Dissecting the flaws within the EPA's Clean Power Plan

With the public comment period on the EPA's Clean Power Plan closing on December 1 (have you submitted your comments yet?), I thought I'd share the public comment I submitted to the EPA on some of the shortcomings in the plan as they pertain to nuclear energy, particularly as it relates to potentially perverse unintended consequences introduced into the plan (as discovered by my students Remy DeVoe and Justin Knowles).

My comment follows below the break (warning: words ahoy).

Serious climate advocates don't turn upon their vanguard

The easiest test of whether one is dealing with a serious environmentalist is quite simple: anyone claiming to be a friend to the environment who simultaneously makes it their priority to shut down the most abundant carbon-free energy source in present day is at best no serious friend to the environment, showing a ludicrous disregard for the most basic concept of triage.

In this case, the calculus of triage is quite simple, and quite brutal - taking Fukushima as an example of some of the very worst consequences of a potential nuclear accident in terms of modern nuclear reactors (insomuch as a 40-year old reactor design can be called "modern"), such consequences amount to a catastrophic loss of property and perhaps even livelihoods to a localized region - but it pales in comparison to the global and devastating consequences of unchecked climate change, and pales even in comparison to the premature deaths brought about from ordinary pollution from more polluting sources like coal.

Few environmentalists are willing to take such a self-marginalizing position (although clearly that number is far from zero, if the ongoing campaigns against Vermont Yankee and Indian Point are any indication). Those that do inevitably fall into two categories - those that (disingenuously) assert that the gap can be filled nearly immediately with renewable sources (despite the mathematical difficulties of such a claim), falling back onto the idea of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" (again failing the basic arithmetic rule that half the carbon dioxide emission of coal, easily the dirtiest source available, is still far greater than zero, or close enough when all emissions are factored in over the entire lifecycle), or when pressed, falling back upon the idea of "energy austerity" - asserting (again, under highly questionable premises) that the energy deficit can simply be closed by using less - either by efficiency or simply by imposed austerity.

A natural experiment for this position is to look to Germany's Energiewende, which purports to do just that - trading carbon-free baseload from nuclear today for a promise of carbon-free intermittent electricity from renewables tomorrow. As to its efficacy, the evidence speaks for itself - Germany's carbon emissions increased last year by 1.2% - namely because the chief replacement for nuclear energy has come not from renewables but perversely from burning more brown coal and natural gas. Claiming that substituting definite and indisputable risks (if only from the environmental costs of coal burning alone) for an uncertain, possible (and by all accounts, remote) risk represents a positive environmental trade-off is laughably absurd.  Worse, it represents the very opposite of intelligent triage - again, taking for granted the idea that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe is non-negligible (debatable, but assumed for the sake of argument), basic logic dictates eliminating the worst and most certain environmental harms first - the very opposite of what is being done.

Inevitably then we come to the default position it seems of most "mainstream" environmentalists today, perhaps realizing the absurd parody of triage implied by prioritizing the closure of existing, operational plants which emit no carbon in their operations over the most significant environmental offenders, instead re-focus their message on opposing the development of new nuclear units (essentially hoping to simply run out the clock on the matter). The most curious arguments invoked inevitably come down to very selective applications of both arithmetic and economics - those being that nuclear takes too long to build compared to renewables (which causes one to question whether they've done the math at the time it would take to build out an equivalent capacity) or that it simply costs too much while in the same breath insisting that the federal government must provide financial support to their energy sources of choice. (As for the latter, there is yet another quick test of the seriousness of the convenient economic principle invoked - ask the proponent whether their argument applies equally when it is their own ox being gored. If the answer is "no," the argument about economics can be clearly dismissed as specious special pleading.)

Give the boosters of natural gas as an eponymous "bridge fuel" credit for one thing - at least their position doesn't rely upon logical gymnastics (although it does depend on where you call home in the wintertime).

The argument is simply puzzling, to say the least. As of right now, nuclear energy forms the vanguard in the fight against climate change, making up about 60% of the U.S. carbon-free electricity portfolio. In what constitutes an existential fight for the simultaneous survival of the human race combined with an unparalleled drive to lift out billions from crushing poverty, what sane leader then treats the vanguard as disposable? Contrary to popular belief, we do not currently suffer from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to options for stabilizing carbon output, especially if economic considerations are factored in (as they should be).

The fact is, prioritizing carbon-emitting sources like natural gas over nuclear - be it for the present (if temporary) economic realities (again, where warm weather and plenty of pipeline capacity persists) or for more ideological reasons (i.e., avoiding nuclear energy at all costs) - poses a real and significant handicap in our ability to combat climate change.

