careers working for the big
environmental groups.
I mean, you name it...
Sierra club, nrdc.
We even worked with earth first!
On a campaign to save the last
ancient redwoods in California.
We were movement guys.
I mean, we were consultants to
the big green groups.
We really accepted most of the
basic ideas of the environmental
movement.
And I think, over time, we,
you know, became gradually
disillusioned with the
traditional environmental
approaches to... to climate
change.
It's my assessment that we
have no consensus here for
article 10, then we are going to
delete article 10 from the
protocol.
It's so decided.
People would tell you that,
"oh, everything is gonna change.
The world is gonna implement
the Kyoto treaty on global
warming.
We're all gonna start using
solar and wind for our energy."
It was a very seductive
narrative.
Then, paragraph is
adopted.
There is agreement on
paragraph on this article.
Paragraph is adopted.
May I understand that there is
agreement on paragraph,
, and?
The idea was that the U.S.
Was gonna sign Kyoto, and then
all the countries in the world
were gonna just start ratcheting
down their emissions, year after
year, just like they did in
their excel spreadsheets.
Let's take a look at
paragraph.
The problem is these were all
proposals based on making fossil
fuels more expensive.
And I think it's pretty safe to
say that is not going to happen.
The adoption of this protocol
to the conference by unanimity.
There's not gonna be a global
treaty on climate change.
The United Nations' treaty
process has basically run
aground.
We just walked away being like,
"nobody has a clue as to how to
do this."
So, we wrote this essay,
"the death of environmentalism,"
that argued that, if
environmentalism is that kind of
small-bore, then we need
something beyond
environmentalism.
Modern environmentalism, with
all of its unexamined
assumptions, outdated concepts,
and exhausted strategies must
die so that something new can
live.
I would suggest that it will
take more than dead penguins and
melting ice caps to get
Americans to fundamentally get
involved in this political
transformation of our energy
economy.
We still didn't think we needed
nuclear power.
It really took us getting clear
about how big the gap was
between fossil fuels and
renewables for us to take a
second look at nuclear.
Part of the problem is
intermittency, and that hasn't
been solved.
It's not always sunny, and it's
not always windy, and there are
long periods of time when
renewables would deliver no
power at all into a grid.
They have to have natural-gas
backup.
So what you end up getting
with renewables is a pretty big
expansion of natural gas.
You know, I'm sure people had
told me that, and I didn't
believe them.
We're building these all over
the country, and one of the
questions we ask... we need
about 3,000 foot in altitude.
We need flat land.
We need 300 days of sunlight.
And we need to be near a gas
pipe because, you know, for all
of these big utility-scale power
plants, whether it's wind or
solar, everybody is looking at
gas as the supplementary fuel.
The... the plants that we're
building, the wind plants and
the solar plants, are gas
plants.
I ended up feeling like a
sucker.
I ended up feeling like I was a
sucker.
The idea that we're gonna
replace oil and coal and natural
gas with solar and wind and
nothing else is a hallucinatory
delusion.
You know, you find yourself
feeling, I think, quite...
I found myself quite
disappointed in myself and...
And honestly, quite angry at
others who were propagating that
myth.
This light bulb, when
everybody's got 'em, is a
quadruple efficiency bulb.
That'll displace two dozen
power plants.
This thing for fluorescent
lights will displace 60 big
power plants.
This motor controller chip and
about 10 other things you do to
motors saves 70 big power
plants.
Just these three things... there
goes every nuclear plant we
have.
I had gotten the religion
about energy efficiency and
renewables in college when I
first read amory lovins.
Amory lovins is still taught in
maybe every liberal arts
environmental studies class in
america.
You know, he has article after
article explaining why solar and
wind are cheaper than fossil
fuels and why you don't need to
build nuclear plants because we
can use energy efficiency.
It's a very appealing, seductive
message.
They're getting smaller.
Here's a little osram 11
replacing a 50.
And I bought it.
My parents, my family bought it.
Really, everybody I know
believed this.
The standard sort of green
environmentalist narrative has
been that we can all use less
energy.
So, we can be renewable.
We can go for energy efficiency,
the idea that humankind is
simply wasting and using too
much.
Now, I have a lot of time for
that argument, but you can't
keep using less energy forever.
