Don’t Give up on Nuclear Energy

The nuclear power plant failures at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the late 1970s and 1980s split Americans into two passionate camps. For some, nuclear plants posed serious threats to both environmental and national security, and, for others, nuclear energy remained the most viable path to clean, reliable power in the United States. But following the fervent debates of the late 20th century, the national conversation around nuclear power stagnated. A few ardent advocates and opponents notwithstanding, nuclear power left the public eye. Popular energy debates—especially among young people—now center around flashier topics like the Green New Deal, electric vehicles, and Greta Thunberg. In light of the collective avoidance of nuclear power, support in the U.S. recently reached an all-time low—although the slight majority opposition fails to tell the entire story. Rather than carefully researching the pros and cons of new advancements in nuclear power, many Americans maintain decades-old opinions, parrot the viewpoints of media personalities, or avoid thinking about nuclear energy entirely. While brushing a topic as difficult as nuclear power under the rug seems the most convenient option, one problem remains—Americans can’t afford to abandon nuclear power. First, let’s state the obvious: Anthropogenic contributions to climate change pose serious threats to the planet, and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere plays a sizeable role in humanity’s impact on the environment. Crucially, though, nuclear plants generate vast amounts of power without directly emitting CO2. Furthermore, nuclear energy’s current technological capabilities—unlike other renewable technologies—can provide reliable baseload electricity in nearly every corner of the world. Yet the current state of nuclear power is what causes such angst among nuclear skeptics. Most nuclear plants came online between 1970 and 1990, and the infamous disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima originated from freak failures in dated technology. Additionally, traditional nuclear plants take billions of dollars and many years to build, all while creating the problem of non-disposable, highly radioactive waste. The perceived health risks of nuclear power, though, falter under further examination. In fact, the use of nuclear power over fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas prevented an estimated 1.8 million net deaths between 1971-2009. As for cost and waste-related worries, traditional nuclear plants do come with high capital costs and create radioactive waste, but the levelized costs of nuclear energy—the minimum price of electricity for the project to break even—tell a different story. In 2020, the levelized cost of nuclear plants coming online was $95.2/MWh, comparable to conventional coal ($95.1/MWh) and below conventional combustion turbine natural gas-fired plants ($141.5/MWh). Additionally, new technologies promise to change the landscape of nuclear power. Companies like NuScale Power, for example, propose a small, modular reactor with a simplified design capable of shipment by truck, rail, or barge and projected to be commercially available by 2025. This modular reactor greatly reduces construction and operating costs, consequently emerging as a viable option for clean, baseload power generation in smaller communities. Another company, TerraPower, has designed a nuclear reactor capable of utilizing fuel made from depleted uranium, the byproduct of traditional nuclear plants. Commercial use of this technology would reduce nuclear proliferation concerns, lower costs, and protect the environment by eliminating existing nuclear waste. Countless additional examples of advanced nuclear technologies exist, and it is in our best interests—environmentally and financially—to give them serious consideration. Even if modern nuclear plants fail to act as a panacea to the world’s energy problems, they may prove beneficial in regions lacking the necessary conditions to survive off solar, hydro, and wind power alone—at least until large scale storage and transportation of renewable energy becomes viable. Simply put, advanced nuclear power’s potential justifies significant investment in further research. Considering the climate-related challenges before us, to outwardly dismiss such an impactful technology would be foolish

Neuroscience and Sentencing

This symposium comes at a propitious time for me. I am reviewing the sentences I was obliged to give to hundreds of men—mostly African American men—over the course of a seventeen-year federal judicial career. As I have written elsewhere, I believe that 80 percent of the sentences that I imposedwereunfair,unjust,anddisproportionate. EverythingthatIthought was important—that neuroscientists, for example, have found to be salient in affecting behavior—was irrelevant to the analysis I was supposed to conduct. My goal—for which this symposium plays an important part—is to reevaluate those sentences now under a more rational and humane system, this time at least informed by the insights of science. The question is how to do that: How can neuroscience contribute to the enterprise and what are the pitfalls? This Article represents a few of my preliminary conclusions, but my retrospective analysis is not complete

Intellectual Property, Antitrust and Strategic Behavior

Economic growth depends in large part on technological change. Laws governing intellectual property rights protect inventors from competition in order to create incentives for them to innovate. Antitrust laws constrain how a monopolist can act in order to maintain its monopoly in an attempt to foster competition. There is a fundamental tension between these two different types of laws. Attempts to adapt static antitrust analysis to a setting of dynamic R&D competition through the use of 'innovation markets' are likely to lead to error. Applying standard antitrust doctrines such as tying and exclusivity to R&D settings is likely to be complicated. Only detailed study of the industry of concern has the possibility of uncovering reliable relationships between innovation and industry behavior. One important form of competition, especially in certain network industries, is between open and closed systems. We have presented an example to illustrate how there is a tendency for systems to close even though an open system is socially more desirable. Rather than trying to use the antitrust laws to attack the maintenance of closed systems, an alternative approach would be to use intellectual property laws and regulations to promote open systems and the standard setting organizations that they require. Recognition that optimal policy toward R&D requires coordination between the antitrust and intellectual property laws is needed.

From "Rites" to "Rights": The Decline of the Criminal Jury Trial

In Representing Justice, Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis highlight - indeed, speak movingly - of the shift from the "pageantry and spectacle ('rites') entailed in Renaissance adjudication," to the "entitlements ('rights') to processes of a certain kinds that entailed making courts open to anyone who wanted to watch." The transformation from "rites" to "rights" is a process rightly celebrated, but, as the authors caution, in the modem American legal environment, it is at risk of backsliding. My talk illustrates one aspect of this phenomenon, from the modest colonial courthouses, in which American jurors enforced (or not infrequently, rejected) English law, to the modern federal courthouses, where the jury deliberation rooms stand empty. Colonial criminal jury trials involved far more than rituals that reflected the administration of power, although they were surely that. On the one hand, they made transparent the acts of the state in imposing its ultimate authority over the individual, the authority to punish, to take away an individual's liberty, even their life. On the other hand, the colonial citizenry was invited in not merely to be passive observers. They - at least the white men with property among them - were decisionmakers, members of a twelve-person lay jury. Courthouses had to be configured not only to make trials open, but also to permit space for the deliberating jury