Sane triage allows for the idea of swapping out the worst sources (like coal) for "better" sources (like natural gas) - but what serious advocate for action on climate change should advocate turning upon their own vanguard - especially when arguably the nuclear solution has the potential to cut across ideological boundaries, particularly to those who might otherwise be otherwise ill-disposed to work as allies (i.e., ideological conservatives)? One needn't even believe in the reality of climate change for solutions which mitigate carbon to have real consequences - something which itself ultimately demonstrates nuclear's cross-cutting value proposition as a key tool in climate change mitigation.

Cultural cognition of risk and perceived risks of nuclear

In a bit of a departure from the typical discussion, I wanted to delve deeper into a topic of some personal interest to me and of particular relevance to nuclear communication - that of risk perception by the public. As a scientist, people like me are trained to view risk in objective, impersonal terms - i.e., evaluating risk in strictly scientific, quantitative terms. One of the unending sources of frustration for the technical community is in the fact that this is not how the general public perceives risk - in fact, quite the opposite. Many times, people will blithely accept particular risks - driving, air travel, smoking, certain recreational activities - and yet recoil in horror at the unarguably lower risks presented by technologies such as nuclear energy (especially in comparison to energy alternatives such as coal and even natural gas).

Often, it's the first inclination of technically-minded folks to simply dismiss these people as irrational, even stupid. And yes, this is certainly easy - even satisfying (particularly on days when I'm feeling especially curmudgeonly...). It's also terribly unproductive. In light of this, I wanted to dig deeper into the idea of how public perceives risk, drawing on an established body of literature (again, perhaps most famously through projects like the Yale Law School's Cultural Cognition Project).

Understanding "perceived risk"

A particular school of thought in the social science of risk perception, known as the Cultural Theory of Risk, purports that the relative perception of risk - and ultimately, the determination of "acceptable" risk, is governed by cultural factors exogenous to strictly technical evaluations of risk alone. In other words, despite the fact that flying is safer than driving, people perceive the latter to be less safe due to other, outside factors. Thus a key element in understanding how risk is perceived by members of the public (i.e., the "non-technical" community) requires understanding the factors which tend to weigh upon evaluations of risk - in other words, factors which promote perceived risk. These include:

• Involuntary exposure
• Lack of personal control
• High/catastrophic consequences 
• Inequitable distribution of risk
• Lack of familiarity
• Lack of perceived benefit
• "Dread" factors (e.g., cancer)
• Irreversible consequences

In this way, risks of higher probability but more moderate consequences (e.g., natural gas explosions, coal waste accidents, etc.) are viewed as more "acceptable" despite much lower probabilities of harm from sources such as nuclear accidents. By the same token, risks which are mundane and taken up voluntarily - think smoking, etc. - are viewed as acceptable despite well-known and demonstrably higher probabilities of harm. 

Values and risk perception

An outgrowth of the Cultural Theory of Risk (or perhaps simply an alternative model altogether, although arguably not entirely incompatible) is the theory known as Cultural Cognition of Risk, which posits that deeply-held values influence how risks are perceived and processed by members of the public - and thus, which risks are seen as more prominent. Cultural Cognition (and the Cultural Cognition Project) seek to explain gaps in public perception of risk by looking at the correlations of risk perception to values - in other words, looking at why different political and cultural groups show wide disparities in perceived risks of large social issues, such as global climate change and other divisive issues.

Cultural Cognition divides value systems into two main axes. Roughly speaking, the vertical axis corresponds to values about how social goods (wealth, power, duties, and entitlements) are distributed, with "hierarchical" orientations favoring their distribution according to relatively "fixed" social markers - age, sex, race, etc. - and thus seeking to maintain these orderings. Conversely, egalitarian values tend to reject the idea of ranked hierarchies in the distribution of social goods. Along the horizontal axis is the relationship of the individual to society - leftward emphasizing a higher emphasis upon individuals and competitiveness, rightward emphasizing group solidarity over the individual. (An example of this can easily be observed in Eastern versus Western cultures, and in particular the expectations of individuals with respect to their societies.)

For those familiar with the Nolan Chart, or its variant, the Political Compass, there is a relatively intuitive mapping between the values proposed by Cultural Congition and the Personal/Economic liberty axes in each one (i.e., at the top left would be considered "conservatives," bottom right "liberals", bottom left "libertarians," and top right "populists"). Thus, the familiar partisan splits in nuclear energy support begin to grow more clear as one draws associations between the commonly held values of self-identified liberals, conservatives (and of course, libertarians!).

