Possible to be pro-nuclear and for the environment? Yes, we can!

A couple of days ago, I was intrigued by a news item, which popped up in my Twitter feed, that a study by James Hansen concluded that nuclear power prevented more deaths than it causes.

if coal or natural gas power had replaced nuclear energy from 1971 to 2009, the equivalent of an additional 64 gigatons of carbon would have reached the atmosphere. Looking forward, switching out nuclear for coal or natural gas power would lead to the release of 80 to 240 gigatons of additional carbon by 2050.
By comparison, previous climate studies suggest that the total allowable emissions between now and 2050 are about 500 gigatons of carbon. This level of emissions would keep atmospheric CO₂ concentrations around 350 ppm, which would avoid detrimental warming.
Because large-scale implementation of renewable energy options, such as wind or solar, faces significant challenges, the researchers say their results strongly support the case for nuclear as a critical energy source to help stabilize or reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.

Interesting.  And, therefore:

Using nuclear power in place of fossil-fuel energy sources, such as coal, has prevented some 1.8 million air pollution-related deaths globally and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes a study. The researchers also find that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases.

Turns out that James Hansen is the co-author and not the principal author.  But, hey, it is James Hansen.  The guy who brought global warming and climate change to the forefront.  He is now retiring to become a full-time activist:

James Hansen, perhaps the world's most prominent and outspoken climate scientist, had told reporters in recent years that his retirement was coming. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that the 72-year-old researcher has made it official and will leave his job at a NASA research institute after 46 years to pursue climate activism and litigation full-time. 

Hansen is, of course, not alone among environmental activists who are in favor of nuclear energy.  But, the public, leave alone the ideologically determined environmentalists, equates nuclear energy with nuclear weapons and crazies like North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  Of course, it was environmental activism by groups like Greenpeace that systematically created this false equivalence in the first place.

As the use of fossil fuels rapidly increase, resulting in unprecedented levels of CO2 emissions, and with renewables like solar and wind not economically feasible enough to become large-scale, nuclear power begins to look less and less of an enemy:

The emergence of the pronuclear Greens represents an important schism in modern environmentalism. For decades, groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace have pushed an antinuclear agenda and contended that the only energy path for the future is the widespread deployment of wind turbines and solar panels. But fear of carbon emissions and climate change has catalyzed a major rethinking. As Brand puts it in a new documentary, Pandora’s Promise, which explores the conversion of antinuclear activists to the pronuclear side: “The question is often asked, ‘Can you be an environmentalist and be pronuclear?’ I would turn that around and say, ‘In light of climate change, can you be an environmentalist and not be pronuclear?’ ”

But, of course, when activist groups have created their identities based on a particular point of view, then they will not be keen on changing their positions anytime soon, and will continue to ignore the cognitive dissonance.

it’s not clear whether groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace can be persuaded to abandon their antinuclear zealotry. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see that some influential environmentalists are realizing that we have no choice but to embrace the astonishing power of the atom. 

Won't it be wonderful if substantive discussions on these happened on Earth Day?

In reviewing the environmental movement, Nicholas Lehmann writes in the New Yorker:

In the decades since Earth Day, Americans have become attuned to forms of social justice of which we used to be oblivious—the latest example is gay marriage, and the enlargement of the circle of concern that it stands for. Yet the cultural and economic distance between the top of American society and the broad middle has grown enormously. Political distances have grown, too. ...
Meanwhile, liberals have come to take as a core creed the urgent need to reckon with global warming, and limit carbon emissions. To turn concern into action requires politics. The science of carbon emissions is there. The politics is not. On its anniversary, Earth Day is worth not just celebrating but also studying—as a story with political lessons.

Easier said than done!