In an open letter published over the weekend, four prominent climate scientists appealed to policy makers and environmental groups to abandon their opposition to nuclear power.
Rising global energy demand coupled with a desire to cut carbon emissions has raised a rift in the modern environmental movement. Prominent groups like the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace continue to fight against the use of power reactors. While other conservationists and some climate researchers have promoted new nuclear plants as cleaner than natural gas and a more realistic alternative in the intermediate term than renewables.
Among them, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, James Hansen of the Columbia University Earth Institute and Tom Wigley of the University of Adelaide recently wrote that, "As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems. We appreciate your organization's concern about global warming, and your advocacy of renewable energy. But continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change."
Their letter went on to note that risks associated with nuclear energy are an order of magnitude smaller than those associated with fossil fuels, while renewables alone are unlikely to scale up fast enough to keep pace with the global economy.
Hansen was among the authors of a recent study finding that, by displacing coal plants, nuclear power has kept a volume of pollutants out of the atmosphere that otherwise would have contributed to as many as 1.8 million deaths.