Social Considerations for the Energy Transition

“How did you go bankrupt?” one character asks another in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. “Two ways,” the other famously responds. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Energy technologies may be undergoing a similar transition, as decades of research and investment in nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and hydrogen begin to yield breakthroughs.

According to the authors of a special series in the Summer 2024 Issues in Science and Technology, this is the ideal moment to engage the public on what Florian Metzler and Jonah Messinger call “the complex trade-offs, risks, and upsides of emerging approaches to nuclear energy.” Michael Ford argues that public support for fusion energy can be gained through “thoughtful mixtures of public and private funding” that facilitate “broad understanding of the technology, regulatory strategies, and workforce development.”

The history of biotechnology, write Andrew Lo and Dennis Whyte , offers lessons for fusion on how to generate public trust through two-way engagement. Aditi Verma , Katie Snyder , and Shanna Daly are building such engagement into their curriculum, training nuclear engineers to work hand in hand with communities from the start. Finally, Valerie Karplus and M. Granger Morgan highlight the US government’s hydrogen hubs program, which “has created a window of opportunity for the nation to test-drive hydrogen on a regional scale, giving communities and workers a chance to participate in developing the technology.”

To read?this special collection—along with essays and artwork about artificial intelligence, research impact, industrial terroir, and much more—subscribe to the print edition of Issues today.

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