The central thesis of Cultural Cognition is that risk perception tends to be oriented along lines that remain harmonious with one's social values - risks which appear to challenge one's social values are minimized, which risks which speak to concerns of social values are heightened. Many of the topics studied under these lines of thought tend to include divisive social issues such as the role of gun ownership, abortion, nanotechnology, and indeed, nuclear power (in particular, nuclear waste management). Thus Cultural Cognition theory posits that differences in perceived risk due to major social issues comes from a reconciliation of information about risk with deeply-held personal values, thus explaining the gap in risk perception between different groups.

Education alone is not enough

Bringing this back to the subject of nuclear, it seems like once we understand what drives perception of risk, this should be enough to influence such perceptions more in line with actual facts. Yet one of the most discouraging findings in the literature on cultural cognition of risk is in that simply educating people is insufficient on its own, despite the naive assumption that such efforts bring about familiarity, thus diminishing outsized perceptions of risk. Why is this? Cognitive dissonance. For individuals already negatively predisposed toward a subject (i.e., nuclear energy), the presentation of new information produces an uncomfortable state of dissonance, which the natural mental reaction is to resolve. Typically this is done by dismissing the conflicting information and seeking reinforcing information from "trusted" sources, thus perhaps illustrating why, in spite of repeated debunking, some myths just won't die. And indeed, this is something we've seen before - again and again.

Going yet further, proponents of the Cultural Cognition hypothesis posit that educating participants on topics to which they were begin previously uninformed can actually produce a polarizing effect in attitudes. An example of this is a study in participant attitudes in nanotechnology, where most individuals have little starting information. The presentation of educational materials on the risks and benefits of nanotechnology actually had the effect of polarizing these individuals, despite the same information being presented - again implying that education on its own does not necessarily lead to broad accord.

Does this mean education is hopeless? Not at all - but what it does mean is that education must be carried out in a way which minimizes cognitive dissonance, namely by engaging with the value system of the listener.  That is, in presenting information in such a way which affirms rather than challenges the deeply-held values of the audience, said persons are more likely to be open to processing this new information and challenging previously-held beliefs.

In my last post, I alluded to the fact that individuals holding an "individualist" value persuasion were more likely to be open to evaluating risks of global climate change if nuclear power is presented in this context as the solution to climate change, rather than regulation. (Joe Romm, are you listening?) In this case, it is a matter of a message speaking to the values of the listener - individualists tend to be more prone to considering technological solutions to social problems and disinclined to solutions which encroach upon private, market-oriented mechanisms to social ordering. 

As a personal aside, I will say as someone with a similar worldview, the connection between nuclear energy and climate change made a similar impression upon myself - that is, in evaluating climate change as a problem to be solved through human ingenuity rather than imposed impoverishment, a discordance is removed - it is possible to reconcile a concern for climate change with previously-held values.

Obviously, this works with different value orientations as well - those with egalitarian value systems can arguably be brought around to support nuclear energy if it is seen as affirming egalitarian social values - two examples which come to mind are those of energy poverty and the inherently unequal outcomes of climate change, which would disproportionately impact the world's poorest nations (i.e., those incapable of adapting to climate change through economic and technical means).

Summing it up

To summarize - providing education and facts are good, useful even - but on their own insufficient without presenting those facts in a context which engages with the deeply-held values of the audience. To produce actual engagement - and even inducement to support - requires a producing a context of facts compatible with the values of those one is trying to reach. In other words, for the case of nuclear, it means going beyond education and comparative evaluation of risk (again, to emphasize, both of which are valid in and of themselves) and placing these within the framework of how this speaks to the values of the audience.

For individualists (who the research shows already tend to have a lower perceived risk attached to nuclear energy), this might mean presenting nuclear energy as a practical solution to climate change - something which has the spillover benefit of bringing about thoughtful consideration of the issues of climate change itself. For communitarians and egalitarians, this might mean both engaging in a demonstration of how nuclear energy can serve to mitigate much larger, more inequitable risks while meanwhile also honestly engaging concerns over safety and inter-generational equity issues like waste management. In other words, validating these concerns while demonstrating that these are issues which we take seriously and continue to devote considerable attention to.

None of this is a silver-bullet solution for engaging with the public, but it provides an illuminating context for which to facilitate a more productive discussion over energy.