Most people kind of think
that, somehow, we're gonna be
reducing our energy consumption.
Actually, we just find more and
more uses for it.
If you look at all the energy
that is used by an iPhone... not
just to make it and to power it,
but, also, to power all the
servers, all of the stuff that
you don't see that the iPhone is
connected to, it uses as much
energy as a refrigerator.
There's a direct correlation
between the amount of energy
available to a civilization and
that civilization's quality of
life.
Unless you want to condemn more
than half the population of the
earth to poverty and sickness
and short lives, we're going to
have to produce more energy.
In regions that don't have
electricity or very little
electricity, the life span is
much shorter.
Clinics, schools,
refrigeration... all of these
things rely on electricity.
And just a few watts make a big
difference.
As soon as you get electricity,
you improve people's lives.
So, that's human life.
First of all, we're talking
about human... just quality of
life.
And if you look at the countries
with the best quality of life,
they are the countries that
consume the most electricity...
Rain or shine, 24 hours a day, a
steady stream of power.
The global south is pretty
warm, and they would like
air-conditioning.
And up till now, they've not
been able to afford it, but now
they can.
They're getting out of poverty,
and they need grid electricity
to run their air conditioners.
And, of course, various
environmentalists freak out at
that point.
But on the other hand, if you
could have vast quantities of
really, really clean energy in
the developing world in the next
decade or so, that is such an
improved world, it takes your
breath away.
Assuming that the world
continues to develop and that
China and India and Brazil
become rich countries over the
next half century or century,
how much energy is the world
gonna use?
When you start running those
numbers, it's a sobering
exercise.
And you may not be able to get
that number exactly right, but
you realize we're gonna
basically double the amount of
energy we consume by 2050.
We're probably gonna triple it
or quadruple it by the end of
the century.
And meanwhile, if you want to
stabilize emissions at some
reasonable level, almost all of
that energy has to be clean
energy.
You know, you've got to not
only, you know, create a clean
energy infrastructure to replace
the fossil fuel infrastructure
we have, but we have to create
yet another one, or maybe two of
them, between now and 2050 or
2100 in order to reduce our
emissions to stabilize the
climate.
And that is just nothing that
anybody has really been talking
about or dealing with over the
last 20 years.
It comes as a shock to a lot of
environmentalists to hear this,
but coal is not only the most
widely used source of energy in
the world... it's also the
fastest-growing source of
energy.
Its use is accelerating
worldwide faster than natural
gas, faster than renewables,
faster than anything else.
When I have spoken to women's
groups, none of them knew how
bad coal was.
They didn't know it killed
people.
If you add up all fossil fuel
combustion in the United States,
just from power plants, you'll
find particulates alone kill
13,000 people a year.
Worldwide, 3 million people die
a year from air pollution from
fossil fuel plants.
One of the big surprises for
me when I started looking into
the mortality data, the death
rates, associated with each
energy technology per amount of
energy they make, is that
nuclear is the second safest
after wind.
And in fact, to add to the
irony of it, nuclear power is
even safer than solar panels.
Making solar panels is an
incredibly toxic process.
But, I mean, I thought that
people died at
three mile island.
I thought that hundreds of
thousands of people died at
chernobyl.
I thought that there was nuclear
waste scattered all around the
country and that it was seeping
into our water systems.
I believed all that stuff.
And I... and I thought, even if
maybe it was getting a little
bit better or maybe if it
were... if the problems of it
were exaggerated a little bit by
my fellow environmentalists that
it was still a risk that we
didn't need to take.
There hasn't been a single
death from the operation of
commercial nuclear reactors in
the United States... not one
death in the history of nuclear
power in this country.
At Vermont yankee, which
antinuclear people are trying to
shut down, protesters keep
saying it's causing public
health problems.
It's not.
But it's leaking tritium.
It's leaking tritium...
That's true.
Banana break?
Oh, I'd love one.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
If you ate one banana...
Banana break?
...which have a potassium
isotope that's a little hot, you
would get more radiation
exposure...
Banana break?
...than you would if you
drank...
Banana break!
...all the water...
Thank you very much.
...that comes out of the
plant in one day.
Banana break!
