Given President Donald Trump’s denial of man-made climate change, and his indifference toward the Paris accords, he has effectively put America on a course that is at odds with the 194 other countries that have agreed to work toward the reduction of global warming.
Although the Paris accords are not binding agreements complete with sanctions against countries that do not meet their goals, they represent a start toward dealing with a pressing existential threat to the existence of life on our planet. Carbon cap and trade, coal scrubbing, electric cars, hydro, solar and wind power haven’t taken us very far yet. American power consumption and lifestyles still account for nearly a third of CO2 pollution in the atmosphere.
The burgeoning middle classes in China and India alone ensure that we will come close to exceeding the 2 degree Celsius point of no return, despite the efforts made by all of the climate signatories, by mid-century. Still, we lack a true national plan for carbon reduction – a plan that involves every citizen on some level and bends the best minds toward a collective solution to this enormous threat. History teaches that we are certainly capable. The fight to remove lead from gasoline was successfully won. We got to the moon and back on the dream of a president. Our children may live long enough to see all cancers effectively treated.
There was another time in the not-so-distant past when America faced a different existential threat, albeit not to the planet but certainly to our way of life. That time, World War II, was met with great resolve and presence of character by “the greatest generation.” Among the unsung heroes of that time was a most unassuming man, working in the field of nuclear engineering.
Alvin Weinberg, a brilliant scientist, was at the center of the development of nuclear power, and his role was pivotal to the progression of nuclear energy worldwide.
Weinberg’s team was the first to achieve a sustainable, regulated nuclear reaction. The results were critical to the production of enriched uranium allowing for the development of the atomic bomb, which effectively ended the war. But his story didn’t end there. Weinberg had found that water under high pressure was one way a nuclear reaction could be regulated, and this method was accepted largely because it yielded useable quantities of the uranium isotopes needed for bomb production. However, it proved to be disastrous to the production of electrical energy as the world began turning away from nuclear power when large, water-cooled reactors proved too expensive, failed or were overcome by natural disasters.
That decision to promote the growth of large reactors and ignore the many other ways of sustaining and regulating nuclear fission was to prove fateful to the future of nuclear power. Ultimately, it moved American environmentalists and legislators to reject nuclear power out of hand as simply too dangerous, too complicated and too expensive to employ as a major energy source.
Not so well known was Weinberg’s own objections to the development of large, water-cooled reactors. To be sure, he welcomed nuclear power.
In his book, The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer, Weinberg states: “In 1972, Phil Hammond and I had observed that continued increase in the use of energy would raise the earth’s temperature, but only a little, since we assumed all the new energy would eventually be nuclear.”
Weinberg lobbied his bosses and Congress to pursue a very different approach to nuclear power. He and his team had experimented successfully with molten salt reactors. In his own words: “We were delighted with MSRE (molten salt reactor experiment). Here we had a high temperature fluid fuel reactor that operated reliably and had remarkably low fuel costs. The viciously radioactive salt was treated . . . and stood in wonderment next to the unshielded canisters of U235.”
Weinberg can be credited with saving Oak Ridge National laboratories, but he may better be remembered for pointing the way out of our energy predicament.
Again, in his own words: “If nuclear power falters and we pay three times as much for solar electricity, I doubt civilization would be doomed, but whether India or China could ever develop if the sun were its only source of electricity seems pretty doubtful.”
It seems unlikely that Weinberg’s generation would allow themselves to be stymied by the problems of climate change. It’s clear to me he wouldn’t expect Americans to bank our future on regulating fossil fuels and relying solely on renewable sources of energy. The second-generation reactors coming on line are much safer. Small and transportable, independent of water sources, they can be located virtually anywhere.
Weinberg’s hope that “in a second nuclear era, the molten salt technology will be resurrected” can and should be realized. Ironically, it may be China that demonstrates the will and the leadership needed in this endeavor.
(Philip Mead lives in Concord.)