Nuclear power and cross-disciplinarity

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Here’s an excerpt from the book Why Nuclear Power Has Been A Flop by Jack Devaney:

When we tried to make the argument for balanced limits to a group of Indonesian nuclear regulators, one member of the group had the honesty to stand up and say ‘I don't care what the problems with coal are. I'm a nuclear regulator. My job is to make nuclear as safe as possible.’ And under the instructions and incentives that he has been given, he's right. Unless these instructions and incentives are changed, horribly unbalanced regulation will continue to be the norm.


This crystalized an insight for me about the importance of thinking at a system level, and cross-disciplinarity.

  • If your job incentivizes you to focus on a certain domain (in this case, safety of nuclear energy), then you will focus on doing that thing. 

  • You will not focus on how, in the big picture, to achieve the theoretical goal of your work (in this case, safe and reliable electricity production). 

  • But your work and theoretical goal are closely connected to work in other domains (in this case, making it difficult to build nuclear plants makes it relatively easier to build coal plants, which kills people)

  • Unless someone is explicitly given the job of making trade-offs across domains, nobody will spend much time on it and we will not make the right trade-offs to achieve our goals (they also of course need the authority to ensure their evaluations enact change)

Here’s a running list of examples of where this sort of cross-domain thinking is missing. I’ll add more as I come across them. Let me know if you have additions!

  • Energy regulation: tradeoffs between nuclear, coal, solar, etc.

  • Pandemic response: Spending resources procuring vaccines vs. enforcing costly lockdowns

  • Carbon emissions (management consulting): In management consulting, tradeoffs between doing projects helping oil companies extract oil more efficiently, and spending money on carbon offsets

We can debate what the right tradeoff is on all these issues. But my point is that it doesn’t even seem like anyone in a position of power is responsible for thinking at a system level about how actions in one area affect the other.

Who is responsible and has the authority for making these trade-offs across different highly technical domains of knowledge and expertise? Who is John Galt?