this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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The people leading the charge against nuclear aren't unknowingly helping the fossil fuel industry, they are funded by the fossil fuel industry. Have been since the late sixties / early seventies when oil and gas companies realized that they could very easily commandeer the anti-nuclear-weapon and environmentalist bandwagon. Since then they've leveraged fear, of nuclear weapons, radiation and unreliable Soviet reactors, to keep fossil fuels pumping in money.
Currently I think fission energy is the best we have. It's relatively low pollution, relatively low whole cycle footprint, energy dense, efficient, reliable, and so on. Renewables complement and enhance but cannot replace some form of always on baseload power.
You can also look at the history of civilization based on how energy dense their primary fuel was. Coal and oil unlocked industrial potential for having many times more energy than wood. The nuclear age brought on intriguing thoughts like electricity "too cheap to meter." Throwing away that very well earned technical expertise in favour of filthy coal and inefficient renewables is completely silly. Until we find/unlock the next fuel source with a higher energy density, it's the best we've got. We should be leveraging it to improve people's quality of life as we have with every energy related breakthrough in human history.
We don’t need high energy density. It’s anomalous and the cause for climate change that we are using the vast stores of fossil energy now. They are the product of millennia and not sustainable. We will run out of nuclear the same way eventually. To live in harmony with our biosphere we need a reduction in overall energy consumption even with renewables. Please read Half Earth Socialism because they can articulate the argument better than me.
We will not "run out of nuclear eventually". In the 80 years that we have nuclear fuel, we have used only enough to fill the pitch of a regular football pitch with 62 gallon barrels. The vast majority of that is from nuclear weapons as well. Further, nuclear fuel is in its infancy, and we have already begun finding ways to recycle the fuel we have been using. That's on top of uranium mining bieng essentially a rounding error compared to all fossil fuels, and already providing a sizeable portion of the world power creation.
We also absolutely need to use higher energy dense materials, because then we can use less of them. Humanity is not going to magically lower its energy usage, and the human population will keep increasing and becoming more developed. So if you do not like the impacts of uranium (however small they may be) why would you be against Fission? You would use even less materials to acquire more energy.
We would run out if we were to transition the world to mainly or solely nuclear as some of those who don’t like renewables advocate. I’ll have to post the section from HES for you to read (and critique if there is need) later. For now, I’m curious what you think about this: https://m.soundcloud.com/empire-files/atomicdays
There have been many studies about how long nuclear would last, and the end answer is, no one knows. There have been results that say 80 years, 200 years, 500 years, and even 200,000 years.
Further, this does not take into account nuclear advancements in recycling or even fission itself.
Also who says you can’t mix nuclear and renewables? It’s just that renewables by themselves is itself extremely unsustainable. How long will the materials that make solar panels last? We need mixes.
I agree, we don’t know how technology will advance and it can help us shift from fossil fuels. It’s true that some people think it’s a silver bullet though, and it’s important to rebuke them.
Why? I mean of course those who are educated on the issue recognize nuclear as a medium term transition solution. But why would we need to dissuade the average layperson from thinking that nuclear is the solution here and now? Surely the more people think that nuclear is the answer the sooner we can get away from fossil fuels. Once we have made that step then we can worry about the next step and explaining that nuclear fission is not an ideal forever solution either. But it is bad propaganda practice to complicate our messaging with unnecessary nuance and caveats. That just causes confusion and uncertainty among the general public which is then exploited by the fossil fuel lobby to halt any transition away from fossil fuel.
You underestimate the wrongness of some nuclear advocates. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/14/the-real-reason-they-hate-nuclear-is-because-it-means-we-dont-need-renewables/?sh=e936c6a128f7
Yeah, ok, that's a very silly take by a very silly person. Of course we should keep developing renewables in parallel. It's become a conservative kneejerk impulse to be against renewables because they perceive liberals as being pro renewables, in many cases it's just dumb contrarianism. But even that contrarian impulse can be redirected in a positive direction if it means more people become pro-nuclear as a pushback against parties like the Greens in Germany who are generally extremely disliked and fanatically anti-nuclear. The response to bad takes like the one you linked is not to start pointing out the downsides of nuclear power but instead to convince people that we can and should do both nuclear and renewables, that this is not an either-or proposition.
I appreciate your response and reading recommendation. Half Earth Socialism is now on my reading list.
Here’s the half earth socialism chapter on nuclear:
spoiler
I apologize for the great difficulty which posting this is taking me. I don’t know if it’s possible to post the rest.
TLDR: prominent nuclear advocates call for a huge rollout of new nuclear power plants. This will not go well because it vastly increases the possibility of nuclear accidents and dangerous substances like Strontium 90 in our bodies. The damage caused by past nuclear accidents is greatly underestimated. Fast breeders and fusion don’t seem possible in the foreseeable future. The environmental movement has been it’s strongest while anti-nuclear so we shouldn’t throw that away.
My personal criticisms would be that I’m more optimistic about future nuclear technology, the Fukushima disaster was mostly poorly handled because of capitalism (though I’m not sure if the same can be said for Chernobyl), and the environmental movement can run on socialism and doesn’t have to focus on nuclear (though we don’t have to put pro-nuclear at the front of our advocacy). Otherwise the argument seems to hold up.
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