A passage which struck me while I was researching this topic was when one proponent of cultural rationality (i.e., arguing that emotional reactions to risk have validity as moral, "normative" evaluations, alongside strictly technical, "positive" evaluations of risk) argued that members of the technological community do not have a privileged view of the normative factors associated with risk, particularly with respect to nuclear (the paper was on perceptions of nuclear risk in light of Fukushima) - that is, while members of the technical community have a privileged view of technical facts, they do not have a privileged view of overall assessments of what constitutes acceptability in risk - a normative judgement.

All of this of course is true. In as much, in my mind it is the job of the nuclear professionals (as members of the "technical community") to do our best to provide an accurate technical framework for these evaluations of risk by the public, such that they can make the most sound decisions on risk. Meanwhile it is the job of nuclear communicators and advocates to speak to values, as to produce more fair evaluations of both the benefits and risks of nuclear, particularly in the context of available energy choices.

The other thing Vogtle has revived: Nuclear hysteria

They say no one likes a buzzkill, but almost as if on queue, the NRC's announcement of its issue of the first combined operating license (COL) in over three decades has drawn out the usual suspects committed to reassuring us that this both simultaneously meaningless (read, "The Nuclear Renaissance is still dead!") and yet somehow at the same time, an imminent danger. Call it the nuclear equivalent of the "double-tap" - anti-nuclear activists will throw out everything (kitchen sinks included) as an effort to kill off an apparently "moribund" comeback of nuclear energy. The Vogtle announcement seems to have put this process into overdrive.

One probably needs to learn to develop thick skin when working in this field, but sometimes the arguments get obnoxious enough to be called out on their own. Take for example a recent facts-optional anti-nuclear jeremiad published over at The Energy Collective (Disclosure: On occasion my posts are syndicated over there), entitled, "Rethinking the Nuclear Renaissance." The piece is essentially a warmed-over serving of recycled arguments (one can suppose at least that part of it makes it "green"), made somehow new and interesting by the fact that there has been some incremental forward motion on reactor construction in the United States. (But never fear, readers - as our intrepid author assures us, "...only 5 reactors including the two in Georgia that are likely to be completed in the next decade," and yet another of those was one which started in the 70's [Watts Barr] and never completed.)

At this point already one may wish to don their wading boots, because at the risk of falling into the classic XCKD trap, we're about to go debunking.

What's your alternative?

As I've gotten older, a particular strategy for more illuminating and constructive discussions and debates I have found when someone expresses deeply held hostility or opposition to an idea is, "So what's your alternative?" Not only does this serve as a test of the seriousness of the individual opponent, but it also has the effect of turning the focus of the discussion from being one solely focused upon defending one idea to evaluating the relative merits of multiple ideas in context.

This of course has particular relevance to many aspects (and objections) to the nuclear fuel cycle, especially when it comes to the most serious objections, such as what to do with spent nuclear fuel. For example, a nascent tactic of anti-nuclear activists has been to insist that no solution exists for waste, something which both demonstrably false (e.g., deep geologic disposal - think WIPP or Yucca Mountain, or even deep borehole disposal - is both technically sound and readily achievable, despite being in my opinion wasteful; in addition, strategies such as reprocessing remain immediately viable and advanced reactor concepts and technologies, including thorium-based concepts - think LFTR - are clearly on the horizon) in addition to being entirely myopic.

To wit - if the waste problem is unsolvable, not even shutting down every reactor tomorrow will rectify this, while solving the above problem makes the objection moot. In as much, a good test for the seriousness of the objector's environmental (or other) principles is in whether they are interested in solving the problem or finding a new objection.

The above can be couched as example of the alternative hypothesis strategy in action. If geologic disposal is out of the question, what is your proposed alternative? If reprocessing in unpalatable, what do you propose to do instead? The purpose here is manifold - in addition to testing the seriousness of the objector themselves, the focus is now placed upon the search for a satisfactory solution rather than assuming a defensive posture.

And of course, this applies more broadly as well. Inevitably, there is the objection that nuclear is "too risky." Despite my obvious disagreement, what is your proposed alternative? More natural gas turbines - taking with it both the direct risk to safety as well as the overall increase in greenhouse gasses? A panoply of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar with their attendant infrastructure requirements, high costs, and requirements for backup given their rather limited scale and availability factors? It may well be that no common agreement can be found, given the emphasis different individuals will place upon specific factors (economics, risk, environmental impact, etc.). But putting the problem into the context of evaluating proposals like nuclear energy not in the context of a perfect (and perfectly fictional) alternative but against the very real alternatives available (with all of their attendant limitations) can provide an extremely clarifying aspect to the discussion.

Interminable innumeracy: "renewables" versus nuclear

Interestingly, Doc Brown's modified Delorean was also the
equivalent output of a modern nuclear plant. Heavy.

