In Which I Disagree With Jared Diamond

Anyone who's been reading this blog knows the reverence with which I regard Jared Diamond. That's why it pained me to read this:

During a public lecture in San Francisco last month, Jared Diamond, the mega-selling author of "Guns, Germs and Steel,'' became the latest and most prominent environmental intellectual to endorse nuclear power as a necessary response to global warming.

Addressing an overflow crowd at the Cowell Theater about why some societies fail and others don't (the theme of his most recent book, "Collapse''), Diamond three times cited global warming as a threat that could ruin modern civilization. During the question period, he was asked if he agreed with Stewart Brand, whose Long Now Foundation was sponsoring the lecture, that global warming posed such a grave threat that humanity had to embrace nuclear power.

It was a delicate moment, because Brand, the former editor of the Whole Earth Catalogue, was on stage with Diamond.

"I did not know that Stewart Brand said that," Diamond replied. "But yes, to deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power." Nuclear, he added, should simply be "done carefully, like they do in France, where there have been no accidents."

Oh, woe unto me! An idol has fallen! How to put this: America is never going to do things like they do in France, because America is America. Specifically, Bush's America is never going to run with the efficiency and care of France's nuclear industry.

But there's a wider problem - the problem of wasted money. Wind power is already cheaper than nuclear power (roughly half the price of nuclear) and solar power is only 25-50% more expensive. Now, that's a pretty hefty margin for solar to overcome, but solar power has been coming down steadily in price for decades - something nuclear can't claim. Yes, France is a model for cheap, clean, safe nuclear power. But it's pretty much the only example nuclear advocates can point to - and there's a bunch more examples of how not to run a nuclear industry. The short list would include Japan, US, USSR, UK, and even Canada.

The problems aren't just technical - as with all energy and economic policy problems, they're political. France was able to form a post-1973 consensus that the country's energy needs should be met with nuclear power. No other country has been able to do so. Furthermore, the French are generally more amiable to big-government projects (like nuclear power) than many other countries. I doubt you could build a similar program in Canada, much less the US.

Meanwhile, solar and wind power have posted double-digit growth rates without nearly the kind of subsidies that Nuclear power has gotten. In the next few years the world will actually add more wind capacity than nuclear, with solar still a much smaller but rapidly-growing competitor. So for countries where the sun shines or the wind blows, they have a possible energy source that is quickly going to be cheaper than the alternatives.

Finally, it's worth noting that there's some question as to the state of the world's Uranium reserves. Some reports say we've got less than a century of Uranium left at current usage rates. Obviously, if we dramatically expanded our nuclear power that number would shrink substantially.

It's sad that people keep advocating nuclear power as a solution for climate change - there's surprisingly little to recommend it. It's more expensive, harder to build, slower to build, and even if it wasn't it's still a nasty form of energy that leaves a millenia-long legacy. This doesn't make Jared Diamond any less of a scientist - but he's certainly no energy wonk.