Five Minutes with Joe Heffernan on Nuclear Energy

"The perception of radiation risks is out of whack with the reality."
Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2021

Photo by Patrick Federi on Unsplash

I was first awakened to the possibilities of nuclear energy through a series of Tweets by Michael Shellenberger last year. Throughout his career Shellenberger has been quite vocal with regard to climate issues and environmental awareness. What concerned him was that the warnings being disseminated were being heard as proclamations that "the end is near." This prompted him to write Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. 

Reading Shellenberger gave me an understanding of the possibilities that lay ahead if we change our way of thinking with regards to energy. The push to eliminate carbon may be noble, but if it leaves our power grids broken, then what? Shellenberger wrote that we can turn to nuclear energy.

These past few weeks I've discovered that developments in the nuclear field have been quietly ongoing for decades, with many smart people striving to ensure that our grandchildren will inherit a safe, healthy planet earth.

Since interviewing Margaret Angwin at the end of September, I've met (through social media) several people with insights related to this topic. Joe Heffernan of Scotland is one of these.

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EN: You have six years experience in the energy field and have primarily served as a geotechnical engineer. What caused you to become an advocate for nuclear energy?

Joe Heffernan: Around the age of 50 I had a bit of crisis and thought about a change of career.  When I looked around to see what would have the biggest impact on making the world a better place I began to look at nuclear power. The more I looked at it the more I saw what a great world, in my opinion, it would be with more extensive use of nuclear power. I never did change career but my enthusiasm for nuclear power has continued to grow.

EN: We hear people say "trust the science" when discussing global warming, but when it comes to nuclear energy these same people say "ignore the science. Nuclear is not safe." In your opinion, why are the advocates for eliminating carbon so opposed to nuclear?

JH: I think that the reasons that some advocates of eliminating carbon are opposed to nuclear are:

• Many of the NGOs who are most vocal about low carbon have a constituency that is vehemently anti-nuclear.  They know where their pay check comes from and have to keep the faith with their constituency.
• Nuclear power would be very disruptive to the current companies and countries that depend on the extraction and sale of fossil fuels. It is not in their short term economic interest to see nuclear succeed.
  
• People are poor at understanding the concept of 'relative risk'. Based on data nuclear power is the safest form of energy but that is not the perception.
  
• Some people have an attachment to what they imagine is a pastoral existence and nuclear power doesn't fit into that narrative.

EN: It seems like the effort to ramp up EVs has some pretty high hurdles if we don't strengthen our electrical grid. What's your take on that?

JH: I am troubled when discussions about decarbonization seem to only concern themselves with the electrical grid. In rough terms our energy consumption is divided into thirds. One third is electricity, one third is transport and one third is heat. All the conversation about clean electricity ignores around two-thirds of power we consume.  Society's interest in electrifying transport never seems to consider that if we do electrify transport that means the grid will have to practically double in output. I personally feel that electric transport within cities is the way to go as it has good impacts on air quality. But I very much advocate for high density towns and cities where walking, cycling and public transport will work well.

I am a big advocate of Small Modular Reactors. I would very much like to see SMRs used in our towns and cities to provide combined heat and power. Some of that power would be used for public and electric transport rendering the need for private cars less important. This also has the advantage in that it allows power production close to the end use. This reduces transmission requirements. I also believe that this would increase robustness and resilience.

I recognize that changing the layout of towns and cities is a huge challenge.

EN: Will renewable energy -- specifically, solar and wind -- ever replace oil and coal?

JH: In a word no, not if we expect to have a high energy consumption modern life.  Nuclear power can go a long way, in my opinion, to reduce the consumption of coal, oil and methane. I recently finished reading Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives, 2nd Edition by Vaclav Smil.  In this book you see that once we start using a source of energy we continue using it forever. As an example, we still use lots of wood and agricultural waste. We will always need oil, coal and methane in my opinion but I would hope we can eventually move away from burning the majority of these materials and use them for chemical feedstocks.

One thing this book brings out is the difficulty of extracting energy from low density sources such as wind and solar. 

EN: If someone were interested in learning more about nuclear energy, are there any books you might recommend?

JH: For me, my entrance drug to nuclear power was Thorium. Therefore I would recommend THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal by Robert Hargraves. He has another book that I expect to read soon. It is titled Electrifying Our World: for climate, for people, with fission

EN: Thank you, Joe, for the book recommendations and your insights on this important issue. 

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Related Links

One Reason Nuclear Power Has Been Overlooked

Grid Fragility and a Book by Meredith Angwin

Key Takeaways from Michael Shellenberger's Apocalypse Never

Photo: Gary Firstenberg

I've spent a lifetime listening to doomsayers tell us we will run out of oil in 10 years. It never happens. So why does anyone keep listening? Why do these spokespeople have any credibility left? 

And then there's the climate crisis.

The coming "end of the world" caused by global warming is an even more serious matter, they say, because it's claimed that the polar ice caps will melt and multiplied millions will die as a result. Is this a fact or another form of spin designed to manipulate the masses?

Ten years ago or so I read an article by a woman scientist who attempted to correct this latter narrative on Wikipedia. Her science-based information was deleted in order to maintain the narrative already established. She was not a climate change denier. She simply had facts to share that might help give balance to what was being said.

Now I'm not saying there are no climate issues. What I am saying is that I don't trust the people inundating us with dogmatic assertions about what is happening when these same people have already been proven unreliable a hundred times in the past. 

This is what I found so refreshing last year when I discovered Michael Shellenberger's Apocalypse Never. Shellenberger has been an environmental activist his whole life, becoming founder and president of Environmental Progress Research and policy organizations that have been advocating for clean power as a means to save nature without sacrificing economic prosperity. In other words, he has been immersed in these matters for over three decades.

