Subjective judgments in the nuclear energy debate

For decades, scholars have debated energy policy choices, especially hard versus soft energy paths and nuclear versus renewable energy (RE) (Supporting Information). Brook and Bradshaw (2015) compared impacts and costs of future energy mixes for electricity generation. They describe their analysis as “objective.” However, all scientific research, including theirs, inevitably contains subjective judgments (e.g., selection of data, method, terminology, assumptions about unknown variables, and onus of proof) (Supporting Information). Using multicriteria analysis, which is designed to address explicitly subjective judgments (Keeney 2009), Brook and Bradshaw analyzed 3 electricity scenarios: business as usual, RE, and nuclear energy. Their results gave top ranking to nuclear energy. I examined Brook and Bradshaw’s use of “dispatchability” as a relevant criterion for reliability of electricity supply, their omission of the proliferation of nuclear weapons from the civil nuclear industry, and the validity of the subjective values they assigned to the other criteria they considered: land use, life cycle CO2 emissions, safety, solid waste, and cost of electricity.