A New Version of Russian Roulette

When Russian troops swarmed over the border last February, Ukraine became the first country possessing nuclear power plants to be invaded. The attackers seized several of the generating facilities and temporarily entrenched around the mothballed reactor at Chernobyl. At this writing, Moscow’s intentions with regard to the operating power plants was unclear.

But the moves raised a red flag with regard to the claims of a large section of the environmental community that nuclear power is a difficult but necessary technology in the transition to carbon-free energy. We have no choice but to accept it, goes this line of reasoning, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. However, as we are seeing in Ukraine, these facilities are uniquely vulnerable in war time; thus we need to add a national security component to the environmental calculation.

My views on nuclear power, and eventually plants’ attraction as military targets, were shaped by several dramatic encounters early in my career. The first was a speech I attended at Princeton in 1975. Ralph Nader would give a fiery address condemning this source of electricity, citing the environmental and weapons proliferation risks. But just before the start of the lecture, Henry D. Smyth sat down behind me. The author of Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, Smyth had worked back stage on the Manhattan Project, whose history first received an audience in what became known as the Smyth Report, and he also had a starring role in the subsequent global spread of atomic power for electricity generation.

I recognized Nader’s prominent antagonist­ on the nuclear stage—and was treated to a Greek dialogue. Aeschylus is credited with the introduction of the second actor in a play, “making the dramatization of a conflict possible,” according to Wikipedia. And conflict there was. Smyth launched a stream of soto voce rebuttals of the speaker on all points of fact. I thus was schooled on the two sides of the debate by top experts who were poles apart.

I concluded that Smyth hadn’t been able to upstage Nader. Fission was a technology that we had yet to master, including overlapping issues of dangerous long-term waste; weapons proliferation; and environmental safety.

Just four years after this scene, a reactor nearly caused a serious radioactive release 110 miles upwind of my apartment in Princeton. The containment at Three Mile Island (barely) worked, but the partial meltdown so nearby—reaching a lengthy climax with a potentially explosive hydrogen bubble—made real the dangers of this power source.

Finally, reactors’ extreme vulnerability in time of war entered my thinking precisely two years later, when I was editor of the U.S. diplomats’ professional magazine, the Foreign Service Journal. Sigvard Eklund stopped at the State Department prior to visiting the disabled reactor on the anniversary of the accident. I was invited to meet him.

Eklund was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and for 20 years had been promoting “Atoms for Peace,” the slogan President Eisenhower had used in establishing IAEA within the UN system. Eklund was known as the father of nuclear safeguards, an accounting and security system that is supposed to prevent signatories of the Nonproliferation Treaty from diverting fuel or waste to bomb use—a condition to receiving IAEA assistance in building power plants.

We talked on the record for over an hour. Eklund was like a bulldog: He denied that weapons programs had been enabled by countries first gaining reactor technology. Indeed, the safeguards system had never failed humanity. “There is no direct connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons,” he insisted. As a physicist, he felt that on the issue of safety, there would never be another TMI. “We have not had a single case of a fatal accident,” he reminded. Further, the engineering for long-term storage of fission byproducts had also been solved. On these three key issues, he said in emphasizing a steady saga of progress, the public needs “a much more positive attitude.”

We then discussed an article in the just-published April 1981 issue of Scientific American, titled “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity.” The authors’ worst-case scenario was an atomic warhead detonated on a reactor. “The nuclear attack turns the reactor into a devastating radiological weapon,” they wrote. “Because the radioactivity from the reactor is relatively long-lived . . .
the time a given area would remain contaminated is significantly greater.” One such shot could make uninhabitable thousands of square miles—an entire region—for generations to come.

Eklund agreed with the authors and quickly added that despite the ban on atmospheric tests, humanity would benefit from an occasional atom bomb test blast so people could witness the gravity. “I regret very much that the experience of these explosions has been forgotten by the public,” he lamented.

Before I was able to write up the interview, Israeli F-16s took out Iraq’s newly built Osirak reactor—lest it be used to produce weapons material, Israel said. It was a huge sign of disrespect for the safeguards system. There was no release of radioactivity—the bombs were TNT and the reactor had yet to be fueled.
But it was a vivid demonstration of vulnerability. As a shaken Eklund told reporters, “I do not think we have been faced with a more serious question than the implications of the Israeli raid.”

