Interview: Jane Goodall

  • Renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. (Photo courtesy of The Jane Goodall Institute)

It’s been 50 years since Jane Goodall first began her research of the behaviors of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in Tanzania. These days, Goodall spends most of her time traveling, meeting with young people to encourage them to think about how their actions affect the people, animals and the environment of this planet. We caught up with her in Chicago this past weekend. She says people see the problems of the world as just too big to tackle.

Transcript

Jane Goodall: You know people are always asking me ‘what can I do?’, and I think one of the main problems is that people just feel so helpless when they look at what’s happening. And so I always say to people, if we could just spend a few minutes each day thinking about the consequences of the that choices we make… they can be small choices like What do we buy? What do we eat? What do we wear? And we ask questions like where did it come from? How was it made? Did it damage the environment? Did it involve child labor in some distant place? Did it involve cruelty to animals? If we start thinking in those terms, we do start making behavior changes, and they may seem small, but multiplied by a couple of billion, you start to see the major kind of change that we desperately need if we’re going to see a planet that’s reasonably hospitable to our great-grandchildren.

Graham: You’ve been working with young people, tell me a little bit about your project ‘Root’s and Shoots’…what’s the goal there?

Goodall: Roots and Shoots began with twelve high school students in 1991, and it’s now in 120 countries and growing, and we’ve got about 15,000 active groups. The main message: every single one of us makes a difference every single day. and every group is choosing three different kinds of projects to make the world a better place for people, for animals, for the environment. And now we span all ages from pre-school and kindergarten right the way through college and university, and actually more and more adults are forming groups because they, too, want to help to make this a better world.

Graham: I know you have a home in London, but I also assume that Tanzania is much your home. How often do you get to go back there?

Goodall: I get to Gombe itself in Tanzania, where the Chimpanzees are, twice a year, but only briefly. Just time to immerse myself in the forest and sort of get a recharge of my spiritual batteries, so to speak.

Graham: I’m wondering if any of the chimpanzee community still recognizes you when you visit Gombe?

Goodall:The older ones do, the offspring of those whom I knew so, so well in the early days.

Graham: And they recognize you when you go back?

Goodall: Yes, absolutely, they certainly do, I’m appearing twice a year.

Graham: How does that make you feel?

Goodall: Well I have that emotional feeling with Fifi, and to some extent with Goblin, Frodo is just such a horrible, and objectionable bully that I can’t really feel anything but a slight dislike for Frodo. His older brother Freud, I always enjoy meeting him out in the forest, and it takes me back a bit to those early days when I lived among them, more or less, and you know, that was the time when I had these close relationships, and it was just such a very special time in my life.

Graham: Thank you very much, I’m sure you are aware of how much people appreciate the work you’ve done, and what you’ve done to raise awareness among us in the West and around the world about the plight of great apes and chimpanzees. I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

Goodall: thanks very much, Lester, and it was nice talking to you.

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The Skinny on High Fructose Corn Syrup

  • A Princeton University research team lead by psychology professor Bart Hoebel (pictured) demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar. (Photo courtesy of Princeton University, Denise Applewhite)

We know eating too much sweet stuff puts on the pounds. A new study suggests the kind of sweet stuff matters too. Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

We know eating too much sweet stuff puts on the pounds.

Shawn Allee reports a new study suggests the kind of sweet stuff matters, too.

Food companies mostly sweeten things with table sugar, called sucrose, or they use high fructose corn syrup.
Dr. Bart Hoebel is at Princeton University.

A while back, his team fed rats regular food and let them drink watered-down sucrose to see if they’d put on fat.
They didn’t.

But, recently he let rats eat the same food, but drink a solution of high-fructose corn syrup.

“The ones with the high-fructose corn syrup became significantly fatter.

Corn sweetener companies dismiss the study since it involves rats, not people.”

Hoebel says rat studies point out where we should do human studies later.

“So we want to find out if the kind of sugar matters as the food producers are putting sugar in more and more things.”

