The Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan represents an attempt to use the Clean Air Act to limit the US' carbon emissions. But its roots trace back to a lawsuit filed during the Clinton administration and decided by the Supreme Court during the Bush years. Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, was in charge of the EPA when President Bush reneged on a campaign promise and announced he was giving up on any attempt to regulate carbon emissions.

Whitman has stayed involved in environmental issues and is now the co-chair of an organization called the CASEnergy Coalition, which is promoting nuclear power as one of the solutions for limiting our carbon emissions. She recently talked with Ars about climate issues, nuclear power, and those awkward Bush years.

Ars: You were in charge of the EPA when Massachusetts v EPA was moving through the courts. Had you already started looking into carbon emissions and the Clean Air Act?

Whitman: We'd already looked at carbon. I'd looked at it when I was governor, and the president had a cap on carbon as part of his campaign promises, and he'd put a cap on carbon in Texas while he was governor. So that had been an issue that I had been looking at for a long time. And of course there was Kyoto as well—it wasn't a new thing.

Obviously, you watch what is happening in Massachusetts, but it was not a new event.

In response to that ruling, your successor at the EPA crafted an endangerment finding for greenhouse gasses that ended up being ignored by the Bush administration. Did you see that coming?

I saw that coming when I got back from my first G8 meeting of environmental ministers and was told not only were we not going to endorse Kyoto—which was no surprise; that was something I was fully supportive of—but also that we were not going to put a cap on carbon. And that happened right at the beginning.

Did that lack of support influence your role at the EPA?

It certainly undermined my credibility with my compatriots from around the world because I just spent four days in Trieste telling them that, while we weren't going to ratify Kyoto, we were going to put a cap on carbon.

And I did indicate to the president that I thought the country was doing enough anyway through voluntary programs that we could combine those to show what was happening and say we're going to continue to work with you on carbon but we're not going to endorse Kyoto. And that, I think, would have satisfied a lot of people because at the time that we dropped out of Kyoto, the only industrialized country that had ratified it was Romania.

The Obama EPA has gone all the way through the standard Clean Air Act process for greenhouse gasses now—do you have any issues with that process or its results?

It's problematic whether the 111 (d) [a section of the Clean Air Act that focuses on state-level regulation] was the way to address the issue—whether that was appropriate and whether it's going to be found to be such in the courts. But I was really amazed at how far the Agency went in trying to give states flexibility because the Clean Air Act really does not allow you to give much in the way of flexibility. I think they did as much as they possibly could.

Since there had been a finding that carbon was in fact a pollutant, there was no question but that the issue itself had to be addressed.

What would you say to the people who are pushing to block the Clean Power Plan?

I think this is an undertaking that is going to occur. Even with the stay in place, you already have 18 states that are moving forward, you have a number of individuals, you have businesses that are taking steps to reduce their carbon emissions no matter what. Because it is good business, because it saves them money, and it's a way to differentiate from others. It gives them a competitive advantage and it's the right thing to do.

We're moving in that direction. How we get there is going to be the question. Whether it is through the law, the regulation, whether it's a cap on carbon, a cap and trade that eventually comes into place, I firmly believe there will be something. Because both utilities and particularly multinational corporations (and national ones as well) want certainty. And trying to meet 50 different standards in 50 different states or different countries around the world is a nightmare.

You're now part of an organization that's endorsing nuclear power as one of the solutions.

What we're talking about here is clean air, and if you want to look at a way to ensure that we have cleaner air while at the same time growing our economy, nuclear energy provides a huge economic boost in the states where it's located, in the communities where it's located. Even if we don't bring any more on, with all that are being built around the world—already just four of those in China that use the Westinghouse AP 1000s [a nuclear reactor design] are providing 15,000 jobs here in the United States.

This is something that shows there is a path to a cleaner, greener environment while having a healthy economy. I believe it needs an all-of-the-above strategy, but right now, particularly if we are to meet the standards under the Clean Power Plan, you just can't do it without nuclear energy being a part of it.

