3 ms·

The truth is, the discussion on nuclear can't be done only on the technical aspects of it, but needs to face and clear its political aspects too. Nuclear as it

The truth is, the discussion on nuclear can't be done only on the technical aspects of it, but needs to face and clear its political aspects too. Nuclear as it is today brings centralization (compared to solar/wind) and many don't like that. For example, nobody wants to live close to a nuclear waste deposit, but governments will just force the decision to build one to local populations. There's also the feeling that it will concentrate the power in the hands of a smaller and smaller technical elite. Another matter is that people don't trust neoliberal governments with a tendency to austerity to correctly handle maintenance of nuclear power plants in the long term. After all, with nuclear you just need to fuck up badly once to cause unrepairable damage. If we want nuclear to be adopted, we have to dispell the (justified) fear people have of it. Discussing about it like techno elitists won't certainly help.

Aachen 6y ago
> nobody wants to live close to a nuclear waste deposit I'll repeat what I've said for wind turbines: do my back yard first then. If nobody else wants it, it gotta go somewhere. But I think you're confusing reactors with waste. We want reactors as close to population centres as possible to avoid losses (some distance is fine, but concentrating power generation for Europe in the Sahara would be wasteful, for example), but radioactive waste can be transported just fine. There's very little of it, shipping it to the Sahara isn't a big deal in energy usage terms. Politics is an issue, but there's more uninhabited places we can put it.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > There's very little of it, shipping it to the Sahara isn't a big deal in energy usage terms I wish it was that easy, but that's not a chance in the current political climate. In Italy we're still debating about where to send the waste generated in the '80s. We turned off our last plant in the '87. Every single town involved as a destination for waste storage is in revolt against the decision. Literally nobody wants that waste even dozens of kilometers away from their town. And I totally understand, I don't trust any government (even worse, private contractor), in this economical system and political climate, to correctly maintain such waste storage for the next 300 years. We can barely make consistent plans for the duration of a government.

Aachen 6y ago

> nobody wants to live close to a nuclear waste deposit I'll repeat what I've said for wind turbines: do my back yard first then. If nobody else wants it, it gotta go somewhere. But I think you're confusing reactors with waste. We want reactors as close to population centres as possible to avoid losses (some distance is fine, but concentrating power generation for Europe in the Sahara would be wasteful, for example), but radioactive waste can be transported just fine. There's very little of it, shipping it to the Sahara isn't a big deal in energy usage terms. Politics is an issue, but there's more uninhabited places we can put it.

pietrovismara 6y ago
> There's very little of it, shipping it to the Sahara isn't a big deal in energy usage terms I wish it was that easy, but that's not a chance in the current political climate. In Italy we're still debating about where to send the waste generated in the '80s. We turned off our last plant in the '87. Every single town involved as a destination for waste storage is in revolt against the decision. Literally nobody wants that waste even dozens of kilometers away from their town. And I totally understand, I don't trust any government (even worse, private contractor), in this economical system and political climate, to correctly maintain such waste storage for the next 300 years. We can barely make consistent plans for the duration of a government.