Even before the colossal oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted the downsides of fossil fuels (as if we needed reminding), nuclear energy was looking better to me. In a previous post, I bashed Barack Obama for trying to revive nuclear power. Nuclear energy materials, equipment and expertise can be diverted toward building nuclear [...]

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—The face mask and three radiation monitors I’m wearing here are grim reminders that I’m at the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. On April 26, 1986, 1:23:44 A.M. local time, explosions destroyed reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, releasing approximately 400 times more radioactive fallout than the atomic [...]

The extent of the damage at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility is still unknown, but comparisons to Chernobyl were inevitable as soon as fuel rods became exposed and an explosion rocked the site. But is the analogy accurate? Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster thus far in the history of the industry, was the result of a [...]

Over the last two days I had a pleasant exchange with a 7th grader from California who wanted to know more about nuclear energy for a school project. He asked me about a dozen questions on nuclear power and I answered them. It was instructive to realize how I needed to formulate my own words [...]

Nuclear power is often promoted as a low-carbon source that mitigates fossil fuel emissions and the resulting health damage and deaths caused by air pollution. But is it possible to provide estimates and actually quantify these effects? A new paper from NASA’s Goddard Institute authored by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen in the journal Environmental [...]

Many of my friends are science-loving liberals. Many of them are also environmentalists. But most of them are against nuclear energy, and this is where I disagree with them. Over the years I have had several conservations with these friends about nuclear power and most of their objections seem to boil down to a handful [...]