Time is running short. When the IPCC published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of human-caused global warming, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) was 354 ppm. It is now 397 ppm and rising. In spite of Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban, and Doha, atmospheric CO2 continues its inexorable upward path.

And the earth continues to warm. Each of the last four decades has been warmer than the previous one. Sea levels continue to rise, the oceans are acidifying, glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt, the Arctic will likely be ice-free during the summer sometime this century, and weather extremes have become commonplace around the earth. We are playing a dangerous game with the earth and ignoring the potential consequences. It is time to get serious about recognizing what we are doing to the earth and drastically reduce our production of CO2.

Forty percent of all energy used in the US is devoted to producing electricity. In spite of energy conservation, the EIA expects the use of electricity to increase by 30% in 2040, while total energy consumption is expected to increase by 12%. The big question is: can we generate the electricity in a manner that drastically reduces the production of CO2?

Coal is the big problem for electricity generation, and carbon capture and storage technology is not going to solve the problem. Coal needs to be essentially eliminated as a power source because of its multitude of health and environmental consequences. Coal provides about 43% of our electricity, and the actual amount of coal used is expected to increase through 2040, even though the percentage of electricity generated by coal would be slightly decreased by then. That is untenable if we want to reduce CO2 emissions. Coal usage generates about two billion tons of CO2 annually in the United States. Natural gas generates about half the CO2 as coal, but fugitive emissions of methane reduce or eliminate its usefulness, and fracking is controversial.

Renewable energy can help. But energy from the sun and wind have major difficulties associated with intermittency, location relative to population centers, footprint, and cost that limit their contributions to about 20% or less of electricity production. Even worse, they do not effectively contribute to the baseload electricity that coal provides. Baseload is the minimum electrical demand over a 24-hour day that must be provided by a constant source of electricity. Solar and wind power contribute principally to the intermediate demand that fluctuates during the day, but they still require backup — usually with natural gas power plants — for when they are not available. An increase from the current 4% to 20% of electricity would be an enormous help. But it does not solve the coal problem.

Nuclear power is the only alternative to coal for stable baseload power that can truly cut the emissions of CO2 to nearly zero. It currently provides 20% of electricity in the United States. It would take about 175 Generation III nuclear reactors to replace all of the coal-fired power plants in the United States. This would take a major national effort, but it would also require a major national effort to get 20% of electricity from wind and solar and that would not reduce coal usage. Neither of these goals will be achieved unless there is a cost associated with CO2 production through some kind of carbon tax. And that will only happen if there is a strong public demand that we get serious about reducing CO2 emissions and halting global warming.

What about the risks of nuclear power? The reality is that nuclear power has a much better safety record than coal. Since the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident (that killed no one), US coal mining caused 1,969 direct deaths. Deaths from black lung (pneumoconiosis) were over 2,500 in 1979 alone and continue to be hundreds per year. Deaths in the general public from lung disease are estimated to be in the thousands per year. No one in the United States has ever died from a nuclear power reactor accident in over 3,500 reactor-years of experience. It is vastly worse in China where several thousand miners die yearly, and several hundred thousand people die from respiratory diseases related to coal burning.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused 31 immediate deaths, 19 delayed deaths in emergency workers and 15 children who died from thyroid cancer. The best scientific estimates are that 4,000 more people may ultimately die from cancer. The tsunami that caused the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011 killed nearly 19,000 people and destroyed or damaged over a million buildings. No one has died from the nuclear accident, and it is likely that very few ever will. Even with these accidents, nuclear power has a far safer record than coal.

I am an environmentalist but most environmental groups are opposed to nuclear power. I challenge environmentalists to look at the environmental cost of depending on coal and measure that against the actual risks from nuclear power. Even in the worst accident — Chernobyl — the effects were localized, but the atmospheric effects of burning coal are worldwide. If environmentalists continue to oppose nuclear power, coal will still be providing most of the world’s electricity 50 years from now and the earth will be on a path to catastrophic warming.

The choice is ours. I believe the best choice is to reduce global warming by replacing most coal power plants with nuclear power. I hope we have the wisdom to take that path.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Subscribe to only earth, environmental, and life sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image: Dukovany Nuclear Power Station, Czech Republic. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.