More research on corn syrup is in the pipeline, including work on animals and people.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Parrots in Brooklyn

  • The parrots build nests around transformers for warmth. But the nests can catch fire and cause people to lose their electricity. (Photo by Steve Baldwin)

Think ‘city bird,’ and you probably
think ‘pigeon.’ But in some cities,
another kind of bird is thriving –
the bright green monk parrot. Some
people love them; some people hate
them. Samara Freemark
went to Brooklyn to find them:

Transcript

Think ‘city bird,’ and you probably
think ‘pigeon.’ But in some cities,
another kind of bird is thriving –
the bright green monk parrot. Some
people love them; some people hate
them. Samara Freemark
went to Brooklyn to find them:

No one really knows just how the parrots got to Brooklyn. But the best guess is they were shipped here from Argentina in the 1960s. They were supposed to go to pet stores. But somewhere along the way someone opened a shipping crate and the parrots escaped. Now there are thousands of the birds in colonies across Brooklyn.

“They’ve reinvented themselves as a north American species.”

That’s Steve Baldwin. He’s a tall, white haired native New Yorker and, I think it’s fair to say, a parrot fanatic.

“It has probably something to do with the peculiar person I am. I think I probably regarded myself as an outsider for most of my life. And so the idea you could have these creatures who really don’t belong here, somehow make the transition and now they belong here. I just found that a personally inspiring story.”

Steve started a website about the parrots. He leads monthly parrot tours. He even wrote a song about the parrots.

“I got some news for you baby and it might not be so good. There’s an avian invader in the neighborhood. Well, they’re little green parrots from the Argentine…”

I met up with Steve as he was starting one of his tours of the parrot colony at Brooklyn College.

“I’ve been following these little green guys for about 5 years. One of the things that endears it is that it’s very smart. In fact the monk parakeet is the second best talking parrot. Next to the African gray, the monk parrot is number two. Are there any particularly Brooklyn sounds that they… well, occasionally you’ll find one that’s imitating a car alarm.”

We head over to the college’s soccer field.

“Sometimes when we come out here we’re lucky and the parrots are down on the ground, eating the grass. But I don’t see them today. So we’re just going to keep moving. Uh! Here they come! There they go! We got a good group.”

There are probably 50 parrots living in the Brooklyn College colony. But it’s one of many colonies across New York. There are about 450 parrot nests in the city. That’s according to numbers from Con Edison, New York City’s energy provider.

Con Edison tracks the nests because for the company, the parrots are actually a pretty big headache. A couple of days after the tour I met up with Chris Olert. He’s Con Edison’s point man for dealing with all problems parrot-related.

“What happens is, these birds build nests around our transformers, because of the warmth. And these are not little hold in your hand nests. Some are three or 4 or 5 feet tall, and 3 or 4 or 5 ft wide. They’re huge. And they do catch on fire. And those fires have resulted in customers losing their electricity.”

Con Edison has been trying to figure out what to do about the parrots for years now. They tried knocking the nests down – but the parrots came back and rebuilt. Last year they even installed some mechanical owls with rotating heads to frighten the parrots away.

“The owl was – some of our people who work in the overhead in Queens spotted these owls in a hardware store and put them up on the equipment, but the parrots pretty much laughed in their faces.”

Nothing has really worked. Olert says Con Edison’s numbers show the New York parrot population growing by 10% every year.

At that rate, in a couple of decades they could be as ubiquitous – and as hated – as that other New York bird – the pigeon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Greening New Year’s Eve

  • The numerals for the New Year's Eve celebration on Times Square are brought in by pedi-cab. Just one of the many things that organizers say make this year's celebration more green. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Tonight, thousands of people will
gather in Times Square in New York
City to ring in the new year. But
with all those lights and all that
confetti dropping, some people
are concerned about all that waste.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
make the party in Times Square
a little greener this year:

Transcript

Tonight, thousands of people will
gather in Times Square in New York
City to ring in the new year. But
with all those lights and all that
confetti dropping, some people
are concerned about all that waste.
Julie Grant reports on efforts to
make the party in Times Square
a little greener this year:

(sound of pedicab)

When the seven-foot tall numerals 1 and 0 were delivered to Times Square earlier this month, they weren’t driven in on big gas guzzling trucks. They were pedaled in by human power – on pedicabs – which look more or less like a rickshaw.

That’s just one of the symbolic changes making new years greener.

The numerals themselves are saving energy.
There are more than 500 bulbs in the numbers. This year, the 40-watt halogen bulbs have been swapped out for 9-watt LED lights.

