NEI Nuclear Notes

At long last, Viking-Penguin releases tomorrow the much-anticipated Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by the celebrated author, environmentalist, Merry Prankster, finder and founder Stewart Brand . In his “New Nukes” chapter, he calls out to his old and new friends with clear advice: To my mind, the Green path forward begins with environmentalists realizing that nuclear power will grow no matter what we do. Our customary opposition would make it grow badly – slowly, expensively, unsystemically, and with dangerously poor overall coordination. But if we encourage it in the right way, nuclear energy growing well would mean that it minimizes humanity’s carbon-loading of the atmosphere; that it collaborates well with other carbon-free or superefficient energy forms; that it helps generate other Green services such as desalination or hydrogen . . . that it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; that it securely energizes cities and thereby helps to reduce world poverty . . . Am...