Tritium is a naturally
occurring hydrogen isotope.
We're going to ask that all
of those people who are willing
to risk arrest remain in this
safety zone until the rest of
the people have moved up.
In new Mexico, where I grew
up, there's radium Springs.
And... I had a friend who went
with his geiger counter.
And the... these hippies were
there, soaking in the baths.
And he got out his geiger
counter and said, "you know,
this is radioactive."
And they said, "yeah, man, but
it's natural."
It's true to say that we're
all bathed in natural
radioactivity.
It's affecting all of us all the
time.
It comes from the rocks and the
air and even from space.
It's in our food, in our water,
in our teeth.
So, radiation isn't dangerous in
an everyday sense.
And there's enormous variation
in different parts of the world.
Do you have any numbers, just
to put that in a kind of a
context?
Well, the numbers... I mean,
the units are difficult.
It's grays and millirems and all
this kind of thing.
Right.
You know, so the numbers are
not familiar to people in any
way, shape, or form.
If I say to you, "the
radioactivity... oh, it's only
another 4 microsieverts," are
you gonna feel better about
that?
Of course you're not, 'cause you
don't know what on earth I'm
talking about.
This... iodine 131.
Anywhere...
The reporting of radiation
levels are as confusing as they
could possibly be.
...has just about 0.7 rem.
You have to get up to
50 to 75 rem to get...
We hear about rems and
millirems and microrems.
And then... oh, now there's
sieverts.
We hear a lot about sieverts and
microsieverts, millisieverts.
And you're... you're looking and
squinting and, "okay, that
looks like a large number.
Is... is that a number I should
worry about?
And compared to what?"
What's the background radiation
level relative to all this?
I didn't even
know there was such a thing as
natural background radiation,
actually.
I had assumed that radiation was
something which humans had
artificially introduced into the
environment, which was doing us
harm.
There's background radioactivity
affecting all of us all the
time, which is many, many times
more powerful than... than
artificial radioactivity, in
terms of how we're affected.
So, zero tolerance of radiation
doesn't make any sense.
Radiation increases with
altitude, so people who live at
high altitude get a higher dose
than people who live in
low-lying areas.
And if you're traveling on an
airplane... say if you're going
from New York to Tokyo... you'll
get 20 times the average
background level during that
flight.
For example, in guarapari beach
in Brazil, the natural
background radiation there is
way above permitted levels in
terms of what the public can be
exposed to, and that's what's
coming out of the soil...
It's on the beach.
Can you ask him why he does
this?
You know?
And this helps?
It helps.
And what's really striking is
that there's no correlation
between levels of background
radioactivity, which vary by
such enormous amounts, and high
levels of cancer.
Cancer is something which is...
Is the greatest fear of most
people in rich countries because
it kills 20% of people, anyway.
We all know people who've died
of cancer, and so this idea that
radioactivity is a cause of
cancer is probably the
number-one reason why people are
scared of it.
You can't go to chernobyl and
not re-examine your core beliefs
about nuclear power.
I mean, you would have to be
really thickheaded not... not to
look at that and look at the
damage that was done and say,
"all right.
When it goes wrong... you know,
we know that we do everything we
can to make it go right.
But when it goes wrong, it can
go really very wrong, indeed."
Chernobyl was a... a real-world
experiment of what happens when
you irradiate a very large
population.
But 1986 was a long time ago.
So, we've got the perspective
and the distance to be able to
assess what the real impacts of
that were.
And they're nothing... nothing
like what... what was expected.
The reactor that exploded in
chernobyl in April 1986 was
actually number 4, reactor
number 4 of a whole set of them.
No one really realizes it...
The three other units, which are
in the same building, carried on
operating and generating
electricity right up until the
mid-'90s.
And people just went to work
there every day.
Isn't that amazing?
Outside of the old
Soviet union, we didn't use the
reactor design that chernobyl
had.
Among other things, the
chernobyl reactor had no
containment building.
It was in virtually a quonset
hut.
So, when there was a fire and an
explosion, there was nothing to
contain it.
Chernobyl was a different
kind of reactor.
It was inherently unsafe.
It was primarily designed to
make plutonium for bombs.
No chernobyl-style reactors were
ever built in the west.
