When we say that nuclear energy is a key element for sustainable development, we mean that:

• It can meet global demand. The International Energy Agency reports that more than 1 billion people worldwide live without electricity. Without electricity, basic human needs like clean water, food security and educational opportunities are difficult to obtain. Nuclear technology can help bring reliable electricity infrastructure to help improve the health and quality of life for a growing number of communities that live in poverty.
  ​* It protects our climate. In the U.S. alone, nuclear electricity prevents more than 506 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering our atmosphere every year. Nuclear facilities also require far less land than most other energy sources.
• It is reliable and stable. Unlike intermittent energy sources, nuclear power supply is available 24/7. And when unforeseen events interrupt the energy supply chain, nuclear facilities stay on line to continue providing power to vulnerable populations.
• It is affordable. A comparison study from IAEA found that nuclear power is one of the most affordable sources of electricity worldwide.
• It promotes health and well-being. NASA and Columbia University found that nuclear power may have saved 1.8 million lives that otherwise would have been lost to pollution from emissions worldwide. Nuclear electricity promotes people’s well-being by improving air quality, providing jobs and stimulating economies.

What can get D.C. politicos and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, environmentalists and business leaders, conservatives and liberals, national security experts and celebrities to finally agree?

Clean, reliable nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy provides nearly 20 percent of America’s electricity, all without carbon emissions. It powers and propels our way of life, protecting national security and clean air, providing millions of dollars in economic benefits and a pathway to sustainable development.

That must be why it unites a vast coalition of supporters from both sides of the aisle and across the country.

See what everyone is saying about America’s largest clean energy source.

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.

Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.

All of which raises the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste? //

• Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

• If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).

• In countries like China, India, and Ghana, communities living near e-waste dumps often burn the waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off the plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled. //

To make these calculations, EP estimated the total number of operational solar panels in 2016 and assumed they would all be retired in 25 years — the average lifespan of a solar panel. EP then estimated the total amount of spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would be generated over a 25 year period. EP then divided both estimates by the quantity of electricity they produced to come up with the waste per unit of energy measure.

While nuclear waste is contained in heavy drums and regularly monitored, solar waste outside of Europe today ends up in the larger global stream of electronic waste.

Solar panels contain toxic metals like lead, which can damage the nervous system, as well as cadmium, a known carcinogen. Both are known to leach out of existing e-waste dumps into drinking water supplies.

When you hear the words “nuclear energy,” what do you think of? Perhaps an image comes to mind of a nuclear bomb, or a nuclear energy crisis like Chernobyl or Fukushima. If this is your image of nuclear power, you might be surprised to learn that nuclear energy is actually considered one of the most environmentally friendly forms of energy production in the world. With fewer emissions and greater efficiency, there are many pros and cons of nuclear energy to consider. //

On our list of the pros and cons of nuclear energy, this pro is quite astounding. Nuclear fission (the process used to generate nuclear energy) releases much greater amounts of energy than simply burning fossil fuels like gas, oil, or coal. How much more efficient? Nuclear fission is nearly 8,000 times more efficient at producing energy than traditional fossil fuels. That’s a considerable amount of energy density. Because nuclear energy is more efficient, it requires less fuel to power the plant and therefore creates less waste as well.

Our paper focuses specifically on situations in which real-world constraints mean strategic choices must be made on resource allocation between nuclear or renewables-based electricity.

Our research explores this dilemma retrospectively, examining past patterns in the attachments (i.e. investments) of different countries to nuclear or renewable strategies. Our paper addresses three hypotheses:

A “nuclear climate mitigation” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to nuclear power will tend to have lower overall carbon emissions.
A “renewables climate mitigation” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to renewables will tend to have lower overall carbon emissions.
A “crowding out” hypothesis: that countries with a greater attachment to nuclear will tend to have a lesser attachment to renewables, and vice versa.
Across the study countries as a whole we found that the “nuclear climate mitigation” hypothesis is not sustained by the evidence at an appropriate level of statistical significance. The renewable climate mitigation hypothesis is confirmed with substantial significance. And the crowding out hypothesis is also significantly sustained.

Put plainly – if countries want to lower emissions as substantially, rapidly and cost-effectively as possible, they should prioritise support for renewables rather than nuclear power. Pursuit of nuclear strategies risks taking up resources that could be used more effectively and suppressing the uptake of renewable energy.

