11–20 of 277 posts
1. a tax on the carbon content of fuels
2. nuclear plants for base load power
and the rest will be taken care of by natural market forces.
Green energy will never be practical without nuclear power:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-energy-transition-will-...
I worked in commercial nuclear power for a while, including a stint at three mile island. The regulatory compliance burden alone, from the NRC and DOE, is crippling financially.
https://i.redd.it/djub5auudfj91.png
I really hope pre-approved, pre-built modular reactors lower costs, delays, and regulatory overhead.
I'm also hopefully that molten salt reactors, once viable, are different enough to not be hampered by the full breath of traditional reactor regulations.
> The postwar American environmental movement began as an outgrowth from the eugenaics movement.
and
> Having fallen out of favor during World War II due to its associations with Nazism, eugenics returned with gusto under the banner of “population control” after the war.
The pro-nuclear lobby has no argument against Chernobyl, which has created an absolute exclusion zone of (literally) 1,000 square miles nearly 40 years later with no end in sight, other than to simply ignore it as an outlier that isn't relevant because the USSR doesn't exist anymore.
Likewise, Fukushima, which along with Chernobyl is the only other level seven nuclear incident, is simply written off:
> No one was harmed by nor did anyone receive lethal doses of radiation.
All the same arguments against nuclear power still apply: nuclear waste from fuel processing, nuclear waste from fuel, transporting of fuel and waste, trusting people in corporations and governments to adequately build and maintain such plants and the very fact that not a single nuclear power plant in the world hasn't been built without significant government help (which is why the pro-nuclear lobby will focus on operational costs rather than capital or total costs).
> France’s nuclear buildout, beginning in the 1970s, achieved the greatest decarbonization in human history; ... In North America, the mantle belongs to Ontario, whose nuclear plants replaced its coal fleet.1 I am dubious of this claim, but it probably depends on exactly how you define it. But switching from a country to a province immediately sends up red flags.
Who Killed Nuclear Energy? The absurd cost to build this technology and the emergence of much more cost-effective and emission-free alternatives. It's as simple as that. It wasn't the tree-huggers or a big conspiracy.
In terms of global warming I’m still conflicted myself. It’s a complex topic. Going nuclear probably would be a pragmatic last minute band-aid if it had been applied 20 years ago. Now I’m not so sure anymore. Future plants will also likely meet more wars and other shocks to the system. You only have to read about current fears surrounding Zaporizhzhia.
Green energy and changing consumption patterns might be the safest solution at this point.
Who Killed Nuclear Energy? The absurd cost to build this technology and the emergence of much more cost-effective and emission-free alternatives. It's as simple as that. It wasn't the tree-huggers or a big conspiracy.
I'm familiar with the argument that nuclear power is the answer to greenhouse gas emissions. Still, this article is the next level of pro-nuclear propaganda as it launches into quite the anti-environmentalist screed. For example: > The postwar American environmental movement began as an outgrowth from the eugenaics movement. and > Having fallen out of favor during World War II due to its associations with Nazism, eug…
We could have a chernobyl every year for the next hundred years, and you would cause less environment damage, and human deaths than we did by operating fossil fuel plants in 2021.
There is no argument against chernobyl because chernobil is quite frankly irrelevant beyond an economic cost to cleanup and contain, both of which can be accounted for, and arguably are already accounted for to a far greater extent than the normal operation of fossil fuel plants.
> France’s nuclear buildout, beginning in the 1970s, achieved the greatest decarbonization in human history; ... In North America, the mantle belongs to Ontario, whose nuclear plants replaced its coal fleet.1 I am dubious of this claim, but it probably depends on exactly how you define it. But switching from a country to a province immediately sends up red flags.
I thought it was hydro in Quebec, or perhaps Norway.
Who Killed Nuclear Energy? The absurd cost to build this technology and the emergence of much more cost-effective and emission-free alternatives. It's as simple as that. It wasn't the tree-huggers or a big conspiracy.
This technology definitely isn't flawless.
