Despite the public focus on radiation risks, cost has long been the main obstacle to a substantial expansion of nuclear power generation, and will be even more as a result of Japan’s still-unfolding effort to secure the wave-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi complex.

Still, it’s worth exploring more fundamental questions about such complicated, consequential systems in an interconnected world where a valued trait, going forward, appears to be resilience. It may be fine to argue, as George Monbiot and others have done with reams of data, that nuclear reactors, even after Fukushima, are vastly safer than coal in terms of lives lost. But is nuclear power simply too brittle?

It doesn’t look that way in this neat, clean — almost cheery — animated diagram on a Nuclear Regulatory Commission educational Web page: Read more…

11:40 a.m. | Updated below |
George Monbiot, the British environmental writer who’s moved, over time, from an anti-nuclear stance to being “nuclear-neutral” as a climate campaigner to nuclear advocate (because of the Fukushima Daiichi emergency), has written a column doubling down on his critique of anti-nuclear campaigners pushing radiation fears. Here are the opening lines and a link to the rest, including his source list:

Evidence Meltdown

The green movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 5th April 2011

Over the past fortnight I’ve made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.

I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the world’s foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for the sources. Caldicott’s response has profoundly shaken me. Read the rest.

He’s published a separate post with the source material for his assertions. I’ll soon be publishing a long discussion involving a host of analysts with various interpretations of risks related to nuclear releases.

You’ll see this discussion largely follows the architecture of the debate over the level of danger posed by accumulating greenhouse gases. Much of the passion is driven by differing perceptions of risk and the role of government in keeping citizens safe.

In both cases, this is not a debate that will be won or lost on the basis of more information or more effective argumentation.

We’re kind of stuck with that diversity, for better and worse.

11:40 a.m. | Update | David Ropeik, the author of “How Risky is it, Really?,” e-mailed a comment that fits perfectly here:

Monbiot’s piece was wonderful, as far as it went. I sent him a note. He uses pretty damning evidence to make his case for the phenomenon of “selective” risk perception. But he falls short, as do most of these pieces, by simply describing and bemoaning the situation, but failing to explain WHY it happens. To the extent there is a solution to the affective/instinctive/selective way we perceive and respond to risk, observing it, as Mr. Monbiot does, is a first step, but explaining WHY it happens seems much more important. Understanding the causes…the roots…offer us insights that can move us toward solutions; respecting each others’ underlying worldviews as we approach these issues, for a start. Otherwise, it’s name calling and we stay polarized and views don’t change.

Don’t know if you saw this, “Nuclear Fear, Science, and Ideology,” a guest blog at Matt Nisbet’s Age of Enlightenment blog at BigThink….

By the way, Chris Mooney is conducting a corollary conversation; are liberals just as bad as science deniers as conservatives? See; “US Liberals on Nuclear ; It’s Complicated.”

The American Bird Conservancy has posted video of a vulture being struck and maimed by a wind turbine blade. The move is part of a campaign seeking “bird smart” design and deployment of this energy option.

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I’m all for “bird smart” deployment of wind turbines, as long as there’s also “bird smart” deployment of cats, as well. And keep in mind that buildings kill hundreds of millions of birds a year.

As for energy choices, they all come with costs and benefits. (With that in mind,  I’m creating a new Dot Earth tag – tradeoffs.)

As populations and energy appetites crest, what’s your preference? Read more…

The Business Section of The Times has run a valuable special section on America’s energy options that kicks off with a piece by Clifford Krauss noting the “Groundhog Day” feel of President Obama’s latest oil speech. (If that sounds familiar, it should). Here’s a guide to the other coverage: Read more…

It looks like the power of the edge might be weakening a bit. The National Journal is reporting that the Tea Party movement is being gently shunned by leading Republican lawmakers (perhaps influenced by a CNN poll showing it is now viewed as unfavorably as the two established political parties; quite an achievement).

Mind you, I’m a big fan of calls for fiscal responsibility. What I personally dislike is reflexive, nearly spasmodic, rejection of a role for government in fostering progress that can fit on a finite planet.

A perfect example is Tea Party and Republican efforts (with some help from some unions) to fight improved energy standards for light bulbs, as if they were a deep intrusion on individual rights.

