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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims:

> Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science.

Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science".

edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting.

I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger to be running the same "I used to be an environmentalist" story:

https://www.netzerowatch.com/gwpf-welcomes-newfound-realism-...

> In recent days, former Extinction Rebellion spokesman Zion Lights has announced her conversion to the cause of nuclear energy, while so-called “eco-modernist” Michael Shellenberger has gone further, and apologised for the years he spent scaremongering over climate change in a long article at Forbes website.

> Welcoming these developments, GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said:

> It’s great to see these prominent green campaigners disavowing the eco-extremism that has done such damage to the world. When Michael Shellenberger says that climate change isn’t even the biggest environmental problem the world faces, he’s echoing a view that the GWPF has highlighted since our inception.”

Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image):

https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2020/09/16/statement-on-zion-...

> There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.

> For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger.

View on HN

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image

Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.

At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today anyway, because renewables have only become cost competitive relatively recently. Even without lobbying by the oil industry people had powerful incentives until now to stick with the technology that didn’t require them to put on a sweater or pay more for energy.

The anti-nuclear movement by contrast knee-capped the last best hope for climate change mitigation. A technology that could have been deployed—and catalyzed electrification and energy storage efforts—decades ago when we had more runway.

> Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.

You would have thought that France would have supplied the European continent with electricity now that Russia cut its gas supply, but it turns out that France received electricity from Germany even during this time.

It turns out that even new builds of nuclear power plants take years to be completed. Getting safety right is a challenge, the more we know about engineering and material science for nuclear plants, the more we know about challenges in building them, the more we need to do to avoid these risks, the harder it is to build a safe power plant.

You wouldn't have thought that unless you thought France had capacity to power Germany just lying around.

Apparently Germany had capacity to power France just lying around.

Literally lying around in a pile of beautiful black lumps of coal.

and also beautiful brown lignite

What you don’t know is that in the 2010’s the left wing had a agreement with the Green Party to stop all nuclear by 2050. That’s why we stop financing and maintaining a lot of nuclear plants. It turned out it was a bad idea..

While I don’t know anything about that agreement, I assume it would have had been a push for renewables.

By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.

How do you know it will be possible by 2050 to go full renewable?

By using elementary grade extrapolation. Right now in 2023 there are multiple countries generating over 90% of electricity from renewables.

Which ones? Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting?

Disregarding electric dams because, while wonderful, those depend heavily on the country geography and I assume a lot of countries cannot build enough of them. (but we should build as much as we can of those, just don't expect 50% hydroelectricity everywhere)

> Which ones?

Norway 98% since 2016. Costa Rica 98% since 2015. Scotland 97% in 2020. Uruguay 98% in 2021. New Zealand pushing close to 90%.

> Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting?

I don’t know what this means. If a country reports that X amount of energy came from a particular source in a particular year, that means the entire year. And if you believe these countries are lying and doing “creative accounting”, then the burden of proof lies with you to prove it, not for me to disprove it.

Norway: large hydro resources, low population. Costa Rica: 80% hydro. Scotland: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56530424 says that renewable met 97% of energy demand, which does not mean that clean electricity was produced when it was needed in Scotland. Considering that this means the country could run at 97% of its production potential with only RE is what I consider "creative accounting". (the article does not lie but interpreting it that way is mistaken). Uruguay: only 31% hydro, that's more interesting. New Zealand: 55% hydro, 13% geothermal.

So except for Uruguay (which does look interesting), most countries mostly use renewable dispatchable sources which are perfect. But not all countries have the hydro potential / population ratio of Norway. We should use hydro as much as we can but we are limited by geography; once everything that can be used is we are stuck with nuclear, wind or solar. Maybe Uruguay could be an example of country that manages somehow with mostly solar/wind; I need to look into it. Thank you.

Keep in mind it is also possible for countries to export electricity; for the world to be powered by renewables each country needs not produce 100% of it’s own energy demands.

This is of paramount importance. Add storage (V2G...) and clean backup (green hydrogen...).

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...

Some references: https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704

No.

The sole closed nuclear plant (Fessenheim) was the oldest one, disputed by neighboring nations Germany and Switzerland (all owning stakes in it!) for seismic-related risks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant...

A new reactor (Flamanville-3, an EPR) was ordered in 2004, work began in 2007 for a delivery in 2012, it is not delivered yet and 6x times over-budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

A huge program (55 to 95 billions euros) aiming at upgrading all existing reactors in order to run them for 60 or even 80 years was launched and runs: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage

Governments adopted sustained nuclear R&D budgets. See «Graphique 1», French ahead: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/energie-recherche-et-developpem...

Governments also sold reactors to Finland (running project, way over-budget and delay), China (2 reactors, over-budget and delay, and they stayed offline or at low-power for a full year after an incident) and the U.-K. (this is a running project, already late and over-budget).

France was strongarmed by Germany and by shitty election related deals to elect Hollande into massive nuclear power closures and reductions, coupled with presidents unable to see more than 5 years ahead means that nuclear plants both do not get renewed and also get closed for absolutely no reason. See Fessenheim.

The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.

Hollande wanted to diversify France because it's not and they had to pay for this stupidity and still do to this day.

Fessenheim is the perfect reason for why Hollande wanted to close some of those plants: old, accident ridden, one of those which have to be closed down in summer due to possible overheating of nearby rivers and to top that off: it's in a region which may have earthquakes for which it is not prepared...

