A conversation about nuclear power as band aid for climate change

Q. Find it hard to understand people who support new nuclear power as a climate solution. Yes technically it could be but politically its just divide and destroy of progress movements as its not going to happen simple. Look at the history of dishonest/ridiculously over cost agenders, simple its poison, please support something people can get behind.

A. I agree it’s a political problem, not a technical one. Sadly, physics doesn’t give a flying fuck wether a solution is politically feasible or not. The planet is warming at a speed faster than any in the last 60 million years, and that spells serious trouble unless we decarbonise everything really quickly. And that means not just electricity, but transport, cement, construction, industry and everything else. Not in 50 years, but now. That’s why renewables can’t do it. Not because they can’t in principle, of course they could. But simply because it will take us decades to ramp up the production facilities necessary to churn out enough solar panels to plaster them everywhere in order to generate electricity that is needed.

What we need now is a band aid. And there is no band aid better than nuclear power to get us out of the current pickle. Nothing deliver small kilowatt-hours put dollar invested. Nothing delivers more kilowatt hours per unit of greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing delivers more kilowatt hours per unit of land taken up. You just can’t do without it.

Q. Climate chaos is here we need new infrastructure to be usable in a more divided and disorganized society’s. Ie. We need new infrastructure to be on the “horizontal” rather than “vertical” balance. As vertical solution like nuclear power are a dangerous choice in a unstable/changing world. A completely fucked up example is the new Hinkley Point power station build at sea level with a high fixed garrentyed price for generations, it will likely be underwater and abandond before it’s put into use would be a good outcom, underwater after turned on would be a complete human/eco disaster. This is not to mention the nuclear elephant up north Sellafield were the is no solution to sea level rise. Just stop this crap now comes to mind.

Q. I agree that Hinkley Point and Sellafield are idiotic choices. But that argument is the same as saying that hammers should be banned because some idiot use one to bash in the head of his girlfriend. It’s a tool. You can use it well or you can use it badly.

The problem with that disorganised and divided society you mention is that there are so very many of us on this planet. Over half of us already live in cities, and that number is increasing rapidly. We can’t disorganise that. On the contrary, you need scalable solutions to ensure that these people have a decent life, rather than a dog eat dog one.

Q. And, since we have to decarbonise everything to ensure that agriculture has a halfway decent chance of feeding all of these people,

Q. We need to figure out a way of supplying enough energy for all of these people in their needs. In the short term, nothing scales like nuclear. Hydropower destroys landscapes. Thermal power plants have thrown us into the pickle we are in today. Nothing else scales as quickly as nuclear. And, since the balance of the evidence available from the nuclear attacks on Japan and the various accidents that have happened since show that radioactivity is more feared than actually dangerous, I really don’t see what’s stopping us.

A. I hear what you are saying but how do you change nuclear from a long ongoing history a poison to one of light and delight in unstable #dotcons dominated times. Its really not helpful to push this against Decentralized renewables. A state lead enforcement of energy “austerity” to be sweetened by pushing as insulation of existing infrastructure to make the world as it is more sustainable and more robust. The only realistic solution is collective action, everything else is a vertical tecno fixe which are always a problem and never a solution. Its already a mess lets try to not to make it messer. You can argue that the is no time and no hope, a fair point of view, but, keep focus, the solution has to be social and nuclear is not a part of this.