This stance is strongly challenged today by my colleague Gail Collins. Her column, “Let There Be Light Bulbs,” builds on “Let There Be More Efficient Light,” an Op-Ed article earlier this month by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political science professor at the University of Colorado (who could be called He Who Shall Be Named, here at least, despite efforts by some self-labeled “progressive” bloggers to deny him a place in discussions).

Here’s just one section of Pielke’s piece that’s worth featuring: Read more…

March 31, 10:30 a.m. | Updated

You can choose from music or film — “Same as it Ever Was…,” “Groundhog Day”– to find the same feeling of echoey familiarity contained in President Obama’s latest speech trying to break through America’s “shock to trance” approach to energy, and particularly oil. His central goal is to cut oil imports by a third over the next decade.. Click here to scan coverage and reactions.

It’s a creditable speech, emphasizing the need for responsible extraction of natural gas and safe production of nuclear power. It includes a rebuke (a tad too mild, to my eye) to those in Congress who see the status quo as energy policy. But there are “same-old” lines on biofuels and no mention of the need for Americans, as a patriotic responsibility at the very least, to reconsider energy habits.

Below I’ve pasted the text of the speech [updated, now as delivered], which Obama gave this morning at Georgetown University. Find paragraphs that you find exciting or aggravating and I’ll add links from the relevant sections to your (constructive, civil) thoughts. Here’s the related fact sheet.

[March 31, 10:30 a.m. | Updated A reader noted that Obama added a line on personal responsibility in his delivered remarks, which I've marked in the transcript below.]
Read more…

2:25 p.m. | Updated
There are many worthwhile discussions underway exploring whether it’s possible to avoid a culture of complacency and transparency around nuclear power generation.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., via Kyodo News, via Associated Press The power came back on Saturday in the control room of Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where the tsunami caused explosions and fires after the earthquake in Japan.

They echo discussions following the losses of two space shuttles, the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher and many other realms where low-probability, worst-case outcomes, or unknown unknowns, can up-end the greatest engineering achievements at great cost in lives or wealth.

Below I point to a couple of starting points. Please provide links to more.

Also, I encourage you to read a new story in The Times exploring how risks that appear incalculably small, in theory, can produce unwelcome surprises in complex, consequential systems (in this case nuclear plants). Tom Zeller, one of the reporters for that story, also filed a Green Blog post looking at earthquakes and nuclear plants, from Diablo Canyon to Indian Point.

Another important article, “Japanese Rules for Nuclear Plants Relied on Old Science,” shows how efforts to safeguard nuclear plants in Japan lagged way behind science pointing to the need to account for tsunami damage and flooding.

- Kennette Benedict, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has written the latest essay in an ongoing string on the Fukushima crisis — “The road not taken: Can Fukushima put us on a path toward nuclear transparency?”

- At Edge.org, the intellectual impresario John Brockman has solicited a heap of feedback on unpredictability, which includes a particularly interesting piece by Eiko Ikegami, a sociologist at the New School who is a student of Japanese culture and its ramifications. Here are a couple of excerpts, contrasting how certain Japanese traits have facilitated the response to the chaos created along coastlines by the tsunami, but probably exacerbated the conditions leading to the ongoing nuclear emergency at Fukushima (I’ve adjusted a couple of spellings to conform with Times style): Read more…

4:53 p.m. | Updated
On Saturday, I participated in a TEDx event focused on the future of America’s century-old National Wildlife Refuge system, with a special focus on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the North Slope of Alaska. The video is archived above. [You can scan my live blogging below.] Read more…

There isn’t a stray word, or unimportant idea, in Frank N. von Hippel’s op-ed article on America’s nuclear future published in The New York Times today. Von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and professor of public and international affairs at Princeton, is also co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

I urge you to read the excerpts below, click to read the rest and return here to discuss the lessons he points to from France’s program, China’s push into new reactor designs and his argument that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs as much revision as our antiquated nuclear technology.

On America’s lax regulatory apparatus:

Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of “regulatory capture” — in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it. Regulatory capture can be countered only by vigorous public scrutiny and Congressional oversight, but in the 32 years since Three Mile Island, interest in nuclear regulation has declined precipitously.

On the physical consequences of this regulatory approach: Read more…