But if you could then point to
other nuclear power stations and
say, "each of those could be a
chernobyl," then you've got a
pretty powerful argument against
nuclear power.
The city nearby called
"pripyat"... the entire place
was evacuated when chernobyl
blew up.
It's just fascinating to see
some place which is frozen in
time, in this... at the very end
of the era of the Soviet union.
It's an extraordinary place.
I-I really can't even describe
it.
It's a bit like the fukushima
thing in the sense that you're
tramping around on this debris
of broken glass and broken
everything, and... and it's
almost as if the explosion at
chernobyl had somehow caused
this...
But, of course, it didn't.
It's just the decay of time and
things have been broken.
Obviously, what people are
concerned about with chernobyl
is the... is the radioactivity.
I never knew until I went to
chernobyl that there are places
full of people who have just
decided to ignore the
restrictions and just moved back
to their houses.
And you can go to this old
church, and you can meet them.
Let's ask him when and why
did he decide to come back and
how many... how many people came
with him?
The explosion of the reactor
at chernobyl had enormous
consequences, but not the ones I
think many people expect.
I followed the studies that have
been done by international
experts in radiation and
oncology that followed the
damage at chernobyl for all the
years since.
The damage that was caused to
people by the fallout from that
worst of all nuclear power
accidents has been remarkably
limited.
You can look at the evidence.
It's all been published.
It's been certified by
the United Nations and
the world health organization.
What's so striking is just to
go read the original
world health organization
documents, then read the public
health reports.
Was that a shock to you?
It was a complete shock to
me.
I mean, I... there was a period
where I'm reading all the
chernobyl stuff and I... I'm...
I kind of am not believing it
because it was so out of sync
with what I had come to believe.
Literally hundreds of
thousands of people were
involved in the clear-up
operation.
They're known as "liquidators."
And they got some really
significant doses of radiation.
Their doses are known, and their
health has been studied ever
since.
And even in that large number of
people who were very heavily
irradiated, 40 or 50 people have
died so far and a few thousand
may have shortened life-spans
due to cancer in future decades.
And there have never been any
children born deformed from
chernobyl, according to the best
authoritative science we've got
from the United Nations.
So, people have substantially
been fed an urban myth, really,
about what the impacts of
chernobyl actually were.
I mean, I've got books full
of it... a million people dying
right now or have died because
of chernobyl.
And it's only 25 years ago.
How many millions more will
chernobyl kill?
40% of the European landmass is
radioactive, will be for
hundreds of years.
In order to believe that more
than 56 people were killed at
chernobyl or more than the maybe
4,000 who could eventually die
of cancer... in order to believe
that a million people were
killed by chernobyl, which is
what Greenpeace and
Helen caldicott, a number of
other people claim, you have to
believe there was a cover-up of
just massive proportions by the
world health organization, by
the United Nations, by literally
hundreds of the world's top
public health experts.
It's so absurd of an idea, and
it's exactly the same thing
global warming deniers think.
Helen, what...
I don't know.
I'm not privy to their
motivations.
Well, they should look at the
literature.
This is the most important
study, almost, that's ever been
done.
This is the biggest cover-up in
the history of medicine.
How do you explain...
Many of the... the tactics
and the arguments that have been
used by the environmental groups
against nuclear power are
exactly the same tactics and
arguments that are used by
climate skeptics...
The United Nations... that's
where all this started.
It was the ipcc in
the United Nations said that
the world's gonna come to an end
because of the emissions of co2.
...so, the cherry-picking of
scientific data, the nurturing
of... of... of scientists who
happen to believe your
ideological position, and the
production of reports which
are... which apparently are
authoritative and scientific,
but actually are just
ideological propaganda,
basically.
41% of the people believe
that global warming claims are
exaggerated.
Climate change deniers are
idiots.
I don't care about them.
They... they... they are denying
science.
We're going back into
the dark ages.
How dare... how dare they deny
science!
Not to understand science and
medicine in this day and age is
more than irresponsible.
I can't.
You know, we think of Japan,
we think of Hiroshima, those
pictures... horrible after the
event that happened...
No radiation is safe, but,
generally speaking, Americans
don't have anything to worry
about...
well, we have this map here,
and we're showing, obviously,
the path, some 5,000 miles,
first to the aleutian islands...
