I want to report on a lively exchange that occurred on the Clean Tech Collective's sister Google Group, The Energy Collective today. A number of high-profile members of the Cleantech/Energy/Climate protection advocates--several of whom are featured bloggers on this site--were discussing the pros and cons of nuclear power. The conversation was prompted by yesterday's Op-Ed piece by Roger Cohen in the NY Times. (Robin Carey has already posted on the topic on CTC here.)

I'll leave comments unattributed to help each participant preserve plausible deniability and thus their viability should they ever be nominated for a minor ambassadorship. But this was the gist:

While none of the participants in the conversation were proponents of nuclear energy, the majority accepted that nuclear energy will be on the table going forward. In one instance, that position stemmed from political pragmatism. The feeling was that those more reluctant to take big steps to combat climate change would insist that nuclear energy be part of any negotiation. That same participant also noted that, given the very limited timeframe in which we must reduce carbon emissions, we would have little choice but to achieve those reductions in any way possible.

Another participant ticked off the problems with the nuclear option, including the challenges of extracting sufficient Uranium, the security risks involved in both mining and plant operation, licencing and political obstacles, and finally the time frame required to bring new plants online. In response, it was noted that expiration dates for licenses of some existing plants will expire in the next few years and local opposition to renewal is already building.

"Licenses for the two Indian Point, NY units expire in 2013 and 2015, and they aren't the only ones facing serious opposition.  If just these two were turned down, the loss in annual net generation of zero-emission electricity would be on the same order as the entire contribution of last year's record 5,200 MW of wind turbine installations (after factoring in their respective capacity factors)."

Finally, one commenter indicated some experience with nuclear plant test regimes and said that failure rates were alarming.

Fascinating stuff. From my perspective, I think it is interesting to see how much the context of this debate has changed since the '70's. Remember when the China syndrome and nuclear waste storage were the planet's ultimate bete noirs? And on the other side we confronted nothing worse than smog and acid rain? How quaint.

I agree with those that believe climate change has to be confronted with every tool at our disposal, and in the real political world. This means nuclear power will be on the table to some degree. The important thing is that reliance on nuclear power be seen as a stopgap that buys us the time to bring renewables online, not as a permanent solution, or even a significant part of a permanent solution.