The European Atomic Energy Forum

Some thirty miles north and west of my home community lies another community called Batavia. Batavia is home to Fermilab, a primer research facility specializing in high energy physics. Though in recent years, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC ) on the Swiss border has made more headlines, the first such high energy particle accelerator, as well as the world's only proton-antiproton collider, are both still in operation at Fermilab. The facility is named after Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist who was best known for his work developing the first nuclear reactor, Chicago-Pile-1. His discoveries would later lead to the creation of the first hydrogen bomb, an achievement that Fermi regarded as inherently immoral and against the intrinsic nature of the goodwill of humanity.

Though the legacy of nuclear technology is largely regarded as constituting the very antithesis of conventional human ethics, contemporary uses of nuclear reactors present a new function for such extraordinary capabilities. The European Atomic Energy Forum (FORATOM), where I now intern, serves as a speakerphone for the nuclear energy industry in Europe, advocating the further adoption of nuclear energy as a clean and efficient means of meeting the projected energy needs for the interim phase between now and humanity's ideal complete transition into renewable sources of energy. The website can be found here.

The issue of nuclear energy is largely ignored, but those who do have opinions have become increasingly polarized. Critics cite the incidents at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Ukraine and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania as indicators of the environmental and human health related consequences of adopting nuclear energy, while advocates claim that such incidents were far out of the ordinary and a fact of the past due to modern advances in nuclear safety and improved design. One certainty is that a significant portion of the public is simply unaware of the extent to which nuclear power is already in use. In the United States alone there are precisely 104 nuclear reactors in 31 of the 50 states. President Obama, who had introduced legislation strongly supporting the use of renewable energy during his senatorial career (I know because I wrote a letter to him regarding renewable energy, and got a nice response from a dedicated underling), has become increasingly receptive to the idea of incorporating nuclear energy into the US energy infrastructure, a position that has notably brought members of both parties towards a common platform.

Despite the increasing receptivity to the nuclear energy industry, Europe in general remains far ahead of the United States in terms of its own nuclear infrastructure. While specific member states of the European Union (i.e., Germany, Austria, and Italy) remain strongly opposed to the adoption of nuclear energy, other countries such as the UK, Norway, and France have already developed an efficient and safe nuclear industry. To illustrate further, France relies on the nuclear industry for nearly 75% of its total electrical usage. Because of the efficiency of their industry, they have now become an exporter of energy, in contrast to anti-nuclear Italy, which is now the largest importer of energy in Europe.

Nuclear energy may not be the solution for which many had hoped, but the renewable energy industry must be substantially expanded to meet global energy needs. Until that becomes feasible, nuclear energy may provide an interim solution. Though it is an overlooked fact, nuclear energy causes no CO2 emissions. Critics frequently refute this point by referring to the nuclear supply chain, an argument that I cannot deny. Yet judging from existing output, nuclear energy is unequivocally an economically efficient, environmentally safe, and locally supportive practice. The current design of nuclear reactors, now at Generation III, includes safety precautions that would have been inconceivable to nuclear engineers one generation ago.

Regardless of my own personal conviction on the matter, my internship at FORATOM has presented a new perspective on an issue that I, and much of the public, know very little. Nuclear energy remains a largely ignored subject, due either to apathy or unawareness, but it is quickly becoming more important to policy makers. I will be sure to include more of what I have learned in subsequent posts, but for right now let it be sufficient to conclude with the following thoughts:

I. Energy is an often overlooked field that will require increased development and innovation in the coming years.
II. Nuclear energy is automatically associated with its weaponized military capabilities and proliferation, which in turn diminishes interest and reception to its adoption in existing energy infrastructure.
III. A wide gap appears to exist between public sentiment and the member state's energy policy. The majority of citizens do not prioritize energy high on the list; as such, activists for or against nuclear energy are already highly opinionated and the debate overall is highly polarized.
IV. The risk and likelihood of nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl or Three Mile Island occurring again are low and overstated. It should additionally be noted that there were no fatalities (direct or indirect) from the incident at Three Mile Island, and that the plant at Chernobyl was Soviet designed, and contained structural flaws that would have violated numerous regulations in a Western designed reactor.