> The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.

Weird because there are plenty western countries which do have popular support for nuclear energy but still struggle with construction times and costs in astronomical ways.

Fessenheim was amongst the top performing nuclear plants, and had no issues being given a 10 year renewal because of how safe it was before it was closed for political reasons. The EELV/Die Grunde kool-aid is not a good thing to drink considering how anti science they are.

And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything that could damage the environment. You could triple the output heat in the river and it would change absolutely nothing.

Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip. Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

> essenheim was amongst the top performing nuclear plants, and had no issues being given a 10 year renewal because of how safe it was

That is false. It was an old and accident ridden plant.

> And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything

Luckily those limits are set by people who know what they're doing and not the nuclear astroturf online.

> Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip.

That's pure propaganda from the opposite political spectrum and is not even worth the discussion anymore at this point.

> Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

We even had to get some coal plants back from retirement (just like you did) because your rotting nuclear fleet isn't performing and it's cold outside. You're welcome :)

Energiewende was cancelled by the Merkel governments in favour of nuclear until they made a turnaround with regards to nuclear after Fukushima.

Exactly, the phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010: the government decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule. Then something unpleasant happened at Fukushima.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu...

Our national energy company EDF has been the largest energy exporter in Europe for ages, in 2019 it was the largest in the world. In addition to that it's made us the cleanest country in the continent for close to 40 years (along with hydro-rich countries). The notion that 2022 is a smoking gun for nuclear is ridiculous. All it reflects is the past 12 years of successive liberal governments writing laws and reforms to gut our nuclear fleet and EDF in favour of private companies.

that is if La Hague isn't leaking nuclear waste

Even if it doesn't leak... France seeks strategy as nuclear waste site risks saturation point. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/france-seeks-st...

Moreover the long-term deposit site (dubbed 'Cigéo') isn't ready.

Covid maintenance postponed + corrosion issues led to this bad timing; otherwise looks like it worked pretty well for decades.

France closed a working-order nuclear plant for political reasons just two years before, so we're not making exactly the brightest decisions here either.

Agree. It's quite possibly, and I say this in full awareness of the scope, one of the biggest own goals in the history of Earth.

The fossil fuel lobby has actually promoted nuclear FUD, including by funding anti-science "environmentalist" groups.

I've always hoped they're secretly funded/friends with the oil lobby, because otherwise that's just pure sadness.

I don't know if they were directly funded by the oil lobby, but I'm not sure that they needed to be either.

At a minimum, it seems that (thanks to ignorance) they lapped up all of the anti-nuclear FUD that was generated by the oil lobby and others.

Actually just by russia.

I'd like to also echo this. Best analysis of the history behind the anti-nuclear craze of the 60s and 70s is basically Russia infiltrated the Hippie Movement of the 60s to exploit the "government is bad" soft anarchism (=minarchism) in the movement to delay America from getting a leg up.

For the past 100+ years, Russia has been one of the largest energy players in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. You can see this today in the Russian Invasion in Ukraine, as Germany tries to comply with the international regulations and shut the Russian Nord Stream pipeline off and can't; Russia has a stranglehold on everyone on that side of the world.

So, given that, they feared an America that could meet its energy needs without pollution, heavy investment, and significant cost; while Russia was literally killing its own people to make the oil and gas flow as a cost of doing business. Thus, they slipped right in and used the Hippies to astroturf an anti-nuclear position.

Reagan may have torn down that wall, but Russia won the cold war; and then they made sure, post-Soviet, to make sure we'd never attain energy independence. The end result of that trainwreck is currently under investigation by the FBI as per the recommendations of the Jan 6th Committee.

Russia produce not only oil and gas but also is one of the biggest nuclear plant equipment exporters. If I were them I would rather sponsor articles on how it is hard to dispose of solar panels…

Russia is one of the biggest producers of nuclear power plants equipment.

https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-face-of-the-anti-n...

I can't believe you're blaming "tree huggers" for this, when the clear beneficiary is the global fossil fuel industry, who've been lobbying against nuclear power since the 50s. Shit, many anti-nuclear groups have been funded by fossil fuel industry for decades. At best, their protests were political cover for governments to do what the oil industry paid them to do.

Do you have sources for these claims?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil...

The rabid anti nukes were more useful idiots. You’re right that the real power is in the fossil fuel industry which was happy to use them.

Is that really true in Germany? Chernobyl was such a big deal to the German public, making nuclear very unpopular.

Are you sure there's a difference here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenpeace_Energy

I don't think so. People in the US have and have had net-positive views on nuclear energy. It's not like public sentiment has turned against nuclear energy because of naked tree hugging protesters. For example, this polling [1] from Pew shows that only 27% of the US public thinks the government should discourage nuclear power with everyone else saying the government should either encourage or be neutral towards it.

Of course some green energy climate tree hugger whatever protesters oppose nuclear energy, but they are powerless and don't change public opinion much and certainly don't influence outcomes. To my knowledge it's government regulations and laws that stifle nuclear energy - not protesters or climate people.

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-c...

So, between the sheer 5x higher cost of nuclear power and people who hug trees your consided analysis is that the latter held back nuclear power more?

It's like an Illuminati conspiracy theory except with people who dont use soap...

Nuclear power is only "5x" higher cost if you utterly ignore the environmental catastrophe of fossil fuels.

Global warming will cost countless trillions and displace, sicken, and/or kill billions in the coming centuries.

