Customer Reviews

Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey

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As a long-time concerned conservationist, I've always been leery of Nuclear power, however, Mr. Tucker's book makes a strong case for a solar-nuclear alliance. Safety is of course a major concern, and Tucker details past failures and the positive results achieved by the U.S. Navy's atomic submarines, aircraft carriers, and France. The fact that France's nuclear program provides 80 % of their electricity at the lowest rates in Europe; stores the high-level nuclear waste from 30 years in one room in La Hague, and exports power to Denmark and Germany, will hopefully get some of those head-in-the-sand start thinking positively about working with nuclear.
Another startler in Tucker's book is the revelation that after the end of the Cold War, two American Senators - a democrat, Sam Nunn, and a republican, Pete Domenici, made a deal with the Russian government to purchase enriched uramium from their disassembled weapons and recycle it through American power plants. Since 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear, and half of our fuel comes from recycled missiles, one in every ten light bulbs in America is now lit thanks to a former Soviet weapon!
The chapter on the creation of the atomic bomb reads like a Le Carre thriller.
Tucker painstaking explores the advantages and disadvantages of biofuels, hydro, wind, and geothermal. The book is clear, concise, credible and well written.
Jerry Kennealy

William Tucker has created a well-written, thoughtful review of the current state of America's energy situation.

When I first heard about this book, which unabashedly promotes nuclear energy as the only reasonable option we have, I had a negative reaction. The reason had nothing to do with embracing nuclear. That part was easy since it brought me back to my childhood in the 60's when nuclear was widely heralded as the energy source of the future.

Rather, it was his embracing of the theory (yes, it's still only a theory) of man-made global warming as a basis for promoting nuclear energy solutions that gave me pause.

After reading the book, however, I have to say he's done a commendable job of fleshing out the science and the arguments on both sides of the global warming debate better than any treatment I've read to date.

Tucker then analyzes every possible energy option currently available to mankind, including coal, natural gas, geothermal, hydro, solar, wind, biofuels, coal gassification, etc. He cuts through much of the rhetoric that swirls around each of these energy options and lays out the history and all the facts, both the good and the bad, for each option.

Tucker does an excellent job of making things understandable for the layperson, despite being someone with a much more technical understanding of the science underlying these energy alternatives.

This book is informative and very engaging, and I would highly recommend it to anyone serious about understanding the reality of our energy choices.

Ever since William Tucker wrote "Progress and Privilege" in 1982, I have been an admirer of his writing ability. The arguments advanced in the 1982 work are still valid today and that book really straightened out my thinking about the dark side of the green movement.

Now comes a new book on terrestrial energy that is full of data. I am an engineer and welcome the data and I know from past experience I can trust Tucker's research. So I could read this book with little or no fact checking on my own. This made the reading go ever so smoothly when numerical data was presented.

I thought the choice of the subject matter for chapter one was perfect.Lets talk about global warming. If he had not opened that dialog early , it would have put lots of readers on the defensive. But he handled the subject in a balanced way and even if readers disagree with his conclusion, most will agree it was handled fairly.









The first one third of the book includes a review of past energy sources that are now in their old age stage of development. This included hydro,coal and petroleum. His analysis of where we have been and where we have left to go was on target based on my own understanding of the technical arguments involved.

Later chapters discuss alternative energy sources such as solar and renewables. You have got to admire a writer that will use the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics in a popular book to advance arguments for and against renewables.

Finally in the last 140 pages the big bear sitting silently in the background is introduced.Nuclear energy. Be prepared to read a really comprehensive and technically muscular discussion of this subject. The French solution presented in detail is really uplifting, particularly the issue of nuclear waste reprocessing.

When I read the book I made a few notes. I am going to re-read it and make lots of notes because I plan to use it as my data base in discussions with my friends.

Several years ago I had a strong desire to write a book that would examine each of current and potential sources of energy and explain its merits and drawbacks. I wanted to have something that would help people understand why nuclear energy is such a promising source of energy for the world. I no longer need to write my book--Mr. Tucker had done it for me, and far better than I would have.

