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The strongest pro nuclear argument is just to look at France’s vs Germany’s carbon intensity. This does not require experimental technology.
by aoeusnth1 3y ago
The strongest pro nuclear argument is just to look at France’s vs Germany’s carbon intensity. This does not require experimental technology.
- Qwertious 3y agoThe problem with that comparison is that it's a political one, not an economic one - France's nuclear power has been largely publicly owned, whereas Germany's has been largely private, and what's more Merkel's energy policy 20 years ago took the Greens plan of "shut down nuclear and replace it all with renewables" and took out half of the renewables forcing the country to backfill with coal/gas. So the carbon intensity was a failure of politics. I think it's kind of ironic, really - there are three arguments against nuclear (safety, cost, and political feasibility), and political feasibility is by far the biggest problem - safety is overblown (in no small part because right now we're using coal/gas which is toxic AF), cost is a genuine issue but frankly irrelevant if nuclear will genuinely speed up decarbonization (climate change is hella expensive), so the big problem with nuclear is that it's so easy to scuttle at any point with fearmongering, so if it delays renewables it could be literally worse than useless due to politics.