A confession - I listen to and read a fair amount of science stories. (Yes, self-outing as a nerd right out the gate). And whenever the topic of renewable energy sources comes up, invariably a spurious comparison to the generating capacity to nuclear plants will come up. For example, identified resources for say, offshore wind will be identified somewhere in the realm of tens of gigawatts, to which the guest will inevitably state, "That's the equivalent of dozens of nuclear plants!" (i.e., about 1 GW each). Naturally, no clarification is given to the important factors here - as in, just how many wind turbines / solar cells / magical crystal arrays (okay, so maybe I'm exagerating with the last one) are required to accomplish this task, much less the inherent capacity factor in such a generating system. (In other words, the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow all the time, meaning these generators sit idle for more time than they actually generate power).

A basic unfamiliarity with these concepts (i.e., the scale of individual energy generators and their respective availability factors) tends to produce a pervasive level of innumeracy, which in turn leads to genuinely terrible energy policy positions, such attempting to displace some or all of baseload capacity (including nuclear) with intermittent sources. In an effort to combat this epidemic (and inspired by the old Total cereal commercials which used to air back when I was growing up) I've put together an infographic to demonstrate just how many of these types of generators one needs to replace just one baseload unit.

I've made high-resolution versions available for download and reuse as well (svg and pdf).

The next time someone claims that renewable energy sources can somehow "displace" nuclear sources for baseload (such as say, Germany is attempting to do), I invite you to ask just how many units (and at what assumed capacity) will be required to accomplish the task. Chances are very good the advocate either doesn't know or simply isn't being honest with the numbers.

An aside: Does this mean I don't think we should use renewable sources at at all? Not really - if sources which coincide with peak demand (such as solar) can shave off demand for "peak unit" power (typically provided by fast-response units like natural gas turbines) and do so at an economically competitive price, more power to them. But don't count on inherently diffuse sources of energy providing baseload power needs anytime soon.

Nuclear and the moral case for energy development

Recently, the Dalai Lama spoke out in favor of the peaceful use of nuclear energy to help bridge the gap between the developed world and the world's poorest, causing quite a stir, particularly among nuclear supporters. In his own words, he said

There is still many developing countries with a huge gap between rich and poor…millions of people’s lives remain under the poverty level and we have to think about these people

I'm arriving somewhat late to the party on this one, coming off the heels of giving five talks at the recent American Nuclear Society conference (incidentally, several of which pertained to nonproliferation education and research). However, there was a point that particularly resonated, similar to what Rod Adams recently touched on and in the theme of the Dalai Lama's comments: specifically, the moral case to be made for energy development. In this respect, I am reminded of the The Obligation of the Engineer, specifically:

Since the stone age, human progress has been spurred by the engineering genius.
Engineers have made usable nature's vast resources of material and energy for humanity's benefit.

As an engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance, and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and the dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of Earth's precious wealth. 

When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good.

Many of us who came into the nuclear profession did so out of awareness of the enormous potential nuclear energy holds, particularly in creating a world of energy abundance. In particular, balancing the dual concern of how to continue our current standard of living against pressing environmental concerns (despite my otherwise lack of granola / hippie cache) is part of what drove me into the field of nuclear engineering. Fundamentally, what motivates many in this regard is thus nuclear's capacity to help bridge the gap in what the late resource economist Julian Simon described as the greatest scourge: energy poverty.

Consider for a moment all of the conveniences that afford those of us in the developed world to call ourselves prosperous: homes which are kept comfortable and lit at night, sophisticated medical technology, the capacity to grow, transport, and maintain fresh food over long distances - each of these critically depends upon abundant access to energy. Take away the energy wealth of the developed world and suddenly much of this capacity is lost.

In this vein, nuclear energy is unique in several respects, but most remarkable in the sheer energy density. Fossil fuels (like coal and natural gas) exploit the breaking of chemical carbon bonds to produce energy, which until the discovery of nuclear fission was the most energy-dense process known around. Indeed, this density along with portability is still what makes fossil sources some of the most economical and attractive forms of energy. Nuclear fission takes this to a new dimension, exploiting the fundamental forces of nature (e.g., the strong force which binds the nucleus itself) to harness orders of magnitude greater amounts of energy, without the harmful byproducts of combustion of organic materials, some from combustion itself (carbon dioxide) and some which are inherent to the source (lead, mercury, and sulfur dioxide - i.e., the precursor to acid rain).