What might explain these patterns? Technologically, nuclear systems have been prone to greater construction cost overruns, delays, and longer lead times than similarly sized renewable energy projects. Thus, per dollar invested, the modularity of renewables projects offers quicker emissions reductions than large-scale, delay-prone, nuclear projects.

Furthermore, renewables tend to display higher rates of “positive learning” where increased deployment results in lower costs and improved performance, especially for wind farms and solar energy parks. This contrasts with the experience of nuclear power in France which has been prone to “negative learning,” rising costs or reduced performance with the next generation of technology.

In terms of policy, the incidents at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011), all resulted in significant tightening of regulatory requirements for nuclear reactors.

All energy sources have negative effects. But they differ enormously in size: as we will see, in all three aspects, fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner. //

From the perspective of both human health and climate change, it matters less whether we transition to nuclear power or renewable energy, and more that we stop relying on fossil fuels. //

Let’s consider how many deaths each source would cause for an average town of 187,090 people in Europe, which – as I’ve said before – consume one terawatt-hour of electricity per year. Let’s call this town ‘Euroville’.

If Euroville was completely powered by coal we’d expect 25 people to die prematurely every year as a result. Most of these people would die from air pollution). This is how a coal-powered Euroville would compare with towns powered by other energy sources:

Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year;
Oil: 18 people would die prematurely every year;
Gas: 3 people would die prematurely every year;
Nuclear: In an average year nobody would die. A death rate of 0.07 deaths per terawatt-hour means it would take 14 years before a single person would die. As we will explore later, this might even be an overestimate.
Wind: In an average year nobody would die – it will take 29 years before someone died;
Hydropower: In an average year nobody would die – it will take 42 years before someone died;
Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 53 years before someone would died.

Death rates from energy
production per TWh

Death rates are measured based on deaths from
accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour
(TWh).

Carl-Ake Utterstrom
Mar. 13 07:36 pm JST
Renewable do not have a chance to fill the requirement for electric demand in the future. We need definitely nuclear.

In 2045 the Swedish requirement according to Danish research will be 500 TWh. Wind power have been built for €20 bln and resulted in 17 TWh which means that we need 26 times as much wind power to cover the requirement besides of water power and no nuclear.

The video "planet of the humans" has found out that renewable do require a huge demand of raw material and do have short life lengths and do destroy huge land areas and the operator just leave the area as restoring of nature depends on area owner.

In ten years we built nuclear resulting in 75 TWh output.

In cold weather the installed wind power of 10 000 MW just delivered 1 300 MW. Oh oh was the opinion. But why The Swedish Power Net have in many year informed that the nominal output in summer is 6 percent and in winter 11 percent. That is still 200 MW output less than expected.

For Sweden the amount of 2 MW wind power plants are therefore 91 000. But the main reason is that the yearly demand is 4 550 plants as effect of the low life length. In several years the erection of wind power have resulted in 3 500 plants for €20 bln. .

The waste from wind power is 50 percent higher than the nuclear waste if we calculate 300 wind power plants will give 9 000 m^3 waste while the total acumulated waste from nuclear are 6 000 m^3.

This is waste that never will be environmentally friendly and the epoxi exposures are strongly cancer activating,

In total 41 persons have been killed in nuclear accidents mainly Tjernobyl where the actual radiation is 800 mSv where still 200 persons live within restricted area. The worst radiation in Fukushima is yeardoses of 120 mSv which means one percent higher risk for lungcancer. A university in Ukraine have developed a unit for measuring the accumulated radiation an astronaut will be exposed for 350 mSv which according to the University increase the risk for lungcancer with three percent.

Norwegian Nuclear workers where evacuated with special chartred air transport to Norway as effect of the accident pity they landed in higher background radiation in Norway and Norway have had quite less deaths in Corona than Sweden. In India highly populated areas do have 200 mSv in background radiation.

In the face of climate change, some environmentalists are fighting not to close power plants but to save them.

