He’s the rock star of climate change activists, but James Hansen’s recent statements supporting nuclear power are pushing environmentalists to re-examine technology they’ve consistently opposed.
During a January visit to UNC-Chapel Hill to support a Sierra Club-led effort to pressure the university to stop burning coal at its cogeneration plant, Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, suggested nuclear as one alternative to replace coal in the nation’s fuel mix.
“If you look at the damage that has been done to humans and the environment by nuclear power and compare that to what’s been done by coal, you’re talking several orders of magnitude,” said Hansen, who famously declared to a Senate committee hearing in 1988 that, “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”
At his Chapel Hill event in January, Hansen said, “The safest large industry in the United States has been nuclear power. The number of people killed from nuclear power is negligible.”
Nuclear also emits no carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas that environmental activists say is killing the planet. Coal, which Hansen calls the dirtiest fuel on the planet, does — and he says it should be phased out globally.
The Coal-Free UNC Campaign hosted Hansen’s visit. Much of its anti-coal work relies on Hansen’s research. The group is affiliated with the Sierra Club’s national Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign. Stewart Boss, media outreach coordinator for the UNC group, says they don’t advocate wider use of nuclear power, but they give credence to Hansen’s remarks.
So does the nuclear expert who sits on Chancellor Holden Thorpe’s new Energy Task Force — the group assessing the cogeneration plant’s use of coal. David McNelis, director of the Center for Sustainable Energy, Environment, and Economic Development at the UNC Institute for the Environment, says nuclear power is a safe technology in the United States. He doesn’t see nuclear as an alternative for UNC, however, because of the relatively small amount of power the campus needs.
“In the future, years down the road,” McNelis says, “there may be small nuclear batteries or plants that are sealed plants and will run their life for 25 or more years and then be replaced like you would a battery. But those are not available at this point.”
The cogeneration plant burns a combination of coal and natural gas and provides about one-third of the power for the university and its hospitals.
At the first meeting of the Energy Task Force, UNC Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus Services Carolyn Elfland told members — including Molly Diggins, state director of the N.C. chapter of the Sierra Club — the Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the cogeneration plant for its efficiency.
Elfland explained that, except for a brief period last year, coal traditionally has been cheaper than natural gas and the state requires its institutions to embrace a lowest-cost operation. At $20.1 million, fuel is nearly 30 percent of this fiscal year’s $59.3 million total budget for the Chapel Hill campus.
The Energy Task Force likely will duplicate work that went into the university’s 2009 Climate Action Plan, adopted just last fall. The document offers recommendations to reach “climate neutrality” by 2050. In the near-term — by 2020 — the plan suggests replacing 20 percent of the coal with a biomass product. UNC plans to test dried wood pellets and torrified wood.
The impact of switching to biomass on the plant’s fuel budget is unclear. The university hasn’t received quotes from suppliers. “The study indicated a long term premium of 15 percent over coal costs,” Elfland wrote in an e-mail. “In the initial years, one might expect higher costs and increased price volatility due to the immature market.”
Boss is pushing UNC to switch to biomass or other alternatives such as wind, geothermal and solar by 2015. He says the public health benefits of eliminating coal from the nation’s fuel mix outweigh economic costs to U.S. mining communities, including North Carolina’s coal-producing neighbors in Appalachia. The Independent Weekly has reported that, over the past five years, UNC has purchased its coal from Kentucky and Virginia.
“Our group is pretty aware of both sides of that issue, that the people in Virginia and West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia where the mining communities are, that they need these jobs,” says Boss. “But also, we realize that right now, coal is devastating mining communities. It’s really bad for local public health. The emissions from coal have been linked to cancer and autism and different things like that.”
Boss says Appalachia shouldn’t be dependent on coal and that he realizes a transition will be tough. “In the long term, they’re going to benefit by biting the bullet now and trying to find ways to support their economy without needing coal.”
More than one-third of the nation’s coal supply comes from Appalachia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but a successful anti-coal effort could increase energy, transportation, and commodity costs in household budgets across the country.
In 2008, the coal industry employed nearly 87,000 people. Coal is mined in 26 states.
Donna Martinez is a contributor to Carolina Journal.