Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions/week, 80 minutes/session
Prerequisites
None
Course Description
This course examines nuclear power as a low‑carbon electricity source, balancing its potential role in addressing climate change against longstanding technical, economic, and social challenges. Topics include the ability of nuclear power to help mitigate climate change; challenges associated with ensuring nuclear safety; the effects of nuclear accidents; the management of nuclear waste; the linkages between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the consequences of nuclear war; and political challenges to the safe and economic regulation of the nuclear industry. Students explore both fission and fusion technologies, emerging reactor designs, policy options, and the institutional and societal constraints shaping nuclear power’s future. Emphasis is placed on critical evaluation of tradeoffs, uncertainties, and value judgments involved in decisions about nuclear energy within an increasingly competitive renewable energy landscape.
Course Overview
This course studies nuclear energy as an important low-emission power source. While nuclear energy is highly efficient and environmentally favorable under normal conditions, its wider adoption is limited by significant challenges. These include high construction and operating costs, concerns about reactor safety, long-term management of radioactive waste, and links to nuclear-weapon proliferation. Public support for nuclear power remains relatively low compared to other clean energy options like wind and solar, largely due to these unresolved issues.
The course explores these technical, economic, and social challenges in depth, highlighting uncertainties such as accident risks, the difficulty of managing waste across generations, and the risks of expanding nuclear power in countries with limited infrastructure. It also considers potential solutions, including safer reactor designs, improved waste management strategies, and policy reforms to reduce proliferation risks. Ultimately, the course encourages critical evaluation of whether nuclear power can overcome these barriers and what role it should play in the future energy landscape.
Readings
Readings introduce students to topics that are central to the intellectual trajectory of the course. In principle, reading is not optional.
Grading
- Full participation in the referee report process 10%
- Final presentations 10%
- Final paper 80%
Homework
Seven opt-in homework assignments are graded on a participation-points basis. These opt-in homework assignments are intended to help students learn to argue, think more critically, and write better without the aid of LLMs.
Final Paper
The final paper consists of the following:
- An original research paper
- A peer-review referee report of a fellow student’s paper
- An in-class presentation of your paper.
The topic may focus on any dimension covered in the course, as well as related issues not directly covered. It must relate to how nuclear technology and society interact. You are especially encouraged to try to answer a genuine societal question by examining a set of technical parameters.
Final Presentation
Aim to make around four slides. I suggest (a) a slide to frame the issue and identify the key questions; (b) a slide describing your method of analysis; (c) your key analytical findings from the analysis; and (d) your key conclusions for the social issue and suggestions for future study.
Plan to speak for about eight minutes—that’s just two minutes per slide. You’ll need to practice being concise!