Underlying the Dalai Lama's endorsement of nuclear energy development is something nuclear professionals and advocates are keenly aware of: despite the attractiveness of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, they are by nature diffuse and subject to the whims of nature. While there are other professionals (as adamantly  feverant about the idea of energy abundance as any nuclear advocate) who strive to soften the issue of the inherent instability of these sources through technologies such as energy storage, none of this gets around the fact that the density of renewable sources is critically constrained by nature, inherently limiting their ability to provide the level of power of sources such as nuclear without taking enormous amounts of land and resources out of other productive uses.

Relative abundance of elements of earth (Source: Wikipedia)

Nuclear, in particular with the development of new technologies such as grid-appropriate small modular reactors (SMRs) as well as alternative fuel cycles like throrium (yet more abundant in nature than uranium, itself more abundant on earth than silver, and both more abundant than the "rare earth" metals essential for components of wind and solar energy systems) thus has the capacity to provide for energy abundance in the developing world without the rather painful environmental trade-offs developing nations such as China have been forced to make, with their heavy reliance on coal.

Does this mean nuclear is a free lunch? Of course not - something which both the Dalai Lama and I freely acknowledge. Spent fuel is still an issue - although as we have seen, a political challenge rather than a technical one. (Looking beyond, the waste problem is one hardly exclusive to nuclear, either.) And indeed, the Dalai Lama is right to emphasize the need to minimize risks to public safety, something which nuclear professionals are acutely aware of (although, as is historically the case with technology, something technical managers are sometimes still catching up to). But what makes the case for nuclear is its capacity to balance these risks against the real and ever-present harms of other sources (especially those from coal, which is responsible for far more deaths per unit energy) against other factors like availability and economics.

Finally, there is of course the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, something the Dalai Lama has long campaigned against (likewise an area I myself specialized in during my graduate studies). Yet as I have pointed out before, nuclear development need not come with the capacity for weapons (and in fact, the broader use of peaceful uses may yet prove to be antagonistic to weapons, both in consuming the feedstock as well as cementing economic benefits not readily yielded for a decision to proliferate).

Ultimately, there is fundamentally a humanist case to be made for expanded energy development in the developed world, in order to enable all of humanity to enjoy the benefits of energy abundance. Nuclear is and will continue to play a fundamental part in this.

Why I became a nuclear engineer

In celebration of the fact that I will be conducting my final defense for my doctorate in nuclear engineering next Friday, I wanted to change gears a little bit and take on a bit more of a personal subject. Namely, I'd like to talk a little bit more about why I chose to go into nuclear engineering in the first place.

Nuclear advocates like Suzy Hobbes and the Nuclear Literacy Project have spoken about the need to put a human face to nuclear engineering. My own hope here is to perhaps inspire a conversation among many nuclear professionals, each of whom have had their own path into nuclear energy, as both engineers and advocates. I'll follow up on this post with links to others' responses as they roll in.


In the beginning...


Unlike many whose views on energy were shaped by the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, I was born much later (well, perhaps not that much later). Late enough at least that the specter of large-scale energy shortages seemed like distant history to me growing up. Nor did I take the path of many who came into nuclear engineering through the nuclear navy (although I did consider the option at the time). In that sense, you might say that my experience is perhaps more representative of the newer generation of nuclear professionals entering the workforce, those born in the 1980's (like me) and 1990's.

For me growing up, nuclear energy always seemed like a bit of an underdog, having been born between the time of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nuclear technology held untapped promise of plentiful energy whose time essentially came and went. I grew up in the time where nuclear power plants were a lot like classic cars: beautiful to behold, but they just don't make 'em anymore. (Incidentally, where I grew up received about 20% of its power from the now currently-famous Fort Calhoun nuclear plant). The 90's were generally a time where nuclear energy was viewed as being on the downward slope: not a single new plant had been built in the U.S. since I had been born while enrollment in university nuclear engineering programs was in a slow decline.

Suffice it to say, a career in nuclear energy didn't exactly seem like a viable career option at the time. This began to change just around the time I started my undergraduate years, but the "Nuclear Renaissance" was still well-off in the horizon at that point.

"Nuclear power is great, but..."

Meanwhile, nuclear power, when not associated with the bumbling Homer Simpson or the barely-operational Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, it was spoken of in terms of the ultimate intractability: how to deal with spent fuel waste. In other words, "Nuclear energy is great, but what do we do about the waste?" It is perhaps the most prevalent question many of us encounter even still today.

