‘Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy’ by Gwyneth Cravens
By: Cameron Catanzano
Tags: Book Review, Climate Change, Sustainability, Science, Nuclear

‘Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy’ by Gwyneth Cravens

Why Environmentalists Need to Rethink Nuclear Energy

Photo by Thomas Millot on Unsplash

As you are probably well aware, climate change is an existential threat to the future of human civilization. Yet, we shoot ourselves in the foot every day that we try and ignore the importance of nuclear energy to curb this disaster. The science and technology of nuclear fission has developed significantly since the days of the cold war, but misinformation and bad PR continues to hold back the full utilization of nuclear power in our clean energy portfolios.

Maybe this is all news to you, or maybe you watched the Bill Gates documentary and have a positive but surface-level understanding of the technology. Either way, Gwyneth Cravens’s book Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy should launch right to the top of your environmentally conscious reading list.

The book was written in 2007. So, there are times when characters talk about technologies that have seen noteworthy development since the original publication (particularly renewables, hydrogen fuel cells, and electric batteries to an extent). BUT, Power to Save the World is definitely still 99% relevant and 100% worth your time.

A Breakdown of the Book

Power to Save the World is split up into 6 parts with 21 chapters spread between each section. I’ll spend the rest of this blog post briefly exploring the individual focus of each part, but it’s just as important to understand how they work together — and nothing sums up the overall approach of this book like the very very small Marcus Aurelius quote included underneath the title of Part 1.

“Look always at the whole.” - Marcus Aurelius

Cravens set out to write a comprehensive book on nuclear energy, and she did not disappoint. Living up to the aforementioned quote, Cravens approaches “the whole” of nuclear energy in 2 important ways:

The practical context in which we are talking about nuclear energy (think: climate change, technological advancement, politics, the economy, etc.). The ENTIRE life cycle of nuclear energy and the uranium we use to power it.

Every single thing that remotely has to do with nuclear power gets dedicated focus in this book. The book starts with Uranium mines, and it ends with nuclear waste recycling and disposal.

Introduction: “Gwyneth’s Pilgrimage” by Richard Rhodes

It can be easy to ignore introductions like this and jump straight into “the actual book,” but Rhodes makes an interesting point that should frame your expectations if you’re considering buying this book.

“Gwyneth Cravens Evokes an old tradition in this very modern book: seeking understanding by going on a journey… She accumulates knowledge as she goes on, guided by her own Virgil, a steadfast scientist named Dr. Rip Anderson. She achieves greater understanding of the deep things of the world, as her predecessors did, and as they also did, she shares it generously.”

- Richard Rhodes

Before you get scared off by the idea of a book on nuclear energy, Power to Save the World is not some ridiculously dense collection of scientific essays for 1% of readers to enjoy. Instead, think of this as a modern environmentalist’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress or Dante’s Inferno (only this one is based on the real factual world of American energy).

Every time the book runs into dense scientific information, it gets presented in an easy to read dialogue mixed in between sections of Cravens’s own journalistic research and commentary.

Part 1: Origins

Survival/ Always Look at the Whole/ Ambrosia Lake

Like any good “Part 1”, this is where Cravens sets the stage for the rest of the book. Here, we are introduced to Rip (Cravens’s nuclear “Virgil”) and begin their journey touring around the country in a quest to understand nuclear energy (starting with step 1, mining uranium). However, Cravens makes sure to remind us of the big “Why?” behind nuclear energy. In the case of this book, it almost always comes back to climate change.

My Favorite Quote From This Section:

(Citing a quote from the American physicist, Alvin Weinberg) ‘Carbon dioxide poses a dilemma for the radical environmentalists. Since nuclear reactors emit almost no carbon dioxide, how can one be against nuclear energy if one is concerned about carbon dioxide? To my utter dismay, indeed disgust, this is exactly the position of some of the environmentalists. Their argument is that extreme conservation, and a shift to renewables — that is, solar energy — is the only environmentally correct approach to reducing carbon dioxide. When I point out to them that conservation might be feasible in industrialized countries, but that it is hardly a choice for India and China, they seem to ignore the point. Or when I argue that solar energy is hardly a choice at this time (2007), or even for the next century, my environmental critics simply disagree: spend on solar energy what has been spent on nuclear energy, and solar energy will be cheap. But we have yet to discover a technical breakthrough — the solar equivalent of fission — and unless we do, rejection of fission energy condemns the world to a future of very expensive energy. … And when I point out that France has reduced its carbon dioxide emission by a good 20% in the past decade by aggressive deployment of fission reactors, I am greeted by silence.’

- Chapter Title: Survival