
Lecture 18: Do We Need Nuclear Power to Fix Climate Change? A Review of the Course's Findings
R. Scott Kemp closes out MIT's 22.04 Social Problems of Nuclear Energy by pulling together the semester's findings on externalities, the hidden costs of accidents, waste, land use, and carbon emissions attached to different ways of generating electricity. He walks through how the course computed those externality values for nuclear, coal, gas, and renewables, then lines the numbers up side by side to ask which technologies actually move the needle on climate change. The lecture functions as both summary and argument, revisiting case studies covered earlier in the course and using them to weigh nuclear power's risks against its low-carbon output compared to alternatives. Kemp keeps the tone analytical rather than advocacy-driven, treating the comparison as an engineering and policy accounting exercise. Runtime is 83 minutes, consistent with a full capstone lecture rather than a highlight reel.