4 ms·
Eh, nuclear isn't that great. It's taken decades to start even getting close to truly safe, low-waste reactors, and that only due to the considerable public pre
by beat 7y ago
Eh, nuclear isn't that great. It's taken decades to start even getting close to truly safe, low-waste reactors, and that only due to the considerable public pressure involved after various high-profile accidents. It's pretty cheap in the long run, but the initial costs are extremely high. We can't trust every nation to stick to high standards in terms of safety, so we're running globally at the safety level of the least competent crew of the worst reactor.
At this point, we're rapidly approaching (or already past) the point where renewables are cheaper per kwh in the long term than nuclear, and much cheaper in the short term - without the dependence on the neoliberal hegemony of giant governments and giant corporations and giant finance.
At this point, I'm not too concerned about climate change, largely because there's not much we can do about it. Environmentalism and liberalism are unfortunately full of a bunch of hairshirted Puritan shaming over anyone doing anything that feels happy or successful - denial is a moral good, and allowing ourselves the benefits of abundant energy is a sin. I feel that's driving concerns about global warming more than the actual environmental damage - they finally have an excuse to deny people a good time.
More importantly, denialism won't work. If we cut our consumption by 50% right now (fat chance), it'd just take us 100 years rather than 50 to burn through the same amount of dinosaur. Same long-term damage. The only thing that will work is creating an energy framework (both production and consumption) that doesn't use fossil fuels, but has roughly the same cost (or less) and the same output.
Renewables are on their way to giving us more energy than dinosaurs ever did, at lower cost, without complex technical dependencies, high up-front costs, etc. It's the greatest weapon against the Corporate State since the internet. Why anyone would want nuclear and its dependency on the neoliberal hegemony (especially if they fear concentrated power at all) is beyond me.