2025/05/01 by Rhys Crilley · 1 voice
Energy · #Global Energy and Sustainability Research
paper · doi:10.1093/ia/iiaf081
openalex publication_date 2025/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
As wildfires rage in Los Angeles and as the world enters another year that is likely to break various temperature-related records, it is clear that we need sustainable and long-term solutions to the climate crisis, and that we need them now. Such an urgent and desperate search has led to a renewed focus on nuclear energy. Can nuclear energy save us from the climate crisis? According to M. V. Ramana and his exceptionally well-researched new book, the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Ramana does not pull his punches or mince his words, and the title of his book sets out his core argument that Nuclear is not the solution, and that atomic power is folly. Throughout, the author discredits the idea that nuclear energy can save us from the climate crisis, in a methodological, rigorous and clear way. The introduction sets the scene and outlines explicitly why nuclear energy is not a feasible solution to climate change: nuclear energy is ‘a really expensive way to produce electricity. And nuclear energy simply cannot be scaled fast enough to match the rate at which the world needs to lower carbon emissions’ (p. 2). In short, we have neither the money nor the time to expend on nuclear power, and, if we did, ‘even a limited expansion would aggravate a range of environmental and ecological risks’ (p. 4).