Among my friends and colleagues in physics, nuclear energy was generally viewed in very favorable terms - lovable but misunderstood. It was a working assumption that nuclear power was safe - this was science after all, and science we'd done half a century ago (even if the public didn't get this). Yet even our conversations turned inevitably to, "But what do you do about the waste?" Being physicists, we appreciated quite well the long-term nature of the half-lives of actinides in spent fuel (such as plutonium, neptunium, and americium). And of course, being physicists, we had all kinds of crazy solutions.

"Well, couldn't we just blast it into the Sun?"
"What if we buried it a deep ocean trench?"
"How about we ship it to Antarctica?"

Needless to say, I was actually a little shocked when these options actually came back up once I was taking a waste management class as options which were considered but otherwise seen as impractical. (Namely I was shocked because these were ideas being tossed around by smart people who otherwise knew very little about nuclear engineering overall - we just liked the idea of a thought problem.)

It wasn't until much later that I would by chance read an article in Scientific American talking about the untapped energy potential in nuclear fuel, and in particular how much of what we consider "waste" is in fact a recoverable resource. By mass, about 97% of "spent" nuclear fuel is recoverable - and with these recoverable elements taken out, the bulk of the toxic radioactivity is gone after around 300 years, rather than over millions of years.

At that point, the potential for nuclear energy seemed blatantly obvious to me, having that issue solved. I began to become a more passionate advocate; my greatest frustration overall was simply, "Why are we not taking advantage of this?" But even still, the business of building and operating nuclear power units was for someone else - I was still a physicist, after all.


"Very interesting. So how does that help people?"

Going forward a few years to when I was finishing my master's degree in Nuclear Physics. It was the mid 2000's by this point (so you can probably guess my age by now). I was happily at work involved with an experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), looking into collisions of heavy particles to try and unravel some of the secrets of what fundamentally makes up atoms at the sub-atomic level, and ultimately where all matter in our universe came from.

This of course was pure science at its best: deep mystery, fundamental questions, and absolutely zero immediately foreseeable practical applications. It was first and foremost simply about satisfying a deep curiosity. And of the wonders of this work, I was a tireless evangelist, trying to impress upon anyone and everyone I could about the deep wonder about the mysteries we were unfolding. (This would include even the woman who would become my wife - the very fact that she tolerated my rambling about this research during our first date and actually agreed to go on a second indicated she was a keeper...)

Around that time, I was spending a holiday with my extended family nearby, proselytizing about the wonder and mysteries we were investigating. One of my older cousins listened with polite attention, and when I was finished, he asked me, "That all sounds very interesting. So how does it help people?"

At the time, I gave a rambling and not very convincing answer about how science leads us to unexpected developments. It was of course true, in a sense - for example, much of what we consider a mundane part of our modern lives now trace their existence back to the development of quantum mechanics; specifically, anything involving a semiconductor (which of course includes computers, cell phones, and all other forms of digital electronics).

The question lay dormant in me for a long time, however, festering every now and then. I couldn't help but think that I wanted to do something with my career to make a positive difference in the world. And while scientific discovery was both interesting and fulfilling, how it "helped" people was mostly a vague abstraction.

When I was a young child, my first ambition (before wanting to be a physicist) was to be an inventor - namely so I could help to invent things that would one day truly help create a better world. My ideas were ultimately not that great (although who can really blame an eight-year old for that?), but the fundamental motivation was still there.


From physicist to educator...

I left graduate school and went in a different direction for awhile, becoming a science educator at a museum in Chicago. My thought was that perhaps I could use my love of science and teaching to reach out to people and show them some of the wonders of the world, even perhaps to help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. My sense of childlike wonder was still quite infectious - it was truly easy, a joy even, for me to find the energy and enthusiasm to explain just how awe-inspiring the universe around us is and how we are just beginning to understand it. I loved teaching; I truly enjoyed being a teaching assistant in graduate school and I loved teaching anyone who would listen (especially children) about the wonders all around us in the universe.


...to engineer...

One thing that struck me while I working as an educator was a series of lectures by climate scientists being held at the museum (particularly with the focus of how satellites were just beginning to paint a picture of climate change). I'd never really been one to doubt the idea of anthropogenic climate change in general (the basic physics, after all, seemed dead simple to a physicist or anyone who'd spent time with a hot car in summer); only the degree of which was ever really in dispute for me.

At this point, the severity of the issue began to seem inescapable to me. I was first and foremost a scientist, and perhaps still a bit of an inventor - what was I doing about this? How would I help?