I'm quite sure op meant 5x higher than certain renewables not fossil.

Nobody is talking about fossil anymore. It's on the way out just like nuclear.

At some point it will, but has fossil fuel use actually declined so far? From what a I’ve read, the Arctic is being looked at as a new frontier for oil and gas exploration as the ice retreats.

Yes, it has declined in countries which invest into renewables: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

>Nuclear power is only "5x" higher cost if you utterly ignore the environmental catastrophe of fossil fuels.

Well, from, like 1960 until about 2010 everybody who built a power plant did exactly that.

And, from about 2015 onwards if you didn't ignore it it's still 5x more expensive than solar panels or wind farms.

So, between "expensive" and "people who hug trees and have no power", maybe it's the tree-illuminati people.

> which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did

France is often considered to be in "The West".

Fear of nuclear is distrust in the government.

I believe in nuclear as a technology, and I believe in mankind's ability to perform science and engineering tasks.

I don't have a lot of faith in the role of the government in properly and adequately regulating a booming nuclear industry.

The hypothetical specter of government incompetence is greater than the actual harm being done here-and-now?

>Fear of nuclear is distrust in the government.

Is it though? The US Navy has a pretty impressive nuclear safety record for the number of reactors they have in service.

To flip it, would you have more trust in a private company with nuclear safety? If the same decisions being made that allows PG&E to cut their funding for maintenance that allows their lines to be the cause of California's forest fires, why would we trust they would pay for the upkeep on a nuclear reactor?

I've worked in the energy industry. There is complete capture there. When PG&E is the "bad guy" it's because the government needs them to be. ERCOT works the same way (though is better).

If the government wanted PG&E to properly fund their line maintenance, PG&E would properly fund their line maintenance.

Not sure if that's controversial? I don't think the fossil fuel industry (or Putin) could've wished for better allies than the Energiewende (anti-nuclear, pro Russian gas with a bit of solar and wind) supporters in Europe.

Whoever was behind it successfully managed to delay nuclear fission adoption by about 60 years for all of the EU and UK except France causing massive amounts of totally unnecessary CO2 emissions in the process.

Putin is an omni-present monster, sure, and an oil and gas monster to that. But he also is THE biggest nuclear power monster:

[Rosatom] ranks first in the overseas NPP construction, responsible for 76% of global nuclear technology exports: 35 nuclear power plant units, at different stages of development, in 12 countries, as of December 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosatom

I agree and I think the damage to humanity that the anti-nuclear movement has done is incalculable. So many years of progress have been missed out on... and while some of it was due to greed (fossil fuel industry funding), most of it was just misplaced fear, whether propaganda induced or from an inability to see the full picture.

The anti-nuclear movement is also still alive and doing well but at this point it's like arguing over spilled milk, the damage is mostly done and a lot of is irreversible. We can try to salvage nuclear but we've already regressed to further impure sources in some countries so progress seems unlikely.

There is so much wrong with this comment I'm not sure where to begin.

0. Nuclear is not forbidden.

1. Nuclear power is exceedingly common in many countries.

2. Electricity production is not (by far) the only source of carbon emissions. Why have we also not seen any major action to reduce emissions from other sources? Or did the treehuggers also force people to fly, eat meat and drive large cars?

3. > Last best hope.

Energy efficiency. Regulation incentivizing fuel efficiency. Low carbon public transportation. Incentives to reduce the carbon emissions from agriculture. Renewables. The list of available remedies is long.

But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance.

> Nuclear is not forbidden.

What is this point replying to?

Anyway, over-regulation can make nuclear energy commercially unviable. It doesn't take a ban for nuclear to die.

The regulation is there for a purpose. The idea that nuclear was "killed" by regulation is a kind of "stab-in-the-back" conspiracy theory.

If nuclear was truly this obvious answer to aquire abundant clean energy, wouldn't our business friendly leaders embrace it with open arms?

A couple of treehuggers didn't stop them from allowing overfishing the sea, or from extracting fuel from oil sands. Despite those things having very clear negative environmental consequences. And strong popular opposition.

But for Nuclear apparently they went totally in the opposite direction. Deaf to the cries of businessmen they heavily regulated an obviously harmless and extremly profitable energy industry to death?

Occam's razor says there's a simpler explanation.

The regulation is there for a reason, but it doesn't have to be a sensible or proportionate reason. Nuclear power is held to a ludicrously higher safety standard than fossil. You are right to suspect that business interests had a hand in subverting nuclear power - the issue is that while nuclear was getting off the ground, the fossil fuel industry was already well established and integrated with government. The anti-nuclear movement wasn't the ultimate cause, but it allied public opinion with a business interest it should have been viciously fighting.

> But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance

This is laughable. I come from a country that’s officially socialist. But even people from there want to come to Texas and drive a big SUV and live in a big house with a pool. Better yet, they want to attain that same standard of living in their own country.

If environmentalists tell people to turn down the thermostat and stop eating meet and crowd into public transit, they will lose every time.

> they will lose every time.

Then I dearly hope turning down the thermostat, stopping eating meat, and crowding in public transport isn't necessary to prevent climate change.

Because if it is, and if you're right, then we are fucked.

Because people in India and China want air conditioned malls, meat for every meal, and private cars. The governments in these regions are absolutely dependent on keeping those countries on a path to western prosperity for their legitimacy. Any climate change plan that contradicts that isn’t a serious plan and will fuck us all.

