Last Night's Gathering with Dr. Milton

Last night we gathered at the Norman Public Library to hear Dr. Kimball Martin of Physics at OU talk about nuclear power. I was looking forward to a vigorous discussion of the topic, and the attendees did not disappoint. I would estimate about 60 people attended, and there were questions about almost every slide that Dr. Milton presented.

Some of the take away messages of the presentation:

(1) No source of energy is clean, free or without risks. Dr. Milton discussed the various ways we produce energy currently, and costs and limitations of each. He expressed concern over the contributions of fossil fuel use to accelerating warming in the climate, and to the limited supply of petroleum left to us. In addition, he noted that hydroelectric generation has gotten close to capacity for the US, and that newer and larger dams around the world are causing ecological damage and displacing millions of people. Other renewables have unknown effects, and are expensive. With this information in hand, it may be time to consider again whether nuclear power has a role to play in the energy budget.

(2) Fears about safety are based on bad calculations of risk. Dr. Milton said that the safety record of nuclear power plants is quite good, and certainly no worse than generating power by other means. The few failures have been spectacular in nature, which leads us to overestimate risk, since the probabilities of failure are low, but the outcomes have been disastrous. He also said that power generation from coal kills several hundreds per year in mining accidents, and that oil exploration is becoming more dangerous, and pointed to the recent Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as evidence that other methods are quite risky.

(3) There are serious concerns with generation of power using nuclear reactors, other than safety. Nuclear waste must be stored for millions of years to become inert, and in a place that won't change significantly and thus expose the radioactive materials to the environment. Also, nuclear power and nuclear weapons are "entwined technologies", meaning that proliferation of nuclear weapons is a very possible side effect of widespread nuclear power use, since the same basic processes and technologies are used for both. Finally, the only international governance of nuclear power, the IAEA, has very little power for enforcement, and is chronically underfunded.

With these points, Dr. Milton suggested that we need to think deeply as a society about our goals as a society, and that moving forward will require a combined effort of efficiency, conservation, and smarter power production. He stressed that he is not an active proponent of building more nuclear power plants, but rather that our current system is not working and needs to be reconsidered.

Let me know if you're interested in the presentation, and I'll do my best to answer specific questions. Hope to see you at the next one! Details to follow soon!