While we can and will do better with solar and wind, right now they're still just peak shaving [handling demand at high-use times], and we're a 24-7 society, so they have to have base power behind them. And that base power needs to be as clean as can be, and that's where nuclear comes in—nuclear boxes way above its weight class. Nuclear is only about 19 percent of our energy mix, yet it's 63 percent of our clean energy.

When you start talking about the human health impacts, it gets to be an issue with which I believe people can really relate. When they start hearing about premature deaths that can be prevented, and you talk about asthma, and you talk about the impacts. Even that study out of China that starts to link childhood obesity to poor air quality.

All these things are things that people can understand. Climate change is kind of an esoteric issue, and when you're worried about whether you can stay in your home, whether you're going to be able to pay your mortgage, whether your kids are going to get an education, or that you're safe, talking about climate change is a lot harder to engage. But when you talk about health, people get that. And they want healthy, clean air to breathe, they want clean water. Those are things that really matter on an absolute basis.

We've finally got new nuclear reactors opening and being built, but the economics make it a hard sell—what do you see that could change that?

Right now, especially a move toward small modular reactors is going to make a big difference. But also as soon as the four plants that are under construction can come online, if they can stay within their budgets, and if they can come in on time, that's going to send a very strong message that this is a doable undertaking.

Remember that in the past, of the 104 reactors we've had over time, 95 of them used different technologies. So, for the NRC, in the course of doing the regulatory review, they were learning each one over and over again, and that took time. Right now, there's only one that's been approved, there's one more type of reactor that's going through the process with the NRC—that moves it much faster.

Plus they've changed their approach to design, build, maintain, and operate one. So that instead of having to come back to the NRC every time the utility did anything new, whether it was cleaning the site, putting the first shovel in the ground, pouring the first concrete, they'd have to go back to the NRC. And that took time, and it allowed the interveners to slow the process down.

Now they have to go in up front with everything—their siting, their contractors, their technology, all of that—and they get a permit where, once they've got it, they're good to go. Obviously the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will oversee and make sure they're meeting all the standards, but they don't have to go back for constant reviews. So that will move it and help reduce the cost, but I think everybody needs a little experience now.

Small modular reactors have been discussed for decades, but we've not seen any hardware built. Is that likely to change?

Well, the DOE has put a significant amount of money out for research and development and there are a couple of companies that are actively working on it now, so I do believe they're going forward and we will see those start to come out and come to fruition. There's a lot going on in the field, too, with different technologies. There's the molten salt technology that's being developed and now being deployed up in Canada. There are a host of different approaches to it, so we're going to see a lot more activity.

And SMRs [small modular reactors] have such great potential for particularly developing countries that don't already have the infrastructure and don't have a grid, or even places in the this country that are off the grid—we do have those out in our more rural areas. So I believe we will see more action.

How do we prevent the sort of regulatory capture we saw in Japan, which left it vulnerable to major safety problems?

Our NRC is very proactive, just on little things. The problem you had in Japan was obviously not the earthquake, it was the tsunami, and that's because they colocated the generators with the reactor. And our Nuclear Regulatory Commission after 9/11 had identified this as a potential problem and required the utilities to have them in separate buildings. So it's constantly looking for new ways to approach safety in the field.

And that's another reason I believe we want to be involved with what's going on internationally, because I believe our standards are higher than other countries' and that we need to be a player so that they're closer to our standards than what they might otherwise come up with.

Any final thoughts?

I hope that we will take on a comprehensive energy plan as part of what government recognizes it needs to do. We need to have that in this country, and it ought to be basic clean, green, reliable, affordable, and nothing more, and let the marketplace choose the winners. But we've got to understand that we need to address these issues—we need to address health, we need to address the environment, we need to address climate change.

But we can call it health issues and skip the polarizing polemics of climate change.

This interview was lightly edited.