A New Image for Nukes? - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com

Whether or not you’ve seen my new Findings column about the hard and soft energy paths, I have some questions for you:

1) Is building nuclear power plants a smart way to reduce greenhouse emissions — and are nukes more or less practical than solar or wind power?

2) Would the prospects for more nuclear reactors in the United States and overseas be better if nuclear energy were renamed “terrestrial energy?”

That proposal to “rebrand” nuclear power comes from William Tucker’s new book, “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey.” As I write in the column, he argues that greens should prefer the hard path of nuclear power because it has a much smaller “environmental footprint” than soft-path technologies like solar and wind power. He calls it the best hope for dealing with the threat of global warming — if only people didn’t associate it with nuclear weapons. Hence his proposal to link it with the natural radioactivity that heats the interior of the planet.