Science, Technology, and Public Policy

This chapter appears in Handbook of the Anthropocene: Humans between Heritage and Future.

Nuclear waste epitomizes the Anthropocene. Scientific discovery of nuclear fission in the 1930s ushered in the atomic age. The onset of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy production in the 1940s and 1950s then created a uniquely human problem with planetary implications. Today, 33 countries operate 442 nuclear power reactors, and nine countries possess nearly 13,000 nuclear arms. The result is high-level waste that is dangerously radioactive for millennia to come. Yet, there has never been a permanent waste solution in place. Technically feasible long-term nuclear waste storage options exist, but nearly all governments prefer riskier interim plans hidden from public view and debate. This chapter considers the likelihood of societies addressing the contentious environmental and economic politics of deep geological repositories; and it asks, how long will obfuscation of the risks of this unique Anthropocene challenge continue?

Preventing nuclear war and avoiding catastrophic climate change are two of the most basic challenges facing human civilization in the twenty-first century. While these are separate issues, these challenges are linked in several ways, and both may be affected by the future of nuclear energy. For nuclear energy to provide any substantial part of the low-carbon energy needed in the second half of the twenty-first century would require dramatic growth. This chapter provides an overview of the constraints and risks of nuclear energy growth on that scale, and the necessary steps to address them. In particular, use of nuclear energy at that scale would place unprecedented demands on global systems for verification, control, and security for weapons-usable nuclear materials. Deep reductions in nuclear arms and their eventual prohibition will also require new approaches to managing the vast global stocks of weapons-usable nuclear materials. Politically, nuclear energy may not be able to grow on the scale required unless governments and publics are confident that it will not contribute to the spread of nuclear weapons, creating another link between climate mitigation and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.