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22.04J | Fall 2025 | Undergraduate

# Social Problems of Nuclear Energy

### Introduction

#### Session 1: A Quick History of Nuclear Energy

- Weinberg, Alvin M. “Nuclear Power and Public Perception.” Chapter 9 in Risk, Organizations, and Society. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. ISBN: 9780792391180.
- Manjoo, Farhad. “Nuclear Power Still Doesn’t Make Much Sense.” The New York Times, September 16, 2022.
- Jasper, James M. “Elite Discretion in Three Countries.” Chapter 10 in Nuclear Politics: Energy and the State in the United States, Sweden, and France. Princeton University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780691609201.

#### Session 2: How Do Reactors Work?

Optional reading: For students with little-to-no prior exposure to nuclear energy, start here:

- Shultis, J. Kenneth, and Richard E. Faw. “Nuclear Power.” Chapter 11 in Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering. (PDF) Marcel Dekker, Inc., 2002. ISBN: 9780824708344.
- International Atomic Energy Agency. “Fusion Energy.” (PDF) IAEA Bulletin, May 2021.

Optional reading: For students not familiar with the commercial reactor designs (e.g., Gen II, III, IV):

- Goldberg, Stephen M., and Robert Rosner. Nuclear Reactors: Generation to Generation (PDF). American Academies of Arts and Sciences, 2011.

#### Session 3: How We Think About Climate Change

- Pindyck, Robert S. “Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?” Journal of Economic Literature 51, no. 3 (2013): 860–872.

### Part I: Energy Policy for Decarbonization

#### Session 4: Introduction to Microeconomics

- Ventosa, Mariano, Pedro Linares, and Ignacio J. Pérez-Arriaga, “Power System Economics.” Chapter 2 in Regulation of the Power Sector. Springer, 2014. ISBN: 9781447169130.

#### Session 5: Finance of Nuclear Power

- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Energy Primer: A Handbook of Energy Market Basics. Washington, DC: FERC, 2020.

#### Session 6: Microreactors, Learning, and Cost Control

- Schlissel, David, and Bruce Biewald, “Nuclear Power Plant Construction Costs.” (PDF) Report of Synapse Energy Economics Inc. July 2009.
- Eash-Gates, Philip, Magdalena M. Klemun, et al. “Sources of Cost Overrun in Nuclear Power Plant Construction Call for a New Approach to Engineering Design.” Joule 4, no. 11 (2020): 2348–2373.

#### Session 7: Wind and Solar

- Shaner, Matthew R., Steven J. Davis, et al. “Geophysical Constraints on the Reliability of Solar and Wind Power in the United States.” Energy and Environmental Science. Issue 4, 2018.
- Dunsmore, J., L.M. Arthur, and R.S. Kemp. “Modelling Reliability Under Deep Decarbonisation of the European Electrical Grid.” arXiv:2503.23604v4, 2025.

#### Session 8: Microreactors

- U.S. Department of Commerce. “The Commercial Outlook for U.S. Small Modular Nuclear Reactors." February 2011.
- L’Her, G.F., R.S. Kemp, et al. “Potential for Small and Micro Modular Reactors to Electrify Developing Regions.” Nature Energy 9 (2024): 725–734.
- Rickover, Hyman G. “Paper Reactor.” Memo dated June 5, 1953.

#### Session 9: The Grid

- Kramer, David. “Advanced Conductors Could Double Power Flows on the Grid.” Physics Today (June 2024): 21–23.
- Charles, Dan. “Off the Grid.” Science, September 8, 2023.
- “Chapter 1: Challenges, Opportunities, and Major Recommendations,” in MIT, The Future of the Electric Grid (PDF) (2011).

#### Session 10: The Heat Market

- No reading assignment

#### Session 11: How to Choose a Paper Topic

- No reading assignment

#### Session 12: Paper Topics Peer Review

- No reading assignment

### Part II: Nuclear Safety

#### Session 13: Introduction to Externalities and Regulation

- Wing, Steve. “Objectivity and Ethics in Environmental Science.” Environmental Health Perspectives 111, no. 14 (November 2003): 1809–1818.
- Wellock, Thomas R. “Engineering Uncertainty and Bureaucratic Crisis and the Atomic Energy Commission, 1964–1973.” Technology and Culture 53, no. 4 (October 2012): 846–884.
- “Appendix L: Factoring the Costs of Severe Nuclear Accidents into Backfit Decisions” in Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety of U.S. Nuclear Plants. National Academies of Sciences, 2014.