While energy sources across all categories failed in mid-February, they didn’t all fail equally. The capacity factors for nuclear, natural gas, coal, and wind in Texas during the four days of load shedding during the cold snap were 79 percent, 55 percent, 58 percent, and 14 percent, respectively.[7] //

Some of the cost of variable renewable energy sources comes in the form of the transmission lines they require. With funding from Bill Gates, the analytical group Breakthrough Energy Sciences last week estimated the U.S. could reduce carbon emissions 42 percent and generate 70 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2030. But Breakthrough Energy calculated that the cost of new transmission, distribution, and storage would be $1.5 trillion.[25] //

The land requirements of industrial renewable energy projects are two orders of magnitude larger than those of nuclear and natural gas plants. Industrial solar and wind projects require between 300 and 400 times more land than nuclear plants.[29] If the United States were to try to generate all of the energy it uses with renewables, 25 percent to 50 percent of its land would be required, according to the best-available study by a leading energy analyst and advisor to Bill Gates.[30] By contrast, today’s energy system requires just 0.5 percent of land in the United States.[31] //

As troubling is evidence that cost declines of solar panels, most of which are made in China, appear to stem from the involuntary labor of a persecuted Muslim minority, the Uighurs. In January the U.S. State Department deemed China’s treatment of the Uighurs to be genocide.[34]

Ninety-five percent of the global solar panel market contains Xinjiang silicon. //

One study by a group of climate and energy scientists found that when taking into account continent-wide weather and seasonal variation, for the United States to be powered by solar and wind, while using batteries to ensure reliable power, the battery storage required would raise the cost to more than $23 trillion.[41] //

Germany will have spent $580 billion on renewables and related infrastructure by 2025, according to energy analysts at Bloomberg[45] and Germany generated 37.5 percent of its electricity from wind and solar in 2020, as compared to the 70 percent France generates from nuclear.[46] Had Germany invested the $580 billion it’s spending on renewables and their grid upgrades into new nuclear power plants instead, it could be generating 100 percent of its electricity from zero-emission sources and have sufficient zero-carbon electricity to power all of its cars and light trucks (if electrified) by 2025, as well.[47]

From this information we can gain a clearer picture of electric reliability, resiliency, and affordability. What tends to make electric grids more reliable, resilient, and affordable is the generation of electricity by a few large, efficient plants with the minimal amount necessary of wires and storage. What tends to makes grids less reliant, resilient, and affordable is significantly increasing the number of power plants, wires, storage mechanisms, people, and organizations required for operating them. //

Restructured electricity markets did not result in the oft-promised lower prices in California, Texas, or the U.S. as a whole.[52] And from 2010 to 2019, consumers from across the U.S. who purchased electricity from electricity retailers paid $19.2 billion more than they would have had they purchased power from legacy utilities, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. [53]

According to the Academies, the older model of regulated and vertically integrated electric utilities were better at taking a “longer-term perspective” that can take into account “broader societal benefits” than today’s tangle of federal and state agencies, electric utilities, and power companies.[54]

BY REP. FRENCH HILL (R-ARK.), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR

But hidden in this strategy, such as it is, lies one idea of consequence, and that is the president's goal to finance lower emissions in developing countries through organizations like the World Bank. While the Bank already seeks to do this, its hands have been tied in an area where it could make an enormous difference: nuclear energy. For the president's climate plan to be serious, it should prioritize nuclear support through the Bank and the other multilateral lenders where the U.S. is a top shareholder.

While rich countries' carbon output is largely flat, the developing world's emissions are only projected to grow unchecked. The U.S. and Europe, responsible for nearly all emissions at the turn of the 20th century, now only account for one third. Wealthy nations may be the loudest voices in climate activism, but the future will be decided elsewhere, and it won't be an especially prosperous one if we insist that poorer societies power their way up the income scale with renewables alone. Nuclear will be essential for their energy mix.

Although its reputation in the United States suffers from memories of Three Mile Island, a 1979 accident as haunting as the bell bottoms of that era (but just as harmless to human life), nuclear energy is a mainstream power source providing 30 percent of the world's low-carbon electricity. The main risks connected with nuclear arise when retreating from it, not embracing it. For instance, after a 2011 tsunami hit Japan's Fukushima reactor, leading the country to temporarily take its nuclear power plants offline, fossil fuel usage and electricity prices surged, resulting in more deaths for the country than from the disaster itself. Researchers have shown that Germany overreacted to Fukushima too, shutting down some of its reactors and incurring $12 billion in social costs each year, mostly through increased mortality from higher levels of air pollution. //

Though the World Bank left nuclear finance decades ago, its own anti-poverty mission makes its return a no-brainer. The governments that act as the Bank's shareholders have already compelled it to quit upstream oil and gas projects in the developing world, even as the Bank pursues a goal of universal access to electricity. This makes little sense. If the World Bank has to surrender its expertise in fossil fuel lending, surely it can restore its know-how in nuclear finance.

