Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions — specifically nuclear fission — to generate electricity. Despite its low carbon emissions and high energy density, its development has been shaped less by engineering capability than by the institutional trauma of accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, which demonstrated that the socio-technical systems surrounding reactors are often less robust than the reactors themselves. The debate over nuclear power's role in decarbonization is therefore not merely a technical question about reactor design or waste management; it is a question about whether human organizations can be trusted to manage systems whose failures are normal rather than exceptional.