Social Problems of Nuclear Energy

Readings

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 18^th, 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 28^th, 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.