
Environmental Heresies (2006) - jotaen
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/405360/environmental-heresies/
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philipkglass
In 2006 I would have agreed with all four of these. Today I still agree more
than I disagree. (Though I didn't think "urbanization" was something
environmentalists generally opposed even at the time; the energy intensity of
suburban or exurban living has long been recognized as higher than urban.)

The one I've since rather soured on is nuclear power. It is quite safe enough,
certainly safer than continuing to burn fossils. I also think that reactors
that are already completed and operating should be used as long as possible.
But the dreadful delays and cost overruns with projects to build standardized
EPR and AP1000 reactors have convinced me that nuclear is _not_ the "fast,
proven, affordable" path to decarbonization that it looked like in 2006.
(Inevitably somebody will blame regulations. Note that these reactors are
badly behind schedule and over budget in France, Finland, the United States,
_and_ China -- everywhere they've been attempted. China has a better track
record with its own domestic designs but one reactor still takes nearly 6
years from construction start to commercial operation, slower than any kind of
energy project but large scale hydro.)

Renewable generation has since grown in scale and improved its
price:performance ratio faster than I thought possible in 2006, solar PV in
particular. The intermittency of these newer renewable sources and difficulty
of seasonal energy storage means that some additional nuclear may still be
required for deep decarbonization, despite its horrendous schedule and budget
problems. But new nuclear really doesn't look like the first, fastest, and
best way to cut emissions any more.

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ggm
You'd be taking a long punt in backing a reversal on nuclear.. the excess
costs built into overcoming planning opposition and compliance may make it
less attractive as a mitigation compared to PV and wind and pumped hydro
storage. Not that the energy density or scale matches you understand: just
that inside a 15-20 year deployment timeline more people will put money into
lower energy intensity paths.

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roenxi
It certainly doesn't seem to have panned out at all. Indeed, there are
countries (eg, ie, Germany) that have moved away from nuclear; as far as I've
been able to tell with the backing of the environmentalists and to the
detriment of the actual environment.

I really have to hold myself back from ranting about comparisons of countries
using nuclear compared to their next door neighbors who do not. I've seen
precious little evidence that nuclear power is anything but a positive for the
environment compared to what people actually do in practice.

But the environmental movement absolutely seems to hate it.

~~~
pjc50
Four reasons, really: trust, militarisation, cost, and worst-case.

Trust: long history of people claiming this stuff was "safe" then it turned
out it wasn't. All the way from radium watch paint to dumping nuclear waste at
sea.

People forget militarisation, but it's why nuclear reactors are only present
in some countries. It's why when Iraq built a nuclear reactor it was destroyed
by an Israeli airstrike:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/news...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm)

A lot of the hatred of nuclear by environmentalists is personal; remember when
the French security services blew up the _Rainbow Warrior_ for campaigning
against nuclear testing?

Cost now looks unfavourable compared to renewables. It can't easily be
improved without concerns over safety. The reactors also take too long to
build. We can build renewables much faster and cheaper, which will fill the
gap.

Worst-case: Fukushima is moderately bad and has left a big unusable zone.
Chernobyl was worse and briefly contaminated most of Western Europe; it still
leaves 20% of Belarus' agricultural land unusable.

~~~
ggm
Trust: true. all industry, science suffers from this. commercialization and
pragmatism rule. But, nuclear suffers more than others because we chose to
ignore love canal type damage and focus on radionucliotides, in weighing up
the risk/reward view.

Militarisation: also true. we're having a minor resurgence of concern about
neonicatinoids. That aside, people tend to downplay the risks inherent in most
biocides, for this purpose. I think the limited use in the syrian war has
played to this: we all know things have been used (tm) and we're all secretly
breathing sighs of relief that they appear to be less useful than we thought,
if just as evil and scary to suffer. The nuclear arsenal isn't going away.
But, brazil has no nuke warheads. Germany, turkey, sweden.. its a bit list of
people with a civilian nuclear industry and no warheads.

Personal: I think this is the killer reason actually. I think people don't
feel willing to flip on this issue (I used to work casually in the FoE office
in edinburgh and I attended the torness demos back in the '70s. I changed my
mind)

Cost: Most of the cost inflation feels to me like opportunistic side effects
of the planning delay. Nuclear reactors for the small market in strategic icbm
submarines have cost overruns but I am less sure the nuclear component of
their build is responsible. None the less, civilian nuclear build out is
insanely expensive so in the 10-15 year spend cycle, bang-for-buck from
PV/Solar is hugely big by comparison. 20-50 years, I suspect its less clear
but re-capitalizing newer PV/wind would probably work over time. Shorter field
life, but better RoI is undenyable. But, at a lower power intensity.

Fukushima. I tend to believe the unusable zone is shrinking but I also think
it was a clusterfuck only the japanese could have come up with. Their socio-
political-civilEng culture tends to do things for maximum harm. Look at
Tsukiji relocation for a non-nuclear instance of insane bad planning: relocate
the fish auction to .. an industrially polluted site none of the fish
merchants want to occupy ... WCGW?

Graphite reactors didn't make much sense to me long term. Windscale fire..
wasn't that also graphite core?

I hate to do this, but I feel like this is bringing historical steam engine
boiler explosions to the table discussing current technology. pebble bed, 4th
gen are a long long way from graphite. Maybe its me but this feels like re-
stating the personal-hatred thing.

I'm not so pro-nuclear I'm blind to reality. I think my original statement
stands: in the 15-20 year planning cycle it looks impossibly hard to make it
fly economically, socially even though in energy intensity terms, its a better
long term bet.

I like PV and Wind. I think emerging battery and pumped hydro makes more
sense, but we should not be blind to the damage Dams do, to the environment.
PH may actually be better in that score, less stable, unmoving deep cold de-
oxygenated water. Overall, I think more renewables make a damn sight more
sense than burning coal, gas or wood.

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pjc50
The only one of these that seems to have traction is the favour for urbanism -
as against suburbia.

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johngalt
I've been bullish on nuclear for as long as I can remember. It's the perfect
power source. Safe and dense power generation that scales extremely well. No
CO2 emissions as part of normal operation. Not dependent on external factors
such as hydro, wind, solar etc...

Gradually I've been pushed away from nuclear by three factors.

1\. The high level of operational excellence required to avoid accidents is
difficult to maintain. Ongoing oversight is difficult in any industry. Let
alone something as out of sight/mind as power generation.

2\. NIMBYism and FUD create large costs to the construction and operation of
nuclear that can't simply be waved away.

3\. The cost trends of PV solar are very promising.

Seems like we could build the future with PV + Natural gas and get 80% of the
solution that nuclear would give us without all the surrounding headaches.