This is where they expect this
to go.
You can't reassure people.
People are so terrified that
anything you say, because they
don't have that background
context, that understanding of
what radiation is and what it
means, they can't actually
decide for themselves what's
safe and risk they want to bear.
And I think that's one of the
real problems of fukushima.
There's no way for the experts
to actually communicate what is
safe to the general public.
If you were exposed to the
fallout from fukushima and
according to the
world health organization,
the u.N., generally, the
increased risk of getting cancer
is estimated to be so
infinitesimally small, given the
large population, that you will
never be able to identify this
impact, epidemiologically.
I just won the bet.
This... this particular weed
here is more radioactive than
guarapari beach in Brazil.
So, we've got... what did we
get... 44?
Now we've seen what the worst
is that can happen with a
1960s-era western-designed
reactor, which does have a
containment structure, which
chernobyl didn't.
But this isn't just something
you can brush away.
This was not supposed to happen
to a reactor.
Back in the '80s, it was
clear to me that something had
to be done, something better
than present day, about safety.
And it wasn't only in safety.
It was in matters of waste, as
well, and in proliferation
matters, and over all of those
things, the matter of economics.
You can't make the plant
impossibly expensive by making
it too complicated.
Just go ahead and go up to
the main parking lot there,
then.
All right.
Thanks very much.
So, in 1980, I was given the job
of directing the entire program
of advanced reactor development
at argonne national laboratory.
Our goal was to design a new
type of reactor where the very
physics of it would be such that
it could withstand almost any
type of accident that nuclear
plants can be subject to.
It was called the ifr, the
integral fast reactor.
The budget was about
$100 million a year.
1,500 people... scientists,
engineers, supporting staff.
This was a very big development
program.
But you've got to test it.
Calculations don't tell you
everything.
You've got to have the big
facilities that say, "if we have
an accident of this kind, what
will happen?"
We will now start to set up
for the test.
We did two experiments to
demonstrate some unique safety
features that that reactor has
that others don't have and
invited people from all over the
world to come and witness it.
T-minus two minutes.
"Station blackout" is a term
that's used by nrc, the safety
folks, to describe the situation
where one loses all bulk a.C.
Power.
You assume that you lose
off-site power.
You assume that you're getting
no a.C. Power from your own
turbogenerator.
You assume that your first
diesel started up and it failed
to start up, the second one
started to start up, and it also
failed, so you end up dead in
the water with no a.C. Power.
This experiment was almost a
direct parallel to what happened
at fukushima.
It was eerily similar.
Mark.
We ran the reactor at full
power...
...disabled the shut-down system
so the operators had no ability
to shut the reactor down...
And we shut off the cooling
system... didn't extract the
heat.
So we just let things get
hotter.
In most reactors, you can't do
it.
No reactor I know of would
survive that accident.
You'd... you'd have a meltdown.
The international audience
were watching the temperature
going up like that, straight up.
They turned around, like so, to
see if I was or if the argonne
guys were running.
And by the time they looked up
again, the... the trace had
turned like so and it was on its
way down and the... the reactor
just quietly shut itself down.
No action required of the
operators, no action required of
the safety systems... nothing.
You could just stand back like
this, watch the dials if you
wished, and the reactor shut
itself down.
30 seconds.
30 seconds till test time.
Well, in the afternoon, we
started the reactor up again and
carried out the conditions
responsible for the accident at
three mile island.
5... 4... 3...
We shut off the pumps.
...2... 1.
Just shut off the pumps.
All major reactor accidents
happen because of one thing...
Inadequate cooling.
The ifr-type reactor, which
ebr-ii was a prototype for, if
you cut it off from the steam
system so it cannot reject its
heat, it will just shut itself
down.
So it can't melt down?
No, it can't melt down.
We're now in the facility that
completes the circle, if you
like, of the integral fast
reactor.
We've come out of the reactor
building.
We're now in the fuel cycle
part.
This is Travis at
window three.
The integral part of it was
that every part of a complete
nuclear reactor system, not the
reactor itself, but, also, the
facilities for treating the
spent fuel, for treating the
waste, would all be an integral
part of the same system.
