3 ms·
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana doesn't look "anti-nuclear" to me. Could you elaborate?
by cess11 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana doesn't look "anti-nuclear" to me. Could you elaborate?
- Luc 2y agoUh... I would say that page is the resume of an anti-nuclear ideologue, of someone who has built his career on being against nukes and nuclear energy.
- pfdietz 2y agoI would describe that as a career based on being realistic, not one based on having drunk the nuclear koolaid.
- Luc 2y agoThat's the thing with ideologies, it colors a person's views to the point where they don't realize they are trapped in it.
- cess11 2y agoYou made this claim before, I asked you to elaborate. To me it seems that the article describes a career doing research and applying it to public policy.
- Luc 2y ago> You made this claim before, I asked you to elaborate. I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you mistaking me for someone else? > To me it seems that the article describes a career doing research and applying it to public policy. That's not incompatible with what I wrote earlier...
- roughly 2y agoThe closing paragraphs of the article: > The climate crisis is urgent. The world has neither the financial resources nor the luxury of time to expand nuclear power. As physicist and energy analyst Amory Lovins argued: “… to protect the climate, we must save the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time.” > Expanding nuclear energy only makes the climate problem worse. > The money invested in nuclear energy would save far more carbon dioxide if it were instead invested in renewables. > And the reduction in emissions from investing in renewables would be far quicker. These statements may wind up being correct, but they’re speculative, and they’re anti-nuclear. To the point of the Wikipedia page, a couple selected publications - although in fairness I haven’t read the publications and am just judging from the titles: > Nuclear power: Economic, safety, health, and environmental issues of near-term technologies, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34, 2009, 127-152 > Beyond our imagination: Fukushima and the problem of assessing risk, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2011, 19 April > Nuclear Power in India: Failed Past, Dubious Future, 2007, Available at www. npec-web. org/Frameset. asp Again, all of these could be entirely factual and well defended, but the author is clearly not a disinterested observer. I’m more pro-nuclear than the author, and mostly I’m skeptical about good scalable solutions to the storage problem. I’d prefer renewables + storage to be the answer, but I think we made a mistake when we halted nuclear development and I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors by not pursuing the technology.
- cess11 2y agoInterested observers can't be researchers?
- roughly 2y agoI’m not saying anti-nuclear as a slander, but that’s clearly their position. Given their resume, I believe they came by it honestly, via years of experience and study. I don’t think I’m besmirching them by saying they’re anti-nuclear, and I think given the tenor of the article, they’d agree with me. It is, however, something to be aware of when reading an article they wrote: they are not a fully disinterested observer, they have a pre-existing belief about nuclear, and their arguments for this article agree with those beliefs. That’s a thing to be aware of when one evaluates the set of facts they’ve chosen to present.