(This review appears in the
December 2008/January 2009 issue of The
American Spectator.)
Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green
Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey
By William Tucker
(Bartleby Press, 420 pages, $27.50)
ONE CLEAR MEASURE OF of nuclear power’s rising fortunes is that
both presidential candidates this year came out in favor of
harnessing the power of the atom to address our nation’s energy and
environmental challenges. It wasn’t too long ago that politicians
avoided talking about nuclear energy, or if they did, it was to
call for shutting down the nation’s fleet of reactors. Times are
certainly changing. John McCain called for building 45 new
reactors. Barack Obama claimed to be for nuclear power as well,
though he did say he doesn’t “think it’s our optimal energy
source.” Still, that’s a big concession from the nominee of a party
that largely takes its cues from decidedly anti-nuke environmental
organizations, such as Greenpeace.
Someone who does think nuclear power is our optimal
energy source, and the answer to all our energy and environmental
problems, is veteran journalist (and American Spectator
contributor) William Tucker. Tucker has emerged as a true
evangelist with his book Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power
Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy
Odyssey. The book’s premise is simple: “The only way we are
ever going to supply ourselves with enough energy while reducing
our carbon emission is through a revival of nuclear power.”
Addressing longtime fears about this strange technology, he notes,
“Nuclear power is a perfectly natural phenomenon, as natural as the
warmth in the ground beneath our feet.”
Powerfully written, Terrestrial Energy is a remarkably
accessible book that should convert any number of skeptics with its
pro-nuclear sermon. However, its strength lies not in the zeal this
preacher brings, but in the dispassionate way he makes the case for
nuclear in the context of all our energy options. More than just
filing a brief for nuclear power, Terrestrial Energy
really offers a first-rate primer on energy.
Almost all the conventional energy sources we employ are forms
of solar power, Tucker notes, including fossil fuels. When
we burn coal and oil, we unlock stored solar energy that originally
rained down from the sun. Or we can “turn to a variety of
technologies that tap the sun’s rays directly or draw on physical
processes driven by the sun’s heat,” like solar panels and
windmills.
Nuclear power is different. The energy source comes not from the
sun, but from deep within the earth (hence the title). “There is
one great difference between terrestrial energy and solar energy,”
writes Tucker, “and that is the energy density.
Terrestrial energy is far more concentrated--by a factor of about
two million.”
This can have dangerous possibilities--just one gram of matter
was turned into the energy that annihilated Hiroshima. But it also
offers an almost boundless opportunity to provide the energy
humanity needs at a time when we are accustomed to think of our
resources as limited. Tiny amounts of material and land can
generate enormous volumes of power, without pollution or greenhouse
gas emissions.
Compare that to the environmental footprint of other “clean”
technologies. Tucker describes one cutting-edge thermal solar
project in Spain as “a remarkably futuristic 30-story structure
that looks like a giant carpenter’s level stuck the ground after
arriving from outer space. The facility uses 136 acres to generate
11 MW.” That's not much power for a lot of land. Extrapolate from
that, and “to get 1,000 MW--an average commercial plant--it would
have to cover twenty square miles.” Photovoltaic solar panels are
worse; they would need 50 square miles. For all those Greens who
talk of the virtually limitless resources of the sun, Tucker points
out that “land, after all, is also a limited resource.”
Wind is hardly better, similarly requiring large tracts of land.
Plus, it doesn’t always blow, meaning that windmills generate
electricity no more than 30 percent of the time. You couldn’t power
the grid solely on wind, writes Tucker. Wind may be able to play a
marginal role in our energy economy--energy expert and Texas oilman
T. Boone Pickens says that, in a perfect world, wind might supply
as much as 20 percent of our electricity. But that’s an optimistic
assessment, and no one thinks wind is anything more than a partial
contributor to our energy solutions. At bottom, writes Tucker, wind
“remains a medieval technology.”
Tucker ably dispatches the fuzzy thinking that has muddied our
energy and environmental debates for decades. A particular target
is environmental guru Amory Lovins, father of the “soft energy”
movement, who thinks we can jettison fossil fuels and nukes and
instead power the economy on efficiency and windmills and solar
panels. Lovins’s influence is outsized; he is almost singularly
responsible for California’s refusal to build any new power plants
during the 1990s, even though demand kept rising. Result? The
rolling blackouts in 2000 and 2001 that made California a
laughingstock and helped bounce governor Gray Davis. Tucker
eviscerates Lovins for peddling a doctrine that conveniently
ignores elemental facts about where we get our energy from and what
we use it for.
A THOROUGH JOURNALIST, Tucker travels the globe to get to the
bottom of the 21st-century energy story. He visits coal plants in
Ohio as well as nuclear reactors in France (a country that produces
80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power). His journalistic
sense of fairness leads him to seek an interview with Lovins. This
is where Terrestrial Energy takes on a “Roger and Me”
quality, as Lovins won’t talk to him and is conveniently absent
when Tucker treks all the way to his Snowmass, Colorado home. The
account is hilarious, as is Tucker’s chance meeting with celebrity
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The author of
several bestselling books on global economic trends, Friedman holds
considerable sway on energy and environmental topics. Yet Tucker
exposes Friedman as fundamentally unserious for his abrupt
dismissal of nuclear power.
Despite the evident benefits of nuclear power, it’s the downside
that has made Americans hesitant since Three Mile Island (TMI) and
Chernobyl. Tucker addresses those worries, noting the heroic
reforms undertaken by the nuclear industry to instill a culture of
safety after TMI (a not-very-serious accident that served as a
dramatic wake-up call). He also calls out extremist
environmentalist claims that any amount of radiation is dangerous.
“If swallowing 100 aspirins will kill 100 out of 100 people,”
Tucker notes, “that does not mean taking 2 aspirin will kill 2
people. Clearly there are thresholds below which the body’s
defenses can deal with an environmental insult.”
The public (and our politicians) is slowly coming to the
conclusion that we should build new nuclear power plants to address
our energy and climate change challenges. Kudos to Tucker for
showing why we can, and why we should.
(This review appears in the
December 2008/January 2009 issue of The
American Spectator.)
