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Madam Secretary: Don’t Just Spout Pro-Nuclear Talking Points

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: One of my favorite TV shows, CBS’ Madam Secretary, used an entire episode about an energy summit they are attending to spout pro-nuclear talking points.

  • Ironically, the discussion starts because one character is arguing strongly that natural gas needs to be included in a “Future of Energy” pavilion and that nuclear has too big a space.
  • Meanwhile, solar and wind – the two sources that actually are the future of energy – are shunted off into an “annex.”
  • Seriously, my jaw dropped as I watched the episode. The show’s writers are usually so careful to portray the state of the world accurately – how could they get the energy state of play so spectacularly wrong?

    • Madam Secretary

    SolarWakeup’s View:  If you know anything about me, know this: I grew up wanting to be a member of the State Department. I wanted desperately to be a diplomat. I did Model United Nations for seven years in high school and college. I wanted to be a diplomat.

    Alas and alack, it wasn’t to be (so now you’re stuck reading me here at SolarWakeup). But it does explain why I love the CBS’ Madam Secretary so much – and why I’m so hurt and dismayed when I discovered the latest episode might as well have been written by nuclear energy lobbyists.

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    The plot isn’t so much about energy as it is about climate change, but one of the important subplots is an energy trade show the State Department will be attending to sell other countries on purchasing their renewable energy equipment from the United States. An initial look at the model pavilion is appalling enough – nuclear has by far the largest section of the display, and solar and wind are, I kid you not, shunted off into what they call an “annex.”

    An annex, for Pete’s sake. An annex for an industry that employs more people than the coal and oil industries combined.

    But that’s not even the worst of it. Then a character for whom I have the greatest respect argues that nuclear is clean, produces no more waste than the size of a football field and that nuclear power has never killed anyone when it’s melted down (see Three Mile Island and Davis Besse). These argument are repeated throughout the show without a hint of doubt about nuclear as an energy alternative.

    Here are just three arguments I would have made had I been in the room with the Secretary, and these are just off the top of my head:

  • It may be “clean,” but nuclear plants are incredibly expensive to build and maintain. By the time new plants are built, who knows what revolutionary breakthroughs we’ll have made in truly clean energies like solar and wind? Do we really want to invest in technologies that will be obsolete by the time the plants are built?
  • It may be a small amount of waste, but it’s RADIOACTIVE. Raise your hand if you want to live next to a nuclear energy waste disposal unit? Mind if we put one next to your tony Georgetown duplex, Madam Secretary? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Plus, if you’re building more plants, that means more waste. It won’t stay football-field sized for long.
  • “It hasn’t killed anyone yet” should never be an argument to invest in a potentially dangerous energy source. After all, there’s always a first time, isn’t there?

    • You know, what I’m realizing is that while it’s easy to dismiss these dangerous arguments as inside baseball that no one cares about, it’s also really easy for them to get into the mainstream, unevaluated and unchallenged. So when shows like Madam Secretary take on complex issues like this and get it wrong, it’s on us to push back.

    More:

    Madam Secretary (CBS)

    Madam Secretary (Wikipedia)