Susan Bloom is spokesperson for Phillips lighting – the company that made the switch. She says the numerals will shine even more brightly.

“Now they will deliver 80% greater energy efficiency, so, if you will, the times square ball numerals have gone greener than ever.”

Organiziers say the power for those lights is also greener – it’ll come from people pedaling stationary bikes in Times Square. Power from the bikes will be stored in batteries to light up the new year’s lights.

Oh, and about the ball.

In recent years, it’s been dropping its energy usage. Bloom says since 2007 they’ve doubled the number of lights, but since those are LEDs, the ball is still 80% more efficient.

Tim Tompkins is President of the Times Square Alliance. The Alliance is one of the event organizers. He says the time is right for the iconic celebration to go green.

“Times Square is always this place that’s kind of this mood ring for America that reflects whatever is going on. And certainly, in recent years, the country and world is getting greener and so it makes sense and is consistent with history that Times Square is going green in the way that the country is going green.”

There are a lots of other big entertainment events trying to reduce their environmental footprints.

Allen Hershkowitz is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He’s been helping to green the Grammy’s, the Academy Awards, Major League Baseball’s World Series, and lots of other big events.

“When we talk about greening an event, like the Times Square event, New Year’s Eve in New York City, or the Oscars or the Grammy’s, we go category by category. Every category of operations, every purchase made, engenders an environmental impact.”

Hershkowitz looks for ways to reduce those impacts at each event – everything from finding fuel efficient transportation to get there, to buying paper products for the event made from recycled materials, to serving locally grown food. They’ve even started using recycled plastic to make red carpets.

But sometimes these efforts draw criticism. When the Democratic National Convention tried to go green in 2008,
press photos afterwards showed piles of trash outside the convention hall. People wondered if the recycling and other efforts really made any difference.

Hershkowitz says big events, such as the DNC or New Year’s at Times Square can make some environmental improvements. But their real impact is in the ideals they represent.

“Frankly, I think the biggest thing that Times Square can do on New Year’s Eve is what they’re doing – publicizing environmentalism. Saying, ‘hey, that ball is made with energy efficiency lighting’ to the 1-point whatever billion people that are watching that show.”

Hershkowitz hopes people look at that symbol and make changes in their own lives in 2010.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

New Water Plan for California

  • Two-thirds of California’s rain and snow falls in the north, but two-thirds of its population lives in the south. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

One of the most drought-ridden
states says it’s finally found
a solution to its water problems.
Amy Standen reports:

Transcript

One of the most drought-ridden
states says it’s finally found
a solution to its water problems.
Amy Standen reports:

Two thirds of California’s rain and snow falls in the north. Two thirds of its population lives in the south. So who should get the water?

It took weeks of intense deal making and years of debate in the state capitol to find an answer. But the new law is not without its critics.

Peter Gleick is a water expert at the Pacific Institute. He says the measure fails to force users – especially farmers– to account for what they use.

” We will never ultimately, sustainably manage our water resources if we don’t know who is using how much water to do what. And we don’t, with any degree of accuracy. And that’s still not addressed in this bill.”

The deal calls for greater efficiency, especially in cities.

But nothing happens until voters agree to chip in for the plan, with an 11 billion dollar bond measure to pay for a new distribution system.

For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.

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Predicting the Next Outbreak

  • The program is supposed to identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Transcript

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Organizers hope the program will help prevent the spread of diseases like avian flu, ebola, and swine flu. PREDICT researchers will work in disease ‘hotspots’ overseas.

Program director Stephen Morse is an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. He says the program will identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.

“We don’t even know how may emerging viruses, let alone other infectious organisms there are out there in nature, but the number must be large.”

The PREDICT program will also create better global disease warning systems.

“This is really essential to our survival as well as something very important to understand if we want to be able to control infections in the future.”

