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Can we please start investing in nuclear power again. Pretty please? We've already lost 50 years due to anti-nuclear policies that effectively killed nuclear po

Can we please start investing in nuclear power again. Pretty please? We've already lost 50 years due to anti-nuclear policies that effectively killed nuclear power in every developed nation not named 'France'. Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those renewables. It's no surprise that natural gas companies now lobby for Wind and Solar deployments, and Germany signs multi-decade deals to import Russian gas as they increase their Solar and Wind footprint. So nuclear, apart from being capable of cutting our CO2 emissions to 0 for power generation, also requires two orders of magnitude less land-use than Solar and Wind deployments. This does nothing for CO2 emissions, but I'm sure wild-life will appreciate less encroachment. What will it take for environmentalists, and progressives (who push the anti-nuclear Green New Deal) to support nuclear power?

jedberg 7y ago
> What will it take for environmentalists, and progressives (who push the anti-nuclear Green New Deal) to support nuclear power? Better marketing. Back in the 90s, the GOP hired a PR firm, who came up with the idea of renaming the estate tax to the death tax. In doing so, they managed to get even hardcore liberals on board with "eliminating the death tax", even though those same people were very much for increasing the estate tax. Nuclear needs a similar PR boost. Call it something else and get the environmentalists and progressives on board. The new marketing would have to tout both the newer "meltdown free" reactors as well as put a new spin on the Yucca mountain storage facility.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Call it something else and get the environmentalists and progressives on board. You think so? Because I would think they would see through the attempt if tried. And it would simply lead to conspiracy theories of big-nuclear trying to put lipstick on a pig - in the same way that 'clean coal' branding didn't really get any environmentalists/progressives on board for coal power.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Well it would have to be a good PR firm. :) I go back to what I said about the estate tax/death tax thing. At the time, most people were for the estate tax, but once they came up with death tax, most people were against, including a lot of the most vocal proponents of the estate tax. It was literally the same tax with a name change, and most people were fooled. I think clean coal didn't take off because it was a straight up lie. With nuclear it's a bit different. There really is a new technology and it really is safer than the old stuff everyone is afraid of. It just needs better marketing.
    - macspoofing 7y ago
      >Well it would have to be a good PR firm. :) I'm skeptical. I think most would see through the attempt. Regardless, no one is attempting it anyway. I think nuclear power has been effectively killed. There are scant new nuclear projects on the horizon, with more shutting down then coming online. The industry is overregulated. FUD from environmentalist and progressives has traction. At best nuclear may get a passing reference in mainstream press when talking about solutions to global warming. I think we're toast. If we doubled down on nuclear in the 60s/70s/80s to the same extent that France did, we would have prevented trillions of tons of CO2 from being emitted, and maybe bought ourselves an extra century to figure out alternatives. As it stands, it's looking pretty bleak. The irony is that in hindsight conservative denialism of global warming will take a backseat to anti-nuclear policies when we get judged for our choices by our descendants. >I go back to what I said about the estate tax/death tax thing. I'd like to push back on that. I've heard that reasoning before and I don't think it's that simple. I don't believe it was PR that did it either, rather there was a cultural shift in the 80s and 90s that embraced privatization and free market policies (not just in US, but UK, Canada, and many other nations). This was a pendulum swing from the 60s and 70s when protectionism and over-regulation and high taxation was fashionable. Besides, there are good ideological reasons for conservatives to not support the estate tax, regardless of the label. Conservatives will tend to oppose taxes and push for tax cuts, but the estate tax provides extra incentive because it can be seen as double-dipping for the government.
      - 7y ago
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Since fission is triggered by neutrons we should call it “neutral energy”.
Diederich 7y ago
I've been worried about climate change, CO2 emissions and related material for quite a number of years now, and I've believed that we should have been pushing hard into nuclear power for a long time. However: > Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those renewables. Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? It has a ways to go, but its price continues to improve exponentially.
- folli 7y ago
  No we can't dismiss it lightly, because there won't be a sole solution to tackle CO2 increase, but we need to leverage and improve all existing technologies.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? We can because there is no battery storage technology today, nor is one upcoming, that would work on city scale (i.e. store enough energy to power a city and industry outside of ideal wind/solar times). For example, the Tesla-style deployments are only there to even out supply on the order of milliseconds and maybe seconds. That's still something, and does replace natural gas in those specific use-cases, but that's not what we need. Worse, we don't even know of a battery technology that would be able to store power across seasons or years, as Wind and Solar are very seasonally dependent and may vary in output by an order of magnitude between, say, Summer and Winter. Furthermore, for wind deployments, you usually need to sample multiple years to figure out if the site is good enough because wind output can vary across multiple-years. That's why wind/solar/natural gas is a package deal today and for the foreseeable future.
folli 7y ago
I don't understand why this is being downvoted, apart from non-scientific resentments. Nuclear power will be needed, together with renewables (hydro, wind, solar), to massively increase the chance to shift away from fossil energy.
maxxxxx 7y ago
I would like to see an honest accounting of the costs of nuclear power including decommissioning and waste storage. I am also skeptical that a world wide increase in nuclear power usage can be done in a safe way. Somebody somewhere will take shortcuts over time.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >I would like to see an honest accounting of the costs of nuclear power including decommissioning and waste storage. Does it matter? If the game is to cut CO2 emissions, and nothing else can cut CO2 emissions - we're out of options. Tell me honestly: is there anything that would convince you or are you just saying things? I ask because I do wonder what kind of answer you are looking for that we don't already know. It isn't like nuclear technology is brand new. There's a 5 decades of history behind it and it has been studied exhaustively. We know the risks, the costs, the capabilities, the safety record. Everything. What more do you need before you accept it?

