Can you be an environmentalist without embracing nuclear energy?

Thirty-nine years after the meltdown at Three Mile Island and almost five years post-Fukushima, nuclear power seems to be emerging from its long funk as a promising alternative to the carbon economy. Innovative new designs are changing the landscape of nuclear power and have the potential to redefine affordable, emission-free, and carbon-free clean energy. So why, is it still a hotly contested issue?

The need for “urgent and concrete action” to cut greenhouse-gas emissions is fresh in our minds post-Paris and there will never be a better time to employ new and old sustainable solutions to the threat of climate change.

Will proliferation of nuclear energy be among the solutions the world seeks or will our long memory of the fallout from first and second generation reactors prevent us from embracing the promise of clean energy that new models provide? On Monday, February 22nd Future Tense held a conversation in Washington, D.C., to consider whether you can truly be an environmentalist without embracing nuclear energy.

Participants included Steve LeVine, Washington Correspondent, Quartz, Future Tense Fellow, New America, Adjunct Professor, Center for Security Studies, Georgetown University; Aaron VanDevender, Chief Scientist and Principal, Founders Fund; Jennifer Richter, Assistant Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University; Robert Hill, Technical Director, Nuclear Energy R&D, Argonne National Laboratory; and Joseph Romm, Founding Editor, ClimateProgress.org, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Author, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Future Tense is a partnership of Arizona State University, New America and Slate.