Why Environmentalists Must Accept Nuclear (Stewart Brand)

VIDEO: Stewart Brand on why environmentalists should embrace nuclear power Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=29&v=-RKkkcL61Cc Link to article: http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/02/video--stewart-brand-on-whyenvironmentalists-should-embrace-nuc.html Considering all the alternatives, including wind and solar, environmentalists must come to terms with the reality that nuclear power is the greenest, safest, most reliable answer to our energy challenges. That is the message from leading environmentalist, countercultural icon, and once-opponent of nuclear power Stewart Brand in a new video interview posted by Big Think.

This is basically a zero carbon source of baseload electricity, which is what you need to run cities and so on, said Brand. the world Is now half cities and it Is headed toward 80 percent urban people, so we are going to want a lot of that kind of electricity and it either comes from coal or nuclear.• Brand goes on to insist that the fears of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility, or of terrorists stealing nuclear fuel, are grossly overblown.

It is science fiction to try to imagine tricky ways that terrorists might do bad things with nuclear as its used in nuclear power, he said. You can find lots more scary things to do, as many real terrorists really do, with many other parts of the infrastructure, Brand said, like the electrical grid, industrial gases, and natural gas.