Morse hopes the program will help governments stop local outbreaks before they become global pandemics.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Sparring Over Water in the South

  • A federal judge ruled that if Florida, Georgia and Alabama don’t come to a water agreement by 2012, Atlanta has to stop taking drinking water from Lake Lanier. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

It’s called “the economic engine of
the South.” Atlanta, Georgia’s population
has exploded in the last two decades.
But with that growth has come environmental
problems, like where to get enough drinking
water. Georgia, Florida, and Alabama
have been fighting over who gets how
much water from rivers that flow through
the states. And, as Tanya Ott reports, a
decision in the federal lawsuit could effect
communities across the country:

Transcript

It’s called “the economic engine of
the South.” Atlanta, Georgia’s population
has exploded in the last two decades.
But with that growth has come environmental
problems, like where to get enough drinking
water. Georgia, Florida, and Alabama
have been fighting over who gets how
much water from rivers that flow through
the states. And, as Tanya Ott reports, a
decision in the federal lawsuit could effect
communities across the country:

Atlanta draws millions of gallons of drinking water each day from nearby Lake Lanier. But Alabama and Florida say it’s such a water hog, there might not be enough water sent on downstream to cool power plants or protect the seafood industry.

“I had no idea! (laughs) I didn’t really realize there was a problem.”

Atlanta-area resident Connie Brand says she knew the state was in a drought last year. She knew she was supposed to conserve water, and she did.

“Not taking such a long shower; not doing small loads of laundry.”

But only recently did she realize how big a problem this could be.

In July, federal Judge Paul Magnuson ruled that under the law Lake Lanier was intended only for things like navigation and flood control – not drinking water. He said if Florida, Georgia and Alabama don’t come to a water agreement by 2012, Atlanta has to stop taking drinking water from Lake Lanier.

“The action of a court could create a public health emergency that would probably rival the effects of Katrina.”

That’s Charles Krautler. He’s director of the Atlanta Regional Commission. He says in the past 25 years Atlanta’s population has more than doubled to 4 million residents and there’s no way to get water to people without Lake Lanier.

“How do you decide who doesn’t have water and who does? Our chairman likes to say, ‘FEMA doesn’t have enough trucks to bring in enough bottled water to deal with the shortfall that would exist.’”

It’s not just an issue for Atlanta. There are more than two dozen similar reservoirs around the country. They were built for navigation, flood control or hydropower. But communities are using them for drinking water. Congress might have to step in to basically retro-actively approve the drinking water use. Cindy Lowery is executive director of the Alabama Rivers Alliance.

“If it goes to Congress, which the court case says that it might have to, it could get even more political and more chaotic really.”

Several members of Congress have said they won’t act until Florida, Georgia and Alabama come to a deal. But Lowery says, so far, the negotiations have been dominated by government agencies and special interests like power companies. She wants a panel of neutral advisors and scientists to study the issue.

In the meantime, Atlanta residents like Connie Brand are left wondering what will happen.

“I’m from a family when they grew up they relied on cistern water, and when it rained you had water, and when it didn’t rain, you didn’t have water. So I’m familiar with having to ration and be careful about those kinds of things. But I don’t think my child or people of my generation, their children, have any concept of conservation of water or anything like that.”

Brand says she just might have to step up her own conservation efforts.

“What was it we had in college? If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down? (laughs) that’ll be our new motto! (laughs)”

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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A Look Into Coal Country

  • The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And that takes coal. (Photo courtesy of Coal Country)

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Transcript

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller set out to make the movie Coal Country
because they wanted to show how different people are affected by coal
mining.

They found lots of activists, and regular citizens, who would talk with
them. Plenty of people were willing to show the thick black water in their
toilet tanks. They wanted to show the black soot covering their cars.
They wanted to talk about the health problems they live with. And they all
blamed the coal industry.

Evans also wrote to coal supporters – to get their side of the story on
camera. The answer?

“No. That was their response. I sent out requests to the coal industry,
to coal companies and to suppliers of the coal industry.”

Evans brother is a coal miner. He supports mountain top removal.

(sound of explosions)

As we see in the movie, that’s when coal companies blow off the entire
top of a mountain to get to the coal. Many people consider it the most
polluting and environmentally devastating type of mining.

But Evans says not even her own brother would do an interview about it.

“And when I said, ‘why won’t you talk on camera? You feel so
passionately that coal is wonderful and mountaintop removal is actually for
the environment as well as the economy.’ And his response to me always
was, ‘oh I would never speak on camera without getting permission from
the company I work for.’”

The filmmakers heard that a lot. And no coal miners ever did get
permission to talk on camera.

