We’ve Been Wrong About Nuclear Power

Zion Lights is a former spokesperson for the radical environmental group Extinction Rebellion, whose members are known for causing mass transportation stoppages and gluing themselves to planes to call attention to what they say is a “climate and ecological emergency.” She has gone from protesting nuclear power plants to aggressively campaigning for their expansion as a way of helping the global poor raise their living standards.

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Raised in Great Britain by working-class immigrants from rural Punjab, her new book is Energy Is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear. She talks with Nick Gillespie about how she came to reject the ubiquitous arguments against nuclear energy she encountered as a child, how guilt-ridden countries such as Germany are increasing pollution by shutting down nuclear power, and why oil-rich Gulf States are betting on renewable and clean energy sources.

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0:00—The significance of a saucepan

5:15—Thesis of Energy is Life

9:07—Prosperity and guilt

17:38—Extinction Rebellion

21:36—Hostility toward nuclear energy

27:35—The safety of nuclear energy

31:10—France and Germany

36:56—Zion’s revelation on nuclear energy

43:57—The nuclear energy industry

50:50—China and the United Arab Emirates

53:16—Energy policy

56:42—Taking technology for granted