In the ongoing effort to decarbonize U.S. energy production, there is one energy source that often attracts great controversy.
In the ongoing effort to decarbonize U.S. energy production, there is one energy source that often attracts great controversy. Nuclear power has been a part of the American energy portfolio since the 1950s and still generates one in every five kilowatt-hours of electricity produced in the country. Still, for a number of reasons, including the association between radiation and cancer, the general public has long felt a significant dread about it. And this fear, suggest Carnegie Mellon University Department of Engineering and Public Policy Assistant Research Professor Parth Vaishnav, and Ahmed Abdulla of the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, may cause people to want less of this zero-carbon energy source in the nation’s electricity generation mix than they otherwise would.
Just how much is this sense of dread negatively affecting decision-making about nuclear about? Vaishnav, assistant research professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and Abdulla, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, set out to quantify it in their peer-reviewed paper published in Energy Policy.
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