And just bring it over to...
What this enables you to do
is you can take the spent fuel,
chop it up, and back it goes
into the reactor again.
You can recycle the fuel again
and again until the end of plant
life.
Ready to receive the fuel
assembly.
The other thing I... that
needs to be said about all of
this technology is that this is
not... a dream.
This is not somebody's
calculations on a piece of
paper.
This is real.
We know how to do these things.
Now, let me frame this
debate, if I may, by reading a
letter from the president
of the United States sent to me
yesterday.
"Thank you for your letter
supporting our decision to
terminate the department of
energy's advanced liquid metal
reactor program, including the
integral fast reactor.
I want to assure you that this
administration does not support
the ifr and will oppose any
efforts to continue the funding
for this reactor project."
Democrats have gotten
themselves on the wrong side, in
my opinion, in this issue, being
opposed to nuclear power for, I
think, no good reason other than
that it's very high on the list
of what Republicans like.
We know that nuclear energy
is clean.
We know that it doesn't pollute
the air.
We know that it doesn't damage
the ozone.
We know that it is a tremendous
producer of energy in a clean
sense.
And our only problem is that we
cannot come to political terms
on how to handle the waste
stream.
We're talking about what it's
gonna cost if we go that far and
continue our obsession with
nuclear power.
Ifr waste streams lose their
radioactivity to background
level in about 800 years,
light water reactor in nearly
10,000.
I share with my colleagues
some of the public opinion on
this.
The Washington post...
"the wrong reactor."
The oregonian...
"give up nuclear breeder dream."
The San Francisco chronic...
"saying no to nuclear pork."
The ifr program was shut
down, and the project went down
the... the... the black hole of
government politics.
It was by chance that, in
about the year 2000, I think, I
wound up in the desert on a
visit to yucca mountain,
america's planned nuclear waste
repository 100 miles north of.
Las Vegas...
A hole in the ground where
10 plus billion dollars were
spent on vastly expensive
experiments trying to prove that
this place is gonna be
absolutely "safe"... quote...
For the next 10,000 years.
And so, it just felt like, "wait
a minute, people.
This is... this is nuts."
Among other things, have you
even thought"... you know, we
are professional futurists, many
of us who were on this trip...
"what exactly is this world
10,000 years from now that we're
trying to protect?"
Science fiction is what
we were playing out at vast
expense at yucca mountain.
The kinds of experiments they
were doing in that mountain...
It's not a mountain.
It's just a Ridge... certainly
didn't persuade anybody.
For political reasons,
yucca mountain was not opened
and will probably never be
opened.
Then, I started to look at,
"well, what actually is the
amount of hazard that comes from
nuclear waste?"
And the first thing I found out
is what people were actually
doing with the nuclear waste,
which is being generated all
this time by every nuclear power
plant, turns out to be pretty
good.
They just put it in this pretty
simple but very workable
dry-cask storage, and they park
it out back of the parking lot.
And you can go there and see it.
There's the nation's nuclear
waste.
Is it causing any problems?
No.
The other realization for me...
And it took a while to get
through... is that by not
putting it in the ground, you've
got the option to use it as fuel
in fourth-generation reactors.
Wow. We can take this waste from
the nuclear plant and recycle it
into fuel, either by
reprocessing or by having a new
kind of reactor that uses this
fuel.
That looks very
much like a renewable resource.
People are always talking
about nuclear waste, the
accumulation of nuclear waste,
and I did, too.
I think it's around 70,000 tons
have accumulated of used fuel in
the United States.
I thought the quantity was
staggering.
In fact, all the spent nuclear
fuel from commercial nuclear
plants in the United States
could fit in a single football
field if you stacked the fuel
rods to a height of about
3 meters... that's it.
But of that, only a very small
fraction, mainly plutonium, is
long-lived.
By long-lived, I mean would
still be hot thousands of years
from now, still be highly
radioactive.
Volumetrically, nuclear
produces tiny amounts of waste.
The entire waste production
from France's 50 nuclear power
stations, which produce 80% of
the country's electricity, are
under the floor in one room.
Compare that with the billions
of tons of waste produced by
coal-fired power stations.
It completely blows away most of
the antinuclear arguments.
