![]() "The production of energy is the very essence of design. He's the planet's most prominent living architect and a masterful interviewee. "Nothing happens by accident, it all happens by design," he says, pausing to smile before continuing to speak with faultless clarity and conviction. We abandoned nuclear and stayed with fossil fuels." We wouldn't be in this climate crisis if we had stayed on the path to vigorous deployment of nuclear energy. Later that same day, MIT's professor of nuclear science, Jacopo Buongiorno tells me, "If we'd stayed on that track" - meaning the track of nuclear energy - "the US now might have 1,000 nuclear plants instead of 100, and the rest of the world likely would have followed suit. In the 1950s, the US was on a path to a low-carbon energy future before the antinuclear movement, including the fossil fuel industry, successfully capitalized on Cold War fears of radiation: despite the evidence against harmful risks materialising. Besides, we are here to discuss solutions to prevent climate catastrophe - the biggest existential threat that humanity has ever faced. I banish the thought, not wanting to ruin the calmness of the moment. Under that scenario, the streets of Boston's Back Bay we are gazing out across at would become capillaries of the Charles River. Immediately my thoughts turn to melting ice caps, and the reality that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where we are headed to that morning, could be submerged under a 12-feet sea level rise within decades. In the 1950s, the US was on a path to a low-carbon energy future before the antinuclear movement, including the fossil fuel industry, successfully capitalized on Cold War fears of radiation.
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