Should We Be Using More Nuclear Power?

The History and the Science

Free write (5 min): students record what they already think about nuclear power — and, worth asking explicitly, where that impression came from.

Data work. The deck's teaching notes are specific about what each chart carries:

• Slide 5 — reactors operating, under construction, shut down, abandoned mid-build, and in outage over time, plus the 2017 picture by country.
• Slide 6 — world energy production by source in 2018; a little over a third comes from low-carbon sources. Nuclear is about 10% of global electricity.
• Slide 7 — US primary energy consumption; roughly two thirds is petroleum and natural gas.
• Slide 8 — the key slide. Deaths per unit of energy on the left, greenhouse emissions on the right. Both favour nuclear, and both surprise students.

The economics, which students consistently underrate: plants are expensive because they are complex and need specialised expertise; regulation drives schedule delays and cost overruns; sites must be safe from earthquakes and flooding. The average US plant is 40 years old and only one new plant has been built in two decades.

Breakouts by Position — Three Groups, Not Two

Mindful moment (5 min), then breakouts. This deck supplies three positions with arguments for and against each, so run three groups where you'd normally run two:

• Expand. Almost no CO2; among the safest sources per unit of energy; less land than solar or wind; constant output where renewables aren't; newer designs are smaller and more standardized. Against: accident and proliferation risk, high cost, security exposure, siting constraints in an era of extreme weather, and money diverted from renewables.
• Maintain. We can't store renewable energy at scale yet, so we need a constant source; cutting nuclear likely means burning more fossil fuel; some countries can't make renewables work. Against: keeping plants running still diverts investment from renewables.
• Phase out. Phasing out builds political will for renewables, as in Germany; solar and wind build far faster than a reactor; no accident or radiation risk; we still have no permanent safe disposal for waste. Against: accident fear is dramatized; subsidies and engineering can bring costs down; renewables may not scale fast enough to replace what goes offline.

Run the Model

Mindful moment (5 min), then the MIT En-ROADS climate simulation. Students move the nuclear slider and watch what happens to emissions and projected temperature.

• How does toggling nuclear affect overall emissions? Does temperature move more or less than you expected?
• Which energy sources have larger effects? Which have smaller ones?
• What surprised you most?
• What does the simulation fail to account for? — the best question on the slide. Models encode assumptions, and finding them is the skill.

The usual result is deflating for both camps: nuclear alone moves the temperature line less than students expect. That result is the discussion, not a disappointment.

Before students leave: themes, lingering questions, and one new resource for Thursday.

Positions, Countries, and Culture

Mindful moment (5 min), then students share resources and take the deck's three discussion questions:

• Should the US increase, decrease, or maintain nuclear capacity? What's the strongest argument for your position?
• The right answer differs by country. Describe a country where expansion is sensible — and one where it clearly isn't.
• What portrayals of nuclear power have you seen in film and media? What do they communicate, and how does nuclear power's association with weapons shape public attitudes?

The third question is the sleeper. It explains the gap between the safety data and how people actually feel, and it lets students who dislike quantitative argument in on real terms.

Score Your Participation

The four reflective questions, then the participation matrix. Students also use the participation rubric to score the week and explain the score.