I changed my mind about nuclear waste

I don't know if I agree with the "organized civilian protestation" entirely. While NIMBY did play a role historically, this seems out-of-touch when I consider the mothballed & troubled builds which are currently in South Carolina.

I do believe regulators have their foot on the brakes, and there are some really telling stories from people in the actual industry. The level of paperwork and scrutiny are hard to fathom for people in other industries. But right now, in the US, that is more of a Federal political issue. The AP1000 lost crucial time due to added missile shield requirements. That doesn't scream local on-the-ground public resistance. You can pin some of this nearly directly to anti-nuclear views from (let's be honestly) Democratic senators (not from the south). Federal policy both encourages and discourages nuclear, but the domestic industry was too weak, and the regulatory policy took critical hits during a formative time.

I care very deeply about addressing carbon emissions. I want nuclear to work, but that's not an argumentative hill I should die on when solar has seen costs go bananas. Maybe another human generation will change things, but from lived experience, I would bet not.

As an engineer, I admit that either nuclear or solar COULD HAVE become the backbone of our energy system. But time is out for climate action. Solar is modular, proven, and roaring. Further deployment will create a new engineering problem of storage, but we don't have time to turn that into a delay tactic. There will be solutions to energy storage, just as there are solutions to nuclear waste. Neither are cheap, but either are a drop in the bucket compared to the climate damage we face.

There's a lot of misinformation about nuclear energy. I used to tell people that a quick way to get kicked out of the nuclear program in the U.S. Navy was to accidently forget to take off your thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) before boarding an airplane. The Navy uses TLDs to track radiation exposure of sailors and has a strict program in place for managing it. Turns out, hopping on an airplane is the quickest way to exceed your annual exposure limit.

It helped people understand the safety protocols we have in place and that it's not this big scary thing waiting to give you cancer at any moment. Of course, it _is_ dangerous when handled incorrectly, but it's not the doomsday thing the media tends to make it.

The financials don't live in a vacuum though. Nuclear is only so expensive because there is a lack of supply chain on reactors and absurd regulations.

The average nuclear reactor is over 40 years old(!) and well past due for replacement. So the cost is skewed by unrealistic maintenance demand on reactors that are 3 generations old because we can't politically replace them with anything other than a Natural Gas plant.

Meanwhile, renewables enjoy fast-tracking and subsidies. But keep in mind renewables currently only benefit places that are either windy or sunny. There are going to be diminishing returns as they fill up our power diet. We are still going to need power supplies that can keep New York powered in the winter. Or power that can be turned on/off to meet seasonal demand. So unless we want to keep natural gas and coal plants around indefinitely, we are going to need some amount of nuclear power in the mix.

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image

Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.

At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today anyway, because renewables have only become cost competitive relatively recently. Even without lobbying by the oil industry people had powerful incentives until now to stick with the technology that didn’t require them to put on a sweater or pay more for energy.

The anti-nuclear movement by contrast knee-capped the last best hope for climate change mitigation. A technology that could have been deployed—and catalyzed electrification and energy storage efforts—decades ago when we had more runway.

Or solar plus CAES. Or pumped hydro. Plus some loads can be shifted.