So, it's... it's not... nuclear
waste is not an environmental
issue.
It's not something which, as an
environmentalist, I'm concerned
about.
One of the most inspiring
stories anywhere is the story of
France.
Here's a country in the early
'70s that is burning oil for
electricity.
It doesn't have coal reserves.
It doesn't want to be dependent
on gas coming from.
Northern Europe and Russia.
But when the oil shocks happened
and the prices went up
dramatically, the French
realized they needed to get
serious about a different source
of energy.
They said, "this is serious,
and it has to do with national
security."
So they focused on making sure
that they had the best nuclear
engineers and a standard design
for the reactors and just roll
it out.
What's so significant about
what the French did is that they
did it so quickly, and they
scaled up almost exactly at the
pace that we need to scale up
nuclear power globally.
They now have 80% of their
electricity coming from nuclear.
Their trains are
electric-powered.
They have clean air.
They have the cheapest energy in
Europe.
They're selling it to everybody
else.
And they are greener than
green Denmark, greener than
green Germany.
I didn't know what French
per capita carbon dioxide
emissions were, which is
actually the most important
question to ask.
The answer is they're about
5 tons per person, per year.
Germany's about 10 tons per
year.
So, Germany has much, much
higher per-person emissions of
carbon dioxide than neighboring
France because France is nuclear
and Germany is trying to get out
of nuclear.
When we look at nuclear, we
have to understand that we're
making a long-term investment.
Now, it's a big up-front capital
cost, but these are plants that
are gonna last 60, 80, maybe
even 100 years.
And much of the other
infrastructure that's being
built will last far longer than
that.
And when you really look at it
that way, there's just really no
question.
It's a much more economical
alternative to very expensive
solar panels or very expensive
wind turbines that require
backup power.
The current generation of
reactors we're building now are
third-generation reactors.
This technology is much safer.
But fourth-generation reactors,
like the integral fast reactors,
can use the waste from the first
three generations as fuel.
The great philanthropist.
Bill Gates has put money and
time into a traveling wave
reactor that you basically stick
in the ground, and it goes
through its body of fuel over a
period of 60 years.
You don't need to refuel it.
There's a thorium reactor the
same group is working on.
Other fourth-generation coming
along are the small modular
reactors.
They look exactly like the kind
of local power source that
environmentalists have
increasingly been saying we
should have.
So, there's a renaissance in
reactor design that those are
just the first glimpses of.
For some people who, perhaps,
accept most of these arguments
in favor of nuclear power, the
ultimate argument is, "but
knowledge of this technology is
also the kind of knowledge you
can use to make nuclear
weapons."
And that's quite true.
It is.
There are, by the CIA's
estimate, about 37 countries in
the world today that, if they
wanted to, could develop nuclear
weapons.
They have the technical and
scientific infrastructure to be
able to do that.
How many countries actually have
nuclear weapons?
Nine.
Which, I think, begins to point
out the fundamental flaw in the
concern... we won't get rid of
nuclear weapons by forgetting
how to make them.
We will get rid of nuclear
weapons by deciding we don't
want them around anymore.
It turns out that
the United States has been
buying up nuclear warheads from
the Russians for over 10 years
now... 16,000 nuclear warheads,
and we're recycling all of these
nuclear warheads into energy,
electricity, and nuclear power.
And so nuclear power is doing
more to de-nuclear-weaponize the
world than any other thing that
we do.
Poetically, it's rather
beautiful.
The very things that were
designed to blow up our cities
are now lighting up our cities.
And amazingly, 10% of American
electricity, half of our nuclear
power, comes from reprocessed
Russian warheads.
Well, ideally, every single
nuclear weapon in the world
eventually can get turned into
electricity.
I believe that, while much of
the environmental movement that
came of age in the '60s will
never change, I feel very
confident that the next
generation will.
They're gonna understand the
challenges they face in an
energy-hungry world, and they're
gonna put nuclear in its proper
context.
We can have a world of
7 billion, 8 billion, 9 billion,
even 10 billion people that are
living high-energy,
resource-intensive, modern lives
without killing the climate...
And that's exciting.
I have... I have a sense that
this is the beginning of
something really beautiful.
You actually do feel like this
is the beginning of a movement.