In the movie, we do hear from Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy. He
spoke at a public hearing about the need to ease environmental restrictions
on coal mining.

“We had nearly 800 employees up ‘til Friday. We had to lay 8 off. I
think that might be just the tip of the iceberg if we don’t our rules
changed how we mine in the state.”

Anti-coal activists at the public hearing explain how the coal companies
use that kind of intimidation to control miners.

“I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping
burgers. You look out and that’s all you see. You see mining and
flipping burgers. And, I argue, that the coal companies want it that way.
They want that to be the only option. That’s the only way they could get
support for how they treat their workers and how they treat this land.
This would never happen in a place that wasn’t poor. Never.”

In the movie, some coal miners stand up at the public meeting to defend the
companies they work for. One explains the coal industry has provided him a
good salary.

Miner One: “For the last 14 years, the coal industry has supported myself
and my wife and my 3 children.”

Miner Two: “When the last one of you so-called environmentalists leave
the state, when the rest of us leave for North Carolina, turn out the
lights. Oh, wait a minute, there won’t be no lights. No coal, no
lights.”

(music)

The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a
light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And
that takes coal.

And, as anti-coal activist Judy Bonds says in the movie, coal is tearing
apart West Virginia.

“It is a civil war; it’s families against families. It’s brother
against brother.”

Or – in the case of filmmaker Mari Lynn-Evans – brother against
sister.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Mice Morphing at Warp Speed

  • Oliver Pergams used a tiny caliper to measure the mice, tracking changes in size over the years. (Photo by Gabriel Spitzer)

Evolution takes place over long stretches of time: millennia and epochs. But some new research shows that animals might be changing much
faster than nearly anyone thought. Gabriel Spitzer has more on those
changes, and how they seem to be linked to humans:

Transcript

Evolution takes place over long stretches of time: millennia and epochs. But some new research shows that animals might be changing much
faster than nearly anyone thought. Gabriel Spitzer has more on those
changes, and how they seem to be linked to humans:

Tall Trees Park is a little patch of green in Glenview, Illinois – a
northern suburb of Chicago. About a hundred years ago, a lot of this area
looked a lot like this. It was mostly farms and pasture and forest. And now
of course it’s a lot of strip malls and subdivisions and stuff. And the
population has grown seventyfold. The climate has changed, too. It’s
gotten a little warmer, a little wetter.

And all this has made life a lot different for the northern white-footed
mice who live here. It’s actually not just made life different for the
mice, it’s changed the mice themselves.

That gets back to a guy named Oliver Pergams. He’s an ecologist, and in
the mid-90s, he was looking at deer mice who live on the Channel Islands
off the coast of California. And he was taking these mice and comparing
them to museum samples of the same kind of mice from the same place, but
decades earlier.

“And I found something kind of strange – that the older specimens were
larger than the newer specimens, so they shrunk in size over a period of
about 30 or 40 years.”

That got him wondering if those relatively quick changes are happening in
other places. So years later, now on the faculty at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, he gathered up some of those White Footed Mice from
the Chicago suburbs. And he went to the Field Museum of Natural History…

(sound of a cabinet opening)
… where they have a hundred years of dead mouse specimens stored in
white metal cabinets.

“Here we have trays and trays of the northern white-footed mouse.”

With a tiny caliper, he’d measure their skulls, their feet, the distance
from their eyes to their noses.

“So this one here was collected by Aikley in 1903.”

And he compared mice from before and after 1950.

“Here are some skulls, this one was collected in 1989.”

Lo and behold, these mice had grown: by more than 10% on some measures.

This phenomenon goes way beyond Chicago. Pergams measured more than 1,300
rodents from four different continents – Alaskan lemmings, Mexican
gophers, Filipino rats. Some of them got bigger, some smaller. But across
the world, most of the animals have changed over time spans thought to be
mere evolutionary eyeblinks.

The next step is to figure out why.

“You can’t get in a time machine and go back and look to see what
actually happened. So the next best thing is to see if there’s
associations or correlations with big factors.”

He found the variations correlate with changes in climate and human
population density. The exact reasons aren’t clear – more people might
mean more yummy trash for the mice to eat, for example. That’s going to
take more research to figure out, and these critters might be overdue for
some extra attention.