BY REP. DAN CRENSHAW (R-TEXAS), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR //

Last month's once-in-a-century freeze throughout Texas and much of the Midwest underscored an inescapable reality: we need reliable energy, and more of it. Modern society demands it. Millions around the world are escaping poverty because of increased access to reliable energy, a demand that will increase by an estimated 25 percent over the next 20 years. But this isn't the only demand from the public. People all over the world are also demanding cleaner energy that reduces carbon emissions.

The Biden administration believes we can do this by prioritizing solar and wind energy. They're wrong.

Now, I am not opposed to wind and solar on any philosophical level. I think they should be a part of the energy mix in locations where it makes sense and the environmental damage can be minimized (remember, you need to clear huge areas to build wind and solar. This is not costless to the environment).

But the sun and wind have self-evident limitations that many refuse to acknowledge. If the Texas grid was solely or even mostly reliant on renewables last month, our situation would be far more dire. So how do we achieve both a massive reduction in emissions while also maintaining reliable baseload energy? Nuclear. //

We don't even designate nuclear energy as clean energy, even though it is carbon-free. As a result, solar power gets 250 times more subsidies than nuclear, and wind gets 160 times more. Not only is nuclear fuel vastly underutilized, but it is virtually infinite with the potential to separate uranium from seawater. One uranium fuel pellet creates as much energy as one ton of coal.

So why don't we build more? Nuclear plants are expensive, for starters. This is partly because permitting requirements go far beyond reasonable safety standards, as well as a lack of scale (we aren't committing to building a lot of plants, so we can't "buy in bulk"). And here in Texas, where wind energy is prioritized to the grid, nuclear plants sometimes operate at a loss, despite the fact that they are producing reliable clean energy continuously. The result? No one wants to invest in building a nuclear power plant. //

For all the hysterical talk from the Green New Dealers of a renewable-only future, the simple truth remains: renewables will never be reliable enough to power the modern world. If we want to tackle climate change, reduce emissions, and power the grid, then we need the proper mix of energy. We need to make sure that nuclear not only stays on the grid, but grows on it.

The generally higher cost of renewables has had a discernible effect: the bulk of global renewable-energy spending is concentrated in high-watt countries even though electricity demand in those countries is generally flat or declining. For instance, in both the U.S. and Germany, electricity production in 2017 was roughly the same as it was 2004. Meanwhile, in the no-watt and unplugged countries — where electricity is scarce and demand for electricity is booming — spending on renewables lags far behind that of electricity-rich countries.
In 2016, global investment in renewable energy projects totaled some $242 billion. Of that some $106 billion, or 43 percent, was spent in Europe and the US. China spent another $78 billion. Thus, the U.S., Europe, and China together accounted for more than 75 percent of all global spending on renewables. //

Meanwhile, spending on solar and wind in Africa, the Middle East, and India totaled just $17 billion. //

What would it take solely to keep up with the growth in global electricity demand by using solar energy? We can answer that question by looking at Germany which has more installed solar-energy capacity that any other European country, about 42,000 megawatts. In 2017, Germany’s solar facilities produced 40 terawatt-hours of electricity. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in global electricity demand, the world would have to install 14 times as much photovoltaic capacity as now exists in Germany, and it would have to do so every year. //

While cost, storage, and scale are all significant challenges, the most formidable obstacle to achieving an all-renewable scenario is simple: there’s just not enough land for the Bunyanesque quantities of wind turbines and solar panels that would be needed to meet such a goal. The undeniable truth is that deploying wind energy and solar energy at the scale required to replace all of the energy now being supplied by nuclear and hydrocarbons would require covering state-sized chunks of territory with turbines and panels. //

From a practical on-the-ground standpoint, the power density of wind energy will forever be stuck at 0.5 to 1 watt per square meter.

In 2015, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who was one of the co-authors of the 2013 letter, reiterated his belief that nuclear must be part of any emissions-reduction effort. “The goal is not to make a renewable energy system. The goal is to make the most environmentally advantageous system that we can, while providing us with affordable power,” Caldeira said. “And there’s only one technology I know of that can provide carbon-free power when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing at the scale that modern civilization requires. And that’s nuclear power.” //