Shellenberger wrote his book to counter the tsunami of claims that a climate Armageddon is just around the corner. He draws on the latest science to recommend practical solutions for our current issues. He is not a climate change denier. Rather, his message is that things aren't as bad as many environmental activists and the media paint them to be. His view is that there are more reasons to me optimistic than pessimistic.

Last year I borrowed Apocalypse Never from a friend and found it to be a refreshing message that I could identify with. This week I purchased Summary & Analysis of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. It's a book in the Snap Summaries series, in a similar vein as Sparknotes overviews of literary classics.

What follows here is the Table of Contents, essentially a list of the key takeaways from the book. It is not meant as a substitute for reading the original. Knowing that not everyone who reads my blog will read Shellenberger's book, I share this summary so that you're familiar with some of the important ideas it seeks to convey.

Key Takeaway #1: There is nothing catastrophic about current climate trends.

Key Takeaway #2: Climate change has not increased the frequency or intensity of natural disasters.

Key Takeaway #3: The earth is greener today than it was 35 years ago. (Examples abound. There has been wonderful restoration of our St. Louis River basin which was once a disaster. There are probably no rivers in America with fire departments dealing with river fires as it used to be when I was growing up in Cleveland.)

Key Takeaway #4: The media's fixation with plastic waste distracts us from bigger threats to marine life.

Key Takeaway #5: Bio plastics are not better for the environment than conventional plastics.

Key Takeaway #6: Supporting the economic development of lower income countries is the most important thing developed countries can do to save more natural habitats.

Key Takeaway #7: Rising economic growth, not activism, is what saved the whales. 

Key Takeaway #8: Historically the shift from energy dilute to energy dense fuels is what has halted severe environmental exploitation.

Key Takeaway #9: Renewables are not always better, cheaper or more sustainable.

Key Takeaway #10: Nuclear energy is one of the cheapest, cleanest and safest sources of electricity.

Key Takeaway #11: Many environmental nonprofits are anti-nuclear because they take money from fossil fuel investors.(As Woodward and Bernstein were exhorted by Deep Throat: "Follow the money.")

Key Takeaway #12: Most mainstream environmentalism is a thinly veiled form of Neo Malthusianism. 

Key Takeaway #13: Apocalyptic environmentalism is a religion that fills the modern atheist need for meaning and purpose.

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Read my other articles on Shellenberger and his work:

Global Warming Is Not the End of the World Says a Longtime Voice of the Green Movement

Michael Shellenberger: Fighting the Good Fight 

Global Warming Is Not the End of the World Says Says a Longtime Voice of the Green Movement

A few years ago I was surprised by a survey which showed the extent to which Climate Change had become the number one issue on peoples' list of concerns. I know that it's been talked about for decades and in the 90s some projected that the ice caps would be melted by now and all coastal cities underwater.

This past week I saw a Tweet from Michael Shellenberger regarding an opinion piece he'd written for Forbes which he intended as an apology to all the people whom his environmental activism had terrified. When I went to copy it for sharing here, Forbes had removed it. Did Forbes cave in to Cancel Culture?

That's what John Robson says in the National Post. The piece is titled Forbes falls to cancel culture as it erases environmentalist's mea culpa. Robson begins, "It’s big news when somebody prominent apologizes for being badly wrong on a major public matter, promises to do better going forward and urges others to do the same, right? Unless the person commits heresy like, say, Michael Shellenberger."

Robson lays out an in depth list of Shellenberger's Progressive credentials, just so those who know him not might see what a big deal this is.

One reason a lot of people want to put a gag on Shellenberger might be that the Democracts have all been piling on to this end of the world scenario, which will enable them to take drastic action should they acquire. the reigns of power. As I have written elsewhere, he who controls the narrative controls the people. The Green agenda would appear to no longer be about truth but about control.

This is what Reason is suggesting in it's latest barb by Nick Gillespie, 'Climate Change Is Real, But It's Not the End of the World': Michael Shellenberger. The Gillespie story puts the political angle front and center at the outset: "If there's one consistent message coming from activists and politicians pushing the Green New Deal and massive new subsidies for renewable energy it's that if we don't take radical action now, life on Earth as we know it will soon be irreversibly destroyed. Greta Thunberg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden all have claimed that we have less than a dozen years left in which to save the planet."

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Photo by RawFilm on Unsplash

The trigger for this media firestorm is Shellenberger's new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,  in which he argues that science doesn't support doomsayers' claims.

Here are some facts that he underscores in the book, facts which have been repeated so often they've been accepted with the same legitimacy at the earth being round and 93 million miles from the sun.

• Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
• The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
• Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
• Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
• The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
• The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
• Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations including Britain, Germany and France since the mid-seventies
• Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
• We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
• Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
• Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
• Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

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It's easy to see why Shellenberger's message is controversial. If deforestation and deaths from extreme weather are declining, it weakens the motivations to dish out boatloads of dollars to enviro-groups whose primary function is to save Planer Earth.

This is precisely what Michael Crichton's disputed State of Fear was about. Fighting for a cause, even if the facts don't support the existence of the problem, is good business. The more you fan the flames of fear, the more people open their wallets. Fear moves people to action, which is why both the major political machines (Dems and GOP) are so fond of it as a fundraising tool.

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When I read about the dust-up at Forbes, it did enter my mind that Shellenberger's opinion piece may have been pulled because he was promoting his new book. It's a foggy matter, since someone decided to publish it initially. I recall a similar incident back in the 90s when an article was pulled from the magazine because of a sit-in in the publication's lobby in NYC.

How interesting that the center of the controversy takes place where the Media Messages are crafted. Ibsen's An Enemy of the People centered around a small town's newspaper. Orwell's 1984 likewise primarily revolves around The Ministry of Truth.