"Terrestrial Energy" is outstanding...this is a book that I would recommend without reservation to all of my friends and colleagues who are concerned about the severe energy crisis that is only beginning. I promise you, no matter how much you know about energy and energy policy (and I don't consider myself a novice in the field) you will learn more, or at the very least have a greater insight into these issues after reading Mr. Tucker's book.

I plan to buy many copies of this book (hope there's a bulk discount!) and distribute them to friends, family, church and work colleagues to help them understand more about how we can actually solve our energy crisis (for thousands of years) using the basic power that has been locked in the nuclei of thorium and uranium for the last five billion years.

For openers an excellent history of the key technologies of the Industrial Revolution that have brought us to complete dependence on fossil fuels. Mr.Tucker explains that oil, natural gas and coal are solar, or extraterrestrial in origin. Sun, wind, tides, biofuels and hydroelectric power, are also extraterrestrial in origin. This century will mark the end of the short-lived fossil fuel era. They will already be severely depleted by mid century. Mr.Tucker describes the Global Warming crowd's rush to sun and wind and bio technology to replace fossils. He brilliantly explains how these intermittent and land intensive sources can't provide the reliable, large volumes of power modern economies need. They will remain supplemental sources. The only ready alternatives are the truly terrestrial nuclear fuels, exclusively uranium at this point. Think about it....if fossil fuels are gone and the so called 'renewables' can't come close to powering modern economies, what is left? Mr. Tucker explains how safe, modern nuclear technology is ready to produce high volume, low cost electricity. And it does not emit 'green house gases'. It will long outlive fossil fuels. Mr. Tucker's book will help educate the public about this sole option that is ignored and blocked at every opportunity by environmentalists.

Mr. Tucker provides what has long been lacking from the energy debate - practicality. This well-researched book is a good starting point for anyone wanting to understand our current energy profile as well as the less-than-obvious constraints to current policy proposals aimed at substituting carbon-based energy with renewable energy.

Our current generation assets effectively meet specific needs and energy consumption patterns. Nuclear, coal and hydro sources meet our base load electricity demand that exists day and night. Natural gas plants, as well as some coal plants, are fired up during the day as electric demand spikes.

Since electricity generally cannot be stored for later use, grid operators must feed electricity onto the grid as it is demanded - all within a five percent variance. The challenge to wind power, as Mr. Tucker outlines, is that it is highly unpredictable and would be a disaster if it were to replace the current role of natural gas peaking plants. In fact, the Danes have refused adding anymore wind to their mix for this exact reason.

Solar, on the other hand, could act as a peaking source since its production spikes at the same time as demand on hot summer afternoons. But the challenge with solar, as with wind, is that both sources are highly dilute (and expensive!).

We would need an inordinate amount of land to replace a traditional nuclear, coal or gas power plant with solar or wind. If we covered, as Mr. Tucker explains, every rooftop in the country with solar panels, we would be able to provide the equivalent of our daytime indoor lighting needs. (This is less than 5 percent of our total electricity demand).

Terrestrial energy (nuclear), by contrast, is far more concentrated than solar energy - by a factor of about two million. Much of the rest of Mr. Tucker's book is spent explaining how nuclear energy works and how nuclear plants are, despite some public sentiment, very safe and environmentally compatible.

As ratepayers we need to understand that utilities merely pass through their costs of purchasing power and that federal and state mandates for renewable energy come with a price tag. If our national priority is clean, safe and inexpensive power then policymakers owe us a long overdue discussion on nuclear energy.

I believe this is the most important book written this year, and perhaps in many years. Why? Because nothing is more critical to our economy and way of life than how we respond to the energy crisis and global warming. So far, we are not off to a good start.

In this thoroughly researched and beautifully written book, Mr. Tucker first acknowledges that global warming is PROBABLY real and PROBABLY at least partly anthropogenic, even though such conclusions are not provable by ordinary scientific hypothesis testing. He then rightly concludes that even if global warming is only very slightly caused by human activity, we cannot continue to pour billions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere without suffering consequences.

Mr. Tucker then proceeds to methodically and objectively examine every known source of energy, with respect to the advantages and problems inherent to each. He then concludes that there is only one source that even comes close to satisfying the criteria of no GG emissions, reasonable cost, and minimal environmental impact - nuclear energy.

