Nuclear power is clean and safe. Why aren’t we using more of it?

CNET writer Daniel Van Boom asks us to consider this thought experiment:

“What would the climate change debate look like if nuclear power was invented tomorrow? Imagine if humanity had only used fossil fuels and renewable up to this point, and an engineering visionary revealed that split atoms could be used to generate clean power.”

That was the hypothetical posed to Van Boom by German entrepreneur Dietmar Detering, who answered: “I’m sure we’d develop the hell out of it.”

Detering thinks that nuclear energy could be the key to solving the climate crisis and is part of a wave of environmentalists campaigning for more nuclear energy, writes Van Boom.

“Though the word evokes images of landscapes pulverized by atomic calamity — Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Fukushima — proponents like Detering and his colleague Eric Dawson point out that nuclear power produces huge amounts of electricity while emitting next to no carbon,” writes Van Boom.

“This separates it from fossil fuels, which are consistent but dirty, and renewables, which are clean but weather dependent. Contrary to their apocalyptic reputation, nuclear power plants are relatively safe.”

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