(To make bit of an aside here - my politics and personality don't exactly make me the stereotypical environmentalist and/or sandal-wearing hippie. Throw out the term "organic" and I'm as likely to roll my eyes; mention "alternative medicine" and I'll likely start to grumble about hippie nonsense. But it's hard not to look at  what appears to be fairly obvious science when it comes to climate change and not be just a little worried.)

I remember looking over Lake Michigan at the Chicago skyline at night, seeing a glimmering monument to the abundance and progress that plentiful energy had brought us. At that point, it seemed obvious: the only way we'd ever be able to seriously confront the issue of carbon emissions while continuing to maintain anything close to our level of prosperity was to begin to seriously embrace nuclear energy in earnest. Nothing else could provide both the abundant level of energy that our economic prosperity has come to depend upon while  staving off an eventual ecological catastrophe. Even then, I was skeptical of wind energy (the availability and energy density alone made it seem impractical), solar seemed like a distant pipe dream, and so-called "clean coal" an absolute lie. And the alternative - essentially asking people to live in caves, eschewing modernity altogether - was unthinkable.

By that time, I had a voracious interest in the Generation-IV nuclear designs then being touted - concepts like the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), which could produce energy at much higher efficiencies and even perhaps be used for process heat in other applications like hydrogen (remember the "hydrogen economy?") or the pebble-bed reactor, which promised the ultimate level of safety. Nuclear technology was actually something new and exciting to me once more - and I wanted to be one of its pioneers.

And so with that I threw the dice - leaving a stable job for a complete risk, going back to grad school and not knowing what the future might hold


...to nuclear researcher

Of course, in my wild enthusiasm, what I perhaps would overlook was the fact that despite the fact that the Nuclear Renaissance was in bloom, we still weren't exactly building that many new reactors, and Gen-IV reactors were a decade or more away from even being remotely commercial concepts. And of course, like many kinds of "sexy" science, I'd also overlook the fact that the real beginning "design" work was already done; they didn't need people to design Gen-IV reactors, they needed people to run simulations on aspects like how neutrons are created and absorbed, as well as "thermal hydraulics" (i.e., where heat is created in the reactor and where it goes). Having absolutely no background in nuclear engineering, it was a task I wasn't even remotely qualified for at the time (despite my training as a physicist). It also lacked some of the urgency that I (rather naively) came in with.

It was perhaps a twist of fate that the director of graduate programs at the time I interviewed at NC State would be the person who would later become my adviser; or, incidentally, the reason I was admitted to NC State to begin with. (My undergraduate academic record he described dismally as, "not very impressive," but he took great notice of my passion; it was ultimately this, and the potential for research that he saw in me, that lead to his decision to recommend my admission.)

My adviser is perhaps a bit of an outlier in terms of personality, much like me. Beyond the simple technical challenge, at his core he is someone who is driven by ethical concerns - especially in terms of how we can make a better world, leading him into nuclear engineering, and particularly his focus, which focuses more upon what one might call the "social" issues of engineering, such as public perception of risk, nonproliferation and safeguards, and nuclear waste management. I realized working with him that there still were challenges to be solved, with the potential to do enormous good in the world.

This is where I would develop a passion for challenges like how we can close the nuclear fuel cycle by recovering the long-lived elements in spent fuel, rather than throwing it all away intact. This as well struck me as the place where I might be able to make a real positive difference, helping to finally clear the path of the last barriers to the much broader deployment of nuclear energy.

Even now, in my view, the issue of nuclear waste management is the last true barrier to widespread public acceptance of nuclear energy. Despite everything that has occurred with Fukushima, I believe that the reactors we have now and more importantly, the reactors we will build, are fundamentally safe, and will continue to get safer with the advance of technology and experience. Thus, it is not fundamentally an issue of safety that stands in the way of nuclear energy development, but a public understanding that we have a plan for spent fuel beyond simply dumping it all into a (very well-studied) hole in the ground and hoping for Mother Nature to do her best. (Please don't mistake me - I think Yucca Mountain was by all accounts technically sound - just also a tremendous waste.)

Of course, what I know now is that closing the nuclear fuel cycle is also not strictly a technical problem - it is one with a wide array of social, political, and economic challenges. But some of these problems too can be attacked via technical means - namely by investigating ways to make reprocessing cheaper and easier and developing solutions to allow us to guard against its potential misuse.

In that sense, so many years later now, I can finally answer my relative's question with a much greater degree of confidence. It's why I'm passionate about what I do - because from my perspective, this is what I can do to leave a better world for my children and their children. And I'm sure I'm not the only nuclear engineer who thinks this way.

So it's with some excitement that I look forward beyond next week, to the point where I truly begin my career as a nuclear engineer... and scientist.