Going ‘beyond nuclear’
around the world
Presented by Linda Pentz Gunter
International specialist, Beyond Nuclear
www.BeyondNuclear.org
It’s already happening
Positive indications
 Japan installed 13Twh of solar in FY 2015, capable of
producing more energy than the two Sendai
reactors
 Germany, still on the path to 80% renewable energy
by 2050
 U.S. in 2015 installed zero GW new nuclear ; 8.5 GW
of new wind; 7.3 GW new solar. (Gas=5.94GW. Coal
= 3MW)
 U.S. solar industry is adding jobs 12 times faster
than the rest of the economy
Technology is not the barrier
(but Bill Gates might be)
Nuclear power:
the case against
 Time
 Cost
 Risks (safety, security, health)
 Unreliability
 Inflexibility
 Emissions (CO2, radioactivity)
 Waste
 Proliferation
Why we’re still talking
about nuclear power
 Lobbying power and political entrenchment
 Old nuclear wolves in sheep’s clothing (small
modular reactors, sodium-cooled reactors, thoriumfueled reactors)
 Media power of “environmentalists for nuclear”
 Ignorance
 THE BOMB
1952 Paley Commission
(the missed fork in the road)
 The commission dismissed nuclear as capable of
delivering only “a modest fraction of American
energy requirements at best.”
 Instead, the commission strongly recommended
“aggressive research in the whole field of solar
energy -- an effort in which the United States could
make an immense contribution to the welfare of the
world.”
 But Eisenhower trashed Paley and took the path of
“Atoms for Peace”
Nuclear power and the Bomb
It’s Article IV, stupid
 The booby prize for not developing nuclear
weapons is nuclear power. Why?
 It’s not about energy
 It’s about political power
 Saudi Arabia: “The Saudi Arabia of solar.”
 Breaking the inextricable link means abolishing both
atomic weapons and atomic energy.
Conclusions
 Nuclear power is collapsing under the weight of its
own lousy economics
 But we need to keep pushing it out the door
 Renewable energy is winning. Trumpet this
 We must change the culture that perpetuates the
“inalienable right” to nuclear energy for renouncing
nuclear weapons
www.BeyondNuclear.org