Then let the west (which has by far the largest carbon emissions per capita) lead the way! Show the world that prosperity isn't necessarily 2 cars and a heart attack at 67.

And to people saying it is not possible, I call bullshit. There are large carbon footprint variations within the West. Of course countries have different circumstances, but it's also very clearly a question of political will.

Point to me where in BD constitution it says that? Are you thinking of India?

> But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused.

The alternative economic systems are even worse on environmental grounds, and their only saving grace is their ineptness and inefficiency, which limits the amount of damage they cause.

Like, have you heard about environmental disaster of Aral Sea? About how Soviet Union explicitly pursued maximizing fossil extraction as its core economic policy? About the environmental disaster of Great Leap Forward? Check out the list of 10 most polluted places in the world, where are they? Literally the only one that got its pollution under capitalism is in Zambia, all the rest are in former Soviet Union, China and India, which started doing market economy when they were already high polluters.

There are alternatives to both extremes

General nuclear paranoia stemming from Cold War M.A.D., Chernobyl and Three Mile Island seem to spring to my mind. Not so much your naked tree-hugger in a historical vacuum theory.

To me - it seems the existential fear around climate change is the topic of the day for environmentalists only because nuclear ended up not gaining traction. Nuclear waste/proliferation is not the number one existential threat these days only because it's used so little (both because of PR issues and lack of economics/long term maintenance challenges).

The masses of environmentalists moved on from nuclear in the 80's but would surely return if nuclear regained traction.

Smith-putnam was early 40s and both PV and the concept of an economic learning curve have been known since the 50s.

We could have had the wind and solar revolution any time in the last 70 years. Instead trillions were gifted to fossil fuel and nuclear con artists.

This blame of the failure of nuclear on them being forced to sort-of clean up some of their mess rather than just sending native people to mine with no PPE and dumping tailings and waste wherever is a sad attempt at gaslighting.

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid.

If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

> so cheap and easy

I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.

China’s doing amazing work on long distance transmission using high voltage DC:

https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M

I think we could build 100 plants in under a decade - it takes us being willing to build them assembly line like, meaning no more 'designed for the site' plants.

The EPR and AP1000 reactor designs were supposed to be the end of "designed for the site" reactors, and they were. The same designs get built at different geographic locations. The problem is that they're no better at meeting cost and schedule targets than older reactor designs. They're still late and over budget.

Can small modular reactors like those designed by NuScale do better? Maybe. But we're not going to find out sooner than 2030, which is when NuScale plans to have its first plant operational: https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about

How about we stop this ridiculous nuclear vs. renewables culture war, while fossil fuels are laughing all the way to the bank? Yes, we should build more solar (and even as a 'nuke bro', seeing solar prices drop at the rate they have is one of the genuinely positive news in the otherwise pretty dystopic climate change discourse), we should build more nuclear, we should build wind, we should build more hydro (though not that much potential left), we should build transmission, we should build storage.

> but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter

There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fucking around and arguing about it, and just get on with building it.

I live in an area (Canadian prairies) where max energy consumption lines up with with minimum solar and wind production (-40C in December on a calm night). Even during the day, those calm bitterly cold days only have about 8 hours of sunlight from a sun that barely comes over the horizon. We're starting to build solar, we've had wind for a while, but even though we've committed to building SMR Nuclear, we're still in a situation where we've got coal and natural gas plants that are approaching EOL and they'll likely be replaced/retrofitted to burn more fossil fuels because we won't have any sufficiently reliable baseload ready.

The Canadian prairies have fabulous solar production, even in the winter time. They also have a good amount of wind.

And BC has tons of hydro.

So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.

So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win, but here’s the numbers I get from looking at December/January this year (my bills don’t quite line up cleanly on month boundaries):

863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy

Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat.

Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity.

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous.

3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs.

If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.

Yeah, I'm not sure if rooftop can quite cut it for Saskatchewan like it can for Australia for instance.

I've got one family member in Saskatchewan with rooftop solar looking at numbers similar to you. Another has 40 acres and a honey operation so just has ground mounted solar and often zeroes his electricity bill even during winter months, although he's still using gas for heating. Just got a heat pump water heater, so he's heading in that direction.

Saskatchewan has lots of land, so we we can do it collectively even if we can't do it ourselves just with roof tops.

Yeah, like, the nice thing about those numbers is that it does work out that solar can very clearly be an effective part of the mix. Out at our family’s farm, there’s a pretty much perfect spot for a long line of solar panels at the south end of the yard that would have no problem zeroing out the electrical bill (is SaskPower still doing net metering? I don’t even know) and probably reducing some of the gas bill as well.

As far as the urban spots go, my electricity+gas numbers there approximately match the size of the entire lot. Extrapolating a bit and assuming that my house is “average”, that works out to needing a solar farm about the size of Regina to power the city in the winter. Maybe half the size when considering all of the street area.

>is SaskPower still doing net metering?

As of last year they just give a 25% credit.

Both certainly have their place and the balance has definitely shifted from where it was thirty years ago - renewables are much more competitive now but I think Nuclear has a pretty critical role to play when it comes to surge capacity.

The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.)

The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.

Can you share the details about renewables being cost competitive with oil?

chat.openai.com claims it is true, albeit without specific sources:

Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing electricity from new fossil fuel plants, including coal and natural gas.

