Ultra Safe Nuclear

Dr. Chris Morrison from USNC's space division presented to the Seattle Friends of Fission at Ada's

https://youtu.be/39LGrJkDmho

I mean, your car probably has a lead acid battery in it. Like uranium, lead is a toxic heavy metal, and it needs to be kept safe; it'll be as toxic in ten thousand years as it is now, and you should definitely avoid getting it in your drinking water (cf, Flint MI). Since your car has parts in it that need to be kept safe, in some form, forever, why is the cost of the car at the dealership not infinite? :)

Many, many industrial processes generate waste, sometimes horrible waste. Much of the waste needs to be stored in various ways, often indefinitely. Nuclear reactors aren't unique; it's more than a decent chunk of the population has noticed nuclear reactors, but is still oblivious to all the other costs of modern industrial lifestyles.

The good news about nuclear waste (and your car battery, come to that), is that dealing with it is actually fairly cheap. Would that we could say the same about the byproducts of burning fossil fuels!

>most of the opposition to nuclear power even before widespread renewable deployment was political, not economic.

Most of the opposition to nuclear power was about a whole lot of things other than politics or economics. Decades of quantifiable failure after failure in the environmental, construction quality, maintenance, radioactive discharge, siting-safety, and waste-handling realms, to name just a few. Everywhere the problems were the same, whether they were covered-up or not. The problems were those of an arrogant energy industry primarily concerned with minimizing expenses. The facts weren't political ... although the many, many cover-ups certainly were.

To overlook all that history and suggest that nuclear is just a political football is absurd. Had it been a quantifiable success, little of the resistance would have evolved. And Karen Silkwood might not have died. There was a lot of money and power at stake, and little tolerance for realistic concerns. The industry earned the disrespect it continues to enjoy.

Remember the widespread promise "Too cheap to meter"? In what year was that promise kept?

I want to add to this because I think it is also something the gp is missing. Decarbonizing the country/world is about much more than cars and electricity. Currently it is only 60% of the problem[0]. That, and we have NO zero carbon power source, if you include lifetime emissions. None. Zip. Nada. So part of the answer is to get some of the other 40% to be included in electricity. That's things like electric stoves, lab grown meat, or electric heaters (also includes electric cars/vehicles).

So there is no way to even get to zero emissions (unless you use extraction methods like CCS). Then you have to consider that the US is 15% of emissions and the EU is 9% and where global emissions aren't heavily dependent upon electricity and transportation like they are in the modernized countries[1].

Truth is that most people are only looking at a small portion of the problem. So when someone naively says that we need to decrease energy usage to power the world with renewables it is naive because power is a small part of the global problem. Unfortunately, we're all in this together. Sadly, you ask an undeveloped country what they want: Hospitals, new homes, and electricity or a clean environment, well... we've done that experiment for a few hundred years with various populations. I think we have enough evidence to conclude an answer.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Far as I can tell that argument isn't a technical argument. It's more of a lawyer type argument where you toss out objections and hope one of them sticks.

One of my memories was my dad taking me to work after dinner. They were running a wind tunnel. They were scheduled to run it at 9pm but the power company didn't give them the go ahead till 11pm. Which meant they weren't done to 2am. The reason, thing draws close to 200 MW. They ran it at night because it's cheaper. Not because they particularly loved blowing their evening into the late morning.

Lot of industrial users are chasing price.

Friend of mine has solar panels and lives in Arizona. She and her husband run the air conditioner full tilt in the afternoon off the panels and then turn it off when the sun goes down.

Much as I poop on the idea that free market pixie dust is the and only the solution to all of our problems. I would assume this is one it'll solve just fine. Seriously if running your air conditioner costs $1/hr in the afternoon and $5/hr after 8pm, you know what people will do.