For me, the war in Ukraine brings up to date a drama older than these long-ago events, one as ancient as Prometheus, the god of fire but also of trickery. If nuclear power is needed to achieve net-zero goals, society is going to have to accept the national security “implications.” — Stephen R. Dujack

Notice & Comment is the editors’ column and represents the signatory’s views.

Countering Russia-Ukraine War's Effect on Critical Minerals

The White House is weighing using wartime executive powers to boost U.S. battery production to help secure supplies for the growing market for electric vehicles and power storage on the electric grid....

President Joe Biden would use the Defense Production Act to help secure U.S. sources of critical minerals that are deemed key components of clean energy technology. While the U.S. possesses many of those minerals, industry and some lawmakers of both parties contend regulations have deterred development and forced the U.S. to rely on supplies from nations like China, Russia, South Africa and Australia....

The move to use an emergency national defense law dating to the Cold War comes as the prices of battery minerals like nickel, lithium, and cobalt have surged during Russia’s war in Ukraine....Prices were already rising before Russia’s invasion because of forecasts that global supply won’t keep up with surging demand expected from electrifying economies.

—Politico

The coldest location on the planet has experienced an episode of warm weather this week unlike any ever observed, with temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soaring 50 to 90 degrees above normal.

—Washington Post, March 18

Some Deductions on Induction

I encountered an induction cooktop for the first time recently, and my life has never been the same. Boiling water, which usually bores me to tears, took half as much time as it did on a gas stove. Garlic sizzled in seconds; broccoli softened in a minute or two. With a press of the on button, I sped up time itself, whizzing through a recipe that would take me an hour on a traditional electric stove, 45 minutes on a gas cooktop.

I felt as if I had been catapulted into the future of cooking, one free of accidental burns and those stressful mornings when the stove just won’t light. And I’m not the only convert. An article in March in the New York Times, “The Case for Induction Cooking,” sung the technology’s praises. The magic is in the electromagnets, which heat your pots and pans directly rather than heating the stovetop first. This prevents your kitchen from becoming a sauna in the summer—and it can also be better for your health.

Unlike gas stoves, induction doesn’t require the active combustion of natural gas, meaning it emits fewer air pollutants. A 2020 study led by the Rocky Mountain Institute on indoor air pollution from gas stoves claims, “Burning gas in buildings is not only a threat to climate action but also to human health.” The experts raised concerns over elevated levels of nitrogen dioxide in particular, a toxic gas linked to respiratory and cardiovascular problems, especially in children and other vulnerable populations.

It turns out that induction stoves are also a boon to the environment. Compared to gas stoves, induction cooktops don’t inherently involve the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane, as noted in this issue’s Debate, is over 80 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide in the short term. That means eliminating methane could make a crucial dent in the race against climate change.

A recent Stanford University study found that even when turned off, gas stoves can still emit methane. In fact, researchers found that 80 percent of the methane coming from stoves happens when the stoves are not in use—“from loose couplings and fittings between the stove and gas pipes,” as reported by NPR. Their findings were consistent regardless of the age or brand of the stove.

Induction’s instant-heating technology taught me that I could, in fact, fry a perfectly crispy egg. How did it take me so long to live up to my culinary potential?

For one, I had to travel abroad to even find such a stove. The Times reports that under 5 percent of homes in the United States use induction. They’re currently more expensive than other stove options, though “industry experts agree that, as demand increases, prices will fall.” There’s also a culture of cooking with gas in this country that NPR says is influenced by “a decades-old ‘cooking with gas’ campaign from utilities.”

Despite some roadblocks, induction’s future is just starting to heat up. New York City, Seattle, and other cities have recently enacted bans on gas-powered heating and cooking in new buildings. The policies arise in a wave of campaigns to electrify buildings on the path to net-zero carbon emissions, potentially expanding the market for induction. In the meantime, you can find me sautéing in the fully electric kitchen of my dreams.

—Akielly Hu