A recent study by the consultancy firm Lazard found that the cost of utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States has fallen significantly in recent years, and is now cheaper than the cost of power generated from coal and natural gas in most regions of the country.

The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar energy in the United States has fallen by more than 50% over the past decade, and is projected to continue to decline in the future.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of solar PV and wind energy has declined by over 80% and 60%, respectively, since 2010. IRENA also found that renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new power generation in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States.

These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the trend of declining costs for renewable energy and increasing competitiveness with oil and other fossil fuels.

Out of curiosity, I asked "How can we fix the climate crisis? Be specific."

Obviously we shouldn't rely on ChatGPT for our answers to life, but it's not a terrible list. Except for the absolute lack of any mention of nuclear, which I think fairly reflects the zeitgeist but not the real science.

Here's what it said:

1. Switch to Renewable Energy Sources: We should phase out the use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. This would reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants from burning fossil fuels.

2. Increase Energy Efficiency: We should invest in technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption, such as LED lighting, efficient heating and cooling systems, and better insulation.

3. Plant Trees and Protect Forests: Trees absorb carbon dioxide, so planting more of them can help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We should also protect existing forests and prevent deforestation.

4. Reduce Food Waste: Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, as it releases methane and other greenhouse gases when it decomposes. We should reduce food waste and increase food recycling.

5. Reduce Meat Consumption: Animal agriculture is a major source of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, so reducing meat consumption can help reduce emissions. We should also promote plant-based diets.

6. Improve Transportation: We should invest in public transportation, electric vehicles, and other low-emission transportation options. This would reduce emissions from cars and other vehicles.

7. Educate and Advocate: We must educate people about the causes and consequences of climate change, and advocate for public policies that can help mitigate climate change.

No. They are not remotely cost competitive, the data saying otherwise is a case of lying with statistics.

Yes, the cost of generating a watt-hour of power from renewables is competitive with fossil fuels. If you could put those watt-hours in a tank somewhere those numbers would work. However, a tank for a watt-hour is called a battery--and storing that watt-hour is going to cost you more than creating it.

In practice what happens is that renewables reduce the fuel use by gas plants. You still need just as many gas plants, though, and once you count those costs the renewables are no longer the cheapest.

Perplexity.ai provides explicit sources:

https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=2921714c-3614-41ae-82d1-...

>then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

Who are themselves.

(Just thought the story would make more sense if I filled in that last part. :-))

> The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term

Last time I heard, it wasn't pro-nuclear France that urgently built a new LNG terminal, it was staunchly anti-nuclear Germany (in 2023!!). So I have doubt about your analysis.

I hope you also heard that Germany exports electricity to France. The natural gas is mostly needed for heating and industrial processes and that cannot be simply replaced by nuclear electricity.

You're sharing misleading information here. While this is true recently, it's not like France has been consistently short of energy. Typically it's Germany that imports energy from France.

"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there.

France produced 15.1% less power in 2022 and the volume fell short of national usage by 1%."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

It's not an externally imposed constraint that Germany's heating and industrial processes require natural gas; it's the result of Germany's conscious decision to build them on gas instead of electricity. Hard to interpret it as anything but pro-fossil-fuels.

I wonder if it's not even more cynical than that because it doesn't seem right. We still need an alternative controllable* source of energy when renewables can't cover the demand (no wind, no sunshine), and it needs to cover peak demand... For now aside from hydro it's mostly fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil.

As far as the current tech goes, my understanding is that "renewables" are much more compatible with profits from fossil fuel than nuclear power is.

* is "controllable" the right word in this context in english?

> * is "controllable" the right word in this context in english?

I believe the appropriate term is dispatchable.

How are renewables more competitive with fossil fuel than nuclear when it comes to storage and transmission? At least nuclear can keep producing when the sun is down and the wind isn't blowing. It's also more energy dense, so it can scale to cover demand. We're not decarbonizing the economy without those factors being accounted for.

> The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

This is an interesting theory devoid of evidence to back it up.

> If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”

I don’t disagree whatsoever that the fossil fuel industry is up to tricks. What I’m saying is I don’t care what their intentions are. I care about results. If Hitler came back and found a way to fix climate change, but his intention was in order to create a better planet for Aryan people, I’d simultaneously despise him and support the fix.

That’s an extreme example of course, but trying to make my point that when we’re facing extinction, we shouldn’t take solutions off the table. We should ignore intentions and look at results.

To me, all this arguing about their intentions is a distraction that keeps us from solving the problem.

We have a slim chance of fixing climate change, and I have yet to see a single fact to dissuade me from believing nuclear is our best hope. Even if the people behind the push turned out to be scumbags.

> The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear.

In Germany it's the same companies running fossil and nuclear btw.

They also expand into renewables now.

Nuclear is not cost-competitive in the US because it is defined as not being competitive! The problem is the standard for radiation is as low as reasonably achievable. Oops, that means that if nuclear isn't expensive that means you could pile more safety systems on it. It's a stealth ban.

Now, if your objective is public safety you should use a different standard: Better than any viable competing technology. Within the limit of rounding nuclear is currently 100x safer than it's closest competitor: natural gas. By mandating that level of nuclear safety we are actually increasing deaths by causing the use of a far more dangerous technology instead.