#### Session 14: Radiation Biology

- Caufield, Catherine. “Confusion and Acrimony.” Chapter 16 in Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age University of Chicago Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780226097855.
- Fajardo, Luis Felipe, Morgan Berthrong, and Robert Anderson. “Basic radiation, physics, chemistry, and biology” Chapter 1 in Radiation Pathology. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780195110234. (Note: When reading the above, you should know the term “neoplasm” means a cancer of either a solid (i.e., a tumor) or disaggregated (i.e., leukemia) form.)
- International Committee on Radiation Protection (ICRP). “Publication 99: Low-Dose Extrapolation of Radiation-Related Cancer Risk.” Annals of the ICRP 35 no. 4, (2005): 5–39.

#### Session 15: LNT and Model Selection

- The National Diet of Japan. “The Official Report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission Risk Analysis.” (PDF) (2012). Pages 10–21 and 26–44.

#### Session 16: Safety Summary

- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Information Notice No. 86-106 Supplement 2, “Feedwater Line Break.” (PDF). March 18th, 1987. (A non-accident)
- Elliot, Jon F. “The Kemeny Report on the Accident at Three Mile Island.” Ecology Law Quarterly 8, no. 4 (1980): 810–817. (A real accident)

#### Session 17: History of Nuclear Waste

- MacFarlane, Allison. “It’s 2050: Do You Know Where Your Nuclear Waste Is?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 2011.
- Gilinsky, Victor. “Heard About the Near-Accident at the Ohio Nuclear Plant? I’m Not Surprised.” Washington Post, April 28th, 2002.

### Part III: Nuclear Security

#### Session 18: Nuclear Weapons 1

- Postol, Theodore A. “Possible Fatalities from Superfires Following Nuclear Attacks in or Near Urban Areas” in The Medical Implications of Nuclear War. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1986.
- Toon, Owen B., Alan Robock, and Richard P. Turco, “Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War.” Physics Today, December 2008.

#### Session 19: Nuclear Weapons 2

- Kemp, R. Scott, Edwin S. Lyman, et al. “The Weapons Potential of High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium.” Science 384, no. 6700 (2024): 1071–1073.
- U.S. Department of Energy. “Nonproliferation and Arms Control Assessment of Weapons-Usable Fissile Material Storage and Excess Plutonium Disposition Alternatives.” Technical Report DOE/NN–0007, January 1997, Box 3-1, Pages 37–39 only.

#### Session 20: Nuclear Proliferation

- Miller, Steven E., and Scott D. Sagan. “Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Proliferation?” Dædalus, Fall 2009, pages 9–12 only.
- Perkovich, George. “Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons in India, Pakistan, and Iran.” Chapter 12 in Leventhal, Paul, Sharon Tanzer, and Steven Dolley (eds.) Nuclear Power and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: Can We Have One Without the Other? Washington DC: Brassey’s [Potomac Books], 2002. Pages 189–199. ISBN: 9781574884951.

#### Session 21: Paper Peer Review

- No reading assignment

### Part IV: Wrap Up

#### Session 22: Paper Peer Review

- No reading assignment

#### Session 23: Synthesis: Nuclear vs. the Rest

- “Summary of Findings and Recommendations” (pages xix–xxiv) in The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon Constrained World. An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (PDF), 2018.
- “Executive Summary” (pages vi–xiii) in Examining Supply-Side Options to Achieve 100% Clean Electricity by 2035 (PDF). National Renewable Energy Laboratory report NREL/TP-6A40-81644, 2022.

#### Session 24: A Way Forward

- Hardwig, John. “Epistemic Dependence.” The Journal of Philosophy 82 no. 7, July 1985.

## Course Info

### Instructor

- Prof. R. Scott Kemp

### Departments

- Nuclear Science and Engineering
- Science, Technology, and Society

### As Taught In

Fall 2025

### Level

Undergraduate

### Topics

- Energy
  - Nuclear Energy
- Engineering
  - Nuclear Engineering

### Learning Resource Types

theaters Lecture Videos
auto_stories Readings
assignment Written Assignments

Browse Resources

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