climate scientists have consistently demonstrated how important it will be to drastically reduce human-generated carbon emissions. Yet almost no progress has been made. Hydroelectric power is reliable and cheap, but there aren’t enough suitable sites to satisfy our energy demands. Wind and solar energy don’t provide consistent output, and battery technology would have to improve significantly to solve that problem. Today, renewables are just an expensive supplement to an electricity system based on coal and natural gas.
There is one source of carbon-emission-free energy that is cheap, reliable, and proven to work on a large scale: nuclear power (see “Nuclear Options”). It often gets a bad rap because of perceived safety problems. In reality, it has become a sort of litmus test for societal rationality. People have a hard time estimating some kinds of risks. For example, they fret about the safety of flying but show little concern for driving, despite statistics showing that cars kill vastly more people than planes do.
Similarly, incidents like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima capture our attention but mislead us as to the risks. Statistics from the World Health Organization and other sources suggest that coal kills about 4,000 times as many people per unit of energy produced as nuclear power does. That counts only here-and-now effects such as air pollution and ignores long-term damage due to climate change.
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