(And note that her post repeats a common mistake about nuclear safety--assigning the Fukushima deaths to the nuclear plant rather than to the politicians. The evacuation of the city did not make sense from a safety standpoint. Growing food there will not be a good idea for some time but the expected death toll from sitting put was zero. The only non-worker nuclear power deaths are from Chernobyl.)

https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/how-to-cr...

Nuclear should be a part of decarbonization, and you can search my comment history here to see I've said so for a long time. But the breezy 'I was misinformed!' tone of this article is PR because it dismisses rather than engages with criticisms of the nuclear industry.

For contrast, consider that British Nuclear Fuels used the Irish Sea as a dumping ground for nuclear waste through the 1970s, becoming a significant bone of contention between the UK and the Republic of Ireland: https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en....

Though practices have since changed and risks appear to have been mitigated, the substack article just ignores the uncomfortable reality of past abuses which should inform policy assessments. When someone tells a just-so story, even if you agree with it - in fact, especially then - you should question whether it's purpose is to educate or to manipulate.

> While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article.

True.

> her logic and her facts were solid.

I came to a somewhat different conclusion after reading that article: I felt it was sufficiently blatant, manipulative, and simply wrong that no one would fall for that. Ah well.

It takes a decade to bring a nuclear plant online, at astronomical cost. Instead, why not take that money and start building wind turbines, solar PV and grid-scale batteries? They can start generating (ie. delivering ROI) in a matter of months, be constructed incrementally and are cheaper per KWH.

Newer designs (existing reactors use 1970s technology) are cheaper and faster to build. Look up the concept of "Small Modular Reactors".

If Wikipedia isn’t missing some examples, there’s exactly one of those operating now in Russia. That seems like we might need more data points before proclaiming them cheaper and faster in the present tense.

I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.

> I also learned that batteries cannot be recycled.

That seems factually incorrect, and the anti-renewables paragraph was the thing that jumped out at me most, though the author claims not "to say that we should abandon renewables altogether, but to illustrate that all energy generation carries an environmental cost, and no solution is perfect."

I would like to see a MASSIVE increase in the amount of nuclear power in use around the world. AND, I appreciate calling out conflicts of interest, astroturfing, and artificial "viral" information campaigns.

Thank you for outing the author.

There is one problem with Nuclear power that was never talked about before the Ukraine War: War itself. More specifically, war in the area that is powered by nuclear. Damage to reactors, power plant workers fleeing, damage to nuclear waste containers, and more.

Radioactive material is not something you can only find in nuclear plants (you can get same levels of radioactive materials in hospitals for example), there are also much easier ways to cause worse disasters (think about destroying a dam for example)

how is destroying an entire dam easier than making an armed incursion into a nuclear power plant to steal radioactive waste? Just in terms of metric tons of ammunition needed

not to mention, maybe the place you want to attack doesn't have a dam?

A destroyed dam is temporary damage. There are going to be eventually gravely ill Russian soldiers last year because they ignored the warnings in the Chernobyl exclusion area.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/world/europe/ukraine-cher...

> In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.

> But in invisible hot spots, some covering an acre or two, some just a few square yards, radiation can soar to thousands of times normal ambient levels.

> A soldier in such a spot would be exposed every hour to what experts consider a safe limit for an entire year, said Mr. Chareyron, the nuclear expert. The most dangerous isotopes in the soil are Cesium 137, Strontium 90 and various isotopes of plutonium. Days or weeks spent in these areas bring a high risk of causing cancer, he said.

"Temporary damage", really? The deaths of those downstream from a burst dam are no less permanent than the death of an irradiated Russian. And there are a lot more of the former than the latter.

Yes. Just like the black death was temporary damage.

Fission waste is truly long term. Just like desertification.

All deaths are permanent. Count them up and the result is clear.

All we are is dust in the wind.

I agree with you.

afaik all modern designs for nuclear power are aimed at being small so they can be installed underground, which would make them much safer during these events.

e.g. Here's a company that was licensed to build SMR (small modular reactors) last month that is designed to be underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

As an add on to that - if nuclear energy did start becoming mass produced in the developed world where some modicum of safety/regulation around waste can be assumed, once all of the necessary reactors are built out to supply first world energy needs, at best, those same private developers/contractors will start lobbying efforts in more questionable parts of the world to build these things. Then it be framed as an equity issue - why is the first world preventing the rest of the world from catching up - even though its actually just a plain "it's not safe to build it in a country in the middle of a civil war".

The more likely scenario I would envision is that - under the guise of business "joint venture partnerships in next generation energy" - the technological know how and access to a steady stream of the requisite raw materials to build weapons will leak to more questionable parts of the world.

I think this is rather a silly thing to be concerned about given the consequences of the world either running out of cheap energy or continuing to dump huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. I will roll the dice on your crystal ball being defective rather than the alternative.

My hot take, pretending I was an environmentalist, is that fossil fuel/climate change is the object d'ire for environmentalists only because nuclear ended up not gaining traction. The masses of environmentalists have moved on to a different front of the battlefield for protecting the earth but would return if nuclear gained traction.

It's kind of like now that humans conquered polio and smallpox, the next challenge toward advancing the human race is ridding ourselves of cancer. If polio and smallpox returned, we'd be back to fighting those.

Your baseless theories ascribing borderline malicious intentions on the part of actors like environmentalists and nuclear construction interests are amusing, but I fail to see why they should be taken seriously.

