Mark Hertsgaard

The very first book I wrote was called Nuclear Inc. And the very first time I heard the phrase “global warming” was in 1981 from a nuclear power industry executive, who told me, at a time when all the environmental activists were saying, “Oh, nuclear is dead because of Three Mile Island and no orders.” And I was investigating the industry. And he said, “Oh, no, we’re not dead. You just wait. Wait ’til the turn of the century, and people are going to realize how bad coal is for them and how bad it is for something called global warming.” I said, “What is global warming?” This was 1981. And the nuclear industry was saying then that global warming was going to save their bacon. It is very ironic to me to see George Monbiot and other environmentalists now bringing that prophecy to bear—to fruit.

The reality is, going nuclear will make climate change worse, not better. And that is not because of safety or proliferation. You know, if nuclear worked the way that it’s supposed to in theory, that’s why Jim Hansen is in favor of it. But look at the economics. It costs so much money to build a plant, it takes so long to build that plant, that by the time you’ve got it online, if you invested that same amount of money in energy efficiency, you would get seven times more greenhouse gas emission reductions. So, let’s spend the money where it’s going to give us the biggest bang for the buck, and that is not nuclear. I’m not saying this for any ideological reasons. I’m not opposed to it, in general. But how it works in reality, this is not the answer.