By the mid-2020s, the US could prematurely retire as much as a third of its installed nuclear capacity. What’s driving the retirements? Low-cost natural gas is a major factor. In addition, nuclear plants must compete in the wholesale market with heavily subsidized electricity produced from wind and solar. Add in aging reactors, post-Fukushima regulations, and the never-ending opposition from big environmental groups, and the US nuclear sector has been taking a beating.
The closure of these plants has been cheered by the well-funded opponents of nuclear energy. For decades, nuclear energy’s foes have relied on three main criticisms to justify their opposition: radiation, waste, and cost. //

The facts show that the accident at Fukushima led to exactly two deaths. About three weeks after the tsunami hit the reactor complex, the bodies of two workers were recovered at the plant. They didn’t die of radiation. They drowned. //

In 2013, the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation released a report which found that “No radiation-related deaths have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers involved at the accident site. Given the small number of highly exposed workers, it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable in the years to come.” (Thyroid cancer is among the most common maladies caused by excessive exposure to radiation.) The UN committee was made up of 80 scientists from 18 countries. //

the one thing that we have learnt from both Chernobyl and Fukushima is that it actually wasn’t radiation that’s done the health damage to the people in the surrounding areas. It’s their fear of radiation. There’s been far more psychological damage than there has actually physical damage because of the two accidents.”

Advanced designs in various development stages promise to remedy the drawbacks of conventional nuclear energy

One should bear in mind that, from 1 kilogram of enriched uranium, present-day light water reactors (LWRs) can produce the energy equivalent of roughly 150,000 kilograms of coal. A uranium-breeder reactor can derive from 1 kg of natural uranium the equivalent of over 1 million kilograms of coal. A similar ratio applies to thorium in a thorium breeder reactor. //

Could nuclear power be expanded rapidly enough to eliminate the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation in the foreseeable future? //

In a speech on national television in March 1974 French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced an ambitious plan to make nuclear-generated electricity the foundation of the nation’s energy system. He declared “France has not been favored by nature in energy resources…. There is almost no petroleum on our territory, we have less coal than England and Germany and much less gas than Holland…. Our great chance is electrical energy of nuclear origin…. We will give priority to electricity and in electricity to nuclear electricity.”

Following the Messmer Plan, France’s nuclear power expansion proceeded at a rapid pace. During the 1980s, 44 new nuclear power stations went on line – an average of 4 per year. Nearly all were standardized in design, with two basic types producing 900 and 1300 MW of electric power each. Standardization reduced costs greatly, and construction times for most of the plants were between 5 and 7 years.

In less than 15 years the percentage of electricity generated from nuclear plants rose from about 7% percent in 1975 to over 75% in 1990. //

The irony of the situation is that the environmentalist movement is to a significant extent responsible for the continued dependence on coal and gas power plants.

It is quite conceivable that we would have had practically CO2-free electricity today if it had not been for the intense campaigns against nuclear energy, mounted continuously for over half a century in the United States and Western Europe.

Although there are good reasons to be concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants – reasons we will discuss – the political opposition to nuclear energy has on the whole been characterized by ideology and hysteria rather than rationality.

In my view the rational response to the accidents in Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) would have been to demand fundamental innovations in the design and operation of nuclear power plants – such as those I shall describe later – rather than attempting to block the development of nuclear energy altogether. //

Unfortunately, in the transition to commercial electricity production by nuclear reactors, most of the innovative reactor designs developed in the early period, were dropped in favor of a single basic type: the light water reactor (LWR). Here the starting point in the West was the successful US Navy program to develop reactors to power submarines. Other reactor types, such as so-called fast breeder reactors, have so far played only a marginal role.

In retrospect the fixation on LWRs as the mainstay of civilian nuclear energy, to the virtual exclusion of other types, was a mistake. The main reason was cost-cutting in the field of R&D, more than intrinsic advantages of LWR reactors. Through lack of developed alternatives, nuclear energy became stuck with the limitations of LWRs. We need to correct this.

Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced that — as far as it is humanly possible to judge — it won’t come to pass.” After Fukushima, Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist, was no longer able to believe that a nuclear disaster would not occur. That there was a catastrophe even in a high-tech country like Japan made her change her mind.

