US ‘asleep at the wheel’ as nuclear industry faces collapse while climate change looms
A ‘low-carbon wedge’ faces sceptical environmentalists and competition from natural gas. The challenges are economic and political, not technical.
The US is on the verge of losing more than half of its low-carbon energy as the fight against climate change reaches a critical point – a reality the country has not fully grappled with.
That is according to findings recently published by researchers at University of California at San Diego, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We’re asleep at the wheel on a very dangerous highway,” said Ahmed Abdulla, co-author and fellow at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. “We really need to open our eyes and study the situation.”
The paper – “US nuclear power: The vanishing low-carbon wedge” – paints a picture of an industry on the verge of collapse.
One of our best weapons in our fight against climate change is at risk of utter collapse because of economic and political challenges
Facing economic competition from cheap natural gas, a significant number of US nuclear power plants could be retired in the coming years, the authors wrote.