jedberg 7y ago

> What will it take for environmentalists, and progressives (who push the anti-nuclear Green New Deal) to support nuclear power? Better marketing. Back in the 90s, the GOP hired a PR firm, who came up with the idea of renaming the estate tax to the death tax. In doing so, they managed to get even hardcore liberals on board with "eliminating the death tax", even though those same people were very much for increasing the estate tax. Nuclear needs a similar PR boost. Call it something else and get the environmentalists and progressives on board. The new marketing would have to tout both the newer "meltdown free" reactors as well as put a new spin on the Yucca mountain storage facility.

macspoofing 7y ago
>Call it something else and get the environmentalists and progressives on board. You think so? Because I would think they would see through the attempt if tried. And it would simply lead to conspiracy theories of big-nuclear trying to put lipstick on a pig - in the same way that 'clean coal' branding didn't really get any environmentalists/progressives on board for coal power.
- jedberg 7y ago
  Well it would have to be a good PR firm. :) I go back to what I said about the estate tax/death tax thing. At the time, most people were for the estate tax, but once they came up with death tax, most people were against, including a lot of the most vocal proponents of the estate tax. It was literally the same tax with a name change, and most people were fooled. I think clean coal didn't take off because it was a straight up lie. With nuclear it's a bit different. There really is a new technology and it really is safer than the old stuff everyone is afraid of. It just needs better marketing.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >Well it would have to be a good PR firm. :) I'm skeptical. I think most would see through the attempt. Regardless, no one is attempting it anyway. I think nuclear power has been effectively killed. There are scant new nuclear projects on the horizon, with more shutting down then coming online. The industry is overregulated. FUD from environmentalist and progressives has traction. At best nuclear may get a passing reference in mainstream press when talking about solutions to global warming. I think we're toast. If we doubled down on nuclear in the 60s/70s/80s to the same extent that France did, we would have prevented trillions of tons of CO2 from being emitted, and maybe bought ourselves an extra century to figure out alternatives. As it stands, it's looking pretty bleak. The irony is that in hindsight conservative denialism of global warming will take a backseat to anti-nuclear policies when we get judged for our choices by our descendants. >I go back to what I said about the estate tax/death tax thing. I'd like to push back on that. I've heard that reasoning before and I don't think it's that simple. I don't believe it was PR that did it either, rather there was a cultural shift in the 80s and 90s that embraced privatization and free market policies (not just in US, but UK, Canada, and many other nations). This was a pendulum swing from the 60s and 70s when protectionism and over-regulation and high taxation was fashionable. Besides, there are good ideological reasons for conservatives to not support the estate tax, regardless of the label. Conservatives will tend to oppose taxes and push for tax cuts, but the estate tax provides extra incentive because it can be seen as double-dipping for the government.
    - 7y ago
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Since fission is triggered by neutrons we should call it “neutral energy”.

Diederich 7y ago

I've been worried about climate change, CO2 emissions and related material for quite a number of years now, and I've believed that we should have been pushing hard into nuclear power for a long time. However: > Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those renewables. Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? It has a ways to go, but its price continues to improve exponentially.

folli 7y ago
No we can't dismiss it lightly, because there won't be a sole solution to tackle CO2 increase, but we need to leverage and improve all existing technologies.
macspoofing 7y ago
>Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? We can because there is no battery storage technology today, nor is one upcoming, that would work on city scale (i.e. store enough energy to power a city and industry outside of ideal wind/solar times). For example, the Tesla-style deployments are only there to even out supply on the order of milliseconds and maybe seconds. That's still something, and does replace natural gas in those specific use-cases, but that's not what we need. Worse, we don't even know of a battery technology that would be able to store power across seasons or years, as Wind and Solar are very seasonally dependent and may vary in output by an order of magnitude between, say, Summer and Winter. Furthermore, for wind deployments, you usually need to sample multiple years to figure out if the site is good enough because wind output can vary across multiple-years. That's why wind/solar/natural gas is a package deal today and for the foreseeable future.

folli 7y ago

I don't understand why this is being downvoted, apart from non-scientific resentments. Nuclear power will be needed, together with renewables (hydro, wind, solar), to massively increase the chance to shift away from fossil energy.

maxxxxx 7y ago

I would like to see an honest accounting of the costs of nuclear power including decommissioning and waste storage. I am also skeptical that a world wide increase in nuclear power usage can be done in a safe way. Somebody somewhere will take shortcuts over time.

macspoofing 7y ago
>I would like to see an honest accounting of the costs of nuclear power including decommissioning and waste storage. Does it matter? If the game is to cut CO2 emissions, and nothing else can cut CO2 emissions - we're out of options. Tell me honestly: is there anything that would convince you or are you just saying things? I ask because I do wonder what kind of answer you are looking for that we don't already know. It isn't like nuclear technology is brand new. There's a 5 decades of history behind it and it has been studied exhaustively. We know the risks, the costs, the capabilities, the safety record. Everything. What more do you need before you accept it?