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Open to Debate

It's Time to Expand Nuclear Power

Open to Debate

Open to Debate

Education, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The calls for nuclear are growing louder. The Biden administration recently announced that it was putting $6 billion toward saving distressed nuclear power plants from closure, considering them carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels. Elon Musk doubled down, not only calling for an expansion of nuclear energy, but even offering to eat food grown near reactors live on TV.  But its critics argue that expanding nuclear energy is dangerous, costly, and ill-advised.  So, we unearthed from the archives this highly-relevant debate: Should nuclear energy fuel our future?    Arguing in favor of the motion is Kirsty Gogan and Daniel Poneman. Arguing against the motion is Gregory B. Jaczko and Arjun Makhijani. The keynote address comes from Bill Nye. And Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time.

0:10.0

Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is a sweaty armpit

0:15.0

because your wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps and heath and you get to the top

0:20.0

and you're like, and then you can see the breath but then your nose is still freezing to touch.

0:25.0

Joy and every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

0:30.0

We are hearing more and more people speaking out in support of nuclear power.

0:35.0

The Biden administration recently announced it was putting $6 billion towards saving

0:40.0

distressed nuclear power plants from closing down. Elon Musk has doubled down on nuclear,

0:45.0

not only calling for an expansion of nuclear energy but he's even offering to eat food

0:50.0

grown near nuclear reactors live on television. For decades the development of nuclear power has been a matter of very,

0:56.0

very intense debate. For people backing nuclear right now they say the key thing is that

1:01.0

nuclear helps reduce greenhouse gases and combats climate change while still meeting the world's energy needs.

1:07.0

Critics of nuclear argue as they long have that nuclear power is dangerous and ill advised they cite

1:13.0

the high costs of building power plants, the dangers of meltdowns and the challenge of managing nuclear waste.

1:19.0

Well given all of this interest and discussion around nuclear we went back into our archives to bring forth again a highly

1:26.0

relevant debate that we put on a little while ago where the question we asked was is it time to expand nuclear power?

1:32.0

So we did that debate but before it starts listen as I sit down with Bill Nye the science guy himself

1:39.0

who helped explain what nuclear power is and also told us about the time he changed his mind after attending one of our debates.

1:47.0

There was a really interesting story that relates to you in Intelligent Square that I want to start with.

1:53.0

Yes you have been in the past a member of our audience you've been out there and there was one particular debate that you attended

2:00.0

and an interesting thing happened.

2:03.0

So I was a debate about genetically modified organisms GMOs.

...

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