“One of the questions is, well, why didn’t anybody notice this before?
And I think the answer is, they haven’t looked.”

Larry Heaney curates the Field Museum’s mammal collection. He says
Pergams’s research opens up new questions about how animals respond to
changes driven by humans.

“The implication is, these animals are changing very, very rapidly. So in
a sense, it’s good: they can change. But the other side of the coin is,
they’re having to change.”

Now, the question is, is this happening in other species, too? What about
birds or bugs or plants?

“There’s been this default attitude that if you go to one place and you
capture or you observe animals or plants, that essentially there’s going
to be the same animals or plants 50 years or 100 years later. I don’t
think that’s possible to assume at all. We have to include the fact of
this change in all of our decisions, from ecology to evolutionary biology
to conservation.”

Pergams’s findings show that even the most common creatures have more to
teach us – when we ask the right kinds of questions.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

Related Links

Nuclear Careers to Heat Up?

  • Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Some Senate Republicans want the climate
change bill to focus on building new nuclear
power plants. They’re calling for as many as
100 new plants in 20 years. But the industry
has been in decline for so many years now,
there’s concern there might not be enough
nuclear engineers to do the job. Julie Grant
reports:

There’s a lot of new interest in nuclear energy and technology these days. But there’s a problem.

The American Nuclear Society estimates they need 700 new nuclear engineers per year to keep up with growing the demand. It’s enough to give long-time nuclear supporters whip-lash. Until recently, things looked gloomy for the nuclear industry.

William Martin is chair of the nuclear engineering department at the University of Michigan. Ten years ago, he says no new plants were being designed or built. And he was having a tough time finding students.

“A student entering the field, what you could tell them was, ‘well, there’s a big focus on waste.’ That’s not hardly something that excites young students to enter the field.”

Martin remembers standing on the stage at graduation in the mid 1990s to call the names of his graduates. Other engineering departments had so many students, it took an hour to call them all. But Martin only had a few names to call.

“Our students trip across in about ten seconds.”

Lots of nuclear engineering programs didn’t make it through the down times. There are less than half the university programs today than there were 30 years ago.

Nuclear got a bad name starting in 1979 – with the meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. That was followed by the deadly nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine in the ‘80s.
By the early 1990s, President Clinton announced he would eliminate funding for nuclear power research and development.

Until recently, there hasn’t been an order for a new nuclear plant in 30 years.

Vaughn Gilbert is spokesman for Westinghouse Electric Company, which focuses on nuclear energy.


He says Westinghouse laid off a lot its engineers in the down years. A decade ago, those who were left were heading toward retirement. So, Gilbert says, the company started working with universities to train engineering students to run its aging nuclear plants.

“Simply because we knew we would need to attract new people to maintain the existing fleet and then also to work with our customers to decommission the plants as they came offline.”

Westinghouse and other nuclear companies started giving lots of money to maintain university programs.

And then, everyone started worrying about climate change – and looking for ways to make energy that wouldn’t create more greenhouse gases. Nuclear power has started making a comeback.

Gilbert says new plants are in the works again – and Westinghouse needs engineers. The company’s designs will be used in six new U.S. plants.

The timing is pretty good for 25 year old Nick Touran. He’s a PhD student in nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan. He knows there’s a negative stigma to nuclear power – because he’s asked people about it.

“I just say, ‘so what do you think about nuclear power?’ Just to passersby on the street. And one person said, ‘I only think one thing – no, no, no, no, no.’”

But Touran says the negative stuff mostly comes from older people. When Three Mile Island melted-down, Touran wasn’t even born yet. He says most people his age are much more accepting of nuclear power.

“It’s the people who remember Three Mile Island and remember Chernobyl and remember World War II, who have all these very negative associations with nuclear weapons and Soviet reactors that were built incredibly wrong. And stuff like that.”

Touran says much of his generation just sees a power source that doesn’t create greenhouse gases.

Of course, there are greenhouse gases created in the process of manufacturing nuclear fuel rods. And then there’s that pesky problem of that spent nuclear waste. There’s still no permanent place to dump it.

Touran says he started studying nuclear power because he was amazed by it. But as the number of students in his department grows, he says more are choosing nuclear because it’s a smart career choice.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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