> Who in their right mind
Activist politicians who value their cause more than the well being of their citizens.
Activist politicians who value their cause more than the well being of their citizens.
And shaming these people isn't the solution. The solution is to bring them around to seeing the virtue of using nuclear power. They may be wrong about the relative safety of nuclear power but they aren't morally defective people, so shaming them isn't appropriate.
Much like recycling or jaywalking, it's a way for an industry to diffuse and downplay their own advocacy and push the fault onto the public.
Like yeah, it would be better if Greenpeace supported nuclear... but they're not the ones sitting in senator's offices getting bills passed subsidizing the fossil-fuel industry. Even the "climate change" bill had to throw almost 10% of its spending to fossil-fuel subsidies.
I think a lot of people are negatively disposed to nuclear based on beliefs that are not justified by the relative risk and reward of nuclear power generation at this stage in humanity's technological evolution. I don't think we have a combination of (better, cleaner, more reliable) base load generation power source that's available right now (which is the question to consider when contemplating "we have a working nuclear reactor; should we shut it down?")
I often see this given as a reason for why nuclear power generation can be safe, but I think it overlooks the fact that military reactors operate in a very different context from civilian ones.
For a start, do we know how expensive (per unit energy) US Navy reactors are? It doesn't matter how safe they are if they are twice as expensive as renewables (plus storage / power-to-gas).
More generally, though, given the secrecy around military and nuclear programs, would we even know how many near-meltdowns and embarrassing accidents US Navy reactors have experienced (at least in the past few decades)?
do we know how expensive (per unit energy)
US Navy reactors are? It doesn't matter how safe
they are if they are twice as expensive as
renewables (plus storage / power-to-gas).
Price does not matter. It has to work reliably, not only in calm days of peace, but during times of war. Having a source of power to move the big boats without relying on external supplies is worth the price. There even were experiments to generate jetfuel using nuclear power on carriers, certainly not because it is cheap.
To be clear, the capacity factor of France's nuclear power stations is "about 70%"[a] (and was "61 percent"[b] in 1988), while recent offshore wind farms manage a "65% capacity factor"[c].
It's also worth noting that there is less parallelism in nuclear reactor designs than in wind farms, so a single mechanical or structural fault (or just the need for regular maintenance and inspection) can take out an entire nuclear reactor, whereas a wind farm can shut down a single turbine without much impact.
So there are certainly differences in the sorts of guarantees that the different types of power station can provide, but I think you need to be a lot more precise about what you mean by "reliable" in order to judge what, if anything, renewables are lacking as an alternative energy source.
[a] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
[b] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/electricit%...
[c] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-fl...
Nevertheless, I don't think the anti-nuclear movement is evil. They're guided by extreme fear, not malice. I don't know how you can bring them around though, unless your offering some form of therapy. But even with that, would they accept it? Would you accept therapy to change some of your deeply held beliefs that you don't view as 'wrong'?
* actually we have almost 30% of known viable resources, but only contribute 8% or 9% of the world total supply currently, producing less than a 5th of Kazakhstan, by far the most prolific supplier.
Of course there are risks, but everything has risks attached -- we calculate the probabilities and then stop worrying about the risks if they're minuscule. And of course there's an economic part to consider, but I'm pretty sure if you counted the amount of hours Germans have spent in 2022 talking about the energy crisis, we could've been well on our way to 100% nuclear coverage if we had spent that time productively instead.
However, I'm not sure the distinction is too useful. Ultimately we're judged by actions, not intentions.
They sit in the government.
most of the people who ended up aligning with that
movement did have good intentions. They were reasoning
that in the long term, nuclear power would bring great
misery to humanity. Long term thinking is good, right?
Even the occasional Fukushima or Chernobyl is preferable to the irreversible fossil fuel-induced hell we're about to experience, with potentially billions of people displaced and so forth. It's especially galling since protecting the planet was their entire raison d'etre.
And there were certainly who opposed nuclear power with evil intentions, specifically the fossil fuel industry.
I'm not sure which one is worse. At least the fossil fuel industry never claimed to be noble.
This is a dramatic understatement. It was coordinated by the Rockefeller Foundation from the very beginning:
https://atomicinsights.com/how-did-leaders-of-the-hydrocarbo...
>They may be wrong about the relative safety of nuclear power but they aren't morally defective people, so shaming them isn't appropriate.
The moral failing that you're missing is arrogance. People who actually study radiation were not leading this movement.
No, it was short term thinking that has brought on these opinions. Thats who funds these anti nuclear opinions anyway, people who are invested such to benefit in the near term over preventing adoption of nuclear energy, not actual scientists engaging in long term thinking.
Other one I would quote is "perfection is the enemy of good" - it seems nuclear is good, but they would not give up only on good. It had to be perfect where renewable sources are 100% ideal.
Why do you appoint morality a higher ground than rationality?
Edit: Typo
Well-meaning anti-nuclear activists have reasoned incorrectly, but that doesn't mean they should be shamed. Shame is not the appropriate way to correct somebody who has reasoned incorrectly. Shaming them is counterproductive since they know themselves to have good intentions. If you want to bring them around to your point of view, you should use rational arguments.
Use shaming tactics against those who know they've done wrong, like those paid to lie by coal companies. They actually have something to be ashamed of.
We have so much other, more real, more tangible and even right now happening vectors of "problems", starting with Covid, not ending with the real chance of WW3, and we whine about miniscule pollution of square kilometers at worst? Hard to get.
Since when? A few days, since the green party convention... Before that, the top figures unmistakenly said nuclear is dead, despite enegery crisis.
> Remember, the current, and hastly implemented nuclear exit, was a CDU led kneejerk reaction
So? And the greens would have exited even faster if they had the chance.
Stop twisting things.