I would take issue with Mr. Tucker's far too charitable treatment of wind energy. He does correctly point out that because electricity produced by wind is intermittent and effectively can't be stored, it cannot provide base load or peak load. He also mentions that modern grids must have reliable dispatch control over the amount of electricity going into the grid to balance load and avoid brownouts and blackouts, which wind can't provide. However, he inexplicably fails to mention the need for "backup" generation from conventional power plants to cover periods of low or no wind. He concludes, unconvincingly, that wind can provide "spinning reserves" to cover grid demand fluctuations. He does not explain how an unpredictable, constantly fluctuating source can provide reserves which must be instantly available when needed. These criticisms are mere quibbles, however, as Mr. Tucker makes it abundantly clear that wind, solar and other renewables are simply not going to solve our energy problems.

Mr Tucker then gets to his main point, that nuclear energy is the answer. He convincingly deconstructs all of of the popular arguments against nuclear energy, such as the terrorist problem, the nuclear accident problem and the waste disposal problem. He makes it clear that these problems are either non-existent urban myths or a product of bad political decisions made during the last thirty years. He does this by taking us on a tour of the French nuclear industry, which provides 80% of France's electricity needs.

It is painful to listen to the comments of French nuclear industry officials as they describe how cheap, clean, reliable and safe their nuclear industry is, and how grateful they are to us for inventing the nuclear reactor. If only we had done what France did 30 years ago, we wouldn't be having an energy crisis and our GG emissions would be a fraction of what they now are. How frustrating!

This book should be required reading for every public official having anything to do with energy policy, from President-elect Obama to members of congress and governors. The stakes here are huge. We are about to commit over a TRILLION dollars on "renewable" and "alternative" energy that simply does not work and cannot be made to work. We are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and will pay dearly for this fundamental policy mistake. Mr. Tucker makes it clear that the task of replacing coal with nuclear energy can be accomplished, but is not going to happen unless the public becomes educated and the myths and misinformation fed to us during the last 30 years are refuted. This book is a great start. I intend to give copies to my environmentalist friends who "believe in wind" but have no idea what they are talking about.

William Tucker's book makes for compelling reading. He argues persuasively that the solution to global warming and our need for energy independence lies in nuclear energy (which he sees as "terrestrial energy" since it occurs naturally in the earth). He clearly explains the serious downsides of energy generated by coal, oil and natural gas as well as the limitations of wind, solar, and other forms of "clean" energy favored by environmentalists (such as me!). Tucker combines history, politics, and some basic physics (understandable to non-scientists) in a style that is both personal and objective. This is a book that should be read by the Obama administration and anyone else empowered to make energy decisions. I was anti-nuclear before reading this book, and now I'm convinced. Buy it. Read it. Buy copies to send out.

This book is a valuable overview of our options for dealing with our energy needs while slowing global warming. Tucker weighs the pros and cons of solar, wind and other "renewables" as well as nuclear. He proposes an investment in both nuclear and solar, and supports his recommendation with solid arguments. A "must read" for anyone concerned with global warming and our energy future.

William Tucker is clearly an advocate for nuclear energy. Nevertheless, if you are in favor of limiting greenhouse gasses and support alternative forms of energy production, you need to consider his arguments for a sizable build-out of large nuclear reactors that can supply the bulk of our future energy needs. He documents his arguments carefully with specific facts and forceful logic. And he confirms what I have long suspected: As attractive as the so called "green" renewable energy sources such as wind and solar may be, there are major limitations on the ability of these alternatives to replace fossil fuels. Tucker makes a convincing case the the risks that have made nuclear power abhorrent to most Americans have been exaggerated and that technology and management practices in the production of nuclear energy have improved dramatically since the Three Mile Island meltdown. Case in point: France obtains 80% of its energy from nuclear reactors, has yet to experience a melt down or even a significant release of radiation, and through recycling technology has reduced its annual nuclear waste volume to a storage facility no larger than four telephone booths! My conclusion after reading Terrestrial energy: The only way we are going to change the greenhouse gas problem and climate change is to use nuclear energy as the basic transformative tool.