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The problem with nuclear power in the US is that it's unbelievably expensive to construct and you will not get the NRC to approve it. Renewables are cheap; he h

The problem with nuclear power in the US is that it's unbelievably expensive to construct and you will not get the NRC to approve it. Renewables are cheap; he has a consistent theme of supporting them because of this. Also, solar and wind farms don't destroy the environment under them or anything; solar can make land more habitable by adding shade. What it does do is make the land harder to sell, which is a problem if you're a land banker pretending to be a farmer, a common situation in the US. And the Sierra Club is anti-nuclear; they just got Illinois to block it again: https://twitter.com/SierraClubIL/status/1690054514772975624 https://twitter.com/SierraClubIL/status/1690054514772975624

nvm0n2 3y ago
Yes, they block nuclear even though it has minimal / no impact on the landscape compared to the alternatives. This is inconsistent with Smith's explanation. Noah Smith publicly advertises himself as being on the left, so of course in these groups he sees the spectre of conservatism. They refuse to build solar farms because they just can't stop conserving things! But there's an alternative hypothesis that also explains the nuclear problem: these are people whose personalities cannot abide tradeoffs of any kind. They are utopian progressives who believe that if a proposal has any downsides at all, then they should protest and block under the assumption that faced with resistance the smart set will come up with a better proposal. Claims that there are no alternatives are rejected on the grounds that capital-P Progress is automatic and easy, so if anyone is stating that you have to choose between birds/tortoises and climate, then they just need to try harder to find a solution that makes everyone happy.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  Your alternative hypothesis is itself conservatism. Blocking change is to support the endurance of the status quo. They may not think it is by their ideals, but do it enough times and the actions speak.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Perhaps, yes. At some point it becomes an argument over words: is it conservative if you're so radical no proposal is considered good enough, so you default to rejecting everything? Is there even such a thing as radical conservatism or is that a contradiction?
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      I wouldn't say exactly that, rather that a refusal to compromise ultimately results in choosing the status quo, and is therefore an effectively conservative choice. The words all mean the same things, it's the choices that are contradictory.
taylodl 3y ago
I work for one of largest U.S. utility companies who operates nuclear units. They've publicly stated there's no plan for increasing their nuclear footprint. The first thing you need to consider is nobody wants these things in their backyard, and I mean nobody. You're going to spend tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars facing the legal hurdles all the NIMBYs are going to hurl at you. Even if you manage to obtain a permit, which isn't that difficult actually, the NIMBYs are going to fight you every step of the way and will do everything they can to impede construction to force costs to skyrocket. Then there's the fact there's steps in the construction process that have to be done within a certain amount of time otherwise you have to scrap and start over. Do you know who knows those steps very well? The NIMBYs, of course. If they win a delay in those steps then they've effectively shut down the plant before it even got built. My company ran into this while building a new nuclear power plant back in 2008/2009. We ended up having to scrap it and built an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plant instead. The thing I remember most was Obama making a promise the year before the plant opened that there wouldn't be a new coal-fired power plant built in the U.S. So much for that! On the positive side, that was the last coal-fired power plant my company has built and they've retired several older units built in the 40's and 50's, since. When I started there, 40% of their power was from coal, now it's 20%. We own and operate the largest wind farms in the U.S. and we've deployed several solar farms and are in the midst of building more. Investors don't even want to hear the word nuclear. There have been a lot of modern coal plants built in the past 20 years. Maybe 20-30 years from now as those plants start to age out we may be in a position to re-evaluate nuclear energy, but I don't see it happening before then.

nvm0n2 3y ago

Yes, they block nuclear even though it has minimal / no impact on the landscape compared to the alternatives. This is inconsistent with Smith's explanation. Noah Smith publicly advertises himself as being on the left, so of course in these groups he sees the spectre of conservatism. They refuse to build solar farms because they just can't stop conserving things! But there's an alternative hypothesis that also explains the nuclear problem: these are people whose personalities cannot abide tradeoffs of any kind. They are utopian progressives who believe that if a proposal has any downsides at all, then they should protest and block under the assumption that faced with resistance the smart set will come up with a better proposal. Claims that there are no alternatives are rejected on the grounds that capital-P Progress is automatic and easy, so if anyone is stating that you have to choose between birds/tortoises and climate, then they just need to try harder to find a solution that makes everyone happy.

Tao3300 3y ago
Your alternative hypothesis is itself conservatism. Blocking change is to support the endurance of the status quo. They may not think it is by their ideals, but do it enough times and the actions speak.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Perhaps, yes. At some point it becomes an argument over words: is it conservative if you're so radical no proposal is considered good enough, so you default to rejecting everything? Is there even such a thing as radical conservatism or is that a contradiction?
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    I wouldn't say exactly that, rather that a refusal to compromise ultimately results in choosing the status quo, and is therefore an effectively conservative choice. The words all mean the same things, it's the choices that are contradictory.

taylodl 3y ago

I work for one of largest U.S. utility companies who operates nuclear units. They've publicly stated there's no plan for increasing their nuclear footprint. The first thing you need to consider is nobody wants these things in their backyard, and I mean nobody. You're going to spend tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars facing the legal hurdles all the NIMBYs are going to hurl at you. Even if you manage to obtain a permit, which isn't that difficult actually, the NIMBYs are going to fight you every step of the way and will do everything they can to impede construction to force costs to skyrocket. Then there's the fact there's steps in the construction process that have to be done within a certain amount of time otherwise you have to scrap and start over. Do you know who knows those steps very well? The NIMBYs, of course. If they win a delay in those steps then they've effectively shut down the plant before it even got built. My company ran into this while building a new nuclear power plant back in 2008/2009. We ended up having to scrap it and built an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plant instead. The thing I remember most was Obama making a promise the year before the plant opened that there wouldn't be a new coal-fired power plant built in the U.S. So much for that! On the positive side, that was the last coal-fired power plant my company has built and they've retired several older units built in the 40's and 50's, since. When I started there, 40% of their power was from coal, now it's 20%. We own and operate the largest wind farms in the U.S. and we've deployed several solar farms and are in the midst of building more. Investors don't even want to hear the word nuclear. There have been a lot of modern coal plants built in the past 20 years. Maybe 20-30 years from now as those plants start to age out we may be in a position to re-evaluate nuclear energy, but I don't see it happening before then.