It actually seems to be a case study that empirically proves the opposite. Hundreds of thousands dead in the Russian invasion of Ukraine so far, untold injuries. Incredible amounts of destruction of cities and civilian infrastructure. But yet none from an exploding nuclear power plant. Why? Because its not really possible and it serves very little point. If the goal is to terrorize people and inflict damage there are much better ways as has been demonstrated.

> power plant workers fleeing

That is an argument for no power plants with workers anywhere.

In WW2 dams were attacked causing lots of damage. I haven't seen anyone using that as an argument that we should demolish all hydro dams lest they become targets in a future war. Strangely this kind of thinking only applies to nuclear power.

You may find this bit of history interesting: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-remembrance-day-ukraine-lit...

Control/operation of nuclear plants has already been a target of brinksmanship. And while your point about dams is a good one, disasters like a dam collapse (which just happened as a result of the Turkey/Syria earthquake, and is adding to the already catastrophic devastation), are more localized in time than nuclear incidents which present long-term environmental challenges. Sometime I'd like to visit Chernobyl, but I'm not sure I'd live there.

> But yet none from an exploding nuclear power plant. Why?

Interesting question.

I think the answer is that Russia didn't plan to occupy the largest nuclear power plant in Europe; they occupied Ukrainian territory, and there was a NPP in it. I think it's inconvenient for them to have international inspectors paying attention to the ZNPP. It's right on the frontline; it's on the shore of this huge reservoir on the Dniepro, and Ukraine occupies the opposite shore.

Russia doesn't need the energy from ZNPP; if there's one thing they have plenty of, it's energy.

And for Ukraine's part, they are playing a slow game. I think it suits them that Russia has this inconvenience in the middle of their frontline.

If a pressurized water reactor is hit breached with explosives, it instantly releases superheated water vapor carrying radioactive iodine and caesium.

For reactors that could be threatened, they should be "walk-away safe" and even more focused on recycling spent fuel so large quantities are not necessary to keep on hand.

> GWPF

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a British foundation highly critical of the anthropogenic global warming scientific consensus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foun...

> anthropogenic global warming scientific consensus

Isn't there some serious, vigorous debate on this topic?

No, there's not. Virtually all scientists with any knowledge of the relevant science concede that global warming is occurring, largely due to human activity.

What's more, the core facts of anthropogenic climate change are based on fairly basic thermodynamics, and were predicted with decent accuracy as far back as 1896. A great little book covering this is the recent The Physics of Climate Change.

The only real debate is whether completely upending the climate in a very short (ecologically speaking) time frame will be net beneficial for humans or net detrimental for humans. We know it will be net detrimental for the general ecology and currently existing species.

And from what I've read a bunch of the people claiming it will be a benefit for humans are speaking strictly on an economic basis, not a quality of life basis.

There's an inverse correlation between the intensity of your coefficients.

Not really. There are a few people that disagree with the consensus (that's the definition after all) and they get outsized media attention.

There's a lot of noise made by those whose ox is going to get gored by getting serious about the climate. There's no scientific debate other than in the size of the debacle. (For example, methane hydrate--it's not included in the IPCC reports at all because our estimates are still too wide. Note that on the high end it's *worse* than the high end estimates for the effects of CO2--and they will add. Earth has seen that kind of temperature before--most of the rocks laid down at that time don't have fossils.)

To point out the perhaps obvious, there's nothing in your post that addresses anything presented in the article on the fact or argument level.

"I don't like her and someone she works with" isn't persuasive. On a controversial topic, everyone with a view is going to be disliked by someone - it carries to significance.

I suppose your user name checks out...

As does yours.

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her

You accuse someone to have a "cavalier attitude to science" and "being in cahoots with" parties you allege are suspicious and then you proceed to use Extinction Rebellion as a source? You should worry more how cavalier Extinction Rebellion are, and who they are in cahoots with.

Citation needed.

Good pickup. Reading it I really couldn't see someone that was anti nuclear yet claims to have not been aware / motivated enough to learn about key, basic concepts like radioactive decay now being capable of writing a piece like this. It is very well crafted to apologetically make an antinuclear view point look juvenile and immature.

> It is very well crafted to apologetically make an antinuclear view point look juvenile and immature.

That was my reaction; but the way she characterizes her younger self was not at all convincing. People who change their views show more sympathy and understanding for their younger self than the author does, who just dismisses herself as a naive idiot (before moving on to explain the rather basic things she's "learned" about radioactive materials in the meantime).

This message feels like you're trying to make a case that the author must be dismissed because of her group affiliation. Is there anything in the argument itself that you find incorrect or misleading?

Do you really expect anyone involved in this to be unaffiliated with some kind of group?

This is just an ad hominem attack that does nothing to rebut the arguments.

OK, but she's not incorrect as far as the need for more nuclear esp in lieu of fossil fuels

i don’t see the problem supporting something with both words and facts

if you think that nuclear is an awesome energy source why shouldn’t you work for increasing its adoption?

Shill or not, she's right.

This is definitely the reddit or twitter style take I would expect from someone outside the industry.

I worked in the industry for about a decade on nuclear, solar, wind, coal, and natural gas. I mostly worked in capacity planning and did some light industrial engineering.

There is not some massive split between 'Big fossil fuel' and 'big renewable'. Most of the generators are diversified in a blend of all different types of power plants. It's ridiculous to advance these conspiracy theories about companies running marketting campaigns against themselves.

