I find this idea of retrofitting old coal plants with nuclear reactors appealing. We are told the new generation of nuclear reactors is safe, and that our fears of nuclear accidents are based on half-century-old obsolete designs. These fears have held back the entire industry for decades, and you can imagine an alternate world where intensive use of nuclear power for all those decades has staved off the climate crisis the world now finds itself in.

The risk of nuclear accidents is objectively much lower than the risk of climate disaster we face. And yet…I have to ask myself if I would want a nuclear reactor a few blocks from my house. There is in fact a very old fossil fuel (oil and gas in this case) power plant a few blocks from my house. There have been accidents both at that plant, at the very old (and now closed) oil refinery nearby, and with the trains that carry oil past our neighborhood. Then there is whatever the air pollution from the plant is doing to my family’s lungs and cancer risk. All these things tell me that rationally I should welcome a nuclear reactor a few blocks from my house. And yet…it is so hard to separate emotions and be purely rational. And I tend to think I am more coldly rational than most people in the neighborhood would likely be if this were proposed. So this would be a tough road. But our power plant is also in a very densely populated urban area, and there would probably be much more out-of-the-way places where it could be tried (and hopefully the handful of people who lived there would be treated fairly).