Climate Change - increasingly horrible disasters loom
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there is so much out there about this - I don't really need to provide a lot of sources - a quick google search will find you thousands of links
of course there are the climate change deniers
and there are those who say what little we can do won't be nearly enough
just one link:
from the article:
"Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree*: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. "
couldn't resist one more link - story about Siberia, one of the coldest places on earth where there is human habitation - they now face 100 degree days and multiple wildfires caused by them
https://eos.org/articles/siberian-heat-w....
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I love nuclear but you are right that lefties are 50/50 on nuclear, which is unfortunate
I also love nuclear and constantly hear it being advocated for on the "left".
I think we can both agree that lobbyists who fight against it (and let's be real, all politics is completely captured by special interests) are a huge problem.
Blaming opposition to nuclear power for using lobbyists is misguided. The nuclear industry has no shortage of lobbyists and pr consultants. It is, after all, an industry which invariably requires huge state investment and government guarantees to operate. They are an effective lobby too.
Nuclear power is appealing because it resolves the biggest problem of our current energy industry, namely emissions.
But it replaces them with other issues. Waste is a problem, accidents are a problem, conflicts are a problem, the industry struggles to address counterfeit and fraud in certificates and spare parts, and the necessary supply chains needed for plants to operate are weak to international instability.
These problems tend to be addressed very hazily with vague promises of modern technology resolving all the issues, but there is not much offered in terms of actual detail and specifications.
Many ignore all that, which is a mistake, but that still leaves the problem of scale. There is little to indicate that the nuclear industry can deliver energy solutions to neither the scale needed to replace fossil fuels to any meaningful degree, and there is nothing that indicates that it can deliver it at the required time-frames.
Blaming opposition to nuclear power for using lobbyists is misguided. The nuclear industry has no shortage of lobbyists and pr consultants. It is, after all, an industry which invariably requires huge state investment and government guarantees to operate. They are an effective lobby too.
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nuclear energy power as a lobby is a joke, there is almost no private money involved in the sector worldwide.
I mean Airbnb is a more powerful lobby by an order of magnitude than nuclear power is.
real lobbies nowadays are backed by companies that capitalize easily one trillion or a lot more, of private money.
there aren't 100 billion of private money in nuclear. it's small, and what there is , is state money. they are utterly insignificant
nuclear energy power as a lobby is a joke, there is almost no private money involved in the sector worldwide.
I mean Airbnb is a more powerful lobby by an order of magnitude than nuclear power is.
real lobbies nowadays are backed by companies that capitalize easily one trillion or a lot more, of private money.
there aren't 100 billion of private money in nuclear. it's small, and what there is , is state money. they are utterly insignificant
AirBnB doesn't require enormous government investment and guarantees, it just needs the government to look the other way. Small does not mean ineffective. The nuclear power industry and its lobbying organizations is also good at gaining traction on social media and traditional media.
As a result, a lot of people have been convinced that nuclear power is problem-free, cost-effective and can be implemented at meaningful scales to tackle the problems it claims to resolve. Now, it isn't impossible that decades into future, nuclear power could deliver those claims. But right now, the claims are light on specifics.
Nuclear power is a very easy and elegant principle, so it is easy to portray its operation as easy and elegant. However, the totality of the operation is very complex and the supply chain is massive and fragile. Nuclear power is historically extremely expensive per energy unit, to the point where it pretty much necessitates government subsidy and guarantees, it can't survive in a free market. Nuclear power plans are also safety-critical to the point where the government would be forced to pick up the bill when companies go under. Construction also takes enormous effort and time, so it is an important question whether nuclear power can even deliver results to the scale we need and in the time-frame we need it.
Trying to research these issues is a bit of an interesting rabbit's hole. You'll find a lot a eerily similar sounding answers, slogans and pamphlets, but very little that points to actual implementable solutions. You'll find tidbits about "potential new reactor types", but that's a bit like reading about "potential new engines" when you're looking to buy a car.
More research is fine, and so is modernization efforts of existing fleets of plants. As a solution to current environmental issues, I can't see how nuclear power is anywhere close to deliver. Right now, it seems like a bit of a red herring to me.