This claim that every statement about nuclear power is some 'industry shill' narrative is really ignorant and misinformed. Then there is the lines-on-the-corkboard about what organizations they belong to... trying to infer that this is some sort of nefarious pysop.. when in reality most people in the industry are part of organizations that span every power source.

I did alot of work with SCE and Nextera which are both incredibly diversified and have a variety of power plants.

Even the infamous Duke (typically considered heavy on fossil fuels) has plenty of renewable and nuclear generation.

There is also a complete lack of knowledge about base load versus peak load, and other aspects of power generation in the thread below. The commenter in the thread claiming that 'Renewables are ALWAYS cheaper' is not correct and is running an interesting theory that energy companies want to create pollution so badly that they will throw away potential profits and lose money.

This entire discussion is pretty much the peak of software engineers who can't tell the difference between a crescent and a ratchet weighing in expertise about an industrial field they do not comprehend.

Yeah, if the fission industry wants to be taken seriously they need to hire assassins to murder Shellenberger in his sleep. I have some sympathy for the scientific and technical justifications for fission, but I have some doubts about the economics and whether capitalist private utilities can be trusted to operate the reactors. I have zero doubts that Shellenberger is a mendacious tool of the fossil fuel industry who will say or do literally anything that will lead to a repeat appearance on Fox News. Therefore with him on the side of fission I am firmly 100% against it.

The fact that the most publicly visible spokesperson for nuclear energy is regularly on Fox News saying that Climate Change isn't a big deal, is mind blowing to me. That's like it's number one selling point, and their salesman is pretending it's not real.

She also had a recent piece out on The Free Press (formerly the Common Sense substack)

https://www.thefp.com/p/climate-activism-has-a-cult-problem

TLDR: She writes about her time in Extinction Rebellion as a media guru and highlights some issues the group has with it's 'eccentric' founder.

That article came out 18 days ago. So there seems to be something of a media coordination going on.

> The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry

This is a pretty serious claim.

> edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting.

This is an EVEN MORE serious claim.

Both of these need some serious backing. I don't see how what you're following up with is evidence to this claim. Maybe there's something I'm not getting because it just looks like typical group fighting to me. Political groups use strong language and often are quick to criticize other groups who are not aligned to a goal in the way that they are aligned (including wanting similar high level outcomes but through different means). I watched the Shellenberger Fox news link that they provided. More than half is Tucker on his typical idiotic rant then Shellenberger saying things that are like 70% true but out of context. Can't tell if he's just an idiot that doesn't grasp what "the nerds" are telling him or malicious (often difficult).

For the fossil fuel funding claims, I didn't dig in but I'll say that I actually wouldn't be surprised. These companies have a long history of funding several environmentalist groups. They had a history of funding Sierra Nevada Club[0] to promote anti-nuclear sentiment (this was highly successful btw). But the story here is actually more complicated than it would seem at first glance. I do think the Sierra Nevada Club members and even leaders (mostly) had good intentions and did believe that they were acting in the best interest of the environment. The same is probably true about the above group. But to see why this may be true we need to ask who benefits the most if you have differing groups that are concerned with reaching 0 emissions fighting one another? Fossil fuels. They are the current de facto solution to energy and unfortunately momentum is a powerful force. They've gladly promoted this war. (It's also not like they don't often try to paint themselves green. They fund plenty of green campaigns and even carbon scrubbing technologies. This is done for PR but those groups still get money. Kinda like filming yourself giving the homeless food and putting it on youtube. You get rich but the homeless probably (?) did get more food than they would have otherwise. The ethics is complicated here even if it is clear you're not a saint)

The fossil fuel industry wants us to think that the conversation is "renewables vs nuclear" instead of "renewables + nuclear vs renewables alone to fight fossil fuels". Moreso, they want us to think that energy can be acquired homogeneously. They both fund the nuclear bro idiots that want a 100% nuclear grid (ludicrous notion) as well as the renewable bros that think solar + batteries are going to work well in major cities that have weeks with no sun. Neither of these groups are listening to the real scientists working on this shit. These same scientists will even tell you that this is a complicated issue and they may not even know the full answer themselves but are working as a community to solve this. Why? Because climate change is the most complicated threat humans have ever faced and unfortunately no singular person has enough expertise to answer half these questions accurately (though can have relatively good accuracy). The honest to god truth is that while we have our stupid uninformed quibbling online we aren't actively building out zero carbon solutions and the fossil fuel industry not only continues but grows because our energy needs also do. The honest to god truth is that the scientific community generally just says "let's just not take nuclear off the table. We'll use renewables where they best fit and nuclear is a good option if/when there are gaps to fill." While we quibble the threat grows[1] and the cost to turn back balloons.

[0] https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear

[1] There have been grounds made and we're not actually on the "business as usual" trajectory, but we are still not building nearly fast enough. Carbon neutral isn't enough, we need to be carbon negative. A much tougher goal. The truth here is that even to reach net zero we're going to have to learn how to scrub chemicals from the atmosphere and oceans. Emissions are far more than vehicles and energy, and many of these are more difficult to decarbonize.

The author gave a fairly detailed account of how nuclear waste is processed and its general safety. Which claims do you take issue with?

As it stands, I have learned considerably more from her post.

Hopefully you didn't learn too many false things, like e.g. her claim:

> I also learned that batteries cannot be recycled.

Shellenberger is such a hack it's hard to stomach, it's a shame that he went full throttle into the tedious IDW culture wars rather than doing something useful with his time.

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