But what about the near-certain catastrophic consequences of the second evil, climate change enhanced by coal-fired plants? Ms. Merkel recognized recently that “climate change is happening faster than we had thought a couple of years ago.” At the same time, she had to admit that Germany was struggling to fulfill the promises of the Paris climate accord: Despite new hopeful figures, the targeted 40 percent reduction of carbon emissions by the end of 2020 may not be met. One could argue that knowledge about the severity of climate change has deepened since 2011 and that countries should do everything they can to shift away from fossil fuels — yet there’s no sign that Ms. Merkel might change her mind about scrapping nuclear. //

The tragedy about Germany’s energy experiment is that the country’s almost religious antinuclear attitude doesn’t leave room for advances in technology. Scientists in America, Russia and China believe that it is possible to run nuclear power plants on radioactive waste — which might solve the problem of how to store used fuel elements, one of the core arguments against nuclear. Certainly, these so-called fast breeder reactors have their dangers too. But as we transition to a completely renewable energy supply, wouldn’t they be a better alternative to coal and gas plants? //

By shutting down its entire nuclear sector in a rush, Germany loses more opportunities than dangers. It forfeits the capacity to connect to a technology that might prove the safest and most climate-friendly mankind has yet seen. At the very least, using Germany’s existing nuclear plants would make an expeditious move away from fossil fuels possible.

Is it irrational not to do so? Maybe, maybe not. But letting this chance slip away could turn out to be one of the gravest mistakes of the Merkel era.

An optimist’s dreams of an atom-powered future. //

There’s one thing I’m certain “Walt Disney” doesn’t make you think of: nuclear power.

But maybe it should.

It may surprise you to know that Walt Disney dreamed of an atom-powered future. And he wasn’t alone. //

But Walt Disney didn’t just dream. If there was one thing that made him successful in life, it was his belief that you could make your dreams come true. This belief culminated in plans to power his new Disney World Florida megaproject with its own nuclear reactor. He even got permission to build one.

Walt Disney died in 1966 before Disney World was complete, and somewhere along the way the plans for a small nuclear reactor were abandoned. //

Evidence of Disney’s atomic dreams is still visible today: the original concept of Disney’s Tommorowland parks was to showcase nuclear technology. Perhaps the greatest example of Disney’s nuclear legacy is the educational movie, titled Our Friend, the Atom, commissioned in 1957 by Mr Walt Disney himself (there is also an accompanying book).

The movie is incredibly positive about the future of nuclear power, predicting that nuclear will displace dirty fossil fuels as the way we produce electricity but also as a means to power our ships, planes and rockets (you could say Disney predicted ‘deep decarbonization’ with nuclear).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwllA-CyJU

There was a very definite 'Atomic Dream' during the industry's beginnings in the 1950s. It was an intoxicating vision in which science leads to progress and abundance, and it was surrounded by incredibly strong and enduring icons. Marie Curie. Albert Einstein and E=mc^2. For 100 years the symbol of the atom has represented pure science and genius itself.

The PIME audience saw in another case study how IBM brought its invisible and highly complex Watson artificial intelligence 'to life' using an atom-like animation.

Why doesn't the nuclear industry use its own icons? Did it, at some point, actually give up on its own dream?

That could be why the leading icons for nuclear energy are the ones given to it by popular culture – cooling towers, the radiation symbol and its three notorious accidents.

Today the atomic age icons seem stale. Industry doesn't know how to connect to them and it hasn't developed any replacements. But are the values of nuclear energy really so different now to what its icons used to represent? Doesn't nuclear energy still sometimes still trade on science, progress and abundance? Aspiration to development is a very strong motivator in the many countries bringing in nuclear energy for the first time.

Many nuclear advocates wonder at the success of renewable energy, particularly wind and solar. By this I don’t mean their technical success in terms of their share of energy (around 4%), but rather their popularity (check this recent IMechE research).

Here’s the thing. The renewable energy industry understands the power of symbols; the nuclear industry doesn’t. //

Now let’s play the same Pinterest game with nuclear. Here, we get danger yellows, warnings about radioactivity, gas masks, meltdowns, skulls and a biological hazard sign. Symbols of nuclear in popular society are of the terror of nuclear war, fallout and apocalypse. //

Even though the nuclear industry uses more neutral images for their logos (typically plays on electrons orbiting a nucleus), the dominant symbols in the public’s mind are those thrown up by Pinterest. Is this the industry’s fault? Not entirely, but saying the nuclear industry hasn’t been successful at deploying symbols is probably giving them too much credit. They haven’t really even tried (at least since the “golden era” of the 50’s and 60's). //

Why has the nuclear industry’s branding sucked so badly up to now? That question requires a long answer I don’t have space for here. I liked energy comms expert Jeremy Gordon’s summary: the nuclear industry stopped dreaming.

https://www.fluent-in-energy.com/post/creativity-a-games-changer